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My arms flailed wildly trying to find something to hold on to, to stand on.
“Grandad!” I screamed.
The boat wasn’t close enough to grab. Each time my arms hit the water, it stung like the water had somehow turned into a sword slicing into my skin. “Gran...” I tried calling, but water kept flooding into my mouth making the word hard to come out. I started to sink and I didn’t know if it was the weight of my clothes or the fact that I didn’t know how to swim. I started to think about all the things that I had never done. Was it true what they said, when you were dying, your life flashes before your eyes? You begin to see things from when you were in the womb, when you were a baby, elementary school? I wasn’t seeing nothing like that, but I knew I was dying. I knew that this was it for sure. Grandad had not reached out to grab me. He didn’t extend an oar for me to grab on to. My nose began to sting. He was gonna watch me die in this ocean and turn into fish food. I started to regret the fights. I could’ve just been friends with those dudes and not made enemies. If I had, I wouldn’t even be here, sinking, dying. So many regrets. Drinking all the orange juice and leaving none for Ma. Using all the Polynesian sauce and leaving only Chik Fila sauce for Ma even though time and time again she told me she didn’t like that sauce. Stressing Ma out. Please, I’m gonna do better, change things around, stay out of trouble, get more Polynesian sauces - enough to share. One more chance was all I needed.
I couldn’t even see Grandad anymore, not his bare chest with the short curly white hairs or his white undies. Not the boat, not even its bottom. My lungs started filling up with water, choking me, closing, blocking the air from going in and out like it was supposed to. My nostrils were blocked by water too. Water blocked every hole in my body, forbidding me from breathing. I tried to recall what they taught me at the Y. Nothing came back. I was doomed. Then I remembered. I didn’t learn anything at the Y, but I did learn something at the Neighborhood Center. You couldn’t go on the field trips to the water parks if you didn’t learn this. I spent enough summers to have learned something cause Ma paid for me to go to all the water parks. I started to kick my legs, trying to control the water with my feet. In and out, move the water between my legs. Nothing. I finally closed my mouth so that I could hold in whatever breath I had. I saw that one in the movies, but it didn’t help either cause every time I tried to close my mouth, salt water gushed in. I tried closing my eyes so that the salt water wouldn’t burn my eyeballs, but they wouldn’t close as I sank deeper and deeper into the ocean. This was it for sure. This was the last breath leaving my body. My body was limp, weak. The ocean had taken over. Oh, Ma I love you even though you sent me here to die.
I felt a tugging on my waist. Did something come to finish me off and drag me all the way down to the ocean’s floor? Was I dreaming? Was someone saving me? Aquaman. Even better, that red headed woman that was with Aquaman but really wasn’t, you know what I mean? Eventually, they’ll get together like in Aquaman II or something. But her, I wanted her to save me. Maybe she was. I could faintly see the surface of the water as the thing tugged on me some more, dragging me through the water. My mind blurred in and out of consciousness. I wished that I’d just been honest with Grandad and told him that I couldn’t swim. I wished. I thought I was being hauled by Grandad, but why would he? He had thrown me overboard. Then I thought a mermaid or the red-headed chick from Aquaman. Yeah, I was definitely dead. Seeing things before I got to the pearly gates. Didn’t even get a chance to ask God for forgiveness so he could let me in without problems. I hoped someone told Ma I loved her. Would they say good things at my funeral; talk about how much of a good son I was? At their funeral, everybody was always a saint no matter what they had done in their past life. My head landed on something hard but it couldn’t have because I was dead, complete fish food. My chest heaved like something was pressing on it, minute after minute. As soon as my chest felt light, the pressure started again. The pressure repeated then stopped, over and over. Pressure was on my lips as well. I felt air pushing down on my lungs. Pressure on my chest, then blown air through my mouth. If this was heaven, it wasn’t fun so far.
I coughed and water pooled out of my mouth onto my chest. My lungs opened. Air, in and out like it was supposed to. Grandad’s palm was on the back of my head lifting my upper body. I coughed some more to make sure that every drop of salt water left my body and that I was really alive.
“Grandad!” I coughed. “You just killed me!”
“Bwoy, hush yo mout’!” Grandad commanded. “You ev’a hear a dead man kaffin’?”
Grandad rowed the boat back to shore like it was nothing. Like his arms didn’t hurt from yanking me out the water, like he just didn’t murder me. I was silent and shivering, not because it was cold but from fright. Ma had to come get me soon. It’d only been a couple days since she’d left. Point made. I was gonna be good - the best I’d ever been. She had to come back for me, and, soon. I didn’t really have friends in the O that I could call friends or even miss but I missed stuff. I missed my Playstation. I missed Waffle House, McDonald’s, and Popeye’s. I missed AC in my classrooms. I wanted to go home. We walked through the villages like we did the day before and through the yard. Grandad had the lobsters and crabs tied together swung over his shoulders. No one questioned him. One person mentioned how big they were but that was about it. Finally in the yard, Grandad strode straight to his little house with the creatures. I went straight into my bedroom. This was too much. I had to escape. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Grandaaaad!” I called.
No answer.
I left the bedroom, walked through the kitchen and called him again. “Grandaaaad!”
“Eh?” He walked from the tiny house carrying a huge black cast iron pot.
“Grandaad,” I said “I need to call Ma!”
No answer. He continued towards the concrete fence at the back of the yard. Fire licked the top of pieces of wood. There was no way we could do this in Orlando; Ma would get in trouble for sure. At least one neighbor would call the fire department. Grandad set the pot on top of the firewood and sat in a chair in front of it.
“Grandad,” I said again. “I need to call Ma, please.”
“People need food and water, not even a roof over day head. Nobody need to call day mud-da.”
“Grandad, please!” I pleaded. The truth was I wasn’t even sure he had a phone. The tv in the living room hadn’t been on since I’d been there. He only used the radio.
Grandad lifted the cover off the boiling pot and placed both lobsters and both crabs in; the pot was that big. I imagined them screaming as their shells hit the steaming water. Then he returned to the kitchen. I followed him. Next to the radio stood a stack of books, papers, and envelopes, like a bunch of mail that he hadn’t yet opened. Ma had a table like that too, one where she put all the mail that “didn’t need to be opened right away” as she said. Though that table became more and more cluttered over the years, she kept putting more and more stuff on it. She must’ve gotten that habit from Grandad cause he had the same thing here. He tugged on an object that was still attached to its cord, a white cord under all that mess.
“Stand here and call you mud-da from dis,” he commanded. “Me don’t want it to move from here cause de last time a lose it.”
Grandad handed me an iPhone. A freaking iPhone! Which meant he had a phone charger and most importantly, WiFi. I didn’t know what made me angrier, the fact that he just murdered me or the fact that he lied to me this whole time.
“Grandad?” I asked in shock. “I asked you...you know what? Whatever.”
I carefully took the phone cause it didn’t have a case on it. Reckless, if you asked me. Ma don’t never give me my new iPhone til it had a real ugly case on it. That way I could drop it many times without breaking. I looked at the phone like I’d never seen one in my life, checking the back of it to make sure Grandad didn’t just gimme a dud. It worked. I touched the screen and it lit up like it was filled with new life. My eyes brightened. Grandad left the kitchen back to his backyard cooking. I dialed Gwendolyn, Ma for short, using FaceTime cause I wanted her to see my face. I wanted her to see my pain. It rang until it didn’t and said that this person is not available for FaceTime. I dialed again.
“Daddy, I’m at work!” Ma sounded rushed.
“It’s me, Ma!”
“Kadeem?” She looked surprised. She was wearing those ugly scrubs and a cap over her hair. Her eyes looked puffy and red like how they looked when she wasn’t sleeping. Good, she was worried about me.
“Ma, when you coming for me? My suspension almost up.”
“It’s going to be a while before I can get back there, Kadeem!”
“What that mean, Ma? What’s a while?”
“A while.” She looked behind her like she wasn’t supposed to be on the phone, like she was hiding or something.
“Ma! Grandad killed me today!” I whined.
“Bwoy, dead man don’t talk. How you on dis phone den?”
I rolled my eyes hoping she could see my worry and fear.
“Ma! When you coming for me?” I asked again.
“Not right now, Kadeem!” She looked around again.
“Ma, I can’t do it!” I cried “I’m a be good. No more suspensions. I promise.”
“Kadeem, I can’t talk about that right now.” Her voice was stern like when she was gonna be serious with me and not play at all - Mommy mode, she called it.
“Well, when, Ma?” I whined some more. I’d planned on shedding some fake tears to convince her to come soon but these tears were real, flowing with ease. “My suspension up soon and if I don’t get back in school, Imma get in more trouble for missing days.”
“Not now, Kadeem! The plan is for you to finish out the year there and we’ll see from there. Okay?”
“The whole year?” I screamed.
“Yes, the whole year. This will be good for you and your...”
“Ma, please, I get it, I get it now,” I declared.
“You get what, Kadeem?”
“I get what you was trying to teach me,”
“Which is what?”
“Not to fight,” my voice softened, “stay out of trouble, I get it so I’m ready to come home.”
“You’re ready?” she mocked.
“On God, Ma,” I raised my hand to the sky, “Imma be good.”
“Glad to hear, Kadeem,” she looked around again like what I was saying wasn’t important, like I just didn’t promise her, like she didn’t even care. “You’re staying there! We’ve already decided.”
“I don’t even live here!” my voice raised.
“Try that again, Kadeem,”
“I don’t even live here,” my voice lowered.
“You live there now, Kadeem,” she looked around as though I wasn’t her only focus.
“Ma, I don’t understand. I thought I was just here for my suspension. It’s over in a couple of days,” I tried again, “I gotta get back in school.”
“You’re in school now, Kadeem,”
“Yeah, but this ain’t even real,”
“Oh, it’s real,” she stated.
“Maaaaa,” I whined.
“Look, Kadeem, this is where we are at,” she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, “maybe Daddy will do what I can’t.”
“Ma,” I whispered into the phone. “Your father tried to kill me today. You know I can’t swim, right?” I waited for an answer but she didn’t say nothing. So, I continued. “He carried me far out into the sea and tried to drown me. A mean, Ma, I was dead for real!”
“Okay, Kadeem. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Ma? I died a little.” I looked right at her. “Ma, for real!”
“Kadeem, I love you and this is the best thing for you right now.”
“Ma! Pleeeaase!” I begged her like I begged when the Playstation 4 came out.
“Goodbye, Kadeem!” Ma said and ended the FaceTime call. She didn’t even give me a chance to tell her the good plans that I’d made for when I got home. She just cut me off. I wanted to throw that phone into the wall and smash it to a million pieces, but how would that get me home any sooner?
“You ready to eat?” Grandad asked. I hadn’t even noticed he’d returned to the kitchen. He carried a large plate that held both lobsters and both crabs. He placed it in the center of the table. I’m not gonna lie. They looked good, better than the ones at Red Lobster. But I wasn’t gonna do it. I wasn’t just gonna sit there with him like he and Gwendolyn weren’t trying to ruin my life. I wasn’t gonna sit there like he didn’t just try to kill me. No, thank you! I would starve to death first. I was not gonna spend an entire school year here. Not me. No way.
“No,” I finally responded. “I’m good.”
“Belly gon’ buss before food waste in dis house,” Grandad said and started eating.
I wasn’t in the mood to sit with Grandad, and I definitely wasn’t in the mood to eat. I walked into the bedroom and away from Grandad, his iPhone and his Wifi. Bang! It sounded like a lone firecracker. The door hit the frame so hard that the chest of drawers shook. Gwendolyn and Grandad weren’t going to win this one. My plan: wake tomorrow to fight another day.