“ Mom, this cheesecake is a good as I remembered it.”, Simone said, in between bites. She and Eve were sitting on the couch, as the ending credits ran from the movie they just watched.

“ Thanks, Honey. Do you have a choice for the next movie?”

“ No, Mom. I just wanna talk.”

Eve shut off the television, and looked at her daughter. “ Talk? About what?”

“ About you. Why did you leave? Why did you stay away for so long? About..your life.”

” My past with Julian. You want to know how we came together.”

” Yeah. I know it’s true. And, I’ve accepted it, but it’s still unreal to me.”

“ Where do you want me to begin?”

“ I dunno. How about the lies you told us. What was true?”

Eve smiled. “ Nothing was true, Simone. Nothing I told you about my past was true. I didn’t grow up in a wealthy home, raised by my aunts. The truth is, I grew up in wretched poverty, by a single mother who was high or drunk all the time. I lived in places I would let a dog be raised in.”

” Did you think we’d judge you, Mom? Poverty isn’t a crime.”

” Maybe it should be. My mother died when I was a child. In a mental institution – her brain was fried due to bad drugs. Someone raped her when she was inside, and she got pregnant. She and the baby died in premature childbirth. I wasn’t even in high school by that time.”

“ Oh Mom.”, Simone said quietly, tears forming in her eyes.

“ The time after my mother died was one of the best times of my life. My best friend at that time – a wonderful spirit named Simone, and her mother took me in. It was so normal. Her mom worked hard – as a maid, but it was stable. She was sober, and she showed me so much love. Simone and I shared a bedroom, and it was like Shangri-la. It was the best 2 years of  my life. Then…”

” What happened, Mom?”

“ Simone hadn’t been feeling well. She commented on it, but she was never one to complain. Her mother had a job, therefore, she didn’t qualify for a medical card, but she didn’t have formal insurance either. You learned early that some folks just don’t have money for doctor visits, so unless the pain was great, you made do. Then, one night, her mother had to stay over at the house she worked in because the people were going out of town, and needed her to watch the kids. Simone woke up screaming. I didn’t know what to do. I ran to a neighbors’ house, and the man and his wife- good people, got Simone, and I grabbed her brother, and we all went where everyone who was poor went to – the County Hospital. We got to emergency, and we had to sit there – even though Simone was screaming in pain, for hours. The doctor finally got to her, and they took her to surgery, but it was too late. Her appendix had burst.” The tears were streaming down Eve’s face. Simone took her mother’s hand and held it tightly. “ I’ll never forget how that doctor told Simone’s mother –he didn’t even care. This woman had lost her child, and he didn’t even care. She was just another Black, poor kid, and who cared. Who cared if she had no insurance. Who cared if she didn’t get remotely the care that a little White kid entering an emergency room would have gotten. She was a statistic, plain and simple.” Simone got a chill listening to the bitterness that was present in her mother’s voice.

“ After Simone died, her mother couldn’t keep it together. She needed a break. She needed to start over. So she moved down south with relatives, and I lost the only stable home I’d had, and would have until I married your father……I can’t deal with anything more right now.”

Eve got up from the couch and went to the window and looked out. The sobs were quiet, but there. Simone went to her mother and hugged her. She knew that she had opened a lot of wounds for her mother. She wouldn’t push her anymore. Eve patted Simone’s arm.
 
 
 

“ Chad, you think we’re finished?”, Sheridan asked, going over the notes of the meeting she and Chad had all afternoon after lunch.

“ Yeah, my brain is fried. But, damn, we were on the go, weren’t we? I can’t believe we got all this accomplished. Sending out for Thai dinner was an excellent choice. Didn’t slow us down a bit.”

” I know. I’m so excited about the new talent show ideas.”

“ Sheridan, this is a good idea. “

” The talent show? I know, it’s  cutting..”

” No, us working together. I had reservations, but this was works. You and me. Working with family.”

Sheridan got up out of her seat and hugged Chad. She had tears in her eyes.

“ Sheridan, why are you crying?”

“ I’ve wanted family for as long as I could remember. I never thought it would happen.”

“ Me either. I have two families.”

” How is that?”

” You’re a woman. What do you expect of your older brother?”

” We’re talking about Julian as a reference point. He’s been lacking until recently.”

“ Ok, ideally.”

“ Ideally, I wanted a big brother that looked out for me. That would protect me.”

” What about if he pointed out to you that you were doing idiotic things.”

” He’s never supposed to think I’m doing anything idiotic. He’s supposed to be my champion.”

” Sheridan, be serious.”

” I am serious.”

” Ok, I hate to bring  bad stuff up, but it’s well known to anyone who reads the tabloids that before Luis you had bad taste in men.”

” Losers. You can say it.”

” Ok, losers. What if Julian had stepped up to the bar earlier with you, and pointed out to you that the guys you were with were losers.”

“ Oh….that’s so tough. I’ll be honest. I would have told him to mind his own business. That he didn’t know anything about love, and that he had no right to try and stop me from finding it.”

” That bad?”

” I am pretty needy, Chad. I’ve been looking for love. If a woman is vulnerable, and the guy says everything she wants to hear, she’ll cling to him like nothing else.”

” Even if he treats her bad?”

” At first, she’s blind to it, and even after she knows he’s a bum, she’d never give her family the satisfaction of being able to say ‘ I told you so’. That would be a fate worse than death. Pride is an awful thing sometimes. This is about Simone, isn’t it?”

” Well, considering that I don’t have a relationship with my other sister, yeah, it’s Simone. I know the streets, Sheridan. This punk she’s involved with, he scares me, because I knew what your answer was going to be because I’ve seen it, time and time again- vulnerable girl, predator guy. ALWAYS winds up bad. ALWAYS. My mind takes the scenario to its conclusion, and I’m terrified for Simone. “

Sheridan takes Chad’s hand and holds it. “ You can’t give up on her. You have to be there for her. And know that you’re not alone. We’re all family now, and anything you need, you don’t hesitate to ask. Understand? Julian and I would do anything for you. “

Sheridan lifts Chad’s eyes to look directly into hers. “ You do get that, don’t you? We’ll do anything you ask…capiche?”

” Yeah, I get it, Sheridan.”
 

Simone watched her mother sleep. She took off her clothes and put on an oversized t-shirt and got in bed with her mother. She had never seen her mother in so much pain as she had earlier. The story her mother told blew her mind because it was so far from the mother she had known all her life. She hugged her mother. Finding out the truth wasn’t so hard. It made her mother finally seem human, instead of some unattainable Goddess her father insisted that she be for Whitney and herself.

As she drifted off to sleep, Simone relaxed. She felt this was going to be the best sleep she’d had in a long time.