Page 113 of Lily In The Valley
LaToya sat in the corner, still in the same black sweatshirt, hair pulled up in a high, wild ponytail. She looked tired in a way I understood all too well. It crept up on you slowly and settled into your bones out of nowhere, refusing to leave.
I checked the monitor, adjusted the nebulizer mask on Kahlia’s face, then turned to leave.
“You from New Orleans?”
The question caught me mid-step. I turned. “No, ma’am. Born and raised in Houston.”
“Hmph.” Toya sat forward slightly, her voice steady but low. “You sure you don’t have no people from the city?”
I tucked my hands into my pockets. “My mother was from there. My grandma and uncle.”
“What’s the names?”
I cleared my throat. “Sonya Green. Her kids are Charisse and Paul. Charisse was my mother.”
The look on her face wasn’t just recognition. It was a gut-punch.
“Lord,” she whispered, drawing the word out. “You Ms. Sonya’s grandbaby?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She sat back, blinking, trying to refocus a blurry photo in her mind. “I knew your mama,” she said finally. “Not well, but enough. She was loud and fine and too smart for her own good. How’s she doing?”
“She passed about six months ago.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. I used to see her going to your grandma flower shop when I walked home from school. She always had this look on her face like the world owed her softness yet had the nerve to give her thorns.” I didn’t respond. LaToya exhaled. “That seem like a lifetime ago.”
I stepped closer to Kahlia’s bed, gently adjusting her IV line where it looped around the rail.
“You’re Khalil’s mother, aren’t you?” I asked, staring straight into her eyes.
She laughed, even though her eyes reddened and strained. “People always said he was my twin.” She grimaced, her eyes going glossy. She looked down at her hands, her fingers knotted tightly, knuckles going pale. “Do you know him?”
Do I know him?
Khalil carried my heart in the comforting embrace of his arms. Nurtured it, tended to it when I left it for dead. He saw the parts of myself I kept hidden, even from myself, and never looked away. Not once. How could she sit here and ask if I knew him? He was the love of my life.The love of my life. And here I was standing in front of the woman who had broken his innocent heart, a heart so pure, so golden.
“You must know him well. I can see it in your eyes, the defensiveness.” Her jaw clenched. “I never meant to be found like this.”
“Like what,” I gritted low between teeth. “An apparition living a whole new life while the one you left behind learned how to move forward, piecing the puzzle together. Alone.”
The tears grew heavy in her lower lids. “They were better off without me,” she murmured, her voice watery.
I shook my head, trying to remember I was a doctor at this hospital and not a random person off the street. I sat in the empty chair beside her. Close, but not too close. “So, what happened?” I asked quietly.
“I left because I was drowning,” she said. “And I knew I’d pull them under with me.” She paused. “No one understands what addiction is really like. What it really takes from you. You hear stories. You watch the movies, the afterschool specials. But nobody talks about the mornings when your baby’s crying andyou can’t feel anything. The days you look at your man and hate him for trying to love you when you feel like dust inside.”
My throat tightened.
“I didn’t want Khalil to grow up watching me fade,” she said. “Didn’t want him to spend his life trying to fill in what I made hollow.”
“You don’t think leaving hollowed him out, too?”
Her eyes glistened. “I know it did.”
“He waited for you. His whole life,” I added. “Even when he stopped saying it aloud, he was still waiting. He built this whole magnificent, brilliant life trying not to look like he needed you, but he did.”
She covered her face with her hands. “I always knew he’d turn out alright.”
