Hero

Epilogue

Tonya looked up at the sky. The wind caressed her face as it came rustling through the trees. Sunlight warmed her skin. She looked over at Big Mike. She was proud of the way he’d cleaned himself up. He now owned his own barbershop and, to her knowledge, it was totally legit, no drugs, no guns, just hair care products. He looked good in his dark suit and tie, like a regular businessman.

Tonya’s husband Gerald stood beside her as he had the entire time she’d been in the hospital, never leaving her side, rushing from her room to her mother’s room to pass information back and forth, keeping her apprised of her mother’s condition and her mother apprised of hers. Even after her mother had had another stroke and Tonya herself had come down with an infection after the surgery, he’d never left either of their sides until they’d had to literally force him out of the door to go home and get some rest. Then he’d be back the very next day. She loved him more than she ever felt she’d be able to tell him.

Her cousin Jerome was there too. Her Aunt Betty. Her Uncle Jake. Members of her family she hadn’t seen since she was a young girl. Members of the local church, community leaders and activists, and of course the news media, though they were careful to keep a respectful distance.

Tonya smiled up at the sun again. The weather was perfect. Eighty degrees with a breeze. If it were like this all year none of them could have afforded to live there. The pastor was preaching but she could hardly hear a word he said. She didn’t want to hear. It didn’t matter. She knew all she needed to know about her mother. She had saved her life.

All her life she’d heard people tell her what a hero her mother was, how she’d changed their lives. They’d quote to her from speeches her mother had given or articles she’d written. They’d give examples from episodes in her mother’s life when she’d stood up for freedom, stood up for all of them, examples they’d tried to emulate in their own lives. She’d grown tired of hearing it. When she’d awakened in the hospital, alive, and learned that her mother had saved her, she’d finally understood why all those people had been so affected by her mother. It was because Adelle Smith never laid down. She was a fighter. She never quit. It didn’t matter what was against her. She always kept fighting. And even when that crazy ass nurse had stabbed Tonya in the chest, she’d somehow known that her mother would save her. As Tonya had begun to lose consciousness, bleeding out on the living room floor, she’d never once doubted that she’d be okay. In her entire life she’d never had any reason to doubt that her mother would always be there for her. And when she woke up and heard that her mother had shot Natsinet, she hadn’t been surprised.

The only surprise had come after she’d gotten out of surgery and her mother had come to her bedside and held her hand and whispered to her.

“Thank you for saving my life. You’re my hero.”

“But Mom…you saved me.”

“I just pulled a trigger. You put yourself between that knife and me. You almost died for me. Thank you.”

That had been the most startling thing to her. That she could be her mother’s hero. That she could be anyone’s hero.

“We all have a bit of the heroic in us, Tonya. That’s all our people really need. You be my hero and I’ll be yours. We don’t need some Black Messiah to come and lead us all to freedom. There ain’t never gonna be another Malcolm X or another Martin Luther King. We’ve got to do it ourselves, together. No one of us can do it alone. Not even your poor old mother. We just have to find that bit of the heroic in ourselves. That’s all it takes.”

The next day her mother went into cardiac arrest. Blood clots in her legs had traveled to her brain and caused another stroke which, in turn, had led to a massive myocardial infarction. It was the first time in Tonya’s life that she had known her mother would no longer be there to protect her. She only hoped that she would be strong enough to do her mother’s memory proud.

Soon after she left the hospital Tonya quit her job and started her own non-profit organization. She went back to her neighborhood to teach teenagers and young adults about business and finance, show them how to apply for grants and loans for college and how to start their own businesses. It wasn’t terribly profitable, but it fulfilled her. It was something she knew her mother would have been proud of. Her first project had been to help turn Big Mike around. It was her influence that helped to get him a business loan and Big Mike’s influence had pushed most of the drugs out of the neighborhood. Only a few blocks away, but enough to drastically reduce the amount of violence in the neighborhood. She only wished her mother had been there to see it all.

Tonya looked over at the small headstone.

A tear weeped from the corner of her eye as she read the last line on the headstone.

Our Hero.

Tonya walked back to the waiting limousine before the preacher had finished his eulogy. She didn’t want to remember her mother through anyone else’s eyes but her own. And she already knew the memory she wanted to hold of her mother. Our Hero. That was all anyone really needed to say about Adelle Smith. That said it all.