CHAPTER 16
HEADS VS TAILS
Mama’s Voice
Thirty-four years left me hollow. I was operating on fumes and the cold snap of muscle memory.
My type of exhaustion didn't respect a bed.
I still got up every morning. Alarm dragging me out of whatever little sleep I managed to catch.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a second, letting the weight of the day settle on me before it even started.
Uniform stiff from too many washes. Shoes worn down at the soles but holding on.
A physical representation of the world leaning on me.
I beat the sun to the block every morning. First shift, the nursing home. A place of slow-motion decay. The scent of antiseptic and bleach lived in the back of my throat. I move through the halls, hands doing the heavy lifting while my voice provided the only company some of those souls ever had.
“Good mornin’, sunshine.”
I whisper, adjusting the linen around frozen limbs. I practiced a careful kind of slow-motion care, pretending there was still an ounce of kindness inside me. In truth, the world had already drained my tank.
Hospital housekeeping was next. I geared up and blocked the world out, wiping down the scars of birth and the stains of death. Smoothing new sheets over imprints of people who ain’t never coming back. Thinking meant slowing down and slowing down meant drowning. I kept moving.
Shift over. Clock out. The street air slapped me awake, my warning that I wasn't finished.
I traded one fluorescent cage for another.
The name on the building changed, but the ache in my spine didn't.
But I have to push through the exhaustion.
I stacked shelves and scanned groceries.
They paid, grabbed they bags, and left. Never once acknowledging the flesh and bones standing in front of them.
“Next.”
“Have a good one.”
Same words. Same tone. Over and over.
The shift never ends, just changes location. Summer, the twins, the noise, the crumbling house, just another demand I can’t meet. Summer watching me with those old-soul eyes, while the block continues to swallow Shay.
Exhaustion is a marathon with no finish line.
The second I quit, the house folds. A year has passed since the night Summer found me leveled on the kitchen floor.
Her eyes sifting through her history, trying to find the mother I used to be and coming up empty.
The memory of that cold tile against my cheek remains a physical weight that I can’t move.
But I ignored the damage, and I drank harder. Hoping the liquid fire would melt that memory away. But guilt don't disappear. It’s a parasite. It burrows in deep and waits. And once it gets a taste of blood, it demands a constant supply.
I convinced myself I was the captain of the ship. I told myself the house stood because of me, that the kids was surviving because of me. I was functioning just fine. But it was a bluff. I was holding on by a thread, fighting to keep the inevitable flood from taking us all in a single wave.
One day at the bus stop, heat pressing in on everything.
People standing around silent, wiping they faces, fanning themselves with whatever they had in they hands.
I waited there, purse clutched under my arm, feet hurting before my shift even started.
The bus was late, as usual. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, staring down the block, hoping the bus might feel sorry for me and come quicker.
A rhythmic thud rattled the air, shaking my ribs.
The sound arrived long before I saw the car.
My heart skipped a beat. Nico. He rolled through with the windows down, beat bleeding into the concrete, and Shay sitting in the passenger seat.
I froze, muscles locking up out of shock.
My baby. My firstborn. She was basically a grown woman now.
Like she stepped out of the screen and finally becoming the image she spent years worshiping on TV.
The face was Shay’s, but her light had vanished.
My baby had crossed a line into a world that doesn't allow for u-turns.
“SHAYYYYY!”
My voice came out too loud, sounding cracked and desperate. I stepped off the curb before I thought about it, waving my arms wishing I could pull the car back with my hands.
“SHAY! BABY!”
She held my gaze, starring me dead in the face. Cocooned in a leather interior I could never provide for her.
I saw her. And I know she saw me. But she didn't budge.
The window stayed closed, like a barrier thicker than blood.
The light flashed green, and Nico didn't blink.
The car glided away. I stood stuck to the asphalt.
A car horn blared behind me, a sharp reminder that the streets don't wait for nobody.
“Yo! Move!”
But Shay’s silence was like a tether, dragging me along behind the car.
Don't believe a soul who says a mother can’t read her own child. She saw me. I’m at that same stop, same time, day after day, year after raggedy year. That was no accident or coincidence. Her refusal to stop was a deliberate choice.
I lowered myself onto the bench. The city was completely deaf to the sound of my heart being ripped away.
Death would have been a mercy compared to this.
She was still in the world, a living, breathing betrayal, but she wasn't mine anymore.
The streets had taken her, and I had no words to bring her back.
I was empty. Out of moves and out of breath.
The bus pulled up with that loud sigh, doors folding open.
“Aye, you gettin’ on or what lady?” the driver barked.
I forced myself up, legs protesting against me. I got on the bus because the clock didn't care about my pain. My entire existence had just evaporated into the distance, but I couldn’t cry. Tears are a luxury for people who can afford them.
The block tallied every effort and weighed every defeat, and the math of my life kept coming up short. The humidity and the exhaustion finally birthed a truth I could no longer dodge. The streets didn't have to fight for Shay, I had given them the keys.
I want to grab Summer by the shoulders and shake her, make her see the dangers before they swallow her.
My mind takes me back to being fifteen, posing on the sidewalk, convinced I could outrun the danger.
Believing my own hype that I was too pretty to lose, too smart to fail.
The block eventually corrected my thoughts.
As the bus carried me further away from that corner, I had one thought that wouldn’t leave me alone: Don’t let it take Summer too.
THE FLIP SIDE
Shay’s Voice
Yeah, I saw her. Make no mistake. Mama was at that stop, exactly where the city left her. Looking like every shift she ever worked. That stank uniform clinging to her frame, as part of her DNA. Trying to flag me down, screaming my name for the whole street to hear.
So what? I didn’t move. Kept talking to my baby Nico, like I ain’t hear or see a thing. But before you crown me the villain, let me tell you my story... you don't know the half of it.
Mama’s exhaustion was a permanent soundtrack.
She recites that line like a mantra, a shield she holds up whenever the world demands too much.
It’s the same old tune, played out on a loop and now the words have lost all meaning.
Shit, I’m been tired too. ‘Tired’ anchored itself in me early, and it never left.
It rode on my back before I even knew how to stand up straight.
Hell, I was forced to be an adult before I ever finished being a little girl.
I spent my childhood bracing for a collapse that wasn't mine even to prevent.
I wore the 'mama' title before I could even spell the word.
No one consulted me. No one checked my strength.
The burden was a gift I couldn't return.
So, I learned to move with it and I never stumbled.
And she wanna act like she’s the only casualty of this grind?
Like I actually had a childhood to trade in. The block’s demands called me in the womb. I didn't just wake up and wanna be ‘grown.’ I woke up and realized the clock had been ticking since day one.
Summer was born and the math changed. I was three years old when Mama walked in with that crying bundle.
That baby didn't need much room, but she claimed every square inch of the atmosphere.
The house was a chorus of coos and grins.
Meanwhile, I stood in the corner; a ghost in my own home, receiving my first lesson in replacement.
“Hol’ her real quick.”
“Watch ya’ sista Shay.”
“Don’t let her fall.”
The baby, the feedings, the changes, the screams.
That was the new law of the house. And Mama was a woman in deep denial, chasing a version of herself that had expired years ago.
She would spend hours in front of the mirror with Aunt Dee, painting over the fatigue and squeezing into outfits that screamed for a life she no longer owned.
They head out to the club, intoxicated by the delusion that they was still the main attraction.
Leaving me to navigate the dark of a house that desperately needed a mother, not a girl in a tight dress.
I learned the code fast. No backup. No cavalry. Just me. I assumed the weight by default. Because in the ‘hood, you either become the pillar or you get buried in the rubble.
Then the math changed again with the twins. Two more mouths meant more overtime for me and less reality for Mama. They was her ticket out. When the house got too loud, she disappeared, and when she finally resurfaced, she was a ghost.
I belonged to the same age bracket as the kids I was raising. But the block don't give a fuck. Mama checked out and I checked in.
One winter stands out, so sharp. It was so cold that the air was slicing through the walls and nesting in our joints. The power got cut off. Again. And we sat in the freeze, listening to the sound of our own breath.
I was eleven, Summer was like seven, and the twins was still too young to understand.
As always, Mama’s shift waited. She stood by the doorway putting on her coat.
She looked at me, didn’t say anything, like she was looking for a reason to stay but couldn’t find none.
She stepped out, door closing behind her, leaving us in the frost.
The house became mine the second the door clicked shut. I navigated the blackness by memory, hands tracing the familiar spots on the walls. I mummified the twins in a patchwork of every blanket in the house and anchored Summer to my side. The cold became our fourth sibling.