The next job I did for Elio was simple. Take a package from point A to point B. I check-in with him after I did the drop. I swung by the hospital to sit with my pops. He returned from his treatment; the nurses helped him into his bed; he looked fatigued, but not too fatigued. He could still crack jokes on me. I checked my text messages.
Elio: Yes, I forgot to tell you while you were here that I'll send a driver over tonight with a suit and dress shoes for you. I have a dinner party to attend tonight and you're coming with me.
Me: Sorry. Can't. Got plans.
Elio: Didn't ask if you did. Like I said, you're coming with me. So I expect to see you tonight, Mr. Jensen.
I didn't reply and shoved my phone into my pocket. The nurses made sure my pops were comfortable before they left. He turns on the TV, a nice-sized flat screen that's mounted on the wall.
"They treat black patients real well here unlike them county hospitals. If I say I'm in pain they give me something, check me out. But the county, they ain't believing a black person in pain. You faking, they think."
Doctors and nurses give up on black patients before they even get them into a room. Just another nigga to them, trying to get their fix to feed their addiction. At least here, my pops has a black woman for a doctor so she ain't trippin' like the white doctors do saying slick shit about how we talk that they can't understand what we saying cause we speak to hood or can you people speak proper English?
"Now you ain't gotta worry about anything," I said.
Pop's smiles and closes his eyes. Today's sunny, so his curtains were open, he's in a private suite that overlooks the medical center downtown. Pop's talks to me about Mom, how he still misses her, that he dreams of her often, and that the worst part of waking up from his dreams with her is that gaping hole of loneliness he feels.
I miss Mom too, but I ain't ever had a good relationship with her. She wanted me to go to college to do something with my life, but I chose to be in the streets during shit ain't have no business doing. And man, I regret the argument I had with her before she died. My pops beat my ass for disrespecting his wife. You think you a man now? That you can raise up on your mother like that? Be a man and fight me then.
So he showed me I wasn't a man at all that night.
"She loved you. Don't ever think she didn't."
I knew she did, but often it never felt like she did. She and my pops were the opposite, with love. My mom had a heavy hand on me while most of the time my pop's had a cool and steady hand. But I guess she didn't want her black son to be another statistic in white America.
My pops fell asleep watching ESPN. I say a prayer to him before I leave. I stopped by my barber to get my haircut to look nice to Yemaya. She sent me the addy of where the poetry slam would be and what time it'd start.
"Yeah, a dude got pregnant shit crazy. Cases like that are rare. It's only three cases in Asia so far. And there's an article calling it the alpha and omega effect or some shit." Mark said. He's a barber at the shop and he's always been into some weird shit.
"Shit is crazy. Like, how does a male even give birth? Like how?" Anthony asked, confused. He's a braider here.
"Through C-section," Mark said. "That's basically the only way. But anyway, if you're born with this omega-type gene, then you're a carrier, and those with the alpha gene are the only ones who can impregnate males with the omega gene."
"Lucky none of us niggas are into men," Charlie said with a laugh as he worked on my fade.
Wasn't like I was into barbershop talk. I don't share my business with them. They gossip more than the ladies at the salon I would go to with my mom when she used to get her press and curl.
