Twenty minutes.

That’s all Isaiah gave himself in the stillness of the morning before it all became too much and he reached for the tiny plastic bag of green that he kept at the bottom of his underwear drawer. He had long since run out of his good rolling paper and couldn’t muster up the motivation to go out and buy more; that would require tracking down his dealer, and he didn’t feel like seeing the sympathy laid out on his face for all to see. Instead, he used the paper from a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, wrapping the crushed buds delicately so as not to tear it before lighting up one of the ends, inhaling as deeply as he could before his lungs felt like they would explode.

It took a while for the high to take hold of him no matter how many hits he took and so whilst he waited, he was forced to endure the wait with his own mind.

Above him, his ceiling fan spun aggressively, threatening to free itself completely from the wall whilst somehow not creating any breeze. The sound of the blades churning the air irritated him, but his speaker had broken the night before and he didn’t have the money to replace it. He rolled over onto his side, clutching his pillow to his head as he faced his closed door.

Saturday. It was Saturday. If he turned on the television that rested on top of the cluttered surface of his dresser, he would find that the Saturday morning cartoons were in full swing, that he was probably missing a highly anticipated hour long block of Looney Tunes or at least a half hours’ worth of Scooby Doo – the Saturday cartoons were never as fulfilling as the Sunday ones - but he couldn’t seem to muster up the desire to bring himself to search through the thin layer of debris and clothes that covered the entire area of his floor to find the remote to turn it on. By this time, he knew had Patience been around, she would’ve already barged her way into his room with a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, shoved him out of the way so that she could take a seat on his bed, and turned on the television for him.

He flipped back onto his back, then swung his legs off the side of the bed.

He used to hate it when she refused to knock, but at that moment he would’ve given anything to see her come through his door. He imagined her commenting on the way his room smelled, how the distinct scent of weed clung to his clothes, hair, and skin, just barely covering the fetid smell of an unwashed body, and they would spend no less than ten minutes arguing about it whilst their cereal turned soggy in the milk.

Shaking his head, he took another hit from the blunt. His hands searched the floor beside his feet until he found the white no longer white wire he was looking for and tugged on it. His phone slowly emerged from underneath a pile of old school papers. Failed Algebra and Biology tests stared up at him, marred with red ink that bled with the expectant disappointment of his teachers. He barely glanced at the illuminated screen before rising unsteadily to his feet, shoving it into the pocket of his basketball shorts. For a moment, he simply stood there, holding his breath as he tried to listen to what the house wanted to tell him.

As far as he knew, although James was once more living with them, he spent as little time in the house as possible. Isaiah could only recall running into him twice in several days since the news of her death descended over the house like a black fog. He wasn’t the one that he was worried about anyways; James was content to act as if Isaiah wasn’t there at all as long as he made sure to speak when they met. It was his own mother that he was concerned about. Just because he couldn’t hear her didn’t mean that she wasn’t around; if her door was open across the hall, she would see him as soon as he came out of his room and he wasn’t ready to start with her. If she was sitting in the kitchen, and he wouldn’t be ready to start with her then either.

He heard what sounded like water sloshing around in the kitchen sink and his heart dropped. Briefly, he considered climbing back into bed, but his bladder chose then to assert itself. Steeling himself as best as he could, he exited the safety of his room. The door across the hall was open, left so widely ajar that he could see the crumpled sheets on the queen-sized bed, the comforter left in a heap on the floor beside it. The blinds were drawn shut, casting the room in the sort of monochromatic melancholy atmosphere that seemed to belong more in a silent film of the early twentieth century rather than in someone’s real household. He stared for longer than he should’ve, his mind attempting to decipher exactly what it was about the picture that made his scalp itch. It was on the tip of his tongue – something about the bed - when his mother rounded the corner.

“Ain’t nothing in there for you, Isaiah. Get in here and do these dishes, I’m sick a yo’ ass just sitting in that room all day.” There was no bite behind her words, but she said it in the tone that only mothers could, the one that was somehow pleading with him not to fight her whilst also concurrently daring him to do so. The little boy in him, the one that would bend over backwards if his mother asked, took charge, steering his bare feet towards the kitchen where the cold tiles styled to look like wood panels startled him into a state of awareness long enough for him to realize what it was that was bothering him; he hadn’t seen her bed unmade in years. Every morning, even during the stint of time when the electricity had been cut off, she started the day by re-tucking the sheets underneath the heavy mattress, straightening the wrinkles and folds in her comforter until it was presentable before finally topping off the whole thing with a set of matching decorative pillows that, when she settled in for the night, lived on the armchair in the corner so that James couldn’t flatten them. There had only been one other time he’d come home and that bed hadn’t been made.

The water spat out of the sink in irregular bursts, cold, warm, then hot enough to scald the tips of his fingers before he snatched them back. Shanice had taught the both of her children that only hot water was sufficient enough to cut through the grime left behind on their dishes, that if when you finished and your hands weren’t the slightest bit red then you hadn’t really washed the dishes at all. There was already food floating in the water before the sink was even full, and Isaiah did his best to bypass his own disgust as it brushed against his skin. His mind was gone before he’d even picked up the first skillet.

A glance over his shoulder revealed a twelve-year-old version of himself hesitating in the doorway to the kitchen, not much different save for a few feet of height and a few inches of locked hair.

Just like the bed, the younger him couldn’t tell exactly what it was that was wrong with what he was seeing. It wasn’t uncommon to come home to his mother cooking in the kitchen or laughing on the phone about something that was grown folks talk and therefore something that he was not allowed to know. In this particular moment that version of him lived in, she wasn’t doing either. She barely reacted when he crept in, and he felt his skin dot with goosebumps. A full minute passed before she acknowledged him, and for each second that ticked by, he could feel the oxygen in the room slip down the drain.

“I got a call from yo’ counselor today,” She started, and it was then that he saw the belt sitting at just eye level on the kitchen table. He scraped the cobwebs out of the corners of his mind for the deed that warranted a whooping but came away with nothing, which only made it worse.

“You got them white folks up at that school thinking something wrong with you,” Her tone told him that he had done something wrong, regardless of whether or not he knew what it was. Tears stung his eyes, and it was all he could do not to start bawling right there. That would have made it worse. With a willpower he didn’t know he had, he stayed quiet, opening and closing his fists deep within the pockets of his shorts as he waited for her to continue.

His mama turned away from the table then and kneeled onto the floor so that she could look him in the eye. When he tried to move away, she gripped his shoulders so tight it hurt, and he could smell the hot sauce on her breath from whatever meal she had consumed earlier in the day.

“Do you want to be taken away from me?” She asked him abruptly. He automatically shook his head without even considering the question.

“No, Mama.”

“Well, if you go back into that counselor’s office and tell them white folks it’s something wrong with you, they gon’ take you away from me faster than you can say sorry. They gon’ blame what’s wrong with you on me and yo daddy, and then where you gon’ be? I got news for you, it sho’ll ain’t gon be nowhere good as here.” The anger had drained from her face, but he didn’t relax his body until she shoved him in the direction of his room with a promise of violence if she saw him again that night.

When Patience came for him hours later, he was curled into a tight ball in the center of his bed beneath his sheets. He didn’t know right away whether it was her or Mama because neither of them made a habit of knocking before they entered, but he was still upset enough that he gambled on the hope that it was his sister. The hardwood floors creaked as she made her way from the door to his bed. Someone whimpered, the sound disproportionately loud in the quiet room. He squeezed his eyes shut, receding further into himself when he realized that it was he who had made the sound.

“What’s wrong witchu?”

Tension seeped from his bones at the sound of her voice. It took him longer than he was proud of, but he managed to pull himself together enough to dig a small hole in the blanket fortress he’d created and peered through. His room was steeped in darkness; the sun had already sunk below the horizon outside, and he could barely make out the bright yellow label on the twist and lock gel she must have placed on his nightstand. He felt an almost instantaneous relief at seeing her face rather than their mother’s; if she had found him still crying over what she more than likely considered to be an insignificant event, he was almost sure she would’ve made use of the belt.

“Nothing,” He lied, sitting up as he dragged his sleeved arm across his face to clear away some of the snot that had crusted around his nose.

Patience had grimaced. “What the hell I tell you about lying to me? If you lie to anybody else in this house, don’t lie to me, Isaiah. Mama told me what happened already.”

His face burned and he pulled his legs up to his chest, tucking his chin low. “I ain’t even do nothing.”

It was as true a statement as any to him. He had replayed the conversation with the older woman over and over in his head in an attempt to suss out whatever it was that had gotten him in trouble. The softness of the flesh that hung from her upper arms had disarmed him, the smile on her thin lips so gentle it was difficult to look at. He hadn’t lied, he hadn’t cursed, he hadn’t done a single thing he could think of that earned him the welcome home he had received.

The bed sank as she sat next to him, releasing a sigh that seemed too big to have just consisted of the air stored in her lungs. He had only seen their mama do that in the aftermath of a screaming match with their daddy, the ones that seemed to shake the foundations of the house and ended with him with spending the remainder of the evening outside of it; she would sit at the flimsy kitchen table after the front door had slammed shut behind him, a cigarette burning between her fingers and heave one of those sighs. He wondered what place that sound had there in his room.

“Let me tell you something,” He gazed up at the side of her face intently, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. The skin on his face felt tight and uncomfortable. The knot in his stomach clenched.

“You ever got any more problems, you come talk to me, okay?” She reached around him awkwardly, rubbing his lower back in what was supposed to be a soothing manner. When he slapped at it whilst attempting to rein in the hiccups that shook his small frame, she shoved him away and reached for the twisting gel.

“Whatever. Since you all big and bad now, do yo’ own hair.”

To him, the four years between them were never as wide as they were then, and they only seemed to grow from that moment on.

The cutting smell of Comet powder brought him back to reality; the sink was empty, and his hands throbbed dully, his high long gone. He was supposed to help clean, he knew that much, but he couldn’t seem to pick up his own feet; his mother was right there, but he couldn’t bring himself to reach for her. His tongue felt too thick in his mouth.

Even when Patience had been stretched between final exams at college and a job to pay for it, the Patience he’d known still made time to call him in the crevice of time between classes and a shift. He’d finally managed to swallow his disbelief that it could happen to his sister and was tasting the first acidic, embittered notes of grief. He was used to the feel of mud in his veins after sixteen years of life, but as of late it felt as if the substance had solidified and taken on the properties of concrete, and there was absolutely no one left to show him how to carry the extra weight.

Isaiah was always hated.

It began with the swishing of Shanice’s stomach that later erupted in explosive morning sickness, rather than an absolute confirmation that was a piss slick pregnancy test clutched between her fingers in the restrictively tiny restroom of her mother’s house as it had with Patience. Denial had refused her the opportunity to run to the drug store to pick one up. It was easy to pass off the sickness as one of those bugs that was going around at the time, or even food poisoning, especially when she watched Patience stumble around the front room in the twilight of the evening; she had been a notoriously easy baby, and not once during her first pregnancy could she remember vomiting with the ferocity and frequency that Isaiah demanded.

There was never a question on whether or not to disclose her pregnancy to James; it did not miss his observation when she shifted away as he reached for her, or how easily the switch blade that was her tongue cut him from seemingly no provocation. In those first months, he lay awake beneath the sheets in the early hours of the morning and listened as she heaved in the bathroom across the hall with a sluggish realization.

Instinctually, he was elated; if Patience only asked, he would have plucked the moon from it’s home among the stars. To this new baby, he would gift the sun so that his two babies could have a matching pair, even if it meant that he had to spend all day at the barbershop to do so. In the rare moments that she allowed it, he was especially gentle as he pressed into her, caressing the barely noticeable curve in her stomach with wonder. She was five months along when he could no longer wait for her to tell him herself, and after he put his daughter to bed, he approached her in the kitchen as unassumingly as he could. He found her staring at an unopened pack of Blue Kings longingly, her thumbs crinkling the cellophane; the sound continued to disrupt his peace of mind even as he sat down across from her, and for a while, neither of them said a thing.

“You pregnant, I hope you ain’t stupid enough to smoke those.” It was a statement, not a question. The trance was shattered, and she slowly glared at him with a heat that could’ve burned two perfectly circular holes into his head if she had her way.

“And how in the hell do you know that James?” She snapped. James did his best to refrain from taking the bait, crossing his ankles underneath the table. She hadn’t denied it, and so that meant he had to be right.

“You must think I’m stupid.”

“Think?”

His eyes narrowed, but again, he let it slide off of him. Her attitude was nothing against the light feeling that bloomed within his chest, like he could get up and dance on the table right then and there. “Girl, what the hell crawled up yo’ ass and died? Why I’m the only one happy we having another baby?”

“You ain’t the one that gotta push it out, nigga. Don’t tell me to be happy, dammit.” He didn’t recognize the hostility that twisted her lips into a sneer; no matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t recall a single time he’d seen such an expression on her face. The smile that had tugged at the corners of his lips fell and he stared into her face.

He knew that she hadn’t been exactly thrilled to learn of her pregnancy with Patience, but this was on an entirely new level of meanness. There had to have been something else wrong, something that he couldn’t see, something that she wasn’t telling him. It had taken her a while, but he had thought that she had warmed up to parenthood. He recalled the smiles that had gradually appeared with more frequency when it was her turn to airplane spoonfuls of mushy, foul smelling baby food into Patience’s toothless mouth, and even she couldn’t resist squealing when Patience had taken her first steps on chubby legs into her father’s waiting arms, who scooped her up and tossed her into the air as if she was weightless. She’d been happy too. There was no doubt about it.

Born in the time before she could truly grasp the slipperiness that was memory, Patience was only able to recall snippets of the fallout; whereas the arguments had previously fallen to few and far between, they soon began to occur again every week, then every other day, then every day, and finally every hour that they were together. If she pressed herself, flashes of shattering glass, crying, and yelling hinted at the tumultuous battleground that was her home for months; on more than one occasion, she could remember the way her father’s dark eyes shined as he hurriedly stuffed a set of pajamas into a plastic grocery bag and drove her to her grandmother’s house as if someone were on their tail the entire ride there. At first, they were about nothing at all; why you piss all over the toilet seat? Why you ain’t throw out the damn jug of juice if you was finished with it? Why you leave yo’ damn drawls on the floor like the hamper ain’t even there? You think I’m yo’ maid or something? All questions hurled at him whilst Patience hid within her own body, turning the television in the front room as loud as it could go.

When he walked her to the bus stop in the morning, her father was unable to meet the gazes of the early risers that sat on their porches with the knowledge that they were likely discussing his marital problems behind their doors when they went inside.

His time spent around the house dwindled, whilst her time at her grandmother’s increased exponentially; she kept a tin of caramels on hand and her voice never rose into a high pitched scream as her mother’s had a tendency to do, and so she didn’t mind. Tiny as she was, there was no way for Patience to see the way that her father’s shoulders began to bow with the weight of her constant attacks until the day that Isaiah came; her mother’s lips were a padlock on the vault of secrets that bounced around within the walls of her mind, and if Isaiah himself hadn’t been the culmination of them, Patience wasn’t sure that she would’ve ever spoken them aloud.

Next Chapter: 19