Godspeed

Chapter Two

When Marley Mason was eleven years old, his mother was arrested for drug possession. Unlike many at Marley's age, he knew exactly what that meant. Long court days, a divorce, a therapist perhaps, and worst of all, the end of his childhood. But to his surprise, he was wrong. In reality, things were much, much worse. The day his mother took the stand in court she pleaded mental illness and, well, in her defence, she wasn't lying.

Cynthia Mason had always been determined to lose her feeble grip on reality, if her three overdoses were any indication. But there was nothing Tafari nor Marley could do or say that would stop that. She had been that way for most of Marley's childhood and the few memories he had of her sober were blurred and choppy like a scratched CD. Sometimes, Marley likes to think that her arrest was a blessing in disguise. She had never confessed that she had a problem until that day when she stared into the hard eyes of the judge and her bravado came crumbling down. Finally, she could get the help she deserved. The only problem was that when Cynthia Mason went away, she never came back. Marley had written her but she never returned any of his letters. Not once.

By the time Marley Mason was twelve years old, his dad got the both of them their green cards and they hopped on the first flight out of Jamaica. Marley knew exactly what that meant, too. Foreign accents, big stores and smooth roads. A part of him wanted to be excited for it; maybe the change would be good for him after all. But the second he landed, Marley realized something undeniably horrific. He could no longer speak.

"Marley!"

Marley snatched off his headphones off and snapped around to see his father standing in the doorway, angrily folding his arms. "One day, I going bruk that ting yuh see," Tafari's nose flared, "Guh get ready."

"Why?" Marley asked aloud. "I want to walk alone today."

The thing was, Marley Mason could speak; just not in front of anyone who was not Tafari Mason. At first, the realization had upset his father to no end. Marley didn't speak to his teachers, bus drivers, even customer care over the phone. But both of them knew it was a result of the trauma they had to go through. It's just that neither of them had expected it to last this long.

"No, you're coming with me today. We have to work longer hours this summer and I can't afford Christina and Jimmy to come earlier so, it's me and you. We a run tings. Get ready."

Huffing, Marley sat up straight in his twin-sized bed. He had a playlist for times like this, he knew. For times where he felt like his life was pulling him along by the roots of his locs but he was ultimately going nowhere. For times when everyone else his age seemed able to do the things he could only dream of, like talking and kissing. For the times when he just wanted to escape. That playlist sounded like slow beats and deep notes that carried his mind far, far away until he forgot where he was.

Inside his small bedroom, in a small house, in a small neighbourhood tucked somewhere where people only expected small things to come from. Marley adjusted his headphones on his head and started the first track.

*

The summers were only getting hotter and hotter in Miami. In fact, Marley swore this heat was worse than Jamaica's, which was saying a lot. Jamaica might have been hot all year round but it never felt like this. Even where he was now, standing outside the double doors of Jah-Jah' Jamaican Jerk Foods as Tafari Mason pulled its locks, he expected their relative distance from the ocean to send some slightly cooled breeze their way. But, that didn't happen. As the sweat formed on Marley's forehead, he quickly tied his locs back into a bun and swiped the wetness from his face with the back of his hand. It was an oven out here.