On the Come Up(45)

“Then stop doing it!” Goddamn, it’s that simple.

“Look, I’m doing what I gotta do.”

Bullshit. Bull. Shit.

“Getting our come up with this rap shit?” she says. “That’s all I got.”

“Then act like it! I can’t wait around for ‘something to happen.’ I need guarantees.”

“I got guarantees. We putting you back in the Ring after the holidays and we gon’ make you big.”

“How?”

“Just trust me!” she says.

“That’s not enough!”

“Hey,” Jay calls. “Y’all okay up there?”

“Yeah,” Aunt Pooh says. She looks at me. “Delete that shit.”

She goes off to the kitchen, joking to Jay and Lena as if everything’s all good.

Hell no, it’s not. Supreme said I have a hit. Aunt Pooh thinks I’m just gonna let that slip through my fingers?

I can show her better than I can tell her.

I go to my room, close the door, and get my laptop. It takes ten minutes for “On the Come Up” to upload on Dat Cloud, and twenty seconds to text Supreme the link.

He responds in less than a minute.

I got you, baby girl.

Get ready.

You about to blow up.





Part Two


Golden Age





Fourteen


On the morning of the first day after Christmas break, loud banging on our front door wakes me up.

“Who in their right mind!” Jay snaps from somewhere in the house.

“It’s probably Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Trey calls groggily from his room.

“On a Monday?” Jay says. “Hell no. If it is them, they’re about to witness something, how ’bout that?”

Welp. This should be fun.

Her feet stomp toward the living room, and it’s quiet enough that I hear the “Aw, hell” she mutters. The lock on the front door clicks, and it creaks open.

“Where’s my money?”

Shit. That’s Ms. Lewis, our landlord.

I get up, holey Spider-Man pajamas and all (they’re comfortable, okay), and rush to the front. Trey dragged himself outta bed, too. He wipes crust from his eyes.

“Ms. Lewis, I need a little more time,” Jay says.

Early as it is, Ms. Lewis takes a drag from a cigarette on our front porch. I’d lose track trying to count all of the beauty marks on her face. She has a black-and-gray ’fro that her brother, a barber, used to keep trimmed for her. He moved recently, and now her ’fro is all over the place.

“More time? T’uh!” She sounds like a laugh got stuck in her throat. “You know what day it is?”

The ninth. Rent was due on New Year’s Day.

“I gave you a couple of weeks for the rest of last month’s rent, and I’m still waiting on that,” she says. “Now I need this month’s too, and your begging ass got the nerve to—”

“‘Begging ass’?” I echo.

“Now wait,” Trey says. “Don’t be talking to my momma like—”

“Y’all!” Jay says.

For the record, I’ve never liked Ms. Lewis. Yeah, my house is technically her house, but she can choke on her spit for all I care. She’s always got her nose in the air, acting as if she’s better than us because we rent from her. Like she doesn’t live two streets over in the hood, too.

“Ms. Lewis,” Jay says calmly, “I’ll get you your money. But please, do me a huge favor and give me a little more time.”

Ms. Lewis points her cigarette in Jay’s face. “See, that’s what’s wrong with so many of y’all black asses. Think somebody supposed to do you a favor.”

Um, she has a black ass too.

“What? You back on that stuff? Wasting my money on drugs?”

“Hold the hell up—”

“Brianna!” Jay snaps. “No, I’m not back on drugs, Ms. Lewis. I’m simply in a bad situation at the moment. I’m begging you, mother to mother, to give me more time.”

Ms. Lewis drops her cigarette on the porch and puts it out with the toe of her shoe. “Fine. You lucky I’m saved.”

“Are you really?” I ask.

Jay glares at me over her shoulder.

“This the last time I’m doing this,” Ms. Lewis warns. “I don’t get my money, y’all out.”

Ms. Lewis storms off, mumbling the whole way down the steps.

Jay closes the door and rests her forehead against it. Her shoulders slump and she releases the deepest breath, as if she’s letting go of everything she wanted to say. Not fighting is harder than fighting.

“Don’t worry, Ma,” Trey says. “I’ll go to one of those check advance places on my lunch break.”

Jay straightens up. “No, baby. Those places are traps. That kinda debt is impossible to get rid of. I’ll figure something out.”

“What if you don’t?” I ask. “If we get evicted, then we’ll be—”

I can’t say it. Yet the word fills the room, like a foul odor.

Homeless. One word, two syllables.

This whole mess May make us homeless.