Live and Learn (6 page)

“W
ake up, Mommy. Mommy, wake up.”

Now, I love my daughter to death, but if she don’t stop bouncin’ her ass up and down on my bed, I’m gone whup her. Okay, no I won’t, but that ain’t the point.

I opened my eyes and peered into a face that looked just like mine. My own Mini-Me.

“Mornin’, girl, with your bad self,” I told her, my mornin’ voice soundin’ way too mannish.

“Diane said to get up, Mommy.”

Yes, Kimani called my mother by her first name just like I did. So?

“Go tell her I’m up.”

I sat up in bed and looked around me as she went running out of the room at full speed. Clothes were everywhere: on the floor, at the bottom of my small-ass closet, atop my damn dresser, and across the foot of the bed. The only thing hangin’ up in my closet was this red fake fur that I don’t even wear no more.

To hell with it.

Alizé was always gettin’ up in my business about
my
shit. She ain’t got to live here, and she can’t fit my clothes, so why the hell she care? Humph, she’ll be the hell okay and so will my clothes…right where they at.

All four of us all weekend in one suite? Oh, I know I was calling dibs on roomin’ with Mo—if she really was going. With Rev Ike who knew?

Damn, it was fucked up the way her parents treated her. Didn’t they know how hard life would be on Moët if she really did walk around all day every day lookin’ like a f’ing Quaker?

Matter of fact, that same dumb shit was the reason we all pulled Mo right into our clique.

“Look at her. Can you believe the clothes she wearing?”

“Girl, I ain’t seen somebody rockin’ opaque stockings and Mary Janes since I was six.”

Monica, Danielle, and I were sitting at the lunch table behind these two upperclassmen, listening to they dumb ass as they ragged on Latoya James. She was sitting at a table alone, her head damn buried in her tray, looking so lonely she was ’bout to cry.

As loud as them upperclassmen were talkin’, she probably overheard them.

“I heard she supposed to be saved,” one of ’em said.

“Somebody need to save her dumb ass from them clothes,” the other replied.

Monica, Danielle, and I all looked at each other and then glanced over at Latoya. That girl didn’t bother nobody, and the only time she talked was to answer questions in class. And sure her clothes
was
jacked the fuck up, but who the hell told them somebody gave a flyin’ fuck what they thought.

I was already in a f’ed-up mood ’cause I wanted a blunt, so I wadn’t hardly in the mood for pickin’, even if them tricks wasn’t talkin’ to my ass.

I jumped to my feet. Before Monica and Danielle could blink, I walked over to Latoya’s table and sat down. “Whaddup, Latoya.”

She jumped like I scared her, and I had to stop myself from rollin’ my eyes. “Hi,” she said back with a soft smile.

“Why you eatin’ by yourself?”

She just shrugged.

“Well, we want you to come sit wit us, a’ight?” I stood up and grabbed her tray.

She looked over at Monica and Danielle. They waved and she waved back. She looked back up at me. “Really?”

Okay, I couldn’t stop myself from rollin’ my eyes that damn time. “Girl, come on.”

She looked relieved not to be alone and scrambled off the bench, nearly trippin’ over herself.

I heard snickers, and my head whipped around to find the upperclassmen laughing. I shot dey ass a nasty look, and trust me the snickering stopped like that. Trust me, these Hillside, Vaux Hall, Union, and Elizabeth living bitches knew I wasn’t shit to fuck wit. Freshman or no freshman I handled mine.

Latoya followed me back to our table.

“Hi, Latoya,” Danielle said, sliding over to make room for her.

“What’s the deal,” Monica greeted her.

She smiled. “Hi.”

I slid on my seat on the bench. “Now let me see if somebody think it’s comedy hour up in dis bitch,” I said with a nasty attitude loud enough for the upperclassmen to hear me.

Monica, Danielle, and even Latoya all giggled.

The three of us been watching out for Mo ever since.

I lit up a blunt I didn’t finish last night. I inhaled, letting the weed fill my lungs. Besides good clothes and great sex, ain’t nothin’ better than gettin’ high.

My bedroom door swung open and in walked my mother.

Diane’s a forty-five-year-old woman goin’ on twenty-five—in her damn mind anyway. I gotta give her her due ’cause she look good for her age. She dressed young, acted young, wore her hair young, liked hangin’ around young people, and slept with young men. Everythin’ about her ass was young
except
for her real damn age.

She’s more like one of my friends than a mother, and the girls always been jealous ’cause Diane just don’t give a damn. She’s always down for whatever.

Her eyes zoomed in on my blunt like a fly to shit. Damn! I ain’t in the mood for her BS this mornin’.

Diane closed the door and strutted her wide-hip self over to my bed like she some runway model. I sucked my teeth and rolled my eyes as she stuck out a hand with a “don’t even play with me” look.

“Puff puff give,” she said, imitating Smokey from the movie
Friday
. “Don’t fuck up the rotation, bitch.”

Takin’ one last hit, I used my long acrylic fingertips to pass it to her with another eye roll.

“Holdin’ out on me?” She laughed, before she took a deep pull.

Oh, yeah, Diane smoked weed. Shee-it. She got f’ed up on the regular. As long as I could remember, Diane got high. First it was rolling with E-Z Wide papers and then Philly Blunts. Hell, I even saw her and her friends smoke it out a bong. A spliff and Smirnoff Ice and she was straight as hell for the day. Mess around and she ain’t got either and she moody as hell. For real.

I’m the same way. I don’t find a damn thing funny when I ain’t high. I guess the limb don’t fall too far from the tree.

I started stealin’ her roaches—that’s the butt of the joint or blunt—from the ashtray at eleven. My grown ass was curious as hell about the little cigarettes Diane always smokin’. My first hit and I was hooked. I got f’ed up before school, during school, and after school. Gettin’ high was my homework, and I got straight A’s. When I went to high school, I started buyin’ my own stash, and I introduced my friends to the wonderful world of weed.

I was seventeen the first time Diane caught me smokin’. She told me I was almost grown and pass the blunt. I swear.

Diane started coughin’, and I cut my eyes over to her as I climbed out of bed in nothin’ but a thong. “You know your ass can’t hang. I don’t why you try.”

With her eyes all red and watery, Diane passed me the blunt. Wasn’t shit left but the end. What the hell she think I want with it? I know some older cats who eat the ends, but it ain’t even that serious. Y’all feelin’ me?

I just dropped it in the ashtray on the floor by my bed. It was already full up with dull ashes, cigarette butts, hardened wads of gum, and an ass of blunt ends.

“Give me a hundred dollars,” Diane demanded, finally gettin’ her shit under control as she stretched her hand out like I’m a ATM.

“For what?” I bent over to dig in a big black garbage bag of dirty clothes.

“The rent is due, that’s what,” Diane snapped, pickin’ up a black Via Nicci sheer camisole that still had the tag on it. “This will look good with my new low-rider jeans.”

She was always wearin’ my stuff. We the same size on top, even though her hips and butt was way bigger than mine.

Reaching over, I snatched it away from her. “Oh, no. I don’t think so. And the rent’s only fifty.”

“Well, it’s two months behind.”

Did I mention that Diane ain’t had a job since I was ’bout two?

When I turned eighteen, the government stopped payin’ her bills. She turned to her men, and me, to pick up the slack.

Now see, I knew she had money, but she didn’t wanna spend her own cash. Diane kept money ’cause she kept a man who kept money. Point blank. She was singing “No Romance Without Finance” long before the song ever hit the airwaves.

And she taught me well. Ever since I was old enough to remember, she been schoolin’ me on men, money, men
and
their money, and why the two should always go hand in hand.

Yeah, Cristal’s uppity butt always talkin’ smack ’cause we live in the projects.

It’s by choice.

Why pay eight hundred dollars or more a month for a one-bedroom apartment when we livin’ just fine in our two-bedroom for fifty dollars a month. Oh, section eight is a son of a bitch. A
damn
good son of a bitch.

Our apartment was decked out. The whole livin’ room was black and silver with one of those nice-ass leather sectionals, a sixty-inch big screen TV, and a glass entertainment center with a matchin’ dining room set. Mirrored walls. Black carpet you could lose your toes in. Even a mini chandelier Diane got from Sears.

Hell, I even got a forty-inch TV and a two-thousand-dollar bedroom set in my room.

Yeah, we liked nice things and we got nice things. If it meant me shakin’ a little T & A to keep my Lexus, my clothes, and a new hairdo every week, then I’m a shake dat ass. Ya heard me?

I picked up the jeans I wore last night and reached in the back pocket. I turned my back to her as I counted the money. Three hundred and eighty dollars. I peeled a fifty, a twenty, and three tens from my roll.

“Huh,” I said, reaching back behind me to push at her.

Rememberin’ I needed her to watch Kimani while I went to ATL, I peeled off three more twenties. “Huh.”

Diane smiled like a cat. “That’s my baby,” she sang, before steppin’ over the piles of clothes on the floor to leave my room. “And you need to get some of this shit up off
my
damn floor.”

I just looked at her ’til the door closed behind her. Straight crazy.

I started throwin’ clothes I wanted to take with me in two piles. One to pack and the other to wash. I gotta lot to do today. Wash clothes, go get a half ounce from Mookie, and drop by Antoinette’s to see what she boosted from the mall last night, ’cause that girl can cop clothes like nobody else.

Ah, what the hell we got here?

I closed my fist around my find as I pulled my hand from the pocket of them vintage Versace jeans I wore to the club last week. I’d bought a bag of weed from this kid standin’ outside the club. How could I forget?

Smilin’, I opened the tiny Ziploc-like pouch, steppin’ over the mounds of clothes to grab my Gucci purse from the foot of the bed. I kept my purse and my glove compartment full up with cigars ’cause you never knew when you gone be in the mood to smoke. Nothin’ worse than rollin’ up to the corner store and findin’ out that Papi’s all out of cigars.

Sittin’ cross-legged on my bed, I used my car key to bust the cigar down the middle. Seconds later I had that mother rolled, licked, and lit.

I held the blunt like a cigarette as I threw some clean things in this Gucci duffel bag I bought from Antoinette for a bill.

I damn near packed my bag and smoked half the blunt before I started to feel it.

Damn.

Either I’m smokin’ too much or that kid’s weed ain’t no damn good.

Nah, must be a bad batch, ’cause you can never have too much weed!

“W
hat star would you freak for one night?”

Alizé asked, stirring her apple martini as the ladies lounged at their VIP table in the Orange Room of the upscale and trendy Vision Nightclub in Atlanta.

“Denzel,” Moët answered without hesitation, blushing before she sipped her Amaretta and orange juice on ice.

Three sets of eyes turned on her.

“I think older men are sexy. Don’t sleep,” Moët warned playfully.

“Needless to say I would be more than pleased to give Sahad Linx a taste,” Cristal added, crossing her legs on the suede banquette.

“We know about him. Who else?” Dom asked, lighting a Newport.

“Okay, okay. Sean Combs,” Cristal admitted with a smile.

“Oh, so if they don’t own a record company, you ain’t feelin’ ’em?” Dom asked.

“Do not hate because I’m ambitious,” Cristal told her with a raised brow. “What about you, Alizé?”

“I want me some of Nelly so bad that it don’t even make sense,” Alizé sighed, fanning her face and then between her legs jokingly.

“Okay, Miss Dom Perignon, what ’bout you?” Cristal asked as she reached in her purse for her wallet.

Dom blew smoke through her nostrils, already moving her upper body to the music thumping loudly against the walls. “Question is who
wouldn’t
I do.”

“Dom!” Moët exclaimed.

“Let me run into Ludacris or Usher in this joint and y’all have the answer to your question. Hey!” She rose and did her signature “Juicy” ass shake. “They can’t stand it! They can’t stand it!”

“Dom, your ass is so crazy,” Cristal told her, before they all broke out with laughter.

One Month Later

“P
latinum Records.”

“What you doing?”

“I’m working, Alizé. What are
you
doing?” I said into the phone.

“Girl, I ran up on a good piece last night!”

“A good piece of what?”

“It damn sure wasn’t cake.”

“So Rah’s ah…skills are improving?”

“What my man got to do with it?”

“You broke up with Rah?”

“Hell no.”

I did not say another word. I was not a prude, but sleeping with two men will wear your walls out. Okay? All right.

“Listen, Cristal, Rah’s cool. The money is lovely. But if he want fidelity, he got to step up his game in the bed.”

Deciding not to school my friend on letting her hot spot out rule a cool head, I moved on. “Where are you?”

“I’m on campus. Why? What’s up?”

“Where is Mo?”

“At work at the Student Center. I think she got a class at twelve.”

“I just spoke to Dom a little while ago.”

“Dom was up before noon?
Do,
Dom!”

I laughed, looking around the lobby to ensure I was alone. “I woke her up to see if I could take Kimani to an indoor block party the label is having this Saturday. Since Mr. Right is nowhere in my future for me to have my own husband and child, I have to latch on to our godchild when I feel motherly.”

“What happened with Townsend?”

“We still go out, but it is not anything serious. Besides, I told you he is not a husband candidate,” I told her as I flipped through my new
Essence
magazine.

“Stop hunting for a husband to make you a BAP and you’ll be all right.”

There was nothing wrong with being a Black American Princess to me.

If I yearned to marry a wealthy man—prefer-ably African-American—and live the life of Riley, what was so wrong with that? Take Patricia Lawrence, now Patricia Smith, current wife of professional football star Emmitt Smith, and ex-wife of multi-millionaire actor and comedian Martin Lawrence. Not only did the woman marry well, but she married well
twice
.

“What did Dom say?”

I did an uncharacteristic eye roll. “You know Dom is forever searching for a babysitter.”

Alizé laughed. “Dom’s so crazy. I still can’t believe she got us thrown out of Vision’s last month.”

I frowned at the memory. “What possessed her to get up on the bar and start stripping?”

“I don’t know. She must’ve thought she was in
Coyote Ugly
.”

We both laughed.

The intercom buzzed from Alyssa DeSanto’s office. Alyssa was Sahad’s executive assistant—his right-hand woman. Humph, I would love to be his right hand so that I could wrap it around that ebony penis!

“Alizé, I have to go. I will call you later.”

“Make sure you call so I can tell you all about that big mule—”

I hung up the phone on her with a laugh, pushing the button on the intercom. “Yes, Alyssa?”

“Mr. Linx is expecting a delivery from Tiffany’s in about forty-five minutes. Just buzz me when it arrives and I’ll walk out to get it.”

“Not a problem.”

Sahad was currently dating Tyrea, an up-and-coming singer whose first release,
Tease Me, Taste Me
, was #1 on the Billboard R & B chart. I saw a picture of them in the
New York Post
’s Page Six section. Tyrea
was
attractive in that “if you like that look” kind of way.

What if it was an engagement ring?

Oh, no-no.

That night I was at home alone, sipping on a glass of Chardonnay and looking out my bay window at the still night below. Everything was quiet. So peaceful. So unlike the rowdy streets where I grew up.

And I was glad for that.

I was mugged twice at gunpoint when I was sixteen and living on Sixteenth Avenue by Westside Park. Hell, I am lucky to be alive.

Do not get me wrong, I was not as ashamed of growing up in Newark as everyone thought. I just decided to move on from the liquor stores on every corner and the thugs hanging out in front of the bodegas. The noise. The littered streets. The unemployed wanderers. The dealers. The addicts. The criminals. The projects.

Unfortunately, I seemed to shift from one foster home to the next in nothing but those bad areas. I always felt like I did not belong. The gritty urban environment did not suit me. I never liked playing in illegally opened fire hydrants on hot summer days, or sitting on the stoop, or playing kickball in the street.

When I was a little girl, I used to dream that my parents were rich and living large somewhere grand like Beverly Hills or the Hamptons. I swore that I had been stolen from them and that they were looking for me so that I could return to the wonderfully rich life I deserved.

I got older and the dream faded with age.

Suddenly the phone interrupted my thoughts, and I was glad for the diversion. No need dwelling on a past I could not change. The future? Well, the future was all in
my
hands.

I picked up my cordless phone. “Hello?”

“Cristal?”

“Dom?” I set my precious Waterford crystal goblet on the windowsill.

“Yeah, this me. You got a dude there?”

“No. It is just me, myself, and I. Why?” I asked, straining to hear her clearly on her cell phone.

“Me, Alizé, and Moët are on our way up there.”

I loved my girls, but the only thing on my schedule for the night was maxing and relaxing. I wanted to focus on my strategy for sexy Sahad since I “accidentally” opened the package from Tiffany’s and discovered it was just one of those trendy I.D. bracelets for Tyrea.

Not a ring.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“You not gone believe this bullshit.”

“What?” Goose bumps raced across my body in a rush.

“Guess who’s knocked up.”

I could tell that Dom had a cigarette in her mouth, but I could also hear her anger. “Who?”

“Be there in five.”

The line disconnected, and she left me in suspense.

Pregnant? Who? Alizé? Moët? Oh, God, not Dom?

Grabbing my goblet, I walked over to the bar and poured myself another full glass of wine. I finished it in one gulp.

Three minutes seemed like an eternity when you were staring at a Fact Plus pregnancy test stick. All four of us were in my bathroom…watching and waiting. Would the pink line appear in the result window?

“Ain’t this ’bout a bitch,” Dom said for the tenth time from her spot on the edge of the tub.

Me? Well, I was busy praying, “Please, Lord, do not let it show,” and cursing, “Do not show, you son of a bitch,” and warning, “You better not show.”

All to myself, of course.

The timer I used for my facials went “ding.”

All my praying, cursing, and warning did not work. There was that damn pink line coming in big, bold, and bad as hell.