Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 97951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“I guess this means I’m not invited over for the next Christmas dinner?”
“Lennox, I’d like nothing more than to have you for dinner, but not in the way that you mean.”
And with that, Grandpa did a little bow of the head, offered a polite smile, then slammed the door in his face. Lennox made his way down the steps, completing the long jaunt to his parked truck at the end of the driveway. He looked at his watch. 12:59 P.M. on the dot. He immediately sent a text message to Nadia, Silva, Kage and Roman:
It is done. Codeword: Mama.
The codeword was so that they’d know for certain that he wasn’t dead, and that no one else had his phone pretending to be him. Getting into his truck, he started it up and drove like a bat out of hell. He needed to hold and kiss his baby. After all, the day’s activities of hunting prey and confronting an intruder had left him famished, and there was nothing a big dog liked more than to chase and taste a little cat…
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Girl Talk
“About three days.” Mama handed Nadia the basket, then sat down on her living room couch. “She’ll be released tomorrow. She told me to tell you not to worry.”
“That explains why she didn’t call me back. Nana is always trying to sneak back home before I know she’s in the hospital. This is the fourth time she’s done this to me. Next time she doesn’t call me back right away, I am driving straight over there.”
Nadia took the basket of homemade jams Mama had made into her kitchen. She then went to sit next to her mother on her couch, hugging her knees next to her. On her television screen was displayed a twenty-four-hour live viewing of swimming fish. Her attempt at a relaxing, laid-back feel.
“Why’d you want to talk to me, Nadia? Ask me to come over here?” Mama cut to the chase. She smoothed her faded, plain black shirt that was a little too big for her frame. Her jeans were dark, with a bit of distress around the knees. Her hair was wrapped in a colorful silk scarf and secured with a knot in the back. Two shiny gold hoop earrings hung from her ears and her full lips gleamed with clear gloss.
“Thank you for the jam. It looks delicious,” Nadia began, soon realizing she was going into her usual stalling mode. Dr. Saint Aknaten’s words crept into her mind, and she cleared her throat. “Mama, I want to talk to you about some of the things that happened in the past that we never really addressed.”
Mama dramatically rolled her eyes and slumped against the couch as if she’d been asked for her left kidney. Nadia continued, not discouraged by the reaction.
“When I was a little girl, I didn’t always feel wanted. I sometimes felt you believed I was an inconvenience, or that having me made you unhappy in some way. I know that may not have been true, but—”
“Now what would make you think that?” Mama barked. “I took care of you, didn’t I? I never let you go hungry, unclean, or unclothed!”
“Mama, taking care of someone doesn’t always mean that someone is wanted.”
“Who you know out here takin’ care of shit they don’t want?! Ain’t nobody I know washing their car every week, if they don’t want it, or cleanin’, decorating and painting a house they don’t care about. That don’t make a lick of sense.”
“I’m not a car or a house. Neither is Nelson, but I’m not going to bring him into this. I am just going to talk to you about me, from my own perspective. You can’t compare me to inanimate objects and expect things to improve.”
Mama sucked her teeth. “Ain’t nothing broken that needs improvement. You just makin’ up stuff tryna give me a guilt trip, Nadia!” Mama waved her hand dismissively. “What is this really about? You need to borrow some money or something? Now that you’ve stopped shakin’ your tail feather, has the money run dry?”
“Mama, I don’t need your money, but what I do need is for you to at least pretend to want to hear my side of the story. You’re doing all of this yelling and carryin’ on because you’re afraid! You fear the emotions that come with these discussions, the same way you feared being the mother that I needed, which caused all of this in the first place.”
“Your grandmother told me that you said you talked to some shrink from out there in New York. Now it all makes sense.” Mama looked her up and down with disgust. “That man done put a bunch of silly shit in ya head. Next thing you know, you’ll be saying he said you were a three-legged clown in some carnival in Peru in a past life, and that you now identify as a circus tent! Pronouns: Barnum and Bailey.”