Page 19

William

My mother took one look into my bloodshot eyes and pulled me in for a hug. She then gave me something for the headache I couldn’t hide before tucking me in and humming me to sleep. Her voice, her love, and the light strokes over my hair were better than any pill I could’ve taken to shake the insomnia.

Night had descended by the time I woke up, and the apartment was clean. I hadn’t taken out the trash since Ryan left, or cleaned up the mess I’d made while searching for my book. And even though she didn’t bring it up, I knew she had questions about the state of the dining room. I felt terrible that she’d witnessed the aftermath of me and Ryan losing our cool.

“When’s the last time you ate?” she asked as I shuffled into the kitchen.

Concentrating had been impossible lately, so I didn’t even bother trying to think back to an exact date. “I don’t know.” I settled onto a stool.

“I’m making your favorite. Your great-grandmother’s secret recipe.” She stole glances at me while she put the finishing touches on the jambalaya, fighting to mother me from a place of support instead of nagging. What was done was done. I hadn’t eaten in who knew how long, so she’d feed me now, and then find a creative way to encourage me into treatment for what we both knew was going on.

“Have you run at all this week?” She kept her tone conversational. “We’ve had a few sunny days. I don’t know what’s been going on with all this rain lately. You’ve gotta get out there whenever you can.”

“No.” I could feel another headache coming on. Running helped. She knew that too.

She turned the fire down under the stock pot and set the lid on top of it. She’d made enough to last me a few weeks, maybe more. I’d need to freeze some of it.

“Well, I just so happen to be off for the next few weeks. I need the break,” she said, waving off my silent concern. My mother loved to work. She never took more than a day or two off, here and there. “Plus, Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks.” She rested her forearms on top of the island. “I figured you could come back to Brooklyn with me tonight. Spend some time out there, get a change of scenery. You could run with me and Delilah in the mornings.”

I squeezed her hand. “I’m pretty sure what you and Delilah do is called power walking. She’s too old for anything more.” The Yorkshire Terrier had been with her for over a decade.

“I’ll put her in the stroller then.” We both laughed, though mine felt tinged with mania. The tears in her eyes said she’d picked up on it.

“You told me you were okay,” she whispered. She’d checked in with me a few times, and for her benefit I pretended things were fine. “I’m worried about you, baby.”

I sighed. “Did you close your office at the last minute because you were worried about me?”

“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation. “You swore you were fine, but something felt off. I should’ve just shown up at your door like I’ve been wanting to, but my caseloads were this high.” She raised a hand above her head. “I kept saying: tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...” She shook her head, squeezing my hand in return. “I heard it in your voice today, William. You told me so. And so I did what I should have done over a week ago.”

I felt the sudden need to cry. The urge felt crushing, debilitating. I wanted to be alone, even when I called her. I’d used my last reserve of strength to ignore my mind telling me I’d be a burden and to not to let anyone in. I couldn’t trust my thoughts right now. “What about all this jambalaya you just made?”

She smiled, pointing to a clear tote bag filled with her infamous Tupperware containers. “We take it with us, or course.”

I picked at my food and swallowed a couple more painkillers while my mother packed up the leftovers.

“Is what happened to the dining room the reason Ryan decided to go to Safe Haven?”

I’d managed to tell her Ryan was gone before drifting off earlier. “No. I think what happened at the gala did that.”

She didn’t pry any further. “It was the right decision.” She passed me another bottle of water from the fridge. “You need to stay hydrated.”

It was the right decision, and I had the note he left behind to give me hope. It was impossible to feel hopeful though when I couldn’t find it in me to face our biggest hurdle. I needed to be free of my painful past. I needed to unlock the shackles it held me in. Believing I deserved heartache needed to end. But how could I end what I did, in fact, deserve?

I’d lapsed into another one of my extended silences, staring at a vein in the marble of the island. My mother tapped the space in front of me. “Huh?” I snapped my gaze to hers, catching the look of worry.

“I said put the water down before you spill it, baby.”

I’d uncapped the bottle, and held it tilted near my mouth. I set it down without taking a sip, massaging my forehead.

“You know, when you were about six, you came home from school one day in a rage.” She crossed her arms and settled back against the counter. “You were always friendly and sweet, with a dash of melancholy. Your father suffered from the blues too,” she whispered more to herself than me. “Your grandfather always used to say ‘What you got to be tortured bout, Mally?’”

He used to call me Mally, his Geechee accent made it sound more like Molly, though.

Even as a kid I had a touch of sadness in me. I felt everything , even the things other people were feeling.

“You were in rare form that day,” my mother said, not a hint of humor in her tone. I listened carefully, because this seemed different than a typical trip down memory lane. There was a reason she’d chosen this story. “The schoolyard bullies had found someone new to pick on, and you didn’t like it one bit.”

None of that rang a bell, but it was a long time ago. Six was a tricky age. Young enough for me to not remember certain events at all, but old enough for me to remember bits and pieces of others—especially if my memory was jogged. I swallowed at the thought—and what else it could apply to—before leaving it behind.

“So I was jealous because they stopped picking on me to bother someone else? That’s… toxic.” And it didn’t sound like me at all.

“No, the whole reason they started bullying you in the first place was because you’d been distracting them from setting their sights on the new kid. He was the smallest boy in class, and he wore a knee brace. You would do silly things to draw their attention after school. Tell them video games are stupid, or show off your big, fancy vocabulary.” She rolled her eyes.

“Samuel,” I whispered. There was power in hearing a name. Memories of that time started trickling in. “I used to dare them to spell big words right.”

“You used to double dare them,” she corrected. “You were always such a bright boy.”

Aside from music, I’d developed a love of reading from an early age. It started with my mother taking away TV time if I misbehaved. She’d tell me to read a book. I listened.

“Anyway, they’d chase you through the streets, clearing the way for Samuel to hobble home safely.”

“He lived a few blocks away from the school,” I frowned. “He was seven.” Samuel was a latchkey kid, and on the days when my mother or my grandfather couldn’t make it to the school by the time the final bell rang, so was I.

“All your classmates were a year older. You’d been skipped from first to second grade early in the school year. It leant credibility to your smarty-pants routine.” She chuckled, then shook her head, sobering. “The bullies eventually grew bored of you. Guess it was no fun harassing someone who’s literally asking for it. They cornered Samuel one day and pushed him to the ground, then kept pushing him down every time he got up. They didn’t stop until he stayed there. A crowd had gathered round, mocking and laughing at him. His knee brace broke, and his parents ended up transferring him to a school across town.”

“So I was upset they did that to him?” I asked, unable to recall my feelings about it back then. It angered me to hear about it now, though.

“You were upset because you weren’t there to help him. You’d been home getting over the flu when it happened. By the time you went back to class, Samuel was gone.” My mother stepped up to the island, her tone anguished, desperate even.

“The day you came home angry… I couldn’t get you to eat dinner that night, and I had to threaten to take away your Faith Ringgold book collection to get you out of bed for school the next morning. I should’ve been more understanding,” she added, no doubt believing my behavior to be an early sign of my depression. A sign she missed. I squeezed her hand.

“I came home with a black-eye that day,” I whispered.

“Yeah, Mr. Jackson said you’d gotten a good swing in on the big one before they jumped you.”

“Yeah, that I remember.”

“You’ve always been a crusader. A champion for the underdog, even when you were the underdog yourself. It both inspires me and terrifies me, because you’ll fight harder for others than you will for yourself—and at the detriment of yourself.”

I let the first tear fall, and the rest soon followed. She came around to my side, and I twisted in my stool to face her.

“Seeing you like this is more than I can take, baby.” She cradled my cheeks in her hands, her voice begging me to help her understand. “Tell me, what makes him so special?”

I breathed through all the pain I’d been holding on to, all the pain I’d nourished throughout the years before confessing, “He reminds me of someone I once knew.” It wasn’t a lie. It felt like the first real step I’d taken toward the truth.

I held onto her forearms for support, expelling another breath before whispering, “There’s something I’ve never told you.”

With one hand covering her heart, and the other one pressed to her mouth, she listened to the story I’d never told anyone before. Then I removed my shirt, showing her the tattoo on my back. The memorial to everything good, to the things I prayed Gargantuan would return.

My mother didn’t try to diagnose me, didn’t come up with a mental health gameplan like I was one of her patients. She’d shown up at my door as my mother. My momma. And that never wavered no matter how weak I became in front of her. No matter how afraid she became for me.

She cried with me, and then she did what she used to do every Sunday after church when I was a kid. She let me pick a couple of titles from my “most iconic movies” list, and listened while I dissected the instrumentation of the score—the heartbeat of every film.

I’d unlocked my dark prison and allowed someone else in, taking me one step closer to leaving those steel bars behind.

My mother built me up that night. She infused me with love and shared stories, highlighting the grit I forgot I possessed. She’d broken through my gray cloud and shined a light on the courage needed to carry me to the pinnacle of being whole. She taught me another important lesson that night.

“Sometimes guarding a secret gives us purpose. We find false honor in the keeping of it. We allow it to define us, because without it we feel as if we’re nothing. The truth is letting go is where we find our true selves. So let go, William. Tell him.”