19
QUIET AS A MOUSE
Kandi
It was amazing how much alike they looked, despite the fact that she was emaciated and one side of her face drooped due to the stroke. The drugs had eaten away at her, and through time, age took what the drugs had left behind. She was older and tired, but those sleepy, bedroom eyes that looked out from that warm, rich sepia skin, triangular face, and high eyebrows were all Kayn’s. I saw the pain etched on his face and the distance in her eyes.
I wondered if she even knew he was here. I sat as quietly as a mouse tucked away in a corner of the room. My eyes darted from the book I read on my Kindle app on my phone back to the two of them from time to time. I finally gave up reading my book when I realized that I had read the same paragraph three times.
Locking my phone, I stuffed it into my pocket and pulled my feet up into the chair with me. Kayn’s hands were clasped tightly together as though he were willing himself not to touch his mother. She stared at him as he spoke, but she didn’t utter a word or move a muscle. If it weren’t for the faint rise and fall of her chest or the flutter of her eyelashes every now and then, I would have sworn that she was already gone.
“Man, . . . just say something. I mean, even if it’s go fuck ya self, tell me something. Why didn’t you give a damn about me, Ma?”
His voice broke, and I wanted to run to him and hold him. But I willed myself to remain quiet, letting him have this moment alone. I had suggested that I remain outside in the waiting area for friends and family, but he insisted that I come into the room with him. He told me that since it was my idea for him to come, it was only right that I be there. And he was right. I would always have his back and support him.
On the ride over, Kayn told me how his mother had ended up in the hospital for almost a week from a drug overdose. When the neighbors reported it to the school, the counselor had come to see Kayn at home and got child protective services involved. Once CPS became involved, it was a wrap. His mother’s brother, Johnny Robley, or Uncle JR, had rushed to where he lived in Atlanta right away and brought him back to Mistletoe Falls.
He shared that they had never failed to treat him as their own, even if he rejected it at the time. Kayn said he had never known true love, thanks to his mother’s abuse and his father’s abandonment. He had only visited his aunt and uncle once a year before that. Therefore, he struggled to receive the love from them. I mused about how time healed all wounds, but he needed this greatest wound to heal so that he could be free to live and to love.
“That’s all I ever wanted was for you to say you loved me. Tell me that I mattered. I don’t know what’s worse, the abuse or the way you’re ignoring me right now. Least when you was kicking my ass, I knew that you saw me.”
Kayn shook his head and turned it away from me. But I didn’t miss the fact that he was wiping the tears from his eyes.
“You just gon’ sit here and keep on digging the wound deeper, huh?”
Kayn’s jaw clenched, and he stood, signaling me that he was done. I unfolded my limbs from the chair and rose but immediately sat back down when I heard his mother whisper, “Manny.”
“Kayn, she called you.” He had told me that his mom and dad used to call him that when he was little, “Manny,” short for Emmanuel. But when his mama was high and feeling good, she would call him Coke for cocaine or his middle name, CoKaine.
He was still moving as though he hadn’t heard her, but when I spoke, he turned back to look at his mother. His face cleared up from the pain momentarily, and he frowned down at her.
“Ma.”
“Didn’t expect you ta come,” she slurred. Although she had had a stroke, her speech was still mostly clear. From what the doctors had shared with Kayn, his mother had a plethora of health issues, including heart and liver problems. She could go at any time, and not just from the stroke.
He dropped into the chair again. “Not even sure why I did ’cept Kandi and RJ said I should.”
“Been in and outta rehab and hospitals most ya life.”
“I know. You seemed to prefer that over me.”
She shook her head.
“Best thing ta happen to ya . . . is for you to go to RJ and Frances with da boys.” Her breathing was labored, but she finished. “Don’t know why you so angry.”
“I’m angry because my own damn parents didn’t want me. How the fuck you gon’ say that shit to me? The best thing for me would’ve been for my mama to be in my life. How you gon’ sit and tell me what was best for me, and you never even knew what my life was like down there?” He snarled.
I wanted to tell him to calm down, but she showed me she could handle him just fine.
“I did know. RJ called ’bout you every damn week.” She paused again, closed her eyes, and then opened them. “He da one who told me not to come back for you till I got my shit together.”
“Guess that never happened. And you still chose the drugs over me in the end.”
“Drugs helped me cope. Ya daddy gave ’em to me to help me. Schizo did me in.”
I was floored. I knew that he told me she had some mental health issues, but I didn’t think about it too much. He hadn’t told me what the diagnosis was, but hearing it blew my mind and broke my heart for both him and her. She wasn’t a bad mother by choice, but it was beyond her control.
Kayn dropped his head, and I suspected that he knew exactly what she’d been dealing with. That thought was confirmed moments later.
