On the Come Up(44)

Jay kisses her teeth. “Thought so. Now get your shoes off my couch.” She swats at Aunt Pooh’s feet.

“You gon’ stop treating me like a kid one day.”

“Well, today ain’t that day!”

Lena covers her mouth to hold back a laugh. “Jay, you need help with dinner?”

“Yeah, girl,” Jay says, but her glare is set on Pooh. “C’mon.”

The two of them go into the kitchen.

Aunt Pooh starts to put her feet up again but Jay hollers, “I said keep your big-ass shoes off my furniture!”

“Goddamn!” Aunt Pooh looks at me. “How she do that?”

I shrug. “It’s like a sixth sense.”

“For re—” My dad’s chain catches her eye. “Oh, shit! Where’d you get that?”

“Jay gave it to me. It was in a box of his stuff.”

“Damn.” Aunt Pooh takes it between her fingers. “That thing still clean as hell. You don’t need to wear it though.”

I frown. “Why not?”

“Just trust me, a’ight?”

I’m so sick of these answers that don’t answer anything. “Was I supposed to ‘just trust you’ when you left me at the studio?”

“Scrap was there, wasn’t he?”

“But you were supposed to be there.”

“I told you, I had something to take care of. Scrap said you got the song done and that it’s fire. That’s all that matters.”

She doesn’t get it.

Aunt Pooh slides her Jordans off and throws her legs across the couch. She eagerly rubs her hands. “Let me hear it. Been waiting for this since the other week.”

“You’ve definitely made it a priority.” Yeah, I said it.

“Bri, I’m sorry, a’ight? Now c’mon. Let me hear the song.”

I pull it up and toss her my phone.

She takes out her own earbuds. I can tell when it starts—she dances while lying there on the couch.

“That hook,” she says loudly. She must not be able to hear herself. “Love that shit!”

Suddenly she stops dancing. She points at my phone. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?”

She tugs the earbuds out and looks toward the kitchen. Jay and Lena are busy talking as some old R&B Christmas song plays. “What’s this shit you saying on the song?” Aunt Pooh asks in a low voice. “You not ’bout that life!”

She can’t be serious. Malik is one thing, but Aunt Pooh, who walks around with a piece all the time? Who disappears for days to do her drug-dealing shit? “Nah, but you are.”

“This ain’t got shit to do with me, Bri. This about you portraying yourself as somebody you not.”

“I never said it’s me! The whole point is about playing into the stereotype.”

She sits up. “You think these fools in the streets gon’ listen for ‘deeper meaning’? Bri, you can’t go around talking street and not expect somebody to test you. And what’s that shit about the Crowns? You trying to have problems?”

“Wait, what?”

“You said you don’t need gray to be a queen.”

“Because I don’t!” Damn, do I really have to explain it to her? “That was my way of saying I don’t claim any set.”

“But they gon’ take it some kinda way!” she says.

“That’s not my problem if they do! It’s only a song.”

“No, it’s a statement!” Aunt Pooh says. “This is what you want folks to think of you? That you pull triggers and stay strapped? That’s the kinda reputation you want?”

“Is it the kind you want?”

Silence. Absolute silence.

She crosses the room and gets all in my face. “Delete that shit,” she says through her teeth.

“What?”

“Delete it,” she says. “We’ll make another song.”

“Oh, so you’re staying around this time?”

“You can point fingers at me all you want, but you fucked up.” She pokes my chest. “You gon’ record new verses. Plain and simple.”

I fold my arms. “What you plan to do with the new version?”

“What?”

Supreme’s on my mind. “If you think it’s good, what’s your plan for it?”

“We’ll upload it and see what happens,” she says.

“That’s it?”

“Once you do a song that’s actually you, you gon’ blow up,” she says. “I don’t need to know how.”

I stare at her. She cannot be for real. That wouldn’t fly on a good day. When your family’s one missed check away from rock bottom? That shit wouldn’t fly if it had wings.

“It’s not enough for me,” I say. “Do you know how important this is?”

“Bri, I understand, okay?”

“No, you don’t!” Jay and Lena laugh about something in the kitchen. I lower my voice. “My mom had to go to a fucking food drive, Aunt Pooh. You know how much I got on the line right now?”

“I got a lot on the line, too!” she says. “You think I wanna be stuck in the projects? You think I wanna be selling that shit for the rest of my life? Hell no! Every single day, I know there’s a chance it could be my last day.”