On the Come Up(20)

“You sure you don’t want me to handle them guards?” Aunt Pooh asks.

She’s so serious it’s almost scary. “Positive.”

“A’ight. I got you, just give the word.” She unwraps a Blow Pop and sticks it in her mouth. “What Jay gon’ do about this?”

“She’s not letting me leave that school, so it doesn’t matter.”

“What, you wanna go to Garden High?”

I pull my knees closer. “At least I wouldn’t be invisible there.”

“You ain’t invisible,” Aunt Pooh says.

I snort. “Trust, I basically walk around with an invisibility cloak on.”

“A what?” Scrap asks.

I stare at him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“It’s some nerd shit, Scrap,” Aunt Pooh says.

“Um, excuse you, but Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon.”

Scrap goes, “Ohhhh. That’s the one with the li’l dude with the ring, right? ‘My precioussss,’” he says in his best Gollum voice.

I give up.

“Like I said, nerd shit,” says Aunt Pooh. “Anyway, stop worrying about whether them fools notice you at Midtown, Bri. Listen.” She props her foot on the car bumper. “High school ain’t the end or the beginning. It ain’t even in the middle. You ’bout to do big things, whether they see it or not. I see it. Everybody last night saw it. Long as you see it, that’s all that matters.”

Sometimes she’s my personal Yoda. If Yoda was a woman and had a gold grill. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know who Yoda is. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“I’m what?” She puts her hand to her ear. “I ain’t hear that good. I’m what?”

I laugh. “You’re right, dang!”

She tugs my hoodie so it covers my eyes. “Thought so. How you get over here anyway? Your momma drop you off on her way back to work? Should’ve told me I was gon’ be babysitting your hardheaded ass.”

Oh.

I forgot the reason I came over here in the first place. I stare at my Not-Timbs. “Jay got laid off.”

“Oh, shit,” Aunt Pooh says. “For real?”

“Yep. The church let her go so they could pay for repairs to the daycare.”

“Shit, man.” Aunt Pooh wipes her face. “You a’ight?”

Jacksons can’t cry, but we can tell the truth. “No.”

Aunt Pooh pulls me into her arms. As much of a hard-ass as my aunt is, her hugs are the best. They somehow say “I love you” and “I’ll do whatever for you” all at once.

“It’ll be a’ight,” Aunt Pooh murmurs. “I’m gon’ help y’all out, okay?”

“You know Jay won’t let you.” Jay never takes money from Aunt Pooh, since she knows where she gets it from. I understand. If drugs almost destroyed me, I wouldn’t take money that’s made from them either.

“Her stubborn ass,” Aunt Pooh mumbles. “I know this shit is probably scary as hell right now, but one day you gon’ look back, and this gon’ feel like a lifetime ago. This a temporary setback for a major comeback. We ain’t letting it stop the come up.”

That’s what we call our goal, the come up. It’s when we finally make it with this rap stuff. I’m talking get-out-the-Garden-and-have-enough-money-to-never-worry-again make it.

“I gotta do something, Aunty,” I say. “I know Jay’s looking for a job, and Trey’s working, but I don’t wanna be deadweight.”

“What you talking ’bout? You ain’t deadweight.”

Yeah, I am. My mom and my brother bust their butts so I can eat and have somewhere to lay my head, and what do I do? Absolutely nothing. Jay doesn’t want me to get a job—she wants me fully focused on school. I picked up candy dealing. I figured if I handled some stuff for myself, that would help.

I need to do more, and the only thing I know to do is rap.

Now, let me be real: I know not every rapper out there is rich. A whole lot of them fake for the cameras, but even the fakers have more money than me. Then you got folks like Dee-Nice who don’t have to fake thanks to that million-dollar deal. He played his cards right and got his come up.

“We gotta make this rap stuff happen,” I tell Aunt Pooh. “Like now.”

“I got you, okay? I was gon’ call you anyway. I’ve had all kinds of folks hitting me up because of the battle. I made some stuff happen for you a li’l while ago.”

“For real?”

“Uh-huh. For one, we getting you back in the Ring. That’ll help make a name for you.”

A name? “Yeah, but it won’t make me any money.”

“Just trust me, a’ight?” she says. “Besides, that ain’t the only thing I arranged.”

“What else then?”

She rubs her chin. “I don’t know if you can handle this one yet.”

Oh my God. This is not the time to drag me along. “Just tell me, dang!”

Aunt Pooh laughs. “A’ight, a’ight. Last night, a producer came up to me after the battle and gave me his card. I called him earlier, and we arranged for him to make a beat and for you to go into his studio tomorrow.”