This is Siani's story about her triplets who passed away before adulthood. Just so there is no confusion, this chapter is mostly her speaking and when Quan speaks, I let it be known. Enjoy!
"Sit." I folded my legs underneath my body and patted the empty space on the bed in front of me.
"What's the matter?"
"I suffer from anxiety and PTSD. It started a little after I saw my youngest triplet Tiani get killed in the shooting when we were ten. It was supposed to be me too but I stayed on the porch while she went to get us some snacks from the store on the corner. On her way back to our grandma house, the bloods and crips began shooting at each other, I dropped down on the porch and lay still under the bench I was sitting in until it stopped. When I got up I saw her laying on the ground. Her body was shaking so violently from the blood she was losing. I went to her and tried talking to her to keep her up but it was too late."
"Grandma came running out with Gianni and that is what they saw. By the time the ambulance came she was dead but I had been holding her the entire time, I was afraid to let her go and there was so much of her blood on me that they made me go to the hospital to make sure I wasn't hit."
Quan went to speak but I stopped him. I needed no interruptions or he wouldn't be able to know everything.
"I went mute after that. I wouldn't talk to anyone except Gianni and uncle K. They knew everything and every emotion that I was feeling. Uncle K used our time together to teach me boxing to relase anger. I probably didn't really start talking until I was about fifteen. But my mom kept me inside the house after Tiani's death because I wasn't talking, she probably thought I was crazy. I wasn't. I was traumatized. If that didn't help, I saw Gianni get killed a few weeks after our sixteenth birthdays. We had this big birthday bash, how they did on the super sweet sixteen show."
I paused to catch my breath.
--
"Gianni and I went to separate high schools but he would always come pick me up. He was at the same school as you while I was at CAPA. Well he came to get me, we caught the bus home and when we got to our block this one kid, Rick was his name he would always bother us. This day Gi, got tired and they ended up fighting. Gi told me to go home before the fight but I wasn't leaving him. He was handling his own and then Rick's friends tried to jump my brother but I wasn't having it so I jumped in and started fighting the guy. Everything that my uncle taught me in his boxing gym I used and literally had the boy on the ground sleeping. Then everyone began running only me and Gi, were left. While I was fighting the guy, Rick was stabbing my brother up. Fifteen stab wounds and like I did with Ti, I tried to stop the blood from leaving his body. He died at the hospital after they had patched him up and the blood transfusion failed causing his body to go into shock."
"I was blaming myself for his death because had I not jumped in then I would have seen when Rick pulled the knife out. I could've saved him if I wasn't on go then." I didn't even realize that I was crying until Quan reached up and wiped my face with a tissue.
"I'm sorry that you had to go through this. I really am." He whispered as he held me close to his body.
"That's not all." I sighed. "When Rick got out, I talked to Jamar about it. I told him how I wanted to hurt Rick's family the way that mine hurt. Jamar trained me on how to use a gun."
I paused and laughed. "I can break them down and put them back together with my eyes closed. He showed me how to kill someone with just my hands. It was a life that I wasn't about but he damn near taught me all that he knew. So in the end of all of this, I killed Rick. I beat him so bad with a metal bat, his blood was all over me. I only shot him to make sure he was dead. Doing that traumatized me and I started having nightmares and thought people were following me or that the cops knew what I had done."
