Hold you down a novel, p.25
Hold You Down: a Novel, page 25
Mercy nodded. “Now you want to listen, huh?”
Deon smirked. “I’ll sleep on the couch, if that’s cool.”
Mercy understood that sleeping in his and Judah’s old room might be difficult for him. “No problem. Let me get you some pillows and blankets.”
While she did that, Deon looked around at all the old familiar things in the apartment. The coffee table had been there since he was eight or nine years old. In fact he noticed that there wasn’t much that had changed about the place at all. It was like Mercy had gotten stuck on pause when Lenox died. Deon hated himself for not noticing sooner.
Mercy returned and got the couch set up for him.
“Before you tell Judah anything, I want you to think about what it’s gonna do to him. You know how he is. He’ll be in the prison library researching kidney failure and hypertension and he’ll lose focus. He’ll start getting into fights again and he’ll get sent back to solitary. And the parole board will look at all of that when they consider whether or not to grant him early release. He can’t afford a misstep at this point, Deon. He’s too close now.”
She kissed and hugged him before she retired to her room for the night.
He got comfortable on the couch while Mercy shuffled off to bed. It took him a long time to fall asleep. Not because the sofa was uncomfortable, but because he wasn’t sure how to handle this complex situation. The knowledge of his mother’s illness would no doubt cripple Judah emotionally. But Deon knew it would be impossible to keep a secret of that magnitude from his cousin. He decided that he would go with Aunt Mercy to her dialysis appointment in the morning. Then he would prepare to go and visit Judah so that he could break the news to him in person.
Deon dreamed more vividly that night than he had in years. In his dream, they were all together again. Lenox and Mercy, Judah and Deon. They were sitting on the beach and the boys were kids again. Their mothers both young, beautiful, and full of life. The sun was shining so brightly and the water behind them was so clear and still. His mother looked at him and her radiant smile widened. She took his chin in her hand, leaned in close to him, and whispered, “Good boy.”
He woke up still feeling the sensation of her hand on his chin, her breath against his face. He sat upright on the couch, disoriented at first because he wasn’t sure where he was. Once the events of the previous day flooded back into his recollection, he stood up and stretched. He saw sunshine flooding through the window curtains and was surprised Mercy wasn’t up yet. She typically rose with the sun to make breakfast or clean something. Deon reminded himself that she was sick. Perhaps too weak to do all of the things she used to do. He went to the bathroom and relieved himself, washed his hands and splashed some water on his face. Then he walked down the familiar hallway and knocked on Aunt Mercy’s door.
“Auntie, it’s 8:30. What time is your dialysis?” He waited. He recalled how long it had taken her to answer the door the night prior and assumed that she was slowly getting out of bed.
A few moments later, he knocked again.
“Aunt Mercy.”
Silence. Deon didn’t want to barge into the room, so he knocked a little harder, called her name a little louder. Still nothing.
Panic set in as Deon turned the doorknob and rushed in.
“Oh, no. Aunt Mercy. No!” He grabbed the phone at her bedside and dialed 911.
“Send an ambulance right now please.”
“What’s your emergency?” the operator asked robotically.
“My aunt … I think she’s dead.”
Deon was right. Mercy had suffered a massive stroke in the middle of the night. By the time he discovered her, rigor mortis had already begun. So, the sight of his aunt’s cold, stiff, and lifeless body would be seared into his memory for the rest of his life. The paramedics had been patient and polite. They offered Deon their condolences as the coroner arrived to remove the body. With all the chaos, Barbara emerged from her apartment and was shocked to see Deon standing in the hallway leaning against the wall.
“She’s gone,” he said. “She had a stroke during the night.”
Barbara wept as Deon rubbed her back soothingly. She and Mercy had been friends for more than a decade and had weathered many storms together. Both had family members involved in the drug game, sons who had gone to prison, and lovers who let them down. Through it all, they had been each other’s confidantes. Now Mercy was gone. Barbara told Deon to come by if he needed anything, then retreated back into her apartment to cry in private.
Deon leaned his head back against the wall and sighed. He thought about the dream he’d had during the night. “Good boy” were the words his mother whispered to him, cryptically. But as he prepared to go and face Judah with this news, he felt like the complete opposite.
SECRETS
Judah sat stone-faced in the visiting room at Greene Correctional Facility feeling like the life had been sucked out of him. The noise and chatter in the room all seemed far away. He was deep in the corners of his mind trying to make sense of everything he had been told in the past twenty-four hours. His mother had been sick for a while, had hidden that from him, and now she was gone.
It was April and rain was typical during that month. But the downpour that occurred on the day Judah was called into the warden’s office and notified of his mother’s death seemed particularly poignant.
Judah looked a lot different now. Daily workouts had made his physique more toned and muscular than ever. His arms and neck were covered in prison tattoos. His face was harder, his tone of voice more serious. He looked like a completely different man than the one he once seemed destined to be.
Deon watched his cousin, aware that he was digesting a lot. He was also aware from his own experience that Judah was living in a place where showing emotion—even over something as heartbreaking as the unexpected death of your mother—could be seen as weakness. Judah didn’t have the luxury of weeping openly. Instead, he sat silently, stoically, and locked eyes with his cousin.
“I know she kept it to herself to protect me. But it’s hard to understand that now.” In Judah’s anger, he wished he could somehow tell his mother that her plan had backfired. Instead of protecting him, she had robbed him of the chance to say goodbye.
“She said she wanted you to focus on coming home. She didn’t want you to be upset, get off track, and end up staying in here longer than you have to,” Deon said.
Judah went silent again. Just days ago, nineteen months had seemed like the blink of an eye. It was nothing compared to the years he had spent in prison. Now, nineteen months felt like an eternity when he thought about the idea of his mother enduring dialysis for that long. Suffering alone without him. Judah thought about the apartment he had grown up in. It occurred to him that he might never get to step inside of it again. By the time he came home—if the parole board granted him early release—that apartment would be rented to a new tenant. Everything he left behind when he picked up the gun that fateful day in 1992 was gone now. The finality of it was a crushing blow.
“If I was home, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Deon didn’t respond. He had known that Judah was thinking that, so hearing him say it was unsurprising.
“I would have fixed it. She’d still be here.”
“She said that if you knew you would have researched the whole thing until you found a cure.”
Judah grinned. It was true. Anything for his mother.
“You know this is the year I would have graduated college?”
Deon did the math in his head and nodded.
“She would have held on, just to watch me walk across the stage and get my diploma. If I was home, she’d be alive.”
Deon stared at Judah, watching him beat himself up for being absent. Deon had been beating himself up the same way for years.
“I could say the same thing,” Deon said. “What if I never left? I could have stayed in New York, checked in on her more often. I would have found out sooner that she was sick. What if my mother never got involved in the drug game and didn’t die, and I never had to come and live with you? Then none of this shit would have happened.”
Judah didn’t respond.
“I looked at the pictures in that scrapbook and saw what Aunt Mercy made peace with. None of it was in our control.”
Judah wasn’t buying it. “We had choices. All of us could have done things differently.”
“But we made the choices we made. And there’s no going back to do it over again. So, now we have a new choice to make. Do we let it eat us alive?”
Deon sighed. He chose his next words carefully. “It should have been me in here. You were on your way to Morgan State. You did everything right, followed all the rules. I was the one who belonged in here. I studied to be here while you were studying for the SATs. You came outside that day to help me fight my battle. I was the one who had beef with them muthafuckas. Not you.”
“I never blamed you,” Judah said. “I came outside to help you. But I did what I did for my own reasons, too. I was proving to myself that I had heart. Standing up to them even though I was scared to death. I got clowned on the bus one time. I never told you about it. I was riding home after school with Chanel, and some dudes got on and started talking shit to me. I was scared then, too. Kept my head down and avoided eye contact while they disrespected me. Lucky for me one of them knew you. He recognized me as your cousin, and they left me alone. But that shit bothered me. Then the situation at the party happened, and it was you that came to my rescue again. So, when I heard that you were getting jumped, I knew it was my turn to man up and hold you down. I went too far, got in over my head. Now I’m paying a big price for it.” He shrugged. “So, I guess you’re right. Now I gotta decide if I’m gonna let it eat me alive.”
“You’re not,” Deon said. “You can’t because Aunt Mercy wanted you to come home. She was trying to live so she could see you walk out of here a free man.”
Judah wanted to fall apart. But he knew his cousin was right. He owed it to his mother, who had died of a broken heart, to live what remained of his life to the fullest.
“I can’t be there to make the arrangements. So, I need you to do it for me.”
Deon agreed. “I called my job, told them I’ll be out of town for a few weeks. I’ll make sure everything gets taken care of.”
Judah thanked him. “They said that I can attend the funeral. But they’ll bring me there in shackles.” The thought of it filled him with shame. But he could not pass up the opportunity to see his mother’s face for the last time. He looked at Deon. “When Aunt Lenox passed, did you want to die, too?”
Deon smirked. “I did. For a long time. But you wouldn’t let me. Aunt Mercy wouldn’t let me. And I ain’t gonna let you die, Judah. So, get that shit out of your head right now.”
Deon returned to Mercy’s apartment and wept. He sat on his old bed in the room he shared with Judah growing up and cried for the loss of their family. What remained was an apartment full of memories and broken dreams.
He heard a knock at the door and hesitated for a moment. He chided himself, unsure what made him pause, and went to answer the door. He opened it without checking to see who it was and he inhaled sharply when he saw her.
“Nelly!”
She smiled at him. “Hey, Deon.”
“Wow…”
He rushed forward and hugged her. She squeezed him back tightly. He stepped back and she looked at him sadly.
“My mother called to tell me about Miss Mercy. She’s pretty upset. Hasn’t stopped crying for long. So, I came back to Staten Island for a few days to stay with her until the funeral.”
Deon thought about the last time he had seen Chanel. Five years ago at least.
“Where do you live now?” he asked.
“Delaware. I go to college there. It’s a small town, but I love it.”
He nodded, his mood lightened suddenly. “You want to come in?”
Chanel glanced inside the apartment. “Sure.”
She stepped in, expecting the place to feel eerie with Judah and Mercy gone. Instead, the whole scene came flooding back to her like an instant replay. The smell of Mercy’s cooking, the sound of Lenox’s laughter, the sight of them dancing together. It seemed like only yesterday. She smiled despite the sadness of the occasion.
“Remember the time I beat you and Judah at Connect Four so many times that you told Miss Mercy to send me home?”
Deon laughed, remembering the incident vividly.
“You were being a bitch that night. So, yeah, we wanted you out of here.”
Chanel laughed, too. She caught herself after a moment. “How are you holding up? My mother told me that you found Mercy yourself.”
“Yeah. I’m okay. I just have to figure out how to pack this place up, put all this stuff in boxes, and get Aunt Mercy’s affairs in order.”
“How’s Judah doing?” Chanel asked. “Have you seen him?” She tried not to sound too eager, but she had thought about Judah for years. She still had the letter he had written her, still wondered what might have been.
Deon nodded. “He’s having a hard time with it. Everything happened without warning and he’s still in shock.”
“He loved his mother so much. All he ever wanted to do was protect and provide for her.” Chanel and Judah had confided in each other about their worst fears and their wildest dreams. She wished she could talk to him now.
“Will they let him come to the funeral?” she asked.
“Yeah. He’ll be there. After that, he told me to give away all of the furniture and pack up everything else for him to go through when he gets out.”
“I can help,” Chanel offered. “My mother is taking a nap and she only has basic cable.” Chanel rolled her eyes. “So, I have time.”
Deon smiled, grateful for the offer. He pointed to the boxes he had brought up earlier from his truck. “Let’s get busy, then.”
Three hours later, they had made considerable progress. They started in Judah’s room. Deon had taken everything he wanted when he left years earlier. So, what remained belonged mostly to Judah. Trinkets, clothes, and shoes from years earlier that Judah had probably forgotten about completely. They moved on to Mercy’s room and found that she was as levelheaded and organized in death as she had been in life. Her life insurance policies and vital records were all placed together neatly in a large manila envelope at the top of her closet. With that information, Chanel helped Deon arrange a meeting with a funeral director that night to make arrangements for the funeral service. She and Barbara accompanied him. They helped him choose the casket, the prayer cards, and the date of Mercy’s funeral service. As Mercy’s best friend, Barbara knew which of the dresses in her closet had been her favorite. So, they brought the flowy lavender dress to the funeral home with them.
By the time Chanel went back to her mother’s apartment that night, Deon felt relieved. Half of the task was completed. And he had help. He was more grateful to Barbara and Chanel than he could say.
Chanel came back the next morning with coffee and donuts. She wore jeans and an old T-shirt and her hair up in a ponytail.
“Ready to work!” she said as she came in.
They got busy in Mercy’s room packing up the last of her belongings. Then they moved on to the kitchen. While packing up the pots and pans, Chanel chewed a glazed donut and leaned against the counter.
“How’s life as a trucker?” she asked.
Deon laughed. “Something about the way you said it made it sound funny. But I love it! I hit the highway and turn some music on. Soon I’m lost in thought. Or sometimes there’s no thoughts at all. Just me and the road. It’s peaceful.”
Chanel smiled. “I can tell it makes you happy. You seem different now. Happier than before.”
He wrapped some plates in newspaper and set them inside one of the boxes.
“How about you?” he asked. “How’s college?”
“I graduate next year. I got a job working at a local newspaper in the editorial department. After I graduate, I want to try and get a job at one of the major TV networks as a sportscaster. If not, maybe print journalism. I’ll see how it goes.”
Deon smiled. “Look at you doing big things.”
She picked up some dishes and began helping him pack them.
“It’s not how I pictured it though. When we were together, Judah and I would talk about going to Morgan State together. Being like Whitley Gilbert and Dwayne Wayne from A Different World. When I pictured my future, I always saw him in it.”
Deon nodded. “Judah felt the same way. He told me he was gonna marry you someday.”
“So, why did he push me away? I wrote him letters and sent him pictures of us together, trying to remind him that he had a life before all of this. And trying to show him that I would still be there for him. But he wouldn’t let me.”
Deon looked at her. “There’s a lot you don’t understand about what it’s like to be in jail. They try to break you mentally and physically. So, every man has to figure out how to do certain things to survive. Some of them become food. They just roll over and play dead and let the other inmates run all over them. They pay for protection, allow themselves to get disrespected, and they get ridiculed, all for the sake of survival. Others decide that’s not an option for them. And they’re forced to fight all the time. To get up every day and prove that you’re not the one who’s gonna get walked over. That’s what Judah is doing. He’s in there fighting every day to maintain control of his body and his mind. I think he had to let you go so he could do that without distraction.”
Chanel grabbed a mug and wrapped it carefully.
“I hate the thought of that, Deon. That’s not who Judah is. Fighting, and trying to prove how tough he is. That’s not the man he was becoming.” It broke her heart every time she thought about Judah and what his life had turned into. “I knew when he took that plea deal that his life would never be the same. He missed out on so many milestones. He had just learned how to drive a car. Never got to go to prom or attend his graduation. Every time I do something for the first time—go to a concert or eat a new food they don’t make in New York—I think about Judah.” She began to cry. “He missed out on so much. And he doesn’t deserve it. Now Miss Mercy died. And I know it’s gonna crush him. And he’s all by himself dealing with that. It breaks my heart.”
