Just Enough Light for Dark Times

The loss of my daughters mother

Note: if you haven't, you may want to read “A Daughter of Criminals” before getting into this piece for a better understanding of the people involved.

https://open.substack.com/pub/indamidle/p/a-daughter-of-criminals?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1s2swo

He sat quietly within the hollowed out husk of a bedroom and watched as a frail, middle aged woman pierced her vein with the overused syringe. With the practiced ease of a seasoned professional she compressed the plunger and emptied the contents in a single, smooth motion. Releasing the rubber tubing around her arm with a snap, she then allowed her blood flow to do the rest.

He leaned forward in his chair.

Falling back onto the bed, she felt the familiar warmth working its way through her body and sensed the impending euphoria like the sound of an approaching train. Her eyes closed lazily as a satisfied smile began to curve her lips.

Rising to his feet, the man crossed the mostly empty room to the edge of the uncovered and stained yellow mattress. There he knelt alongside her, leaning over to whisper;

“Follow me”

As if she'd been tased, her muscles seized and her back arched violently. For a moment, only her head and heels touched the bed. The instant it released her, she tried to sit up, yet only made it part way before vomiting onto herself.

Suddenly her head was full of muddy water. She couldn't think straight or form even individual thoughts. She vomited again, more aggressively this time. Something deep inside her, an instinctive part of being, recognized the danger but it was as if she'd lost all her strength, along with her ability to think, as her body refused to obey.

She was choking and gurgling on her own retch, moaning and desperately trying to roll onto her side. The man alongside her bed laid his hand gently onto her chest.

Her body had gone all but limp and only then did her reddened eyes finally notice him as her vision began to blur. She was suddenly so tired as she looked pleadingly at the man standing over her with his warm and welcoming smile. As she watched him watching her, her breathing became more shallow and labored, feeling like more effort than she could possibly maintain. He nodded his head gently as her pulse began to slow. She could barely see him, or anything else, any longer. The edges of her vision darkening.

“Follow me” he said soothingly one last time. She felt the tugging inside her chest and with her very last ounce of strength she did exactly that. As the world faded away, she followed him.

That was the day Kaliyah, my daughter's mother, died.

I may not have been there, but I know the man who was. He is the reason I'm able to take what I know and imagine.

Going back to the beginning, I was 15 years old when I first laid eyes on Kaliyah. Tucked neatly out of sight in an alley I watched her swishing her hips as if her ass were moving independently of the rest of her body. She was all done up to be seen and every guy along that street definitely saw her.

My interest developed the moment I watched her walk up and kiss the man I was actually there to observe. He was the G of this neighborhood's crew, a man I had vengeful hatred for, and watching the two of them together inspired me to desire something more than just the money and drugs I continually stole from him. I saw a new way to cause him harm. I was going to ruin his Queen of the Hoodrats.

You didn't think this was going to be a love story, did you?

Months later she and I were sneaking around regularly to hook up. I had approached her one day not long after spotting her, having already determined that a gamble like this would take an all or nothing play.

“You be lookin' bored as fuck ‘erytime I see you” I said out if the blue as I pulled up next to her in a 7/11 aisle.

“And who the fuck you think you is?” she snapped at me with some swerve in her voice. I leaned back, looking her up and down.

“I'm the guy who's been robbin’ your man” I responded casually yet full of arrogance.

“Boy, you done lost yo mind you thinkin’ you kin rob me.” No hesitation, she was fearless. Just as I had expected from a woman in her position.

“Nah, I ain't tryna rob ya.” I shook my head, “I am gon’ steal ya tho.”

The rest I've already written about.

Many years later, standing with our daughter in the morgue, how far she'd fallen wasn't lost on me. She was a withered, ghoulish shell of the “It” girl I had once prayed upon. Almost unrecognizable to me. Yet this story isn't really about her. It's about the person we made. It's about the daughter who'd been called to identify her.

It was this past October when my oldest called to tell me her mother was gone. She wasn't crying on the phone yet I could hear through the weakness and rasp of her voice that it was only because she'd gotten herself under control before dialing.

She croaked the words “Daddy….my mom's dead”.

I knew immediately this call wasn't meant to inform me, I was her biological mother's bane. Though I had long ago abandoned any hatred I still had for her, I still remained an ever present and looming threat which prevented her from pulling our daughter back into the life she'd made for herself.

Without saying it out loud, my daughter was asking me to come. That's what this call really meant. I knew her well enough to understand unspoken words. She's not one to ask for help or even admit that she needs it. She's too tough for that. She's built different.

I hated that she had to be the one to do this; however, she was the most immediate relative the authorities had available to contact. She had a pair of siblings through her mom yet they both refused to even show up. One listing a host of excuses why he couldn't and the other simply saying she didn't care.

So there the once Queen Kaliyah laid, cold on a slab, with only her first born and the man who took her away to acknowledge she had ever existed in the first place. A tribute to the unspoken truth your crime dramas and gangster movies always fail to mention. People who remain in the Game too long never go out in a blaze of glory, we all die alone with a whimper.

She was quiet, my daughter, yet I could feel the tension in her radiating like pulses from a subwoofer I couldn't hear. She was furious. I couldn't protect her from this nor would I have done so even if it were possible. I knew what was about to happen and positioned myself to intercept the coroner should he force me to.

“WHEN IS IT EVER NOT GOING TO BE ABOUT YOU?!” My daughter screamed. Her voice cracking as her petite body attempted to produce a sound that matched her rage.

The pinhole that outburst created quickly caused the entire dam to give way. She screamed with a pitch that stabbed against our eardrums. Shrieking through sobs she cursed and bawled at the woman who could no longer silence her. I won't transcribe her words but I will say I was pained and grateful to hear them pouring out of her as if her body were expelling poison.

I watched my tiny, soft spoken, sweet and funny daughter unleash everything like a woman possessed by the demon devil's fear.

I was proud of her.

Get it all out baby.

Since the day I had taken her away, my daughter had developed a new kind of relationship with the woman who brought her into this world. One with the freedom to develop on my daughter's terms as she no longer had to answer to this woman. I protected her from her mother's choices but I never hid her away. I refused to allow the hole a parent's absence creates inside a child. Even when it's a bad parent.

They had become more like “frien-emies” than a mother and a daughter. They loved each other, but resented one and other as well. She'd get off the phone and roll her eyes saying, “moms got a new boyfriend. Apparently this guy is the one”. Her sarcasm was never subtle. She'd worry but only on her mom's behalf because that life no longer affected her personally. Whenever she'd vent to me about whatever the latest drama entailed I'd simply remind her that people are going to do what they're going to do and that it's not her job to be her mom's mom anymore.

I'm the morgue, she had finally stopped screaming. No wind down, she just stopped cold. She turned and I walked over, allowing her to put her head into my chest with her arms hanging loosely beside her. I put mine around her and just stood there. After a few long moments she said without looking up, “does she get a funeral?”.

“Yes baby” I reassured her, “she gets a funeral.”

My daughter had to plan and arrange everything, I simply paid for it. I refused to do it for her. She needed to be the one in control, she needed to be the one making a statement with this, it had to be her taking care of her mother one last time.

While she may not have understood it, I know full well that you can regret the things you don't do every bit as much as the ones you do.

The day of the funeral, saying it was a modest showing would fail to describe how few people attended. And there I stood, watching my oldest child mourning a woman who’d neglected her. I watched her cry for someone who had done so much harm to her for so many years. I discovered in that moment one of the reasons why she was better than me.

She was a girl who grew up in the same world I had yet never lost an ounce of her humanity. She could love the people that world created independently of their actions and failings. She was strong enough to endure and survive them yet still be who she was. So, in honor of her, I chose to try and live up to the standard she was setting for me. Maybe she would be proud of me as well.

I would've never imagined I'd be standing at that woman's casket thanking her for the little girl we made together. I had hated her for so many years. And even when I did finally let that go, I still only knew disgust. I never thought I'd feel gratitude towards her. That I'd run my thumb over her eyebrow and wish her a safe journey. That I'd stand there and promise her on my name that I would take care of our daughter.

“Our daughter”, who had no idea that just being herself in that moment forced me to be a better man that day.

We're not always the ones with lessons to teach. Not everything we learn comes from our elders. Sometimes it comes not from experience, but from purity. An unclouded view we lose somewhere along the way.

My little all-grown-up girl, this criminal's daughter.