7. Lee
Lee
It had a pool, a huge kitchen, more bedrooms than we knew what to do with, and damn near everything else you could think of. I ain’t know if he was trying to spoil me, make up for leaving me that first night, or a little bit of both. Either way, I wasn’t complaining.
Friday, we ain’t do shit but fuck, eat, and get in that pool.
I barely put clothes on the whole damn day.
The only time we really came up for air was when we got dressed and went to Fish Out of Water for dinner.
Somewhere between eating seafood and drinking something that probably cost more than it needed to, I asked JB if Anika and Trevon could come down and spend the rest of the weekend with us.
“Go ahead and call ’em,” he told me like it wasn’t nothing.
By Saturday, they were there. The rest of the weekend was tequila, card games, talking shit, burning stuff on the grill, and arguing over what movie we were gonna watch. Nothing fancy. We were just having fun, and for once I wasn’t sitting around thinking about everything I had missed.
Then Sunday came, and the second we got back to Mobile, all that vacation shit was over. JB barely got in the house good before dispatch called, and just like that, he was gone again. I hadn’t seen him since.
He called me every morning and every night, but that shit wasn’t the same as having him there.
By Tuesday, I was ready for him to get his ass back home.
We still needed to finish furniture shopping, and after spending a few days in that Airbnb, coming back to my empty-ass living room made it look even worse.
I was sitting on the couch with my phone in my hand, about to call JB and get on his nerves until he came home, when somebody knocked on the front door.
I figured it was probably Nina stopping by, maybe Wren, or even Anika coming back over. I wasn’t expecting anybody important, so when I opened the door and saw my mama standing on the porch, I just stood there for a second.
“Mama?”
She sucked her teeth like I was the one who had some nerve. “It’s been damn near a week and you ain’t came to see me or called me, so I figured I’d come over here and make sure you was alive.”
I crossed my arms. “Mama, I just got out last week. Why you wasn’t at my welcome home party?”
“Oh, girl, please.” She waved me off and started walking toward the door. “Anika didn’t tell me until the last minute, and you know JB’s ass ain’t tell me nothing. I don’t come where I ain’t invited.”
I wanted to ask why the hell she was standing on my porch now then, but I kept that to myself.
Mama looked past me into the house. “Can I come in, or did JB tell you I ain’t allowed over here?”
“See, you already starting.” I stepped out the way. “Come on.”
She walked inside and immediately started looking around. Her eyes went from the living room to the dining area before she frowned.
“Why it’s so empty in here? You did five years for that nigga and he couldn’t furnish your shit?”
“Mama, don’t come in here being messy.” I closed the door behind her. “He gave me the money to do it myself. You know how I am about decorating.”
“How much he give you?”
I looked at her. “Enough, Miss Nosey.”
She kept walking, looking around like she was inspecting the place. “Well, you need to spend it. This house too nice to be sitting empty like this.”
I stood there watching her for a second. She had been in my house less than five minutes and was already talking about JB, my furniture, and how I needed to spend my money like everything between us was normal, but it wasn’t.
“Why you never wrote me?”
Mama stopped and turned around. “I did write you.”
“Barely.”
Her face changed. “Well, Lee, it’s your fault you was in there anyway. I been telling you since you was fourteen to leave Jabari’s ass alone.” That hit exactly where she knew it would.
“At least he loves me.”
Mama’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You kicked me out my senior year in high school!” I yelled. I hadn’t planned on saying it, but once it came out, all that old hurt came right along with it.
“You was pregnant with his baby, so obviously you thought you was grown!” Mama yelled back. “I couldn’t have you in that house being a bad influence on Anika.”
“I needed you, Mama.”
My voice cracked, and I hated that it did. I was twenty-nine years old standing in my own house, but for a second I felt seventeen again, pregnant and scared with nowhere to go because my mama had put me out.
Mama opened her mouth like she was about to argue some more, but nothing came out right away. When she finally spoke, her voice wasn’t as hard. “Everything back then and everything now always come back to JB. It’s like that nigga got some kind of spell on you.”
That made the tears fall harder because as much as I wanted to tell her she was wrong, I couldn’t.
My mama had been preaching to me since I was fourteen.
Go to school. Get good grades. Don’t get pregnant.
Stay away from boys bringing trouble to your door.
I knew every rule she had ever given me, and I had broken the one she cared about the most.
Mama had me when she was sixteen, so she had always been hard on me and Anika about not repeating her mistakes.
She had talked to us about birth control and condoms before either one of us was even old enough to want to hear that shit.
To her, me getting pregnant senior year probably felt like everything she’d tried to keep me from doing had happened anyway.
She let out a breath and looked away from me for a second. “I’m gonna tell you the truth, Leona. I kicked you out because I was mad as hell. I figured you’d go stay with Big Mama or one of your aunties for a little while, I’d calm down, and then we’d figure the baby stuff out.”
I wiped at my face, but Mama wasn’t done.
“I ain’t expect Jabari to turn around and get y’all a place of your own.
By the time I got over being mad, you was already over there playing house with him.
” Mama shook her head. “I regret putting you out. I do. Because after that, it felt like I had handed you straight over to that monster.”
“He’s not a monster, Mama.”
“Anybody who would hide drugs in your business and let you sit in prison behind that shit is a monster to me.” She looked me dead in my face. “Don’t let all this money and everything he buying you make you forget why he doing it. That man know what he did to you.”
“Why you gotta come over here with all this?” I asked, wiping my cheeks again. “I ain’t even been home a week.”
Mama stared at me for a few seconds, and whatever else she had been getting ready to say seemed to leave her.
“I just wanted to see my baby,” she said. “I ain’t come over here trying to argue with you.”
That was all it took. I started crying harder, and this time Mama didn’t say anything.
She just came over and wrapped her arms around me.
I held onto her and let myself cry because no matter how mad I had been at her, no matter how many unanswered calls and barely written letters I had kept count of, she was still my mama and I had missed her.
For a minute, I just let her hold me. I felt like a little girl again, and maybe part of me needed that.
Me and my mama had damn near grown up together.
She figured life out while raising me, then turned around and tried to make sure me and Anika didn’t make the same mistakes she did.
She wasn’t perfect, and she damn sure wasn’t one of those soft, sweet mamas who always knew the right thing to say.
Mama had picked up welding as a trade, was rough around the edges, and being from the hood didn’t exactly help with that either.
But she was mine, and as fucked up as things had been between us, I loved her.
After a while, she pulled back and wiped under my eyes. “Girl, you gone have to stop all this damn crying. Your house so empty, the shit echoing.”
I stared at her for half a second before I started laughing. “There you go,” Mama said, smiling like she hadn’t just had me boohooing in my own living room.
I shook my head and wiped the rest of my face. “You wanna come furniture shopping with me?”
Her smile got a little bigger. “I’d like that.”
We probably needed therapy to fix everything between us, but shit, this was a start. Neither one of us was good at all that sitting down and talking about our feelings anyway, so for right now, retail therapy was good enough for me.