Halfway through the day, two of Daddy’s Panther friends came over to watch the football game, so he turned off our cartoons and I threw a fit until Daddy promised he’d put me to bed that night. I always begged for Daddy to tuck me in because Mama wouldn’t do nothing but kiss my forehead, but Daddy would stay until I fell asleep, tell me all kinds of stories about times before I existed, when it was just him and Uncle Ty.
That day, Daddy’s friends sat next to Mama on the couch and one of them leaned down to me, his beard long and crooked, and told me that my hair looked just fine. We had no reason to think that day was any different from our other hair days until the door pounded and Daddy opened it and next thing we knew guns were being pointed and Daddy was handcuffed along with his friends, charged with accessory to drug trafficking even though Daddy claimed he never even knew what drugs they were talking about. Mama begged for them to let Daddy go while Marcus and I hid behind the couch with our hair only halfway done and waited for the door to finally shut, for Mama to rush us into the bathroom just in case the cops came back, and get on the phone with every person she knew, trying to find a way to get to Daddy. That night, I waited for him to come home and fulfill his promise, tuck me under my covers, but he never did.
Daddy knew what it meant to disappoint and be disappointed and I never once thought he’d look at me and say I had failed him, say anything but that he loved me.
“I had to say it.” Uncle Ty shakes his head.
“You don’t have to say shit to me. This about Marcus.” I keep my head straight on the road and try to drown out Uncle Ty’s presence in music that sounds far too similar to the kind Marcus tried to make.
Uncle Ty tries to tell me about L.A., but I don’t listen, not as we near the jail, the long driveway lined in cop cars and a looming building of cement, a trap just smaller than the one Daddy spent three years inside. He pulls into the parking lot and I get out of the car, leaving my phone on the seat. Uncle Ty does the same and then follows me up the ramp and into the building where we check in and wait for our appointment with Marcus.
They call us in and Uncle Ty stands first, jittering, looking like he’s about to start heaving as we follow a guard through the corridor and into the large room lined in tables, different men dressed in gray across from their visitors, and Marcus sitting there with his eyes scanning until he sees us, his whole face lifting upward as he takes in Uncle Ty and then me, then back to Uncle Ty.
We sit down across from him and he reaches for one of my hands, squeezes. None of us say anything, the hand holding mine shaking. Uncle Ty looks down at the table and then back to Marcus, finally speaks.
“Flew all the way up here to see you.”
I shake my head, thinking how these men never learn, how Uncle Ty only needed to show up and care and instead he starts with this.
I glare at Uncle Ty before turning back to Marcus. “Say whatever you need to say to him, but know I got a lawyer and I’m gonna help get you outta here.”
Marcus nods and I wish he looked more angry but instead he looks resigned or wounded, his eyes floating around the room and landing on Uncle Ty.
“You the reason I’m in here.” Marcus says it calmly, like he’s telling Uncle Ty what he ate for breakfast.
Uncle Ty looks taken aback. “I didn’t do nothing but help you out, bring you with me when you asked, help you learn how to spit better. Don’t go blaming this shit on me, this all your mama’s fault.” He pounds a fist on the table.
“I ain’t trusted Mama to do nothing for me. It was you, you was the only one raising me and then you turned on me and I didn’t have nothing left of you but music, so I got myself in a mess so I could keep on living like you would, but I ain’t you.” His eyelids are crinkling the way they do right before he starts crying. “I left Ki alone for you and now we here and I need you to see it. Look around, Ty, look.”
Uncle Ty’s eyes jerk around for a second, but Marcus waits until he twists his torso, takes in the knees in sweatpants shaking under tables, two toddlers chasing each other up to the metal detector and back, two pipes in the ceiling taking turns dripping. He looks back at me, sitting in this chair grasping on to the only family I got left, Marcus holding right back, both of us staring at Uncle Ty, at this man who don’t belong to us no more.
Uncle Ty’s neck loses its ability to hold up his head and he droops, a man sunken in shame. He looks up. I watch as Marcus and him stare each other right in the face and Uncle Ty’s hand shoots forward to try to hold on to Marcus’s other palm, but Marcus moves it back into his lap. It feels wrong for me to be sitting here, to be witnessing this ultimate break between them.
“You gotta understand I been taking care of your family so long that when your sister died, I realized I didn’t have nothing of my own. That you wasn’t my child and your mama wasn’t my wife and I didn’t have no place here. So when a friend of mine offered to let me live with him down in L.A., it felt like my chance, like I could have something bigger and you was eighteen so I thought I would just let you live your life. How was I supposed to watch after y’all and have my own shit at the same time?” Uncle Ty’s arms are resting on the table, supporting his head, and he’s looking up at us with these big eyes with red all up in the whites of them. “Both of y’all just started to remind me of your mama and I couldn’t stand looking at you the same, not after what she did, who she became, so I did one last thing and paid her bail and then I had to go. I had to.”
Marcus is shaking his head, his tears flowing, squeezing my hand so tight the fingers are turning yellow. “It don’t matter no more what you meant to do, this what you did.” Marcus slams his free hand down on the table, the vibrations shooting Uncle Ty back into an upright position.
“I’m sorry.” He glances toward me, then back to Marcus. “What I gotta do to make it better?”
I still don’t trust him or his apology, but I can sense the desperation in him, the desire to be forgiven.
“You can’t.” Marcus’s voice shatters.
The guard standing closest to us gives a five-minute warning and Uncle Ty leans farther across the table, toward Marcus. “I’ll do anything.”
Marcus nods slowly. “Take Ki back to L.A. with you.”
Uncle Ty looks at me fully, like he’s assessing whether or not Marcus is worth it.
“You know I can’t do that, Marcus. I got a family out there, can’t take neither of you back.”
Marcus’s lips tilt into a smile that is actually more of a wince, more like the face Trevor makes when he loses a game. “Then I guess we done here.”
Marcus starts to stand, letting go of my hand.
“Wait.” Uncle Ty stands too, almost Marcus’s height. “At least let me pay your bail. They set it at a hundred thousand, yeah? I can pay the ten percent.”
I watch as Marcus shakes his head, looks back down at me, and returns his gaze to Uncle Ty. “Pay Cole McKay’s bail, not mine. I spent too long not doing right by no one. Least I can do is give his baby her daddy back.”
Cole’s child’s eyes come back to me again and this time I see Cole in them, when he bursts into laughter and they glitter. I don’t know if Marcus does this for me or for Cole or for his daughter, but I don’t think I’ve ever been that proud of him, ever looked at him and thought, That is a good man. He’s still got a lot to make up for and I don’t know if I’ll ever really forgive him for what he’s done this past year, but seeing a glimmer of the person I know my brother to be gives me hope where I thought I didn’t have any.
The guard approaches Marcus to take him back to his cell, back inside the tunnels of this place, and, for the first time, he doesn’t look at Uncle Ty or any of the other faces in this room but mine, leaves me with a last glimpse of a smile I recognize from back when we didn’t know how lonely we would be, before he is pulled beyond the table, a flash of my fingerprint disappearing down the hallway.
* * *