Page 13 of On You 2

Like grief had been eating at her physically too.

For a second she stumbled slightly once she got to her feet, and my hand moved to her lower back to make sure she didn’t fall.

As we stepped inside the brownstone, the noise from outside dulled behind us, replaced by the familiar sounds of family packed into a house together. This was the way it used to sound when Mecca would throw large dinners for our family and the close members of his organization.

When I walked into the kitchen, there was already a platter of fried fish sitting out on the counter along with a bowl of potato salad and a pan of rolls smoking and dripping with butter. The whole kitchen smelled warm and seasoned, like the type of meal made with love instead of just ingredients. Crew’s mama quickly started fixing both of us a plate making her blindness look like a minor inconvenience before waving me toward the kitchen table.

“Sit down Amir, baby.”

Jasmine sat across from me, resting her head against her fist like she was completely worn down mentally and physically. Looking at her sitting there so quiet made me realize I really didn’t know what to say to her. I wasn’t good at grief or comforting people. I wasn’t Delilah and all I really knew was the Quran and what it taught me about hardship, loss, and faith.

Once the plates were set down in front of us, Crew’s mama remembered she needed to go speak to one of her daughters about making more sweet tea, so she hurried out the kitchen and left Jasmine and me sitting there alone together.

I started eating, and the food was good as hell, but after a few bites I noticed Jasmine was barely touching hers, only breaking apart tiny pieces of fish small enough to only keep a bird alive. After hearing that she hadn’t been eating, I couldn’t watch her sit across from me and not eat anything. That was making me enjoy the food in front of me less.

“You know, Jasmine,” I started carefully,

“I know me and you got two different religious backgrounds, but the Quran says that hardship and trials are part of life. Allah tests people in different ways, and sometimes pain can be the thing that bring you closer to your faith instead of further from it.”

“I’ve been trying to keep my faith, and today honestly helped a lot but.”

She stopped talking suddenly like she was afraid she had already said too much, but I found myself wanting her to continue. One thing Delilah had taught me was that holding shit in only made it heavier.

“You was about to say something else? Don’t worry, I’m listening.”

She stared down at her plate for a second before finally sighing.

“I just, I guess I feel so angry that I haven’t had space to have faith,” she admitted quietly.

“I’m filled with anger and so much regret about a lot of things, and even though I know I’m wrong for certain shit I’ve done, I still feel like I never did anything to deserve this.”

“That’s what I was saying about the Quran. It teaches that life is going to test us with trials and tribulations, but we have to put our faith in Allah even when we don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” she muttered before looking at me curiously. “But can I ask you a question?”

The expression on her face almost reminded me of a child trying to understand something too big for them, and I wiped my mouth with the napkin beside my plate before nodding.

“Of course.”

“If you believe in the Quran so much, and what you just told me about trials and tribulations, why does your anger make you do bad things?”

“Bad things like what?”

“You know, what you and my brother do?”

“To be honest with you, some people deserve the shit I do to them in my eyes. And if I don’t feel like something is just, I won’t do it. Just like what happened with my brothers back in the day when they took Pernelle. That shit wasn’t right, and I knew it. That’s where my faith came in.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know that my faith has to come in for me during the times where I want to go over to Reggie’s fucking house and scratch his eyes out for not watching my baby as he should've. That nigga wouldn’t even tell me which cousins he was outside with at the time he got hurt. Something tells me that they weren’t even cousins and just some random kids around his mama’s house. He probably just won’t admit it because he knows I’m going to go left again on his ass.”

Her voice got sharper with emotion the more she talked.

“I mean, I can’t believe they even had kids playing back there knowing that fire escape was broken, that was so fuckin dumb of him.” Her hand slammed down on the table.

“Yeah, something definitely needs to be done about that shit for sho.”

“And I don’t even have the strength to go over there and see what it looks like. I know Reggie is mad at me for his own reasons, and weirdly sometimes I want to understand why, but at the same time I don’t. You supposedly love RJ so much, but you let that happen to him and then you don’t even come see him anymore? His ass has given up before he even knows the truth.”

“You plan on finding out the truth? Besides how that fuck nigga Reggie feels, I’m sure Hov wants to know if that’s his son.”