CHAPTER 14 #3
Shay’s exit was a manual override on the house's spirit. The walls no longer held the vibrations of her joy. Like someone had cranked the intensity down to zero and walked away with the key. Mama’s voice no longer shot out the front door yelling,
“Shay! Bring yo’ fast ass back in dis house!”
Sai and Sin still turned the hallway into a demolition derby every day. So, the house was noisy, but the sound was hollowed out, a shallow imitation of itself. Leaving us to navigate a world where the sun never quite rose again.
That grief became a physical part of Mama’s anatomy, like an unhealed fracture.
A hidden, pulsing injury. She still beat the sun to the kitchen every morning, her body a slave to the only schedule the streets hadn't dismantled.
On the outside, Mama’s legend held firm.
Denise Carter, a statue of resilience. The backbone of our family, a solo mother of four who balanced the world on her shoulders.
But the inner glow she used to carry evaporated.
Movement became a chore, like she was dragging herself through the house.
The kitchen was a place of forgotten errands, she would stand at the counter her original intent for being there gone.
She would sink into the couch cushions, the living room a cave of unlit emotions.
No sound. No motion. Just her thoughts on a permanent loop of the daughter who chose the streets over the house.
The void Shay left in our home was a raw wound for me too. But watching the threads of Mama’s sanity snap, one by one, was a slow-motion execution. A horror I had no armor for.
One afternoon, I came home from school to a beer can standing guard on the kitchen table, a new and unwelcomed tenant in our house.
Two days later, a wine bottle poked from the trash, half-buried under a mess of paper towels.
Mama started humming louder to drown out the ghosts.
A frantic attempt to fill the hole Shay left behind.
Her walk through the hallway became a series of sloppy movements.
Her words began to bleed together. A messy, drunken cursive that forced me to lock in.
For now, it was small cracks in the foundation. Minor chips in the brick. But the gaps widen when the weight is this heavy. I was seeing every single shift in the structure. I just kept my mouth shut. Silence was the only thing keeping the house from collapsing in real-time.
The cable cut out mid-broadcast, the cable company finally pulling the plug on our entertainment.
The twins erupted in a chorus of desperation; their survival seemingly tied to the wrestling ring.
I dragged them to Mia’s house to secure a working signal.
Without Shay to split the shift, I was the only babysitter left in the wreckage.
Every whine and every shove was now my problem to solve.
Mia’s Mama fueled the twins with pizza, leaving them paralyzed in front of the broadcast.
Me and Mia spent the hours in a gossip session.
When the shadows stretched across the asphalt, signaling the end of the day, Mia walked us home.
The twins didn't even wait to hit the top step before the begging started, they wanted the night to last forever.
Mia stayed on the stoop, a human shield for the twins while I stepped into the house.
I pushed through the front door and walked straight into what I wasn’t supposed to see.
Mama at the kitchen counter with her back to me, the cabinet door hanging open.
A clear bottle tilted in her hand while she poured the liquid into one of our chipped coffee mugs.
My foot found a stray action figure in the dark, the plastic crunching under my sneaker with the force of a gunshot.
I froze mid-step. That one clumsy move was a flare launched into the shadows, a direct signal to whatever version of Mama was home today.
The smell reached me before her eyes did. Sharp. Raw. It scratched the inside of my nose and lingered in the back of my throat. Mama’s head turned. She plastered a smile over the wreckage, a robotic expansion that had clearly been rehearsed in the mirror.
“Jus’ a lil’ sumn’ to take tha edge off, baby.”
Her speech a performance of normalcy. Her fingers, however, an honest admission of the wreck inside.
They shivered as she lifted the cup, the brown contents sloshing back and forth.
I performed a silent audit, the cup, her eyes, then the cup again.
The kitchen walls became unblinking eyes, pressing into my space.
I stayed mute and went back to. The stoop, forgetting all about my reason for even going inside.
The drinking loosened Mama’s tongue, that was the part I hated most.
Sober Mama carried her words as weapons, sharp, controlled, precise.
Drunk Mama swung them wild, saying things that sober Mama would never say.
One night my bedroom door flew open so hard it slapped the wall.
She stood there breathing heavy, eyes glassy and red.
“You betta’ not grow up ta be a ho like yo’ sista!”
The words cracked through the room.
“Do you hear me, Summer?” Her voice climbing higher.
“You betta’ not let these streets chew you up!”
My throat burned.
“Mama…” I whispered.
“I’m not Shay.”
The second the words left my mouth, all the anguish drained out of her face. She collapsed, like a house with the supports knocked out. Her shoulders dropped, and she lowered herself onto the edge of my bed.
“I’m sorry,” Her hands covered her face.
“I’m sorry, baby.” Her voice broke in the middle.
“I jus’… I can’t lose you too.”
Mama looked paper-thin. The authority she once carried, a forgotten memory. She was nothing but a heartbeat and a tremor. Easily destroyed. The sight of her breaking down was a cold reality I wasn't prepared to navigate.
Our descent was a public broadcast for anyone with a window and a pulse.
Privacy is a myth. The block kept a running tally of our every failure.
I walked past Miss Jackie’s stoop on my way to the corner store.
She sat there fanning herself with an old church program while two other women leaned against the railing beside her.
They didn’t even bother to lower they voices when I passed.
“Denise out here losin’ haself,” Miss Jackie muttered. The other woman clicked her tongue.
“She always thought she was betta den eerbody.”
“Look at her now.”
The words crawled across my skin like ants.
My hands balled into fists. They don’t know my mother.
They didn’t see the nights she sat at the kitchen table counting crumpled bills.
They didn’t see the meals she skipped so we could eat.
They didn’t see how hard she fought to keep the lights on.
But the streets don’t care about truth, it feeds on stories.
Gossip is my block’s favorite sport, and once the whispers start, they never stop.
Shay’s exit was officially a month-old wound, but the scabs still fresh and prone to bleeding at the slightest touch.
In the corner, the fan was barely holding its own.
Mama faced the kitchen table, the glass bottle her only companion.
Her stare was a bloodshot blank glare, and her speech carried a nasty, syrupy drag.
“Yo’ bitch ass daddy shoulda been here,” she slurred.
“Sorry son of a bitch.”
Anger tightened around my throat. Daddy’s name was the only holy thing I had left in this house. Mama was turning it into a blade, with a rusted edge she used to carve out the last of my peace.
“Don’t talk ‘bout him like dat,” I said. My voice barely louder than the fan. Mama’s head snapped up, eyes flashing fire.
“Why not? Huh?” Her volume a high-frequency assault on the small room.
“He left us here ta drown! Fuck him!”
Her hand slammed against the table.
“He left me wit’ four kids n’ a broken damn heart! And you wanna take his side?”
Standing in front of her was like standing in front of an open furnace, the sheer force of her resentment singeing the air.
I lost control of my own impulses. I closed the distance between us until she could feel the heat of my words.
“This is all yo’ fault” I shot back.
“You ran him off and you ran Shay off too. All you do is get drunk all day. I HATE YOU!”
I watched my words land, a physical blow I couldn't take back.
Mama stared me down, like a predator frozen in the lights.
I thought she would burn the house down with her rage.
Instead, she withered. Her forehead met her hands with a dull thud, and the sound that followed was a brutal excavation of her spirit.
A messy, primitive weeping. Broken. The room went quiet as her armor was being stripped away.
Parents ain't superheroes. They just people.
Damaged. Tired people. She was navigating the same minefield as the rest of the world, and the ground was giving way beneath their feet.
The fallout from that evening pushed Mama toward a total social breakdown.
She engaged in a series of verbal brawls on the stoop.
Cussed Mr. Ali behind the counter for no reason at all.
Attacked the silence of the street, barking at people who was just minding they own business.
A woman unraveling in broad daylight. And the block watched, as always.
I hated the way their eyes slid over to me, like her shame belonged to me too. I swung if anybody ever tried to disrespect her. Shay’s words playing back in my head,
‘Don’t let nobody disrespect you. You either put up or shut up. Ain’t no in-between.’
A girl at school called her,
“Dat drunk lady from tha block.”
Next thing I knew Mia was dragging me off her while my knuckles bled.
“Yo’ you ride fa her hard,” Mia said.
“Duh Mia, dat’s my Mama,” I fumed.
“Ain’t nobody disrespectin’ her.”
Even when she was breaking apart in front of me… she was still mine. Still my Mama.
I traded my eighth-grade freedom for the twins' survival.
The block expected a mother, so I became one.
Mama barely managed to get out the door for her shift each day, so I ran the morning hustle.
Backpacks, breakfast, and the bus stop. I mastered the art of the grocery run, my conscience a casualty of the empty cabinets.
Sometimes the food went into the bag. Sometimes it went into my purse.
The block had issued a decree, and I lacked the rank to appeal the decision.