She held on for a long time before stepping back, her tired eyes scanning my face. “You hungry?”
“I’m good.”
She nodded. “It’s been a while.”
Guilt settled over me like a thick, heavy fog.
Daddy was in his usual place in the living room, lounging in his recliner, the TV playing at a low volume so as not to irritate him. He looked up when I walked in, his lips pressing into a hard line, his greeting a singular nod.
I rushed over to hug him anyway. He used to be so animated. So affectionate. But that all changed when Revere died.
I sank onto the couch as the weight of their grief pressed down on me. But the longer we sat in silence, the more I realized it wasn’t just them that made me sad.It was this house. It wasn’t a family home anymore. Just a gaping void Rev’s absence had left behind.
I didn’t feel his absence at the Omega house. There, I felt hispresence. Joy. Warmth. Nostalgia for the good times. His aura and energy were powerful there, filling the space in a way that comforted me.
But here? It was the opposite.
“How’s work?” Mama said.
Small talk. Okay. I guess that was all she could manage.
“Work’s fine. Same old foolishness.”
Mama nodded. “You still talking to that boy…what was his name?”
“Samar. And, no. He’s blocked.”
Not that he'd done anything wrong. He was a perfectly nice young man, but there had been no spark. No desire. Not like what I had with my guys. Not even close.
I could see it in Mama's eyes, the strong desire to dig deeper into my love life. She wanted to know if I had someone, or if I was all alone in this world with nobody to lean on. If there was anybody looking after me now that my brother wasn’t here to do it.
I couldn’t be honest, so I said nothing at all.
I cleared my throat, hesitating before I shifted the conversation.
“Are you guys okay?”
Silence, then my mother’s tears and my instant regret.
“I just don’t understand,” she wailed. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
I had no answers. None I could share, anyway.
So I just sat there, my throat tight, my nails pressing into the skin on my palm. Daddy stared at the TV like he wasn’t listening, but his body was taut. His eyes glassy.
Mama snatched a tissue out of the holder on the coffee table, and I wondered how many of them she had planted throughout the house just in case she broke down in an inconvenient place and couldn’t make it to the bathroom.
This was depressing.
I excused myself before I had my own breakdown, retreating up the stairs and down the hallway.
Revere’s room was exactly how he left it the day he went off to college.
Glossy magazine cutouts of pretty black girls in bikinis covered one wall. A Jay ZBlueprintalbum cover hung over his desk, while a life-sized Michael Jordan poster stared intently at me from the wall next to the closet. G-Unit and Roc-A-Fella took up residence on the wall opposite the bed. Several car mags with curled edges lay stacked up on his nightstand.
I trailed a finger over his red comforter—he’d always loved that color, so it felt like fate that he ended up pledging Omega Theta. I smiled at the empty rack on the floor. It was where he kept his millions of pairs of Jordans and Air Force Ones, which he meticulously cleaned every night with a toothbrush when he took them off after a long day at school.
A boombox. CD cases. An Xbox near the small TV on the dresser. Old controllers and DVDs. It was like a time capsule, only we never buried it. It was available, and open like a wound.