I could tell whenever an aid came to assist her with a shower, or helping her around the house, it felt like poison was being injected into her veins.
An independent woman’s worse fear was receiving help. She had done it on her own for so long that this was foreign territory for her.
Before she agreed to let an aid help her, Khaos would come over and help her bathe. She refused to have him help her, so all he could do was move her into the shower chair, and she would slam the door, so she could get undressed.
We would do anything for our mother, so the shit was no sweat off our backs. It was for our mother. She had bathed us once upon a time and raised us up into men. She didn’t want us seeing her that way.
In her words, weak.
“Sharon! Where yuh at?” I hollered, the minute I came through the door.
It was silent.
“She’s not here, and stop hollering,” Inez’s soft voice greeted me instead.
I hadn’t spoken to Nez since I left the house that day, and she made sure she stayed from around me. Nez loved to push shit under the rug, and act like the shit never fucking happened.
That was the reason she was suffering now.
Trying to get high and pretend that she didn’t lose her son. The shit was a toxic cycle because my mother and aunt made that shit okay. They babied her, when they needed to be honest instead.
“Where she went?”
I rounded the corner, and she was sitting on the couch Indian style with her bible in her lap. “Said she was going to get groceries… cooking tonight.”
“And you didn’t go with her?”
Inez shut her bible and looked over at me, quickly diverting eye contact. “She said she didn’t want my help, and she went with her new aid.”
“Hmm.”
“Goo, say what the fuck you really wanna say.”
I laughed, going into the kitchen. “Nez, you don’t want me to say shit to you.”
“You think I’m some weak junkie bitch.” She continued to try and get a response out of me.
When we were younger, Inez always tried to get a reaction out of Khaos whenever they argued. She was good at getting what she wanted, so he always fell right into the trap.
“You’re only weak because you’ve been given every chance to get clean and stay clean… but you want to continue to get high, then open that bible like it’s gonna save you.”
“God can save me,” she snorted.
“Not when you out there sucking dick to get high. Then wanna be calling on God with that same mouth you wrapping around random dicks… make it make sense, Inez.” I guzzled the water, tossing the bottle into the trash.
“You don’t know shit about what I’m going through.”
“We’re all fucking going through it… we’re fucking hurt behind Ramelle… been hurt. You think you doing this shit makes it easier on us?”
Inez remained on the couch with tears slowly sliding down her face. “None of you know what this is like… none of you know what it feels like to bury a child. All of you sit in my face like you feel bad and talk shit behind my back.”
“I talk that shit in your face. How many times have I had to climb out my bed to come pull you out a trap house? How many times? Don’t sit in my face and tell me that we don’t know what it feels like.”
“None of you fucking do! Life continued for you all, leaving Melle behind… I don’t see none of you hurting.”
I could feel the anger rising up my neck, becoming hotter with each passing second. Inez was talking out her ass and felt like she could do that since she was the only one hurting. As if we all weren’t hurting when Ramelle was killed.
“Life fucking moves on, Inez!” I roared, and she jumped. “Even if you don’t want to believe it, life has to fucking move. Getting high and living the way you have been, isn’t going to bring him back.”
