Here in Ohio Reggie Goudeau

A beautiful day, is not guaranteed that rained on my parade and left a mere flood around.

When Mother Nature is a scandalous fiend.

Here in Ohio, she’s the most bloodthirsty. Making the weather report so untrustworthy.

As the rain descends, I await its end, Although I enjoy eating pizza as I waste away in bed.

I can barely raise my head, although it’s stuck in the clouds.

Here in Ohio, No forecast is true. Yet that also means your destiny is more up to you.

Skye Jalal

“Are we really sure Jesus turned water into wine? Because if you think about it, it really could have been anything. Personally, I think it was Crown. Because anyone who was hanging out with pimps and hoes like Jesus was, was definitely drinking Crown.”

About a year before my great-grandfather died, Mama found a box of letters between him and another woman, stuffed underneath a stack of old newspapers and a PlayBoy Magazine. Turns out, the entire time, he and this woman had a whole secret family. Monday to Friday, he was Meena’s husband and our Papa, but on the weekends he was theirs. For three decades, he went on like that, shape shifting.

My mama and aunties were so mad, but by the time they found out, the statute of limitations was up Alzheimers had already spread into his brain like a dandelion seed, and not only could they not confront him about it, but they all had to take weekend shifts wiping his vegetable ass

When he died, we sat pew-to-pew in the church house with the other family Enraged, Mama went to Meena asking her to do something about it. Why would she let us share space with this mistress? With her raggedy children? How could she not be angry? Meena responded with a patient smile, “Do you really think I was that stupid? Who do you think has been paying for those babies to go to school all these years?” Meena was always a woman of God, which I never understood. I didn’t get how she could worship a God who had done us so wrong, same way I didn’t get how she could love the babies of a man who did her worse.

The thing is, where I’m from, the weather is warm and the skin is brown. We speak the language of: “What’s mine is yours, no seriously you take it. - You need a bed to sleep on? Take mine.I’ll sleep on the couch.- I’ll be 45 next month if the Lord sees fit.- Here, I can watch both babies while you go to that interview, maybe their bad asses can now bother each other instead of me.” I’m from the land of “Won’t he do it God?” and “Yes he will!” and “I know Jonathan got that birthday coming up, I got extra food stamps from last month why don’t you go to Kroger and get some of them good candles?” and learning to love your cheating husband’s love children, because it's his fault, not theirs. I come from buckets catching the leak from the apartment upstairs and praising God every time the rent check goes through There, the weather is warm and the skin is brown, cause at least when it's cold we’re close together We take turns both sewing the safety net and trust falling into it It isn’t easy, but let me tell you when Meena died, she didn’t have any of those white-lady wrinkles

How did they manage to convince us for so long that we’re the ‘lesser’ sex? Everything is a mother. The Earth. Vinegar. Sourdough bread. Even the men’s own machines, those are still mothers.

The baby’s ears are itching. At times she plugs them with her pointer fingers, rotating them back and forth in a semicircle. That, or she cups her palms over her whole ears, like something loud is playing in the room beside her. But here, it is not loud. It is only a Thursday afternoon, on a random day at my aunt's house and the only sounds are me humming down to her in my lap, and her cooing back up to me in return.

We sit on facetime with my mom, and I bring up the ears. “Maybe they’re just filled with wax?” Mama said to me, unpacking groceries into the fridge slightly out of frame. “I don’t know though,” I responded. “Would a baby really be so conscious of her ear-wax? I’m nervous that she’s getting an ear infection. Or maybe she’s having that issue that I had with my ears when I was a baby, didn’t I get some surgery?”

“You and your brother both had tubes placed inside your ears. I have the same problem. As soon as you guys started having issues I had you get the surgery, because I didn’t know about mine until I was much older That's why my hearing is so bad ” Splitting open a carton of raspberries to rinse in the sink, she paused “You know what, you’re right I’ll talk to Sonia about it in the morning ”

I posted a photo of the baby on my Instagram story, and a friend slid up and asked me if she was my niece or my cousin. I didn’t know how to answer. I know that she’s my cousin’s daughter and my aunt’s

Once I really thought about it though, I wasn’t quite sure how I was related to the two of them either My Aunt Sonia is probably not my mother’s whole sister, possibly her half-sister, maybe a cousin, or a friend from college or high school or somewhere else I have a lot of aunts and only a few of them look like me Whoever the baby was, she still slept spread eagle the night before on top of my back, leaving a sweaty drool stain on my shirt by the morning. “My niece,” I replied. I guess that’s how aunts are made. I do know that Aunt Rhea is Aunt Sonia’s friend from college. The four of us, Rhea, Sonia, the baby, and I sprawl across the living room, watching the Jeffersons go to Hawaii on the TV. “You know,” Rhea says, “the baby has been messing with her ears a lot lately.” I perked up, “I was just saying the same exact thing to Mama on the phone this morning,”

Helen and her white husband Tom are on a beach in Oahu. Helen is upset, she feels as if Tom has been ignoring her the whole vacation. She storms away in hurt, but Tom is too distracted by the butts of young white women to follow her. He chooses to help one of them apply sun-tan lotion to her back instead.

Rhea picks the baby up from her legos on the ground, plants a sweet kiss on her cheek, and places the baby on her hip bone, wrapping her legs around the curve of her waist, “Usually when they’re having trouble with their ears like this, you know you’re in for a lot of sore throats.” I had noticed earlier in the day how well the baby fit on the curve of my own waist as I hauled her around. A curve I had hated for so long, that day seemed like it finally had a purpose, like that line of my body was drawn just for her to rest on. I didn’t know what to make of it

Sonia looked up from her phone for a second, “It could be an ear infection ”

“I was talking to my mom and she said that me and my brother both had to get tubes put in our ears Maybe she’s having the same problem,” I offered.

“Hmmm, it could be a family trait. I’ll talk to her mama about it when I drop her off.”

My therapist always talks to me about how “well-raised” I was, which always makes me laugh. My generation loves talking about childhood trauma, and my therapist knows better than anyone just how much of it I have. I laugh because I always thought being well-raised meant having two parents who puree their own baby food and run everything they say to you through a parenting-book first.

Just last night, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my second mother, sobbing into her chest about the wrongs of my first. And I’ll tell you, nothing else this year has made me feel more well-raised. If there’s anything my mom and dad did right, it was understanding that raising me was too great a task to trust only themselves with it. I guess raising your kids well is giving them parachutes to jump out of the buildings you set on fire.

I thought I found gold once in the creek that ran behind the house I lived in before the house I lived in before I lived in the house I live in now That house was painted bright green with pink stripes on every wall and even the bookshelves and the kitchen counters too Back then, my parents were 20 feet tall and could instantly heal any scrape on my knee or elbow with a magic kiss There was something shiny in the water, and so I dug my fingers into the bed, ripped it out, and let the current push the dirt off I dried it with the pant of my overalls and held it safe in my front pocket as I brought it inside to Mama. In the kitchen, Mama flipped over a white plate and dragged the tip of the shiny rock down its ceramic bottom. Pointing to the blackishgreen trail it left behind, she said to me, “Looks like you’ve found yourself some fools gold baby.” I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know it was up for someone else to decide. If it's shiny and yellow and hides under the creek current waiting for me to find it, why was I a fool for thinking it was gold? If I can tie a string to it and loop it around my neck, what’s the difference anyways? That day, Mama got a little bit smaller.

On the TV screen, a group of children sneak into a haunted house to hunt down the evil clown. The building sits upon a tall hill, a strike of lightning flashes behind it in the night. The wooden siding slinks off the building, crows fly out through smashed windows, an ominous howl erupts out from somewhere in the distance. I chuckle, knowing this is only Hollywood. I know that the most haunted of houses have picket fences. I know the ghosts that hide in walk-inclosets. It is not cracked foundations that scare me, but marble countertops that make me wonder, “Who was it that had to suffer for this?”

That building, the one the movie tells us is haunted, is probably just tired. The carbon in the wood has absorbed all the stories it can, and it is ready to be put to rest, to return to its mother. I know it’s unnatural for anything to be stainless, or try to be ❦

Whatever was making the baby’s ears itch, she gave it to me My nose was running just like hers The last time I was sick, the nurse after checking my temperature and testing me for strep, also gave me a word of advice. “Make sure you continue to eat, even if you aren’t hungry. Sometimes, when you have a lot of mucus in your body, it can drain down to your stomach, making you feel fuller than you are.”

Me and the baby laid down on the couch, as our Aunts around us spoke.

“There was so much traffic on 75. I didn’t leave in time, so I had to drive all the way home in the dark.”

“Girl, I hate driving in the dark. When I was younger, it was like no problem, but once you turn 50 it's like a switch flips and you’re ducking in a motel as soon as the sun sets.”

“I should have checked the Waze before I left. Google maps isn’t as good with the traffic stuff ”

“You know they’re owned by the same company right? But I think they run on different databases, sometimes Google maps can find addresses that Waze can’t”

“Yeah true You know what else? Can you believe it’s already snowing? Here I am shoveling the driveway in early November, I haven’t even had time to go to the Lowes and….”

Something caught the baby’s eye, and she darted to go investigate it I sat up with her With my head then above my body, I began to feel the mucus drip down to my stomach.

“Don’t you dare ask me how the Cowboys are doing this season, I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Girl, when will you just accept that your team is trash!”

“If you wanna talk about trash teams, I wanna talk about husbands!”

I have never had a birthday party with less than 40 people at it. I have jumped out of so many burning buildings. And even on an empty stomach, looking around me, I felt full.