I moved back into mama's house about a month and a half after my last surgery. It was weird. Real weird. I could see what Jazz meant by "different." First of all, it wasn't even the same house, the same neighborhood, the same side of town.

Nothing.

Nothing was the same.

And that bothered me.

To see my whole family there, but in a place that was completely unfamiliar to me. I didn't know how to function in the middle of all that, and could see then why they kept saying that it was only a matter of time before Jazz went right back to what she knew.

To be honest, it was only a matter of time before I did, too.

That shit was just...uncomfortable.

And everyone felt it, not just me and Jazz. Nobody said anything, though. Charity seemed to like it there, but she definitely didn't like me being there. She treated me like shit the whole two months me and Jazz lived there. She acted like we were crowding her space, and we kind of were. She wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't look at me. Nothing. The only thing she would do was help me if she saw that I was having trouble getting my legs to do what I needed them to do, but then right after she helped me, she would just go right back to ignoring me.

Sometimes I would catch her staring at me, though, and looking like she wanted to say something to me, but then she would just start crying and turn away from me or leave the room.

Every time.

But she wouldn't talk to me and tell me what was wrong. Now that I was walking again, I knew that I could fix whatever it was, or set whoever was fuckin' wit' her straight, if she would just tell me who or what it was. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't even look at me.

It broke me.

All the way down.

That shit made me want to get the hell out of there. ASAP. Those two months couldn't have gone by fast enough for me. If my family, my own family didn't want me around, then fuck 'em. I would leave, and they could figure out their own shit for themselves. It hurt me so bad when Charity took it upon herself to make it clear on behalf of everyone that I no longer...belonged to them. Thanks to her, by the time Wallace loaded up the moving truck to take me and Jazz to Virginia – mostly all we took were mattresses, you know how that goes – I was too ready to leave.

Charity cried the hardest when we left. She just grabbed onto me out of nowhere and wouldn't let go. I mean she held on tight, too. My sister had never acted like that before. Not even when she thought I was dying. Jazz had to come get her and take her out of the room before she made mama check out.

When they walked away, all I kept hearing Jazz say was, "You had to, shA. You had to do it. You had to. He'll understand one day."

I didn't know what these women had goin' on, but I wished Wallace luck because they were his problem now.

Of course, if it ever got to be too much for him, all it would take was a phone call for me to come back. I would be on mama's doorstep right away. With one phone call. I told him that over and over, too. I told him don't just leave mama and my sisters out there. I wouldn't even blame him if he did leave. They were a lot to deal with, I already knew that. I just didn't want them to ever be stuck out there again, hungry with the lights off, about to lose the house, like they were when daddy died. Mama and Charity were my responsibility, anyway, not his. The babies were his daughters, not Charity, and I let him know repeatedly that I was still fully aware of that.

Most of the time Wallace would just listen when I tried to talk to him man to man like that, but I knew he heard me, and I trusted that he wouldn't walk out on them without letting me know first. I had to believe that, or else leaving them would have been...too much.

And I wouldn't have gone.

No matter how much like shit Charity treated me, I wouldn't have left them alone without Wallace. Charity's ass was mean, anyway, so I didn't really take how she was acting too personal. I knew she was just tired of life being fucked up, just like I was.

I said goodbye to the babies. I actually dropped tears when I said goodbye to them because...well, I just couldn't deal with it. We were leaving too much behind, and there were just too many people that we would never see again. My heart ripped more and more every time I thought about Angel. And the house. And our life. It was like our life was there when I went into the hospital, and completely gone when I came back out.

Our whole life was totally gone.

Honestly, I didn't think me and Jazz were gonna make it.

Wallace's grandma helped us out, though. A lot. She had already been through the same thing with Wallace, and I guess to an extent with Jazz, too. Which I was grateful for, because Jazz's transition wasn't nearly as rough as it should have been once we got to VirginiA. I found out that Jazz had pretty much already set up a life there the first time she went, and that's why she was itching so bad to get back to it.

The first thing I did was buy me and Jazz a car and a house. Well, Jazz got the loan for the house, and I paid it back. I think Wallace or somebody must have co-signed for her, because the only job she had was working part-time at the church. Wallace's grandma was cool, but me and Jazz needed our own space to...figure everything out. We had to figure out how to "get back to our center," as Ma Buck would say. "Find your center, and work your way up from there."

Turns out the center for both of us was that place. That place you go to in prayer that no one can ever take away from you, and that no one can ever force you into. Ma Buck would pick us up and take us to church every Sunday. Even though we had a car now, I guess she wanted to make sure that we went. Every Sunday.

Eventually, Jazz put herself back together again. She didn't seem so lost. She started praying with me more, until we were both praying and reflecting and thanking God...and asking God for forgiveness...together. Every night. Just like we had done when I was a kid.

And things started getting better, little by little. I made some new friends, Jazz rediscovered her love of speaking and "educating The People." I loved Jazz so much, and I told her that every day. Every single day. Because she needed to hear it. She needed to hear that someone, who she knew for sure would never hurt her, loved her. And she told me every single day that she needed me to keep...surviving. She needed me to stay alive. And to learn how to live a different way, one that was the opposite of the way that she and Rico taught me to live.

The thing was, they taught me a lot of things that I could still use. I only had to use them in a different way. Wallace showed me that.

Jazz sent me to Wallace's grandmother a lot when we first moved to VA.

Ma Buck didn't play, either. Wallace's grandma was worse than Jazz when it came to...soldiering people. She used to run an all boys reform school and didn't take any shit from anybody. I thought mama was tough. Imagine Charity, mama and me all rolled into one. And she's like 5'2, but she would keep you in check. Believe that. She cleaned my mouth all the way out. I'm not sure to this day how she did it, but all of a sudden I didn't cuss as much. I stopped walking, and talking, and sounding like, and being...Little Rico. I went back to being Kenney. Not Scarface, not Lil Rico, not La'Rico, not even Christian Duvalle's boy. I just...came into my own. I started being my own man. And it was a little old woman who helped me do it.

I started seeing women differently, the more time that I spent with Ma Buck. And I suddenly realized that it was real fucked up the things that I used to accept as "payment" when crackheads couldn't pay. Not to mention the fact that I considered "crackheads" to be a completely different category of people. And even though I wasn't doing women like my uncles did, what I was doing was still not right. I knew it, even then. I just didn't see every person as equally human at the time.

I started to understand why Charity lit my arm up in the hospital. Why she got so mad about my excuse that I thought Tiana was "just another crackhead," and that's why I treated her the way that I did. I started to understand why Wallace could be trusted to pick up with my family where I left off. Why I could trust him with my sisters and mama, and even Jazz when she...and mama both...were so out of it that they couldn't even defend themselves against him if he decided to do them harm. I didn't think he would, though. Wallace was a good person, he was just hard, like Charity. I came to realize that some people, even the hard ones, just...understood and appreciated humanity. As mean as Charity was to Tiana when she thought Tiana was taking advantage of me, Charity would have gladly whooped my ass...even in the hospital bed, for treating Tee like she was less than human.

And I would have deserved it, too.

I would have deserved a hundred beat downs for just that one person that I hurt out of so many others, and I knew it.

As weak and scared and as vulnerable as Jazz was when Wallace found her in the cut and brought her to me in the hospital, I didn't even have to question whether Wallace had done anything to her before he brought her to me. Even while she was in her weakest state. With Rico, I was sick every minute that Jazz was out of my sight. The more I thought about all of that, the more I started to see myself for what I had become. Who I had become. So unlike them, so unlike daddy. So much like Rico, even more than I could have ever imagined. I didn't even see it.

But now I did.

And I didn't like what I saw.

At all.

Repentance took on a whole new meaning to me. The lives that I destroyed weren't just bodies and crackheads to me anymore. They were...souls. Souls that belonged to God. Souls that I would eventually have to answer for.

Who the hell was I to determine what their lives were worth?

There was no getting around it. One day, I would have to stand before God and answer for every single thing that I had ever done in my life. I just hoped that God would have mercy on me, and that my punishment wouldn't spread out beyond me. I asked God every day not to involve any more of my family in what I figured I eventually had coming to me.

I still ask for that.

Every day.

I want God to keep that all on me.

All of it.

My prayers took on a whole different meaning after that. I wasn't just saying what I always said anymore, just because that's what mama and daddy always said. I was truly seeking God's hand for so many things, and Jazz was doing the same. We both knew as sure as we were breathing and free, that without that guidance, it was only a matter of time before we both spun right out of the delicate balance that had become our lives. We were thankful for that shaky balance, too.

Because finally our lives were balanced.

And we thanked God for that, each and every day.

I didn't know what was ahead of us in that new place with all those new people, and I honestly didn't think too hard about it. What I did start focusing on was the "familiarity" that Wallace said to look for once I got up there. God's guidance. God's way of showing me what to move toward and what to steer clear of. As long as Jazz and I both followed that, we would both be ok.

My heart broke every time I thought about Angel. Every single time I thought of Tiana and her beautiful smile, the one that I took away from her. Every time I thought about Sammy. And daddy. MamA. And even Charity. My heart hurt, my soul hurt, all the time. And I know Jazz's did, too. She missed the life. She missed Rico. And Remmey. I could tell. We were both free now, but I know she felt more trapped than ever before. We were now living the life that she used to fight against. The life that she was running away from, the one that pushed her right to Rico in the first place. He offered her a way to stay free from the repetition that she hated.

And now here we were.

Doing the same damn thing at the same damn time every damn day, just like Wallace.

Not that we weren't doing the same thing at the same time every day before, because for the most part we were. Jazz just couldn't see it that way. So I'm not saying that it was easy for either of us. Jazz hurt all the time. Every day. And to be honest, I did, too.

Jazz used to apologize to me for what me and Angel went through.

Every day.

Every day.

But eventually we both had to accept the fact that that's just the way it was and how we were living at that time, and thank God that we didn't have to live that way anymore. Thank you Jesus every day that we didn't have to live like that anymore. Because even though we missed it, and home, and knowing what to expect at all times, that life just wasn't good for us. Or anyone around us. We knew it at the time that we were living it, and we just had to keep reminding each other of it once we got out.

Mama was right. Jazz needed me. And I needed her, too. So much. At first it was all we could do to get through the day in front of us. I mean, it was really hard to survive at first. To breathe our next breath. To take our next step. But we made it.

Money was never a problem again once we came up, thankfully. We had plenty of that. It would have been a million times harder trying to start over if we didn't have that. But it was learning how to be ok with living off of that money - even though we were supposed to be brand new people - that was so hard. But I mean...what else were we going to do with it? And why would we do anything at all with the money, other than live on it? Other than use it to survive. I earned that shit. And Jazz already paid for what we had to do to get it. With her own daughter, and with her own life.

It's a fucked up mentality, but that's all I could come up with, so that's what we went with.

Everything else was hard, too. Like learning how to reconcile the "thanks to Rico" for showing us how to survive and make money part, with the "thank you Jesus" for showing us how to let go of everything that Rico ever stood for part. While we were still only eating because of the money that Rico showed us how to get.

We had to learn how to feel deserving of breathing that next breath, after truly understanding and accepting how we fucked everyone else on the block's life, and how to deal with living free while Rico was locked up. As strange as it sounds, that part was real hard to do. Jazz loved Rico. With everything she had. And she loved Remmey, too. It was real hard for her not to go back there. And to be honest, as much as I hated Rico, I knew that he raised me and kept me alive, just like Jazz did. So in a way...I didn't know how to feel about him, either.

Or Remmey.

I thought a lot about Remmey at first. Where he was, what he was doing. How he looked out for me on the corner growing up, every single night, until I was old enough to look out for myself. I wondered if he was still out there and if my uncles were still a crew, or had they turned on each other like they turned on the youngins? I wondered if Remmey was even still alive, or if someone had killed him by now. As messed up as it sounds, if ever I had a living guardian angel walking the earth with me growing up, back then I would have told you that it was Remmey. Even now, I would probably still tell you the same thing.

Jazz and I both had a real hard time at first, sorting through all of the things that Ma Buck was trying to get us to buy into. Going through everything that she taught us, and trying to figure out which part applied to us, our experiences and our situation.

It was difficult. And confusing. When someone tells you that you belong to the Kingdom of God, but also tells you that everything you ever learned, everything you've ever done, everything that you're comfortable with, everything that you are, basically, is from hell...but yet, you still belong to the type of God that they're pushing - one who hates all that shit, but still loves you? We didn't know what to do with that. Or how to feel about church at that time. Or where we fit into this new picture. Neither one of us knew. Which put me and Jazz on an even playing field... as far as that was concerned. And we had never been on one before. It had always either been her teaching me and taking care of me, or me looking out for her and taking care of her. But now we had to learn this new life together, at the same time.

And we had to decide once and for all who would be in charge. Since I was still a minor, Jazz won out. Of course she did. Because she was the adult. For all intents and purposes. That's the way we had it set up, with everything in her name. Even though I had turned sixteen by then, I still didn't even have a driver's license. For a long time, the thought of officially putting myself on paper made me...uneasy, to say the least. I was used to living like a ghost. No one outside of my family, Tiana and Ma Buck had ever known any real thing about me. No one.

Aside from my being just barely old enough to have a driver's license, Jazz had always been the adult, my adult, whether it looked like what it was supposed to look like or not. And because I was a soldier, once we decided who would be who in this new life, I fell in line.

Just like she taught me to do.

And just like I had always done.

But it was hard for me to back up and let her completely take over at first, because she cried. All the time. All the time. All the time. Like she didn't know what she was doing. Like mama used to do when daddy first died. And I wasn't for that shit. It took me back to the place that had me looking for a way to take care of my family the first time around. However I could make it better, that's what I wanted to do. The more I thought about it, the more she cried. And the more she cried, the more I thought about it.

She just wouldn't stop crying.

And I wasn't some little kid anymore, so this time, I wasn't helpless and standing by watching what was going on around me. I could have stepped in and just...ran things like I did with mamA. Because this time, I already knew what to do and how to fix it. But with Jazz and this situation, it was different. I knew that Jazz had to see that she could make it on her own. It was hard not to step in, but I didn't. I didn't do anything to ease her stress, to take her mind off of what was hurting her, to take the weight off of her shoulders and put it on my own.

I just let her cry and tried not to stress her out more.

I stayed back and didn't take over. I made her handle her own business. And I prayed. All the time. All the time. All the time. And eventually...Jazz stopped crying. And started praying with me. And I finally really saw her, and realized that...even though she was going through all of that and was in so much pain, she wasn't high. Through all of that, she wasn't high anymore. Ever. She didn't want it. Even with all that crying, she never asked me to find her a rock.

Not once.

She never went back to it.

And eventually, through her tears, she saw me, too. I was still there. Standing strong with her. I was breathing and surviving, just like she taught me to do. Only this time, she noticed that I could sleep now.

All night.

Just like everyone else.

And I noticed that she still respected herself in spite of, and maybe even because of. Because of the things that she had been through and brought herself out of, she knew that she was stronger than anyone now.

And we both noticed that every day there was a slight change in the way we thought, and planned, and carried ourselves, and presented ourselves. And in the way that we...eventually knew that we would make it not only through that day, but through the next day, too, and even the day after that.

Ma Buck called this "finding the treasure." She said that we were using the limited time that we had on this earth to find the treasure in the mess. Every day brought a new treasure and a new lesson, and according to her...all we had to do was find it. And we did. Every single day we looked for that treasure, that gift from God, together. I think that Wallace was helping mama do the same thing because she was getting better. I could hear it in her voice when I talked to her on the phone.

She told me and Jazz both all the time that she loved us and just wanted us both to be safe. She said that if it could have been any other way, then she would have made it so, but she couldn't and that's why God sent us Wallace. To give us a safe place to be, and I believed her. Because we were finally safe. We were all safe thanks to Wallace, and I guess that was the "seen" part of the "seen and unseen angels" that Ma Buck was always talking about...as far as I was concerned, anyway.

The unseen...well, very obviously, they had been running with us the whole time.

I didn't know why God took daddy or my favorite sister away. Or why Angel had to come here to have such a miserable time on this earth. Same with TianA. I didn't have the answers to most of my questions when it came to any one of the people that we lost. So eventually, I just stopped trying to figure out everything that went wrong, and started looking for the things that were right.

I would have lost my mind if I didn't do that.

I would have really lost my whole. damn. mind.

I didn't always recognize the good things at first, either, the things that were going right. Because I was obsessed with all of the bad things in life. I never stopped thinking about them. But finally Ma Buck and Jazz got me to look at other stuff. After a while, I was able to find the treasure in just about everything. Because of daddy, I knew how to treat the woman that I was with. Because of Sammy, I knew how to defend myself and others. Because of Angel, I knew how to take care of another human being in a place that didn't even seem like it was meant for human life. Because of Rico, I knew that no man could ever defeat me. Ever. And because of Tiana, I knew how to love. With my whole heart. And how to forgive. Totally and completely. Every single time.

I thank God for those lessons every day. And I ask for forgiveness for hurting Tiana, for giving drugs to Jazz, for not taking better care of Angel, for all of the lives that I was responsible for destroying, every day. Every single day. And the pain still hasn't left, and the burden of it never got any lighter.

But it became more bearable.

And it eventually became easier to breathe.

It became easier for Jazz to breathe, too. Eventually, we stopped talking about the things that were crushing us, and what we should have never done, and what we could never go back to, and we started making plans for what we were about to do, what the next step was that we were going to take, and where we were trying to get to.

I bought Jazz a nightcluB) To keep her busy. It only made sense that she would be good at running a club since she was so good at managing the parties that her and Rico used to throw. She would run the party and cook at the same time, and make the money. Really, Jazz ran the business back then. Rico was only the muscle. So it was basically the same thing with the club, only now what she was cooking was legit. Like crawfish on zydeco night. And I hired guys to be her muscle. Guys who recognized me for what I was and knew not to fuck with her or her money, and knew not to let anyone bring anything around her or the club that didn't go through me first. Nothing. Jazz made a lot of money that first year, too. Because there was nothing else really out there like what she was offering.

Supply and demand.

And any time my Aunt Jazz ever did anything, she did it right. The first time. Always the best. Always, every time. No matter what it was. So, of course, her customers started going out of their way to hand us their money. Just like they had always done. That's the way it had always been. She called the club Jasmine's, of course. It helped her get back into her own and stand on her own two feet. I noticed little by little that she didn't need me around her all the time anymore, and that she didn't depend on me as much.

Which made her feel good. So it made me feel good, too.

Once Jazz was settled enough, I finally manned up and got myself a driver's license. Then I bought myself a car. Well...Jazz got the loan and I paid it back. Then I finally signed that student loan promissory note and bought myself a college education. It was time. We had been in VA for almost two years by then, and I was almost eighteen years old. I wasn't really doing anything with my life, besides working at Jazz's club during the day, and getting put out at night because I was too young to be working there.

I was starting to get restless.

And that's a very bad thing when it comes to people like Jazz and me. We need to stay busy. All the time. Especially now that I was almost old enough to do real time. So I finally took the Armistead University acceptance letter that I had gotten almost two years before and went to college, because Wallace said that this was my ticket out.

My way to stay out.

For good.

Besides that, I didn't really know where else to go or what else to do, so I just...did like Wallace did. I asked Ma Buck to help me see if I could still get in. When I handed her the two year old acceptance letter, I thought that she would be mad that I had it and sat on it all that time. But she wasn't. She just held it and looked at it for a long time, smiling from ear to ear. Like she was looking at something that she had seen work out before, and couldn't wait to see it work out again.

Next thing I knew, I was playing basketball and doing homework.

Like a regular kid.

Charity would have liked that, and I knew one day that I would be able to tell her...even if she still wasn't talking to me that day. But I knew she was checking on me, because sometimes the questions that mama or Wallace would ask me, or would ask Jazz about me, were things that only Charity would know that I needed someone to see about. I just couldn't figure out why she wouldn't just ask me herself.

I still loved her though, even if she hadn't spoken to me in two years. I still loved her with all my heart. And I missed her. So much. I missed the babies, too. They were growing up so fast without me, and when I thought about it too hard, I would think about Angel and how she should have been growing up right along with them. I wondered what she would have looked like, what kind of personality she would have grown into. Would she have been hard like Charity or soft like Tiana? Would she have been kind like Sammy, or all heart and too wide open for her own good like Jazz? Would she have just shut herself off from reality, like mama, so she would never have to deal with anything that came her way?

Sometimes when I thought about Angel, I dropped tears. But nobody ever knew. I couldn't even tell Jazz, because whenever I brought Angel up to her...she would get this look in her eye. Like fuck life. And I just didn't want to ever see that look on her face again. I had already seen her spend too many years looking like that, and I just...didn't want to see her looking like that anymore. Out of all the things that Ma Buck helped us through, Angel was the one thing that Jazz never once told her about.

So I never did, either.

Really, it didn't take long for me to stop bringing the baby up even to Jazz. Or anybody. Charity was the only other one that I would have ever talked with about the baby, and, well...Charity wasn't speaking to me. So I just stopped bringing up all of it. I never talked about our life before we moved to Virginia with anyone, and me and Jazz just...moved forward.

And tried to leave her...them...and everything else that we used to know and love behind.

It hurt.

Bad.

And sometimes, I just couldn't hide it. But I also knew that there was no point in bringing it up. So I didn't. And I was good with that. Whatever it took to keep Jazz...on earth.

God has a funny way of doing most things. And it's not ever the way that I, personally, would have wanted them done. But I can say that life does repeat itself. Over and over again. And for someone like me, that could be useful. I guess that's what Wallace was trying to tell me in the hospital. If you keep your eyes peeled, the second and third – sometimes fourth time, if you have a real hard head – you won't miss out on that opportunity or fall into that same hole.

If you're lucky, you learn your lessons early and bounce back. You learn to recognize what you're seeing quickly, and run toward it or run the other way.

My life has been pretty...stressful so far, and that's the truth. But I would like to think that everything leading up to my new life has been a training ground for everything that's to come. And hopefully everything that's coming will all be good. Of course, I know that it won't all be good, because that's not the way life works. But hopefully there will be more good days than bad.

Me and Jazz make it a point to pay extra close attention to those good days, too.

Because sometimes that's all you have, and all you can hope for.

All you can pray for.

All you know how to pray for.

And you know what? If we can get mostly good days, then I'm good. More than good, actually. You know what they say, every day above ground is a good day. So if me and Jazz could just get that, I would definitely thank God for it.

Life is so...crazy.

I mean, I just look back and can't believe that we're still here. I can't even believe what we've been through.

None of it.

I thank God for it all, though. All of it. Because after you go through all that, and still come out on top...

What else can you do?