“I’m not lying, Mekhi. Why would you?—”
I moved fast.
My hand slammed against the wall beside her head, the impact shaking the carefully hung picture. She didn’t flinch—Gillian never flinched—but her breath caught in her throat.
“Ma,” I said quietly, “I told you last time. Don’t play with me.”
“Mekhi… you need to calm down.”
“Calm?” I leaned close enough to see her pupils constrict. “You turned my girl over to a psycho. Tell me where she is before I stop asking nice.”
Her lips parted in offense. “Yourgirl? Your—Mekhi, she ain’t even?—”
“Say something else stupid,” I warned. “I dare you.”
She pressed her back harder against the wall, chin lifting like it held that old steel she used to cut people with.
“Watch your tone,” she said. “I am still your mother.”
I stepped even closer until our foreheads were almost touching.
“You stopped being my mother,” I whispered, “when you let Trell put his fucking hands on Farrah.”
Tears filled her eyes instantly. She looked away—and that alone told me she was guilty.
“He wanted her,” Gillian said finally. Her voice was soft, like she wanted it to land gently. “He promised to leave you alone if he could have her. She wasn’t worth risking you for.Nothingis worth risking you for.”
“You traded her for me? Mama, you?—”
“You don’t understand the rage that boy has toward you. You don’t understand… He said you were the reason he lost everything!” she shouted suddenly, eyes blazing through thetears. “His life! He said you took the wealth, the happiness he should’ve had?—”
“That wasn’t me,” I said through clenched teeth. “That wasyou. You and Medgar.”
Her face twisted. “We made mistakes?—”
“Mistakes?” My voice cracked, incredulous. “You call fucking my father’s brother a mistake? You call killing my father a mistake?”
She flinched back like I’d hit her. “I didn’t?—”
“Don’t,” I warned. “Don’t lie to me again.”
Her shoulders sagged. She looked small, then, like she was fragile, worn down by years of guilt she hid behind silk blouses and expensive perfume.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she whispered. “He was so mad, Mekhi. I thought he was going to kill me. I watched him beat Medgar’s ass. I knew where the gun was.”
My jaw clenched until it hurt, leaving me unable to speak for a minute. Finally, I regained my composure.
“You killed our father, then you isolated us,” I said. “Youmade sure we had nobody but you. Not your parents. Not Daddy’s family. Nobody.Youchose that.Youmade us think they forgot us.”
She shook her head wildly. “It wasn’t like that?—”
“It wasexactlylike that.”
“I was… ashamed.”
“You should be.”
Her knees buckled. She walked to the counter, grabbed it like the words hit her physically.
