Red Bull

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

I'm watching from the living room and that's where I see Sean and Eva sitting with my mother. Sean is off to the side. He doesn't talk to my mother or try to get close. It's strange to see her back after all this time. It's strange to have her back in the house.

"Mom..." I ask.

She's so busy with the kids that she barely hears me. When she does she turns slowly to us. All four of her kids are standing at the doorway with me. Our Uncle and his children are standing behind the sofa that my mother is sitting on. They are just as confused as everyone else is at the fact that my mother said I sent her.

"Eva, come here," Joshua falls his daughter away from our mother.

His daughter is always well behaved and knows to go when her father comes calling. There is an awkward mood when he takes his daughter away from her grandmother. My mother is left just looking like a balloon with the air let out when it happens. She wasn't going to get that love from Sean. And that was for sure.

"You really think God spoke to you?" I ask.

"Don't look at me like that, my Joy," my mother says, "I came here for a reason. God speaks to us in mysterious ways."

"What'd he say?" Uncle Regis asks.

I'm not even sure where Uncle Regis is coming from and honestly its Joshua who has a problem with all this.

"Are you all fucking serious?" he doesn't look specifically at me when he asks the question, because he means it for all of us, "This woman comes out of nowhere and..."

"This woman is our mother," I argue.

Joshua isn't having it, "This woman comes out of nowhere after abandoning us and she says she has a message from God."

He has this look of abandonment on his face. I knew the look. I think all of us felt some type of way when he looked at them in that sort of way. Looking at him I could tell that he was really not even interested in having this conversation.

I give my little brother a strong look, "Funny, I remember another family member leaving all of us and making us feel abandoned only to come back with some good news..."

"What good news?" Joshua asks, "I came back and helped rebuild the Marchioness."

"Sounds like good news to me. Sounds like you spoke to God to me," I offer with a shrug, "But who knows?"

I can see the pain on Joshua's face. The look on his face tells me that he is plagued with memories of things that happened in the past that perhaps changed the person who he was now. It's clear that this pain, no matter how shallow I may think it is, really had a deep root inside of him. This is a deep root that he is desperately is holding onto and perhaps I can't blame him.

"You turning on me, now, Joyous?" Joshua asks me.

"Joshua...I get how you may have your guard up," I tell him, "I would too if I were you..."

"But you aren't me, are you!" Joshua rages as he almost gets in my face, "You felt curious, for what? A few weeks at most. I've been gay my whole life and I meant nothing to this woman."

"I can leave if now isn't a good time," my mother states.

"That won't be necessary," Joshua corrects her, "I'm leaving."

"Joshua please," Jamila begs.

She's not the only one. Joshua knows me and he knows that I'm not the type to beg. I'm not the type to just let him get away with things without checking him and I knew that the time was right to check him.