Antwan sat in silence with his mother at the dinner table as they slowly made their way through the meal that Michelle had prepared. It wasn’t much. In truth, Michelle had never been much of a cook and she’d never needed to be before, so most nights Antwan would get food out with Roland or the two of them would tuck into whatever half-hearted meal Michelle had prepared. Antwan eyed his mother as she lifted the fork to her mouth, a darkened piece of meat between her teeth, as he thought back to the conversation he’d had with Deacon Harris that morning. For some reason he’d not been able to get their talk out of his head since. Some of the things he’d said had made him question his relationship with Roland. He’d even gone so far as not responding this morning when Roland had text him.

Finally Antwan wiped his mouth clean with a napkin and looked across at his mother. “Deacon Harris came by the court this morning.”

His mother feigned a look of surprise that wouldn’t have fooled a child. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Antwan said as he reached out for the can of soda that sat beside his meal. “Reckons I have a hitch in my jump shot.”

Michelle nodded dejectedly and looked back down at her food as if she were expecting the conversation to go somewhere else. Antwan knew she was the one behind sending Gus to the court this morning. Who else could it have been? Even now though she couldn’t play things straight with him and open up to it. Antwan thought back to the times when his mother had been using and how she’d look him in the face and lie to him. She’d never been straight with him, not even about what had happened with his father or why Uncle Chew had gone away. She hadn’t even told him that Jayson had tried to take the rap for him. That more than anything got to Antwan.

He wanted to leave it and go upstairs but it niggled at Antwan too much to leave things as they were. He swallowed a mouthful of soda and sat back in his seat.

“Why didn’t you tell me Jayson tried to take the rap for me?”

His mother looked up from her food, this time there was no shock or surprise in her expression, only a shrug. “It didn’t seem like it was my place, Antwan.”

He thought about every time he’d looked in his mother’s bleary eyes when they’d found her in some pigsty in Jardin with the trailer trash. About how many birthdays and Christmases he’d spent with Jayson and his mother instead of in his own home. For all his pain, for all his anger, Antwan had seen some sense to the old man’s words this morning but even now his mother couldn’t bring herself to be honest with him. It made him hurt.

Antwan stood up from his seat angrily and pushed his mother’s plate out from underneath her, knocking the cutlery from her hand and onto the ground. 

“Could you just fucking treat me like an adult for once in my life? Please.”

Michelle didn’t so much as flinch, raising her eyebrows slightly at her son’s sudden outburst. She stood up and began to pick the plate up from the ground. Antwan watched, breathing heavily, as he his mother gather together her fallen cutlery and clean up after the mess he’d made. He felt his anger drain from him slowly and knelt beside her to help her clean up the food apologetically.

“I’m sorry,” Antwan said with a sigh. “My head’s been all over the place recently, Mom, I don’t know what to think at the minute.”

His mother looked around at him and smiled. She placed her arm around him and without a hint of anger in her voice she purred. “It’s okay.”

Antwan felt a wave of relief flood over him as the pair of them cleaned up slowly and carried both their plates to their tiny kitchen. His mother had offered to clean up after them but, overcome with guilt at having lost control of his temper, Antwan stood over the sink and washed their plates as his mother watched. 

“I went to see Chew.”

A look of concern appeared on Michelle’s face. “What? Why would you do that?”

Antwan shrugged.

“I don’t know, I figured I owed him.”

His mother’s face hardened. For almost as long as Antwan could remember his mother had hated his uncle Chew’s guts and she’d never once explained what he’d done to draw her ire. Before Chew had gone to prison he’d been a father figure, a coach, and a big brother all at once for Antwan, but his mother’s reluctance to allow him to spend time with him was clear even then. He’d spent the past decade feeling indebted to Chew for those hours he’d spent out on the court with him. That feeling had dissipated that day at Dante’s when his uncle had treated him like dirt.

“You don’t owe that man anything, Antwan.”

“I know,” Antwan said with a knowing nod. “I know that now.”

Michelle smiled and Antwan finished stacking the clean plates on the draining board beside the sink. He leant against it and his mother and he stood in silence for a few moments. As Antwan looked at her he was still hit by pangs of pain as he remembered the woman she had been, the things she had done, but Deacon Harris’ words for this morning run in his ears and the pain passed. No matter what she had done, what she had hidden from him, Michelle was still his mother and nothing was going to change that. The sooner he accepted that the better for the both of them.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said to you in the car, Ma, it was out of line.”

Michelle smiled proudly and buoyed by his mother's obvious pride Antwan knew what he had to do.

“I’ll give the car back to Roland too,” Antwan said as he walked towards his mother and placed his arms around her. “We got by without fancy cars before, right? We can get by without them now.”

Antwan closed his eyes and held his mother close to him as she spoke. “I’m glad to hear that, son.”

Roland wouldn’t like it when he heard about it but if he was truly his friend he’d have to come to terms with it. Maybe there’d been some grain of truth to what Harris had said, maybe more than Antwan wanted to admit, but Roland had been there for him and he wasn’t going to cut him out entirely considering everything he’d done. Antwan would take a step back and focus on balling, that’s all that really mattered, and that's what was going to get him, his mother, and his people out of Norman. Not all the other shit that came with it and [i]definitely[/i] not weed.

He let his mother go and looked at her with a smile that slowly began to shift into a frown.

“You don’t think I have a hitch in my jump shot, do you?”