Psalms 42 || Tori Kelly

God Pt.1

continued

Abiah sat in the waiting room of the local ER with Jairus beside her and Sampson in her lap. She watched her youngest brother move around her lap, getting up, rolling around, playing with anything his fingers touched. Jairus on the other hand couldn't keep his leg still. Abiah couldn't tell if it was anxiety or habit, but it was annoying. "Jai! Please!" She bit, throwing her hand over his leg to stop him.

The seven year old, jumped at the boom of his sister voice and stared at her. "Are you really having a baby? Like Nona said?" He asked, as his sister removed her hand. The fourteen-year-old sat quietly for a second, knowing she couldn't lie to him.

"Yeah, Jai. I am," she softly replied. Jairus scrunched up his confused face, and pulled up his jacket.

"Why? You aren't married. I thought you can only have a baby when you are married. Are you married?" Jairus asked. Abiah shook her head and leaned back against the seat, getting a tighter grip on her baby brother.

"No, Jai I'm not married..." she trailed off. "I'm not exactly sure why I'm having a baby, but some times things happen and— uh well, God allows you to experience things that help you grow," she tried to explain with out scaring him. "So, I went through something and now God is giving me a baby to help me grow and mature from the past," she said. Jairus lightened up a bit, but still carried his head to the side.

"Do you know how babies are made? Because my friend, Colby, told me and it's gross! Did you do that?" Jairus asked. Abiah shoved the memory down and simply nodded, thinking about the night at the party with Malik.

"Yeah, buddy," she replied. The seven-year-old gasped, having so many more questions, that Abiah didn't want, but was going to answer to pass the time.

—

In the back, Irie laid in her hospital bed, knocked out from the drugs. "You have some nerve! Are you crazy?" Tori scolded, pacing back and forth. André hung his head in shame. "You are something else, you know that? Where is your compassion? She's twenty-one! She's going to make mistakes!" Tori fought, leaning against her daughters bed.

"She can't afford to make these mistakes. Spending all night with her boyfriend doing God knows what!" André yelled back. Tori scoffed. 

"Irie is a good kid. We have no reason not to trust her," Tori lied. She had a good reason not to, but as far as André knew, they didn't. Or so she thought.

"A good kid? Trust her? Irie lied to us about having sex! I tracked her phone a couple of months back and she was at a sketchy house for almost an hour. We know what being high or drunk looks like from Abiah and she was neither, so what else?"

"You tracked our daughter's phone?" Tori fumed, ignoring the rest, since she already knew.

"You don't? I track Abiah all the time. I need to know where she's going, especially now," André said. Tori shook her head, folding her arms.

"It makes sense," she pieced together.

"What makes sense?" André asked, still in the dark.

"All this time I thought, it was me. But it was you. Abiah doesn't trust you. And I can see why. So, she figures that since you don't trust her, why should she do anything that would make you trust her. I would honestly do the same," Tori concluded. André got ready to fight back, but had no words. "We need to fix this. We have a baby and a grandbaby on the way. You saw what happened last time a grandmother and her daughter didn't get along," Tori said, glancing to her sweet baby girl in the hospital bed.

As much as André wanted to continue to helicopter parent, Tori was right. He had to lay off and give Abiah space to be trusted. After all, she was caring a child and needed to be more responsible.