I sighed out loud before peeling the clothes off my body and then putting them into the dirty clothes bin. Once I put on my pajamas, I stood in front of my full-length mirror while I tied my hair up, and then really looked at myself. The two-piece pajama set from Victoria’s Secret hugged my curves. I was built just like my mother, thick in all the places that mattered. I sighed and then watched how my pouty, full lips poked out a bit. Once I was satisfied with the way my hair was securely tied up, I got comfortable in my bed. There was a light knock on my door.
“Come in.”
I’m sure it was my dad. He could smell a lie on anyone’s breath, but instead of being faced with what I thought would be a lifetime sentence of being grounded, my dad’s replica, MJ, stood in my doorway.
“Oh, good. You’re still alive. I thought Pops was about to kill y’all.”
“Shut up!” I said as I threw a pillow off my bed at him. The basketball player in him caught it midair.
“No, seriously.” He stepped all the way into my room and then sat on the edge of the bed. He tossed the pillow back at me before he spoke, “You should try talking to Ma. She’s not as hard to speak to as you think.”
MJ was my stepbrother and was a year older than me. Mom and Dad found out about him almost ten years into their marriage. I was nine at the time, and Maylee was four. It seemed to me that MJ and my mom had a stronger bond than she and I. When I was younger, she used to tell me that she needed to love him a little harder because he didn’t have a mother of his own. His mom died in a car accident, which is how he ended up with us.
“Mali, are you listening to me?”
He broke me from my thoughts.
“Yeah, bro. I’ll try talking to her tomorrow when I get in from school.”
“Aight, watch, you gone see. Now, when you break the boyfriend news to Pops, God bless you, sissy.”
I sucked my teeth because he was right. Although Maylee was the baby, in my father’s eyes, I was. I don’t know if it was because I was the first child he had a hand in raising or what. Dad loved MJ a little differently because he was a boy. He had freedom, and the shackles weren’t placed on him.
“I’ll tell you what…” MJ stated as he stood from my bed to make his exit, “If ya goofy ass was at Uncle Ty’s house jumping fences, those guards on his lawn would have lit you the fuck up.”
He laughed, and I did too. I felt bad for my older cousin Paige. She was the oldest of five kids over there. If I thought my dad was strict, he had nothing on my Uncle Ty.
“Night, sissy,” he said before making his exit.
“Night, bro.”
After MJ closed my room door behind him, I just lay in the bed in my thoughts. He didn’t even know who my boyfriend was. I should have broken the news to him first, but I didn’t. I just wanted to keep the happiness that Tahari gives me a secret just a little longer because you know, once you start talking about something good, something bad happens. I tossed and turned as I tried to get rid of all the thoughts that were going through my head. Flipping from one side to the other had become the norm until I drifted off to sleep.
My eyes stared fixatedly at the clock that hung on the wall. Impatiently, I tapped my pen on the desk as I waited for classto finish. All morning, I was thinking about what MJ had said to me. I should have had the relationship that he did with Ma, but for the life of me, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. I guess a piece of me remembers little memories from when I was a little girl. My mother would cry loudly at night, music would be playing, and still, I could hear her over it. And over that, I would hear Dad trying to soothe her. I started noticing it after Maylee was born. I didn’t know why she was so emotional back then. When I got older, that’s when I found out about my older brother. I didn’t know all the details, but I knew that real late at night, when my mother thought that Maylee and I were sleeping, she mourned him.
“Maliah, class isn’t over just yet. I need you engaged and paying attention.”
I snapped my head up and looked directly at my science teacher.
“I need you engaged and paying attention,”I heard my brother’s voice mimic the teacher who was trying to clown on me.
“Malik, you might as well gather your things and head to the principal’s office. Spend the last bit of your comedian time with him.”
The rest of the kids in the class started to laugh.
“That’s cool.”
I watched as my brother tossed his backpack over his shoulder and then grabbed his basketball from under his seat before making his exit.
MALIK BROWNE JR. A.K.A MJ
I slowly walked through the halls while spinning the basketball on my fingertip. I made a mental note to check in with Mali.For our last two classes, she was zoned out. I knew that she wasn’t in her feelings that much coming clean about having a little boyfriend. Mom and Dad let me do what the fuck ever. She should have seen that they were cool as shit. But I understood where she came from. Not only was I not biologically my mom’s child, but I was a boy. Things were always different with boys.
“Psttt… MJ.”
I turned around and saw my girlfriend, Justine, peeking around the corner of the hall. I checked the Apple Watch on my wrist and then smirked.Just in time,I thought to myself as I began to lightly jog in her direction. I was going to come up with something to get kicked out of class, and defending my sister was the perfect out. Justine grabbed me and led me into the ladies’ bathroom and then locked the door.
“What you on?” I asked as she pushed me up against the door.
