~~Young~~

Chapter Twelve

   “I know,” Tami nodded and looked back to the fire, “I’m…I’m just not ready yet.”

   With a sigh Mama shook her head, and Sera knew it was because Tami was a lost cause. She might say she wants to start over, but once the roundness was gone and her body held more value she’d be back on the streets. And there was nothing Mama could do about it, sometimes even she couldn’t help.

   “So what did you bring us?” Mama asked as she forced a smile on her face.

   Sera went through the contents of her cart halfheartedly, wanting to ask Mama more but knowing she had closed the subject. It was the usual mix of canned foods and dry goods, a couple of bags of apples and oranges, a couple of loaves of bread. She’d brought more when she first started coming to Mama but she insisted Sera stop, that not only would most of it spoil without refrigeration but that carrying so much food was not only a burden, but a danger. If others knew the stores she kept of food they would be robbed constantly.

   Mama nodded appreciatively, and grinned ear to ear when Sera pulled a couple of paperbacks out, “now what did I say about spoiling us?”

   “You deserve it Mama, and here,” she pulled the backpack she had bought off her shoulders and handed it to her, “the meds you wanted.”

   Now that smile wasn’t one for herself but for her ever changing family, “thank you Sera, I can’t tell you how much this will help.”

   She read each label, penicillin, amoxicillin, and three Z-packs for illness. The cough syrup and decongestants, vicodins and percosets that she had been known to sell in desperate times. Not just pills, there were creams for rashes, burns and the fungus that were known to plague the homeless. There were a dozen Epi-Pens for her as well, asthma inhalers and steroids, she liked to be prepared for anything. Including the unexpected, this would explain the Plan B pills. Mama was prochoice to the end, and she thought it better to end it before it could begin rather then have to pull another unwanted baby from a trash can.

   At the bottom of the backpack was the biggest bottle of all, for her. She had been complaining of lingering aches over the last year, and a couple of visits ago Sera started bring the Flexeril with her, for Mama’s arthritis. She may not be giving up any time soon, but time had taken its toll on her body.

   “What about me?” Billy asked as he came up behind Sera, “you got what I asked for too?”

   Sera didn’t answer him right away, instead she turned a questioning glance on Mama, “you sure you’re okay with this?”

   Another of those unenthusiastic sighs pushed past Mama’s lips and she threw a hand up, “Okay, hardly, but I understand where his reasons for wanting a gun would come from. I’d be a hypocrite if I told him he couldn’t have one,” she said as she reached around and patted her lower back. Beneath those layers Mama herself was hiding a double barreled shot gun. She said she had never had to use it, that the sight of the beast usually scared anyone away before she could fire a round.

   Usually, not always unfortunately.

   Sera understood Billy’s reasoning too. Last time she came to see Mama it was only hours after Billy and Vanessa had been jumped. The two were inseparable, they knew there was strength in numbers, unfortunately so did their attackers. They didn’t have any money of course, and for their efforts their attackers wanted some sort of compensation…so they knocked Billy out and raped Vanessa. Billy said it wouldn’t have happened if he had a gun. That he was overwhelmed three to one and he knew if he could have showed a weapon they would have backed off. And it very well could’ve been true, but it didn’t change what happened.