Brooklyn Chronicles: Save our Sons and Daughters

Chapter Five

“He’s not coming back, I saw the look in his eyes.” Zipporah sat at the kitchen counters. She had lost all appetite to eat food, she hadn’t eaten in days and her body was becoming weak. She couldn’t eat knowing her brother was out there hungry.

When the doorbell rang, Zipporah was fast to run to the door and open it. The first thing she noticed on her brother’s face was the red marked scar underneath his eye from her scratch. She threw her arms over his shoulders and hugged him. He kissed her forehead and apologised for his actions.

“Please come back home where you belong.” He held her hand looking down at her hoping she would have changed her mind, she hadn’t. “The streets aren’t our home Izzy. I’m scared of sleeping by gutters, hostels, in boxes and moving around every night.” She cried refusing. He took a deep breath.

He looked behind his sister, Malaika was standing there. “Can I talk to you in private please?” He asked her politely. She nodded leading the way to the kitchen, he closed the door making sure his little sister wouldn’t hear him.

One thing was clear, his sister had already become attached to this woman and he knew his little sister was longing for a mother’s love for someone who had grown up without a mother.

He had tried to give her that love but it wasn’t enough and sometimes he wished his late mother and father were here for them.

“Look that girl means the world to me, she’s my life and the only reason I’m this calm right now.” He made it clear, Malaika listen to him carefully.

“I don’t know what you’ve said to her or what you’ve done to her because she won’t listen to me and she’s refusing to go back with me.”

Malaika spoke up, “Izrahiah, can’t you see she’s afraid of losing you?”

He swallowed hard, “She’s all I’ve got left.”

Malaika spoke to Izrahiah and he began to open up to her realising the woman didn’t mean to cause any harm or problems. As far as he knew, she was a Youth support worker at a centre in Brooklyn and she had moved to Brooklyn from North Carolina. They spoke for a while and came to an agreement.

Izrahiah had considered Malaika’s offer of accommodating his family for free in her home as long they enrolled back into full-time education. But convincing the rest of his family, especially Tank wouldn’t be as simple as Malaika made it sound. 

During those two weeks he hadn’t come back and during that time Zipporah had become closely attached to Malaika. Malaika could notice the motherly love the young girl had been longing for and she had also become attached to the young girl.

For those two weeks Malaika had learned a lot about 12 year-old Zipporah. She had been raised by brother and father after mother had passed away. When her father became sick, her brother had to look after them a lot and that’s how he had started getting involved in the streets to make fast money to pay for the medical bills.  As time went on, he wasn’t getting any better and after he passed away, the two siblings were left without any family but the streets and on those streets they met the rest of the family.

In those two weeks, Zipporah had been helping Malaika choose colours and things to decorate the spare bedrooms in her home for her family who she had hoped to come back and live with her.

She stood in the basement that was once dark, cold and damp had been transformed with brick red painted brick walls, the floor had been repaired and painted and it had been redecorated with a table tennis table, brown sofas and set up video games with a large plasma.

 But her family she had been expecting didn’t turn up.