Her face contorted in utter confusion as she slipped her hand out of my grip. “Who are you?”
 
 “It’s Aaliyah. Your daughter.”
 
 “I have a daughter?” She looked around me at Brenda with eyes full of so much confusion that it broke my heart. “Brenda, you never told me that I had a daughter.”
 
 This was what I hated about dementia the most. I knew so much about the disease, but every time she remembered someone she had just recently met, before she could even remember me, it still broke my heart.
 
 “Yes, I have Ethel,” Brenda told her softly.
 
 “Where am I?” she asked Brenda.
 
 I cringed and sighed. “Shit.”
 
 My mother frowned and gestured at me. “Listen to this girl’s mouth. No daughter of mine would talk like that.”
 
 “Mama, please,” I begged with tears filling my eyes.
 
 But I knew that there was no use. She wouldn’t remember me. Not today.
 
 As if I wasn’t already frustrated enough, as my mother talked in a delusional way with Brenda, I noticed red marks around her neck that I feared had come from Rah but prayed that they hadn’t. Either way, she wouldn’t be able to tell me today.
 
 “Brenda, let me talk to you outside.”
 
 I walked out without saying anything else to either her or my mother. I stood outside of my mother’s door pacing with my arms folded across my chest. I was trying real hard not to lose my mind. These were the people that I needed to entrust my mother with until I could afford to take care of her myself. The last thing I needed to do was piss them off. But I was ready to lay hands on every one of these staff members.
 
 As soon as I saw Brenda, I checked her through gritted teeth. “The only person on the list to see my mother is me and her sister, and that is for a fucking reason–”
 
 “Aaliyah, he–”
 
 I was past reasoning at the moment. I cut her off, still seething, “Make sure that your receptionist knows that no one is to visit my mother unless their name is on that very short list. Understood?”
 
 She looked so hurt and offended. I had never been unpleasant to her or anyone else in this place. But as I thought of what Rah had done to others that he supposedly loved, I knew that there were no limits to what he would do to anyone else. Just the thought of it had me so pissed that I just walked away from Brenda’s confusion and hurt. I walked right past my mother’s room too. I no longer had the patience for the visit I had initially come for.
 
 I charged towards the door. On my way through the exit, I put the hood of my North Face over my head. I was hiding from the cold and Rah. As I rushed towards my car, I feared that hewas sitting outside somewhere watching me. I tore open the driver’s side door, wondering how much longer this shit was going to go on. This was the one place that I thought I could come and not worry about him seeing me. But apparently, my mother would have to go without seeing me for a while.
 
 KAHLANI
 
 “Right there, Moses,” I panted.
 
 “Right there?”
 
 I smiled, knowing that he was playing games. He knew that he was hitting that spot. But I went ahead and stroked his ego. “Ooooo, yes. Right fucking there.”
 
 I arched my back further. My face was buried into the couch cushion. Moses was behind me, holding on tight to my waist as he murdered this pussy.
 
 Ever since he got out of the hospital, I couldn’t keep him off me. I wasn’t mad, though. It was as if his near-death experience had sparked a fire in our relationship. Our love was all the way turned up now.
 
 After a few more minutes of his slow, long, deep strokes, Moses was cumming.
 
 “Arrrrrrgh! Fuck!” He pulled out of me, and I could feel him releasing on my ass cheek. I sighed with relief, finally relieved of that beautiful punishment. Moses’ dick was fat andlong. You had to be a big girl to take all of it. I loved it and was scared of it at the same time, even after years of being with him.
 
 “Be right back,” he said.
 
 I stood still in the middle of our living room floor as he ran into the bathroom. He came right back with a wet towel. When I tried to take it from him, he snatched it away and went to clean my cheek himself.
 
 “You wanna go out tonight?”
 
 “You wanna goout?” I was shocked. Moses hadn’t been out partying or kicking it since he got home from the hospital. I was glad too. Living in the hood, I had always had a fear of him getting shot. And now that he had, the thought of him going back into the streets terrified me.