Everything that had been sitting on this family was lifted.
And what was left was the lives that we always deserved.
A catered venue, pink and blue confetti bombs and two women who deserved every good thing they were walking into.
—
Gutta was impossible to be around today and I mean that in the best way.
He had been pacing back and forth since we got here. Checking his phone. Adjusting his outfit. Asking me every twenty minutes if I thought the smoke bomb was going to work right. He had been a father, but this was his first time being there from the beginning. This was my first time ever, but this nigga was more nervous than me.
This was a man who had never flinched at anything in his entire life and the idea of finding out whether he was having a son or a daughter had completely dismantled him.
Simone had come back to him less than a month after she walked out with that overnight bag. She hadn’t made it easy — Gutta would tell you himself that she had put him through it before she let him back in and he had taken every bit of it because he knew he had earned it.
But she came back. And when she did she came back all the way.
Amara was proof of that.
Gutta’s daughter spent more time at their house than she did anywhere else. Sandra had worked out an arrangement that everybody understood. Amara was five going on thirty-five and she had Simone’s whole heart from the first day they met. Right now she was running around the venue in a dress that matched Simone’s outfit exactly because Simone always dressed them like twins, and Amara had lost her mind with excitement when she saw it.
Gutta watched his daughter run past him and the look on his face was of a proud father. Soft in a way that the streets never got to see.
That was fatherhood doing that to him.
I understood it more than I could explain.
—
Brielle found me near the back and slipped her hand into mine. She leaned against my shoulder and we watched the room together for a minute without saying anything.
She had disowned her family completely after the arrest. Every last one of them. Her mother. Her aunts and uncles. The cousins who had known her father for what he was and said nothing. She had walked away from all of it and hadn’t looked back once.
My mama had welcomed her like she had always been there.
They talked every day. Brielle went to Sunday dinner even when I couldn’t make it. My mama had started a routine of braiding Brielle’s hair on Saturday mornings and calling her her bonus daughter. Brielle cried the first time she said it and my mama held her and didn’t let go until she was done.
I had never loved my mama more than in that moment.
Brielle was still healing from what her father had done. Probably would be for a long time. But she was healing inside a family that was real and that was full of love. It was something that she had never had before and it showed in how she carried herself now. Lighter. More open. Like something heavy had been put down for good.
I squeezed her hand.
She looked up at me and smiled.
—
My brothers were in the back corner being loud the way they were always loud when they were together. Now, they were states apart and hardly ever got to see one another. So when they linked up, they were a mess.
Mazi was playing linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. Home team. My mama cried for three straight days when he got drafted and had not stopped talking about it since. He and Monte had stayed close since that night in that dark house. I never asked for details about what happened after Gutta and Mazi left. I just knew that Tavarus was no longer a problem and Monte was someone I would always look out for regardless of what it cost me.
Melo had been drafted to the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round and was averaging eighteen points a game in his rookie season.My aunt and moms had attended every home game and most of the away ones for both my brothers, and still found time to be at all of my fights. You would think that it was four of them instead of two.
My mama had three sons who were doing something good with their lives and showing her that her sacrifices weren’t in vain.
She had done that. Working double shifts before sunrise. Raising us alone in a house that was too small for everything she was trying to hold together. She had done all of it and here we were on the other side of it.
I was going to spend the rest of my life making sure she never wanted for anything.
