More than I Can take

Love

Love: to hold dear: to feel a lover's passion, devotion, or tenderness to fondle amorously: to copulate with: to like or desire actively: to take pleasure in.

At a young age Erik was shown love, Love is what ruled his household. His parents always made sure he was engulfed in it, he spoke it, sang it, breathed it, and anything he saw was filled with it. From what he could remember he had a big family, so much so that every year a family reunion was thrown in honor of new relatives coming or being met every year. He'd never seen so many people embrace and bask in prayer and loving spirits, coming together and being as one as his family did, new babies, marriages, cousins, uncles, and aunts from all over coming together to celebrate. 

From the young age of 8, he saw and appreciated having young cousins to play with, and older and wiser aunts and uncles to cherish moments with. His parents always encouraged him to seek refuge in the family for they were a village among thieves, thieves seeking what their family had: Love, Trust, and Most of all honor. 

His parents always basked in love, at night they often sang and danced to some of the most celebratory of songs. His father was African but he always listened to American music from the late 60's, and early 70's.  The O'jays and Marvin Gaye are his favorite artists, N'jobu sang the majority of the songs to him and his mother while she prepped dinner and Erik worked on homework. His father never spoke much of his family but Erik figured they had to have been like his father so loving and happy to have someone in their life to care for them.

 Erik had just turned 8 a few weeks ago when he heard his mother and father having a screaming match in their Oakland home, he had never heard such foul and loud body language. He'd never seen his parents unhappy with each other, let alone having such foul words for each other. 

"You cheated on me? For what? What justice did that do you eh? That white devil gave you that much happiness in two minutes"  N'jobu laughed menacingly at Erik's mother Elise.

"I didn't fuck him for justice, N'jobu I wanted to feel something. Something that I haven't been given from you in such a long long time." Elise wept with her head down. 

Erik had his door slightly open, he'd been put to bed by his father after a nice meal and a bath followed by his Marvel pj's. He could sense his father's aura was off by the way he had picked over his food and not uttered a word to him like he usually did. No, helping him speak Xhosa or Spanish just silence, on top of it all his mother hadn't called, and she hadn't come home or called saying she'd be late, not anything. His father wasn't supposed to be back in Intown until Saturday today was Wednesday and he was supposed to be with Papa James when he came home from school. It wasn't until his father put him to bed and thought he was asleep that he heard his father pick up the house phone and call several people to see about his mother where abouts, until he sighed heavily with defeat placing the phone back on the hook and settling for some tv.

He now stared down the hall directly from his room his loving parents screaming and hollering at the top of their lungs, his father moved sluggishly and his mother stood firm holding her ground. "If your that got damn unhappy how about you leave! You're not that good of a mother anyway I can find  him another woman who will be happy with me and him!" N'jobu shouted grabbing Elise by her wrist and bringing her into his chest.

"He will never be happy here, you know no true freedom you've always been left in the shadows to hide." Elise grimaced turning her face away from the foul stench of his beer-battered breath.

"The shadows are what haunt you, it was holding us together at a point in which I didn't think I loved you. I love you with all my heart, I'm not perfect but I know I don't deserve someone who keeps stabbing me in the heart and throwing poison on the wound." N'jobu mumbled something his mother couldn't hear.