CHAPTER 15
LIFTING WEIGHTS
Funny the way certain dates anchor themselves in your mind.
With everything going on in the house right now, you’d think it would slipped my mind.
It didn’t. The date was loud. An unavoidable headline in a world that had gone completely black.
May 23, 1998. Daddy’s birthday. I flopped on the edge of the bed staring at the calendar taped crooked on the wall.
I love Daddy. At least the version of him I used to carry around in my head.
It’s just that love can get cold after a while.
Life has a way of freezing things that used to feel warm.
Especially when somebody misses twelve of your thirteen birthdays, including the day I was born.
I let that thought sit there for a second before pushing it away.
Thinking about him wasn’t going to help me right now.
My mind stayed on Mama. On the twins. On the suffocating tension that had settled over the house, like dust after a storm.
I rubbed my hands over my face and looked around the room.
I needed Aunt Dee. If she was here, she would know exactly what to do.
She always had answers. Always had a plan.
But Aunt Dee ain’t here. She was sitting inside a concrete cell, halfway through a ten-year sentence that had already stolen too much time from our family. Plus, she ain’t called in months.
I sat there for a moment longer. Thinking about today. Thinking about the man who gave me his name but never really stayed long enough to carry it with me. I stood up, and before I even knew it was coming, the sound tore out of me.
“AAAHHHHHH!!”
My voice bouncing off the walls. Rough and tangled.
Cuss words spilling out, like fire that had been locked inside too long.
I kicked the side of the bed hard enough to make the frame rattle.
My hands balled into fists, my chest rising and falling.
All that anger I kept swallowing, about Daddy, about the house, about life that never seemed to stay right, finally forced its way out.
I was on fire, but I swallowed my anger the best I could.
Burying it deep so the fire wouldn’t rise and burn the world around me.
I reminded myself, right now the twins and Mama needed me consistent.
There wasn’t room in the house for all of us to fall apart at once.
But the fire didn’t die easy. It stayed there under the surface, bubbling, low and hot, waiting.
I wiped the tears from my face with the heel of my hand and drew in a slow breath.
I straightened up. Because sometimes you don’t get the luxury of breaking down.
Because sometimes birthdays didn’t matter when the house was burning down.
Sometimes you just have to wipe your face and keep moving.
Right now, the only thing I had space for was figuring out how to keep my family standing.
Later that afternoon the heat sat heavy over the block.
Mama was at work now. The twins outside chasing each other down the block, pretending life still was normal.
But it wasn’t normal. Not anymore. I was lounged on the couch with the house phone receiver pressed tight to my ear, fingers wrapped around the cord, trying to squeeze an answer out of it.
It rang. And rang. And rang. I dialed 999 and slammed the receiver back into the cradle harder than I should have.
“Damn, Shay,” I muttered under my breath.
I been trying to reach Shay for months. Still no response. No call back. Nothing. I leaned my forehead against the arm of the couch, closing my eyes.
“Summer!” I could hear Mia’s big mouth from the cracked window.
She was jogging down the block, braids bouncing against her shoulders. She came through the door fast, breath short like she been running the whole day. She didn’t knock, never had to. She kicked the door shut behind her, halfway inside before I could say a word.
“Girl, dis house is swallowin’ you up," Mia spat, her tone a direct challenge. “You neva hangout nomore.”
I shrugged, my response a flat.
“I was comin’ out wit’ the boys. I had ta make a quick call.”
“To who? Shay?” Her stare a silent accusation. I didn’t answer.
“Well… I saw her earlier.” Mia didn't blink, her focus locked on my face. My head lifted quickly.
“Where?”
“At tha mall.” She stuttered. My chest pulled tight. I was bracing for what was coming next.
“Tha mall?”
Mia continued.
“Yeah. Me and Mama went dis mornin’ to get me those new Jordans. I saw Shay by tha food court.”
I waited.
“And?” I was irritated. Mia shifted her weight awkwardly.
“She was wit’ Nico.”
The mere sound of his name was a deep charge in my soul. Nico. Of course. Mia kept talking, trying to soften it.
“Yeah, dey was jus’ walkin’ aroun’ or whateva. I tried to say hey, but she didn’t really wanna stop. Said ta tell you she been busy. She said sum’n ‘bout needin’ ta get to an appointment.”
I let out a hard breath through my nose.
Busy. That word tasted bitter. I been calling Shay for months about Mama.
About the house. About life falling apart piece by piece.
And she was walking around the mall with Nico.
The weight of Mama’s decline and the twins' hunger a million miles from her mind.
“You prolly jus’ caught her at a bad time,” Mia said quickly.
“You know how Shay get sometimes. Sh—”
“Yeah, I know how Shay gets,” I cut in.
My tone carried a high-frequency spike that caught us both off guard. Her eyes flickered.
It wasn’t Mia’s fault though. She didn’t know.
She couldn’t know. Mia didn't possess the tools to understand my struggle.
Her moms worked behind the high-rise windows of Center City surrounded by the scent of expensive department store perfume.
Mia’s fridge was a museum of fresh groceries.
The power company never sent a final notice to her door.
Mia’s issues were solved with a phone call or a check.
My problems was growing more massive with every sunset.
“I was jus’ sayin,”
Mia continued carefully,
“She prolly ain’t know you was trynna reach her.”
I didn’t respond. Her words hung in the air, and I sat there with them, turning the nine months over in my head. And the math always added up to the same number: one. Me. Wasn't no calvary coming. No rescue mission was being planned in the shadows of the block.
“Summer?” Mia’s voice pulled me back.
“You aight?”
I forced a small shrug.
“Yeah. I’m good.” But even I didn’t believe that answer.
Mia dissected my expression, searching for a clue. It’s like she recognized the scent of trouble, but the actual source of the fire was a mystery. I pushed myself off the couch and started pacing around the room. Mia hurried to my side.
“Are you sure you good?”
“Yeah, I’m fine Mia.”
She hesitated.
“You want me ta stay tha night? Keep you company?”
I thought about Mia asking questions I didn’t have answers for. I shook my head.
“Nah,” I said softly.
“I’ll be aight.”
We chilled the rest of our time in silence. Mia flipped through some of Shay’s old magazines.
Life didn't pause for the funeral of our family. I was a lone soldier trying to keep up with the stride of a block that would swallow me whole if I ever thought about stopping to breathe.
DEMANDS
June ‘98 arrived with a weight the city couldn't lift. James Byrd Jr.’s murder was a modern-day lynching.
A brutal reminder that the ground beneath our feet was still a battlefield.
The usual sounds of summer play surrendered to a thick, unbreathable vacuum of grief.
His death was the ultimate proof that safety was a luxury we couldn't afford.
It’s been ten months of carrying the weight of that kitchen floor. The image of Mama on the cold tiles a permanent stain on my memory.
I went from a daughter to a detective. I watched the way she hovered by the cabinets, searching for something, or hiding it.
I scoured the corners, like a search party of one.
Each bottle I found met the same fate, a baptism in the kitchen sink.
It was my only leverage, the one small piece of a broken world I could actually control.
On the block, Ms. Tracey was the only one I trusted with the truth about Mama.
She was one of the aunties actually carved from the West Philly concrete.
Whenever the salon demanded my hours, she was the steady ground beneath the boys' feet, accepting the responsibility like it was a natural extension of her own soul.
Ms. Tracey never weaponized the moment with pity or drown it in a sermon. She moved into the cracks of our struggle with a quiet grace. In my world, words are cheap. Her presence was the only currency that actually held its value against the rising tide.
“Go on baby. Do whatchu gotta do.” she would say, waving me off.
“I got ‘em.” And I trusted her.
The twins recognized the law in her voice, she commanded a stillness from them that I could never quite command. And for those few hours, I could shed the armor of the leader and breathe, knowing they was safe.
Mama’s hatred of my shifts was a performance of pride she couldn't really afford. She needed my sweat to keep the lights burning, even if she couldn't stomach the taste of the truth.
“You don’t needa be workin’,” she fussed.
“You supposed ta be focused on school.”
But the bills was a deck of cards stacked against us, we had a losing hand. And nobody was coming to pull us out of the wreckage. So, I traded my childhood for our survival because the only alternative was to sink into the concrete.
The shop was two blocks from my front door. It was a sensory collision, the chemical sting of perms, the sweet musk of hair grease, and the low-frequency thrum of the dryers.
“Mornin’, baby,”
Ms. Rochelle always said when I came in, not looking up from the head she was working on.
I would grab a broom without being told and sweep up the hair.
Empty trash. Run errands. They would talk over me, grown conversations that floated around, like I wasn’t supposed to catch them.
Men. Money. Struggle. Survival. They would look at me and say stuff like,
“You too young ta be workin’ like dis baby. Why you not out hangin’ wit’ cha friends fa tha summa?”
“I’m good,” I said, the lie came out too smooth.
The wages was a joke though. But I worked hard because it was a raw confirmation that I could draw blood from a city that wanted to bleed us dry.