A House Is Not a Home Read Online Free PDF

things helped turn Li’l Brotha Man into Errol, and he’d become that person without him. Not only did this make his heart hurt, it made the ulcer worse. Li’l Brotha Man no longer existed, and Errol didn’t see his daddy as the sun that he revolved around.
    Raheim became the invisible man in the very family he wanted Crystal, Li’l Brotha Man’s mother, to embrace. And she did embrace it—but he was no longer a part of it.
    So, these strangers became his new family. They were people he would’ve passed in the street, people he never would have been friends with. They didn’t know him, they didn’t live with him, they didn’t love him . . . but they understood him. They understood what he had been through, where he was, what he needed to do, and where he needed to go. He counted on them. He confided in them. He cried with them, over their heartaches and his own. And he celebrated with them—the birthdays, the births, the promotions, the engagements, the weddings, the reunions.
    They didn’t know it, but today would be the final time he’d fellowship with them. It was his anniversary, his one-hundredth meeting. He made the change and made the changes to stay on the right path. He felt secure enough to step out on his own. That welcome he received was a hello the other ninety-nine times; this time, it was a good-bye.
    But he was looking forward to hearing that welcome again—this time, from his other family.

Chapter 3
    M itchell couldn’t open the door fast enough.
    He wasn’t in a rush to put away the eight bags of groceries, which he left sitting in the shopping cart just outside the hall. Yet he headed straight for the kitchen.
    He tossed his keys on the breakfast table. He went into the utility closet, put the stopper in the sink, turned on the hot water, and poured in a strong mix of Ajax and ammonia. When the water was at the halfway mark, he turned off the faucet. He then gently placed both the cookie jar and its top in. He’d found it on the way home, waiting to be picked up with the five black garbage bags by the curb.
    In every home, it’s those little touches, those little touch-ups that give it its character. He found many of these items at flea markets throughout the city, some costing only a dollar. There’s the basket-weave mirror, shaped like an open book, hanging in the first-floor foyer; the three rusted sconces, mounted diagonally just outside the great room; the navy-blue secretary with hand-painted gold bumblebees, which is in the parlor; the green elephant clock (when the alarm goes off, it bellows and the tusks rise) that Destiny keeps on her desk; the black wood, handcrafted table that’s in the recreation room; the giant Oriental throw rug, hanging on the basement wall; and the yellowish photo of Aretha and Martin Luther King Jr., which he framed and hung in his office.
    The cookie jar, though, remained an elusive item. He’d been searching for it since he moved into the brownstone six years ago. Can a house really be a home without one? It’s one of those trappings that signal you are living “the American Dream.” But it just couldn’t be any cookie jar; it had to be the cookie jar. Only problem was he didn’t know what color he wanted it to be, how small or large it should be, what kind of design it should have, whether it had to say COOKIE JAR, COOKIES, or nothing at all. He must have seen hundreds of them over the years, in department stores, at street fairs, at the homes of others. But none of them spoke to him. He’d know it was the one when he saw it. And he did this morning.
    This cookie jar had certainly seen better days: it was chipped in several areas, only the outline of the word cookies remained, and even after a good scrubbing some of the dark spots on its yellow-and-off-white ceramic frame wouldn’t come out. But it didn’t matter. He polished it up as if it were