DELPHINE
Iwas standing at the front window before I even heard the car, because a mother knows. Days of silence from my child put me at that window whether I meant to stand there or not.
Then, I saw it—a Mercedes so clean and so expensive it looked like it had been dropped into my neighborhood by mistake, gleaming against my cracked curb like it belonged to somebody else’s life.
And there was a man in it, one of them security types Truth had mentioned, scanning my block like he expected trouble to walk up out the damn ditch.
My stomach dropped, and my blood rose at the same time. Two feelings that had no business living in the same body, but that’s motherhood for you.
I watched my daughter sit in that car for a long minute before she even got out, gripping the wheel like she was praying.
Something about her stillness scared me more than if she’d come running up crying.
I’d left that woman eleven voicemails. Eleven.
I called Raven. I called Saroya. I was two seconds from calling the coroner’s office to see if they had an unidentified body matching my baby’s description, and here she comes finally, gold swinging in her ears, dress fitting her like it was sewn on, looking like a whole magazine cover.
She got out. Some folder clutched to her chest like it was made of glass.
I had the door open and my hand on my hip before she made it halfway up the walk. I’d been rehearsing this moment for days, and Lord, I let her have it.
“Truth Renois.” My voice cracked across that yard like a whip, and I meant for it to.
“You’ve got some nerve pulling up here in that car, looking like a whole diva, when you ain’t called your mama in days.
Days! I done left you eleven voicemails.
I called Raven. I called Saroya. I was two seconds from calling the damn coroner’s office to see if they had an unidentified body matching your description! ”
“Mama—”
“Don’t Mama me. You out here dealing with God knows what, carrying my grandbabies, and I gotta hear from your sister that you’re staying with Amai in the Garden District like this is a Tyler Perry movie!
I’m your mother! I birthed you! I should not have to find out you’re safe through the family group chat! ”
I was still going, working myself up good, finger pointing, and I could hear somebody’s lawnmower running two houses down like the whole world just kept moving while my nerves were shot.
Normally, she’d stand there and let me finish, maybe even smile a little at how country and dramatic I get when I’m scared half out my mind.
But I didn’t even get through my whole sentence before I saw her chin start trembling.
Her eyes went glassy, and then she was crying—not the pretty kind, the real kind, shoulders shaking, breath hitching, that folder slipping right out her arms and hitting my porch step with a soft slap.
Every bit of anger dropped off me like a coat I didn’t need anymore.
“Oh—baby.” I was down them steps and had my arms around her before she could get another word out, pulling her into my chest the way I did when she was seven years old and scraped her knee on the sidewalk.
She still smelled like something expensive under all that grief, but underneath that, she still smelled like my child.
“It’s okay,” I murmured into her hair, rocking her right there in the yard where anybody driving by could see, and I did not care one bit. “Mama’s got you. Whatever it is, Mama’s got you.”
She cried into my shoulder for a long, long minute, right there in the sun, designer clothes and all, and I held on tight because underneath all that shine, she was still just my baby girl falling apart.
I got her inside eventually, sat her down at my kitchen table—the same one that’s been there since before she could walk, scarred with knife marks and a ring from some hot pot decades back—and set a glass of sweet tea in front of her like that could fix something.
Maybe it could. I believe sweet tea can fix a lot of things this world tries to break.
“Now.” I sat across from her, hands folded, watching her face close. “Tell me.”
So, she told me. The appointment. The doctor’s face when she walked in. The results.
“Two different fathers, Mama.” Her voice cracked all over again just saying it out loud a second time. “The girl is Amai’s. The boy is Kaisen’s.”
My mouth fell clean open, and I swear I didn’t have a word to say, which for me is close to a miracle.
“I thought—” I shook my head slow, trying to reset something in my mind that had already made itself up weeks ago.
“I thought y’all said it was gonna be Amai’s.
Both of ’em. I done been sitting here for weeks, thinking, ‘Okay, once them results come back, my baby can finally figure out the rest of her life. Get some peace. Move forward with that man since y’all clearly ain’t stopping what’s already started. ”
“I know.” She wrapped both hands around that tea glass like she needed something to hold onto. “I thought the same thing. And now—now Kaisen’s got a claim, Mama. A real one. Not just some man who was in the room when it happened. His actual son.”
“Lord have mercy.” I rubbed my temple, feeling a headache building right behind my eyes. My girls always had some shit going on. Honor was over there beating Terrance’s ass, Truth always had something going on with a man, and Raven couldn’t keep at man with that mouth of hers.
“And it’s not even just that.” The words started spilling out of her faster now, like the dam had really broken, and there wasn’t any stopping the flood.
“You remember when I first started telling you about Kaisen? How sweet he was, how consistent, how he’d show up and just sit with me and not ask for nothing? ”
“I remember.”
“That man is gone, Mama. The second Amai got chosen—the second it was clear I wasn’t going with him—Kaisen turned into somebody I don’t even recognize.
Disrespectful. Controlling. Showing up places uninvited.
Saying ugly things to me on my own porch.
” She swallowed hard. “Amai had to shoot him to get him to back off.”
“He what?”
“He’s fine,” she said quickly, waving her hand like that would settle my nerves.
“Grazed him, some rooftop sniper thing. It’s a whole other story, but the point is—Amai handled it.
Handled him. But now I got proof that boy’s blood is tied to one of my babies forever, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel safe about that. ”
I sat back in my chair for a moment, quiet, studying her the way I used to when she was a teenager trying to convince me a curfew violation wasn’t really a big deal. This wasn’t no curfew, though. This was blood and war and grandbabies caught in the middle of it.
“Baby,” I said finally, “I’m not gon’ sit here and pretend this ain’t a mess.
It is. It’s a whole ’nother level of mess than what I signed up to worry about when you told me you were carrying a surrogate baby for some rich man.
But I need you to hear me on this.” I leaned forward and took her hand across that table.
“You keep standing your ground. You hear me? However this shakes out—whoever’s blood is tied to which baby—don’t you dare let either of them men make you small.
Don’t lose your voice in the middle of this.
That’s the only thing that scares me more than Kaisen or Winston or any of the rest of them Landrys. ”
“I won’t,” she whispered.
“Good.” I patted her hand, then looked her up and down. “Now. How’s the morning sickness? You still throwing up every five minutes like you did them first few weeks?”
She actually laughed a little, wet and hoarse, and it was good to hear, even broken up like that. “It’s gone, Mama. Been gone a couple weeks now.”
“Thank you, Jesus.” I threw both hands up like I was in church, because I was. “‘Cause watching you hunched over that toilet was taking years off my life too.”
We sat at that table a long while after that.
I kept getting up to check on the pot of red beans I’d started before she even got here—I’d had a feeling she was coming, I always do—and I let her just sit in the smell of it, the bubble and thump of the pot, the hum of my little TV on the counter playing some judge show that neither of us was really watching.
“You need anything?” she asked at one point, watching me move around my own kitchen in my house shoes, that linoleum still peeling up in the corner near the fridge, same as it’s been for years.
“I’m fine, baby.”
“Mama.”
“I said I’m fine.”
She got her purse anyway, pulled out five hundred dollars cash, and set it right on the counter next to my stove.
“Truth, I don’t need—”
“I know you don’t need it.” She put her hand over mine before I could push it back at her. “I want you to have it. Get your hair done, fix that back porch step you keep saying is about to break somebody’s ankle, whatever you want. Let me do this for you.”
I looked at that money, then at her, and I swear my heart went soft in a way that made my whole chest ache.
“You’re a good daughter,” I said quietly, folding them bills and tucking them into my bra strap the way I always do with cash I mean to keep safe. “Better than I deserve some days.”
“Stop that.”
“I’m just saying.”
By the time them red beans were done, a shaft of sunlight split down the middle of the plate, and we ate together at that same scarred table.
I told her about Ms. Odalys next door and her mess with her grown son.
She half-listened and half just sat in the sound of my voice, the way she’d done since she was small.
After dinner, I pulled her into the front room, sat down on that old plaid couch I done had reupholstered twice since she was a child, and patted the spot next to me.
She curled up against my side like she hadn’t done since she was maybe twelve years old, her head on my shoulder, my arm wrapped around her, and the TV playing low in the background—some rerun neither of us was really watching.
“You can’t hide out here forever,” I said after a while, my fingers smoothing her hair the way I used to before school.
“I know you want to. I know this is the one place in the world where nobody’s shooting at nobody and nobody’s got a Landry last name.
But, baby, you gotta go back out there and tell both them men what these results say.
You can’t let it fester. Secrets don’t get smaller. They get bigger and meaner.”
“I know.”
“And Kaisen—” I sucked my teeth, because I knew something was off.
“I never did trust that one. Too sweet. Too perfect. A man that nice all the time is hiding something, baby, I don’t care what nobody says.
You know I always said that. Amai, at least, I could see coming a mile away.
Kaisen’s the one that’s really crazy, mark my words. ”
She lifted her head to look at me, half-shocked, half-amused despite everything going on. “Mama, you tased Amai. In your own house.”
“And I’d do it again,” I said without a flicker of shame, because I would.
“That don’t mean he’s the dangerous one, baby.
That means he’s the honest one. Amai’s what you see is what you get.
Man’s dangerous, sure, ain’t no denying that, but he don’t hide it.
He walks in a room, and you know exactly what you dealing with.
I could see that the one time I met him, how he looked at you when you got loud with him.
That’s a man who respects fire when he sees it.
” I squeezed her shoulder. “That kind of man can be good for you, Truth. Long as you keep standing up for yourself. Long as you don’t let that same fire go quiet just ’cause he’s fine and got money. ”
“I promise you I won’t.”
“Mm-hmm. We’ll see.”
She sat up a little straighter then, and I could tell there was more coming, something she’d been holding back.
“Mama, I’m staying at Amai’s house right now. Something happened.”
My whole body went rigid. “What kind of something?”
“Somebody left a package on my porch. At Mimosa Ct.” She hesitated, and that hesitation scared me more than anything she’d said all day. “It had body parts in it, Mama. A finger. An ear.”
“Aww, hell nah!” I jerked forward, both hands flying to my mouth. “Lord Jesus, Truth, why am I just now hearing about this?!”
“Because I didn’t want you to spiral before I was able to reassure you in person,” she said quickly.
“But Amai’s taken every precaution. Full security detail, cameras, the whole nine.
He moved me to his place in the Garden District so I’m not sitting out there alone while whatever’s happening with his family plays out. ”
“His family is the threat, Truth! That’s Winston.
That’s probably Kaisen, too, running around unstable the way you say he’s been.
Them the ones sending body parts to your porch!
” I was up off that couch, pacing my own living room, hands moving everywhere because I could not sit still with that kind of news sitting in my chest. “I don’t care how many guards that man’s got standing around your house.
The Landrys are the danger here. All of ’em. ”
“I know, Mama.” She stayed calm, let me pace it out the way she always did.
“But I will say—when I watch Amai move through all this, I can see it. He’s been carrying that whole family on his back for a long time.
All that weight, all that war, it’s aged him in ways he probably doesn’t even realize. ”
“And Amai is tired,” she added softly.
“I don’t give a good got-damn about Amai being tired.
” I spun to face her, pointing my finger, my voice sharp as a blade.
“You know what I care about? You. My daughter. Staying alive. Staying safe. That man’s exhaustion ain’t my concern.
Never will be. My concern starts and ends with you and them babies. ”
I let that sit a second, because I wasn’t wrong, and there wasn’t a thing she could say to argue with a mother’s love that fierce.
I finally sat back down, breathing slower now, and cut my eyes at her.
“You bring him here Sunday,” I said. “Dinner. Both of y’all.”
“Bring—Mama, why?”
“Don’t worry about why.” I waved my hand, because the matter was already settled in my mind, no room for negotiation.
“I’ll get everything I need to know just from him being in my presence.
A man’s lips can tell you anything he wants you to believe, baby.
Lies, half-truths, whatever’s convenient.
But my discernment don’t care about none of that.
My discernment will tell me the truth whether he opens his mouth or not. ”
I reached over and tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear, the way I used to when she was small and scared of something she couldn’t name.
“Sunday,” I said again, softer this time, but just as final. “You bring him to me.”