Page 82 of Rah

I slightly rolled my eyes. “You think he was telling the truth about the meeting?”

Moses kissed his teeth and grimaced. “I doubt it, since it hasn’t happened yet. Seems like he’s been selling me dreams.”

Scoffing, I replied, “I was surprised when he actually gave me that money for that lawyer.”

Moses’ brow raised. “He did?”

“Yeah. The night you got shot, he handed me a wad of cash and gave me even more the next day. I couldn’t believe it. I wonder where he got that type of money from.”

“Yeah,” Moses said, staring oddly into the TV. “Me too.”

RAH

“Mumph.” I groaned as my eyes tried to adjust to the fluorescent lights. I remembered waking up before but being too groggy to keep my eyes open. I was still feeling high as hell, but I managed to keep my eyes open and trained on my mother.

She gasped when she saw that I was looking at her. The concerned look on her face quickly went away. A smile replaced it as she jumped to her feet and ran towards me. “He’s awake!”

She stood over me, cupping my cheek. I watched as my father walked up behind her.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

I opened my mouth, trying to say something, but it was hard to get the words past my dry throat. I forced out, “High as hell,” and it came out hoarse.

“It’s the morphine,” my mother told me.

My eyes kept opening and closing. I was floating.

“She is going to pay for what she did to him,” my father fussed.

“Not right now,” my mother insisted. “We can talk about that later.”

“No,” he barked. Then he looked at me and asked, “Why did she do this, Son? Did you all get into a fight or something?”

I might have been high, but I remembered exactly what happened. Solae faulted me for what happened to Essence, but she was to blame. Has she known her place, Essence wouldn’t have gotten raped. The last thing I remembered was her screaming she hated me as she drove a knife in my side.

“No, we didn’t get into a fight. That crazy bitch snapped. She’s jealous of Aaliyah and mad that I had that baby on her. So, she tried to kill me.”

I wasn’t so high that I didn’t feel the desire to make Solae pay, burning on the inside. Lying in that bed, I swore to myself that as soon as I was out of there, I was going to kill Solae and do a better job at it than she had.

18

FABE

“’Bout time you showed up.” As soon as I walked into his hospital room, Rah made me regret being there.

In response, I scoffed as I walked into the room.

Once I got the call from our father that Solae had stabbed Rah, I took my time to visit him. I was done with him. For my father, I had shown up while Rah was in surgery, but I hadn’t been back since he came to on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t feel the need to rush to come show sympathy to a motherfucker that had no sympathy for anybody in his life. All he cared about was himself.

But Aaliyah had convinced me that if I didn’t visit him soon, my absence would only make Rah more suspicious. So, for her, I had come.

Rah looked like his old self, as if he hadn’t been stabbed in the leg and twice in the abdomen. The stab to the thigh had hit the femoral artery and one to the stomach had hit the spleen, both causing a huge loss of blood, resulting in loss ofconsciousness. Apparently, from what our father was told by the cops from Solae’s statement, that’s why Solae thought he was dead and took her time calling the cops out of fear. His lung had also collapsed. He had undergone surgery to repair the artery and remove the spleen.

Yet, this nigga was sitting up in bed with a threatening and cynical look on his face. He wasn’t worried about getting better; he was worried about getting to that money. He stared at me with a questioning glare. He didn’t look like he had almost lost his life. Not at all. But I was sure that under that hospital gown, there were bandages and staples where Solae had tried to take him out.

He continued to eyeball me as I removed my coat. It was still wet from the snow that seemed to have been falling since the new year.

“Fuck wrong wit’ you?” Rah spat.