The hospital waiting room smelled like hand sanitizer and coffee that had been sitting too long. Malcolm sat in a plastic chair, his legs too short to reach the floor, Maya asleep against his chest and Tiana pressed into his side. He hadn't changed out of his clothes from the night before. Neither had Tiana. Neither had Maya.
Michael's mother sat across from him. She'd shown up at the apartment sometime after the ambulance, after the police, after a social worker asked him the same questions three different ways. Malcolm didn't remember calling her. Maybe Michael had called. Maybe she'd just known.
Her name was Brenda. She'd brought a bag with clothes for Maya, a blanket for Tiana, a cup of juice that Malcolm hadn't touched.
"They said we can see her soon," Brenda said. Her voice was soft. "The doctor just needs to—"
"I know." Malcolm's voice came out flat. He'd been saying I know all morning. I know to the police. I know to the social worker. I know to the nurse who asked if he wanted to sit down. He knew enough to know that his mother was gone. He knew enough to know that nothing the doctor said would change it.
Brenda didn't push. She leaned back in her chair and watched the door at the end of the hall, the one that led to the room where Diane was. The room where Diane was. Malcolm couldn't think of it any other way.
Michael appeared in the doorway of the waiting room, a paper cup in each hand. He'd come with his father, who was talking to a nurse at the station. Michael walked over and handed one cup to his mother, then stood in front of Malcolm, holding the other.
"It's hot chocolate," Michael said. "They only had that or coffee."
Malcolm looked at the cup. He didn't want it. But Michael was standing there, waiting, his face open in that way Michael's face always was. Malcolm took it.
"Thanks."
Michael sat down in the chair next to him. For a while, neither of them spoke. The waiting room had a television mounted on the wall, muted, playing a morning show Malcolm didn't recognize. People walked past in scrubs, in street clothes, in the slow shuffle of people who'd been there all night.
"My mom said your mom went to heaven," Michael said quietly.
Malcolm stared at the hot chocolate. The steam rose and disappeared.
"I don't know if I believe in heaven," Malcolm said.
Michael was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "My grandma says heaven is a place where people don't hurt no more."
Malcolm thought about Diane on the bedroom floor. Diane with the bottle beside her hand. Diane crying into her palms behind the closed door.
"Then maybe she's there," Malcolm said. His voice didn't crack. He didn't let it.
---
When they finally took him to see her, the room was dim and quiet. Machines were off. Tubes were gone. Diane lay on the bed with her eyes closed, her hands folded over the blanket. She looked smaller than she had in life. Smaller than she'd looked on the floor.
Tiana held Malcolm's hand so tight it hurt. Maya was with Brenda in the waiting room.
"She looks like she's sleeping," Tiana whispered.
Malcolm didn't answer. He looked at his mother's face. The lines around her mouth were gone. The worry that always sat between her brows was smoothed away. She looked younger. She looked like the woman who'd pushed him on the swings at Druid Hill Park, the one who'd promised him a real home.
You said you'd never leave me / You said you'd never leave me / But you left me. The words came into his head like a song he'd heard somewhere, a song he couldn't shake. He didn't know who sang it. He just knew it was true.
He reached out and touched her hand. It was cool. It wasn't her.
He pulled his hand back.
"Okay," he said to the nurse standing by the door. "We're done."
---
The days that followed blurred together. Brenda kept Malcolm and his sisters at her house. Michael gave up his bed and slept on the couch without complaining. He loaned Malcolm a pair of his pajamas, even though they were too short in the arms.
"You can stay as long as you need," Brenda said each night, tucking Tiana into the guest room, warming bottles for Maya. "We got room."
Malcolm believed her. But he also knew that Brenda wasn't his mother. That Michael's house wasn't his house. That everything he had fit into one garbage bag that a social worker had packed from the apartment on North Avenue.
The apartment. He tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about the orange bottle on the carpet, the door that wouldn't open, the silence that had woken him before dawn. But it came anyway, in the quiet moments, in the space between sleep and waking.
I'm not afraid of death / I'm afraid of what comes after. He didn't know why those words kept coming. He didn't know where they came from. They just arrived, unwanted, and sat in his chest like stones.
---
The burial was on a Friday.
It rained. It always rained, Malcolm thought, in the movies. In real life, rain seemed to fall on the days when you least wanted to stand outside in your good clothes.
The cemetery was in a part of Baltimore Malcolm had never been to before, near the county line, where the city gave way to grass and trees. There weren't many people at the service. A few women Diane had worked with at the diner. An older man who said he was a cousin but looked like he hadn't seen Diane in years. Brenda. Michael.
Malcolm stood between his sisters in front of the casket. It was plain, gray, the kind the funeral home provided when you didn't have money for anything else. There were flowers—a small arrangement Brenda had paid for, white roses that smelled sweet even in the rain.
The preacher said words Malcolm didn't hear. He watched the raindrops hit the casket, slide down the sides, disappear into the ground.
Tiana was crying. She'd been crying since they left the car, quiet sobs she tried to hide with her hand. Maya was in Brenda's arms, staring at the sky with her dark eyes, rain dotting her face like tears she was too young to shed.
Malcolm didn't cry.
He stood with his hands in the pockets of the black pants Brenda had bought him, and he watched them lower the casket into the ground, and he felt something close inside him. A door. A window. Something that had been open, even a little, even through all the bad nights. Now it closed.
How could you leave us? / How could you leave us? / I'm not okay, I'm not okay.
He blinked. Rain ran down his face. If anyone saw, they'd think it was just the weather.
After it was over, Brenda drove them back to her house. Michael was quiet in the front seat. In the back, Tiana had cried herself to sleep against Malcolm's shoulder. Maya was asleep too, her small body rising and falling with each breath.
Brenda looked at Malcolm in the rearview mirror. "You hungry?"
Malcolm shook his head.
"You gotta eat something."
He didn't answer. He looked out the window at the city passing by—the row houses, the corner stores, the church with the broken sign. His city. His mother's city. The place where she'd promised him a real home.
The rain kept falling.
When they got back to the house, Michael's father had made spaghetti. The table was set with plates and glasses, the way families did for dinner. Tiana woke up and ate two helpings. Maya ate mashed bananas from a jar. Malcolm pushed his food around his plate until Brenda reached over and put her hand on his.
"Malcolm," she said. Just his name. Nothing else.
He looked at her. Her eyes were kind, the way they'd been since the first day she picked him up from school. The way they'd been when she let him sleep on her couch, when she bought him pants for the funeral, when she held Maya so he could stand at his mother's grave without holding a baby.
"I know," he said. He picked up his fork and ate.
After dinner, Michael put a movie on in the living room. Tiana fell asleep on the couch. Maya was already in the pack‑n‑play Brenda had set up in the guest room. Michael sat cross‑legged on the floor, pretending to watch the screen, glancing at Malcolm every few minutes.
Malcolm sat by the window. It was a different window than the one in the apartment—cleaner, with a view of a fenced yard instead of a bus stop. But he sat the same way, his back against the wall, his knees pulled up.
"You okay?" Michael asked.
Malcolm looked at him. Michael's face was serious, the gap between his teeth showing because he was chewing his lip.
"I don't know," Malcolm said.
Michael nodded like that made sense. He turned back to the movie.
Malcolm looked out the window. The rain had stopped. The street was wet, reflecting the streetlights in long silver streaks. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking. The same sound he'd heard that day at the park, the day his mother had pushed Tiana on the swings.
I can't keep doing this / I can't keep doing this / I need you to know that I'm trying.
The words came again, unbidden. He didn't fight them this time. He let them sit in the silence, in the space between the movie's soundtrack and Michael's breathing.
He didn't cry. But something shifted. Something small. Something he wouldn't have words for until years later.
His mother was gone. The apartment was gone. The life he'd known was dirt in a cemetery, rain on a gray casket.
He was still here.
---