YOU GOT MAIL

I’m pretty sure my mom is about to bail on me.

So I call her last week and she says, “You’ll never guess what just happened...”

Miss Jean from across the street calls her and tells her that some she saw some kid take the envelops out of my mother’s mailbox and run through her back yard. She said she saw it through her window. The kid came to the door like he was offering to shovel her driveway (Damn, I miss old school kids who used to HUSTLE out in the cold. Not these new Xbox young fucks!)…but um, my nephew’s old school. He took care of that snow as soon as it stopped falling.

Now, we’ve lived in this same house for 30+ years, and my mom is in fact, old school. Ever since she retired and is home during delivery times, she could tell you the names of damn near every mailman in order of employment. She still believes in greeting and asking about the kids and leaving him gifts at holiday times and offering him tea when it’s cold out. She’s accustomed to leaving her mail out for him, secured with a clothespin, even when she doesn’t have stamps. He always got her. Her mail doesn’t even need an address. It’ll get to her, as long as it has her name on it.

So my mom goes outside and checks the mailbox and sure enough, it’s empty. On that morning she had run to the bank and thought he had already come through while she was gone. She walks down the paved driveway and peeps the footprints dotting the snow through the back yard.

Miss Jean had immediately called my nephew to go find the boy, but he was at work. (Neighbors having each other’s phone numbers…how old school is THAT!) Luckily, her grandkids saw the boy. Knew where he stayed.

“What kind of mail did he steal, Mommy?”

“My credit card and car insurance payments.”

Wow mom.

By the time she had called the jakes (sn!tching runs in the family??), Miss Jean’s grandson was knocking on my mom’s door. He’s an Xbox kid for sure. About 15 or so. Him and his younger brother are like my mom’s little mentees. Their daddy’s in the bing, and their grandma can’t control them. But they STAY stopping by Mama Wise’s crib before school every morning, and whent hebus drops them off after school, and even spend the night when my mom’s in the mood for noise in the house.

Young Xbox hands my mother her mail. He went running around the block, like a tough old school maverick, and got my mom’s shit back.

“I swear, I’m so ready to be out!” I’ve never heard this conviction from my mother before. Tomorrow she’ll board a plane home to Jamaica and she’ll be gone almost a month. My siblings and nephew will man the crib. The neighborhood will provide an extra set of eyes.

She’s finally gonna start work on the house down there that she and my father had been plotting for the last 30+ years. They’re old school immigrants. Come here, hustle, raise and educate your kids, go back home, ball out. I always knew she’d do it. But I never quite believed she’d really dip. But there’s really nothing stopping her. Her children are grown. She's a widow. Her grandkids the only real attachment now. She’s outgrown her community. She uses the word ‘ghetto’ now, often.

I laugh, cuz it’s funny, cuz that’s a word she’s learned, or conceptualized from incidents like the Mail Fraud. The kid who stole her shit was 12.

When her house is done, she will move. And I’ll be lost. But she’s earned it. She’s weathered 30+ unforgiving winters. Made her connections. Raised and educated me. She’s left her mark. She should go and I should be happy.

And that suddenly opens up the possibilities of a whole world with my name on it.