"Do you remember me from when I was a kid?"
"No."
At the time it's not a lie. She's got way too much to deal with to stop and try to recall if she knows him.
It doesn't come all at once, it's there in her periphery just hovering, but the more he talks, the clearer it becomes.
When he starts talking about Mama Mabel and her place in the community.
When he mentions how much weight the Stokes name carries.
When he says she'd be surprised at what she's capable of when she finds the nerve (and boy, does she find it, Cornell can attest to that)
It's when he looks at her like she is the answer to all his problems, that she remembers a skinny Puerto Rican kid looking at her the same way. Eyes swollen, lip split, but shoulders straight and still ready to take on the world.
She remembers Mama Mabel taking him on as one of her errand boys, and later, one of Cornell's friends that would always be hanging around when she came home from Howard on break. It's on one of those breaks that she sees he's got ANOTHER black eye (this kid stay getting his ass beat) she thinks and takes pity on him.
She tosses him an old pair of shades "Put these on, until you can back up all that shit you're talking, we can't have you scaring your mom (there's enough there already for her to deal with, but that's a whole other matter)
She remembers his genuine smile that morphs into a smirk when Cornell comes back from the corner store.
She remembers the phantom weight of his gaze even through his shades (kid seriously has no clue on how to be stealthy)
She remembers how he never took them off, except when he spoke to Mama Mabel (and later she realizes that courtesy extends to her as well)
Oh yes, she remembers him. And as he hands her Mama Mabel's gun back, she wonders how she could have ever forgotten him.
