Do Or Die

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I awoke again to the smell of Grandma Mae’s eggs and Auntie Carissa’s yelling.

“Boy, I know you hear me! Wake up!” she yelled pulling the covers off of me.

“It’s Sunday,” I groaned before realizing Mama’s side of the family was big on church. 

“Exactly. Now start getting’ situated for morning service.” 

I watched Auntie Carissa walk out my room and head downstairs. The only thing I had on my mind was last night and parts of earlier this morning. 

“DJ, I gotta go back home before Daddy wakes up.”

I groaned softly and sat up as the cold air beat my bare chest. “A’ight, bae. Want me to walk you to your car?” 

She smiled and drew imaginary circles on my stomach. “No, but you can do one thing for me.”

“And what might that be?” I said in a mockingly uppity voice. 

“Don’t be the center of drama. I’ve already had too much of that already with my family.” 

I looked down at Kayla who knew nothing about the Pirus or Eddie. Finally I smiled back and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll try…but I still want my basketball shorts back.”

“Whatever, DJ. Love you,” she said before getting ready to slip out my window and leave. 

I finally got up to a shower then headed downstairs with a casual suit on. “I’ll take two spoon-fulls, please,” I joked.

“Maybe when everyone else gets something to eat,” Grandma Mae softly laughed.

She had the same sense of humor Mama did. I took a small bite of the scrambled eggs and nodded. Had the same cooking too.

“What’s on your mind, Daimon?” she asked sitting a glass of orange juice next to my plate.

“Nothing. I just…miss eating like this. At home.” 

Grandma Mae looked at me with a sympathetic smile and nodded her head. “If I had known what happened after…and before…” she drifted off. “I would have taken you all in willingly.”

I dropped my fork on my plate and sighed. “Mama never told you what happened behind closed doors, did she?”

She sighed and shook her head this time. “No sweetie. I mean, Eddie was always so…respectable whenever he was around me or anybody else for that matter. It’s quite hard to believe he did what he did to you all.”

“And Mama,” I blurted. “And Tiara.”

I looked up at Grandma Mae who looked at me with a strange expression. “Daimon, your father might be a lot of things but I’m sure he would never grow the courage to kill his wife and child.”

“But you wasn’t there!” I screamed. “He beat her repeatedly and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it!” 

Grandma Mae stared at me long and hard leading me to think she was about to knock me into a coma for screaming at her. Instead she sighed. “Daimon, Denise loved you all deeply. There were days she would struggle to feed you all and she wouldn’t eat.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Whatever the cruelty level of her and Tiara’s death, just know they alongside God watching over you all with open hearts.”

I looked down at my empty plate with a heavy heart. “Okay,” I softly mumbled.

I could hear her back at the stove cooking again for a while before I heard her stop moving for a second. “Daimon.”

“Mam?” I choked through my tears slowly building up.

“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.”

“What?”

“Read Isaiah chapter 25,” is all she said before going back to her cooking. That’s another thing Grandma Mae and Mama had in common…Quoting the Bible in different situations. 

I stood up and put my dish in the sink and walked back up to my room. Not only did I lose my appetite, I’m slowly losing my G points by turning soft.