Page 31 of Nostalgia
I pulled my lip between my teeth. “And why the hell not?”
“Why the hell would you? They’re scary.” Maze replied for him.
I rolled my eyes. “I needed someone to protect me from all of you heathens. Looks like I chose right.”
I closed my eyes as I prepared for the worst. I was about to walk out into the humidity to confront my father. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I didn’t know if I was going to survive it but I knew I needed toheal.That’s the only thing that kept me going to the back door. But when I opened the door the plate I had been holding slid from my hands. I couldn’t hear the way it shattered against the tile. All I could hear was the blood rushing into my ears.
There she stood. My mother’s ghost.
“Momma?” My voice came out choked. I couldn’t breathe. Her hair was longer and all gray now. There were laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. She was a lot smaller than I remembered. I shook my head and took a step back. This couldn’t be real.
“Aiyanna,” her voice was a whisper and a cry. We rushed to each other at the same time and I fell into her arms like I had done so many times as a child. Before I knew it, I was sobbing again. I didn’t know how my body produced so many tears. My breathing came out rough and ragged as I tried to drag air into my lungs. Her small arms wrapped around me in an embrace I had dreamed of for the last decade.
“How?” I wailed.
She ran her hands down the back of my head. “Where have you been?”
I looked over my shoulder and saw that Kia’s emotional barrier was down. He knew what I had been through. I had thrown it in his face. How could I do that to my momma? How could I tell her everything I had gone through for nothing?
“I saw you die,” I managed to choke out.
She kissed my temple. “I didn’t die that night, sweet angel.”
I shook my head against her neck. “You did. I saw you.”
“I almost did but I am here and so are you.” She grabbed my face between her palms and looked into my face. “I thought you were dead, too. All of these years.”
I couldn’t believe this was real.
Someone had cleaned up the mess I had made with my plate and my food. I didn’t let go of my mother, even when I got my purse and pulled the picture out. She looked at the designer’s name on the side of my Neverfull and smirked. “You have done well for yourself, Aiyanna.”
I held the picture out to her instead of replying. I was sandwiched between Vivian and Jack. My big eyes looked at the camera with dead eyes. There was a smile on my lips but you could see on my face that was still suffering. It was one of the first pictures I took with them. I was fifteen and a mess. The reason the picture was my favorite wasn’t because of myself. It was because of the two people that obviously loved me. Their light skin was the perfect contrast to my dark and when we went out in public together we always got stares.
My mother’s eyes looked at the picture with longing and regret. “You were so quick that night. You were gone before the ambulance even showed up. I don’t remember that, but I remember after. These people took care of you?”
I nodded and my throat closed with emotion. How did I explain it all? How could I sum up the last ten years in such a short amount of time? “They loved me. They left me everything. They would have died for me.”
As the words left my mouth I took my time to look around. The sun had gone down and the twins were inside. Their little faces were pressed against the glass at the back door and Kia was trying to persuade them to leave us alone. Their big hazel eyes didn’t leave my face. In their hands were the Barbies I had left just a few days before. A new emotion took over my chest, one I wasn’t used to.
“You left him, right?” Her answer was important. I needed to know.
Momma shook her head. A few gray strands escaped her low ponytail. “No, I didn’t.”
My eyes immediately searched her visible skin for marks. There weren’t any. “Why?”
“When I woke up and you were gone, I knew there was something different about him. You changed him.”
My words came out bitter. “Then you are stupid for staying.”
She reacted as if I slapped her. “He never laid a hand on me again.”
“You should have been the reason he changed, not me. He saw you dying on the floor and it wasmethat changed him.”
Kia interrupted me. “I’m sure it was a mixture of both.”
My eyes cut to him and I wished he would have stayed out of it. “I didn’t askyou.”
“I don’t care who you asked. You came here, for what? To meet your nieces or to get closure?” Kia threw his wide arms in the air. “You have it now. Mother is alive.”
