7
You Forget Am Yuh Mother
Alex’s older brother and sister, were both very busy people, Nicole worked the night shift at a hotel and took classes on evenings twice a week, and Michael worked at a garage in the town while doing his music on the side. He had an amazing voice too.
They had both been very secretive about their whereabouts lately, more secretive than usual and Alex was starting to feel like she was in this all alone.
She only managed to catch Michael home alone one day after school. When it came to serious issues Nicole was more reliable than Michael, who tended to be a little too immature in grown up situations but what she’d overheard at the hospital was really weighing on her mind, especially as Ryan seemed to be getting even closer and bolder by the day.
She walked right into his room. Michael sat up on his bed, as he nonchalantly slipped something underneath his pillow.
“What?” he asked guiltily.
“What you got there?”
“None of your business, yuh can’t knock?” he swung his long legs to the floor.
“Sorry,” she remained standing at the door, awkwardly fidgeting with the door knob.
“Well what yuh want?” he asked.
Alex shut the door behind her and leaned against it, whatever Michael was hiding really was not her business.
“It’s about mom,” she said.
He got up and picked up his jeans, “as always,” he murmured as he shook them out.
“This Ryan guy is her next target, but things are different now I...
“Of course Al, is what she does do,” he said pulling up his jeans.
He looked over at her with tired brown eyes, “that’s what she does, she do it with Nicole father, she do it with mine, she did it with yours and with whoever other baby daddy she got out there. You remember our older brother right? And the one she gave up when she was sixteen?”
Alex nodded, she knew all of that but what she wanted to think about now was her life.
“So right now it don’t bother me so much, so she’s got a new sugar daddy, you know what?” he picked up a plain white t-shirt and yanked it over his head, “I don’t care no more.”
Alex inhaled sharply, how could he not care? What other hope could she possibly have? He could be strange sometimes and detached but she always knew he was interested. Michael made a move to open the door behind her, and she panicked.
“He asked her to move in,” she blurted.
Her brother looked directly at her then, and she was sure she saw something flash in his eyes but she couldn’t put a finger on it, for sure it wasn’t anger.
“And what she say?”
“She’s gonna ask us” she replied.
“Mom does never ask us nothing,” he said, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Exactly my point,” said Alex, “but you know how she is with these guys, it’s all about impressions.”
Michael looked at Alex once more, “well you know she gonna do what she wants, all I have to say is I’m not going anywhere. I sorry for you.”
He jerked open the door and left her standing there with furrowed brows. She sighed, she really was in this alone after all. Her eyes fell on his pillow, whatever he was hiding was still there.
She was tempted, but before the thought could reach her limbs, the door was yanked open behind her and Michael stood dauntingly before her.
“Get out!” he commanded.
Later on that evening after Ryan left, Sherry walked right into Alex’s room and planted herself at the door.
“Mom!” She cried, “Don’t you know how to knock?” she was hastily wrapping her towel about her.
Sherry walked right by her to sit on her bed. Alex looked at her with wide eyes.
“Ah ah, so what you hiding? You forget am yuh mother,” said Sherry with a hint of amusement.
Alex swore under her breath as she turned to try dressing without removing her towel. When she finally managed to get her brassiere and shorts on, she was breathless. Sherry motioned for her to sit down on the bed next to her.
“I have something to tell you,” she started.
Alex pulled on a T-shirt and sat as far as she could from Sherry on the small bed. Usually when Sherry came to talk, it was about something Alex could not agree with or stomach, and it usually ended with a hot slap. She knew Ryan’s proposal was going to come up, so she was putting a safe distance between them in advance.
“What is it?”
Sherry sighed and straightened her back, “now, what am gonna tell you, it won’t make you happy but is not for the whole world to know, you understand? Not yet at least.”
Alex sat completely still, knowing what was coming didn’t lessen the uneasy feeling in her stomach.
“I think is a good idea to move in with Ryan,” she said, Alex was already shaking her head, “we plan to do it before the new year, probably after Christmas...”
“You don’t need to do this mom,” Alex pleaded, her voice thick with emotion, “We can manage, I’ll find you a better job and I’ll work for the holidays....”
“Is not that simple Alex, I cannot ask you to work at this time when you have exams coming up. I sick, I need to take care of me self and Ryan want to help, is not easy,” Sherry explained.
“No!” Alex shot to her feet and glared down at her, “you’re complicating it, we’ve managed before. Let him move in if he wants to, just like every other guy. Am not going anywhere.”
“Sit down Alex!”
After some heaving angry breaths, Alex complied. Sherry awkwardly reached for her clammy hand but Alex just as awkwardly slipped it out again.
“It is complicated now Alex, that is true. Ryan is a respectable man, he not gonna let me manage on my own, especially now when...” she paused and shook her head.
Alex looked at her with anxiously suspicious eyes, “What? what?”
“Ah pregnant.”
Alex was very still, she felt as though she was on a treadmill that had suddenly propelled her back ward into the hard wall behind her. She waited silently for her mother to start grinning and announce that she was actually joking around with her, but Sherry-Ann Moore didn’t joke.
“You hear what I say?” Sherry was growing annoyed.
Alex just shook her head in disbelief. She was not ignorant of how her mother lived, neither was she ignorant of the implications of such a life. She was a product of that life, just like her siblings were, but it was one thing to know something could happen and it was another to find yourself actually facing it.
“You’re pregnant,” she repeated softly, confirming it to herself. Sherry sucked her teeth, leaned back against the pillows and folded her arms across her chest, as though preparing herself for the inevitable barrage of questions.
“Who’s the father?” Alex asked, she looked so panicked one would think she was the one with the news.
Sherry rolled her eyes, “Who you think it is? Is always something with you, you always making things bigger than it really is.”
Alex got up and started to pace frantically, trying to rub the tension from the back of her neck as she did.
“Please tell me you know its Ryan’s baby, for sure.”
Sherry shrugged and looked thoughtful for less than two seconds, “could be, I figure is his. Antonio don’t look like nothing in him fertile, so it have to be Ryan own.”
“You figure,” Alex had fire in her eyes, “mom you can’t figure with these things, there’s a life in there. That baby – me, you – we all need to know who the father is. We can’t take care of a baby now, two days ago we hardly had anything to eat.”
Sherry sat up and puffed out her chest like an aggravated fowl, “now wait a minute, who is the mother here?” she locked hard eyes with her daughter.
“I’m a big woman, is me that having the baby. I have it under control.”
“Yeah of course, you
’ve been doing such a great job of it so far,” Alex sneered.
Sherry looked like she wanted to say something, slap something maybe. She edged off the bed and got to her feet, they were almost equal height, Alex being slightly taller. Same nose, similar shaped eyes, same strong defiant chin.
“I will handle it,” Sherry said adamantly, “you focus on getting use to it.”
Alex eased by the group of girls standing near the entrance of the bathroom; she looked at them and rolled her eyes, who hung out near the bathroom? She thought. It was a pretty typical day at school, save for the troubling thoughts swimming about in Alex’s mind. A group of disrespectful, underachievers throwing words at her, was the last thing she needed right now.
“Well watch where you going!” One of the girls cried in annoyance.
Alex ignored them; she had too much on her mind to be interested in petty arguments. It had been two weeks since Sherry had given her the news and she still felt like she was being strangled.
“So she just gonna pretend she didn’t hear us?” the girl who spoke was in her class, her name was Tracy. They also lived in the same neighbourhood which is why Alex along with most of the neighbours knew she had an abusive, drunk as a father. Just as how Tracy knew how her mother lived and how she came to be.
“Y’all I hear she mother pregnant,” Tracy was saying, Alex paused.
“Again? How much she have now? Who that one for?” another girl asked.
“Just make sure it’s not your father,” another replied, and they all shared a laugh as though they’d been rehearsing this for days before.
Alex turned around then, her eyes narrowed, “just shut up,” she growled.
Being the proud overachiever that she was, it was no surprise that she had enemies. Girls like Tracy who were jealous over her success.
Tracy made a funny face at her friends then looked back at Alex smugly, “I’m sorry” she said, “I didn’t think you were listening. I was just sharing some news to the girls, congratulations by the way,” she winked at her tauntingly and turned to join in the laughter.
Alex stepped toward her until she was close enough to sniff the scent of Tracy’s cheap perfume. The Spray Can kind, that looked and sometimes smelled like bug spray.
“Seeing that we’re sharing news and all. How’s your mom? That black eye your father gave her better?” she glared at her, pasting on a cruel smirk.
Tracy made a move toward her but was restrained by one of the girls standing behind her; she shook her off and shoved Alex roughly. Alex stumbled backward, she wanted to shove her back, maybe drop her to the ground and rough her up a bit. She could take her and they both knew it.
They stood staring daggers at each other, nostrils flared, chests heaving with suppressed emotion, waiting for the other to make the first move that would satisfy them both.
Alex glanced down at her clenched fist then at the red badge on her chest, she looked over at Traci, her shirt pocket was bare. If anyone of them was going to lose something if they acted on their emotions it was her, so as much as she wanted blood, she also wanted to leave this school with respect and dignity.
“I’m gonna walk away Tracy, but don’t cross my path like this again,” she threatened, deliberately brushing her shoulder against her rival’s, as she passed by her.
Alex made her way to the library and took a seat near the large window that gave a perfect view of the city, all the way to the sea, it was quiet there. She thought about Sherry and her unborn baby, about Tracy’s comment and her brother’s reaction to the news.
Did anybody care? Was she the only one bothered by this? She sighed; Sherry said she had a plan…
I have a plan Angel
… and that she should trust her.
You can trust me Angel
Frowning Alex looked about her frantically, but she was alone, she could hear the Librarian’s Blackberry vibrating in the quiet. She shook her head and turned back to the window, she sighed. The days when she used to believe in everything her mother said were gone, and she was forced to look at things as they were, as opposed to what they were imagined to become. In addition to that, it seemed she was starting to hear voices.
Sherry handled it alright, with suitcases and impressions, and before the Christmas wind could sweep through the tense house, they were preparing to leave it. Alex and Sherry, that is.
Since Sherry had started seeing Ryan, Alex had never needed to cook, Sherry was always at the stove, cooking lunch, baking... Alex never knew she could do either. Nicole was even scarcer these days, working late, classes, and a new boyfriend were all conveniently keeping her away from her family issues and her sister. And Michael, Michael was getting even more secretive, he’d started locking his bedroom door, sneaking into the house at odd hours in the morning, hiding to have cell phone conversations. It frightened Alex, and she felt she was the only one noticing that things were falling apart.
It was no secret what most of the guys in the neighbourhood got into once they stopped going to school. Michael was the ideal future gang member and drug dealer. He was almost twenty-one, he’d finished secondary school with three subjects after being kept back twice in the third form – at least he’d graduated, she couldn’t say the same for most of his friends.
He spent a year working at a garage in the country after school, where he’d learned the trade the unconventional way. Now he didn’t have a steady job, he was what they called a hustler, going from job to job, wherever and whenever he could get one. Personal observation had shown Alex that this was the similar story of most of the guys who got involved in such illegal acts. The majority of whom came from ‘broken homes’, it wasn’t something she would openly admit, but her home could be defined as broken.
Now it was the Christmas season, Parang on the radio, the smell of sorrel boiling and ham cooking on the neighbour’s outside fire, but the festivity wasn’t inside the Moore house. Christmas was an exciting time because it was supposed to be the celebration of life, giving of gifts, spending time with the people you cared the most about, but this year Alex was sullen, because she felt as though she was waiting for her execution.
She sank back onto her bed with a sigh and closed her eyes, listening to all the sounds of her life crumbling at the edges. The dragging and lifting, Ryan’s laughing voice and Sherry’s flirty response, the truck idling out front, by evening there would be nothing left. She looked over at the photo next to her bed and suddenly felt like crying.
“So you just going to lie down inside here and do nothing, come and help your mother nuh. Still have plenty to do.”
Ryan was standing at the door a disapproving expression on his face. Alex had jumped at the sound of his voice, her hand immediately going to her pocket. He surprised her by coming into her room like this. She glared at him – the gall of the man – rolling her eyes she laid back down again, with one hand folded behind her head, the other still lodged in her pocket gripping the red flick knife.
“Your mother told me how you felt about moving in with me,” he said.
“Yeah, how did she say I felt?” Alex asked, with more animosity than she wanted.
Ryan shrugged, “You’re angry at us,” he replied, coming further into the room to lean on her dresser.
“And shouldn’t I be?”
Ryan chuckled dryly, “I don’t think you’re seeing the big picture child. I can give you more than what you have here.”
Alex sat up and eased off the bed, she didn’t feel comfortable lying down while he hovered so close. She looked at him with piercing eyes and he held her gaze with equal intensity, she didn’t like the way he was acting; who died and made him man of the house.
“Why don’t you make that picture a little clearer for me,” she suggested.
She wasn’t usually this rude and impulsive, but certain people seemed to bring that out in her; Ryan had become one of them.
“Frank
ly I think it’s none of your business, considering you’re just a child and all, but Sherry seems to think otherwise...”
“I haven’t been a child for a long time. And yeah, it would be none of my business, if you were my father, that is,” she interrupted.
“You know you are very disrespectful” he said with a snort, “and yuh selfish...”
“I’m selfish...” she started.
“You just listen to me. This is your mother’s decision, you’re only included because it affects you. But the bigger picture is our unborn baby growing up in a place where it can call home”
“And what about me? What about what I call home?”
“You call this dump home?”
They paused and glared at each other, two strong willed people facing off on one very personal subject, and suddenly the entire neighbourhood wasn’t large enough for them.
They were still standing in silent suppression when
Sherry called out to them, “Ryan, where’s Alex?”
“She’s right here, hon,” he replied.
“Tell her to bring her things out to the truck,” she called back.
He smiled smugly at the stewing teenager, “you heard your mother. Take your stuff out, little girl.”
Twist of Faith Page 8