Menace
Recommendation: Listen to “Superstar/ Until You Come Back To Me” by Luther Vandross
This was the third holiday without them.
I didn’t wake up to my mother making a bunch of noise with pots, pans, and everything she needed for dinner. She wasn’t there to swat Kora’s hand as she tried to steal the shredded cheese.
Staring up at the ceiling, my chest was on fire. Not because I had just taken a bottle to the face, and was about to open another, but because this was our reality now. We didn’t have anyone here who cared. Our uncle didn’t invite us over to his lavish ass mansion for dinner with his family.
Shit, he didn’t even call.
We were considered the orphan kids. We stayed in the house while Kora tried to keep Bean and Landon busy with old movies she used to watch with our parents. Shit was too painful for me to watch.
As strong as I had been, this shit fucking hurt me to my core. There wasn’t nothing that I could do. The world saw me as some fuck ass kid that had nothing to offer the world. Shit, I didn’t have anything to offer my own siblings.
It was Thanksgiving and we were sharing two cans of Campbell soup instead of having a full spread of food. Nash has an au pair to take care of us, but when I found out he was fucking the bitch, I sent her packing.
She only wanted to be involved when his ass came around anyway. I didn’t need no fucking weak ass, cum filled pussy bitch around my siblings. You either were gonna care or not.
There was no in-between.
I’m assuming she didn’t tell Nash because he would have called or showed up. Nigga could never look me in the eyes whenever he came around. I wasn’t one to look someone in the eyes, either, but his shit was guilt.
“The solution to your problem isn’t in the bottom of that bottle, Maverick.” Kora leaned in the doorway, her brushed to the front of her head.
She picked at her hair. The entire front of her hair had pieces missing because she couldn’t help herself. The shit started after our parents were murdered. Control was Kora’s thing. She had to control everything, and that was something that she couldn’t control.
“Picking your hair ain’t gonna help, either,” I slurred.
Drinking usually helped people forget, but not me. That shit came to me so vivid. Every unspoken thing I never said. Actions I never took, and the guilt of living while our parents were gone. I often thought back to the day it happened. I wanted to stay home from school that day.
If I would have stayed home, I could have been with them. Not here struggling with money and life. How was I supposed to raise these kids? Kora not so much, but Landon and Zoya...
They fucking left me here to figure this shit out alone.
My biggest fear was losing my parents. They understood me more than anyone on this earth.
My pops lived by fuck everybody that don’t understand him, while my mother worked to find out the answers.
She rallied behind me when it came to going to school.
I watched her make dinner mostly every night, but she had my food on a different counter because she knew that I was a picky eater.
My pops would let me sit in his office while he handled business and I would sit quiet. He never forced me to talk or try to pick my brain because he knew how I was. He’d talk and I would just absorb everything he wanted me to know.
First thing he always told me was to never give a fuck. The same people talking about you were the same people ready to suck your dick when you did something amazing.
Dick sucking ass haters.
Told me to enter every room as myself because it was harder to be someone else. People didn’t respect a facade. They wanted the real deal person, so always enter that room and put your best foot forward.
Never show mercy. Give ‘em hell and always apply pressure. You’re the fucking boss, never give them a chance to ever doubt your capabilities.
Then he left me.
They.
Left me with kids that I had to raise.
I was responsible for raising them to be good people in society. They would never look at me as their big brother, but as a parental figure. I’d have to make the decisions that they would eventually hate me for. While they would call Kora to hang out, or just talk, I wouldn’t be the next call.
To them, I was their parent. The one who had to stay on their necks to ensure they did everything correct. Our relationship as brothers and sisters changed the minute our parents were murdered.
“Come on and help me unload this car with the food.” I heard Linda Bruster’s big mouth.
Kora smiled. “We were down to the last can of soup, and I had found some corn… right on time.”
I leaned up as my head started spinning. “You called her?”
Kora shook her head no. “Sometimes family always knows.”
“Fuck is Maverick’s big-headed ass?” I heard Bruster’s voice. “Ouch... dang, Ma.”
“Corleon, I will beat you with that broom if you cuss when I’m in the room again. You hear me?” I could picture him smirking and her folding. “Stop looking at me with that smile… you know you are wrapped around my finger, boy.”
“Love you, Mommy.”
“Uh huh… get your butt to my car and unpack so we can have a good dinner. Spent all day cooking all this.”
“Let me roll my bike into the garage,” he spoke.
Had I not been drinking so much, I would have heard the engine of his motorcycle. Corleon had always been obsessed with bikes and hung around biker crews.
“Corleon, he’s in here drunk,” Kora announced.
“And your edges is gone,” I spat.
She folded her arms. “And your hands are raw, bitch.”
She swung the rest of her hair over her shoulder and left me to my misery. I leaned back on the bed, not wanting to accept the help. I felt less than accepting fucking help from Linda.
She wasn’t responsible for us and shouldn’t have had to go out her way. Her son was grown and making money on his own. Fuck was wrong with me and why couldn’t I muster up the energy to do what needed to be done?
Because I was so dependent on what my uncle was telling me.
Promising me.
I heard a knock on the door and looked over at the door with my brow raised. Linda Bruster stood there with her hand on her thick hip, and had her lips pursed.
“You know I can smell you down the hallway?”
I shrugged. “Happens when you drink.”
What else was I supposed to say? I didn’t have an excuse for me to defend my drinking, or the fact that I was drunk in the middle of the day. She came further into the room.
“I dated this man that would drink every time he was in his feelings or had an inconvenience in life. I’d come home and he would be halfway through a bottle. At first, I thought it was fair, life does beat us up, huh?” she nudged me while chuckling lightly.
I remained quiet.
“As our relationship grew, more issues happened in his life, and he became a regular at the liquor store. Would walk around smelling like he had climbed out of a bottle. I love a stiff drink after a hard day. When Corleon got that damn tattoo on his face, I had me three drinks that night. It’s alright to take one back every now and then, but as a man, when you turn your problem solving to the bottom of a bottle, you’re fucking weak.
” She held the empty bottle of vodka up. “And then vodka is your choice?”
Linda was blunt.
She never held shit back and told you exactly was on her mind. It was her honesty that I appreciated, because I was so used to everyone staring in my face while lying.
“I’ll be sure to get tequila next,” I sarcastically mumbled.
She snatched my face in her hands and looked me in the eyes.
“Maverick, you aren’t fucking weak and you will never be.
This is a major step back, yes, but you are not weak and you aren’t alone.
Let us be there for you. There will come a time when I’ll need you to be there for my baby like he’s trying to be for you.
Accepting help doesn’t make us think less of you…
mainly because I know you’ll pay that back.
The man you’re becoming doesn’t accept handouts and doesn’t get his back washed without washing someone else’s. ”
She released my face and stood up, walking towards the door. “Easier said than done, Linda.”
I watched as she laughed. “Then make it harder said than done, Maverick… and scotch. Drink fucking scotch.”