Raymond 'Rooster' Jones is a 21 year old man who didn't come from money and is from the other side of the tracks. Raised by his aunt and uncle. Rooster who should be enjoying life as any 21 year old kid should be doing. But Rooster's life is not abo...
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JADA
In my car driving by myself just thinking about what's been going on since I moved in with Lisa. A lot is different now like with Tami, Tami she doesn't really hang with us anymore. She said she couldn't with me and knows that I did what I did. I know what she's talking about and I don't blame her.
I can't even look at myself in the mirror to be honest but Lisa and them are telling me to live my life that I'm too young to be mother and I believed them at first but they don't know that at night I cry most nights I cry myself to sleep. It's been months since I saw Rooster, Rima and Rayna and I feel so empty without them. After I moved out of my house to go live with Rooster.
I had come back to my dad's house after I had Rima just to get some paper work I needed for school and went to my dad's office and what I found there shocked me, shocked me to the core... As a mother myself, there was part of me that didn't want to know how a mother could walk away from her children. It was unimaginable and yet I carried the thought like a thorn caught beneath my skin. What if there was a "leaving gene" that had been passed on to me? What if it lay dormant in mothers like me?
I thought a lot about my mother and all the moments she missed. Sometimes I felt resentful. Other times I felt consumed by sadness. I had spent so much of my childhood longing for her presence but she wasn't there. I looked for her when I got older. But my dad didn't wanna tell me anything. He told me she ran off with some guy and that's all he knew.
What I found, was something I never expected to find. Stuffed in the back of his desk draw was a manila envelope. As I opened it and saw letters, I pulled out the first one and looking at the name on it, I remember feeling as if I might lose my balance. The room tilted. I sat down on the floor. Why had my dad kept these letters that was sent to me in the back of his desk? What had he been hiding? Cautiously, I pulled out more and more, enough to see layers of folded-up letters.
I spent the next several days in and out of his office reading my mom's letters in privacy. I vacillated between wanting to read the letters and wishing I had never found them. My mother had never been able to articulate her regret and sorrow over the years. In her letters, she didn't hold back:
"I have and will ever mourn the loss of my babies. Some say I "spared" myself the responsibilities of raising you—none will know the agonies of missing you. I still cry, but I know now I did what I had to do, and the guilt must be continually held at bay, because it is worthless."
And—"Dear Jad, May it never be too painful for you to look inside and share all that you find within. There is so much beauty in you that it would be selfish to lock it away. And beauty includes any pain or anger—all things must have balance."
Here was my mother, her authentic voice like a long ago recording telling me fragments of her story in the letters I never got, my dad kept them from me. The letters were like quilt squares and I was determined to find the pattern and sew them back together. Almost none of them had dates written on them so I had to piece together the timeline - separating them on the floor into rows of 'Before' (she left) and after. I didn't find the "Ahha" moment of understanding her reasons for leaving but the letters provided a comfort that I had not been able to find elsewhere. I could love and appreciate my mom for the incredible woman she was —as opposed to the mother figure I hoped she would be.
