Chapter 3
CRESCENT
The ringing of my phone pulled me out of my sleep.
I laid there a minute with my eyes closed before finally reaching over to feel around on my nightstand for it.
After knocking a few things over, I found it.
With a sigh, I stared at my brother’s name before looking up at the time.
It was seven. If O was calling me at seven in the morning, it was because our sister hit him first and pissed him off.
“What up doe?” I groggily answered after putting the phone to my ear.
“You up? Good. Listen... Talk to Luna, bro. Please,” He stressed.
“Didn’t you tell her mommy didn’t want no got damn caterer?
She calling me early as hell, trippin’ talm’bout did I remember to book with the caterer?
” He paused, briefly. Just long enough to catch his breath.
“What fucking caterer?” The nigga sounded disgusted, damn near.
“Luna stay trying to mix some bougie shit up somewhere it don’t belong.
You know how that’s going to go, right? Niggas not gon’ touch it. They gon’ look at that shit and—”
“Orion,” I cut in, rubbing my eyes. “It’s seven. Yo’ meeting with Alyssa is at what time? Nine. Recenter. Refocus. I’ll talk to Lu’. Stop trippin’.” I closed my eyes and cupped my freehand under my head. “You know how she is. I got it.”
“Godspeed, bro. God fuckin speed, cause—”
“O,” I interrupted. “Chill.”
We shared a laugh, and he told me to just hit him up after, to let him know how it went. I told him I would, and we hung up.
I laid there a minute, with a slight smile.
Sometimes, Orion could be a wild ass nigga.
Slow to think, but quick to react. We were opposites in that sense.
But... there was a balance because of it.
The same where Luna was concerned. We were triplets.
With Luna being the oldest by two minutes between the two of us.
Orion was in the middle, and me... at the end.
Often, I wondered if that was where my patience came in at.
Because I was in no rush to listen to Luna’s whining, I ruminated a minute.
I had to lay there for a couple to collect my thoughts before calling.
Because she was the oldest, she liked to control a lot of shit.
She liked to think of herself as the ‘leader’ of the pack.
Which... at times was legit. I could give her that, easily.
But what Luna struggled with was accepting that there was no leader.
We were individuals and not everybody wanted to listen to her ass.
Lu only saw things through her own lenses, often neglected to look at the full board.
But she couldn’t do that. Not with ma she couldn’t.
Moms wouldn’t want a caterer. We came from her, but we didn’t share the same experiences.
Luna could get lost in her own world sometimes.
And most of the time, it’d be me to bring her bourgeois ass back down to reality.
With a sigh, I picked my phone back up. Right before I could get in position to call her, it rang. I smirked. Luna. Connection was interesting.
“I was just thinking about—”
“Did you talk to Orion?” She immediately interrupted. Didn’t even greet me. See how they do me? “You know how special this birthday is for mommy. This is supposed to be special. It should be special. Why wouldn’t she want a caterer? It’s so got damn tacky not to have a caterer bro.”
“Lu—
“And even if she doesn’t, she needs one.
Yes, Auntie Marjorie’s mac and cheese is good as hell but.
.. what’s wrong with outsourcing? That way the family don’t have to worry about cooking.
” She paused to whisper, as if someone was on the line with us.
“And then... didn’t you say Uncle Moe and them still had roaches?
You know how much she love his baked beans, Cres,” she whined.
“Do you know how easy it is for roaches to hide in a pan of baked beans? And—and who in the fuck still has roaches? They too comfortable being dirty.” She gagged. “I don’t—”
I laughed.
Literally cracked up. So hard that I had to sit up.
“Lu... yo,” I laughed. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She giggled and pouted. “I’m serious, Crescent! Stop laughing!” She wanted me to stop laughing, however... she couldn’t stop laughing her damn self. “I don’t want to be eating and then... I look down and—please!” She grunted. “Bro! We literally need a got damn caterer!”
I laughed and shook my head. “You overdoin’ it.” Pausing, I added, “Chill, chill, chill.”
I got it. Understood why she was overthinking the whole party thing.
Moms was turning fifty-seven and on her third year with stage two cancer.
Every year since her diagnosis was celebrated harder than the one before.
However, this one was a milestone because her own mother didn’t see past fifty-six and that was the one thing moms talked about growing up.
All she wanted was to see fifty-seven. And after her diagnosis, she thought it was a wrap.
We got her the best doctors and put her on a holistic diet.
So, realistically, the caterer, or whoever prepared the food, wouldn’t be for moms. She might sneak in a little bit of macaroni and cheese or some of those baked beans Luna mentioned, but that was it.
The food would be for the family more than anything.
And if there is one thing Niecy was notorious for, it was taking care of the family.
Luna sucked her teeth. “I’m not overdoing it, Crescent. I’m traumatized and you should be too.”
Shaking my head, I thought of the last time we spent the night at Uncle Moe’s house.
Luna was throwing down on a bowl of cereal—corn flakes we had to add sugar to—when she spotted a few baby roaches floating in her shit.
She was sick. Literally and figuratively.
Cried for hours before our folks finally said fuck it, cut their little kid free time short and picked her up.
Unc ‘nem had roaches like a muthafucka. They were basically a part of the family. Seeing one, two, or a whole team of them ho’s was as normal as seeing my cousins, low key.
For them it was common, at least. For us.
.. three silver spoon fed kids that stayed in a house that could fit theirs, and their neighbors house in it, it wasn’t.
For us, it was a nightmare. We didn’t spent time over there often but because our parents wanted us to be in touch with our roots, despite where we were raised, we spent at least two weekends out of the month in the trenches.
Uncle Jo stayed in the trenches for real—off E.
Warren and Chalmers. It was like a completely different world out there.
A world me and O thrived in. Luna? Not so much.
Sis hated that shit. However, I looked forward to our trips from the burbs to the hood every fucking time.
The balance molded me into the man I was today.
I laughed again and dragged my hand down over my face. “Lu... that was twenty years ago.”
“And they still stay in the same house,” she pointed out. “All of them. The roaches too, remember? I really don’t—”
“Listen,” I interrupted, swinging my legs to the side of the bed. “Regardless of all that, you know mommy don’t want a caterer, Lu. I got an easy ass solution for your problem.”
She didn’t. Denise ‘Niecy’ Carter grew up in the hood.
Despite moving to the burbs and living out there for a good twenty years or so, she didn’t care for catered food or any of that fancy shit.
Moving didn’t change her. Moms wanted soul food.
And while it was very possible to get soul food from a caterer, she wanted the food to come directly from the souls in our family.
It wouldn’t hit the same coming from anywhere else.
Not at all. It wasn’t even about the food, for real.
It was the love that would go into it. It would be the process of preparation.
The togetherness it would create. It wasn’t often that family got together and cooked these days.
Muthafuckas were very divided. They needed to be in the kitchen together.
And ma’s birthday was the perfect time for it.
“Here you go,” she mumbled with a sigh. “What is it?”
“They can cook at the compound,” I suggested with a shrug. “Did you forget? The kitchen is massive. And clean. Won’t have to worry ‘bout roaches or none of that shit, sis.” I added with a smirk.
Luna laughed. “Yeah, that would work... if they didn’t have a problem with traveling across eight mile—”
“There is a solution to every problem. That’s easy,” I interrupted. Shit was very easy. I’d pack every last one of them muthafuckas in sprinter vans if need be. “You just want something to complain about. You need me to handle the planning shit, Lu? Shits easy, low key.”
She gasped. Dramatically, too. As if I’d threatened to do something to one of her cats. Luna was a cat lady. Loved them muthafuckas. Didn’t have kids but had three cats she treated like children. Ugly ass hairless Siamese cats at that.
“Don’t play with me, Cres! I can handle it.
And it’s not easy. At all,” she answered.
“You handle the food, and I handle everything else. And since you want them at the compound, you need to be there to make sure they don’t fuck anything up.
Since you got a solution for everything. I want to see you try to control them.”
I hung my head a little with a light chuckle. “I got it.”
With that, we said our I love you’s and hung up.
About two hours later, I was parking in the lot at my newest investment—a hotel. I had several investments—mainly bars scattered around Michigan, laundry mats, and a few chain restaurants like Little Caesars and McDonalds’—but this one was special to me.