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“My baby not no joke, bruh,” he cracked a small smile. “You really ain’t shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yea, you was doing allat stunting like you couldn’t go a few hours without Louri…but all it took was a trip to Miami and now you acting brand new. See, that’s that fake love I’ma have to teach my baby to stay away from.”

“Nigga, I’m her mama,” I laughed. “You can’t tell her to stay away from me!”

“Shittt, you better ask Rahesha about that.”

“Y’all will kiss and make up soon.”

“You really think that?”

“Yea. Shit, we should’ve dropped Louri off at her house,” I said, appearing rather serious when I was anything but. It was my turn to rage bait him.

He stared at me blankly, prompting me to bust into laughter.

“Man, stop playing with my child.”

“All jokes aside,” I tittered. “I don’t think she’d do anything to hurt, Alouri.”

“Neither do I. She not crazy.”

“Right, but I don’t think she’d be evil enough to hurt a child. And I know you don’t think that either.”

“How do you know what I think?”

“Would you let your younger siblings stay with her if you thought she had that type of hate in her heart?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I thought that or not. I’d have no rights to take them from her based on what I thought.”

“But you wouldn’t just roll over and leave it alone. Would you?”

“You know I wouldn’t,” he admitted, before licking his lips. “I know Rahesha would take good care of Alouri. I’ll give her that…she’s good with babies.”

“Shit, she outta be,” I laughed.

“Right…she’s at her best parent wise when she has a small baby to cling to. It makes her feel important and needed. But when the toddler stage roles around her parenting gets lazy. Don’t get me wrong, she stays on top of it with keeping everybody up appearance wise. She also takes them everywhere they need to go from school to extracurricular activities. But she don’t really pour into my siblings…and that’s probably for the best.”

“Don’t say that,” I giggled. “I kinda feel bad though.”

“About what?”

“Your mama has texted and called us multiple times apologizing and begging to meet Louri, but she still hasn’t. Then she be up under every picture we post of her and she reposts everything.”

Social media would have the world thinking she was an active grandmother. She’d comment things like “she’s such a chocolate barbie like her Honey!” or “Hey Honey’s baby!” Just yesterday she reposted a picture of her that I’d posted on my IG story and said “Honey loves you Alouri!” Yea, she’d dubbed herself as “Honey” over grandma. I only knew this because my mom’s messy self always sent me screenshots because she was still friends with that lady on Facebook. At first I felt like the social media stuff was performative and a small part of me still felt that way. Rahesha was an attention whore and that was never going to change. However, I felt like she genuinely did have love for our daughter and that she hated being left out. Not only because she’d reached out multiple times begging and pleading, but Aneesah recently informed us that she had broken down into tears when she learned that Alouri had arrived a few weeks early and nobody told her. She found out when her kids returned from the hospital and Aspen told her that she wasn’t welcomed up there. I thought her ignorant ass would still try to come, but her spirit must have been really broken because she hadn’t been crossing any boundaries. She wasn’t hounding Armias for favors or asking for money nor did she pop up at our home. The handful of times she reached out it was about her seeing Alouri, but her son had put his foot down about that. After Christmas, I was team fuck Rahesha, but now I felt like maybe we were being a little too cruel.

“And it’s gon’ stay like that for a while.”

“For a while, huh?” I smirked. “So you are willing to kiss and make up with your mom?”

“I don’t wanna be at odds with that lady. It’s actually easier to be on the same page with her with my younger siblings in the mix. But the days of me tolerating her bullshit because of them are a wrap. So yea, we can make up but that’s dependent on if she really changes or not. And her words don’t mean shit. I want to see some action.”

“I think we have been seeing action…you didn’t pay any of her bills this month and she didn’t hit you up to curse you out. That’s growth if you ask me. I don’t know,” I held my hands up.

“You need to make up your mind how you feel about my mama. One minute you’re saying fuck her, the next you’re defending her.”

“You’s a damn lie. I don’t like Rahesha and I don’t know if I ever will. I also still feel like you’re justified in cutting her off. But I also think we can let her meet Louri. I was never really against her being around the baby. I just decided I wasn’t fooling with her anymore because she got too many issues.”