SEASON TWO, EPISODE FIFTEEN:
THROUGH THE WIRE
AMARU chisholm
I pretend to still be sleep, but the sound of the machines around me makes me come to the realization that I wasn't.
I hate that I have to keep putting everybody through this, especially since everybody thought I was getting better, but I didn't feel like I needed to do this anymore.
It would hurt to leave Aniyah, but I feel like I showed her that I loved her enough, so at least when I go, she won't be thinking she was the reason. Hopefully she'll just realize I genuinely couldn't take it anymore.
Because she's the last person whose fault it would be.
I really thought it was going to work this time, though. That's why I was writing all those letters. I had it all planned out, I just knew it was going to go the way I expected.
Thought wrong, though.
Deciding to suck it up, I open my eyes slowly, taking a quick look around the room. I had noticed the nurse and Aniyah, who was in a chair next to my bed with her head laid on my lap, my right hand intertwined with hers.
"Glad to see that you're awake, Amari." The nurse smiles.
"Amaru, like Tupac." I say to her. She nods her head.
"Ah, yes. My apologies, sweetheart. I saw the first four letters and ran with it." She finishes up checking whatever it is that she was checking. "Your mother should be back soon. She went out to grab something I believe is what she was telling the young lady when I was last up here."
"Okay." I speak lowly. "Thanks."
"Mhm." She hums, staring over at Aniyah. "Girlfriend?"
"Yeah."
"Our visiting hours start at seven in the morning," She begins to speak once again. "She's been here since seven o' one. Every time I've come to the room she's been in the same chair. I don't even think she's eaten today. I'm sure when she wakes up she'll be extremely happy. Seems like a sweet girl."
"She's the sweetest." I say, admiring her beauty as she slept.
"Well, I'll head out now. In about an hour or two I will be back to make sure everything's fine."
I nod as she heads out of the room. I wait about a minute or two before nudging Aniyah, waking her up almost instantly. "Hmm? Is he-" She paused her sentence and just stared at me. Her facial expression going from worried to disappointed.
"Hey.."
She shakes her head. "You don't understand how mad I am at you."
"Baby, listen," I get ready to just tell her a whole bunch of bullshit and beat around the bush.
"Don't 'baby' me. What if you would've killed yourself? Huh? Then what?"
That was the plan.
"You really piss me off. I am literally so mad at you I could throw a house at your face and not think twice about it." She stares into my eyes, soon leaning in to me and putting her forehead against mine. "But I am so happy that you're still here."
Her saying that had made me feel guilty. She was happy that I was here, so imagine if it would have gone how I planned.
"I love you so much, Mari. I can't do this without you," She says as her voice begins to crack. "I just don't understand why you keep doing this, I thought you were doing better."
"I thought I was too," I admit to her, my own tears being on the verge of dropping. "I thought that all of the good that comes from being with you would make everything better, but it doesn't. There's just so much fuckin' darkness in my life and it's gotten to the point where nothing in life could make it better."
"Mari.."
"I can't keep doing it anymore. I can't keep fighting, nothing happens. I feel like I'm winning one battle just to lose a million more, it's tiring."
She sniffles and backs up. She's no longer sitting in the chair, she is now up and pacing the hospital room floor like a madman.
"You can't give it all to me? I can't take any of the pain away? We can't fight the battles together?" She asks, almost as if she was genuinely concerned.
I was sure that she was.
"Aniyah, I'm going to die." I tell her. "All I see in my dreams are the signs, when I wake up in the morning I think of a million different ways not to wake up the next day."
"Mari, stop it. Stop." She glances over at me, eyes bloodshot red with her face covered in tears.
Seeing her like this was breaking my heart into a million and one pieces.
"Ba-"
"Stop it! Just stop!" She yells, covering her ears before she dropped to the floor, sobbing.
They didn't have me doped up on any drugs, nor did I have anything in me, so it was very easy for me to get out of the bed and walk over to her, kneeling down next to her. I decide to not say anything. I've said enough. Instead, I wrap my arm around her shoulder and pulls her in closer to me as she continues to cry into me.
"You're the first girl I've ever loved." I admit to her.
Probably the last, also.
"The last thing in this life that I want to do is hurt you. I don't want anything I do to ever have a negative impact on you or your life. I hate seeing you this upset. I really do,"
She sniffles and looks up at me, her eyes went from mine down to my lips before she licked over hers and leaned in to kiss mine. What started as a peck turned into a deeper, much more passionate kiss as she placed her hand on the back of my head to deepen it.
"Mm," I moan into the kiss as she climbed on top of me, slipping her tongue into my mouth when I gave her the chance. "Aniyah, wait," I break away for a second.
"Come on," She wipes some of the tears off of her face. "Let's just do it while we have some privacy."
"I'm not having sex with you on the floor of my hospital room."
"You don't want to?" She asks, leaning in to kiss my neck.
Shit, I wanna do her ass in right about now.
"I do. More than anything, but I can't. Our first time has to be better than this." I tell her and she stops kissing my neck, so we are now staring at each other.
"Right.." She speaks barely above a whisper. "I'm doing the thing again."
"What thing?"
"Trying to use my body for something."
"You're good. I'm not judging you. I would've went with it if we were in a house."
She shrugs and climbs off of me. "Maybe I should head home."
"No," I shake my head. "Don't leave. I want you to stay."
Sighing, she stands up and holds her hand out to help me up. I take her hand and she somehow gets me up, allowing me to walk back over to the bed and get comfortable. "Come here."
She walks over to the bed and squeezes in to the tight spot next to me, laying her head on my chest. "You ever thought about talking to someone? Like a therapist?"
"Mhm." I hum, rubbing my hands through her hair. She had her natural curls pressed out due to the fact that it was cold out so she wouldn't sweat it out. "I've talked to a few. They never helped me."
"I saw a bottle of anti-depressants in your room one time when I went over there. Those don't help with anything?"
"Can we just drop it?" I ask. "Let's just forget it."
"Is that what those letters were for?"
"Aniyah."
"Is it? I mean, were you writing letters because you were expecting for it to work?" She continues to ask.
I roll my eyes, getting annoyed by the fact that she just would not let the situation go like I had asked her to.
"Would you stop? Just leave it alone."
"I'm just trying to get some answers."
"You're not going to get them from me so I think it would be best if you just leave it alone."
I hated getting an attitude with her, but I equally hated the fact that she thought I would have the answers for her when I just barely had the answers for myself.
"I'll just call Tee and go home." She mumbles, reaching into her hoodie pockets to get her phone. "You know what.." She shakes her head. "No."
"No what?"
"Just no." She leans up. "You don't get to sit here and tell me that I can't ask anymore questions because I won't get any answers because I deserve answers. I got that phone call last night from your mother. I couldn't sleep for majority of the night because I kept waking up thinking that something was going to go wrong and you were going to die."
"I got up and got dressed at the ass-crack of dawn and woke my grumpy ass brother up to bring me thirty minutes over here so that I could sit in this depressing ass room with you in hopes that you would wake up. I dropped everything I had planned today for you, so that I would be able to sit here for the fourteen hours I get to visit you and have no distractions. So yeah, I deserve some answers."
"You can't get what I do not have. I don't have any answers to even try to give you."
"If you try to harm yourself again I'm going to leave you." She deadpans.
"Be cool, bruh. What?"
"When we first got together I told you that I was here if you ever needed to talk and since then you have hurt yourself multiple times. You never come to me. You never want to talk. Is it because of me?"
"It isn't because of you. If anything it's because of me. It has nothing to do with you."
"It doesn't only impact you though, Mari. It has an affect on me, Shannon, Cameron, and even the rest of your family. Why not try to talk to people who only want to help you?"
"Cam doesn't give a fuck about whether or not I live or die so bringing him up didn't really help your argument at all."
"Other people still care, whether he does or doesn't."
"I get that."
"Okay, so let's try to figure out an alternative. You ever tried the rubber band thing that people do? When they pop themselves instead of doing anything else?"
Here we go.
•••
It had been two days and they finally sent me back home, prescribing me with more anti-depressants and suggesting a few therapists to me. They weren't saying anything I hadn't already heard, I could've just listened to Aniyah talk if I wanted to hear about alternatives that I'd already tried before.
"You want me to tell Aniyah that you're home?" My mom asks, leaning against my bedroom doorframe.
"I'm fine."
"You sure?" She pesters. "I'm sure she'd love to come over and see you now that you aren't in that hospital room anymore."
"I don't want to see her, Ma." I say honestly, watching the smile on her face drop.
"Oh...is everything alright with you guys?"
"Yeah, but she was at the hospital every day I was there. We don't need to see each other every single day. It's Christmas in three days anyway, I'll just see her then."
"Whatever you say, then. It was just a suggestion. Usually I have to beg you guys not to see each other." She jokes but it isn't funny, so I couldn't even fake a laugh.
"Right."
"I know that I can't help you, Mari," She speaks softly, coming to take a seat on the edge of the bed. "But I just need you to know that I love and appreciate you more than you know. You make me so proud every single day. My sweet angel boy."
She places a hand on my cheek, leaning in to place a kiss on my forehead. "I love you so so much, don't you ever forget it."
"I love you, too."
"My little rainbow baby." She smiles at me. "I'm so lucky to be able to call you mine."
I can't help but smile weakly. "I'll leave you alone, though. You and your brother are so wishy-washy, one minute you guys love the attention and the next y'all don't want anything to do with me. Don't wanna overpower you with my lovin'."
"I don't act like that."
"You do. You just don't see it. It's okay, I give all of my loving to you and you give it to Aniyah. It's cute. You act like you don't like it but you use all of my tricks."
"Right." I laugh.
"Okay," She taps my leg and stands up. "I'm about to go make something to eat, you want anything?"
"I'm fine for right now."
"That's okay, just make sure you eat before you go to sleep tonight." She points at me.
"I will," I say. "And, uh, Ma?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry about the car."
She waves me off. "It's fine, Mari. Don't worry about it."
"It was a lot of damage done to it and I know it probably costs a bunch of money to get it fixed."
"It got totaled, but I'm working on it."
"I got some money saved up in one of my shoeboxes. It should help somewhat, because I used a few hundred on gifts for Aniyah and still had a bunch more saved."
"Where you getting all this money from?"
"Cutting grass during the spring and summer, raking leaves during the fall, shoveling snow during the winter, and last year Uncle Andre had let me work in the shop so I saved all of my tips."
"Speaking of, I think you should head up the street to the shop and ask for a job again. You did great with the haircuts so it's not like he has much of a reason to say no. I mentioned it to him a few months ago and he said he would think about it."
"Y'all talk a lot?"
Uncle Andre was my father's older brother. Him and I were somewhat the same, the black sheep of our families. Him and my father had a huge falling out around five years ago when my dad got locked up for money laundering. The main reason being because of the fact that my dad was laundering the money through Uncle Andre's shop, which resulted in him getting locked up for a year and got his shop shut down to be investigated also. He had just opened his shop back up last summer when he hired me to work there.
"We catch up from time to time. Last time we talked I told him all about Aniyah and how happy you seemed with her."
"Mommy, bruh, come on!"
"What?" She laughs. "It's cute that you're in love, shush."
"Y'all don't ever gossip about Cam."
"He doesn't ask about Cameron." She says. "He asks about you, always."
"Oh...did he bring up Dad?"
"You know he isn't too fond of him."
"Maybe I shouldn't go ask for a job then, I look just like him, maybe I'll give him PTSD and he won't want to give me a job."
"Boy get your mudda'fuckin' ass up and go beg that man for a damn job."
"Why do you want me to get a job so bad?"
"You enjoyed cutting hair, decent hours and your clients tipped you well. It's easy money, I'm not asking you to do rocket science. I'm asking you to cut hair. Who knows, maybe this newfound relationship with your uncle can be good."
"We've always had a pretty good relationship, I'm not sure this will make much of a difference."
"Doesn't matter. Do what I said. Maybe this will be good for you, who knows."
•••
Sighing, I look at the lit up 'Open' sign that was in the window. I had waited a few hours before coming up here being that I had to gain the courage to come up here and beg for a job anyway. Part of me felt pathetic. Another part of me felt like this could be a good distraction.
I open up the door, the bell ringing through the small shop. Children's Story by Slick Rick playing through the speakers as the movie 'Juice' played on the TV, volume on mute. The shop had a decent amount of people in here, around five guys getting their hair cut and a few kids sitting in the chairs reading magazines.
The familiar scent was taking me back to my childhood when I would come in here with my dad and he would show me how to cut hair and tell me about how intricate the work actually was, the other memories taking me back to last summer when I was getting valuable life lessons from my uncle.
"Nah, some niggas just be terrible fathers. Ain't shit gone change that." One of the clients says, the group of them finishing their conversation. "We wouldn't have as many young niggas in the streets if we had better and more present fathers in the community, that's all I'ma say."
"Man, bye!" Demetrius, Cameron's godfather spoke up, turning his clippers off. "Niggas be present and good fathers and their kids still end up in the streets. These lil' niggas just wanna be like everybody they see online. They wanna scam and deal drugs and shit because they see these other niggas they age with designer, money, cars, and hoes and they want that shit for themselves. It's all follow-the-leader, parenting don't always play a part."
I look around awkwardly before spotting the long dreads that had belonged to Uncle Andre. I gained some courage and walked over to where he was, standing behind him. "Aye,"
"If you need a cut just take a seat, this only gone take a few seconds." He brushes me off, his eyes never leaving the money that he was counting.
"I don't need a haircut. I need a job,"
He stuffed the money in his pocket and turned around to face me. "Mari? Boy, what the hell you doing here at this time of night?"
"I just said I need a job, man."
"Girlfriend tired of you being broke?" He asks with a chuckle.
"I been a lot of things but I ain't ever broke. Even without the job the money still rolling in, don't play like I'on get no money."
"Hope it ain't laundered." He says. That was a shot at my dad, but I ignored it.
"Ha." I fake laugh.
"How's your mental health been?"
"Better." I lie.
I knew that this was going to play a big part in him giving me a job, and since I was already here there was no way that I was going to leave without a job. Therefore, I wasn't about to tell this man that I just got out of the hospital this morning because I tried to kill myself a few days ago.
"You lying, son?"
"No, sir." I shake my head.
I was a pretty decent liar when it came to anybody else. The only person I couldn't really lie to was Aniyah, I'd always feel like I was betraying her if I tried to lie. No matter how small it was.
He kept eye contact with me and let out a deep breath. "I'll let you have the job under one circumstance."
"Cool, hit me."
"You have to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas. Eleven o' clock to eight o' clock on Christmas Eve and ten o' clock to three o' clock on Christmas since I'm not staying in this damn shop all day on the holiday."
"I got plans with my girlfriend on Christmas Eve." I tell him, not wanting to cancel my plans with her.
"It can't wait?"
"I really don't think so. We've got a whole day planned out. Breakfast, ice skating, going downtown to see the lights, making gingerbread houses, going to the community Christmas concert at the rec and then we were going to watch some movies. It's been planned since Thanksgiving."
"Aw. So no job? Fine with me."
"Why can't I just do the Christmas Eve shift tomorrow? I'll even stay later." I try to bargain with him, hoping he would understand.
"Do the activities tomorrow and she can sit in the shop during your shift on Christmas Eve."
He was not someone who was easy to convince.
"Uncle Andre," I stare at him. "Maybe you need to see a picture of her to see why I can't miss this."
"A picture won't change my mind."
"She's the one." I tell him truthfully. "I can't disappoint her. She's really looking forward to it and we just had a real bad disagreement two days ago and things haven't been right with us. I need to make it up to her and show her that I care about her."
"First girlfriend, ain't it?"
"Mhm." I nod, hoping he would think back into his miserable ass childhood and remember the first girl that made him feel like this.
"Puppy love." He says. "I remember."
"This isn't puppy love, this is real. Nobody understands why we love each other the way-"
"Eight o' clock sharp tomorrow. Not a second later." He cuts my sentence short. "Every minute you're late is an extra hour added on. Holidays are busy, so it'll be a lot of regulars and walk-ins trying to get a cut. You'll take Antwon's booth,"
I look back at my father's old booth. It hadn't been used since my dad got arrested, even last year when I worked here he didn't even allow me to sit in the damn chair, so I was surprised he was going to let me use it.
"You'll take every walk-in unless there is someone around who can help you juggle them. You'll take some of my regulars if there's no walk-ins. Niggas tip more during the holidays. Keep the tip, no matter how big. You're young and scrawny, there's a few old niggas that come in for Christmas cuts and if you hide your coat then they'll tip you even more because they'll think you're broke and can't afford one."
"What?" I laugh at his serious tone.
"I'm dead serious. I got my first job in a grocery store, we had to take the groceries out to their cars in the wintertime if they couldn't carry them out and I forgot my coat once and made fifty dollars in tips that day from concerned old folks. Forgot my coat that entire winter."
"You're sick."
"I'm for real. Saved up and was able to buy me a Gameboy by that weekend. It's a hustle."
I just nod. "Bet. So I don't have to come in Christmas Eve?"
"Nah. You got the day to be boo-lovin', just make sure you here the next day."
"Got you, thanks, man." I dap him up.
"You need to let me retwist that, shit looks a mess." He looked at my hair in disgust. "Come in at seven tomorrow, actually. I can't keep looking at that shit. I'll do it free for the holidays."
"Damn, for real? Fa'sho! I'll be back in the morning." I can't hide my excitement as I head out of the shop.
a/n:
i'm on a 2019/2020 updating streak right now i am not gonna lie.
i don't think i ever gave a backstory on amaru's dad so there it is. if i did give one it's okay we can just ignore it because i'm sure if i forgot it wasn't memorable.
q: would y'all be mad if these last few chapters are basically aniyah/amaru and saida/lucky/mekhi with cameos from everybody else? and it'll likely be mostly aniyah and amaru.
i got really attached to their characters lmao and i have no idea what to write for the others, which i hate bc now i wish i just made the whole book aniyah and amaru's love story no shade.
i hate having favorites lmao it makes me feel like i'm picking which of my kids i like more.
anyways, see ya.