Pushing Pause

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  With the thick accent again plus the reference to buying and selling us made me and Jalisa burst out laughing all over again. Chili didn’t get it, so she just rolled her eyes. It was Chili’s thing to throw her family’s newfound wealth at everybody when she got pissed. Unfortunately for her, nobody really cared.

  When her parents first got here, they tapped into the Latino housing and food service market and now they made big bucks. Nobody really cared one way or the other, but since she didn’t have any other power to throw around, she went with the “I have more money than you” taunt. Childish, I know, but whatever.

  “Chill out, girl, you know we’re just messing with you,” I said to her.

  “Yeah, you know we girls,” Jalisa added, reaching out to hug her as she slapped her arm away and stepped aside, still acting like she was mad at us.

  “That’s right,” I said, blocking her on the other side.

  Sandwiched between us, she had no recourse but to give in. “Yeah, right, but y’all two play too much,” Chili said, finally relenting, but still keeping her bottom lip poked out as we all three continued walking.

  “Check it out,” Jalisa said, trying to repeat the action, spinning around on the ball of her foot, then stopping, just as the performer did.

  We continued joking and laughing as the doors to the Freeman Dance Studio opened wide and a steady flow of hip-hop wannabes streamed out.

  Everybody was pumped and still having a great time, especially me. I was right up there with them, on a dancer’s high. Four and a half steady hours of hip-hop, old-school and jazz nearly tore the roof off the hundred-and-sixty-year-old building we called our home away from home.

  The studio was named for the intersection of three streets coming together. It was called Freeman’s Point. History has it that a congregation of freed slaves was killed in this spot during an abolitionist march about a hundred and fifty years ago. The building, now dilapidated with no heat in the winter and no air in the summer, was a wreck, but nobody cared ’cause Gayle Harmon and her steppers brought it, then seriously kicked it out. Of course, shooting a video for Tyrece didn’t hurt, either.

  Tyrece, aka T.G., is actually Tyrece Grant, a guy from around the way who had made it out. There were two popular versions to his story. One had him as a gang banger and gun dealer who’d gone to the penitentiary for a double murder, then got off on a legal technicality. The other was that he was a full-scholarship Cornell University student who was discovered doing his thing onstage in a college talent show, then dropped out to become a star.

  Either way he was now hip-hop royalty and as such deserved his props. Tonight he’d chosen to bring his court to the Freeman Dance Studio.

  The music was loud and bumping, the place was packed and everybody within a mile and a half was still jamming. We weren’t in the video exactly, but whatever, you never can tell. Being in the crowd, maybe, why not, we could be.

  “Aw, check, you never guess what I heard,” Chili said excitedly as we continued down the street.

  “What?” I asked, still pumped up.

  “Tyrece is going over to Giorgio’s Pizza Palace to celebrate the video wrap.”

  “No way,” I said cynically. “Why would he celebrate at a corner pizza parlor?”

  “It used to be his hangout in the day, so he’s going back to check it out and bring some of his boys with him.”

  “No way,” I repeated.

  “When?” Jalisa said, ignoring me.

  “Tonight, now,” Chili said animatedly.

  “Get out,” I contended, still finding it hard to believe.

  “Seriously,” Chili insisted.

  “Check, I’m going,” Jalisa said.

  “Me, too,” Chili added needlessly.

  They stopped walking and looked at me. I looked at my cell phone. The supposedly two-hour show had gone on for four and a half hours. “I gotta get home,” I said, knowing I’d have to hear it when I got home. The last thing I needed was more drama, particularly after my mom had just argued with my dad.

  “Aw, come on, Kenisha, you’re already grounded for the piercing thing, what’s the worst that can happen?” Chili said.

  “Hey, yo, y’all going over to the pizza place to hang? We heard Tyrece is stopping by later with some of his crew,” somebody said to us as they passed by.

  “Sure-nuff,” Chili said before anyone else could answer.

  “We are?” I asked. At fifteen, I know my own mind and I don’t usually follow just anybody, so when the crowd is going one way, I usually make it a point to go the opposite or at least make up my own mind. But Chili and Jalisa are different. They’re my girls and all, but sometimes they be seriously trippin’. “Y’all don’t seriously think Tyrece is gonna hang out some old pizza parlor, do you?”

  “Yeah,” Chili said indignantly, then turned to me. “Don’t tell me you’re seriously gonna miss tonight, damn, Kenisha! You’ve been going to the place since forever and now that they’re gonna party at your spot, you want to miss it? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Yeah, I’m out of my mind,” I said, agreeing, “plus it’s late and I’m tired.”

  “I’m not,” Chili said adamantly, “and there is no way I’m missing the hottest throw-down this town has seen all summer.”

  “Do you seriously think Tyrece is gonna show up at some greasy pizza place that serves sweet tea and not some top-shelf champagne?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “Didn’t he, like, grow up around here or something? It would be like coming home.”

  “Oh, please,” I said as we came to the corner. We stopped and looked in two different directions. We could either keep straight one block and go to the pizza place or turn and head for the Metro back to Virginia.

  “Pizza place,” Chili said.

  “Home,” I said.

  So as usual Chili and I looked at Jalisa to settle the dispute. “Would y’all please leave me out of your drama?”

  “Come on, Jalisa,” Chili whined in that way that she did.

  Jalisa looked at us, then at her watch. “Okay, since we already missed our train and the next one isn’t for another fifty minutes, we’ll hang for thirty minutes tops,” Jalisa said, then turned to me. “But if nothing’s going on, we’ll leave earlier, deal?”

  “Deal,” Chili said, obviously confident that the place would be jumping and we’d be there all night.

  I half nodded, knowing that we’d be there at least forty-five minutes. “Fine, thirty minutes and then we’re out.”

  Chili nodded. “Fine, so it’s settled.”

  “Yo, Kenisha, where the party at?” someone called out from behind us.

  We turn around and see Jerome Tyler, aka Li’l T, and some of his friends walking behind us. They’re a trip ’cause they act all hard and everything, but really they are just a bunch of eighth graders trying to hang.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime Li’l youngin?” Chili said, knowing he’d hear her. She’s always talking down to Li’l T ’cause he’s had a crush on her since the first time he laid eyes on her. He introduced himself by grabbing her butt and running, so he’s been trying to kiss her ass ever since.

  The insult hit hard as usual, so his boys started laughing and crackin’ on him, so of course he had to respond.

  “What, you offering your bed, shorty? That’s cool, I’ll polish your little Chili pepper real good,” he snapped back, then stuck out his tongue and started making sucking sounds, causing his boys to hoot and holler. They slapped and shook his hand in congrats.

  “He gets on my nerves,” Chili said to us as we kept walking.

  “Yo, Kenisha, hook a brotha up, where it’s at, where the party at?”

  “Y’all know you too young to be hanging out this late,” Jalisa joined in.

  “Who you calling young, I’ll show you young,” one of his boys answered, then grabbed the crotch of his low-riding baggy jeans and came up behind Jalisa acting like he was gonna grind on her butt.

  I turned
around and he stopped, causing a new round of cracks on him for punking out.

  “Yo, Kenisha,” Li’l T said, drawing my attention away from his friend. “Check this out.” He started dancing, trying to do some of the steps he’d seen the performers do earlier. His MP3 player was wired to his earbuds as he jerked his neck, popped his head and arms, then moved his shoulders like a tidal wave getting shock treatments. In a seamless flow of pop-and-lock moves, he started sliding and snapping his legs as his feet spun in circles in perpetual motion. I had to admit he was looking pretty good with mad skills, for about a minute and a half.

  Chili and Jalisa had turned around by this time and we were all clapping and cheering him on as a semicircle began to form around him. One of his friends joined in, then another and another, and they each started to do different steps and they were really starting to look hot.

  Then one of his friends stumbled and tripped and fell off the pavement bumping into a parked car, which set the alarm off, then someone in the house across the street started yelling. So of course we all broke up laughing and ran like hell.

  “You need to stop showing off, little boy, before you hurt something,” Jalisa said, seeing Li’l T as he shook hands with his friends. We laughed again. Li’l T was always trying to show off for Chili, and of course she did her best to ignore him.

  “I know they’re not even trying to be following us,” Chili said when she turned around and saw Li’l T and his friends still walking behind us.

  “They’re probably just going to the pizza place, too,” I said, knowing that Li’l T would walk into hell if it meant getting Chili’s attention. “You know they go there after dance class as much as we do.”

  Li’l T was tall and lean with a soft, dark-chocolate complexion and bright white teeth and an always-ready smile that seemed to brighten even more when Chili was around. He was in the eighth grade, middle school, and as far away from us as light was from dark. High school made all the difference: as far as we were concerned, he was a kid.

  Usually we allowed him to hang, but tonight we ignored him ’cause we were seriously hot. We looked it and we acted it. Although Chili must have skipped the casual but cool memo ’cause she was sporting a two-sizes-too-small midriff top, a micro-miniskirt and wearing four-inch stilettos, looking like she just got finished working the brass pole in a strip club. She usually dresses fifteen minutes from being a stripper, but tonight she was dressed ten minutes from actually selling it on the street. No joke, she looked whacked, but we didn’t say anything ’cause getting noticed was seriously her thing.

  Jalisa, sans her usual microbraids and optioning instead for flatiron-straight curls, wore wide-legged dance sweats with a tight, sleeveless tank top under a hot pink Guess hoodie with a dozen or so silver bangles on her wrists. I had on my Baby Phat baggy sweatpants with the matching tight-fitted sweatsuit hoodie zipped halfway down the front.

  Anyway, as we approached the pizza place, we could see that it was already jam-packed. There were people hanging outside dancing and playing, talking and joking around ’cause mostly everybody else was inside.

  CHAPTER 3

  Time to Go Now

  “There’s nothing like being alone in a crowded room hearing yourself breathe for the first time.”

  —myspace.com

  The overhead sign light was on and the place was lit up, but there were so many people that it looked dark inside.

  “Wow, check this out, there’s no way we’re gonna get a seat in there,” I said, surprised by the crowd so thick that it continued overflowing out onto the sidewalk.

  “We should have left the dance studio earlier,” Chili said. “You’re right, we’re never going to get in there.”

  “Don’t worry, Diamond is saving us a seat,” Jalisa said. We both looked at her like she was crazy. “Don’t start,” Jalisa said, knowing exactly what we were thinking. Diamond was one of her friends, not ours, and she knew we didn’t like her.

  Before, it was the three of us that used to be tight, me, Jalisa and Diamond, but that was before she changed. I don’t know what happened to her. Now we don’t trust her anymore. Nobody does anymore.

  Diamond stepped to Chili’s boyfriend right there at Chili’s sweet sixteen birthday party, got caught right in the act, then tried to play it off like it wasn’t her fault. And now the thing was Chili told me that Diamond was tripping after LaVon and I wasn’t having it.

  LaVon and I have been together since eighth grade. We had our future all planned, high school, college, grad school, then marriage, but then two summers ago he grew almost two feet and every basketball coach in the area was after him and even though they weren’t supposed to, college coaches and recruiters were hot on him, as well, and so was every twitching hot-ass, including my used-to-be-best friend, Diamond Riggs.

  “Come on, let’s just go in,” Jalisa said insistently, pulling my arm.

  So we went inside. Jalisa was looking around for Diamond. We walked around the whole place, cruising the crowd, then stopped by the front door again.

  “Let’s just find a spot to stand and look around instead of walking all over the place,” I said.

  “Maybe your friend ain’t show up,” Chili said in a catty way.

  “Good, then we can go,” I said.

  “There she is by the back door,” Jalisa said, pointing.

  We walked over to where she was sitting and saw her talking to…“LaVon?” I said.

  He looked up and saw me standing there and smiled like he wasn’t caught. “Hey, K-shorty, what’s up?” he asked innocently, using his nickname for me like I was blind or something.

  “Nothing,” I said. “What’s up with you, you hanging out now or what? I thought you said you were doing colleges all week.”

  “Nah, I had to check out early. There was nothing happening with the college thing, so I decided to step out with my boys.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, then looked at Diamond as she smiled tightly.

  “Hey,” she said generally to the three of us.

  “Girl, did you check that out tonight, it was too hot. Tyrece is too fine. I can’t wait to check him when he gets here,” Jalisa said as she sat down on the empty stool on the other side of Diamond.

  “Nah, I missed it. I came straight here,” Diamond said, knowing that I was gritting on her, so she made sure not to look in my direction.

  “Where’s Isaac?” Jalisa asked LaVon, looking around for his best friend. She had a serious crush on him.

  “He’s over there,” LaVon said to Jalisa as he unfolded his six-foot-three frame to stand. “Come on.” He took my hand, pulled me in and kissed me on the lips as we started to move through the crowd. I turned seeing Diamond staring and I smiled. I wasn’t gonna make it that easy for her. Possession was nine-tenths of the law and she had better recognize that.

  So we walked over and talked to Isaac and some other friends for a while. His boys were there and we were all talking, but I was still pissed. I still couldn’t believe that Diamond was all up in LaVon’s face like that. If he wasn’t on his way to the NBA, half the girls wouldn’t even give him the time of day.

  So now he was holding on to me, but I was tired of his crap, too. So I went to the bathroom just to chill a minute. As soon as I walked in, some girl came over to me.

  “Hey, I saw you outside, do you know Jade Dawson?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m Leelah, Jade and I graduated last year. She’s cool, we had a few classes together. I thought she said she had a sister in dance, too, you look just like her.”

  “I’m Kenisha, Jade’s my cousin.”

  “Did you check her out tonight? Girlfriend was tight up there, and her moves were too fierce.”

  “You Jade’s cousin?” someone asked. I nodded.

  “Yo, tell Jade that Denise says hey,” someone else added behind me.

  “I didn’t know she was still hanging with Tyrece. She looked hot up there.”

  “Yeah, she did,” I
said, having no idea that my cousin was so popular around there. So I’m standing at the sink, talking, and Diamond came in.

  Always perfect, she had on her Air Force One sneakers, skintight low-riding hip-hugging Hilfiger dance jeans with a snug-fit midriff top that choked everything in place.

  So she stood across the room and started grittin’ on me like she wanted to start something.

  “What, you think you want to say something to me?” I asked her boldly in a threatening tone. The girls I was with stopped to check out what was about to go on.

  “Look, you think I want LaVon, I don’t. You know we all go way back and I know he’s your man so you can chill on that ’cause he came over to talk to me. So if you can’t hold on to him, then that is your drama, not mine,” she said, obviously nervous.

  The remark was intended to sting, but it fell off like cheap jewelry. ’Course I wasn’t having that. There was no way I was gonna let her front on me like that in front of these people. “I know you ain’t frontin’ on me, ’cause you don’t even know me anymore,” I said, then Leelah, the girl I was just talking to, stepped up and put her hands on her hips, obviously ready to get busy if anything jumped off. Then a couple of her girlfriends stepped up, too.

  Diamond looked at the girls around me and glared. “I’m just saying, it wasn’t me, so you need to check your man and your other friend…”

  “Whatever,” I said dismissively just as Chili walked in, and several of the other girls in the bathroom started checking us out, too. But I was cool, I wasn’t about to be rolling around on the bathroom floor fighting over LaVon Oliver. But Diamond kept staring like she wanted to say more. I looked at her and cocked my head. “So, what, is that all you got?” I asked.

  She glared at Chili.

  “What up?” Chili said as she walked over and stood by my side, looking at Diamond.