“You a man or you a mouse? Huh?” Messiah grilled. It was a question he had asked Saviour many times before.

“I’m a man,” Saviour said, tilting his chin slightly, proudly, because Messiah had taught him that too, over the years. “But what if someone still tries to take them?”

“Niggas run up on people they think won’t fight back. You let niggas know you got a little bite behind your bark, and you’ll be a’ight. They won’t mess with you, and they for damn sure won’t try to take no shoes.”

“But what if that doesn’t work? What if they are ten times bigger than me?” Saviour asked.

“You come get your daddy. They ain’t bigger than Daddy,” Iman’s voice came from behind them.

Messiah stood as Saviour asked, “But what if they are?”

“Then you holler at Unc, cuz I’m coming with something hot for ’em,” Messiah said, staring at Iman in the eyes.

“You’d shoot them, Uncle Messiah?!” Saviour asked.

“Blow a nigga head off his shoulders, nephew,” Messiah said. He was no longer focused on Saviour, however. “Over you and your mama. I’ma go to ten every time. Niggas ain’t never really took nothing from me without it being a problem, so those shoes better stay put. Ain’t that right?”

“Definitely!” Saviour agreed, dapping Messiah up.

“That room still need to be packed up,” Iman said. “Go take care of that.”

Saviour raced up the steps, and Messiah finally addressed Iman. “What up? B here?”

“I been cooling it with you for a minute, laying in the cut cuz I know Bleu rocks with you heavy,” Iman said. “But this is my family, nigga.”

Messiah halted. People didn’t speak to him like that. Ever. It took everything in him to not put Iman’s jaw on Bleu’s pretty tiled floor.

“They my family too. Them weeks when you gone back to Cali, and it get lonely for her. When he got the doughnut day at school, and you can’t fly them three thousand miles … or you forgot about them days? She mine too.”