Hold Love Strong Read Online Free PDF Page A

huff on a nightly basis, her hands jammed on her hips. “You don’t think any nigga is good enough!” But finally, my mother had given in. Finally, she had accepted Jamel’s offer.
    There was a knock on the door. Then there was another. My cousins and I sat on the couch, but we didn’t move to answer it. We were watching cartoons, mesmerized by the TV, absorbing all of the heroism we could. Donnel was nine and he didn’t respond to noise unless it was Eric or me interfering with his relationship with the TV, asking questions or breathing too heavily or sneezing or coughing. Eric was seven and at the beginning of his infatuation with drawing things he saw and things he swore he had once seen. He had a few old crayons and markers on his lap and some paper he’d taken from school and he was in the midst of drawing the characters in the cartoon. I, sitting forward, my legs dangling above the floor, was five and very much an imitator of Donnel and, to some degree, Eric. Thus, because they ignored the door, so did I.
    A third knock came and my Aunt Rhonda hurried out of the bathroom, sure it was her and my mother’s dates.
    â€œYou all don’t hear that?” she scolded, sashaying across the room, placing one foot directly in front of the other, her hips slamming left and right, as if the person on the other side of the door could see her.
    â€œHear what?” said Donnel, his eyes trained on the TV.
    â€œBoy,” my Aunt Rhonda said, continuing to the door, “what I tell you before I started getting dressed?”
    Although still a child, Donnel chose which questions he answered and which he ignored. So he was silent. My Aunt Rhonda stopped walking, put her hand on her hip, and waited if not for his answer then someone’s. I was missing my two front teeth, and although I was too shy to smile and I covered my mouth with my hands when I couldn’t stop myself from doing so, and although I recognized that everything I said sounded wet and whispery, I didn’t yet understand that knowing an answer didn’t require that I blurt it out. So I spoke.
    â€œYou said,” I slurred. “‘Don’t start noth’n.’”
    Quickly, Donnel pinned his middle finger on his thumb, then snapped it free, flicking me in the middle of the forehead so hard the blow knocked me back on the couch and the pain caused me to squint. But I didn’t hold my head with both hands or squirm as if desperate to get out from under it. I heard Eric laugh and swung my foot to kick him.
    â€œThat’s enough,” ordered my aunt.
    With a long, swift stride to the couch, she yanked me upright. My eyes welled with tears. The middle of my forehead burned from the blow. Then my mother walked out of the bathroom and I swallowed, blinked, and sailed years away from pain. Even at the age of five, I was overcome by my mother’s beauty when she let her beauty shine. She could transform herself, metamorphose from a gritty, testy sister who wore neither a smile nor a hint of being delicate to a being who exuded feminine glory.
    â€œAbraham, sit right,” she said.
    I sat as tall as I could, for not only did my mother demand it, but, although I was only five, her being in love and making her angry were the thing I most wanted and the thing I never wanted to do. Maybe Jamel would be the one; maybe he would be my father.
    My mother tugged at the bottom of her shirt. She shifted and squirmed. She hooked her thumbs in the top of her pants and pulled them up.
    â€œThis shit’s tight as hell,” she said.
    My Aunt Rhonda quickly stepped to my mother. She fixed and repositioned her clothes. Then she shifted my mother’s breasts in balance and tried to smooth a ripple out of the back of her pants.
    â€œYou got panties on?” she asked.
    â€œHow you know?” said my mother.
    â€œCause I see the line,” said my Aunt Rhonda. Then she pointed at the bedroom they