12. Turk #4
“All that shit you holding onto isn’t good for you and damn sure not good for our daughter, Pay.
You gotta lighten your load. You been holding it down for however long, but Daddy’s here and anything you need I got you.
I’ll hold onto the bullshit you need me to.
If we laying niggas out, I got my sheisty and black forces in the closet somewhere.
I’ll play mediator, too. Whatever you need. ”
Pay’s shoulders shake from chuckling and I breathe a little easier knowing she’s not sobbing anymore.
“So you just so convinced you’re my baby’s daddy? ‘Cause I didn’t correct Dr. Mathis?”
I run my hand through her hair before gripping it and pulling her head back so she can see me.
“I been letting you make it for months now, but the second I heard my daughter’s heartbeat, that act got quiet.
You know one thing I’m never gone play about is my kids.
Yesterday was the last time we both acted like my super soldiers ain’t dust off ya eggs and make a miracle, aight? ”
Her freak ass hooded her eyes and nodded, so I planted a wet one on her lips and pushed her head back into my chest. “Talking crazy, girl. I let you blow snot all over my chest and that’s how you play me.”
“Shut up, dumb ass.” She cackles and wipes her nose on me more, but jokes on her. I don’t care about that shit.
“H-how did your mother pass? You never talk about her.”
I hug her to me automatically, like I’ll need it. Like she’ll need it. “You don’t talk about yours either.”
“Don’t deflect.”
“I’m not.”
“We don’t have to… but I want to be better. I want to start telling you things, you and Autumn. I want you guys to know me, and I want to know you both, too.”
Well, damn. I already can’t say no to my cinnamon apple… now I got Paypay and a mini Paypay coming. I’ll never know the word no again.
“My mom got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was four. Some people be living hella long with it, but my mama… her shit was bad, and she didn’t have a lot of money for her meds, so she got worse.
She really didn’t have no money for a nurse, and she didn’t want my sisters and me to have to take care of her, so she, uh, committed suicide. ”
“Oh fuck, Royce!”
I hold onto Patience so she doesn’t climb all over me. “I promise, I made peace with it, and I get why she did what she did. I don’t talk about her because the only people who I’d wanna talk about her with don’t fuck with me, but I don’t mind telling you about her.”
The tension relaxes just a little in her shoulders, but I’ll take it and continue.
“Bea Atkins was an angel on earth. She loved kids, her people, and South Kenton. She had me a little older, like thirty-eight or thirty-nine, but you wouldn’t know it with how she kept up with all the Birch Babies.
And anywhere you saw her you saw me, and Set, and even Nutty ass.
They went to her daycare, but they’d be with us more often than not, so it was the three of us since diapers foreal.
“I was her favorite, and she wasn’t shy about it.
She spent her last night talking to me and watching her favorite movies, and I soaked it up.
She dropped so much knowledge on me, and gave me her journals I read when I’m really missing her.
I’ll let you read some. I haven’t touched the one where she talks about my dad.
I think I wanna preserve the magic of what she kept to herself.
Part of me wants to believe they in heaven together watching over me. ”
For a while, all I hear is our breathing. Our legs are all tangled together, and I see from the sun’s position in the window it’s almost time to go get Deuce. Pay’s breathing is even like she’s sleep, so once I hear that lil snore she swears she doesn’t do, I’ll leave.
But then she shifts. “My mother had me young.
She met my father when she came here to visit family one summer and never left.
She had plans, college acceptances and abandoned them all to marry him and have me.
I only know this because my father told me.
My mother never talked about her life before me.
She told me, ‘my life started the second I looked into your eyes, little fox.’
“I almost died in utero. Her emergency c-section turned into a radical hysterectomy after I made it earthside. She never fully recovered from it, or not being able to have more kids, especially when my father wanted a son, but she poured all her love into me. She’d tell my father the spirits granted her the greatest gift, and she’d spend all of her days thanking them and cherishing it.
That’s what she’d say any time I got in trouble and she wouldn’t discipline me. ”
Patience sniffles and moves her arms to hold me to her. “Children are gifts to celebrate their parents’ love. I’m the best parts of my parents, just like our baby is the best parts of us, and you’re the best parts of your parents. Not poison.”
Damn Rian’s big ass mouth. “You heard that?”
“It was hard to ignore… she’s wrong, though, Royce. She’s the poisonous one. You… you’re pure.”
Her arms grow limp and that little snore starts coming through. I don’t even think she knows what she said. But I heard her, loud and clear, and I pull the corner of my lips up before kissing her hair.
She fuck with the kid heavy as fuck.
One more piece just fell into place.