Jay stares at the spot where he sat. “You can have everything in the box, Bri. Your brother obviously doesn’t want any of it. I’m gonna go start dinner.”
Yeah, she’s starting dinner already. Christmas is for eating in Jesus’s honor.
I sit across the couch. The chain’s draped over my hand, and the hat’s on my head. I hold the pendant up against the living room light, and the diamonds glisten like a lake on a sunny day.
The doorbell rings. I pull the curtain back and peek out. Aunt Pooh’s got on a Santa hat and a dabbing-Santa sweater. Her arm is hooked through Lena’s.
I open the door for them. “Where you been?”
Aunt Pooh slides past me into the house. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
“Don’t even bother, Bri,” Lena says. “It’s the same as usual.”
Considering half the stuff Lena puts up with from Aunt Pooh, she’s a saint. They’ve been together since they were seventeen. Just like Aunt Pooh has Lena’s lips tatted on her neck, Lena has “Pooh” on her chest.
“I’m grown,” Aunt Pooh says, sitting on the couch. “That’s all Bri need to know.”
Lena plops down extra hard on her lap.
“Ow! Get your big butt off of me!”
“You gon’ tell me you grown, too?” Lena says. She pinches Aunt Pooh, who laughs and winces at once. “Huh?”
“You lucky I love your annoying ass.” Aunt Pooh kisses her.
“Nope. You lucky,” Lena says.
Fact.
Jay comes in, wiping her hands on a towel. “I thought that was y’all.”
“Merry Christmas, Jay,” Lena says. Aunt Pooh just throws up a peace sign.
“I figured Pooh would show up soon as I started on dinner. Where you been anyway?”
“Dang, can y’all get up out my business?” Aunt Pooh asks.
Jay sets her hand on her hip and gives her the say that again if you’re bold look.
Aunt Pooh glances away. It doesn’t matter how old she gets—Jay will always be her big sister.
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