Mama Dearest (3 page)

“What?”

“Don’t mind me, I was just making a little joke, or should I say making a little cheer.”

“Whatever, Dalton.”

“Danni—I told you my good friends call me Danni.”

“Okay, Danni,” I said, wondering when we had suddenly become good friends.

“See you at the next show or maybe back at the hotel.”

“Okay, whatever. Hey, I heard you were really tight with Nicole Springer.”

“You mean Nicole Springer-Stovall? Oh, I just love her. She is the greatest. Ms. Stovall said she knew you back in the day.”

“What did she say about me?”

“Oh, that you were really talented, beautiful and a real go-getter.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think she respects you a lot. She encouraged me with my songwriting.”

“Then why didn’t you give her the songs? I remember an okay voice,” I said.

“Nicole is done with that side of the business. She told me she just loves teaching and being a wife and mother.”

“Oh, I forgot what they say. Those who can’t, teach,” I said with a wicked grin.

“Well, let me get out of here,” Dalton said with slight disappointment in his voice. If he wanted to really work with me he was going to have to get over his infatuation with Nicole Springer.

“Whatever, Dalton.”

Dalton left my dressing room and it was back to my mirror time.

S
OMETIMES
I
DON’T LIKE
what I see in the mirror and this evening before I left for the theater was no different. I decided to do something about it. In the cramped dressing room I looked into the tiny mirror on the wall that was chipped in two places and gave myself a much needed pep talk.

I spoke swiftly and with great conviction. “Yancey Harrington Braxton, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You a bad bitch! It’s time to show the world what you’re really made of. What you’re capable of. It starts tonight when you open the stage door. You’re as good as Vanessa L. Williams, Angela Bassett and Gabrielle Union. No! Not as good as, better than all those pretend divas. A setback is a setup for a comeback, bitch. Now let’s get to work.”

All Ava Middlebrooks wanted was for those loud-ass broads to quiet down so she could watch
American Star
in peace. Ava didn’t know who she hated more—ghetto-girl whores or white trailer-trash bitches. Sadly, this prison was filled with both.

Her favorite singer, a teenaged girl from a little town in Ohio, was up there on the stage right now. Ava stared at the screen, mesmerized by how the satin-smooth notes of “Summertime” could ride such a big voice in such a little body.

“Yawl betta change the channel to
Dancing with the Stars
,” Sheronda Jenkins shouted as her hulking figure blocked the TV in the beige-walled rec room of the women’s prison.

“Get out the way!” Ava yelled, standing up. “You watched your show last week. It’s our turn. So move!”

Sheronda stomped toward Ava, coming at her like a bull in orange cotton. The fluorescent light glowed on the shiny skin between Sheronda’s fresh cornrows. She squinted and spat: “That’s yo ass, old bitch.”

Unfazed, Ava crossed her arms and sat down on the couch between her girls, Lyrical and Cheryl. She craned to look around Sheronda to focus back on that girl with the magic voice on TV. That child represented everything that these prison broads didn’t. Success. Talent. Reaching for your dreams. Living life to the fullest.

And that was exactly what Ava planned to be doing twenty-four hours from now, in the comfort of her own home in the free world. Her whole body tingled with the thrill of resuming her prominent place in society. She would go to the salon and stay there until she’d achieved perfection with her hair, nails, toes and skin. She would dine on gourmet meals. She would sink into the buttery leather seat of a luxury sedan. And her daughter had better have a big dinner party to welcome Ava home if she knew what was good for her.

“You hear me?” Sheronda shouted, standing at Ava’s feet.

Ava looked up with a bored expression.

“I’m out of this hellhole tomorrow,” Ava snapped, with a haughty tilt of her chin. “And I’m not about to jeopardize my freedom by stooping to your ghetto ways.”

“How is your ass getting out anyhow? Didn’t your crazy ass shoot somebody? I thought they gave you fifteen to life.”

“I know important people,” Ava snapped.

“I bet you do but let’s see how they treat you now that you’re a convicted felon. I don’t think the country club types take too kindly to people like us.”

Ava stared up at Sheronda with disgust and pity. She and her ghetto girl crew were no different from the white trailer trash chicks who hung together. Black or white, they all came from the lower rungs of society, and because they didn’t know any better, were destined to languish there forever.

But not Ava. She was about to rise back up to where she belonged. She simply shook her head and told Sheronda, “You
need
to get yourself some anger-management classes. Now move!”

Sheronda glared down at Ava with hate in her eyes. Her wide chest rose and fell with her heavy breathing. Those dark blue tattoos up and down her caramel-colored forearms rippled like a creeping rash as Sheronda clenched and unclenched her fists, over and over.

“Girl, move!” a woman on the couch behind them shouted. “We tryin’ to watch!”

“Will you please move!” a white woman yelled.

“That ho always tryin’ to start somethin’,” another woman said. “You betta put your wide behind in a chair and watch the show.”

“I ain’t gon’ watch that white shit!” Sheronda snapped. “I want
American Star
. That’s
our
show.”

“Yeah, turn it!” yelled another woman.

Ava rolled her eyes. “Turn around and look. A black girl is stealin’ the show. Don’t be so prejudiced. The judges love her. Just look at the judges’ faces.”

Sheronda pointed a finger at the dozen women sitting around the TV. “Last time I looked in the judge’s face, I ended up in this joint—”

“Sit down and shut up!” Cheryl snapped, standing to face Sheronda. Cheryl was cool people. She was tiny, and her milk-white skin and spiky peroxide-yellow hair contrasted with Sheronda’s. But she stared down the bigger woman without an ounce of fear.

“What you gon’ do?” Sheronda threatened, hunching lower to glare at Cheryl nose to nose.

Good. Now Ava could see that girl sing on TV. The beauty of her voice raised goose bumps on Ava’s flesh. And when she sang the lyrics “your daddy’s rich,” Ava’s eyes burned with tears. She had sung “Summertime” in her cabaret show once. Ava was thinking that soon she’d be rich again too.

Ava loved that powerful look in the singer’s eyes. Like she owned the world. Soon as she stepped out of this place, Ava would look at everyone and everything just like that. The singer was nearing the end of the song, and Ava leaned forward to hear every beautiful note.

“Can’t none a’ y’all bitches watch!” Sheronda shouted. She stood in front of the TV, blocking the screen, reaching backward to wrap her arms around it. “How ya like me now?”

Two dozen women rushed up like a swarm of bees, yanking Sheronda’s arms.

Ava remained seated, hoping they would extract Sheronda in time to hear the end of the girl’s song and get the judges’ responses.

Four guards stood around them.

“Sit down or all of you will return to your cells,” the guard shouted. “Now!”

The women obeyed. And when they dispersed, a TV commercial was playing.

“Damn!” Ava snapped. “We missed it.”

Beside her, Lyrical whispered, “Sit tight, I’ll take care of this bitch.”

Sheronda shot a hate look at Ava as she crossed her arms, sitting with her group of bull-dykish broads who were probably lesbians. Ava suspected that all these women had some girl-on-girl tendencies. But she wasn’t about to stoop to muff diving, no matter how hot and bothered her body had gotten in here.

No, she would let a man take care of all that, starting tomorrow. Whoever he was had better get ready to make up for all the lonely nights she’d had to take care of it herself here in prison. She’d almost lost her mind from the burning hunger—

A flash of yellow and brown caught her eye.

Cupcakes.

They were arranged on a tray made of newspapers carried by Lyrical, who carefully walked toward Ava. The other women surrounded them. Even Sheronda, but her big ass probably just wanted a cupcake.

“We’ll miss your ass,” Lyrical said, smiling as she offered the treats to Ava. “I made up a little rap I want to do for you after we eat. I call it ‘The Classy Mama Anthem’ and it ain’t got no curse words in it.”

Ava’s heart softened. She could feel her face forming into an expression of shock. Everyone and everything around her was so hard. Yet this was such a gentle and sweet gesture. Even her own rap song, though Mama wasn’t a moniker Ava answered to.

“We got the cupcakes out of the vending machine,” Cheryl said with a shrug. “The best we could do, you know?”

Ava smiled, refusing to let the threat of tears show up in her eyes. She couldn’t get
that
soft. There was a tough world awaiting her and Ava knew it wasn’t for sissies. Her own mother had taught her that.

“Take one,” Cheryl said. “You first.”

Ava took a yellow cupcake with white frosting drizzled across the top.

“Mmmmm,” she said, loving the sweet taste and the attention. Yes, the sweetness.

Tomorrow, after she got out of here, she would be living the sweet life.

Two days later, it’s closing night in Miami and some wannabe socialite is throwing the cast a party at Crowbar, one of the hottest clubs on South Beach. I’m walking into the club like I’m appearing at an Oscars after party.

My hair is down and bone straight and I’m wearing this cute, short black-and-white dress I purchased at BC/BG on Lincoln Road. It’s a strapless number and the top is white lace, pleated across the chest, and the bottom half is black satin. I have on a pair of black patent leather Christian Lacroix pumps and am carrying a small black beaded bag. No matter what LaNita Duncan thinks, I’m the star of this show.

LaNita is playing the role of Effie White (which some folks are foolish enough to consider the lead), and let’s just say no fat suit required. The producers discovered her in some backwoods church in Tennessee and all of a sudden she thinks she’s an actress. I spot her in the corner with a bunch of the boys from the cast clinking champagne glasses in the air, and so I head in the opposite direction to the bar.

A cute Cuban bartender smiles. “What can I get for you, pretty lady?”

“Let me get a mojito,” I said, placing my purse on the bar.

I recognize a couple more castmates heading to the dance floor and sometimes I nod and other times I act like I don’t see them. The producers are the only reason I’ve graced this little affair. They asked everybody to come because this socialite is thinking about investing some money, which might allow us a few more cities.

When we leave Miami we have two days in Tallahassee and then Raleigh before the tour is supposed to end. I really don’t care if more cities are added because I’m ready to get back to New York. I also want to make sure that the producers remember my face in the place when my bonus comes up. Sometimes when you do things to piss producers off it takes them a little longer to deliver your check. This is another problem with doing a bus-and-truck production. If that happened during a New York production I would be on the phone with the union rep so fast heads would spin, and I would have my money.

The bartender sets my drink down. “Here you go; would you like some appetizers from the buffet table?”

“No thanks,” I said. For a moment I wondered what it would be like if my mother, Ava, was here for the party. Due to a little time being served upstate, Ava isn’t here tonight. But if she was, she would be shouting at the top of her lungs, “Who organized this chicken wing affair and where can a bitch get a drink to quench her thirst?” I smile to myself and remember how I miss Ava, even though she is the last of the original bitches from hell. She taught me everything I know on how to be a bitch-diva without really trying. And despite her numerous faults, Ava is my mother.

On most nights of this second-rate tour I’m ambivalent, at best, about being in this cast, but on nights like this I hate being forced to take this job. A hatred so deep I’m scared that if somebody says the wrong thing to me, the slapping will begin without hesitation. Then
I’ll have to worry about lawsuits and jail. One woman locked up in the family is enough.

I’ve been to hundreds of opening- and closing-night parties and I can tell by just looking around the club that this one will elude my memory before morning breaks.

I order myself another drink and look away from the bar for the producers. I want them to know I’m here so that I can get my ass back to the hotel, change and do some real clubbing. As my eyes wander around the bar I see the person I’ve avoided for most of the tour coming toward me, smiling.

Her name is Marshawn Dallas and she plays the role of Michelle, the new girl in the fictional group the Dreams. I hear she’s the daughter of a wealthy interracial couple from outside of Boston and has attended Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. I knew she was trouble when I walked into the auditions and I saw her whispering and laughing in my direction. It was such a middle-school move.