The sisters teamed up.
“Why you gots to be wildin’ in our crib?”
Keeba said, “Yeah, makin’ our poor mama curse, and she tryin’ so hard to git to Heaven. Girl, we gon’ PARTAAAAYY this weekend!”
“Shhh, Keeba, she right in the kitchen,” whispered Teesha. “So how many you bust on your first day as a cop, Ai?”
Aisha recounted her day as a patroller.
They kept interrupting Aisha’s story.
“Gurrlll!”
“That’s drama!”
“No, she didn’t!”
“All I know is, I ain’t gettin’ killed for no dollar-a-hour fake workfare gig. I cut out early today ’cause of what happened, but I’ma talk to Miss Vinker tomorrow about doing a different job.”
Keeba said, “But ain’t nothin’ left but all that scrubbin’ and cleanin’, and you said you wasn’t goin’ there.”
“True dat,” said Aisha, shaking her head. “I don’t know, I hafta figure out something. In the meantime, what y’all got in the refrigerator to settle my nerves?”
Sixteen
Mrs. Vinker glanced at her watch as Aisha came running toward the group the next day. Seven fifty-six. “You cutting it close, Ingram. Is your son better?” A look of worry flashed in the supervisor’s eyes for a second. Aisha stared, sleepy and sweating.
“Yeah, how is the little brother?” asked Max. “When your moms beeped me with that message about him having a hundred three temperature, I knew it was serious.”
Aisha looked at Max. She didn’t get it. Then she got it. “He a little better. We took him to the emergency room ’cause he was throwing up and diarrhea was—”
“We don’t need the details. Next time you have a family emergency, and this goes for all of you, I better get a call before you go gallivanting off. Now circulate. Yesterday was quiet —let’s hope for the same today. Ingram, put your cap on.”
Aisha and Max agreed it might be better to stay away from the main terminal and just patrol the subway platforms and entrances.
“I owe you, Max. At first, I was like, ‘What is he talkin’ about, nothin’ wrong with my baby.’ Thanks.”
He shrugged. “Ain’t no thang to help a sister out. Our little encounter of the homeboy kind shook you up, I can understand that. But thank you for letting it go. Man, I couldn’t have nothing like that on my conscience. Enough there already.”
“Ah-ight. It’s all good.”
The second morning was a replay of the first, noisy and hectic. The 4 and 5 express trains screeched into the station one after another and people charged across the platform to the number 6 local, using their elbows and shoulders like running backs. Tourists wearing golf clothes, fanny packs, and cameras huddled around a guide.
Aisha bought a bag of Cheez Doodles and a pack of Chuckles at a newsstand. Max, orange juice in hand, made fun of her diet. They walked the length of platforms, sat on benches, climbed stairs, inspected exits. A photography exhibition in Vanderbilt Hall kept their attention for a good half hour. At the Lexington and 43rd Street entrance a bunch of kids wearing identical T-shirts from some private school jumped the turnstile. They froze and turned pink as Aisha and Max approached.
“Uh-oh, guys, undercover cops,” someone whispered.
Max put on his tough cop voice. “What’s going on here?! Don’t tell me you rich kids can’t afford a token.”
A long-haired girl with five earrings in each ear spoke. She looked pleadingly at Aisha. “Excuse us, officers, we’re er—late for our finals and didn’t have time to—”
Aisha held her hand in front of the girl’s face. “Talk to the hand. Now, how y’all didn’t have time to buy tokens when there ain’t even no line at the booth? I should bust y’all just for thinking we stupid enough to believe that ’cause we black.”
“Oh God, no, that is so not anything I would ever think. Ask any of these guys, they know me and what I stand for. I am so not about race!”
“Well, I is. So you got two minutes to race right over to that token booth and pay your fare, or y’all’s gettin’ cuffed.”
The teens scrambled back under the turnstile, calling over their shoulders, “Thanks, you guys are so right on!” As soon as the kids were out of sight, Aisha and Max cracked up.
There was a pizza break, followed by more patrols. The station’s after-lunch pace was slow, and the riding public had thinned out. They followed the signs to the shuttle passage. A violinist had set up near the shuttle line and was playing a sweet adagio. Tired of walking, Max leaned on a railing, and Aisha sat on a crate munching a cherry-flavored Chuckle. The doors of the short shuttle train opened. From the car emerged a smartly dressed, shapely woman who towered head and shoulders above the other passengers. Aisha had just popped the licorice Chuckle, her favorite, into her mouth and was savoring it with closed eyes. Satisfied, she slowly opened her eyes and looked directly into the woman’s. Debbie Silver was striding toward her so deliberately that Aisha tensed up as if she was going to have to throw down, this time in self-defense.
“Aisha!”
Aisha jumped to her feet. Max eyed the woman from head to toe and back up again.
“Aisha!”
“Miss Silver, she the one who—”
“I know, I know. She’d given away your slot a whole half hour early. Pammie’s history. Gone. But why didn’t you call to clear things up? There’s been some interest, but your file was missing—Pammie no doubt—and for the life of me, I could not remember your last name! I’m so glad to see you. The timing is perfect too, because I’m just out of a meeting.”
Aisha was beaming. “Max! Come meet my friend Debbie Silver. She a model!” She introduced them, but her mind was on one thing. “What kinda interest? You mean I got a modeling job?!” She started dancing and waving her arms in the air.
Debbie Silver took Aisha by the arm. “Slow down, star! No, it’s not modeling. It’s a job I think you’ll like even more. Can you skate?”
Debbie invited them both for coffee. Max didn’t want any beefs with Mrs. Vinker and turned the woman down, but he offered to cover for Aisha. Aisha and Debbie went together to the Park Avenue Coffee Shop, and an hour later, her head full of fantasy and excitement, Aisha floated home to Brooklyn.
The pounding at the door rattled the kitchen dishes. “Who in the hell …” said Louise. “Coming, dammit, and something better be on fire.”
Aisha burst into the apartment jumping up and down, cheering and shaking her butt.
“Ma! I’ma be a model! I mean, a actress! We gon’ get paid, Ma, at last.” Louise made her daughter sit down and explain what the devil was going on.
“First, me and Max had messed with these white kids for fun, then we was patrolling near the Grand Central shuttle. So I was eating Chuckles, you know how much I love them, especially the black one I always save for last, and who do I see but the lady from the model agency! Debbie Silver! She is down, Ma! She got me on a TV commercial for this skating joint that this rap label and a Rollerblade company is hookin’ up. They gon’ open all these rinks all over the place! I’ma be the project girl of the world!”
Louise’s mouth was open. She was happy and shocked and hardly understanding anything Aisha was saying through that mouth of hers going ninety miles an hour.
“It is so phat! They need a girl from every race, like in them Benetton ads, and I’m the black one! And ya know dat ’cause I’m black like dat!” She was doing a booty dance and giggling. “I get big bling, bling cash up front and zidjewels every time it be on TV. So they can keep their welfare and workfare and stick they check where the sun don’t shine!”
Louise was all smiles, blinking like she was waking up from a dream. Then she asked, “What you call the jewels they gonna pay you in?”
The beats and bass were bouncing off the walls of the production studio, and Missy’s voice gliding and smooth sliding, growling and purring. The good-looking commercial director, all eyes and height and loafers without sock
s, was freaking out.
“Girls! Girls!” he shouted, clapping his hands twice. “I do not want to hear that the blades don’t fit! Jam those feet in—they’re not Cinderella’s slippers! Your residuals will buy you all the blister treatments you’ll ever need! The ramp ready? I need that ramp!”
The final hammering was being done on the wooden Y-shaped slope designed to propel the skaters directly toward, then immediately to both sides of, the camera.
“Amanda! Paulanne! You’re on the right.” The two girls rolled onto the large X’s marked “Latina” and “White.”
“Okay, that’s great. Ginny and Sonya, you’re over there.” He gestured toward the “Asian” and “Native” floor markers. “Let’s go, let’s go. Sound people, is the rap cued up? Time is money. Where’s Aisha? Get Aisha out here!”
Inside the skaters’ makeshift dressing room, Aisha, wobbly and shaky, was trying to balance on her Rollerblades. Her hair was styled in a loose pageboy, and her face and eyes were fully made up. She was beautiful. And frustrated.
“I can’t even stand up on these things—how I’m s’pose to roll around on ’em? I ain’t no ice skater. Y’all gon’ have to get me normal skates.”
The production assistant, a fair young woman with a mass of tangled red hair, was holding Aisha up by the elbows and talking into her telephone headset. The director’s voice came back so loud that it reached her in stereo.
“I don’t care if you put remote control cars on her feet, Valerie, just roll her out here!”
The assistant ran from the dressing room and returned within minutes, pale and panting, carrying a box. “Hurry, Aisha, Peter’s going Sturm und Drang.”
Aisha put on the white leather shoe skates and sailed onto the ramp.
“Why, thank you, Miss Ingram!” said Peter, directing Aisha to the “Black” marker in the center. “The shot’s from the waist up anyway, so the Bomb Blades people won’t know a thing. Let’s hit it, people!”
The skaters, wearing matching HOUSE OF RAP ’N ROLL sweatshirts overhanging baggy jeans, rolled together down the ramp and split off in pairs, leaving Aisha to head straight to the camera, spin to a stop, and say, “Rap ’n Roll New York in the house!” Take after take, the girls rolled and split apart, again and again, until all five were complaining about sore feet. Aisha was getting grouchy.
“I’m tired! What you trying to get to? All we doing is the same thing over and over.”
The other skaters agreed, adding their own individual complaints about cramps and hunger and having to pee.
“What I’m trying to get to, Miss Ingram, is perfection. That and nothing less is expected by clients who pay top dollar for our services. Ginny’s timing is still a little fuzzy, and I need to see joy radiating from your lovely black face because you’re essentially the It Girl on this shoot. Now stop bitching, and give me take eighteen!”
Aisha felt like she could give him a good whack upside the head but thought back to the BIGMODELS receptionist. No, she was done fighting like that. Now she had to fight the fatigue in her legs and the urge to stick her tongue out at the camera. Doing commercials was hard work, not like it seemed on TV. She wondered how many takes Debbie Silver had gone through before she had tossed her hair and turned on her foot exactly the way they wanted her to.
“Time’s money, Miss Ingram, and we’re waiting!”
Aisha took a deep breath and skated back to her X. She skated and smiled and said “Rap ’n Roll New York in the house!” so many times that she became giddy. The other girls did too, and after a while they were laughing so much, the makeup artist had to keep touching up their tear-streaked faces. Aisha messed up a couple times and said “Nappy Roll,” which only made them more giddy.
On take twenty-five, Ginny crashed into Amanda, and both girls landed on their butts. Seeing Peter roll his eyes and suck his teeth, something Aisha didn’t know white people did, almost made her lose it. She rolled toward the camera fighting the urge to bust out laughing. With a giant smile on her face and too wrecked to care, she sang out, “Rap ’n Roll New York in the house, y’all!”
Peter shrieked. “That’s it! I love the ‘y’all’ at the end, Aisha! So urban, so ethnic, so perfect!” The skaters tumbled in a heap onto the floor moaning. The crew applauded.
Seventeen
Aisha became an instant star. Not only because she rolled into living rooms across New York beaming a happy smile but because she got free T-shirts and Rollerblades for her friends. Toya, Keeba, and Teesha mastered their blades in a week—even Starlett cruised around the projects on blades—while Aisha stuck to her four-wheelers, troubled only by the need to choose which of her ten pairs to wear with which color outfit. Without depriving themselves of one bite of their favorite foods, they all began slimming down because they skated everywhere—school, church, supermarkets, movies, even across the Brooklyn Bridge to J&R Music World, where the cashiers greeted Aisha like a celebrity.
“You the Rap n’ Roll girl, right?! Whoa, like I been doing blades since they first came out! Hook me up on TV!”
Raven called from college. She nearly passed out, up late studying with the TV on, when she saw Aisha grinning at her. “I thought for a minute, Ai, that I was hallucinating. I couldn’t believe it! My suite mates were ready to kill me for waking them up screaming ‘That’s my girl! That’s Ai!’”
Max, who was spending a lot of time with Aisha, insisted he was too old to do skates or blades. She was really into him but was “staying focused,” as Debbie Silver suggested, on keeping her flow.
Even Kevin tried to make a comeback.
“Yeah, Ai, it’s me, Kev. Just thought I’d give you a shout, you know, kick it with you a little bit, say wassup. Everybody giving you mad props for the TV thing, baby, and that make me feel real good, seeing that we—”
Aisha was stretched out on the living room couch, playing with her DVD remote control.
“What? Since when we anything at all? What happened to Blondie?”
“Aw, man, she the past, baby.”
“Well, that make two of y’all. Gotta go. ’Bye.”
When Louis Jr. and Luis Jr. called all excited from Florida, they put their boss on, who just had to say hello to “the boys’” famous sister. He was putting together a publicity budget, he said, and wanted to “brainstorm” with her, when she had the time of course, about young, hip ways to promote his Doubletake chain. Maybe she and the kids could vacation in the Keys, at the condo.
Aisha didn’t know she could feel so much power. And not from kicking butts but just from making good things happen for herself. She’d finally gotten the break she needed, and this time she hadn’t blown it.
The House of Rap ’n Roll people were thrilled with the public’s response to the commercial and called Debbie Silver whenever they wanted to open a new rink in what they called a “homegirl demographic” area. Aisha taped spots for rinks in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Trenton, and Hartford, and the company was planning to expand west ward. She opened a savings account and watched in amazement as it filled with residual payments, even when she wasn’t working. Louise had no more trouble making rent payments. Aisha had found a place for herself and the kids and had already packed a few things in boxes.
One evening Aisha’s cell phone rang. She checked the Caller ID but didn’t recognize the number.
She answered with her usual “Ai in the house, wassup?”
The caller laughed. “Still working?”
Aisha was puzzled. “Who this?”
“It’s me, Ebony. Why didn’t you call me back?”
Ebony? Call her back?
“Ebony, hey! You saw my commercial?! I can get you some Rollerblades if you want. But what you mean I didn’t call you back? You never called me back!”
“Aisha, I returned your call a couple days after you left that first message months ago, and again when I saw you on TV. I thought you were being all that and didn’t want to be bothered. I am so proud of you, girl, you have
no idea. Didn’t Louise tell you? She promised she would.”
Now Aisha was downright confused. “Nope, she never said nothing, Ebbie. You know I wouldn’t diss you like that.”
“Hold it, Ai! Just because you’re rich and famous doesn’t mean you can call me Ebbie. You know I hate that name. Anyway, Miss Rock and Roll—”
“Rap, Ebony—”
“Pardon me. Miss Rap and Roll.”
“Rap’n Roll—”
“Aisha!”
They had the same laugh, and it filled both homes. Ebony was the first to compose herself.
“As I was saying, Frank and I would love to have you over to the house this coming weekend. Bring Starlett and Ty too. I told Louise to tell you. Put her on—and we’ll see you Saturday. In the house.”
Louise was sitting on the bed brushing her hair and humming to the radio. She smiled.
“Who is it?”
Aisha handed her the phone.
“Hello?” She waved Aisha from her room.
Aisha decided, after looking at a street map, not to skate to Astoria. The N train would do just fine. She got off at Astoria Boulevard and followed the directions scribbled on the back of her “Aisha Ingram—Actress, Model, Dancer” business card. A few blocks later, she was standing at the door of a modest one-level home in the middle of a street of attached houses. She smoothed down her ponytail, adjusted her sunglasses, and pressed the buzzer.
“Aisha!” The sisters hugged. Aisha came up to Ebony’s shoulder. Height was the most obvious physical difference between them. Along with her thick hair and high cheekbones, what really distinguished Ebony from Aisha were her pale, almost gray eyes.
“You look good, kid. But no, you do not have on shades as cloudy as it is! Come on in, Miss Thing, Frank’s in the kitchen. Hey, where’re the kids?”
Louise had taken them to the Prospect Park Zoo.
“Really? Is that … safe?”
“Uh-huh. She not drinking no more.” Aisha felt proud saying that, like she had something to do with it.
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