Free Dutch by Teri Woods Page B

Towers, just more airy because it had more
     windows.
    “So, you moved, huh?”
    “Yeah,” was all Delores said as she lit a Newport.
    “Well, whatcha’ do with all the stuff I bought you?” he asked.
    “You bought?” she said as if he was crazy.
    “Ma, listen, I know I messed up. And I know you probably mad at me, but…” His words made him think about all the visiting
     days his heart had yearned to hear his name called. Everybody else had someone waiting on them with open arms in the visiting
     room. “But, you coulda’ came to see me at least once or wrote me back. I wrote you every week and you just moved on me.”
    “Because, you a goddamn fool and a coward, that’s why.” Delores glared as she blew out a gust of smoke.
    Her words caught him by surprise. She had never cursed him. It didn’t anger him or add to the pain he already felt, but he
     was shocked.
    “That’s right, you heard me. Yous’a goddamn fool and you damn right I was mad, not at what you did, at what you didn’t do.
     You let them muhfuckers lock you up like a damn dog?” she said with her voice a little higher. “And then you expect me to
     write you?” she asked again with that crazy look she’d fix her face with. “Nigga, you must be crazy, the words I had for you.
     Shit, better I didn’t write,” she said, crushing her cigarette in the ashtray.
    Dutch stood quiet in the middle of the floor, head bowed. She was right; he had let them lock him up. He thought back to the
     night at the port, how they surrounded him with guns drawn. He gave in without a fight. Animals fight back when they’re cornered,
     they fight to the death, but he had given up without a fight.
    “You let them take you from me and you didn’t do a damn thing about it. So, you damned right I left all that shit you bought
     me right where it was to rot, left it. All that bullshit you traded your freedom for, you expected me to keep it?” she screamed
     at him. He felt nervous, wondering if she would hit him. She was so emotional, yet her insanity was crystal clear to him.
     His mother’s eighteen-month silence now spoke volumes. Every visiting day, every letter unanswered, even the unannounced change
     of residence said to him,
Nigga, be a man.
All that shit he had wasn’t worth the time he had spent locked in a cage.
    “I ain’t goin’ back,” he said, repeating what he’d told himself earlier that day in the prison cell.
    “Nigga, you goddamn right you not, ’cause I’ll kill you myself before I let you. You hear me?” she screamed. “I’ll kill you
     myself!”
    Her voice was cracking as tears rolled down her face in torrents. She had emptied her heart of the bitterness and it now lay
     unprotected from her emotions. Dutch felt the pain and hurt released by her words. He reached and tried to embrace her, but
     she shoved his hands away.
    “Get off of me! Don’t hug me!” she hollered at him and twirled around so he couldn’t hold her. “Nigga, go on out there and
     take back what them people took from you!” she yelled.
    Dutch had never seen his mother like this. She was always strong-willed, but she now sounded like a gang leader. He didn’t
     know about his father and how the years without his father had worn on her. Delores had sacrificed her heart to set that man
     free so long ago, and for Dutch to go out and give his life away to those people was, to her, the ultimate betrayal. For everything
     their union represented, for all her heart’s pain and for all the years of loneliness and sacrifice, she had Dutch to compensate.
     But she wouldn’t let him disappoint her again. He turned to walk out the door.
    “Bernard!” his mother called out to him.
    He turned to face her, ready and willing to do anything for her.
    “I just wanted to say the name,” she said, turning from him.
    Dutch walked out, closing the door behind him.
    Craze turned the Prelude onto Dayton Street, and they saw Angel yelling at a cop car that was