Page 6 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

We stayed like that until the room stopped feeling so much like a room where something had ended, and started feeling, just barely, like a room two people were sitting in together.

The doorbell rang at nine in the morning, and I knew before Amai even got up who it was.

Mama didn’t wait for anybody to answer properly. By the time Amai reached the door, she was already halfway through it, a Crock-Pot balanced on one hip like it weighed nothing, her purse dangling off her elbow, wearing the same head wrap she always threw on when she meant business and didn’t have time to be cute about it.

“Raven gave me the address,” she said, like that explained everything. Like that was the only sentence required for a woman to show up unannounced at a man’s house at nine in the morning, carrying a Crock-Pot full of God knows what. “Don’t nobody need to ask me how I found it. I found it. And I cussed them muthafuckas at the gate out.”

She set the pot down on the counter without asking where the counter was, like she already knew, like Amai’s kitchen belonged to her the second she crossed the threshold, and then she turned around and looked at me.

I don’t know what she saw. I hadn’t looked in a mirror since yesterday. But whatever it was, it broke something open in her face before it broke something open in mine. She crossed the room in three steps and wrapped her arms around me so tight I felt my spine pop.

I didn’t mean to cry. I told myself in the shower last night that I was done crying, that I’d used up whatever I had, that there wasn’t more where that came from. I was wrong. It came up out of me like something that had been waiting for permission, and Mama just held on, one hand flat against the back of my head the way she used to when I was small enough for that to fix things.

“I know, baby,” she said into my hair. “I know.”

She didn’t say it would be okay. I noticed that. She didn’t say God has a plan yet and didn’t rush to hand me the thing that was supposed to make it better. She just held me and let me shake and rubbed my back in slow circles until the worst of it passed, and I was just breathing hard against her shoulder instead of sobbing against it.

When she finally pulled back, she held my face in both hands and looked at me the way she used to check for fever.

“You eat anything today?”

“Mama—”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“No,” I admitted. “But I just woke up, Ma.”

“Mm-hmm.” She let go of my face and turned around like the matter was settled, because to her it was. She lifted the lid off the Crock-Pot, and the smell hit the kitchen all at once—chicken and okra, the good kind, cooked down slow with rice already made in a separate container she pulled out of a grocery bag like she was unpacking a magic trick. “Get you a bowl.”

I got a bowl. There wasn’t a version of this morning where I didn’t.

She was scooping a second bowl before I even sat down, and I watched her carry it across the kitchen to where Amai was standing by the island, arms crossed, watching all of this unfold with the particular stillness of a man who didn’t know what his role was supposed to be in somebody else’s mama taking over his kitchen.

“You too,” Mama said, holding the bowl out to him.

Amai blinked. “I’m alright, Ms. Delphine.”

“I didn’t ask if you was alright. I said eat.” She didn’t move the bowl, didn’t lower it, just stood there holding it out like she had all day, like she’d stand there until Christmas if that’s what it took. “No exceptions in my house. This ain’t my house, but you understand me.”

Something moved across his face—I couldn’t name it exactly, but it wasn’t resistance. He took the bowl.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Mm-hmm.”

We ate at the island, the three of us, mostly quiet at first. The stew was good the way her food was always good, thick and peppery, the kind that filled you up somewhere past your stomach. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I was three bites in, and my hands had stopped shaking.

Mama watched us eat the way she used to watch me and my sisters eat as kids, like the act of it was proof of something. Proof we were still functioning. Proof the world hadn’t actually ended, no matter how much it felt like it had.

“I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it don’t hurt,” she said eventually to both of us, not just me. “Because it does. And I’m not gonna tell you there was a reason, because I don’t know the reason, and anybody who tells you they do is lying to make themselves feel better, not you.” She set her spoon down. “But I do believe God don’t make mistakes. I believe that with my whole chest. Don’t mean it don’t hurt like hell. Just means it wasn’t an accident.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t ready to believe it yet, not really, but I let her say it, because I understood she needed to say it as much as I needed to hear it, and there was room in the kitchen for both those things to be true at once—the hurt and the faith, neither one canceling the other.

Amai was quiet beside me, his spoon moving slower than mine, and I noticed he wasn’t looking at either of us. He was looking at the bowl like it required his full attention, and I understood that too. Some men needed somewhere to put their eyes when the feelings got too big for their face.

“She’s still here,” Mama said, nodding toward my stomach without making a show of it. “That’s not nothing. I know it don’t feel like enough today. Might not feel like enough for a long while. But you carrying a whole living person in there, and she’s gonna need you whole, not in pieces. So, you eat, and you cry when you need to cry, and you don’t rush none of it. You hear me?”