Chapter 9

"Where was Wissy born?" Karisma asked tapping her pen annoyed that she herself could not remember, although she had been nearly 4 years old when he was born. 

"Same place as No-No. Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, Fort Hood, Texas." Dorinda rattled off without taking her eyes off of Divorce Court.  "November 5, 1992, 4:31 a.m."

Machlon Kamal Wisdom Lewis-Gessinger, 17.......

As she had done in the waiting room of the Critical Care unit, after taking her allotted 5 minutes to say goodbye to her baby sister before the machines tethering Amaris to this life were removed, Karisma began to write the obituary of her younger brother also. Amaris had never feared death, wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive just to ease the ache in their hearts, and so there had been no reason to delay for a miracle that wasn't going to happen. Once the machines were removed and Amaris was cleaned up, Dorinda had gone back inside determined to have her baby girl die in her arms, regardless of how much she herself feared death. Karisma had taken up in waiting room with her own daughter nestled against her side asleep and captured the essence of 15 years of life in a few short sentences. 

There was not much more to be said about 17 years of life. 

"I just want it all to be over, Lord." Dorinda murmured. 

"Don't start." Ibrahim spoke for the first time since he had strolled into the family home unannounced earlier in the afternoon and promptly gone upstairs to nap in his old bedroom.

 Few could tell the eldest two of Dorinda's five children apart physically except if you noted slight things like Ibrahim's extra inch, preference for eyeglasses, and deeper voice. By their temperaments and lifestyle choices though it was ridiculously easy to know who was who. Unlike his reckless and 2 minutes younger identical twin, Ibrahim was a man of few words and the patience of Moses. He had graduated from high school a year early, earned a degree in Actuarial Science with honors, and settled into a comfortable yet affordable apartment with a well paying entry level job by the age of 21. While still in university and working part time, he had offered to look after Amaris and Machlon in Texas. The kids wouldn't have had Air Jordans and I-Phones if they lived with Ibrahim, but they certainly would've have had a roof over their heads along with other necessities and stability.

Isaac's endless money of questionable origin had won out though.

"No, don't you start." Dorinda pounced seeing the perfect opportunity to vent her frustration on her reserved eldest son. "I know you blame me. And I know you got some kind of ulterior motive for coming all the way up here from Houston."

"Yes, the motive to check on and spend time with my mother, sister, and niece." Ibrahim replied mildly making himself comfortable on his mother's bed with the three of them. "It is not every month or even every other month that I get a four day weekend." 

"Atleast one of my sons gives a damn about me." Dorinda got the elephant in the room off her chest. 

"The other one gives a damn." Ibrahim did not know why he felt the need to defend his twin when there were no real justifications for Isaac's actions. "He just cares more about not going to prison....or running into me."

"Don't go throwing your life away from Isaac's low down a*s!" Both Dorinda and Karisma looked horrified that he'd even given thought to ruining a promising future over the family's official black sheep. They needed Ibrahim around, as a free man, in more ways than one. It was thanks to him that the bills were still getting paid on time in spite of Dorinda's worsening debilitative migraines and the whole family did not disintegrate under the strain of this living nightmare. 

"He ain't worth all that." Dorinda said with finality daring him to disagree with her. "Every dog has its' day."

Since her word was law, after a few tense minutes, the women watched their court drama and Ibrahim began to show his nearly 5 year old niece, who as always was all over him and eager for male attention, how to do simple finger math. There had been another five year old little girl he showed the same tricks to a decade earlier, however that little girl had turned into a voracious reader with a knack for foreign languages and interest in geography, who could not see the beauty in numbers. It had not been a pleasant ordeal for either him or his spoiled baby sister, when he breathed down her neck forcing her almost daily to work at the mathematics she loathed in order to get the A grade she expected to earn magically. When No-No took her time and paid attention she wasn't half bad at math actually. Which is why he was so rigid and did not mind one bit adding to the enmity that had defined their relationship. Havyn would never know what it meant to hate the sight of her main male role model coming while refusing to admit he only treats you as he does because it is in your best interests. 

"She probably died thinking I hated her."

"Hate?" Dorinda discerning which 'her' he meant and why he was saying what he was before the thought was even finished. "That girl loved you to death. You didn't even have to say nothing when you went in to see her and tell her goodbye. I was watching. You touched the back of your hand to her face and she calmed right down." 

""True, true, No-No always stopped when you said it." Karisma agreed. "And you didn't even hardly raise your voice either. S**t, she probably loved you more than Mama.....sorry Mama!"

Ibrahim shrugged indifferently. "Some kids just do better when they've got male influence around them."

"It has to be the right influence." Karisma corrected him hating how he always refused to accept deserved credit. "I'll take what you can do for my daughter over what would happen if I let Isaac take her off somewhere talking about to keep for a while. You're a damn good man and our baby sister loved you to her dying day. Alright?" 

Silence fell again. 

"This means we're gonna get some real bad news, right G'Mama?" Hayvn was the one to finally chime up so childishly innocent that none of them could be mad though they didn't want to hear what she was saying. "Cuz you always say when people argue for no good reason and feel all strange, something's gonna happen. Right?" She crawled from her uncle to her grandmother, who seemed frozen, staring at yet not really the TV anymore. 

What the tyke did not know, and at the moment neither did her mother nor uncle since her grandmother had not shared it with them, was that the bad thing had already happened. Dorinda had received a phone call early in the day, so early she had almost started to give the coroner a piece of her mind, until of course she realized who she was speaking with. Amaris's autopsy and toxicology reports were complete, but he would not sign off on the death certificate with the cause of death given as 'Cardiac Arrest due Acute Opioid Intoxication' for an otherwise healthy 15 year old minor without further investigation. 

"I don't know if you are aware, ma'am, since you live out of state." He said gravely. "But your daughter was found unresponsive in a residence known for drug activity by first responders who never could get a straight story out of the numerous adults who were present."

Gregarious and opinionated Dorinda, for once in her 40 years of life, had found herself completely lost for words and could not even remember the end of the conversation, whether she hung up or the coroner assumed they had been disconnected. How long she had laid there, propped up in this very same position she reclined in to watch TV, she did not know. There were no words, none in the known universe, that could adequately express how she had felt as her mind sliced through all of the medical jargon to arrive at one very blunt conclusion. 

Murder. 

At the moment, she didn't care if she ever saw either her second or third son ever again. 

The overindulged Mama's Boy she had once called her prince could go straight to Hell with Isaac. 

How could he hug my neck, say he loved and missed me, call me his Mommy, and then not tell me what fucked up s**t had been done to my baby girl? 

"Can't nothing be worse than how G'Mama feels now, Havvy." She finally forced herself to say aloud in response to the pats on her shoulder and concerned stares of her trustworthy children. 

They left it at that.

Turned blinds eyes and pretended not to see the tears silently streaming down their mother's milk chocolate face. 

Author's Note

please be brutally honest with critiques