Good Girlz in the Hood : The Chronicles of Ciara

Chapter 54 - The Best Decision

Chapter 54

I was sat on my bed at home, dressed in a black blazer and navy blue dress. It was the morning of my mother's funeral, and I was waiting for Anton to come and pick me up and take me to her and Raphael's house. 

His oldest son was letting us use the house for the wake, but he said after that he wanted all of us (except his sister obviously) and our stuff out of the stuff. He blamed our mum for the death of his stupid father, but to be honest I couldn't give a flying fuck. She was already dead, there wasn't much that could be done.

During the week I had gone with my dad to collect the last few bits I had left in that house, and was finally going to be moving into my permanent home the next day. I heard a car beeping outside, and stood up. It was time to go. I picked up my bag off of the floor and walked out of my room, looking the door behind me. I walked down the stairs, and out of the house. Anton and Elysia were sat in his car waiting for me to get in. I slowly walked over to the car and got in.

"you okay?" Elysia asked as I closed the door and Anton started the engine again.  

"Yeah, I'm just tired." I said, resting my head on the window as we drove towards the house to meet the rest of the family.

We pulled up at the end of the driveway, which had no more room on it so we had to park on the road and walk up to the house, this felt so weird; when you're young, you don't expect that your mother will never meet your children, and never know what became of you. I was only 18 and my mum was already dead, whereas some people in their 60's still had theirs in their life. It wasn't really fair

What felt even weirder was being back in the house after so long, it seemed like an alien environment to my eyes. I sat at the kitchen table in silence, watching everyone milling around sorting everything out. According to Anton, Byron had planned most of the funeral and had consulted the rest of them at the last minute. He hadn't contacted me to ask for my input...

I felt my phone vibrating in my bag, and took it out to see the name 'Dickhead' flashing on its screen. I pressed the reject button and turned all the alerts off so I wouldn't be disturbed again

"Ciara, we're getting in the cars. Come on." I turned around and saw my mum's baby sister, aunty Angela standing there, she was about 7 months pregnant but looked like she was ready to pop.

"and I wanna sit down and talk with you when we get back from the church," she said, as if she was gonna tell me off.

I stood up and took the hand she was holding out to me, and followed behind her out of the house and onto the driveway. The hearse carrying her body was just sitting there; I felt sick looking at it, seeing all the wreaths saying "Mum" "Daughter" and "Christina". I wanted to throw u. She pulled my hand, leading me over to one of the waiting cars.

As we sat in the car, my aunt held my hand tight, but it seemed like it was more for her benefit than mine. It was an odd feeling; we were driving behind a car that was carrying the body of my mother, ready to be buried or whatever Byron had decided.

We arrived at the church about 20 minutes later and filed in silently as the pallbearers carried the coffin in., taking our seats in the pews closest to the front of the room as the coffin was put down.

The pastor began saying a short prayer which was followed by each of my brothers reading their eulogy (Byron hadn't even asked me to write one), then my granddad read out a poem. The funeral ended with a few more prayers, before the coffin was moved out of the room into the crematorium. I sat in my seat, staring at the coffin as it moved behind the red velvet curtains. She was really gone...