Page 232 of Kentrell

I was just about to hit call when my phone lit up again…

Mama.

I froze for half a second, my heart doing that little anxious flip it always did whenever she called out the blue.

“Whew… okay, let’s see what this is about,” I mumbled, sitting up straighter as I swiped to answer.

“Hey, Mama…”

“Hey, baby.” My mother’s voice came through soft, almost too soft, like we hadn’t just detonated a bomb and left the pieces scattered for both of us to step over.

“Hey,” I answered, my tone flat, my throat tight.

“You sound tired. You okay?”

I sank deeper into the theater chair, still barefoot, still wrapped in Kentrell’s hoodie, still fighting the lingering nausea from earlier. “I’m fine.”

There was a long pause. The kind where I knew she was deciding which version of herself to be.

“I was just calling to check in,” she finally said, her voice full of that careful mama-tone she used when she was tiptoeing around me. “See how you’re doing out there. You eating? Sleeping alright?”

That did it.

“Ma,” I said, sharper than I meant, my words cutting through the air like glass. “We not gon’ act like nothing happened.”

Silence.

I waited. No spin. No sidestep. No soft landing. Not this time.

“You right,” she finally said, voice smaller now. “We not.”

I crossed my arms, my jaw tight, every muscle in my body bracing for whatever came next.

She took a slow, shaky breath like she was finally ready to peel back years of varnish and just… tell me the truth. “I wanted to tell you for so long, Zoe. But every time I looked at you… I saw everything I wanted you to be. Everything I wasn’t.”

That stopped me cold.

My heart clenched as her words landed, one after the other, like weights settling on my chest.

“Do you know what it’s like to grow up in chaos?” she asked, her voice drifting somewhere between tired and haunted. “To belong to the streets before you even knew your own worth? I did things I can’t take back. Things I thought I had to do to survive.”

My throat burned.

“And then I had you. And you were… light. You were mine. And for once, I could build something clean. So I buried everything dirty. Hid it all in the closet and prayed it wouldn’t come knockin’.”

I closed my eyes, resting my head against the pillow behind me, trying to hold myself together even as I felt the cracks widening.

She continued, voice softer, more broken now. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to look at me different. I didn’t want you to see me the way the world saw me… when I was just Pokie.”

“Pokie?” The name barely left my lips. I’d never heard anyone call her that. Not once.

“It was the name my mama called me… but Kenny heard it, liked it, and used it every time somebody saw me and wanted me.”

I froze, my hands shaking as I gripped the phone tighter, tears burning hot behind my eyes.

Prostitute. She was telling me…

I couldn’t picture it. No matter how hard I tried, my brain rejected it like bad data.

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