Chapter 5
by 
takacube
What's next?
You meet your new family
Over the next few days, you got the chance to not only get acquainted with life as a young man again, you also had the chance to meet up with Tanya, TJ's mother. She was a bit awkward when she came in, knowing that you were in there, inside her son's head, and yet she still had no problems walking up to you and embracing you tightly against her body, brushing your head gently and resting her head there. For some reason, a compulsion Kerry would call it later, your body instinctively reacted and you wrapped your arms firmly around her body and held her close to you. It wasn't far from your imagination that you heard her gasp slightly, followed by a relaxing of her body against yours, but you just chalked it up to her being very close to her son, one that she almost lost just days before.
Getting dressed was simple enough, TJ knew how to dress but he also wore comfortable things, mostly a t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of sneakers finished off his attire. You weren't the snappiest of dressers either but you knew that TJ was among the more popular kids in the school and he had a certain style that he carried himself around with. A certain style that was now YOUR style.
After being discharged, and having thanked the doctors and nurses who reminded you to check in with them in a month's time, you followed Tanya out into the parking lot where she eyed you for a moment but just smiled as you again picked up on the unspoken cue and walked next to her, your arm around her waist, and she placed a hand on your chest. From a distance, it would be a different way of interpreting this type of closeness, maybe an eye-batting bit of confusion if one looked closely and saw the family resemblance. "Black don't crack" was a joke you often heard but now, looking at her walking with you, you couldn't be sure that they weren't on something. 3 kids, a single mom, and at 33, she definitely did not look much older than 18 or 19. Hell, as you glanced at the reflection in the garage mirror, if you didn't know better, you could be a couple with the way she was carrying on with you and your body seemed to respond.
"It's going to be an adjustment, that's for sure, trying to get used to understanding what this all means," she spoke softly as you approached her car, a decent (if not older) Civic. "It'll be different now but the girls, they don't know about the surgery. They just know that you had to spend a few days in the hospital and now are coming home."
"Makes sense." You thought about the information that you two had spent hours going over the past few days during visiting hours. "The youngest is Shandra, age 13, and the second is Sonique, 15, right?"
Tanya smiled and nodded as they reached the car and she unlocked the car doors and then glanced at the apparent son in front of her. "Did you want to...?"
You smiled and shook your head. "It's okay, you should drive. I still need to get my bearings and the doc said to hold off doing so for a few days, anyway."
With that, you got in and adjusted the seat back to the fullest, placing your feet open with your left leg resting against the center console. Tanya got in behind the wheel and after adjusting things, pulled out of the parking lot. It was a quiet moment or two before she placed a hand on your leg. "It's good to have you back, baby, we'll make it work."
You nodded and placed your hand on top of hers and gave it a squeeze before you looked over at her. "So, we never talked about this before...do I call you mom all the time?" You thought back to TJ and how respectful he was to the adults in school but a lot of the younger teachers seemed to be put at ease immediately and quite a few were on first-name basis with him. Did that carry to Tanya? "I mean..."
She returned the squeeze and smiled again. "TJ always called me 'Ma' or 'Mama' in front of his sisters, he said it was a respect thing, for the girls to learn that I had an important role in the house. He was always like that," she turned off the main street and headed towards the neighborhood where he learned they lived. "When it was between us, though...well...we'll see how we feel about that." She looked back at the house and smiled. "We're home."