Page 52 of This Is Law 3
“No matter where we end up going to school for college, I’m going to always be my brother’s keeper. We got phones, man. If you start missing me, and if I start missing you, it ain’t nothing to hop on a facetime call real quick. Not even that, but our parents got money. They’ll book a flight for one of us in a second to go, and pull up on the other,” he joked, making light of the situation. As I was laughing, a tear fell, but I was able to play it off, as if my laughs were the reason I started crying.
I didn’t have the kind of brother that would fuck with me for getting emotional, so he didn’t do it.
“We gotta do our thing in college, and after college though, Creed. We gotta make ma and pops proud. They gave us a lifestyle that most kids don’t have. Look around at our backyard, man. We look like we vacationing somewhere on a resort. They had us in private school since kindergarten, and they’ve always poured into us, making sure that we had whatever we needed to be great. I think about the times that pops would be dead ass tired, and he would still come to your baseball games, stillin his work clothes to watch you play. Ma, too. Remember after she had Sarai, she came to your game that next week, bags and shit up under her eyes because she was so tired, dealing with a newborn baby, but nothing in the world was going to have her miss your game. Even with me. I know ma, and pops don’t understand half the geeky shit that I’m into, but they love it, and they support it. Neither one of them misses a beat. We can’t let them give us all these years of love, support, and showing up, and we don’t do our part. We gotta finish out high school strong, and then go off to college, do our thing, and do something with our lives. I want our parents to feel good years from now, knowing that all the sacrifices and shit that they made for us had paid off,” Legend finished, and I couldn’t agree with him more.
“I feel you. We going to make them proud,” I assured him.
“I love you, man,” he let me know.
“I love you too,” and like that, we dropped it.
Twenty minutes later, our pops was calling us over, so that we could eat. Like this was my first time eating in years, I told my mom to put everything on my plate for me. There was baked chicken, yellow rice, mixed vegetables, baked macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and some homemade blueberry cornbread. My grandma had done all the cooking at her house, and she’d come over with the food.
I went through my food so fast, and once I was finished, I ended up fixing another plate. We ate together, played a couple of family games, and now, it was the moment when my mom and dad were both standing up front, right behind the patio table, and there was a medium-shaped cake in front of both of them. The cake was white, but once they cut it, you would see what was inside. My grandma was the only one that knew the gender. She was the one that decorated these beautiful cakes. You could see all the nervousness on my mom’s face as she stood right nextto my dad, who was smiling, jumping up and down, like he was getting ready to run a race.
“We going to count down? How we doing this?” Milan wanted to know, her phone already in her hand, prepared to start recording.
“We going to countdown from ten,” auntie Shai replied.
“Wait… wait… I’m nervous,” my mom released.
My dad reached his hand out, pulled her to him, and he placed kisses all over her face. Seeing my parents back together again, and in love like this, it made me happy. I won’t lie, at times, that shit got on my fuckin nerves when I would walk into a room, and see them hugged up, and trying to shove their tongues down each other’s throat, but I would choose this over them being divorced and living under different roofs.
“Girl, come onnnnn! I’m trying to find out what tee- tee babies are,” auntie Shai was eager. She was a good auntie to us, so I knew that she would only continue with that great role once the new set of twins were here.
“Okay. Let’s starts. 10…9…8…”
“7…6….5…”
“4…3…2…1...”
My mom cut into her cake with her eyes closed, and my dad had his eyes wide open. From where we stood, we could all see the inside of my dad’s cake, and it was pink. I started jumping up, and down, screaming, just like everyone else. My mom glanced over at my dad’s, seeing that his was pink, and she screamed as well, instantly started crying, and that’s what made her finish with her slice, and there it was… a pink interior again, and my mom dropped the knife, put her hands over her mouth, and she sat her ass on the ground, and she cried happy tears that she’d gotten her girls that she wanted.
My dad had to pick her up and carry her because she was so happy to see that she was going to be a girl mom all over again.To know that we lost Sarai so suddenly, only getting four months with her, to now God blessing her with two more girls, that was truly a blessing. I couldn’t even try and thug it out because seeing my mom break down and cry like that, I had tears of my own sliding down my face.
My auntie Shai ran over to me, and Legend, and she hugged both of us, kissing us on our cheeks. Milan and my grandma came over doing the same thing. That’s when Legend and I walked over to our dad, who pulled us both into him, and we went for the crybaby next, which was our mom, who pulled both my brother, and I to her, hugging us.
This moment was so beautiful. Now, I just wanted these next four months to speed by because I couldn’t wait to meet my little sisters. It was going to be their world, and I was just going to be living in it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SORAYA ‘YAYA’ CRAWFORD
Four months later
I was nine months into my pregnancy and scheduled for my c- section in two more weeks. I was literally all belly, just as I had been for the last two pregnancies. Because I was carrying twins, my stomach was huge, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to get these two little girls out of me because they were killing my back and weighing me down.
Whenever I was out in public, I would receive compliment after compliment about how I was carrying so well, and although that was true, I felt like the cute stage was over, and I was now in the stage where I felt like I was fighting for my life.
We had a house full right now because we were hosting a nesting party. I made it clear early on in my pregnancy that I didn’t want anything top of the line. I didn’t want a big, grand gender reveal like how we did with Sarai, and I didn’t want a big baby shower, either. I just wanted small, intimate events that were surrounded by nothing but family, and close friends.
A few months ago, my mom suggested that I at least do a nesting party, and I agreed to it, not seeing the harm in that, and feeling like that would be something that I enjoyed. Of course, my mom was here, my sister, Milan, my boys, and I even invitedsome of my crew from work. Law had a few of his colleagues from work come over, who invited their wives, and he also invited Freddy, and some of the other men that were once cool with his father, and he still kept in touch with. Everyone was somewhere, spread out at our house, doing a job. My job was to just walk around, and micromanage, and that’s exactly what I had been doing all afternoon long.
As I was walking down the stairs, someone was ringing the doorbell. Iwaddled my ass over to the door, looked out into the peephole, just so I could see who was standing on the other side, and when I saw who it was, and who she brought with her, I beamed, quickly turning the knob, opening the door for them.
“Oh, my Goddddd. You listened to me, and your brought the babies. Hiiiiii,” I cooed, looking at the most beautiful little boy, and little girl that I’ve ever seen before in my life.
It was Alecia, Montana, and they brought the kids. Their son, Marcellus stood right in front of Alecia, and I died with baby fever, watching him stand in front of me. He had the most perfect chocolate skin, but then he had hazel-colored eyes like his dad. It was fall, so he stood there in a cream-colored long sleeve top fromRalph Lauren.He wore denim jeans, and a fresh pair of wheat colored timberland boots that looked to be fresh out of the box. His little chain was around his neck, and my God, don’t even get me started on the straight back braids that he had in his hair, that went down his back.
