Page 21 of This Is Law 3
She was holding her yoga mat in her hand, and she stood there with a blank look on her beautiful face. When I made it in front of her, I was much taller, so she had to look up at me, while I looked down at her.
“What’s up pretty girl?” I asked, and that made her give me a miniature smile. Shit, I’ll take that over her mugging me and looking like she wanted to kill my ass like she often does when I come see her.
I knew that my mom had long hair, but it was always up in a ponytail, so I had no idea that it was this long, and thick. They’d straightened it for her, and I could tell from it being even on all sides that they’d even cut her ends for her. Her hair was pushed back, out of her face, and it stopped right at the middle of her back. I looked at her fingernails, seeing that they were painted in a pink color. She had her little self- care day, and I loved that for her.
“Hi,” was all she said to me.
“Come on. Let’s go sit down and eat. I got us food. You hungry?” I asked her, prepared for her to say no, but she nodded her head, telling me that she was hungry.
I led the way for us, and I took us to our private little cabin. There were a few cabins out here, and I took the one that was right in the middle of the field. Inside the cabin, there were acouple of armchairs, with a small coffee table in the middle. The coffee table is where I sat the food, and the drinks.
I took the yoga mat out of her hands, and before we took our seats, I pulled her into me for a hug. I knew that there were times when she would fuss about physical touch, but she didn’t do that today. She was so short compared to me, so her head rested on my chest as I held her. She wrapped her arms around me as well. I kissed the top of her head multiple times, just soaking in this moment because I really didn’t know the next time that she would allow me to hold onto her for this long.
I gave it about five more seconds, and then I let her go. She sat down in one of the chairs, and I followed suit, doing the same.
I went inside the bag, pulling out the burger, and fries that belonged to her. I grabbed a few napkins, placed them on the table, and that’s where I put her food, so that she could go ahead, and start eating. I knew she liked a lot of ketchup on her fries, so I pulled a few packets out of the bag, and I sat that down too. Once she sat had everything, that’s when I pulled my food out, sat it in front of me, and I dug in.
“Where are the boys?” she asked me, right after I just stuffed a bunch of fries in my mouth. Before answering her question, I chewed the food down first.
“The boys in school. I got some new pictures, and videos of them. You want to see it?” I asked her, and she nodded her head, letting me know that she did.
I quickly picked my phone up from the table, and I unlocked it. Even though my sons were big kids, I was obsessed with them, so I went over to the album that I had of my children, and I scrolled to what was recent. I handed her the phone, showing her a video of the three of us in the gym at the house, down in the basement, and we were getting a workout in. She watched the video, and her eyes danced all around the screen, looking atit in awe. I could see the glare of the video through her pupils, so I saw when the video stopped, but she lifted her hand, and she pressed play, replaying the video again.
She handed the phone back to me, and I swiped through, showing her a picture of them that I’d taken earlier in the week, when we were about to walk out the door, so that I could take them to school. My boys looked very handsome that day, so I stopped them on their way out. When she saw the picture, she smiled, and instead of her passing the phone back to me, she kept it down on the table, keeping it near her, and the picture was still pulled up, so that she could continue looking, along with eating her food.
“Where’s your wife?” she asked a few moments later. With a lot of the mental illnesses that my mom was battling, for the most part, it was fluid these days.
There were days when I would come to visit her, and she would be super sharp, remembering past conversations that we would have, and bringing it up when I revisit her. Then, there were days when her memory wasn’t the best, and she would be a little confused. That’s why whenever I head over here, I have to guess to myself the kind of mood that she was going to be in because she was always unpredictable.
“She’s at work. She said that she’s going to come by one of these days to sit up and talk with you. You remember her name?” I wanted to know. I’ve told her that Soraya and I had divorced, back when it happened, so this was proof that she didn’t always remember everything. I wasn’t going to correct her though. Shit, that was my wife.
“I know Soraya,” that shit made me smile.
“We got two more babies on the way,” I shared with her, digging in my pocket, and I pulled out the ultrasound images that were there. I only wanted to share good news with her on this visit.
On the drive over, I was conflicted on whether I should tell her about the shit with Dutch, but because of the good mood that she was in right now, I didn’t want to drop that load on her and fuck up her day. She stepped out of her shell today, and she allowed the stylist to wash, treat, and style her hair. She even allowed them to paper her with getting her nails and toes done. Participating in yoga was the biggest one of them all because she never wanted to do any of the recreational shit that the facility would offer. I knew that if I dropped this shit on her right now with Dutch, it might fuck with her mental, and put her in a bad place, and that’s not what I was trying to do.
“It’s two babies in there!” you could hear the excitement in her voice, as she held the picture in her hand. I laughed at her reaction. Seeing my mama happy damn near made me want to shed tears because she spent a lot of her days mostly angry, or sad.
“Yeah. Two babies, ma. I’m hoping it’s two girls,” I commented.
“You going to bring them to see me when they get here?” she asked.
“Of course, I am. My kids will always know who their grandmother is. I’m not embarrassed of you. Never have and never will be. Despite all the shit that we’ve been dealt, nothing will ever change the fact that your my mom, and your my kids grandmother. They going to know everything about you. Your face, your love, your voice, everything that I can teach them about you, I’m going to do that, alright?” I asked her, and she gave me a small smile, and she nodded her head.
We continued eating our food. I finished long before she did. Even when she did finish her food, she didn’t eat everything. She still had more than half her fries left over, and she’d only taken a few small pieces out of her burger. The appetite that my mom had was barely existent, and that played it’s part in why she wasso tiny. I’ll take her eating some of the food, versus her not eating any of it at all.
She claimed that she was full, and didn’t want any more of it, so I went ahead, and put everything in the bag, and I would throw it out when I left. She was holding her drink in her hands, which held fruit punch in it, and while she was doing that, I sat across from her, staring at her.
“You look so pretty today, ma. I like your hair like that,” I complimented her. She was eating the compliments up, as she sat there smiling.
“Let me get some pictures of you. I gotta show Yaya, and the boys that you got your hair done,” I said, sounding like her biggest fan, as I stood up with my phone in my hands.
I went over to the camera, and she smiled for me to take her pictures.
“Let me see the nails too, ma. Your nails look so pretty,” I hyped her up, taking a video of her nails.
Once I had done that, I reached my hand out, pulled her up, so that I could hug her. Just like I did with our first hug, I squeezed her but not doing it too tight because her small body was so fragile. Holding onto her and still hearing the words from captain Roy echoing in my head and just knowing the pain that she’s been through in life, that shit had me dropping a tear.
