Zoya
Recommendation: Listen to “Family Business” by Kayne West
The beeping sound jolted me from my sleep.
I ached as I tried to move but felt the heaviness of my body. It was as if I had been swimming for hours and had finally taken my first steps out the water. My eyes were still closed, and I struggled to open them.
One eye opened and it took a bit of force to open the second one. My vision was blurry as I looked around the room. I quickly opened and closed my eyes to try and see where I was at. The beeping sound was evidence that I was in a hospital, because the sound was familiar.
The huge window showed the other side of the hospital building. It was dreary outside with clouds. There was no sign of the sun, which matched how I felt. My eyes shifted around the spacious room, with a seating area, a private fridge and coffee machine.
On the couch to the far right of the suite, I saw a pair of sneakers hanging off it. “Don?” I croaked.
My throat felt like sandpaper. He slowly rose from the couch, and that was when I noticed it was Maverick.
My chest tightened, waiting for him to scream at me.
He rubbed his hands together, and his eyes were puffy. I had never seen Maverick look the way he did. His clothes were disheveled, as if he hadn’t changed them in days.
How long had I been here?
I watched as he slowly approached the bed and stared at me. He looked at me as if I wasn’t real and this was a dream.
“How?”
“Don found you.” He cleared his throat.
Tears welled in my eyes, as I looked towards the window. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” his voice was shaky, as he came closer to the bed. “Why would you do this to yourself, Bean?”
Hearing the sound of his voice and the look of concern etched on his face, the dam broke and tears poured down my face. Those were the tears that I never shed because I thought I was weak if I had. Kora didn’t cry, nor did Maverick, so what did I look like crying?
They had more time with our parents, more memories and they didn’t break when they died. Who was I to break, when they stood tall and were strong? Life moved on for them, and they did everything they could to keep us together.
It felt selfish to feel the way that I felt. My heart was incomplete. Our family was incomplete. Life was hard to maneuver when you were missing pieces of you.
Our parents were gone.
My mother was dead.
I missed my mother so much. Every single thing reminded me of her. When I stared in the mirror, I could hear her voice calling me her beautiful chocolate princess. How she poured into me, always reminding me that I was beautiful and God made me this way because I was special.
When I listened to my friend’s vent about their nagging mothers, my heart shattered.
If only they knew how it felt not to have one.
Not to have your parents there to witness the rest of the life they helped create.
I’d give everything to have my mother see me grow into the woman that she would have wanted me to be.
My father would never walk me down the aisle to my husband. My mother would never hold my hand as I brought life into this world. She would never be able to meet my children.
Prom came and there were no pictures of us on the grand staircase with my parents hugging me. I could picture them both kissing me on the cheek, as my father told me how beautiful I looked.
This wasn’t just my reality. It was our reality. Our parents would never get to witness the life that we had to continue to build without them.
And that fucking hurt.
“I miss them, Maverick,” I wailed.
Years had passed since they had been gone, but the pain was fresh. It was hard to heal and let them rest when life kept happening. All these new experiences happened, and all I could think about is having a parent.
Maverick tried.
He really did.
Maverick was the closest thing we had to a parent. Angie was like a second mother, but she wasn’t my mother. I watched her with Jeffie, and all I wanted was that with my own mom. Kora tried. She was always there. She taught me how to use a tampon, how to keep my hygiene up and do my own makeup.
These were all things our mother got the chance to teach her. Some she had to learn on her own.
Maverick came closer and took my hand into his, kissing the top of my swollen hand. The IV they put in caused my hand to swell. “I miss them, too.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. More than anything. Still hear mom’s voice when I left for school that day,” he sniffled.
He didn’t cry.
Ever.
“How do you drown out the noise? It’s so loud and it hurts, Maverick… so much. I just wanted to silence it.”
“By trying to kill yourself?” I looked past him, and Kora was standing in the doorway.
I could tell that she was in pain and felt the same way Maverick felt. “I’m sorry.”
She quickly came over to the other side of the bed. “You’re mine, Zoya Bean… mine.”
Tears fell from all of our faces, as Menace rubbed his face against my hand. “Don’t ever do it again, Bean… promise me. Promise me when it gets too hard, too loud, too tough that you’ll tell me… come to me,” his voice continued to crack.
Kora removed my hair from my face and kissed my entire face. “We’re all we have, Bean… just us four. Please don—”
“Leave us,” Don walked into the room, and stood next to Maverick.
With the way he was growing, he would soon reach Maverick’s height. It was like staring at a younger Maverick. I wonder if he ever felt some way about it. Having to raise the younger him.
“I’m so sorry, Don,” I sobbed.
He rushed over and hugged me tightly. Like he never wanted to let me go. Maverick held onto my hand, never letting it go, while Kora rested her lips on my forehead.
“I’m close to getting that pizzeria… don’t give up on me, okay?” Maverick didn’t like pizza, but he promised that we would always have pizza.
Ever since I was younger, he promised we would always have, and he came through on that. We never had to eat canned food, and Kora didn’t have to make white rice and boiled chicken.
I was starting to believe that the pizzeria was code for something else, but I just nodded and promised him. “I promise.”
“Bean,” he kissed my forehead, something he never did.
Kora put her arm around his neck, as we all huddled together. “No matter how hard life gets, we have each other. This won’t be our story forever.”
“I can become a wrestler?” Don got hopeful.
“I eat shit?” he asked Landon.
Kora laughed. “Us always.”