I Know You Can't Speak

Part 2:

Part 2:
I Know You Can't Speak #IKYCS

"Come on Faith slide down to mommy! I said laughing as she sat at the top of the slide in the playground. It was a nice spring day and I had the day off from work so I decided to take her to have some fun. We played on the slide and I held her on the monkey bars to make her think she was swinging from each one. Once the swings cleared, I put her in one and started swinging her as I watched her kick her little feet and laugh. "Mommy" she kept chanting and I loved her little voice calling me that. The swing came back to me and I pushed her back once more but this time she didn't come back to me. I looked up in the sky and saw her floating as I reached out to her.

"Faith come back to me!" I said over and over and then.. I woke up. I opened my eyes and looked side to side as reality set in. I had been dreaming and Faith was not next to me. We were not at a playground. It had been two weeks since she had been taken away from me and I was still having dreams.. well nightmares about her. I missed her so much and every day that I thought got easier actually got harder. I laid in bed, closing my eyes and then quickly re opening them because Faith's face kept popping up. Her brown skin, curly hair and pretty poppy eyes with long eyelashes and her tiny pink lips. Her laugh rang in my brain. I got out of bed as I began to attempt to clean up. Something I hadn't done in weeks. I was looking around the apartment coming across a bunch of Faith toys and clothes and Mikes belongings. I realized that I couldn't stay there one more day. The place held too many good memories but also one that would never be forgotten. My phone rang snapping me out of my thoughts as I found it under the pile of clothes on my bed and answered.

"Hello" I answered dryly.

"Hey. Are you all ready for tomorrow?" Faith's dad Lawrence asked me. Faith's funeral was the next day and I was nowhere near ready.

"No, I'm not ready at all" I told him honestly. Because I wasn't. I wasn't mentally or emotionally ready to bury my child. I wasn't ready to see her laying in a casket one last time and I wasn't ready to watch her be lowered 6 feet under the ground. I wasn't physically ready either because my appearance was horrible.

"Me either, I'm about to go to the barbershop and then I'm on my way to you" he told me before hanging up. Although me and Lawrence hadn't been on the best of terms when Faith was alive, we had saw each other a lot in the last two weeks making funeral arrangements for Faith and taking care of business. We had been together for 3 years prior to Faith being born and in those three years he lied about everything. I mean if he said it was raining, I would have to go to the window and see for myself before I believed him. When I left him for good and got with Mike a year later, he hated it. We argued and he called me all kinds of names. Telling me he didn't want no other nigga around his daughter and if I was going to have another nigga around her then he didn't want anything to do with me. That me turned into her as well because he started slacking. Now we both regretted everything. Wishing things would have went differently and she was still here with us. Since her passing though, we had gotten way closer and he had been a big support system in the whole funeral process. Not thinking long term, I didn't have insurance for her and was left to pay for everything out of pocket. I barely had enough money to get by, let alone pay for a funeral. Kiyah helped me set up a go fund me and surprisingly raised all the money and then some to put my baby away the right way. Kiyah had also been a big help with getting it our story to the public. Our story went crazy in the media and everyone was trying to get interviews but I just wasn't in the right space to be answering questions.

About an hour later, Lawrence called me telling me he was outside. He came in with food as if he knew I hadn't eaten in days.

"You need to clean up. I don't even know how you can be in here with this nigga stuff still here" Lawrence said as he looked at a hoodie that belonged to Mike that was thrown over the back of the couch. "I don't even know how you can still stay here" he told me. "We gonna find a new apartment for you to stay in" he told me as if he had read my mind.

Nibbling on the breakfast sandwich he had gotten for me to eat before putting it down, I looked at him realizing how much Faith resembled him. We all had the same skin color but she had all his facial features  and his texture of hair. The day she was born, she came out looking just like him and that was because he drove me crazy my entire pregnancy. Lawrence went in the living room and cut the tv on cut the tv on and the news was just coming on. They were in the middle of talking about Faith.

"Police have apprehended the suspect" they said as they flashed a picture of Mike on the screen. "Baby Faith's funeral is tomorrow and we will be covering. If you want to pay respects, here is the information" they said as they flashed the funeral information on the screen along with a picture of Faith. Not being able to hear or watch anymore I cut the tv off.

"Lawrence I just can't believe she's not here..."
I said as I looked at him with tears in my eyes.

"Me either" he said before standing up and walking over to me. Tears fell down my face as I stood up and he embraced me with a hug. "It's cool, he's gonna get everything he deserves" he told me. "Go get in the shower and get your day started. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow" he told me.

"I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight" I told him and he looked at me, hesitating before speaking.

"You want me to stay here tonight? I can ride in the funeral car from here" he suggested and I nodded my head yeah. We parted ways and I went to go find something to wear, get my hair and nails done. Almost everywhere I went, ppl were sending me condolences because I had gotten a T-shirt made with Faith's picture on it that's said "Mommy's Angel is watching over me". Some ppl turned their face up at me too. I'm assuming because they thought I was the cause & I knew what was going on and could have stopped it from happening. But I really didn't. I didn't care what people thought either.

Lawrence came back when I got home and as we laid in bed that night, neither one of us said a word. There was an awkward silence so I broke it, reading his mind.

"Lawrence, I really didn't know what he was doing to her" I told him with my back facing him as tears began to fall on my pillow.

"How could you not know?" He asked me as he turned to face me.

"How could I know? She couldn't talk to me Lawrence!" I said defending myself.

"The signs Jas, you had to pay attention to the signs" he said as tears rolled down his face. "If you wouldn't have had a nigga around her like I first stated, we wouldn't even be in this mess!" He snapped at me. It was like a switch had flipped and just like that he was blaming me.

"If you would've been a father then maybe this wouldn't have happened!" I snapped back at him. We both turned our backs to one another realizing that we had to stop playing the blame game because the truth of the matter was, no matter how much we blamed one another, Faith was gone and she was never coming back.