"All will be all, whether times are where we need them to be or not."
—
"I tried calling your daddy yesterday," Mama said, the two of us were in our home's kitchen, searching throughout the cabinets before us to prepare a night's meal. "Bastard won't even pick up the phone."
Instantly, my eyes rolled in a circular motion. Honestly, I didn't care to speak to Daddy for reasons I hadn't even disclosed to Mama. What he had done to her, he did out in the open. The trauma he gave to me, he handed over secretly. And I loved my father, I really did. But I didn't know how to form a conversation with him after all that had transpired. And truly, I wished Mama had just let him be. It was okay for us to miss him, but we definitely needed to learn to let him go.
"Ma, can you stop calling him?" I replied, finding a box of Shells macaroni within the cabinet above our white colored stove. "We ain't spoke to him in years. Probably got his number changed anyways."
She waved me off, opening the door to the nearing refrigerator. She looked through it for a moment before taking out a package of hot dogs. "Chile, please. His digits ain't done no changing. I don't care if he ain't wanting to speak to me, but he not gon' ignore his child."
I watched as Mama grabbed a rounded bowl from underneath the sink. She filled it with water, then set the microwave for ten minutes. "Well, I ain't trippin' bout hearing from him. He ain't been no good to us, Ma. Let's just leave him alone."
"Wait a minute," She then reached toward my hand of which the box of macaroni rested. She opened the box then poured the hardened shells into the bowl full of water. "What you mean he ain't been to good to us? What he did to you, Jay?"
I breathed heavily, wanting to honestly switch subjects. What my father did to me, I was not ready to discuss just yet. Especially not with Mama. Not because I wanted to keep it hidden from her, but more so because I didn't know how to tell her something that held such magnitude.
"Nothing...he ain't did nothing." I began to feel my blood boil within my body. "Just ain't wanting to talk to him."
Eyeing me closely, Mama made her presence closer to my own. "Jay, I ain't gon' ask you no more. What did he do?" She saw how tensed up I had gotten, refusing to answer her. "Girl, did he put his hands on you?"
I wanted to tell her of what he had done. But I just couldn't. I could not do it. I just wanted to forget about it and not face it, but I knew that soon I would have to talk about it. And maybe I would be more comfortable speaking of it at a later time, but in regards to now, I just wasn't ready.
Feeling my heart race rapidly within my chest, I stormed out of the kitchen and into our living quarters. I then ran for the front door, but before emigrating, I grabbed my jacket that had been laid upon our leather black couch. After placing the jacket across my left arm, I seen two plastic bags. One full of green material and the other full of white material.
My body hurriedly entered a bombshell. Everything in me prayed that Mama hadn't been retracting back to her old habits.
"Mama, what is this?" I called out to her.
She peeked within the living room, standing in the kitchen's doorway. Upon her face, guilt settled into her pores. Which was why she didn't answer me back, but she didn't have to. Her eyes had already given me an answer.
Completely angered, I marched towards the door again all while silent tears rolled down the right side of my face.
If there was one thing that it seemed as if I could never overcome, it was surely disappointment. I just didn't understand why it felt like before anything could get any better, everything else had to completely fall apart.
