Chapter 9
I didn’t want to wake up. I only woke up because someone started violently pulling on my arm. My eyes shot open and I realised I was lying on a hospital bed with nothing but my sweatpants on.
My eyes then moved to the dark tattooed face in front of me. The man who was pulling on my arm sighs in relief and then starts pacing up the and down the room. Who is he?
“Where’s Shaun?” he asks coming to a stop in the middle of the room. He must be talking about Uncle Shaun.
I open my mouth to answer him, but close it as soon as a thought pops into my mind. “Where’s Shaun?” He asked me that in a way that clearly showed him, and Uncle Shaun were close…and that might just mean this creep in my hospital room is a Viper!
I analyse him again and the Viper tattoo on his arm catches my attention so quickly that I wonder how I missed it in the first place.
“Get. Out!” I yell. My voice came out shaky and I wasn’t expecting him to be intimidated…but he was. His eyes widened and he looked over at his tattoo, then back at me.
“This means nothing, Amari,” he says pointing at the ink that covered his while arm.
“It means nothing? You think that tattoo means nothing? You people killed my father!”
“It’s not what it looks like. Listen, you have to come with me.” He pulls out a syringe from his pocket filled with God knows what.
“No!” I dart for the door and he is right behind me. When I reach the door, I hear footsteps from the hall coming closer and closer to my room. The tattoo-faced man hears the footsteps and slides the syringe back into his pocket and takes a seat on the chair in the corner as if nothing had just happened. A true criminal!
As the door opens, I’m met with a frown from who I assume is the doctor.
“Is everything alright here? Why aren’t you in bed?” he asks. I hadn’t moved a single inch from the door, I didn’t dare. This man had no other motive but to kill me, and I wasn’t going to allow it.
“I’m not in bed because I want to go home. I feel much better now,” I lie. I didn’t feel better at all. My head still hurt from hitting the ground so hard, and it would begin to pound whenever I thought of the picture that Cassie sent me.
“I understand, but we still need you to stay in here for a few more check-ups. You hit that floor quite hard. If everything is okay, then you’ll be out of hospital by the end of the day,” the doctor assures me. I turn to look at the tattooed man on the chair.
A part of me wanted him to stay and explain what the hell it was that he wanted from me. But, a bigger part of me still wanted to live, I was going to be a father after all. So, I said: “I’ll stay if the unwelcomed visitor leaves.”
The doctor looks surprised. “I thought you said you were his uncle. Uncle Shaun?” he reminds the tattooed man who couldn’t care less about what the doctor had to say. He simply stood up from his seat and pulled out something else from his pocket, luckily, it wasn’t a syringe.
Before walking out of the door, he gives the doctor a dirty look which he surely didn’t deserve and forces a paper into my hand.
“Call me once you put everything together.” After saying this, he walks out and doesn’t look back. I, on the other hand stare at him until he turns into another passage. The paper has the name Don written on it with a number which I assume is his.
Just like Uncle Shaun, he has left me wondering what he meant by his words.
“So, to be clear, you don’t know who that man is?” the doctor asks, still surprised that he had allowed a total stranger into a patient’s room. I shake my head as I lay back down on my bed. “I am so sorry. I hope he didn’t harm you. I should have not been so careless!”
“Don’t worry about it, doc. I’m perfectly fine,” I lie again.
The doctor opens up his mouth to speak but is interrupted by loud voices approaching my room again. I can already make out Summer’s loud voice screaming at someone else, who I assume is my mother. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse than being stuck in a room with a Viper, my girlfriend is arguing with my mother in a public hospital! Will this madness ever end?
“That must be your mother. She’s been arguing with the girl ever since she got here,” the doctor explains.
Their voices become louder and their words clearer.
“Why won’t you just give me a chance!? I love him, can’t you see that?” That’s Summer’s loud voice which was beginning to break into a sob.
“You know nothing about love! The only love Amari will ever need is from me and Lily!” my mother yells back.
Gosh! Even after being admitted into hospital because of her, she still thinks Lily is my soulmate! What has gotten into my mother?
My mother yells at Summer to leave, but she refuses. She walks into the room after my furious mother. Summer looks devastated. Her eyes are red probably from crying, and her hair is a mess. I felt terrible knowing that for the few hours that I had been back in Detroit, all I had caused Summer was pain, and even after she saw me “having a great time” with Lily, she still showed up to see me in hospital. I didn’t deserver her.
“Summer I…” My mother interrupts me.
“You what, Amari? I told you to leave her alone and now look? Look what you’ve done! She is devastated and she is convinced that you love her when you don’t!”
“What!?” Summer and I yell at the same time.
“It’s true!” my mother yells.
“Mom!”
“Shut up Amari!” She turns and looks at Summer. “Summer, dear, if he loved you, he would have invited you for dinner, not Lily. Please, leave.”
“That is not true! I didn’t even know who Lily was until last night,” I defend myself. “Summer, you have to believe me.”
Summer’s tears have dried against her skin, and all that’s left is a hiccup in her voice.
“Please say something,” I practically beg.
“I need to go,” she says turning around and leaving the room.
I sigh and throw my head back on the bed, while my mother dusts off her hands.
“It’s about time she leaves. Amari, we need to talk,” my mother says. Oh, so now she can be civil? Now she can sit down and talk like a civil person instead of screaming at my girlfriend through the hallway…that’s if Summer is even still my girlfriend!
“About what, mom? After everything you’ve put me through this week, I don’t think I even want you here,” I say coldly, and I mean it. All that mattered to my mother was what she wanted, what she thought was best and what she wanted for me. It was never about what I felt. What was the use of talking to her if what I had to say would never be taken into consideration?
“Amari, I’m still your mother,” she reminds me.
“You don’t act like it, mom. You’re trying to live my life for me, and that’s nowhere near fair.”
“That is not what I’m doing, Amari. I’m trying to give you the best life possible.”
“The best life possible?” I chuckle at her use of words. If those are her intentions, she is failing…drastically.
“Yes! Yes, Amari don’t you see? Summer lives miles away from you. You barely get to see each other. It will never work. The distance is just too much. Lily is perfect. Your personalities are alike, and she lives around your new school. You’ll always get to see her.” That concludes that Lily is filthy rich. The city my school is in is for rich people only, I don’t know how I got in. The houses there are top of the class and it isn’t full of criminals like Detroit.
“Son, I just don’t want you to fall for Summer too hard because loving her will hurt you. Loving someone who is so far away isn’t easy.”
“Well, it’s too late mom. I’ve fallen for her hard and nothing you do or say will change my mind…or my heart.” I turn in my bed to look away from her.
“Amari…” she sniffs. Is she crying? Even if she is, I don’t care. If I was big on emotions, I’d be crying too. I’d be crying over the fact that my mother is trying to control my life. I’d be crying over the fact that I messed up and impregnated Cassie. I’d be crying over the fact that I didn’t know if I had just lost Summer or not over this Lily saga, and even if I hadn’t, I couldn’t be certain that she would stay after finding out about Cassie.
How would I even begin to tell her? “Summer I’m so sorry, I made your best friend pregnant by mistake, could you ever forgive?”
Of course, she wouldn’t! I’d be crazy to think that she would but hiding it from her wouldn’t help either because Cassie would eventually tell her herself.
The doctor stood in the corner of the room. You could tell he didn’t know what to do after the whole scene that had unfolded in front of him, so I decided to put him out of his misery.
“Can you run those tests now doc?” I ask.
He clears his throat and blinks rapidly. “Uhm…yeah…sure, let me just get a few things.”
He walks out of the room leaving my mother and I in an awkward silence.
“I’m sorry, Amari,” she says after a long time. “I…I…I thought I was doing the right thing. I was just trying to protect you, but I just keep on hurting you, don’t I?”
I ignore my mother, not because I have nothing to say to her, but because everything that I want to say will break her into a million pieces. And, like she said, she is still my mother, meaning if I can, I’d rather hold back all the mean things I want to say to her, just to avoid hurting her.
“I’ll come by and see you later,” she says after realising that I’m not going to say anything to her. She leaves the room and with her she takes all my stress and worries. I take in a deep breath, and before the doctor can return, I find myself drifting into sleep again…
A week later, I’m back home. I haven’t spoken to my mother since I came back. I didn’t know what to say to her until today. I decided that I was tired of ignoring her and acting as if we don’t live under one roof. I wanted to sit down with her and explain to her every little thing that I felt. I wanted her to listen.
“Mom,” I say softly while knocking on her door. She opens the door so quickly that you’d assume she was sitting at her door waiting for me to knock.
“Go…Good morning.” She says the words as if testing if it really is a good morning.
“Morning mom,” I say briefly. “Can I speak to you, before Jamila and the nanny wake up?”
“Sure.” She closes her door behind her, and I follow after her to the TV-room.
“I wasn’t really expecting you to speak to me anytime soon. How are you feeling?” she asks.
This is the first time in I don’t know how long that my mother shows interest in knowing how I feel. The feeling of knowing that she actually wants to know how I’m doing, is a feeling I’ve longed for, for…forever.
“I’m managing mom, I just really miss Summer.” Silence falls between the two of us. My mother looks away with no emotion evident on her face. I hadn’t spoken to Summer since the day after she walked out on me. I called her and left messages flooding into her inbox. She only replied to one of my texts the next day:
I need space, Amari. I need to figure out if I’m willing to live the rest of my life with a potential mother-in-law who hates my guts. I love you, and I hope my heart will find the strength to be with you.
I didn’t respond to her text. I was out of words and I still am. All I can do is to hope that Summer will find the strength to choose us, even with the relationship between her and my mother. If she does, maybe the chances of her still choosing us after I tell her about Cassie will be greater. Or maybe that would be the last straw.
Anyway, Summer left two days after sending that text. I don’t know where she went. All I know is that I saw her and her dad loading a bunch of her bags into his car and driving off. Since then, her bedroom lights have remained off and the car hasn’t been back. I assumed that maybe she had gone to a relative’s house for Christmas.
Her birthday was the day after Christmas, and I hoped that she’d be back in time for me to give her the gift I had bought for her.
“Is she ever going to come back?” my mother asks. I gaze up at her. “I’ve realised that they haven’t been around for some time now.”
“I don’t know, I hope so.” Silence again.
“Look mom, I know I’ve been singing the same song over and over, but it’s only because I want you to believe me when I say, I love Summer. We’re young and we still have our whole lives ahead of us, I know. But mom, Summer makes me happy. She makes me feel like one day, I’ll be able to go outside and live freely, even though I know I won’t. She makes me feel alive mom, and until I met her, I didn’t know how that felt. She gives me purpose, and if that isn’t enough reason for you to let me love her, then I don’t know what is.”
My mother wipes the tears from her eyes. “You’re just like your father. He always fought for what he loved…always.”
We remain silent as my mom wipes away her lasts tears and pulls herself together again.
“You’re right.” I choke on my spit and cough uncontrollably.
I’m right? Well, of course I am, I just didn’t expect to hear the words come from her mouth.
“You clearly love her Mari, and there is nothing I can do,” she admits more to herself than to me. I’m in awe. Maybe, just maybe things really could work out.
“Are you saying you won’t stop me from seeing Summer?” I ask hesitantly. My heart is beating out of my chest. She has to say yes. She has to allow it. She has to allow us.
“I never wanted anyone to separate me from your father, and I won’t do the same to you that was done to me. So, yes, I won’t stop you.”
I can’t contain my excitement. A high-pitched scream escapes my mouth sending my mother into laughter.
“Can she come over anytime soon? During the afternoon or whatever time suits you.” I know I was pushing my luck, but I had to try. She definitely wasn’t going to allow me to go out with Summer, so I had to at least try to bring her to me. That’s if Summer would even be up for it after she returns from wherever she is.
My mother raises her eyebrow. “Please,” I beg. She huffs and says: “Fine, she can come over just once a week.”
Joy. Pure joy was what I felt. Yes, I still had a baby on the way which was news that I would still have to break down to Summer, and she probably wasn’t going to take the news well but at least I had one problem out of the way. My mother was willing to accept the idea of me and Summer being together, in fact, she had already accepted it! For someone with a mother as stubborn and strict as mine, that meant the world.
“Thank you, mom. You have no idea how much it means to me for you to acknowledge how I feel.” It was the millionth time I had thanked her already.
“Do you not think I acknowledge your feelings other times?” she asks, concentrating on the last part of my sentence instead of the first, which is the most important.
“I…Well…”
“You can be honest with me, Mari. I won’t be mad,” she assures me. I nod and begin to speak.
“It just always felt like it was your way or no way. I never had a say in much of the things that happened in my life.”
“Well, it’s only because I’m trying to protect you…and Jamila. You know this already.”
“I do…I do mom. But you can’t protect me forever. Soon, I’ll be headed off to college. How are you going to protect me then?” I ask.
“College?” Her eyes widen as if it’s the first time she hears the word, but it’s not. I’ve spoken to my mother about college several times, but it always ended up falling under one of the topics that I don’t have a say on. “You could just get a simple job at a warehouse, or at a store that pays you enough, like me.” That would be her response every time I told her about college. But I didn’t want a simple job, or one that pays me just enough. I wanted to get a job that I loved, and one that would pay me my worth. Unlike my mother, I refused to fall into the generational trap that had started with her. She had to live in fear for the rest of her life, and if I was as fearful as her, I would’ve done the same, and so would my kids, and their kids, and so on. I wanted to break this cycle before it even started. I wanted to get my dream job and my dream home. I wanted to see and experience life out of Detroit. I didn’t want my sad little story to begin and end in Detroit.
I knew my mother would never agree to any of that, no matter how hard I tried to convince her, so I took matters into my own hands. While we were still friends, Deshae helped me apply into as many colleges as we could find. He seemed to know a lot about applications and laptops than I did.
After a few weeks of waiting, I was put onto the waiting list for Stanford and Howard University. Howard University was Deshae’s idea. My dream was to go to Stanford. The only problem with Stanford was its location: California. At least I knew that if I went to Howard, I’d be far away from the Vipers. But going to Stanford would be suicide, seeing that my mother’s family, and the Vipers are from California.
But my determination to end this cycle of fear was beyond that, and so whatever university I would get accepted into, I planned on going to, no matter what.
“Now you know how I feel about college Mari,” my mother warns.
“I know, I know. Never mind,” I say dragging the words. She smiles.
“Good.” She happily walks off to the room while I rush to mine to call Summer.
There was no need to hide anymore. I could call her at anytime of the day, whenever I felt like it. I could speak to her through the window as loud as I wanted to. I wasn’t completely free to leave the house and go wherever I wanted to, but at least I was finally free to love.
Summer’s phone rang unanswered all the five times that I tried reaching her. Was she avoiding me, or was she genuinely busy with something? Maybe she needed more space. I mean, I did call her everyday even though I knew she’d never pick up. Maybe I wasn’t giving her the space she needed.
I laid on my bed defeated, but hope found its way back into my heart when my phone started ringing. I looked up at it hoping it wasn’t Cassie. I hadn’t responded to the ultrasound picture she had sent to me of the child that was apparently mine. I knew avoiding the situation wouldn’t be a good idea, but I needed to deal with everything else before dealing with Cassie.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t Cassie calling, it was Summer. I made sure to not let the phone ring a second time by answering almost immediately. I was so filled with joy that I even forgot to greet after picking up.
“Uhm…hello, Amari are you there?” I hit my forehead with my palm and chuckle nervously. Why am I nervous? This is the girl I love. I shouldn’t be nervous when speaking to her.
“Yeah, I’m here. Uhm, how are you doing?” I ask. She sighs.
“Better, I’ve been much better. I’m really enjoying it here.”
Does that mean she’s happier away from me? I remove the thought from my head. I have to be very careful with my words if I want Summer to forget about everything that happened.
“So, I spoke to my mom today,” I say. Summer remains completely silent. “That’s actually the reason why I called you.”
“You spoke to her…about me?”
“I did.”
“Why would you do that? You know she hates me!” I move away from the phones speaker to avoid Summer’s loud voice from bursting my eardrums. Clearly, I didn’t use the right words.
“It’s nothing bad Summer, I swear. It’s actually really good news,” I assure her. Her breathing begins to settle, and she says: “I’m listening.”
“She…she’s finally accepted our love for…well, my love for you.”
“Your love for me? And what about my love for you?” she asks. Again, I failed to use the right words. I left out that part because I didn’t want Summer to think I was cocky for talking about “her love for me.” Heck, I couldn’t even be sure if she still loved me. All I knew was that I loved her, and I was going to do anything to get her back.
“Well, that too of course,” I say shyly.
“Why didn’t you mention it in the first place then?” she asks immediately.
“I don’t know, I thought…”
“Never mind. It’s cool.” We both remain silent. I had no idea what to say to her. I didn’t know if she was mad at me or she just wasn’t in a good mood. What if she hated me?
I expected her to react differently after I told her about the conversation I had with my mother. I thought she would be just as excited as I was, but after all the hurtful things my mother said to her, she probably didn’t believe a word coming out of my mouth. I myself couldn’t believe it either, that my mother would ever accept our relationship. But it was happening, and I had every reason and more to believe it.
“I miss you, you know,” I say breaking the silence.
“Too bad, I’m only coming home on my birthday.”
“That’s great!” Now I’ll be able to give you your birthday gift. I don’t say that out loud. I want to surprise her the moment she gets back home.
“Why is it great? It’s not like I’m celebrating with you.”
“Wouldn’t you want to?” I ask.
“I would, but your mom wouldn’t,” she says. Clearly, it’s going to take much more for Summer to believe that my mother is not the rude and evil woman she was acting like at the hospital.
“She would, Summer. Please believe me when I say she has accepted this relationship.”
“Fine, I believe you Amari. Now what? Nothing will change. The only time I will ever get to speak to you is through your window and on text. I’ll never get to hold you and physically be with you.”
“That’s not true either,” I say.
“Prove me wrong,” she argues.
“I will once you get back to Detroit. You’re welcome in the house anytime you want.”
“What?” she asks confused. I can hear the excitement in her voice which she tries to hide but fails drastically.
“Now that you know this, you can stop acting so cold towards me. You’re too cute for that.” She giggles. Gosh! I’ve been waiting to hear her giggle like that since I was admitted into hospital.
“You mean that your mom is cool with me coming over, to actually see you… and be with you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Summer goes quiet, and I assume that she’s just in shock, until I hear her sniff.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry. Isn’t this what you wanted?” I ask.
“It is. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted before I even knew I wanted it.” She laughs before going on. “Maybe, just maybe we can make this work. Maybe we can have our happily ever after, after all.”
“We deserve it. I don’t see why not.” “Because you made her best friend pregnant.” I ignore the voice at the back of my head which always seems to remind me of the things that I’d rather forget about.
“You know what, I might just come home earlier if it means I’ll get to see you and be with you.”
I chuckle. “Something tells me I’m going to have a very restless visitor.”
“Restless isn’t the word! I need you to paint my toenails…”
“Woaw, woaw, woaw! Your toenails? Why would I paint your toenails? I don’t know where those feet have been.”
“My toenails are perfect, excuse you. And painting my toenails is only one of the many things I have planned out…”
And just like that, she’s back to her old, annoying but fun self. I liked us like this. Fun and free to talk about anything. Soon we’d be able to not only hear each other’s voices, but to hold hands and to be just inches away from the other. I’d be able to lay my head on her chest and listen to her heartbeat. To feel her soft, warm skin. At that moment, nothing could have excited me more.
I was lost in Summer’s voice and had completely forgotten that I was in my bedroom. I felt like I was floating, and the more she spoke, the higher I’d go. We laughed and discussed so many things that by the time we hung up, she had to rush to prepare dinner for her family. She told me she was in Hamilton celebrating Christmas with her mother’s family. I learnt more about the type of person that Summer’s mom was, and the more she spoke about her, the more I realised that Summer was just as sweet as her mother was.
Her voice is full of enthusiasm and joy as she describes all the lovely things she’d do with her mother, and for a moment I wished that God would bring Summer’s mother back to her because clearly, she was the world to her, and always will be.
I told Summer about my plan to go to college. She was so excited that I had decided to chase after my dreams, besides my situation. See, Summer always saw the positive in everything I did. Unlike my mother who would scold me for wanting to go to college, Summer would encourage me to go because she knew it was my dream. And that was one of the many reasons why I loved her.
She told me that the next day, she was going to apply at Stanford and Howard as well. “I want to make sure you’re stuck with me wherever you go, even if it means moving to California or Washington.” That’s what she said after hearing about my plan to go to college. I was falling deeper and deeper in love with her, and the more I fell, the more I feared telling her about Cassie.
My mother had some work to do in her room, so I made roasted turkey and potatoes for dinner. I knew my mother would yell at me for not saving the turkey for Christmas, but I was really eager to try out a new recipe that Summer had suggested to me on how to make the best turkey.
Two days later, I laid on my bed, bored out of my mind. I had already called Summer twice, but she was now at church, and she made it clear to me that if I called her during the service, she’d come to Detroit just to break my phone and then go back to Hamilton. At first, it sounded like a good idea seeing that I’d get to see her. But common sense reminded me that then I’d have no phone. So, I kept my phone far away from me to avoid calling her.
I went to the living room and found my mother laying out all the Christmas decorations that we used every single year. We had a plastic, foldable Christmas tree. Our house was small, so we figured that using a small recyclable tree would be the best option.
“Hey son, are you going to help with decorations this year?’ my other asks excitedly. Every year, she tries to get me to help put up the Christmas lights and all the other bits and pieces, but I never do. I stopped after my father passed on. It never felt the same without him. I remember the times when he’d have to carry my mother and I on his shoulder to put the lights on the top of the doorway. My mother and I were too short to reach, I still am, but my mother has grown so much in length that you’d swear she was taking “Grow Taller pills.”
“Come on Mari, it will be fun. Don’t you want to see the house look pretty like it always does this time of the year?” she asks.
“I do.” I kiss her forehead and grab my bowl of ice cream before throwing myself on the couch and flicking through the channels. “That’s why I’m leaving it to you, you always get the job done perfectly.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “Good one, but I know that’s just your way of saying: ‘sorry mom, I’m too lazy to help.’” She mimics me and I frown because she sounds nothing like me.
Hours later, lunch was served, and we were all seated on the couch with the TV on. For the first time in a long time, me, the nanny, Jamila and my mother sat together in peace. There was no hidden beef or unresolved conflicts. We joked, laughed and told stories.
There was a knock on the door. I looked to my mother.
“Are you expecting anyone?” I ask her. As you already know, it was rare for us to ever have any visitors.
“Go and see for yourself,” my mother says with a pearly white smile.
I get up from the couch, curious to know who is on the other side of the door. The person knocks on the door again and when I open says: “Damn! Summer was right! You do look older than before!”
“Shut up man! How have you been doing?” I handshake Jason still trying to process the fact that he is here! My best who I never thought I’d see again is at my door, and he hasn’t changed one bit. He’s still the same fun and goofy boy that I remember growing up with.
“I heard you were being stubborn about helping with Christmas lights. So, I decided to come over and do your job for you since you can’t handle it,” Jason says walking past me. He hugs the nanny and Jamila who holds onto him for longer like she always does.
“Man! You came here to try and disrespect me over some Christmas lights? I laugh.
“I’m just saying Amari, it’s hard for us to trust that you’ll handle Summer right if you can’t even handle a few tangled Christmas lights.” Jason dangles the lights in front of my face. My mother, Jamila and the nanny laugh.
“Is that a challenge sir?” I ask Jason.
“It sure is,” he shrugs.
“Well you know I never back down from a challenge. Let’s do this.”
“Me too!” Jamila yells. Everyone gets up from their seats and soon we are laughing and having a wonderful time while struggling to detangle all the Christmas lights. The nanny helps Jamila put up ornaments and little decorations around the house. Soon, the whole house begins to look like Christmas, and the atmosphere begins to feel like it too. A warm and fuzzy feeling grows inside of me and I finally feel that I’m home. My mother prepares a huge dinner while we finish off the Christmas tree.
Summer and I were back on track.
My mother had accepted our relationship.
Jason was back to remind me of the great times I had in Detroit, and to remind me that I’ll always be his brother.
Everything was perfect, and I wanted it to stay that way.