Was blind, but now I see.
Xavier rolled down the window and hung his arm down the side. As he picked up speed from the traffic light, he made waves with his hand, slicing through the wind resistance like he’d done when he rode in the backseat of the same car as a boy.
The first time he’d heard his mother hum the tune to “Amazing Grace” was when the family had returned from church one morning. It had been like any number of Sundays he’d been forced to go, boring and overly long. He never knew when to sit, stand, or kneel. He liked the tune, though, and asked his mother what it was. She told him the name and sung out loud the line: was blind, but now I see.
“That don’t make—” Xavier had started.
“Doesn’t,” Evelyn said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t say ‘huh.’ You can say ‘what’ or ‘excuse me,’ but not ‘huh.’ And you say, ‘That doesn’t make’—not ‘that don’t.’”
Xavier rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
She winked. “What doesn’t?”
“You can’t get better from blindness. That part of the song is dumb.”
Sam had laughed sharply.
“What?” 192
Evelyn batted Sam playfully on the shoulder. “Don’t mind him. It’s a figure of speech, honey. It means that the person’s eyes are open to something they couldn’t see before.”
“Yeah, but what does it matter if their eyes are open if they’re blind? They can’t see if they’re open or closed.”
“Boy’s got a point, Ev,” Sam said.
She laughed. “Don’t you start. Xavier, it means that the person was saved by God. They were lost without him, but he helped them find their way. They were blind to what life was like without him, and he let them see. Does that make more sense?”
“Through him who gives me strength,” Sam said softly. Evelyn hummed in agreement.
Xavier sat back. “Not really. But the song is pretty. You can keep singing it if you want.” Evelyn patted his knee, turned back to face the front, and sang it again.
All the way back to Shot’s gym, Xavier smiled. He hadn’t realized he was smiling until at a stoplight. Another car pulled up next to him, driven by an older Black woman. He turned to look, and she grinned and tipped her head at him. Maybe she recognized him. Maybe it was that nod of familiarity he’d noticed more often from other Black folks since the election. That look of recognition and camaraderie that said, “We’re in this together, because we’re all we’ve got.” She drove off first when the light changed. He kept smiling. It felt good to keep that grin and he relished the mild ache in his cheeks.
Was blind, but now I see.
It hadn’t been too late. Evelyn held no ill will for him for the decision he’d made to stay with his father, for barely maintaining contact with her. But she was only human, after all. There must have been times when she thought him ungrateful, times when she felt betrayed. Those feelings had to have been 193there, tucked away in her gut, a cancer that ate away at anything she might have felt for him. They must have been there, because it’s what he would have felt. But she wasn’t him.
In an instant, no longer than it took for her to recognize his face, she had excised any malignancy that might have grown inside her. There was no falsehood in her embrace, nothing reptilian about her tears. Her son had come back to her. She was ready to receive his love, but not to forgive him, because she made it clear there was nothing to forgive.
Xavier understood that for all the opponents he’d faced on the mats, in the ring, or in the cage, his mother was the strongest person he’d ever known. Though his father had been his coach, everything he learned about fighting came from her. Her capacity for love was boundless, despite the very human cost of that love. If she had that in her, he told himself, then maybe he did, too.
He pulled into a shopping center lot and parked. He’d missed more texts from Shot inquiring insistently about his whereabouts. Xavier went to clear the texts and accidentally dialed. He hung up quickly, but Shot returned the call immediately. Xavier sent him to voicemail. If he didn’t act on this feeling now, he might lose his nerve, or worse yet, he might forget that he felt it at all. He pulled up his contacts and pressed send.
“Maple Grove, how may I direct your call?” the receptionist answered.
“Mrs. Thomas, please.”
Classical music carried across the connection as he waited, though not for long.
“Nursing.”
“Mrs. Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“Xavier Wallace.” 194
A pause, then a slow inhale. A clearing of the throat. “Mr. Wallace. Good to hear from you.”
“It is?”
“I’m sorry?”
“No, I am. I owe you an apology for yesterday, Mrs. Thomas. I could give you a bunch of excuses as to why I acted that way, but they’d be just that. Excuses.”
She exhaled. “Thank you, Mr. Wallace. I appreciate that.”
“Thank you for not hanging up on me.”
Another pause. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Wallace?”
“Yes.” He heard the tremor in his voice and took his own deep breath. “I’d like to bring my father home.”
“You want to end his hospice care?”
“No. I mean, don’t they come to the home? I guess I don’t really know how any of this works.”
“Yes, they certainly can. I’d have to arrange for an ambulance to transport—”
“No. I’ll pick him up. I want to drive him home. Can I do that?”
“He hasn’t been out of bed since he’s been back, Mr. Wallace.”
Xavier knew letting professionals bring him home was the right thing to do. He also knew the last time Sam had ridden in the Volvo was when his only child brought him to the place he’d begged Xavier never to bring him. Though his anger for his father had not completely resolved, his guilt over taking him to Maple Grove overpowered that resentment. If there was any vestige left of the father he remembered, he couldn’t let that perceived betrayal be one of his final memories.
“Can someone help me get him in the car? Please?”
“I can’t endanger my staff, Mr. Wallace.”
“Okay. I understand.” 195
“Hold on.” Noises in the background went muffled. He envisioned her pulling away the phone and covering it with her hand, cursing him out. She came back. “I’ll help you. Between the two of us, we should be fine.”
“Oh, man. Thank you, Mrs. Thomas. Thank you so much.”
She told him that she’d contact the hospice agency. She wanted to coordinate a time for Xavier to come for his father and minimize the gap of care in-between. Xavier thanked her profusely and she told him again that she was glad to help. He thanked her yet again, and she hung up before he could say it one last time.
The car engine hummed in park and the fan blew stale warm air across his face. He rolled down the window again and drummed his fingers against the outside of the door. Hope and sadness churned. Sadness for the impending loss of his father, despite feeling in the last few days that he was already gone. Hope in bringing him home. Hope that things might feel as they once did, even for only a moment.
They’d sit on the couch (such as it was) and share one more meal on the tray tables in front of the television, an old fight DVD playing while they ate. If he couldn’t get out of bed, he’d bring the television to Sam, put it on top of the dresser, and watch with him until he fell asleep. Either way, they’d both be where they’d been when things were right with their worlds, and that would be okay. Even if that story wasn’t entirely true. Even if it was only for a little while.
Guilt strummed again though, for his mother and what she’d endured. But he reminded himself of her words and her strength. If she could forgive, then he could, too. He didn’t owe it to his father. He owed it to her.
His phone buzzed again.
The fuck you at X? 196
Heading back to the house
That better mean the gym
It doesn’t
Xavier immediately regretted that response, surprised at how quickly it came, but the text had been sent. A speech bubble from Shot appeared then disappeared almost as quickly and his regret compounded. Xavier waited for a response, but nothing surfaced. He drove out of the lot and toward his father’s house. He had to make it a home again.
Xavier took one of the undamaged throw pillows and put it down before he sat in the gap Loki had created. He rested his head on the edge of the sofa and counted the drop ceiling tiles. An ache settled into his neck, followed by a throb in both knees. He’d spent hours on all fours while he scrubbed the tub, stooped over as he scoured the toilet bowl and cleaned the sinks. Floors swept, bed made, he rested. That he was so fatigued and achy from such menial tasks would have surprised him had he not been as dehydrated as he was. Tomorrow, after he got his father settled, he would go to the gym and sweat off as much as he could before returning home to Sam. Then he’d drive to Jersey, to the resort hotel, where he’d get a good night’s sleep before the weigh-ins the following afternoon. A thought sat him up. His neck cracked.
What if he doesn’t die before then?
Yeah, what are you going to do about that?
He sat forward and massaged one shoulder. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him when he’d asked to bring Sam home. How had he not thought of this? He’d been so caught up in the emotion of the reunion with his mother that he’d romanticized logic out of the equation of his father dying at home. Could Xavier even leave the house? How many hours 197would the hospice team be there? Would Sam die alone no matter what? Mrs. Thomas said he was on the decline. That he hadn’t been out of bed since he’d returned. It sounded as if it was only a matter of time.
It has to be.
That’s some cold-blooded shit right there.
He hadn’t known when the tinnitus had returned, only that it had, in both ears now, and growing ever louder. Then someone knocked on the front door.
Though the glasswork obscured his face, Xavier knew Shot’s silhouette. He cursed under his breath and opened the door. They stood on either side of the doorway in a pre-fight faceoff.
“What, you not going to invite me in? I ain’t no vampire.”
“Come on, then.”
Shot crossed to the middle of the living room and gave it the once over.
“The fuck happened to your couch? Looks like a dog got at it.” He put his hands out as though something unseen had frightened him. “Wait, where’s that dog at?”
“Not here.”
Shot’s shoulders relaxed. “Where, out back or something?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“All right, cool.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What I’m doing here is you got a fight in a few days and you ain’t been to the gym all day. You’re not answering my texts, or you being a bitch when you do, and you sending my calls to voicemail. That’s some cold shit, by the way. At least let it ring through and pretend you ain’t heard it.” 198
“Pops is coming home tomorrow. On hospice. That means—”
“Nigga, I know what it means.”
“I guess—I don’t know, I felt like I should get the place clean, you know? And look, I’m sorry about not answering the call and disrespecting on the texts, but I saw Mom today, too.”
“Auntie Ev? Where?”
Xavier motioned to the undamaged cushion on the couch. Shot sat while Xavier explained the last few hours to him. When he was done, Shot leaned back.
“That’s a lot, cuz.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“You all right?”
Xavier opened his mouth to ask Shot what he cared, other than to make sure his mind was right for the fight, but stopped. He read Shot’s body language like an opponent—leaned forward, elbows rested on his knees, hands gripped opposite arms like they held space for an embrace—one meant for Xavier.
All that told Xavier that Shot did care about him, as clearly as if he’d come right out and said it. Though that voice shouted in his ears not to trust him, not to give him an inch, not to be manipulated, Xavier was comforted by Shot’s question. As infuriated as he’d been with both Shot and himself for their current situation, he wanted badly for them to have the relationship that existed before the complications and accusations. Before the mistrust and the words that left bone-deep bruises. Too much had gone wrong in too short a time, and the familiarity of that love and concern from his cousin was a balm he was all too willing to apply.
“If I’m being one hundred, man? I don’t know if I’m all right. Everything I think I know seems to change hourly, and I 199think that would probably be normal even if all of this jumbled mess in here wasn’t messing with me in the first place.” He pointed to his head with his index finger and made circles in the air. “It’s like, whenever I’m away from Mom, Dad—hell, even you—it makes it easier to be pissed off. I can wallow in it. Like the opposite of absence and the heart growing fonder and all that. But the minute I saw Mom—man, the minute she opened her arms to me like nothing had ever changed, I couldn’t hold on to that anger even a second. Even as happy as I am about seeing her right now, there’s a part of me that’s asking if this is just another mood swing. If this is just my fucked-up brain telling me what to think now, and that tomorrow, I’ll be pissed off all over again. I don’t trust it even now.”
“Don’t trust what?”
“Everything. Everyone. Myself. How I feel. What I think.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Come on, man. That’s not what I’m saying. Are you even listening to me?”
“I guess that’s my answer.”
“Shot.”
Shot stood. There was no confrontation in his countenance, his shoulders relaxed, hands in his pockets. Xavier had seen this posture from opponents in the cage. Resigned. Broken. Without intention, he’d landed the blow that took the fight out of Shot, the one that made him quit. He walked over to Xavier and put his hand on his shoulder.
“It’s all right, cuz. I get it.”
“You’re taking this the wrong way. I’m not explaining it right.”
“Nothing to explain, my man. I feel you. I do.”
Xavier’s phone buzzed and shimmied across the top of the entertainment center. He saw it was the nursing home.
“I have to take this. Don’t leave.” 200
Shot jutted out his chin.
Mrs. Thomas gave Xavier the details for hospice as he rushed to the kitchen and opened the junk drawer. He pulled out scrap paper and scrawled down the time he needed to meet her at the facility. He thanked her, hung up, and returned to Shot in the living room. “Sorry about that.”
“All good. You got shit to handle. You not going to put all that in your little reminders thing on your phone?”
“In a minute. About what I said.”
“You said what you said. I ain’t mad at you. Just do me a favor. Tomorrow, when they’re setting up your pops in here, and next week when you having brunch and mimosas or whatever with Auntie, and you and me are whatever we’re going to be when this is all done, remember who was always who they said they were with you. Who ain’t never been anybody but who they told you they was, for better or for worse. Maybe there’s some shit you can’t trust, maybe I ain’t always done right, but you could always trust me to be me. You could always trust that.” He looked around the living room. “Good luck with your pops tomorrow. When you’re done, get to the gym. We got to make that weight and you still looking soft.”
“I don’t know how quickly they’ll get him set up, so—”
“See you tomorrow.” He pulled the door closed behind him.
Xavier crossed the small room to sit where his cousin had and put his head in his hands. “Shit.”
The quiet of the room brought the tinnitus to the forefront, along with a renewed throb at the base of his skull. He went to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and took his pain medication, slurping water from a cupped hand to ease it down. The pain moved to his temples. Each breath shoved another knitting needle in his brain. The lights in the bathroom, the kitchen, all too bright. The burning filaments 201buzzed in his eardrums. He walked back to his bedroom, pulled the blinds, drew the shades, and lay in bed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and willed himself to sleep while his phone sat on the kitchen counter next to the notes he’d taken from Mrs. Thomas’s call.