“Don’t be mad at me just ’cause Leroy got your stupid ass pregnant!” she said, with a grin on her face, running around me to grab her Detroit Pistons Starter coat from the end of the couch. All the blood drained from Renelle’s face, decayed into an astonished gray. She opened her mouth in a perfect circle, but no sound escaped.

“Yeah … she fucked yo’ nasty ass ugly husband and now she pregnant,” Nakesha said as she stuffed her feet into raggedy jellies. Then she started on her way out the door. The last thing I heard before a slam that rattled a couple oranging pictures off the wall was: “Find a new girl, bitch.”

When I turned back toward Renelle, shock had captured her. Her mouth, frozen; her breath, trembling; her eyes, two black tombs waiting; her hands, trembling and holding the wild, knotted, uncombed hair on top of her babies’ heads. Before she could ask her question, scaled back to simply whispering my name, I had run out the door behind Nakesha.

AND JUST LIKE that, I felt myself suddenly jolted inside her.

Visions of storms invade my growing mind always, frequently, and unexpectedly. Living and growing inside my mothers is always much like that, waking up to a daily storm whose nuisance offers only the excuse to stay inside all day. The commotion of outside life fades to background music after a while, like the soon silence of a blizzard whose screeching wind and combative snow are searching for conquests—simple destinations to invade for their short lives. Or a rainstorm with its threatening prelude of thunder and lightning finally giving way to the calming, hypnotic onslaught of an all-night torrent. Both are greeted by early-morning disdain and curses spit out between hands peeling back curtains, but all their possibilities are soon forgotten by people caged inside warm rooms and sturdy houses. The irony is that I could forget them, let life outside slide into background music; but my mothers could never, ever forget the life inside no matter how hard they tried.