Page 42 of Truce Of The Matter

“Where’s Daddy?” I ask as soon as I enter the house. His car isn’t parked in the driveway.

“He got up and went to morning prayer service. He was up before me,” Daija says.

“Did he eat?” I ask.

“Yeah. He was eating toast and drinking his black coffee when I came downstairs. He even ate some of Porsh’s paella last night. The bowl was in the sink when I got back home,” she says excitedly.

“Oh good,” I say, expressing her same sentiment. Concern about him eating and doing anything normal has plagued me for days and I wondered if he would ever even get out of the house.

“I know, right? Daddy just wasn’t the same and I was scared to go back to school and leave him here all alone. Now I don’t feel so bad about going back.”

“While I would love for you to transfer to CFU and stay here for selfish reasons, I know you have to go back. I’ll take care of him; let me do all the worrying. That’s my job. Are you hungry? I am. I can cook something real quick before we start,” I say, stalling. I really need to talk to her this morning but I’mstruggling to find the words. Cooking for her will give me time to put my thoughts together.

“I already started but I can eat. Your salmon croquettes and grits?” she asks with pleading eyes. They are her favorite and she’s the reason we added that combo to the menu. She loves the croquettes with creamy, cheesy grits and can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “I haven’t had that in forever.”

“I got you,” I say and she smiles.

“Let me get this box I was going through and I’ll meet you in the kitchen. I need to at least watch you this time and try to learn a little. Not one place in Atlanta can make the croquettes, or hell, the grits even like you.”

“Get the box; I’ll be in the kitchen.”

She heads to the stairs and I remove my boots and leave them by the door. I journey into the kitchen and wash my hands at the sink. After raiding the pantry, cabinets, and fridge for ingredients, I grab a pot, the griddle, and a mixing bowl. Daija returns with a big ass pastel letter box and sits at the kitchen dinette.

“She has three of these boxes. I went through the first one and it was pictures. We can go through them and figure something out. Maybe we can create a digital album or something. I don’t know. It’s a lot of good memories.”

“I like a digital album. We can definitely do that.”

She lifts the lid off the box then looks up at me. “Then I can take the pictures we choose back with me. Malaia’s boyfriend is an IT major,” she says, referring to her roommate. She glances in the box. “I thought these were pictures too. It looks like it’s just papers. Maybe I should save this for Daddy,” she says as she flips through it.

“I thought you were saving it for him,” I quip as I pull the skin off this large salmon filet.

“I can organize it for him.”

She continues going through the box. Watching me cook this food is the last thing on her mind. I smile at the thought as I turn on the griddle. As it gets hot, I continue to prep the salmon then season it. Once it’s ready, I place it on the griddle then start my grits. As the grits boil and salmon cooks, I chop a small red onion and a green bell pepper. I glance over at Daija. There’s a small stack of papers and envelopes on the table and she’s holding a piece of paper in her hand, staring at it intently. She’s so focused that she looks stilled, frozen.

“What’s that?” I ask but she doesn’t respond, move, or even blink. I wait a few seconds then call out to her. “Daija?”

When she still doesn’t answer, I place the knife on the cutting board then turn and wash my hands at the sink. The moment I turn around, I see tears falling down Daija’s face so I rush over to her. Right before I reach her, she mumbles in a low, stern voice.

“Don’t you touch me.” It isn’t her exact words but the anger and disappointment crowding them that causes my feet to stop. I’ve never heard such mixed, heavy emotions in her tone before. Almost immediately, I freeze, similarly to the way she was before she spoke those bone-chilling words. She swipes her hands across her tear-stained cheeks roughly then glares at me. “Is it true?” she grits. She shakes her head angrily, then flicks the paper toward me so fast I don’t have time to dodge or block it. It lands on my stomach before hitting the ground. “Is it?” she demands louder.

I glance down, and when I see what she was holding, my heart stops the same way my feet did.God! This is not how I wanted her to find out!

“Pick it up and tell me the fucking truth, Truce!”

Her anger and disappointment are still evident in her tone but her hurt overshadows them both. More tears fall but she doesn’t wipe these away. They pour out like a waterfall and my stopped heart begins to shatter. My entire body quivers and Ifeel a strong force of indescribable emotions pulsate through me. As my breath becomes labored, I can feel my voice starting to retreat down my throat. I use all of my fleeting strength to try and gather air for my lungs and my voice for my mouth.

My efforts seem futile when all I manage to say breathlessly is, “Let me explain.”

“Explain,” she huffs then gets up. She steps to the paper, picks it up, then shoves it in my face. I’m not only caught off guard but I’m baffled. I didn’t even know this document even existed. “It’s simple,” she screams. “Are you my mother? Yes or fucking no!” she demands with a cracking voice. She’s breaking down and I’m crumbling too.

This is not how I wanted this to go at all.

My guilt, shame, heartache, or pain doesn’t mean a thing at this moment though. She is the only person who matters;she’s the only one who has.The love I have for her consumes and strangles me sometimes and not being able to tell her I am her mother and not her sister has been the second hardest thing I’ve done. The first was giving her to my mom and dad. A big piece of me died that day and I’ve never been able to resuscitate that part of me. I was fourteen, a child myself, and I didn’t have a choice. None at all. My plan was to come clean today and finally tell my child, my baby, the truth. This is not the sequence of events I pictured or wanted but we are here. Finally, here. So I take a deep breath, once again pushing all my emotions aside, and answer her with the truth that the church, my family image, and my mother made me conceal from her.

“Daija,” I utter.

“Yes or fucking no!”

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