away because he was the better man. He's strong, yes, but no man can go up against a pure love like that and win. That's a wall of pure white Light. That's how I was able to cast aside your shield--with pure love... because I love you like a mother, Carlos. Ain't no shield for that. 1 want you two kids to work it out. Heal this family. Get yourselves together. Stop hurting each other and therefore hurting the rest of us. You muddied the waters, not just by your actions, but by what you didn't validate within her. That's where the first, critical brick fell away from the wall... the tower began to lean, and then you both kept chipping at it until it came down. Now you've gotta rebuild from the rubble, brick by heavy brick." She sighed. "It didn't have to be all of this." He could hear his mother's words, his grandmother's entreaties, could see every pair of hurt female eyes looking at him. His brothers' women, wishing their men weren't in the drug life. Mothers from the neighborhood standing over caskets so bereft that no more tears would fall. Mothers with young sons sending prayers up to God on their knees to spare theirs from the same fate. Women pacing the floors at night waiting on some errant male that was connected to his energy to return home. Damali's worried eyes, that time she'd come to his club, decimated him. Moreover he could feel the vastness of their multiple feminine disappointment, their broken spirits, their unrequited hopes... the magnitude of it nearly sprawled him out on the floor.
"How do I make it right?" Carlos whispered. There was no resistance, no game, no fraud, or false pride left within him. He'd been taken to the rock so hard and body slammed against it that the Chairman's wall now seemed like it had been made of foam rubber.
Marlene gently held him back and wiped his face with her hands. Love seeped from her palms as he stared down at the floor, too ashamed to meet her tender gaze.
"Baby, look at me," she murmured.
He shook his head. "I can't."
She lifted his chin with an easy, slow placement of her palm beneath his chin until their gazes locked. "You are a good man. Just young. This lesson you just learned in fifteen agonizing minutes, some men take thirty years to get. Some never learn it at all. You're blessed, even if you don't feel like it at the moment." Marlene sighed and smoothed his disheveled hair. "This was a hard gift, but I had to give it to you." She smiled. "You saved my life, so it was my debt to save yours. Like you always say, fair exchange is no robbery, Carlos."
He smiled weakly and closed his eyes, too fatigued to reply.
"Do you understand that I did this from a place in my heart that is held especially for you?" Her tender gaze made him open his weary eyes and stare at her. Marlene nodded. "That's right. I've claimed you as one of my own, baby. That's why I called you 'boy' Not because you aren't a man. But because you're mine. Hear?"
He nodded and looked down as new tears streamed down his face. "I'm sorry, Mom."
"I know you are," she whispered. "That's why I'm willing to go through all of this with you."
"How did you get so wise?" he asked, his voice raw and thick. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and stared at her.
"Because I've had the privilege to lie under the wings of angels," she said, closing her eyes as the group simply looked at her. A serene expression came over Marlene's tired face, adding a surreal glow to it that was lit from an inner, unknown source. "I crossed over, too," she murmured without opening her eyes. "My body was burning. I was in so much pain that I couldn't even scream, then this magnificently caring being dropped over me and shielded me from predators. He sent healing white Light of pure love into the very marrow of my bones. The pain receded, even as someone slit my throat. He didn't know me from a can of paint, but he loved me, cared that I survived, and hoped if I died I'd go out in the white light of blissful surrender."
Tears rolled down Marlene's cheeks as she spoke. She stood with effort and clasped her arms about herself. "He made