Chapter 11 Ghost
Ghost
By the time I made it back to the apartment, my hands were still tight on the steering wheel, and my mind was moving faster than the car ever could.
I didn’t remember half the turns I took getting here.
I didn’t even register the lights, the streets, or the people I passed.
Everything felt blurred, like my body was on autopilot and my mind was stuck somewhere I couldn’t fully reach.
The only thing I knew was that I needed to get inside.
I parked crooked and barely cut the engine before I got out of the car and moved fast up the steps.
My head was on a swivel as I made it to the door.
The regular, everyday shit surrounded me, yet I was nervous.
My keys fumbled in my hand before I finally got the door open.
The second I stepped inside, I didn’t stop.
Didn’t say anything. I didn’t even open my mouth.
I just went straight for the bathroom and slammed the door behind me hard enough to shake the walls.
From the other side, I heard Trigga’s voice with this humorous tone.
“Damn, you ran in here like that… what, you gotta take a shit or something?”
Under any other circumstance, I probably would’ve said something back.
I probably would have opened the door and thrown something at him.
But I couldn’t. Because nothing about me felt normal right now.
I braced both hands against the sink. My head was hanging low, causing my locs to drop down in my face as I tried to catch my breath, but it wouldn’t come easily.
My chest was rising too fast with air, dragging in like it wasn’t enough, like something inside me was still running even though I had already stopped moving.
I lifted my head slowly and looked in the mirror.
And for a second… I didn’t recognize myself.
My eyes looked different. My natural almond form looked wider and unsettled.
I dragged a hand over my face, then again, harder this time, like I was trying to wake myself up.
I was trying to snap out of whatever this feeling was that was creeping up on me.
“Get it together,” I muttered at my reflection.
But then I saw it, and my eyes squinted at the sight.
It was blood. Faint at first, then clearer the longer I looked.
It was on my shirt and on my hands. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough.
And just like that, something in my chest shifted because the reality of what I had done was now on me. I could see the shit.
My breathing picked up again. Breaths came out in uneven spurts as I stared at the blood.
My mind was trying to process what I was looking at, while something else started pushing forward from a place I didn’t even realize was still there.
A place that my mind must have had under lock and key.
A memory that was clear, loud, and uninvited…
I was small again. I had to be seven, maybe, and I was lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling while voices carried through the walls.
They were louder than they were supposed to be.
I remember the way it made my chest feel tight even back then, the way I tried to ignore it at first. I tried pulling the covers up over my head like that would block it out. But it didn’t.
The arguing got worse. My mom’s voice was sharp and strained.
I barely ever heard her raise her voice.
So, this was alarming. A man’s voice was angrier and heavier.
He held so much bass that at my young age, it felt like he was shaking the walls just with his words.
I slid out of bed slowly, my feet hit the floor carefully, like I knew I wasn’t supposed to be up.
And that’s because I wasn’t. I started creeping toward the door.
I moved lightly on my feet to make sure that I wasn’t heard.
I pulled it open just enough to peek out into the hallway. That’s when I saw it.
My mother was backed up near the wall in the living room.
Her face looked tense, and her hands were up like she was trying to hold distance between her and him.
The man was standing over her. He was bigger, louder, and his presence filled the space in a way that didn’t feel safe.
I was scared for her. I was scared for myself.
“If you can have your cake and eat it too, so can I. I’m sick of you…” Her voice trailed off when his hand moved.
It was fast. Too fast. Like, if I blinked, I probably would have missed it.
The sound of his baseball mitt-shaped hand hitting her echoed in a way I never forgot, even if I thought I did.
She stumbled, and my body froze in the doorway.
My small hands gripped the frame like I didn’t know whether to run, scream, or disappear completely.
He didn’t stop. He kept going. Even when she fell to the floor, he let his feet pick up where his hands had left off.
Anger spilled out of him with nothing to hold it back.
And I just stood there, just watching in horror as I began to feel something build in my chest that I didn’t have words for back then.
Other kids had a monster under their bed or in their closets, but not me.
I had whoever the fuck this was. Right when I was about to open my mouth to scream, the front door burst open.
Trigga’s father stepped in like a storm. His presence cut through the chaos instantly, his eyes locked onto what was happening before anything else could be said. There was a darkness I saw take over those pupils.
“What the fuck is going on?” his voice came out low and dangerous.
The man turned, barely getting the chance to react before everything escalated too fast. Things became too loud, too chaotic, and suddenly too final.
The sound of the gunshot cracked through the house, louder than anything I had ever heard before.
The noise stopped everything in its tracks.
The man dropped, and when he fell onto our gray carpet, a burgundy pool started to surround him.
Just like that, the room fell into a silence that felt too big for the space it was in.
I remember my mom crying. I remember still not moving when I watched Mr. Reynolds help her up off the floor.
The bad man was gone, but I was still halted in my tracks.
Mr. Reynolds pushed my mother’s hair out of her face and then placed his hand under her chin and turned it to examine the damage that was done.
He whispered something to her, and before they could notice that I was up this whole time, I closed the door lightly and then scurried back to my bed.
I remember the way my chest felt like it was caving in as I lay there, too young to understand what I just saw, but old enough to know nothing would ever be the same after that.
And then suddenly, I was standing in the bathroom.
Breathing as if I had just run miles instead of standing still.
My hands gripped the sink so tight that my knuckles turned pale as I stared at my reflection again, but now I knew why it looked the way it did.
I now knew why something felt off. Why this felt familiar in a way it wasn’t supposed to.
“I ain’t…” I started, my voice low, shaky in a way I didn’t recognize. “I ain’t even remember that.”
But I did now. The memory was clear as day, like it had been sitting there waiting for something to pull it back up. And today? Today was the day it came back.
It took a while for me to pull myself together.
I was in the bathroom for what felt like hours.
Trigga called out to say that he was going outside and that he would be back.
I figured that he was going to see his little girlfriend.
Once I heard the door close, I gathered my clothes that had Bashar’s blood on them and headed straight to my room.
I had never killed anyone before, and to be honest, I felt sick to my stomach about it.
Hours had passed, and I didn’t even know it until I heard the locks to the front door click as my mother came in from work.
I wondered if that flashback scene I had in the bathroom was even real.
It had to be. I knew that if it were, then she would know.
I had to hear the shit from the horse’s mouth.
I crept out of my room and headed to the kitchen.
I knew she would be there unpacking her lunch bag, along with unpacking her thoughts of her day.
Even steadily walking in her direction reminded me of the little boy I was thinking about.
The little boy who had tiptoed through the house to see some tragic shit.
“Hey G, how was your day?”
She didn’t even turn around, but she knew it was me. She always knew when I was behind her. It’s like she had eyes in the back of her head or some shit. Growing up, if we weren’t so broke, I would have thought that she had cameras laced throughout this bitch.
“It’s been better, Mama,” I said with a sigh as I plopped down on one of the barstools that was opposite the island counter.
Now that made her turn around and give me her undivided attention.
“Want to talk about it?”
I looked at her and I mean really looked at her before offering a smile.
To me, my mother was gorgeous, and I mean, she had a natural beauty.
The same kind that people nowadays call 90s fine.
She looked just like a younger version of the actress Lynn Whitfield.
She always behaved in a classy manner and had the look to match, just like her.
When I was a little boy, I used to tell everybody that my mother played in A Thin Line Between Love and Hate and everything.
That’s how much they looked alike. The neck of the scrubs she wore was loose as fuck.
Because they were old. She needed new uniforms, but she never got any because she always said money could go to something else.
“G… you wanna talk about it?”
She asked again, this time with a more sincere tone.
“Not about my day, but about something.”
“Shoot.”
She turned around and started putting the items from her lunch box in the sink.
“Today I remembered some man getting shot in this very living room. Shot by Tahari’s father…” I let the last word drift off a bit.
Her ceramic travel bowl made a thud when she placed it in the sink. She stood there for a bit. And when she turned around, she rested both her hands on the counter in front of me and sighed. The weight of the world looked like it rested on those petite shoulders.
“So… what happened?”
I asked as I sat back in my chair. I was giving her the floor. That shit had to really happen. I remember we went from carpet to hardwood flooring in the living room and everything. That memory was too vivid to be some made-up shit.
“Mr. Reynolds saved me from a very bad man.” She was wringing her hands together as she started telling her story.
“I don’t remember you ever dating anyone.”
My mother never brought a man around. To be honest, now that I’m grown, I thought her ass was gay, and maybe I was a product of a very weird, freaky night.
“As a single mother, G, I didn’t want just any man in your face.”
“Okay, makes sense,” I paused before opening my mouth again because I really didn’t know if I even truly wanted the answer to what I was about to ask. Still, I did anyway, “this bad man… was he my dad?”
“Hell no,” she quickly answered.
She seemed offended by the question, but I never got the chance to know who the fuck my father was. She should be offended with herself for tossing that damn coochie around and making a fatherless kid.
I started thinking about the flashback again.
When it happened, it was late as hell. Tahari’s dad didn’t even stay in our neighborhood.
His popping up there didn’t make sense to me.
Thinking back, a lot of what he did never made sense.
The giving of money, buying me gifts, and coming to my basketball games. Man, the list was long.
“What was Tahari’s dad doing here?”
“I called him here,” she quickly answered my question.
“He had a whole wife and son. You called him here, and he just came like that?” I said with the snap of a finger.
“He was a good man like that.”
She said the statement with pride, and that fucking bothered me. Now I had asked this question before, but maybe just maybe she lied to protect the little boy who was asking. I’m a grown-ass man now. So, I took a deep breath before asking again.
“Was Mr. Reynolds my father?”
She stared a little before shaking her head no.
I stood from my seat, rounded the kitchen island, and then kissed the top of her head.
Mentally, I felt myself hitting a switch when it came to the emotional aspect of what was bothering me, but what was done was done.
Fuck that flashback and, honestly, fuck Bashar.
I had to worry about things right now in the moment.
And what mattered most was getting back to the money.
I was about to do some research on the other MB’s Autos, and I was going to pick the most secluded one to hit next.
Trigga didn’t have to know that there may not be any bricks inside.
Shit, maybe it is. Either way, I was going to make sure we hit another one soon.