Dabbling in Danger

Where You Get Those Wings From?

"Why are you being nice to me all of a sudden? I thought you're role was to 'remold' me and make me into some upstanding citizen?"

Adeen's joined me on my side of the house and sits on the sofa with me.

"I don't believe there was a time I wasn't nice to you."

I look at him with bulging eyes, "you call scolding and jacking me up a nice thing to do? On several different occasions..."

"No. I call allowing you to live here rent free, paying for your needs/wants and putting up with your attitude, nice... Besides, I needed to squash the disrespect in the beginning, your sister's told me quite a bit about you."

"Oh I'm sure she got a kick out of painting me as some degenerate whore."

He looks at me sternly, "she's never called you a whore. Why would you say that?"

"Well then what did she say? Nothing good I'm sure!" I pout.

He looks at me with that killer smile of his, sits back on the couch and hikes his foot atop his other leg's knee.

"Well, she told me you danced once upon a time."

I chew on my inner jaw and look down at my lap, "yeah... I used to do ballet."

That's back when momma was still alive. I clear my throat feeling a lump grow as I blink back the tears.

"How was that?" Adeen asks.

I shrug, "I did it for a few years before our mother passed away. Kinda stopped around then."

Sounds so bleak when I mention momma out loud.

Adeen scratches his cheek. "Tiana told me about yall's mother... I'm sorry for your loss."

I shake my head and wave a hand at him, "that was years ago, I appreciate it though."

He nods understandingly, "you liked ballet while it lasted?"

"I liked it enough to get to pointe."

He looks at me trying to read my expression in the setting sunlight, "no shit?"

I laugh, "oh we can curse now?" I tease, then continue on, "I wasn't always running the streets, I was good once."

He jokes, "you're good now, just really hard headed."

Before I can reply he stands up and walks out of the living room and down the long hall.

"Word..."

Now I'm all in my feelings thinking about my mom. She died of heart complications when I was nine and Tiana was fifteen. She'd always had issues with her heart even when she was a little girl, but she was always so strong, or at least she appeared to be.

Then suddenly she wasn't.

I remember it seeming like it all happened at once. One day she couldn't walk me to school, next day she couldn't even get out of bed. Then next thing you know I'm crying in my grandma's lap at her funeral.

A few tears spill from my eyes, I sniffle and wipe them away.

Our father was never in the picture so Tiana and I moved in with our grandparents. That's when Tiana started showing out; partying all of the time, coming home drunk, stealing and yelling at our grandma. I started to notice as I got older how Tiana had changed. One day I talked to my granny about it.

"Granny," Malina says, sitting close on the swinging wooden bench next to her elderly grandmother.

"Yeah, baby," Thelma softly asks, slowly wrapping her arm around Malina.