1. Sametra #2
“Ma, I’m not going to college. I want to focus on my streaming channel.”
I blinked hard, sure I’d heard him wrong. “Excuse me? As hard as I’ve worked, as much as we’ve talked about your future, and you want to stream? Stream what?”
“My life.” What life, I wondered, because besides practice and being holed up in his room like a hostage, there was nothing to stream.
“That’s funny, Maj. Really, funny. But no. College is happening.”
“Why not? It’s my life, right?”
“Samaj, this may be your life, but you don’t know every damn thing. Why are you hell bent on doing things the hard way?”
“What? You don’t think I can do it?”
I shook my head, gripping the steering wheel tighter.
It wasn’t about what he could or couldn’t do.
My son was smart, honor roll smart, scholarship smart.
He got good grades, stayed out of real trouble aside from the occasional write-up or detention at school.
Normal teenager stuff. But it was senior year, time to lock in and stop playing around.
Samaj was my only child, my heart walking around outside my body, and I wanted him to do and be everything I never got the chance to be.
College had been hard enough as a single mom, but when Ashe left, I had to choose between textbooks and diapers, between study groups and daycare pickup.
It became damn near impossible to chase or have a dream.
Bottom line: I didn’t want my son stuck in Silverrun, with limited options and big dreams that never materialized into anything but a job at the local factory.
“Is that what you think? Samaj, I rai…”
“…raised you by myself,” he mocked. He knew the speech, because I had given it to him several times. And his ass was about to get it again.
I looked over at my son, the same boy who had once clung to my hip in grocery stores, now morphing into a version of himself that I barely recognized.
In just three months, he’d shifted into someone harsh, cold.
A certified asshole—one I loved more than life itself, but something was off.
You didn’t just wake up and throw a ten-year dream away.
“Did something happen?”
“I’ve been talking to my dad.”
The words hit me like cold water. My chest collapsed, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe right. Not only did Samaj have me completely fucked up, but so did his lowdown deadbeat father Ashe.
After seventeen years of radio silence, this man wanted to play daddy now.
I could still see him clear as day, twenty-two years old, standing in the doorway of our tiny apartment, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, telling me he “wasn’t ready for all this responsibility.
” Samaj had been teething, screaming his little lungs out, and I was running on maybe two hours of sleep in three days.
“I can’t do this, MiMi,” he’d said, not even glancing at the baby he helped create. “I ain’t cut out for this family shit.”
And now that the real work was done, seventeen years of sleepless nights, scraped knees, homework battles, explaining why other kids had daddies and he didn’t, now he wanted to crawl from his hole?
I’d survived raising a Black boy in this world alone, raised him to be the man Ashe never bothered to be.
He didn’t get to come back into our life like that. He had me fucked up.
My hands trembled against the steering wheel, but I kept my voice even.
Had to. Losing my cool would only push Samaj away from and closer to his daddy’s nonsense.
Because it was definitely nonsense on the horizon.
He was back around for a reason, and I was going to find out why and make sure he never got this idea in his head again.
“Come again?” I asked calmly. Too calm.
He shifted in the seat, picking at the string on his hoodie, winding it around his finger until the tip turned white. I’d watched him do this, whenever he was nervous or unsure of how to say something, especially if he knew I wouldn’t want to hear it.
The way he wouldn’t look at me said everything.
This wasn’t just curiosity. This had traction. This was something he’d been carrying around for weeks, maybe longer. How long had they been talking? How many messages had passed while I was at work?
“He hit me up. On Instagram. Said he wanted to reconnect. Talk. Maybe meet up.”
There it was.
The betrayal I’d felt brewing in my gut for months finally had a name. All the times I’d caught him quickly locking his phone. The sudden shift in how he questioned me, the way he looked at me like I was somehow the problem, instead of the one who stayed.
“And you said what?”
He met my gaze, and it made my blood pressure spike even more.
“I said okay. I wanna see for myself, Ma. I just…”
“Samaj, that man dipped before your baby teeth even came in. He doesn’t get to circle back now after the job’s damn near complete. No damn way. That’s absurd of you to even consider.”
“People change.”
I laughed, but there was no joy in it, because yes, people changed, but Ashe didn’t.
“Baby, the only damn thing he changed was his number and address when shit got rough.”
“But what if he wants to make things right?”
“Make things right?” My voice cracked. “Seventeen years too late for that, don’t you think? What could make him abandoning his family right?”
“I just...I need to know, Ma. I need to know why he left. Why wasn’t I enough? And only he can answer that.”
And there it was—the real wound underneath all his attitude and distance.
My heart broke for the little boy who still wondered what was wrong with him that made his daddy leave, because I knew that feeling all too well.
I’d wondered the same thing about my own mother, Samisa, who’d left me with my daddy when I was just a few weeks old.
“Baby, listen to me.” I reached over and squeezed his hand. “You were always enough. More than enough. His leaving had nothing to do with you and everything to do with him being a coward.”
The same words my daddy had said to me about my mother all those years ago.
“Then why won’t you let me find out for myself?”
Because I was terrified. Terrified that Ashe would break his heart all over again. Terrified that my son might choose a fantasy father over the reality we’d built together.
“Because some questions don’t have answers worth hearing,” I said quietly.
There was nothing that would ever separate me from my child.
From the second I laid eyes on him, I knew come hell or high water, he would always have me.
So no, I didn’t understand how a parent could walk away. I’d never understand.
I wanted to scream Fuck Ashe Lowe but I didn’t.
The conversation hurt. It gnawed at me because maybe I should’ve reached out or stayed on him about Samaj, but I wasn’t into begging.
A muthafucka had one time to show me who they were for me to believe them.
Ashe was a parasite who had no business around my child, deserving or not.
I looked over at him. He was still my baby, but he was growing into a man. And I wasn’t ready.
I turned back to the road, mind spiraling. On everything he’d just laid in my lap, his attitude, his questions, and how he was growing up faster than I could keep up. I wanted to press, to push back, but I was too tired. Not tonight.
It could wait.
I opened my mouth, thinking I might joke about the streaming just to lighten the air. Instead, something else entirely came out.
“Samaj, streaming, really? I wanted you to go to college. I thought you had your schools picked. What’s going on?”
“Ma, you act like streaming ain’t a real job. People make millions doing what I want to do.”
“Some people, Samaj. A few. You know what most people who chase dreams like that end up doing? Working regular jobs anyway. Except now they’re thirty, no degree, and limited options.”
“So, you don’t believe in me?”
“I believe in you having a backup plan. I believe in you not putting all your eggs in one basket or being so impulsive.”
I knew what he heard when I said that. That I didn’t believe in him. That I didn’t see him the way he wanted to be seen. But fear has a way of garbling even the softest truths.
“Impulsive? You run into burning buildings. I just don’t know if I love playing baseball anymore. Dad says…” he trailed off.
Ashe had been in his ear. Feeding him lines. Making promises.
“Whew, I almost blacked out,” I joked to keep from demanding he call his bum ass dad right then and there.
I needed his location immediately. Samaj didn’t fully know this side of me, but he was going to see the mama bear in me come out like never before.
“Let’s finish this later. We’re almost at Sheena’s. ”
I wanted to tell him his dreams were valid, that I supported him. But fear had its hands around my throat. Fear that he’d get hurt and not have enough to fall back on. Fear that all my pushing was more about my regrets than his path.
The light ahead turned green. My foot eased off the brake.
The rain came harder now, drumming against the sunroof of my Telluride. The wipers squealed against the windshield—I made a mental note to fix them soon. Taillights ahead blurred into red streaks, and the world outside shimmered in watercolor.
I could smell the rain through the vents; it was a smell that would normally calm me, but nothing about this moment felt calm. My stomach was in knots, and the silence between us swelled again, giving me a headache.
The radio hummed in the background, R&B that wasn’t doing its job calming me down.
Even Summer Walker couldn’t take the edge off this conversation or the pain in my heart.
I swallowed my pride, my anger, and my confusion.
I needed tonight more than ever now, and I wouldn’t let Ashe or his influence on my son ruin it.
Dad was turning sixty tomorrow, and it was time to celebrate.
“I just want to know him, Ma. You talk like he’s a ghost. But he’s real. And he’s talking to me.”
He wasn’t just mad—he was mourning something I couldn’t give him.
That look on his face reminded me of the first time he asked about Ashe. I think he was eight, maybe nine, and he’d started noticing his classmates getting picked up by their dads. Back then, I told him the truth in pieces. Just enough to protect his heart.
But now? He was starting to believe the only thing standing between him and his father was me.
I reached for the radio, needing something to calm the rage building in my chest. As far as I was concerned, his father was a ghost, and I never spoke on that man. Ever. I didn’t believe in ghosts.
As I began to turn the knob, I caught movement in my periphery. A flash of something that didn’t belong.
Then…headlights. Coming from the right. Too close. Too fast.
The SUV blew through the red light and slammed into the passenger side, Samaj’s side. Time slowed. My instincts took over, firefighter instincts, mama instincts.
My arm shot across Samaj’s chest. Seventeen years of protecting him. Even when there was nothing I could do. “Hold on, baby.”
The word was still coming out when the SUV slammed into the front passenger side. Metal crunched. Glass exploded. The airbag deployed on Samaj’s side. His body jolted hard, his head snapping sideways.
My world spun. My hands seized the wheel. My chest hit the restraint hard, bruised for sure, but I stayed conscious. Dizzy. Disoriented. But awake. I forced myself to slow my breathing.
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi…
“Samaj!” I turned toward him, heart hammering but slowing as I continued to breathe.
His head was slumped. Blood. On his temple, maybe his lip—I couldn’t tell through the fog.
“Baby, can…can you hear me?” My voice cracked. I reached for him, fingers shaking, already on the prayer line, asking God to cover us.
I could hear the sirens in the distance, but I was fading, darkness creeping in as my eyes fluttered. I blinked fast, trying to stay focused. “Stay with me, Samaj. Please, stay with me.”
His fingers twitched. That was all I saw before the darkness pulled me under.
People began crowding around, yelling that help was on the way. I held on as long as I could, but the spinning came fast. I passed out before they could reach the door.