Suds - Season 1, Episode 4

...a mini-soap opera that bubbles with Love & Drama

[Last time on Suds, Shantel was leaving on the morning train to Georgia? Not Georgia, to Carbondale with lofty expectations of resuming her relationship with the ex, Darien, which would be a simple task if she didn’t feel a need to hold on to new beau, Terrance. Meanwhile, Leilah’s trip to the nursing home has granny trippin’.]

Grandma looked up at Leilah standing in the doorway. “You got some nerve coming here,” she growled in a low tone. She inched toward Leilah, roughly dropping Tuilette on her roommate’s twin sized bed. Grandma’s eyes darkened as she approached Leilah. “Didn’t I tell you to leave that child with Lisa?”
“What are you talking about, Ma,” Leilah asked in shock.
Grandma’s voice thundered, “Sheila, I told you to stay away from them kids!”

The stout woman charged at Leilah with bloodshot eyes and a menacing scowl. Before Leilah could move out of the way, Grandma’s heavy right hand landed on her face. Leilah stumbled backward gripping her burning cheek.
“It’s me Leilah,” she screamed, clutching her face as she pedaled backward into the hallway.
“You don’t care bout nobody but yourself and them filthy drugs!” Grandma yelled, charging toward Leilah again.
“Leilah,” she begged in vain, attempting to ward of her grandmother’s attacks. “I’m your granddaughter, Leilah!” She fell to the floor, anguished.

Tuilette jumped down from the bed, “Leave Lily alone,” the mousy voice squealed.

Leilah cowered against the wall, pleading with her eyes. She could hear the nurses rushing down the hall toward them as Grandma’s face neared hers. The old woman was lost to dementia. Leilah’s eyes held Sheila’s shade of chestnut brown. Her round face could have been molded after Sheila’s, and her slender frame although healthy could in the wrong light, or the wrong mindset, be confused with that of a drug addict.

Leilah braced herself for another blow, knowing she would feel at least one more impact before the nurses were able to restrain her grandmother. She closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the nightmare to concede, except the last blow never came.

Instead she heard the little voice. “No, Grandma! You don’t hit Leilah!” Then everything went silent and Leilah felt soft, tiny hands stroking her hair. “Are you okay, Lily?” Tuilette asked.
~~~

“Baby, you know I gotta pass this class,” Shantel reasoned, stroking Terrance’s cheek. They sat in his car in front of her house.
“You don’t have to catch the train, Shantel. I can drive you back. We can leave at two o’clock instead of six.”
“Baby,” she pulled his attention away from the parked car in front of them. Terrance rested his head on the back of his seat. “You can come over tomorrow night, and by then I’ll be finished studying.” Shantel tried not to let on that there would not be a tomorrow night for them, and for a brief moment, she almost regretted her decision to leave him.
“Alright,” he sighed, wishing he didn’t have to spend Sunday morning with his family before heading back to campus.
~~~

Leilah opened her eyes to see her little sister’s tear-streaked face. Across the hall, her grandmother inched backwards with both hands clasped over her mouth. Her bewildered expression prompted the nurses to halt less than two feet away as the elderly woman slid down the wall, curled into a ball and cried. The painful tune of Grandma’s sobbing was the only sound echoing though the hallway.

Leilah slowly crawled to her grandmother’s side, embracing the aching woman while she sobbed and apologized profusely. “It’s okay, grandma,” Leilah assured her. Still, her entire body shook from fear.
~~~

Lisa sat on the enclosed back porch of her two flat building, sucking the life out of the cigarette with hopes of reinvigorating her own. She closed her eyes and imagined what her life would have been like without children. She could have been like one of Joan’s Girlfriends, a sexy and successful black woman with the occasional man toy. Lisa smiled at the thought, but thanks to her consistently reckless older sister, Lisa now had seven kids, Leilah (21), Lalique (17), Xeniyah (16), Jack D. (15), the twin boys, Ty and Tyler (7), and the baby girl, Tuilette (3).

Leilah stepped out onto the porch. “I finished the laundry, but there’s a bag I was too tired to fold.”
Lisa smiled, blowing the smoke from the corner of her lips, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll have the kids take care of it.” She extended her arm toward the girl she practically raised since she herself was a teenager. Leilah slid into her Aunt Lisa’s embrace. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Leilah lied.
“You know all that wasn’t mean for you, right?”
“Yeah,” she rested her head against her aunt’s shoulder, experiencing comfort in its smoggiest yet purest form.

[Stay tuned: Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you’re only a day away]