The day came when the twins and Mandy came home from the hospital and there was a HUGE party. One in which Mandy wasn’t too keen on attending. Since leaving the hospital, she’d been feeling a little sad. She thought it was just because her body had gotten used to having her children inside her and now they weren’t there anymore. She still attended and put on a brave face for everyone. But, for some reason she wasn’t feeling right.
Brie was noticing what was happening. Even after coming home, Amanda seemed distant. She’d withdrawn from Malachai and the babies. She mentioned this to David. “Have you noticed that Mandy seems a little distant with the kids?”
“Yeah, I have. What do you think is causing that?”
“I think she’s going through post- partum depression, but I can’t diagnose. I’m just a massage therapist, honey.”
“Do you think that she needs to be seeing that counselor you referred her to when you were dealing with all that scar tissue?”
“Possibly.”
At that moment, both of the babies started crying and so did Amanda. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you guys!” she screamed.
Brie and David went into the living room to check on her and the twins. “Amanda, sweetie, have you pumped any milk for them?” Brie asked. “They’re hungry.”
“No.”
“Do you want us to give them some formula and give you a break for a while? You seem like you need a rest.”
“If you don’t mind. The sleepless nights are too much. I can’t close my eyes without them screaming. I don’t know what to do anymore!”
Brie sighed. “Amanda, go get some sleep. David and I will take care of the twins.”
“Are you SURE?”
“Amanda. GO”, David said. “You're no good to these children or their father if YOU’RE not rested. We’re their grandparents. We’ll take good care of them.”
She wiped the tears from her eyes and headed out to her house. She was thankful to her in laws for taking the kids for her for awhile so that she could get some rest while Malachai was at the studio. The three days she was in the hospital left him with a lot of work to do. He had music to track. They were getting ready to release their first record and he needed to focus on the music while he was away from the house. When she walked into the house that she shared with her husband and new children and went straight to her bedroom and collapsed onto her bed.
---------------
David and Brie exchanged a look as they watched Amanda leave the house. “That poor girl is going through something right now. I don’t know what, but I STRONGLY suspect that it’s PPD”, Brie said as she changed Miranda’s diaper.
David had gotten bottles for both of the babies and was feeding Isaiah as he spoke. “What’s suggested for the families of someone who’s going through something like that?”
“Just be supportive. Take as much of the burden off of them as you can until they work through it.”
“I’m honestly glad we never had to work through that with you after our kids. Don’t get me wrong, I would have done just what you said. I would have supported you and taken as much of the burden as I could off of your shoulders. But, this kinda of thing is pretty scary.”
“Yeah. I’m glad I never went through that too. I’ve heard stories, but, I’ve never witnessed it and NEVER been through it.”
“Then how can you recognize it?”
“I was taught how to recognize it in massage school. I had to take a class on prenatal massage. We watched videos on it and talked about the signs and stuff like that.”
After Isaiah had emptied the bottle, David put the little boy on his shoulder and burped him. “Oh.”
“You seem surprised”, she said as she gave the other bottle of formula to Miranda.
“Not really. I guess that should have made sense, but I’m concerned about these innocent little ones so I didn’t put two and two together to get four. Instead, I think I got 16”, he said with a laugh. Isaiah belched and David started rubbing the little boy’s back. “There you go, Isaiah. That’s Grandpa’s boy.” He looked back to his wife. “Isn’t it nice to have babies in the house again?”
She laughed. “Don’t tell me you want more.”
“Oh, hell no! Ten is just fine. We don’t need anymore.”
“And, just think, with these two we can spoil the hell out of them and send them back to Malachai and Mandy.”
“Yeah. I know. But, should they step out of line, they’ll know that Grandma and Grandpa don’t play around.”
“That’s for sure.”
--------------
Malachai was in the sound booth laying down the guitar parts for all of the covers they wanted to consider for the album. He wanted to put his own flare on “Asylum”, but seeing as his Godfather was sitting in the control booth, he didn’t try. Thankfully, “Asylum” was the last song he needed to do before Jordan came in and laid down the vocals. Once he was done, he looked to the glass separating the two booths. “Are we done, Uncle Danny?”
“Yeah, you’re good. Come on out of there so that we can get Jordan in there to do the vocals”, Dan replied over the intercom.
Malachai took his guitar off and set it on the stand, then left the room. He looked at Jordan when he walked in. “Knock ‘em dead, Jordan”, he said.
She smirked at him. “I fully intend too.” She made her way past him and into the booth. After putting the headphones on she looked to the control booth. “What are we doing first?”
“Give me ‘Nightmare’, first, Jord”, Dan said.
“You got it.” The music filled the headphones and at the perfect time she sucked in a deep breath and screamed into the microphone. “NIGHTMARE!!!!” The music continued to play as she continued to record. “Dragged you down below, down to the devil’s show, to be his guest forever! Peace of mind is less than never! Hate to twist your mind, but God ain’t on your side, an old acquaintance severed, burn the world your last endeavor!
“Flesh is burning, you can smell it in the air, ‘cause men like you have such an easy soul to steal, so stand in line while they ink numbers in your head, you’re now a slave until the end of time here, Nothing stops the madness turning, Haunting, yearning, pull the trigger!
“You should have known, the price of evil, and it hurts to know that you belong here, Yeah! Ooh, if your fucking NIGHTMARE!” Jordan thought of Sasha while she sang the song. She thought of the evil bitch that had trampled all over her heart. This song was for her, and so were several of the other songs that they’d done for this album. The only songs on the album that weren’t about broken hearts and hating the bitches that broke them were the two songs that they’d recorded that were written for her Uncle Matt.
As the last chorus of the song came up, she took the upper harmony part. “No one to call! Everybody to FEAR! YOUR TRAGIC FATE IS LOOKING SO CLEAR! Ooh, it’s your fucking Nightmare.”
Dan came over the intercom. “Good take, Jordan. Now, we’re going to go back and do all the echoes and things like that. Can you handle that?”
“Yeah. I can do that. After that can we take some time for lunch? I’m starving.”
“No problem, Jordan. I think Malachai wants to go check on the twins anyway.”
--------------
After the second take, they broke for lunch. Dan gave them an hour and a half for lunch. It would give them plenty of time to go check on the new babies and grab a bite at the house, then head back. When they walked into the house, Malachai saw something that he wasn’t expecting. He had expected to see Mandy taking care of their children, but it was his parents instead. “Where’s Mandy?” he asked.
“She is out back sleeping”, David said to his son.
He nodded. “Ok. Poor girl needs to get some rest. I understand. Is everything ok with these two?” He looked into the bassinets that had been brought into the main house at his beautiful children.
“They’re fine. They’ve been fed recently, diapers have been changed, all that good shit. Now, they’re sleeping.”
“Ok. I was just checking on them. Seeing as they’re asleep I’m not going to mess with them. I did want to hold them before going back to work, but no need to disturb them.”
“You wake either of these babies up, Malachai Aaron, and I will kick your ass”, David said, making it clear in his tone that he wasn’t joking.
“Yeah, not gonna chance that. I’m gonna join Jordan and the guys in the Kitchen for lunch. We have about thirty minutes before we have to head back to town and go back to the studio.”
“How is the first album coming?”
“No bad. We’re still trying to get everything picked out because we recorded fifteen songs and Uncle Danny said that we could only have twelve.”
“Decisions, decisions, huh?”
“Yeah. Jordan’s already made it PERFECTLY clear that ‘Unholy’ and ‘Matt’s Song’ are NOT to be cut.”
“Those are songs for your late uncle, Malachai. Do you blame her?”
“No, but Caleb says we only need ONE of them.”
“And Jordan said?”
“’Fuck off, shit head. I say they BOTH stay.’”
“And you and Logan back her up on that?”
“We sure do.”
“Good.” David looked up from his note pad at his son. “Go eat.”
“What are you working on, Dad?”
“Lyrics. Your children have been helping me. If they like it, they coo. If they don’t, they cry.”
“Only a week old and already helping Grandpa write, huh?”
“Like I’m going to have it any other way?”
No comments:
Post a Comment