You Are Loved, Baby.

Maggie and Nadine looked shocked as my words left my lips. Maggie looked to me quickly and away from her computer screen as I tried to calm myself down and push thoughts of Brian away from me.

"What!? Why!?" Maggie questioned loudly as she jumped out of her seat.

I shrugged, "We aren't good for each other. Actually, we react badly when we are together," I said in a way that I hoped would make her and Nadine understand.

"I don't know what you're talking about! You and Brian are perfect together. You make the other stand out more than any other couple I've ever seen." Maggie murmured with a dreamy look in her eyes as she glanced at the computer screen.

"Nissa," Nadine added in a scolding voice, "You need to learn how to love, baby girl. What would your Mamma say?"

I shook my head, ignoring Maggie's curious looks as I replied to the elder woman. "My Mom would tell me not to get my heart tangled up in this. She'd tell me to figure out with I think is best and than run with that idea."

Nadine shook her head and murmured, "Silly girl," Under her breath as she walked towards me. She handed the baby to Maggie and rested her hands on my shoulders as if she was trying to make me understand more clearly. "Your Mamma used to say that the worst thing you can do for love is deny it."

I shook my head once more and pulled my baby into my arms as chills rushed over me and made me contemplate more than I was willing too. I wanted to just push all thoughts of Brian and Love from my mind and forget that either had existed in my world at all. However, Nadine was right. My Mamma was a woman of few words but whenever someone tried to talk about love and what it was and what it wasn't she'd open her mouth and let the quotes flow from her lips. My Mamma was a girl from the south who came to California on vacation with her parents when she was 18 years old. She was raised as a southern bell and had never left home, not even when she graduated from school. When her father, Aiden Heidell, brought her up to California she was exposed to a different lifestyle.

My Mamma quickly fell in love with my father's world and my father. She saw him as a young, daring, 22 year old man with sharp wits and attitude that could make even the most ignorant of people think twice. They quickly fell in love. My Dad saw my Mamma as a young, ready-to-be-recklace, beautiful 18 year old, woman with a bright future ahead of her. But it was what he didn't know that would hurt he and I both. By the next year Mamma was pregnant with me and living with Dad and my "Uncle" Jay who was my father's best friend at the time. Mamma had given up the glorious and rich life that she once lived with her parents in southern Tennessee for a ratty old apartment in Orange County California. When I was old enough to understand, my Dad told me that she claimed that it was "All in the name of love," Something that I thought was incredibly romantic back then.

I learned, when I was six, why my Mamma wasn't around. It wasn't because she didn't love me or want me, but it was because my Mamma was sick. She had contracted a disease from ticks that were down in Tennessee. Lyme disease was what it was called, however; no one new what she had back then. My Mamma's father had taken her out of the country setting and away from what the doctors thought was making her sick, the air, the trees, the animals, all those things. He brought her to the city for the doctors and to get away from an environment that was hurting their only child, Sumah.

Mamma had other plans in the city. She knew that she couldn't be cured if they didn't know what what hurting her. So she didn't worry. She just let the western American air make her into someone else, someone free from all the worries of sickness and the stress of doctors and hospitals and potential death. My Mamma wanted to be free. Yet, freedom didn't come easily when she had a disease raging inside of her. It would give her rashes, make her tired all the time. It seemed like she was always sick with the flu and somedays she couldn't even walk because her knee joints hurt her so bad.

Momma fought through it, though. She fought until she couldn't anymore. Mamma gave birth to me on October 30th, 1987, at 4:13 AM. Mamma died on October 30th, 1987, 4:16 AM at the age of 19, with me crying in her arms. The doctors told my Dad that child birth was just too much for my Mamma's body. That her immune system couldn't handle it and just shut down. Which caused the disease to overtake her body within a few hours, just long enough for my Mom to push out a baby.

I was given to my father two days later after being checked for the same disease that had taken the life of my mother. I was cleared and then released from the hospital and into the arms of my father who was just 23 at the time. I didn't even have a name, yet. He named me Nissa because that was the name that my mother, Sumah, wanted. My middle name became Georgia because that was my mother's favorite place to spend her summers. Nissa Georgia Chambers was now my name and I was the daughter of Juliann Chambers and the deceased Sumah Bethany Heidell, only child of Aiden and Mary Heidell, a rich couple from the south whose daughter ran away to fall in love.

All through out my childhood my father told me stories of my mother and who she was and how much she meant to him. But as all stories do the stories of my mother grew old for my father and I soon became the only reminded of a young love between them. By the time I was in kindergarden my father stopped with the stories all together, only telling me bits and pieces when I begged and begged. When I was four my father remarried a woman named Nytasha who my father was deep in love with. She was a woman from California who seemed to be the complete opposite of Sumah Heidell.

Within two years, by the time I was six, Dad and Nytasha had a baby. A boy who they named Isaias Javier Madrid Chambers. When I was nine and Isaias was three they had another boy, Juliann Gabriel Luis Chambers Junior. Named after my father. That became my family and my father's old dreams of my mother, father, and all their friends being my family drifted away into some distant graveyard to rest with my mother, in piece.

"Nadine," Maggie murmured as we stood in the office, "Why are you bringing up her Mother, now? You know that's a touchy subject with her. Just look at the girl, she's lost in her own mind."

I blinked away the tears and turned to Nadine and Maggie who had grabbed Blaik during my reverie. "It's okay, Margaret. Nadine knew my Mamma," I told her quietly as I tried to muster up the best smile I could, "Nadine was good to my Mom."

Maggie looked shocked as she turned to Nadine, "How did you know her? I mean... How?"

Nadine shrugged and shared a knowing smile with me that was somehow saying, "My baby girl was your Mamma's best friend, 'round here," Without any words at all.

"It's not important," I shrugged, "What's done is done. The future is what's important, Maggie."

Maggie nodded animately, "I know," She grinned, "That's why you've got to follow your heart and let yourself fall in love with Brian."

Nadine smiled a aged smile and said, "Like your Mamma would've wanted you do to, baby girl."