When the day came, Patience was buried beside her grandmother.

She felt as if watching her own funeral should’ve affected her more. She had only ever been to one – her mother hadn’t allowed her to attend Owl’s and she hardly remembered her grandmother’s – but she’d seen a few take place during the Lifetime movies that she secretly loved to watch after the sun went down. She didn’t know how to act in person. She’d seen folks crying over the body in movies, but what sense did it make to cry over her own?

She and Owl milled aimlessly about during the wake, taking stock of who was there and who wasn’t.

She apologized to Reverend Kidd for never finishing the bible as he offered his condolences to Shanice and James, stone faced. She told her cousin Beau that the haircut he’d received from a new barber made him look like his forehead was eating his hairline because no one else would, and that he should’ve gone to her father for a cut. She told her aunt that wasn’t really her aunt that she was rude and that everyone could tell she was wearing a wig. Some dry, some glassy, the eyes stared through her all the same.

She hardly listened to the speeches that her family offered her. Her father went last, but he didn’t have much to say. He almost didn’t have the strength to keep moving past the closed, glossy casket when it was his turn to do so, his knees nearly buckling underneath him. Patience looped her arm through his, holding him up. He didn’t feel his wife beside him, nor did he feel Isaiah on his other side, who was smelled of sandalwood instead of weed. The four of them gazed down and a strangled noise squeezed out of James’ throat, like the last bit of toothpaste out of an empty tube.

Before him was not his daughter.

He didn’t see the twenty-year old woman that she had grown to be, nor could he consider the painted body inside to be her. Instead, all that he could visualize was how his hands dwarfed hers when he first held them, how soft but effortlessly powerful they had been in swaying the direction of his life. His nose filled with the sweet scent of shea butter and coconut oil, and he recalled how he had floundered the first time he had tried to teach her to braid her hair when it became evident that Shanice was content with letting her roam with a headful of dry, brittle hair tied back into a pitiful ponytail.

He saw Patience at five, in a bright, tulip yellow dress as she danced away from him on her first day of kindergarten. The need struck him like a sucker punch to the jaw; he needed to see her face. Not the one in the casket, but the one that had idolized him, the one that used to smile so much he would ask her what was wrong with her as a joke. He needed to hear her laugh, hear her arguing with him about something. Anything.

He was only broken out of his revere when Shanice tugged on his arm, reminding him that there were too many eyes watching. He was taking too long; there were other folks waiting to say goodbye. Taking a steadying breath, he shook off her hand, moving on. If she was bothered by it, she didn’t let it show, trailing behind him. Her own tears had left tracks in her makeup. She erased them the first chance that she got to split away, touching up her makeup in the safety of the church’s restroom.

Isaiah struggled to be useful as a pallbearer. He was well out of breath before they reached her grave, and Owl chastised her for making fun of him.

Pastor Rolland said what he had to say. He reminded those left standing to resist the urge to be sad, to celebrate the life that she’d been able to live, to be grateful for the time that they’d been able to share. He assured them that she was returned to God’s loving embrace, and that he took only those that needed taking; if He decided it was her time, then it was her time.

She didn’t see Darius kick a clump of dirt towards the back of the crowd, staining the cuff of his black dress pants. He dipped out just as her coffin grazed the bottom of the hole. She didn’t see That Bum pat her father’s shoulder with something that mimicked sympathy. Instead, she watched her brother.

There was moisture on his face. Little droplets of salty water began to dot and darken the freshly roused soil between his shoes. When she first began to smell the weed that clung to his skin and hair, she’d warned him that it would only work for so long before whatever it was that was bothering him flourished and spilled out. Isaiah wondered how the cold the earth would feel against his skin if he were to jump in after her.

Isaiah shambled off of the bus. From the sidewalk, Patience could see that he was one of the very last to be dropped off, the remaining kids slumped against their seats as they peered listlessly out of the windows. He approached her, and Patience wanted to ask if he had any friends or if he spent the long bus rides like she had at his age, crammed into a corner nursing an R.L Stein book as paper balls flew around her. The mouth of his backpack gaped at her as he passed her and she could see no books inside. Instead, crumpled assignments jutted out and stray pencils jingled at the bottom and Patience thought that they couldn’t have been more different.

She didn’t know how to receive him. She didn’t know if she should have greeted him, or welcomed him with a hug. Rather than either of these things, she grabbed a fistful of his bag and zipped it. “I’m walking you home today. We’re stopping at Family Dollar,” She said awkwardly as they fell into step beside one another.

The walk was no more than five minutes from the bus stop, and in that time Patience tried to understand what exactly about him it was that she hated.

Had he ever actually even done anything to her? Words pressed against the back of her teeth, threatening to seep through the tiny gap between the front two. She didn’t know what shape they would take when they came out. She kept sneaking glances at him.

It was a Monday. She hadn’t actually planned to pick him up from the bus stop until the bellowing of the engine grated on her eardrums and her eyes were watering from the smoke. At four-fifteen in the afternoon, she ought to have already been in bed, pretending to sleep. That wasn’t to say that she hadn’t tried. She looked to her brother again. They hadn’t had a moment to themselves in the four days that had passed since his confession. James made it his business to keep his face hidden. Patience wasn’t sure if it was because of shame or because he just didn’t want to be bothered with the fallout, but she found the answer didn’t matter to her either way. Then there was Shanice.

Isaiah’s voice floated in, faint and wooden. “Can I get some candy?”

She hadn’t even realized they’d arrived. She didn’t have much money; what she had wasn’t even really her money. She’d come across a torn, sad thing of a five-dollar bill at school earlier that day and had planned to save it. All day, it singed a hole in her pocket as she thought of all that she could spend it on. Even if she’d managed to pin down something that she wanted, she found herself unable to say no to his face because she couldn’t stand to look at it for too long.

“You can get one thing. I don’t have that much.”

Patience folded her arms over her chest, trailing behind him. It wouldn’t do to have him lost in the store, even if there was no one looking for him at home. He meandered around the store at a leisurely pace, scanning the half empty shelves as if he didn’t already know what he wanted.

“Has he…” It was hard to say. She hoped the nervousness that rattled about inside her didn’t show. “Has he hit you before?”

As soon as she asked, she hoped that he wouldn’t answer.

Isaiah took his time licking his fingers before he answered, sucking until the orange cheese from his Cheetos was long gone. He then began kicking his feet in and out, the weak rubber of his shoes banging off of the concrete ledge they sat on.

“No. He mostly just don’t talk to me.”

She deflated with relief, slumping back as far as she could without tipping over. That was an answer she could work with. She then sat up straighter.

"Why did you do that around Daddy? You know he don’t play like that."

Isaiah shrugged. “Ion know. Who cares? Why do it matter?"

Patience felt like slapping him upside the head. "I don’t know. And what do you mean, you don’t know? I ain’t ever seen you act like that around him."

She wanted to ask how long he’d known. She hadn’t been able to speak to her father since that day. His treatment of Isaiah suddenly made sense. He never looked directly at him if he could avoid it. When it came to things like report cards and school pictures, James didn’t even care to see Isaiah’s. It was always Shanice that saved them. Regardless of how long Patience thought about it, she couldn’t even remember a time where James had gone out of his way to even speak to Isaiah.

She chewed the bottom of her lip. Tasted blood.

It all seemed so, so unfair. She’d heard stories around school of siblings with different fathers, but they were always through divorce or more savory means. Not from a cheating parent. Her parent. 

She was angry. It was unfair. Isaiah had done nothing to deserve what he’d gotten. She’d learned in psychology class that it was normal for an older sibling to be jealous of the newer, younger one; used to being alone and the sole holder of attention, having to share it was a new experience. She could excuse her own behavior that way and besides, she was making up for it now. But what about her dad? What about her mom?

Neither of them seemed sorry.

Patience threw an arm over her brother, drawing him close so quickly that his head banged into her shoulder.

"I’m gon’ take care of you so don’t even worry about it." She hoped that it came out comforting, but she didn’t look at him to confirm. Instead, she waited, tracking the colors and the count of cars that whizzed by on the street below them.

One blue. Two brown. Three and four, blue and red. The entire rear bumper of the red car was missing.

Finally, Isaiah pushed against her ribs but it was weak. "Whatever. I don’t need nobody to take care of me."

Next Chapter: 30