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ring, as if she was waiting by the phone, expecting a call from me. I could tell she was both happy and surprised to hear my voice. At the same time, I could hear the relief in her voice.
    â€œAre you going to help?” she asked eagerly.
    â€œDo I have a choice?” I knew it was a rhetorical question.
    â€œWhat can I do to help?”
    â€œCan you take Mayhem’s kids?”
    â€œSure. Bring them babies to me.” There was no hesitation in her voice and I felt a smidgen of jealousy.
    â€œThey’re not babies and they are a handful. They’re just like Mayhem.”
    Shirley chuckled. “I can handle them.”
    â€œWell, you’re going to have to get them out of L.A. They’re in danger. Whoever has Mayhem will kill them if they find them. Are you off parole yet?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGood. Do you have any money to get out of the state?”
    â€œDavid set up an account for me about six months ago. I still have the money because of my job.” She said the word “job” with pride. That’s right, Venita worked at a floral shop. First time in her life my mother had held down a job, and from what I could see, she’d been a good employee over the past year. Before she went to prison, she’d always been a welfare queen and sugar daddy baby.
    For a moment, I felt a stab of jealousy in my stomach, though, when she called Mayhem by his real name, but then I remembered Venita gave up twenty years of her life for my brother when she took the fall for the murder her ten-year-old child committed. I’d always known he was her favorite, even when we were little. All because he was a boy.
    To mask my feelings of sibling rivalry, I became brusque. “Well, this is the time to use the money. You’ve got to get out of town today and take his boys with you. Can you do that?”
    â€œI’ll do whatever I have to do.”
    â€œDo you need a ride to the bus station or train station? Do you have someplace you can go?”
    â€œI know where I can take them. No, I can catch a cab. You need to get moving to try to help David.”
    I felt a little envy again when I hung up. Help David. That was my birth mother’s first concern. Help her first born.
    In an ideal world, she would have said, “Thanks for sticking out your neck to help my criminal son and his underworld mess,” but I guess that was in a dream world. This was the real world.
    I climbed back into the car.
    â€œWhere we goin’?” Milan demanded.
    â€œI’ve got a surprise for you,” was all I said. The boys and I drove in silence to Venita’s colonial in View Park. I hadn’t been to her place before, but I knew her address. I was thinking about my mother. She’d come up in the world in a short time. A year ago she was living in a halfway house. Now she was living in what was an old, settled middle-class Black neighborhood in South Los Angeles. I guess the same way the NBA players looked out for their moms, Mayhem had looked out for Venita. But could he buy her back twenty years of her life? Did they ever discuss what went on between them? I wondered.
    I hustled the boys out of the car, all the time looking over my shoulder. I rushed up the brick walkway and banged on her heavy mahogany door.
    â€œIs that you, Z?” Venita called through the door. She peered through her peephole and snatched open the door.
    As soon as Venita saw the boys, she broke into tears, grabbed all three boys at once, and began to kiss them all over their faces. She held all three of them in a headlock embrace. I was shaken. I’d never seen my OG Cripping mama cry before. I guess time brings about a change.
    â€œLeave us alone with all that mush,” Koran said, pushing Venita away.
    â€œWho is you anyway?” Tehran demanded, lip curled in defiance.
    â€œYeah, we’re not babies. We’re soldiers.” Milan stood with his shoulders back, bandy legs