"C'mon let's hurry!" Jayden said as they picked up their pace and ran all the way back to his home to get those portable shopping carts.
* * * * * * * *
"Hell yea man… Hey, we're gonna do something special for your birthday, right?" Avery asked even though he already knew the answer.
"Yea, I'm going to call in sick from school, lock myself in my room with my Play-station and stay the hell in bed." Jayden responded as they had exited the bus and were walking back up 167th St. making their way back to his house. They had finally made it to the grocery store and both of their carts were overburdened with cases of water, juices, tea and sweet rolls. In addition to that, each of them carried a shopping bag filled with fruits, sweet rolls, cinnamon buns, muffins and some goodies for themselves.
"Man when you're gonna snap out of it? Let it go dude…"
"Easy for you to say…"
"You know your mom is going to bake you a cake… Take some pics… Man let her have that lil' piece of happiness." Avery said with a slight hint of mockery in his voice.
"Yup and I'm gonna save half for you…" Jayden responded tongue-in-cheek.
"That's all I'm saying… My man…" Avery said with a sly smile thinking about how good Jayden's birthday cake would taste. His mom was one of the few modern-day mothers who actually still baked goods from scratch; she even made homemade frosting.
"I don't get you man… I mean I can kind of understand but then again I don't…" Avery said more or less thinking out loud to himself.
"My dad comes around every-now-and then making an appearance. Sometimes dropping off ten- twenty dollars here and there…" Avery shrugged his shoulders together.
"But you know everything is what it is. You can't make people be who you would like for them to be." He said quite profoundly for a thirteen soon-to-be fourteen years old.
Jayden didn't respond right away. He kept pulling his cart and walking as if he hadn't heard his friend. Avery was right. He could understand a little, but he would never know what it was like to wonder what did your father look like. Avery wouldn't understand what it was like to be constantly told that "you're the splitting image" of someone; yet never having seen what that person looks like. How many times had he walked down the street or been at the mall looking at the unfamiliar faces of the black men he would encounter. Not to mention that sometimes when he was out at the transit center selling his juices, waters, fruits and sweet rolls, often times the question "could that be him" would cross his mind. There were even times when he had almost bit off his tongue to keep from asking strange men if they knew a Marla Townsend. Those were the times when Jayden felt there could be a resemblance between him and the other man. There were so many faces of strange men in all the different places that they seemingly merged together into one giant unrecognizable fuzzy image of what could his father possible be like.