Tyrell by Coe Booth Page B

Black ass home last night,” she say. “Not even with your little brother starving to death.”
    I look behind me where Troy is jumping on the bed, trying to touch the ceiling. “He look like he starving to you?”
    â€œYou know what I mean,” she say, and set the bags down on the dresser.
    I can’t believe this woman. “Don’t try to get outta this,” I tell her. “How you gonna leave Troy here by hisself?”
    â€œHe was ‘sleep.”
    â€œYou left outta here ‘fore nine o’clock,” I say. “It’s after one now. You think he gonna sleep through the whole day? What you think he was gonna do when he got up and you wasn’t here?”
    â€œI thought you was gonna be back by the time he got up.”
    If Troy wasn’t here, I would probably curse her out or something ‘cause her attitude is making me so fuckin’ mad. She dead wrong and she know it, but she trying to blame me. She do this all the time, and it frustrate the hell outta me. She always acting like she ain’t responsible for nothing. Like it’s always somebody else fault.
    She used to try this shit with my pops too, but he wasn’t having it. Matter of fact, even though my pops ain’t really no violent guy, I seen him beat the shit outta her twice when she tried to play him like this. Now, I ain’t like seeing my moms get a beatdown like that, but at the same time, she the kinda woman that could drive any man to do some fucked-up shit.
    The first time my pops beat her was after he got outta prison the first time. He ain’t like how much she changed while he was away. The apartment was nasty, and she acted like she forgot how to cook. That’s ‘cause my grandmother was living with us the whole time he was locked up and my moms ain’t had to lift a finger. But my grandmother went back down South a couple weeks before my pops got out, and he kept telling my moms she needed to go back to being the woman he married, but she acted like she ain’t know how to do nothing no more.
    One night he came home from a party, woke her up, and dragged her ass outta bed. I woke up too, ‘cause they was making mad noise and shit. My pops was cursing and screaming, and my moms was crying. He had her in a headlock and he was just dragging her from the kitchen to the living room to the bathroom, showing her everything he thought wasn’t clean enough. She tried to talk back to him, but he would just tighten his hold on her and tell her to shut up.
    Finally he told her that when he woke up in the morning,everything had to be clean, but she was still talking back. She said she was tired and couldn’t stay up all night cleaning. Man, I thought that man was gonna lose his fuckin’ mind. He backhanded her ‘cross the face so hard, she fell up against the bathroom door, crying. And I was standing there the whole time with my mouth open, but I couldn’t say nothing. What I wanted to tell her was to just shut up and start cleaning before he killed her.
    My pops ain’t say another word that night. He went in the kitchen, drank a beer at the table, then went to bed. And when he woke up, the apartment was as clean as a apartment in the projects could get. I ain’t never gonna forget that. While we was eating breakfast, man, that’s when I saw just how jacked-up my moms face was. The whole right side was swole up and her eye was bloodshot red. I couldn’t believe my pops actually did something like that to her. Crazy thing is, no one ever said nothing ‘bout it. We all just went ‘bout our business like nothing ever happened.
    The second time was, like, two years ago, right after we moved out the projects. My pops was making some good money, and he was taking care of us. Matter of fact, I was real fuckin’ happy ‘cause me and him was hanging out all the time. I was at most of his parties, and I would help him DJ