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.”
“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?”