Can't Stop the Shine

  “Aw, girl, you’re okay. Leave her alone,” said another svelte woman in a tight gold number that had shimmering beads all over it. She turned to Kalia. “She’s got like four hundred pairs of shoes in her closet. She probably wasn’t ever going to wear those again anyway.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Kalia. “I’m still sorry.”

  “Hey, sweetie, can you hook me up back here?” asked the woman in the gold dress, turning around and pointing one long manicured nail down her back.

  “Uh, sure.” Kalia fastened the woman’s dress.

  “So what’s your name, anyway? You don’t look like one of the usual industry suspects.”

  “She sure don’t,” said the big-breasted woman, adjusting herself in the black super-low-cut, nearly sheer top she was wearing. She looked Kalia up and down.

  “Shut up, Sasha,” said the woman in the gold dress.

  “Sasha?” said Kalia, taking in the gaudy false eyelashes, matte-finished skin and glossy glittery lips pursing at her.

  “Yeah, you know me or something?” asked Sasha, sucking her teeth and looking in the mirror at herself. She flipped her ash-blond Beyoncé-styled wig and bent over to perfectly position the diamond-encrusted S pendant hanging from a platinum chain between her breasts. Her numerous platinum bangles clattered noisily.

  “No, we’ve never met,” said Kalia, wishing she’d dug her heel into Sasha’s foot. There was no way in the world this could be the Sasha that gave Malcolm that watch, she hoped.

  “Well, we’re meeting now. I’m Chi Chi and you’ve already met Sasha,” said Chi Chi, blinking incessantly from the ill-fitting blue contacts she was wearing and finger-combing the bangs of her bone-straight blond weave to cover her coarse black new growth. Kalia looked at herself in the mirror standing between two mountains of video sophistication and felt very plain in her flip and her simple blue strapless dress. A strange desire came over her to show a little more skin. She wished her dress was a micromini.

  “So are you here with somebody? If not, there’s a lot of bodies out there, girl.” Chi Chi smirked in the mirror. “You need to hook up with one ’cause they’re out there throwing bills around like money ain’t a thang.”

  “It’s my thang, girl,” said Sasha, “and I’m ’bout to work it out. Excuse me.” With a roll of her eyes at Kalia, Sasha sashayed out of the ladies’ room. Chi Chi did a little wiggle with her fingers and followed.

  By the time Kalia made it back to the balcony, she knew she was going to have to figure out a way to see if she’d met Malcolm’s Sasha in the bathroom. If she didn’t find out, she’d go crazy. Malcolm was engaged in a heated discussion with several very wealthy-looking men when she returned.

  “Now who is this young lady?” asked one of them as Malcolm broke away to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Oh, this is my girl Kalia,” said Malcolm. “Baby, this is Gene Grady, Lawrence Mathis, Ken ‘Big Dog’ Murphy and Cool Mike. Gene’s with Fire, Lawrence is with Shine and Big Dog has the hottest producers around and well, you know how Cool Mike does his thang on Hot 103.5.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Kalia, eyeing Malcolm as he gestured to each man he was introducing with a tumbler filled with dark liquor. He was acting a little different from when she’d left him.

  “Naw, baby. It’s nice to meet you,” said Lawrence, looking at her in a way that made her skin crawl. “Malcolm, why didn’t you tell me you had a little something like that?” Lawrence puffed on a cigar and looked back and forth between Kalia and Malcolm, who just laughed along with Gene, Big Dog and Cool Mike.

  “Yeah, girl, you’re a little young, but if Malcolm hadn’t gotten to you first, I could have shown you a few thangs.” Gene sneered, giving Cool Mike a pound.

  Again, Kalia watched as all the men around her snickered. She waited for Malcolm to speak up about the obvious way she was being disrespected, but all she got from him was a pat on the behind, which she found incredibly inappropriate. They started their conversation again, with Malcolm jockeying to join in like a junior high kid who was really too young to hang with the high schoolers. As they joked about the big butts on female celebrities and what rappers had the whackest lyrics, Malcolm paid little attention to Kalia besides squeezing her hand or grabbing her arm to hold himself up when he was doubled over laughing at some weak joke one of the fellas made. All of his pandering to them, not to mention his disrespect of her, annoyed Kalia.

  She excused herself again and walked toward the inside of the party. Looking back over her shoulder at Malcolm and his crew, she knew they were talking about her by the way they laughed and cut their eyes at her. Inside, the party had kicked up a notch, and so had the crowd. Kalia made her way through the throng of high-profiling people, catching snatches of conversation about all kinds of drama along the way.

  Kalia was having information overload. She sat down on a plush plum sofa next to a cool-looking lady who was tapping her fingers on one of the cushions and looking around the room. The lady looked at her briefly and smiled.

  “This is a wild scene, ain’t it?” she said to Kalia.

  “Sure is.”

  The lady turned toward Kalia. “I bet you don’t come to these parties often, do you?”

  “No. This is actually my first one,” admitted Kalia, thinking she must have a sign on her forehead that read First Time Partyer. She did admire the lady’s style though, especially her dark brown curly pageboy. She dug her mauve feathered top and matching leather skirt with fringed edges and the black fitted knee-high stiletto boots that capped off her funky look.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she said, leaning over, but still looking at the crowd. “If you’ve been to one of these little shindigs, you’ve been to them all.” Then she chuckled to herself at her own joke.

  “So I guess you’ve been to a lot of these, huh?”

  “I feel like I live at these damn parties,” she said, stopping a waiter who was passing by. “Can I get some water, please? Make that two.”

  “Thanks,” she said, assuming the second water was for her.

  “No problem. So why are you over here sitting by yourself? It’s New Year’s. You should be out there shaking it up.”

  “Well, why aren’t you?” asked Kalia.

  “I’m over it. This is just another day’s work for me.”

  “Oh.”

  The lady turned to Kalia. “You’ll see. When you get in this industry, as I’m sure you want to do, you’ll do these all over the country—all over the world—for a few years then all this will be just a job to you, too,” she said, waving her hand in a sweeping arc over the crowd.

  “So how long have you been doing this?” Kalia asked, guestimating the lady was in her late twenties. She had no idea what this lady did, but she didn’t want to let on how clueless she was.

  “My daddy has been an exec at like every major label. I grew up in this,” she said, lighting a slim cigarette and staring at Kalia. “What do you do? You sing, huh?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I can spot them a mile away. You can probably really sing, too. You shouldn’t be out this late and around all this smoke,” she said, blowing her smoke away from Kalia. “You’re not drinking, are you? I know you’re not old enough to drink.”

  “No. No, not really,” said Kalia.

  “Good ’cause it will ruin your voice,” she said, flicking her cigarette into an ashtray. “I’m quitting…really.”

  Kalia just nodded and smiled. She had heard before that drinking too much, staying out too late and smoking were all bad for singers, but for some reason she believed it more when this woman was warning her. An hour later they were still talking, the woman chain smoking and downing water like there was no tomorrow and Kalia mentally taking notes of all of the music industry insider information she was getting. She hadn’t even thought about Malcolm until she saw Sasha and Chi Chi walking toward him at the bar. Kalia flinched when Sasha grabbed his waist from behind and he leaned over and
said something in her ear that made her laugh and push her body against him. Chi Chi dragged Sasha away, pointing in the direction of some tall basketball player, and Malcolm leaned unsteadily against the bar. As he ordered another drink and sloppily fumbled around in his wallet to pay for it, Kalia wished she had another way home.

  “I think I need to get out of here,” she said, fishing around in her purse for their valet claim ticket.

  “Okay, cool,” said the lady, throwing up the peace sign. “I hope you have a good night, and remember what I said.”

  “I will. I appreciate all the knowledge,” said Kalia, locating her ticket and walking toward Malcolm. She tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey. I’m kinda ready to go.”

  When he turned and looked at her, she thought it took too long for him to recognize who she was.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” she said.

  “I think I’m going to hang a little more,” he said, grabbing her wrists. “I wanna dance some more. Come on.”

  “No, really,” Kalia said, breaking his grasp. When she jerked him, he seemed to wake up from a daze and really look at her.

  “Okay. Let me take you home,” he said, straightening up.

  When the valet brought the car around, Kalia spoke up. “I know a quick way to get home. You should just go ahead and let me drive.”

  “Aw, you just wanna push this Beamer. It’s all good. I’ll let you drive it, baby. I needs me a chauffeur,” he said, beating his chest with one hand.

  Kalia couldn’t believe he was disrespecting her like that, but she let it slide because she wanted to get home safely, and the only way she was going to be able to do that was if she figured out some way to not let him drive.

  When she pulled up to her driveway, she didn’t even wait for him to come around to her side of the car for him to open her door.

  “Dang, baby, you sure are moving fast. Don’t I get a happy new year’s kiss?” asked Malcolm, walking around to the driver’s side.

  “I gave you one at the party,” she said.

  “Ha-ha. Come here, girl,” he said, grabbing her waist. He hugged her tight, and she could smell the whiskey on his breath as he tried to kiss her good-night. She kissed him on his cheek, maneuvered out of his grasp and popped up the steps.

  “Hey, do you want some coffee or something?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “No. I guess I better take it to the crib.”

  “Well, if you want, you can give me a call when you get home,” she said, opening her front door.

  Malcolm sat in the car and pointed a finger at Kalia. “Oh, you just want to see if I can make it home.”

  “Yes,” Kalia turned to admit. “I do want you to make it home okay.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” Malcolm slammed the car door abruptly and sped out of the driveway, and he kept her up all night, too. Not only did he not call her when he got home, he didn’t answer his home phone or his cell phone either. When he finally called her on her cell the next day, she was happy to have caller ID. Whatever message he left, she knew she wasn’t going to feel like checking it until she stopped wanting to slap the mess out of him.

  Kalia took a frantic phone call a few days later though from Colby. When she tried to tell her that Mari wasn’t there, she couldn’t hang up. Colby was sobbing, saying she didn’t have Mari’s cell number programmed in her new phone and really needed to talk with her. Normally she didn’t give out Mari’s cell number, but Colby sounded so distraught, she reeled off the digits.

  When Mari got home from working out in her school’s weight room about an hour or so later, Kalia gave her the urgent message in the kitchen, hoping Mari would call her friend right there, so she could find out why Colby was crying, but she didn’t. She went upstairs to her room. About a half an hour later, Mari walked into Kalia’s room and plopped down on the bed.

  “What would you do if one of your friends called and told you she was pregnant?” she asked her sister.

  Kalia was taken aback for a moment. She didn’t expect that.

  “I don’t know…I guess I would tell her that I was there for whatever she needed help with.”

  “Then I’m glad that’s what I told Colby,” Mari said, lying back across her bed.

  Kalia didn’t want to be any nosier than she already was, but she really wanted to know if the baby’s father was Sean.

  “She’s more nervous about her grandparents finding out than she is about having a baby,” Mari continued.

  “Oh yeah, her grandparents are so religious, they’re probably going to freak out,” said Kalia.

  “Probably.”

  “Wait. How does she know she’s pregnant?”

  “She’s like two months late and she took three of those tests.”

  “Hmm. She really needs to go a doctor to make sure,” said Kalia, “but three tests probably aren’t wrong. Well, what’s she going to do? She can’t hide it but for so long.”

  “I don’t know,” said Mari, rolling over. “She’s about two months along, so she’s only got a little while before she starts showing. She said something about coming over here.”

  “Oh, is she thinking of hiding out or something?”

  “I think she was just upset. Plus, I can’t imagine Ron and Elaine wanting yet another daughter. I think that we’re killing them as it is.”

  “Right, right,” said Kalia. “Well, I hope she starts taking care of herself—you know eating right and stuff.”

  “I don’t even know if she’s going to have it.”

  “For real?” Kalia sat down on the bed next to Mari. “I hadn’t even thought about that. Wow.”

  “I guess I just gotta be there for her.”

  “Yep. That’s what friends do.”

  Later on that evening, Mari got another frantic phone call from Colby. She was at the bus station, and it was midnight.

  “Girl, your grandparents have probably put an APB out on you. I’m surprised they haven’t called me yet,” said Mari.

  “I don’t think they have your phone number.” Colby sniffed. “They don’t have any of my friends’ numbers.”

  “So what are you doing at the bus station?”

  Colby detailed her whole plan—how she was going to catch the bus to her cousin’s place in Memphis, so she could decide what to do. She just couldn’t bear being in the house with her grandparents in her condition. Every time they came around, she said she felt like a big sinner.

  “But your grandparents love you. They’ll understand,” said Mari hopefully. “Look, I’ll go with you when you tell them if you want me to.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course. Now, what about Sean?”

  “I haven’t talked to Sean in a week or so. I can’t talk to him right now.”

  “He does know, doesn’t he?”

  “He knows something is wrong with me, but not what. I know I’ve been acting a little crazy lately,” she said. Her voice was thin, like she was far away. The weakness in her voice made Mari speak more calmly.

  “So is that what’s really going on here? That you don’t want to tell him?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t you think he deserves to know?”

  “I guess,” Colby repeated.

  “Well, whatever you want to do, I’m cool with, but if you were him, wouldn’t you want to know?”

  “I guess.”

  Mari was silent for a minute. She knew they’d hit a brick wall. When Colby started talking again, it was about her relationship with Sean and how she’d never felt the way about a person as she did about him. She talked about the way he held her hand and opened doors for her, the way he told her she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen all the time, the way he kissed her. She told Mari that one day their kissing just wasn’t enough for him. She had been so afraid that he’d leave her that she’d decided the only way to keep him from being with another girl was to have sex with him, but after they’d done it, she’d immediately reg
retted it.

  “Well, did you talk to him about it?” Mari asked.

  “No. I was too embarrassed,” said Colby.

  “Yeah, I can understand that. I guess I’ll be nervous my first time.”

  “It wasn’t that bad really.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mari, trying not to sound too eager.

  “Well, you know, it kinda felt good. Good like weird, but good.”

  “Oh,” said Mari, not sure exactly what Colby meant.

  “So I guess I’ll just have it,” said Colby.

  “What? What?” said Mari, tuning back to the conversation after drifting off. “You’re going to have it?”

  “I think so. I hadn’t really thought of myself as a baby’s mama before this, but I guess that’s what I’m gonna be.”

  “Okay cool, if that’s what you wanna do. As long as you feel like you’ve thought it through.”

  “I have,” said Colby confidently. “I know that I have two more years of school and then I want to go to college, and I’m gonna do it.”

  “Okay good. So you’re gonna tell Sean, right?”

  “Yeah. I guess I will.”

  “Good, good. So you need to go home. Call your grandparents first though, okay?” said Mari.

  When she hung up the phone, she lay in her bed wide awake, thinking about what it would be like to be a teenage mom. She had seen girls her age in the grocery store or at the bus stop holding a baby on one hip with another toddler by the hand. They just looked tired and frustrated. She made a vow to be there for Colby, whatever she needed. Praying that Sean would take the news well, Mari drifted off to sleep.

  Colby told Sean the next day, and Mari’s phone was blowing up again. She tried to talk to Colby early in the day, but she was running between classes. Thank God she went to a private school, where cell phones were allowed to be used during the day and nobody bothered you if you were sitting out on a bench on the grounds in the middle of the day. She took the beginning of her free period to talk to Colby, who did a poor job of communicating Sean’s reaction to her news. Mari knew he wasn’t jumping up and down like he’d won the lottery, but he wasn’t entirely upset, Colby told her.