On the Come Up(94)

“Jayda, they took Law’s chain,” Aunt Pooh says. “They bragging about pointing a gun in your baby’s face! They laughing about me being in here. I’m supposed to let that go?”

“Yes!” Jay says. “I don’t give a damn about that chain! Bri is okay, and that’s all that matters to me.”

“This bigger than that though,” Scrap says. “We can’t let them get away with this shit.”

“Actually, you can.” Jay looks at Aunt Pooh again. “You know what? I’m starting to realize that maybe you need to stay in here.”

“What? You not gon’ bail me out?”

“With what?” Jay bellows. “What, you got some money stashed somewhere? Huh? Please tell me if you do. Maybe I can use it to pay some of my goddamn bills!”

“Look, I got it all figured out, a’ight? You can get a loan. Use that to pay my bail and pay for a better attorney who will clear me of these charges. I’ll pay you back—”

“By doing the same stuff that put you in here in the first place!” Jay yells. She puts her hands together and holds them at her mouth. “I’ve cried over you,” she says thickly. “But I don’t think you’ve cried over yourself, and that’s the problem.”

“Jay, c’mon, please?” Her voice cracks. “If they get me for this, I’m going to prison! I can’t go to prison!”

“I don’t want you to go,” Jay says. “I don’t want you in the system, Katricia. Hell, I’ve been telling you for years that it’s built to keep you in it. But you gotta get the streets out of you somehow. Maybe this is it.” She stands and holds her hand out to me. “C’mon, Brianna.”

“Bri,” Aunt Pooh pleads. “Bri, c’mon. Tell her I’m gon’ change.”

I can’t say what I don’t know.

“Brianna, let’s go,” Jay repeats.

“Bri, tell her!”

“Stop using my child as your cover! It’s not on her to fix you, Katricia! It’s on you!”

Aunt Pooh’s jaw hardens. She straightens up, lifts her chin, and narrows her eyes. “So it’s like that? You left me to fend for myself when you got hooked on that shit, and now you leaving me to fend for myself again, huh?”

It’s a punch in my gut, and she’s not even talking about me. “How can you say that? This isn’t on—”

Jay puts her hand up to cut me off. She looks solely at Pooh. “You know what? I’m so sorry for abandoning you. It’s one of the biggest mistakes of my life. But there’s only so long you can blame what you’ve been through for what you do. At some point, you gotta blame yourself.”

She grabs my hand and takes me with her. I look back at Aunt Pooh. Her face is hard, but her lips tremble. I’ve got a feeling it’s the last time I’ll see her for a long time.

The clouds seem darker than they were when we first got here. Or I’m just imagining it. There’s no way the sky is mourning my aunt, too.

In the driver’s seat, Jay wipes her eyes. Her tears started the moment we walked out of the building.

I bite my lip. “You’re really not gonna try to bail her out?”

“I’m not getting a loan to pay her bail when we have bills, Bri, and I’m especially not doing that for somebody who’s just gonna be up to the same ol’ mess in no time.”

“She can change though,” I damn near plead. “I know she can.”

“I know it, too, Bri, but she’s gotta know it. She has to decide that enough is enough. We can’t do it for her.”

“What if she never gets there?”

Jay holds her hand out. I put mine in it. “You have to prepare yourself for that possibility, baby.”

I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it. “I don’t wanna lose her,” I croak.

“I don’t either,” she says roughly. “God knows, I don’t. We can love her with everything in us, but it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t love herself. She’s sitting in there more worried about a chain than about her own well-being.”

I stare down at my chest where the pendant used to be. “I’m sorry they took it.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that, baby,” Jay says. “But girl, what in the world is going on with you? First it was the song, and I found out about that from a TV report. Now this chain and the Hype interview? What else are you hiding, Brianna? Huh?”

There is a superpower that black mommas possess—they can somehow go from being gentle to firm in a matter of seconds. Hell, sometimes in the same sentence.

My mouth is dry all of a sudden. “I . . .”

“What. Else?”

I stare at my Timbs. “Supreme.”

“What about Supreme? And those shoes didn’t give birth to you. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I make my eyes meet hers. “He’s got a big record deal in the works for me.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why would he have a record deal for you? He’s not your manager.”

“But he is. I hired him.”

“Oh, you hired him,” she says with this fake lightness that scares me. “My bad, I must’ve missed the memo that you grown. Last time I checked, you were sixteen years old, Brianna. Six. Teen!”