Page 29 of Girl, We Go Together
“Say less. I’m with you all the way.”
His voice was broken, and so were my thoughts. My brother and I didn’t agree on much, but one thing we did agree on was getting Fresh for Moms. I didn’t think I would be able to live with myself if I didn’t. I used the back of my hand to wipe away the tear that had finally fallen.
Chapter 10
Omari
The church smelled like lilies and old prayer books. People moved like ghosts in black, slowly, carefully, and rehearsed. I sat on the first pew in the front with my shoulders tight. My hands were folded so hard that my knuckles went white. The whole place felt wrong in a way I couldn’t name, like the world had been turned inside out, and I was just left to deal with the pieces.
Mom’s casket was up front. The fixings on the silver casket were classy, just like she was. I kept thinking about how she hated drama and scenes. She would be rolling her eyes if she knew all these people were dressed up and crying over her. She’d tell us to stop the theatrics and pass the plates and the bottle. But none of that mattered now. None of that could fix what had been done.
Orion sat to my left in silence. He didn’t even have to speak because I knew him. I saw all that fury bottled up in his face. He was quieter than I’d ever seen him, and that quiet was worse than any scream. That calm was deadly. OJ sat beside Orion. His light cries echoed in the room. That shit had us all teared up. He was my mother’s only grandchild, and their bond was inseparable. Cayla sat beside him. Her eyes were red and puffyfrom crying. She seemed to be taking Mom's death hard as hell. At first, I thought the bitch was doing too much because she didn’t even know Ma, but later I found out that she was battling her own damn demons because, like us now, she was a motherless child as well. I quickly learned that she was here for my brother. Any other bitch would have run for the hills, but she stayed grounded, and I respected that. My phone vibrating in my suit jacket caused me to take a quick look at the screen.
Lucia
She had been blowing my phone up since the night my moms died. I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her. If I had never fucked with her ass, none of this would have happened. I glanced over at Orion again and saw that he still had the glance of stone. I wondered if deep down he felt how I did. Like this was all my fault. People came up to the casket in a slow line filled with cousins, old neighbors, and folks I only knew from block gossip. Each one of them pressed a hand to the steel like it could bring her back.
The pastor talked about Mom the way church folks do. She had charity and faith and provided food for the community. I listened, but I kept hearing other sounds like the sirens from that night, my family’s screams, and the way the bullet hit her like a thunderclap. That one shot was louder than the rest that had torn through the night.
When they opened the floor for people to speak, I stood before I even thought about it. My legs felt like lead. I walked up to the pew with my palms sweaty against the program in my hand. When I peeped out the corner of my eye and saw that Orion was walking beside me, it gave me some strength. All those eyes in the room turned on me. The crowd was full offamily, friends, and folks who’d watched us grow from boys to men. I cleared my throat and let the words come out raw.
“Ma taught us how to keep the house warm when the world was cold. She taught us how to feed people ’til their bellies didn’t know hunger. She taught me how to be a man, not by the things she said but by the way she gave her whole self to everyone.” My voice cut, and I swallowed. “They took her from us. That ain’t right.”
People nodded. Some cried. I had more to say, but when I went to open my mouth, cries escaped instead. This shit was my fault, and it was tearing me up inside. I felt Orion’s hand clamp down on my shoulder like a lifeline. He was saving me by jumping in. He walked up to the microphone like a man walking into a storm. The whole room fell silent. I always joked about being Ma’s favorite, but I knew he was, and everybody in the room knew that shit too. He stood there and looked at the casket and then at all of us.
“She was my moms,” he said with his voice low and steady, “if anybody thinking that they can shoot this woman and walk free, they gotta think again. She was my world, and I never took that lightly. When it came to her, I didn’t play, and I swear…” he paused and glared at the casket for a while, “I’m gon’ handle this.” The promise in his voice was a blade.
After the service, the line to the car stretched long. Everyone gave us hugs, handshakes, and condolences that felt like nothing to me. But I stood still and let these people get their emotions out because, like us, they were grieving too. At the grave, I watched the dirt fall. It was like I could hear every particle of the earth fall onto her steel casket. I kept thinking about how short life was. I was plagued with memories of how every fight we started over nothing seemed pointless. I was the problem child, always had been, and over the years, it would be small shit that my mother and I would fall out over. None of that matterednow. I would kill to get a moment back with her, even if it was a moment of arguing. I would take anything that I could get.
After she was securely in her resting place, some of our family hung out at the gravesite to let some time pass for things to be ready at her homegoing party. No one knew if we would be targeted again, so at the repast, I understood the leery behavior of some. Still, I walked around the room, making sure everyone was good.
“Aye, nephew, let me holla at you for a second.”
I turned to my right and saw that my mother’s oldest brother was calling me over. Uncle Willie is what some would call an old-school street cat.
“How is he holding up?” he nodded his head in Orion’s direction as he asked.
Orion was tucked in the corner, clear across the room, sitting by himself.
“Shit, how do you think?”
He stared me down for a while before responding.
“I can see that fire of revenge in your eyes. At the end of the day, nephew… the day gotta end. Don’t carry this hatred with you.”
“Man…” I sucked my teeth before walking off.
What I wasn’t about to do was take advice from some reformed hood nigga turned drunk. He could go straight to hell if he thought that my brother and I weren’t going to avenge our mother’s death. I tried my hardest not to let his words of bullshit get to me. Because Orion was taking his own space, I fell in line with getting back to entertaining the people. Cayla moved slowly beside me, carrying plates and smiling when people praised the food we’d put out in my mother’s honor. She looked tired but present. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to do any of this, but I knew she was trying to help in any way she could. Plus, I had so much anger that stillsat in my chest like a stone that speaking to anyone right now probably wouldn’t even come out right.
When the afternoon wound down and folks started dribbling out, I found myself and Orion alone by our cars. We stood in the shade as the neighborhood hummed around us. In the distance, I could hear music and kids playing. The noises were peaceful to me, and they were the main reason I would never leave the hood. We grew up in East New York, and I was the only one who still lived there. I wasn’t going to speak until Orion did. I was letting him take his time with everything. He spat out a long breath before opening his mouth.
“We can’t let this go.”
“No,” I said, “we won’t.”
We didn’t make a plan out loud then. It wasn’t talk that did it. It was the look we gave each other. We were just two brothers with something hot and ugly coiling up inside. In the back of my head, Ma’s voice told me to keep my hands clean and to keep my prayers up. But I didn’t give a shit about prayers right now. I had a score to settle.
After dapping Orion up, I hopped into my car and drove off. I couldn’t get the image of Ma’s casket out of my head or out of my rearview mirror. As I sped down the block, the road ahead felt like the only place where anything could change.
