CHAPTER 18
REASONS
Daddy’s Voice
People love saying addiction comes from weakness.
That’s bullshit. Ain’t nothing weak about holding onto weight so heavy it crushes your lungs every time you try to catch your breath.
My burden started with a loss. The kinda hurt that settles deep in your bones.
Waiting for you to think you have a moment of peace, only to remind you it’s still there.
And I been holding this load for so long, it don't even feel like a burden nomore. It’s just part of me.
I was slumped on them cracked steps behind that abandoned rowhouse on Diamond.
Same spot I been getting high at for years.
Paint peeling off the bricks. Trash piled up in the alley.
The whole place smelling of piss, burnt plastic, and body rot.
My hands shaking. Bad. I looked down at the pipe sitting in my palm.
Small. Glass. Nothing to it. Yet my entire life tied to it.
I flicked the lighter. Flame jumped up. Danced for a second.
I hesistated. I imagined, maybe I could stop right then.
Sadly, I knew better.
I leaned in and pulled hard. The smoke hit my chest just the way I wanted it.
Sharp. Bitter. Burning all the way down.
My lungs tightened, then opened. Everything got silent.
Bullshit. That’s the lie right there. That false calm that the world finally takes its hands off your throat.
But it never lasts. It never fucking lasts.
It always comes back. Don’t matter how far I try to push it down.
Don’t matter how fast I try to outrun it.
It finds me. Same face. Same day. Same choice I wish I could take back.
My little brother, Alonzo was two years younger than me.
He was seventeen at the time. Had that softness in his face, like the world hadn’t pressed down on him all the way yet.
Alonzo moved quiet. Always off to the side with one of those beat-up notebooks, pencil moving steady across the paper. Lines. Shapes. Buildings.
He used to sit on the steps and sketch neighborhood, like he was trying to redesign the block.
Talking about blueprints, structure, how things was built and how they could be better.
Better. I used to laugh at that. Tell him he was dreaming too big.
Deep down, I respected it. He still believed there was a future out there, a world bigger than what I could see.
The first time I put that pipe in his hand is a permanent mark on my conscience. Waiting on me every time I close my eyes.
We was up on the roof of our cousin’s spot. Flat tar roof sticking to the soles of our sneakers. The city stretched out around us. We was above everything. Untouchable.
I was already lost in it by then. Running the streets. Chasing money. Moving like I had it all figured out. Alonzo stood next to me, softer than usual. Watching my every move, the way he always did. He studied the world first, like he needed to understand it before stepping into it.
His eyes came off the skyline and landed on me. Not the city. Not the lights. Me. Like whatever came next was mine to decide. The one he trusted to show him how this life worked.
“C’mon,” I said, bumping his shoulder.
“It ain’t nothin’.”
He didn’t reach for it at first. He looked scared. Fingers hovering in heistation.
“Are you sure bro’?”
I let out a laugh, pretending the question didn’t even deserve space.
“Yo man, relax. Everybody doin’ it.”
Everybody. The lie came out smooth. Too smooth. I said it like it was motivation.
He took the pipe with both hands, slow and unsure.
Like he already feel the gravity of it before it even touched his lips.
Held it there a second. Heart caught in his chest.
He pulled in. The smoke curled deep, filling him up too quick.
His face tightened instantly. Eyes squeezed shut.
Lungs locked. It hit him. Hard. He folded forward, coughing sharp and violent.
One hand bracing against his knee, the other reaching out, like he needed me to hold onto.
His body was trying to force something back out that never should’ve been there in the first place.
It could’ve gone another way. He stood there bent over, coughing, trying to catch his breath, body fighting to steady itself.
All he had to do was step back. Hand it off.
Walk away. Stay who he was before he climbed those steps.
But he didn’t. He straightened up. Dragged his hand across his mouth, wiping away the mess of it.
Took a slow breath, forcing his body to fall in line.
He laughed. Short and strained. A laugh that don’t come from joy, it come from pride.
From not wanting to look small. From wanting to belong.
From trying to stand where I was standing.
I saw it. And I fueled it. Laughed along with him.
Clapped his back like I was proud. Like he passed some sort of test.
Like I had just handed him a piece of the world he needed to survive.
I ain’t stop him. Ain’t pull him back. Ain’t think twice.
The opportunity was in front of me, and I let it pass.
That was the line. I didn’t watch him cross it, I pushed him over it.
Addiction don’t come with a warning. It just bleeds through the cracks, finds a corner in the room, and settles in for the long haul.
The shift stayed undercover at first. Alonzo still carried himself the same way, but his drive was dying out.
Skipping school became a habit, and the habit turned into total detachment.
He would come in late, moving sneaky through the house. Eyes low, never meeting yours. Clothes hanging looser every week. Skin losing that healthy glow. Like his spirit was being pulled out of him piece by piece. And I saw every bit of it. I just kept brushing it off.
“Let him live,” I said, waving it off.
“Baby boy jus’ havin’ fun.”
I was watching him drift further every day. I knew what that road consisted of. And I knew Alonzo was never built for that life.
The streets don’t treat everybody the same.
Some people learn how to move with it. Adjust.
Harden. Others don’t. They try to carry shit too heavy for who they are.
Eventually, they break under it. But Antonio didn’t break.
He fucking shattered. Into a million pieces.
And I was standing right there knowing exactly who handed him the gun.
That morning the sound hit first. Ripped through the house forcing me to open my eyes. Mama’s voice. I ran. Heart racing. The hallway felt longer than it ever had.
Then I saw him. My baby brother. Stretched out on his bed. Wrong. Everything about it was wrong. His body flat, one arm hanging off the side like it lost its place. His chest didn’t move. Nothing. He overdosed.
The silence was too loud. Leaning in on my chest. Suffocating.
Mama on her knees beside him. The sounds that tore out of her split the room open.
They came from a place so deep you don’t reach unless the spirit inside you breaks for real.
Forever. Her cry was raw. Uncontrollable.
Shoulders shaking violently, head thrown back as the sorrow kept coming.
Her speech breaking apart into sounds that wasn’t even language no more.
It was a wretched weep. A cry I couldn’t answer.
But haunts me every day of my life. Every day.
I stayed where I was in the doorway. Frozen. Breath stuck halfway in my chest. Mind blank. Buried under all that shock, under the noise, under the chaos, I already understood. This wasn’t random. This wasn’t life being cruel. This had a beginning… me.
I ain’t cry that day. Didn’t scream. Didn’t break shit.
I just shut it down. Locked it tight. Buried it so deep it couldn’t reach the surface.
Then I ran. Fast. Chasing money. Different women in my bed.
block. Trap houses all night. I stayed moving.
Didn’t give myself space to stop. But grief don’t fall behind.
It don’t get tired. It keeps pace, right there with you. Breathing heavy on ya’ neck. Waiting.
Didn’t matter how loud the world got. Didn’t matter how far I went.
Soon as things went quiet, it was there again.
Getting high is the only thing that could drown it out.
I started doing whatever I could to escape.
Not to feel good. To shut everything off.
Even if it was only for a minute. Even if that minute cost me more and more every time.
Losing Alonzo cost me more than my brother, it cost me my parents too.
Mama and Daddy couldn't even look at me after his funeral.
They packed up their lives, and left Philly.
Somebody told me they ended up in Florida.
That was Alonzo's favorite place. Maybe they hoped being there would make him feel closer.
Maybe they just couldn't stand another street in Philly reminding them of what they lost.
Maybe hearing the ocean is easier than hearing the silence he left behind.
I ain't seen them since. No birthdays. No holidays.
No phone calls. Nothing. They have never met the kids.
Shit, I don’t even know if they know that I have kids.
But I don't blame them. I was the one who led us down that road. I gave the streets everything, including my little brother. And every day since, I've carried the weight of being the son who came home when Alonzo couldn't. Because of me. That's not something a parent forgives.
Then Denise had the twins. Saiyd. Sinceer.
I remember the day clear as anything. Hospital lights.
Doctors moving around. People smiling. All I could hear was the date.
Same day Alonzo died. Same exact fucking day.
Two lives coming in, on the anniversary of the one I helped take out.
That shit irritated me. I couldn’t hold them.
Couldn’t even look at them. Every time I tried, all I saw was Alonzo laying there. Lifeless.
Saiyd, he mine for real. Same fire. Same edge.
I understand him without him saying much.
But Sinceer look like Alonzo. Not only in the face, even though it’s there too.
But it’s deeper than that. The eyes. The way he carries himself.
Quiet. Thoughtful. Watching everything. Thinking before he speaks.
Building things in his head the same way Alonzo used to.
Every time I look at him, I don’t see my son. I see my brother. Standing in front of me like he never left. Like I never lost him.
I just keep running from it. Feeling it means remembering.
Remembering means facing what I did. And I am not ready for that reality.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be man enough to tell Sinceer the truth.
Why I look at him the way I do. Why I go blank sometimes when he’s talking.
Why I keep my distance when I should be pulling him closer.
I can’t even be around my own son. He probably thinks it’s him.
It ain’t. It’s the past sitting between us.
And I ain’t figured out how to move it out the way yet.
“Damn…”
The word slipped out broken. This wasn’t about the block.
Wasn’t about stress. Wasn’t about nothing outside of me.
Hiding. Hiding from that night on the roof.
From the moment my world started shifting and I didn’t try to stop it.
From Alonzo laying there. From the silence that followed.
From my own kids. Shay. Summer. Saiyd. Sinceer.
Names I carried but didn’t show up for. They was growing.
Changing. Becoming better and I wasn’t growing with them.
I was stuck. Right there on the same steps.
Same habits. Same ghosts. Looking at time pass me by while I sat hopeless, trying to smoke away pain that refused to disappear.
Across the street, the hydrant was busted wide open.
Water shot up into the air, catching the streetlight, breaking into silver drops before crashing back down onto the pavement.
Kids tore through it barefoot. Yelling. Laughing.
Free. The world ain’t reached out and grabbed them yet.
I sat there and watched. Letting the scene play out in front of me.
One of the boys ran through the spray, head thrown back, arms wide. For a second, I saw Alonzo in that water. He was seventeen. Alive. Smiling. Nothing in the world could touch him. Talking fast, hands moving as he spoke, going on about buildings, designs, dreams. He felt so…real.
This time, I ain’t fight it. The tears came slow.
Slid down my face, hot against my skin. The streets have took a lot from me.
Money. Time. Pieces of myself I’ll never get back.
My kids. And the worst thing they ever took, was him.
Watching that water fall back to the pavement, I accepted a hard truth.
I can run all I want. Numb it. Bury it. Chase it away.
But some ghosts don’t leave. They don’t fade.
They don’t forget. They stay. Right there in your chest. Quiet. Waiting.