When The Sun Rises | ✔

04 | Completely Loco

Chapter 04 | Completely Loco

• • •

        I've had the same social worker since I got picked up nine years ago. Miranda Velasquez or as I like to call her, Ms. M. The pint-sized, dark-haired lady with more patience than a single mother of five in a damn grocery store and more fight than a lot of these men. Looking back at all the switching around I've been through, she's the most constant thing in my life and half the time she's the only reason I make any kind of attempt to keep my attitude in check.

        Like my personal moral compass, helping me distinguish up from down when I can't see past my own perspective. When she comes for her monthly visit, the first thing I do after she steps through the door is hand her the envelope. I needed somebody to tell me I wasn't in the wrong for wanting to see Sheila's perfect little world crumble.

        "Ay, Mami. Can I sit down first?"

        She chuckles and grabs the envelope with her free hand, bumping the door closed with her hip.

        "What is this," she asks as she sits her briefcase on the coffee table and settles onto the couch. I plop down next to her, stubbornly crossing my arms.

        She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and her shoulders drop when she reads the name printed across the envelope.

        "Dios Mío, she wrote you? What'd she say?" Her slant eyes study my face, but my expression is a picture of stillness. I'm not about to be falling all over myself because of this shit, nose running and lip quivering.

        "Talking about how sorry she is, and how she was wrong. All that good shi – crap. And you won't even believe this part. She had a whole baby."

        I can't shake that part. No matter what I do it's there, hovering in the shadows taunting me. Na, na, nanana, you have a brotherrr.

        "You're kidding me. You know I would have told you if I'd have known right? I thought she was maybe back in rehab." She places a hand on my knee, eyebrows pinched in sincerity.

        Her levelheadedness is about to snuff the molten heat brewing at my feet and gurgling up to my ears. Reasonable is the last thing I'm trying to be right now so I shut out every rational thought telling me not to act like a child because damn it I am one.

        "Serious as the picture of him she left in that envelope. And that ain't even it. She's engaged. You believe that? She's getting married while I'm stuck in this dumbass – "

        I huff and flatten my lips into a line. Shaking my head, I clasp my hands together to keep the shakes at bay.  

        I hate this feeling – like I have no control over my body. An act as natural as breathing becoming an Olympic feat as I tussle with my lungs for each ragged breath. Trapped inside a trembling shell, I watch myself tumble down a steep hillside spiked with anger, doubt, and fear.

        "Sorry," I mumble.

        My eyes dart unevenly across her face, stopping on her nose. She looks like she wants to say something about my language, maybe call it basura like she usually does, but she seems too stunned to say anything.

        Her gloss stained lips open and close, searching for the right words to say. She lifts a hand motioning for me to wait and unfolds the letter. Each finger adorning a ring, she reads. Her expression goes from empathy to sadness, to surprise, and back around to empathy. Once she finishes, she refolds the letter and releases a soft breath.