Every Sunday, I felt like the pastor was speaking to me. My cousin’s ’nem swore I told the pastor their business because every time they’d accompanied me to church, let them tell it, he was talking about them too.
“I do.”
“That’s because he was!” She sassed, making me laugh out loud.
When I saw her eyes water, I shot up and sat down next to her, pulling her in my arms. “Mama, what’s wrong?”
My heart thudded, and my words came out shakier than intended. My mind went into overdrive immediately. I needed my mama to always be okay. There wasn’t a world where she and I weren’t in there together. She would bury me—that’s how I’d always imagined it, and that’s how I needed it to be.
“Oh, Shio…” She pulled from my embrace, swatting my chest. “I’m okay, baby. Sometimes, you do things that… That makes me realize that you’re no longer a baby. No longermy baby. The tenor in your laugh was deep enough to shake the whole room. You’ve been a man for a long time, longer than the age of maturity, but?—”
“I’m still your baby.” I flashed her a smile.
“And forever you shall be. Don’t mind me. I’m just an old lady with too much time on her hands that’s obsessed with her child.”
“You sure dat’s it?”
“Yes, baby. I’m sure.” She placed her soft hand on my cheek. The vanilla in her perfume was finally settling, bringing me the comfort that I yearned for. “You’re so handsome, son. Tell me something good.”
I chuckled. I knew my mother better than anyone else on the planet, including my damn self. “Who told you, Mama?”
Her smile broadened, and the combination of that, plus the wet tears that stained her face, was cinema-worthy. “Um. Don’t worry ’boutwhotold me. I want to know whyyouhaven’t told me.”
She tapped my cheeks twice, and once she released me, I leaned my body back so that I wasn’t all up in her space, crowding her anymore.
“You know if I keep it from you, it’s for a reason, Mama.”
“I do. I don’t ask you about the business you do out there in them streets. But I’m not oblivious to it, nor is the pastor. But only God can judge you, son, and even Timothy knows your heart enough to know God is there.
“You were born into this life, so I keep my nose out of it. But a child, Shio Cuppacio? I thought you would try and make me a Glam-Ma once you calmed your life down, son.”
The downside to us Cuppacios being all we had for so long was that everybody talked too fucking much. If I had to guess, it was Nel who’d run his mouth. I knew he’d told Tunan, and I’d bet a million that he’d told Auntie, and Auntie told my mama. However the whispers went, I knew it had started with Nel’s ass.
When I ran my hand down my face and looked back at my mother, she was staring right at me. “A baby girl, um? Who is her mother? Pretty little sinner?” She lit up when she mentioned Solana.
“Mama, that math wouldn’t math. Solana and I haven’t known each other long enough to produce a child.”
“Hmph.”
“I didn’t know about her—the baby. She and her mother were… caught up in…sum’n. I’m still processin’ myself. I wasn’t gonna hold it from you for long, I just wanted?—”
“I don’t mean to cut you off, son, but I understand. And you don’t owe me an explanation. As bad as I would love to meet her, I trust your judgment first, Shio. Always have.”
“I ’preciate that, Mama. But I was sayin’, I wanted to get the DNA back first. We did a test, but we had to do another one cuz the first one was incomplete. Baby girl cut up so bad that the tech that came by the house didn’t get enough skin cells or whatever to complete the test back at the lab. She didn’t act no better at the hospital. Me and ole girl had to hold her down.”
Waiting for the second DNA test results had me more anxious than the first time. They did a blood test on all three of us at the same hospital we used for everything mob-affiliated. Convincing Bahati to bring her ass there with Shya had me seeing red the other day, but she finally caved and used the Range Rover I had basically given her. Had Bahati met me at the lab the first time instead of acting like Felipe ’nem bitch asses were going to jump out of the bushes at the hospital, we would’ve had this whole thing solved by now.
Shya started showing her ass as soon as Bahati walked in with her. Even I couldn’t calm her down like I’d been doing at the house. She didn’t want anyone touching her, but the phlebotomist had to draw her blood in order for me to get the answers I wanted. Bahati and I had to hold her down, and that shit had hurt my feelings. Now that the lab had what they needed, I was waiting for that email telling me Shya was mine, and then I’d make the familial introductions. I told the doctor before I left that there better not be any more bullshit with the test results because I was not putting Shya through that shit again.
“And how do you feel about what the results may be, son?” my mama asked, shaking me from my memory of what happened the other day.
“I don’t really know,” I replied truthfully. “I been busy while trying to find a good medium between gettin’ to know the little girl but also not gettin’ attached, but I ain’t gon’ lie. She looks like you, Mama.”
My mother beamed before a small smile settled on her face. “Son, it’s okay to be scared. It’s also okay to not knoweverything. Sometimes, things happen without us understanding the details surrounding it, and sometimes it’s not for us to understand.”
“I hear you, Mama.”
“You always do. But I want you to understand me, Shio. Understand that God makes no mistakes, baby. I won’t ask you any details because that will only make me want to meet her more now that you say she favors me. I’ll find out everything I need to know when she’s crossing my threshold, or I’m crossing yours.”
