CHAPTER 4
BABY MAGIC
The twins being born didn’t feel special. The city was restless, the same way it always is. Sirens echoed, folks down the block was arguing again. West Philly did not slow down just because new life was arriving.
Inside our house, Mama moved slowly, one hand pressed against her lower back while she leaned against the kitchen counter. Her face looked stressed in a way I had never seen on her.
Shay posted in the doorway eyeing Mama, with her arms folded across her chest. Her expression tight with worry only older sisters understood.
“You need ta sit down Mama,” Shay voiced firmly.
Mama waved her hand without looking up.
“I’m fine.”
I could see she wasn’t. Every time she shifted her weight, she inhaled slowly, like something deep inside her hurt. Shay closed the distance between her and Mama.
“You been sayin’ dat all day,” Shay spoke like she was the mama.
“But you don’t look fine.”
Mama propped against the counter for a bit longer before lowering herself into the chair by the window. She closed her eyes and exhaled.
“I’m jus’ tired, I’ll be fine baby,” she mumbled.
Those words meant more than they sounded like. Tired from work, tired from carrying twins, tired from doing it all alone. The stress weighed on the room. The one person who should have been there wasn’t. Tony.
He came around earlier that week, smelling of watered-down cologne, wearing a blazer, when he had nowhere important to be.
He stayed barely long enough to make promises.
Promises about helping more. Promises about being around when the babies arrived.
Promises that sounded nice but floated through the room, like black smoke.
Nobody in our house said his name out loud, the empty space he left behind already took up too much room.
Shay scooted over to the window and glanced out toward the street.
“You think he comin’ ova tonight?” She questioned hopefully.
Mama didn’t respond. She kept her gaze fixed on the table, breathing heavy.
“Yo’ Daddy got his own ways Shay.” That was all she said.
Shay’s shoulders got tense, like she understood the weight of those words. Daddy got his own ways, and none of them seemed to include staying.
The night went on and the pain started coming faster. Mama tried to hide it. She rose from the chair, strolled toward the sink, and gripped the counter as another wave hit her. Shay turned around immediately.
“That one hurt, didn’t it?”
Mama forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Jus’ a little.”
Shay had already moved into action. She grabbed the house phone and started dialing Aunt Dee’s number.
I watched from the couch, my legs swinging nervously while the room grew thick with the sense that something important was happening.
I didn’t understand all about babies or hospitals yet.
All I knew was Mama’s stomach had been growing for months and folk kept saying two little boys were coming.
Two. Our house was already crowded, now it was about to hold two more people.
Shay hung up the phone.
“Aunt Dee on ha way,” she blurted.
Mama winced, gripping the edge of the table again as another contraction ripped through her body. This time she didn’t pretend it didn’t hurt.
Shay looked at Mama with a mixture of excitement and fear that didn’t belong on an eight-year-old face.
“Everythang gonna change now, ain’t it?” She asked.
Mama glanced up at her, the worn look in her eyes softened into warmth.
“Yes,” she replied gently.
“Good change.”
The ride to the hospital felt way too long.
Aunt Dee drove fast, her hands gripping the steering wheel, like she was trying to outrun the contractions.
Mama in the passenger seat breathing through the pain while Shay kept whispering encouragement beside her.
Me in the backseat viewing the city lights blur past the window.
Sirens echoed somewhere nearby. Same sirens that I heard daily, was lighter today, like they was announcing good news.
We reached the hospital and Mama could barely walk without help.
Nurses rushed her through the doors while Aunt Dee handled the paperwork.
Shay stayed close to Mama’s side the entire time.
She held Mama’s hand while doctors asked questions.
Wiped sweat from Mama’s forehead with a paper towel.
And right there, Shay stopped being a big sister, she started becoming another parent.
She looked at me, eyes saying she was responsible for protecting more than herself now.
Hours passed before the cries finally came. Two tiny voices announcing themselves to the world. The nurses wrapped the babies in blankets and placed them beside Mama. She looked at them with a mixture of exhaustion and joy.
“Meet your brothers,” she whispered. “This is Sinceer. This is Saiyd.”
The twins were born four minutes apart but not in the same day. Saiyd came first. September 22st. 11:57 p.m. The last breath of summer. Hot. Restless. Impatient. Like he couldn’t wait to get here.
Four minutes passed and the earth shifted. Then Sincere came. September 23nd. 12:01 a.m. The first breeze of autumn. Calm. Measured. He arrived already thinking and studying the world around him. Same womb. Same night. Two different seasons.
Shay crouched beside the hospital bed gawking down at them, her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Two of them,” she mouthed.
Mama agreed slowly.
“Two.”
Shay looked at me next. I saw the truth settling behind her eyes, our family had now become new. Bigger. Harder. And the responsibility was shifting onto her shoulders.
“He look like a lil’ alien,” she exclaimed.
Mama giggled weakly.
“All babies do.”
I posted near the window admiring Saiyd. He was smaller than his twin but louder.
“Why he cryin’ so much?” I asked.
“Cuz that’s what babies do,” Mama replied.
Afterwhile, when the twins was asleep and the nurses had finally stopped coming in every five minutes, Mama stared at the empty chair in the corner of the hospital room.
Aunt Dee was filing her nails, sitting at the end of Mama’s bed.
She had returned to the hospital after going to get Mama’s hospital bag that we left by the front door.
“You know what’s strange?” Mama said quietly.
“What Niecy?” Aunt Dee asked.
“I wish Big Mama was here.”
A hush settled over the room.
Mama’s Mama, our grandmother Lorraine, died almost four years before the twins was born.
It was a heart attack. One minute she was yelling at kids in the kitchen, the next minute she was gone.
Big Mama was the glue that held the family together.
After she died, the family scattered like broken glass.
And Mama was never able to put the pieces back.
“You remember Big Mama, Shay?” Mama’s eye lit up.
Shay’s face filled with emotion.
“Yeah.”
“What was she like?” I wondered. I didn’t get to know her. I was too young to remember.
Shay beamed softly.
“She was loud,” she giggled.
“Louder than Mama.”
“Well dat ain’t hard,” Aunt Dee joked.
Mama gave her a dramatic eye flip. Shay kept going.
“She used to sit on tha porch in dat old rockin’ chair. The green one wit’ the broken arm.”
“I remember dat chair,” Mama added. “She would yell at everybody passin’ by.”
“Not yell,” Shay corrected.
“She jus’ talked loud.”
Mama cackled.
“She ran that block.”
I tried to imagine her. This Big Mama I had never known. She sounded strong.
“Did she ever hold me?” I wondered.
Mama looked down at the hospital blanket covering the twins.
“You was less than a year old when she passed baby.”
“But did she ever hold me?”
Mama lowered their chin in agreement.
“Yes baby. All the time.”
“What did she say about me?”
Mama smiled faintly.
“She said you was so sweet and so quiet.”
Shay snickered.
“Well, that ain’t last long.”
It always seemed like our home was missing a piece.
Friends talked about their grandparents as permanent parts of life.
Sunday dinners. Holiday stories. Old people sitting on porches telling you how things used to be.
But we ain’t have that. Mama’s Daddy died long before I was born.
Vietnam. That was all anyone ever said. Just one word, like the war swallowed him whole.
All Daddy ever said about his parents was that they was dead. Nothing more. Never how they died, never when it happened. Just gone. All I knew was we grew up without them too, carrying an absence we didn’t even understand.
Now Mama’s Mama was taken too soon.
“Big Mama used to cook tha best fried fish,” Shay bragged.
“That’s who taught me how to get down in da’ kitchen! Best recipe on da’ block.” Aunt Dee chimed in.
“Wit’ homemade hot sauce and white bread.” Mama added.
“She used to make us sit at the table for dinner even when we ain’t want to.”
“She would smack the back of ya’ head if you tried to get up early,” Aunt Dee blurted.
They both cracked up laughing. The sound was warm, but also sad, because those memories didn’t belong to me.
I peeked down at the twins sleeping in their mini hospital beds. They were so small and cute.
“They will never get to meet her?” I spoke low.
Mama shook her head.
“No baby.”
“And they will never meet Grandpa either?”
“No.”
The atmosphere was somber. Mama reached over and stroked Sinceer’s cheek gently.
“That’s why family matters,” she started. “Because once people are gone…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.
I laid in the hospital chair looking at the babies sleeping.
Shay had fallen asleep in the corner. Aunt Dee curled on the hospital couch, snoring.
Mama rested peacefully with her eyes half closed.
I stayed awake wondering about the grandparents that I would never know.
Stories I would only hear secondhand. Family history that ended before I was old enough to retain it.
Our household wasn’t just missing grandparents, it was missing roots.
Families grow the same as trees. Grandparents at the base.
Parents in the middle. Kids branching out toward the future.
But our tree had been chopped at the bottom, and Mama was trying to grow new branches on a trunk that had already taken too many hits.
Our house was full of love, but also full of absence.
Even at five years old, I could feel how much that absence mattered.
When a family loses its elders, the kids end up raising themselves faster than they should.
I climbed onto the chair beside the hospital bassinet. The babies laying there, with their tiny chests rising and falling in small waves. The hospital room buzzed weakly with machines and distant footsteps. I rested my chin on the rail and whispered subtly.
“I’m your big sister.”
That day wasn’t only the beginning of their story, it was the start of everything that would come after. And none of us were ready for the story that was about to unfold.