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“Though it’s only been over phone conversations, I feel like I’ve already met your grandfather. He’s… he’s a character.”
“He gon’ get his ass beat if he keeps threatening me. He’s banned me from his house until I make shit right with you. Sometimes, I wonder if it was really my father who was bipolar and it just rubbed off on my mo… my mother.”
He choked on the last few words.
“Sorry,” he apologized.
“For what, baby?”
“I try not to even think about that shit, but lately, it’s been just right here.” He motioned toward his head. “Just right here.”
His parents’s deaths were a sore subject for him. I couldn’t help but wonder if all that was happening around him had triggered the trauma he’d buried deep inside.
“That’s okay. Death has been a big part of your life. It’s taken away the people you’ve loved most. If you think about them or even Anna every day, the world should understand. I understand. We’re human, Malachi. You can’t just blink and it all goes away.
“You’ll hurt some days. You’ll smile some days. You’ll cry some days. You’ll celebrate some days. Grief doesn’t have a day, month, or hour. Grief doesn’t have a timeframe. There’s no limit to grief. It knows no boundaries.
“It’s big as it is small. It’s hard as it is healing. It’s all the things and it’s a natural part of life. I’ll forever give you space to accommodate it in your life. For your parents. For Anna. For everything death has taken from you.”
“But it’s given me so much,” he added, rubbing my belly.
“It’ll keep giving you more.”
I kissed his lips as the wind from the bedroom rushed inside again.
“Mommy? Daddy?” A half-asleep Aussie slowly walked inside.
“Yes, baby?”
“I’m hungry.”
Sleep had helped her work up an appetite.
“Me, too,” Malachi yelled through the shower.
“Chinese takeout? Veggie rice with extra veggies on the side?” I called out the dish I’d been craving for the last few days.
“AndFrozen?” She yawned.
“AndFrozen, baby.”
She didn’t watch much television, butFrozenhappened to be a favorite whenever she was in front of a screen.
“Let us finish our bath and then I’ll order our food. Would you like to get the pillows ready for us in the front room?”
“How?”
“Just grab them off the couch and toss them on the floor. We’ll build us a little pit and have a big ole sleep over.”
“Really?”
“Really!”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll be in here waiting.”
“Alright. We won’t be long, baby.”
“Close the door,” Malachi insisted.
