Kenney: Still Waters Part 2

Chapter 82

I moved back into mama's house about a month and a half after my last surgery. It was weird. Real weird. I could see what Jazz meant by "different." First of all, it wasn't even the same house, the same neighborhood, the same side of town.

Nothing.

Nothing was the same.

And that bothered me.

To see my whole family there, but in a place that was completely unfamiliar to me. I didn't know how to function in the middle of all that, and could see then why they kept saying that it was only a matter of time before Jazz went right back to what she knew.

To be honest, it was only a matter of time before I did, too.

That shit was just...uncomfortable.

And everyone felt it, not just me and Jazz. Nobody said anything, though. Charity seemed to like it there, but she definitely didn't like me being there. She treated me like shit the whole two months me and Jazz lived there. She acted like we were crowding her space, and we kind of were. She wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't look at me. Nothing. The only thing she would do was help me if she saw that I was having trouble getting my legs to do what I needed them to do, but then right after she helped me, she would just go right back to ignoring me.

Sometimes I would catch her staring at me, though, and looking like she wanted to say something to me, but then she would just start crying and turn away from me or leave the room.

Every time.

But she wouldn't talk to me and tell me what was wrong. Now that I was walking again, I knew that I could fix whatever it was, or set whoever was fuckin' wit' her straight, if she would just tell me who or what it was. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't even look at me.

It broke me.

All the way down.

That shit made me want to get the hell out of there. ASAP. Those two months couldn't have gone by fast enough for me. If my family, my own family didn't want me around, then fuck 'em. I would leave, and they could figure out their own shit for themselves. It hurt me so bad when Charity took it upon herself to make it clear on behalf of everyone that I no longer...belonged to them. Thanks to her, by the time Wallace loaded up the moving truck to take me and Jazz to Virginia – mostly all we took were mattresses, you know how that goes – I was too ready to leave.

Charity cried the hardest when we left. She just grabbed onto me out of nowhere and wouldn't let go. I mean she held on tight, too. My sister had never acted like that before. Not even when she thought I was dying. Jazz had to come get her and take her out of the room before she made mama check out.

When they walked away, all I kept hearing Jazz say was, "You had to, shA. You had to do it. You had to. He'll understand one day."

I didn't know what these women had goin' on, but I wished Wallace luck because they were his problem now.

Of course, if it ever got to be too much for him, all it would take was a phone call for me to come back. I would be on mama's doorstep right away. With one phone call. I told him that over and over, too. I told him don't just leave mama and my sisters out there. I wouldn't even blame him if he did leave. They were a lot to deal with, I already knew that. I just didn't want them to ever be stuck out there again, hungry with the lights off, about to lose the house, like they were when daddy died. Mama and Charity were my responsibility, anyway, not his. The babies were his daughters, not Charity, and I let him know repeatedly that I was still fully aware of that.