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Giving her a salute, I said, “Sure thing, boss. Um, is your father-in-law going to be there because that would be an added bonus.”
“Possibly…with his wife.”
“I’ll be there early, then. All I’m tryna do is look.”
VANN
I loved music, and I don’t mean that in a casual way. I mean it in a fanatical, spiritual, vital way.
My love for the art form found me early when my grandmother, Mama Yura,would sit in her rocking chair with me in her arms while singing along to the music on the radio—soul Mondays through Fridays, blues on Saturdays, and Gospel on Sundays. This was before Sharla was even thought of, before reality snaked its painful path into my consciousness. My mom was young, the scope of her gift wasn’t widely known. and Mama Yuma doted on me like I washerchild.
I loved it, too.
Her favorites were Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. So they became my favorites, too. My mother was young when she had me, just eighteen, and in addition to trying to learn to be my caregiver, she shouldered the extra burden of nursing a broken heart. My father left her, left the whole county, shortly before I was born, and for a long time, she was lost. Even as a small child I felt that, but I had Mama Yura and she deftly mothered me, my mom, and Uncle Rabbit, who was a young man in his twenties at the time and my favorite playmate.
Because of Mama Yura, music became a way for me to escape and I never would’ve thought a time would come when it didn’t bring me joy. Well, that day had come months ago attached to a rare cancer diagnosis—retinoblastoma. Shit, I couldn’t even drive with the radio on. I didn’t want to be pulled out of my misery. I didn’t want the comfort because that comfort would be temporary. It would be like applying a band aid to a gunshot wound. I had cancer, a form that almost exclusively affects children when I was in my damn forties. I lost an eye. My life was forever changed, full stop. There was no comfort to be had for any of that. There was no fixing it, either. Yes, the doctor claimed the cancer was gone, having been contained in the one eye without metastasizing to any surrounding tissues, but so was my got damn eye! A prosthesis might make my appearance more palatable, but it didn’t give me back the other half of my vision. It…life had screwed me over and I was satisfied to wallow in my sorrow. I didn’t need comfort no matter how hard my mother or sister tried to give it to me,
See, all of the love and support they liberally gave me made me feel like something or someone to be pitied, like an injured stray dog or a lost little kid crying for his mommy. I wasn’t that. I was a man who lived life on his own terms, ran the streets of the whole world, and did as I pleased with whomever pleased me. I was...whole. Now? I wasn’t sure what I was other than a one-eyed monster.
And I was fucking angry about it.
I was thankful that while Sharla doted on me to an extent, she didn’t overdo it. She had a family and a job, so for the most part, she left me to my own devices—siting in the cottage on her property doing absolutely nothing but thinking and sulking until someone called me. This time, the someone was Messiah.
“London!” he boomed into the phone, his voice sounding rusty.
“What the fuck is wrong with your voice?” I replied.
“Damn, hi to you, too. I had a show last night, remember?”
“And you overdid it? What I tell you about that shit? You looking for longevity or not? Stop straining your damn voice.”
“Um, first of all, I been doing this shit a long time, London, long before I hired your ass. And second, it was my mom’s birthday party, a party you were invited to. Had you been there, you could’ve reined me in.”
I sighed. “I forgot.”
“Stop lying. You just didn’t come because you left your mom’s house to become a damn hermit in your sister’s house.”
“Her guest house.”
“Whatever. You thought any more about counseling? Something? Because that one call you did with me showed ain’t shit wrong with your mental. You just gotta move on.”
Says the nigga with two eyes, I thought, but I didn’t respond verbally.
“You know you still pretty, right? That one gray eye gon’ pull more pussy than my two brown ones.”
I had to laugh, and I was pissed about it. “Yo, I hate your ass. You know that?”
“Uh-huh. Two weeks. You got two weeks to get your shit together and be my manager again.”
“Or what?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowed.
“Or I’ma come move into that guest house with you and worry the shit out of you twenty-four seven. I’ll hit you later.”
Then he hung up, and I just sat on the side of the bed, shaking my head.
I’d decided to take an afternoon nap before having to brace up and have dinner with Sharla and her family—something she nagged me into doing every damn night—when a knock came at the front door. Sighing, I left the bedroom, stepping through the cozy living room to open the door. Jovani stood on the other side, blocking the view of the swimming pool and all sunlight.
“Hey, man,” he began. “Your sister wanted me to tell you we’re having a little get together this evening instead of regular dinner. She said, and I quote, ‘Your ass still needs to be there and don’t be late.’”
