“Good, now you gonna come clean up this mess I made?” She rotated the can in her hand.
I set the coffee on the dresser and licked her dry.
27
I think I was more nervous about this meeting than Bridgette as I drove from Malibu to the McClain Films office in Hollywood. A glance to my right gave me a view of a calm Bridgette, pretty as ever, staring out the windshield, but I was so damn wound up, I jumped when my phone started ringing. The screen on the dash told me it was Neil.
“I’ll call him back later,” I said, more to myself than to Bridgette.
“No, answer it. You have time for a quick conversation with him.”
I sighed and answered the call. “Neil, wassup?”
“Damn…you still answering my calls, huh?” he replied.
“Yeah, I told you we’re gonna get our shit together. What’s on your mind?”
“Um, I need to ask you a favor, and I know what you’re thinking. It’s not money.”
I frowned a little. “Okay, what is it?”
“I been thinking about life and shit, you know? All the stuff I wanted to do, the stuff we used to talk about. Shit, I’m supposed to be scoring your movies right now. You remember that?”
“Yeah, man, I remember.”
“We both talked about how we wanted to travel, see the world…I don’t know. I see Ev and Leland all happily married, and you got Bridgette. She’s a good look for you, a real good look.”
I glanced at Bridgette again. She was grinning, her eyes still on the windshield. “Yeah, she is. That’s my all, man,” I said.
“Man, I’m happy for you. But anyway, I know you wondering why I’m saying all this, so let me get to the point. I want better in my life. I’m tired of being fucked up, and I wanna get myself straight. That’s where you come in.”
“Okay…”
“There’s this rehab program, very exclusive. They don’t really fuck with nothing but stars, but I’ve been researching it, and I think it’d be a good fit for me. It’s run by a black actress who was big in the eighties, got an all-black staff, deals with a lot of herbal healing and cleansing and shit.”
“Oh, that’s right up your alley.”
“Right, right. So, I know you the king of connects and I don’t wanna bother Ev with this. He’s done enough to help me. Shit, more than enough. So, I was wondering if you think you could help me get into this program.”
It sounded like it hurt him to ask me for help and that bothered me. What had we become? “Yeah, man, let me look into it, see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Nole. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem, man.”
After I hung up, Bridgette said, “I’m proud of you for helping him.”
I shrugged. “He’s my brother, my twin. I just wanna see him win.”
*****
She wouldn’t get out of the car.
The serenity she’d worn on the way to the studio was gone, and now she was sitting in the passenger seat shaking.
“Bridge?” I said softly for the fifth time.
No answer from her.
So I climbed out of my car and walked around to her side. She flinched when I opened the door.
Squatting next to her, I reached up and laid my hand on her thigh. “Bridge, you wanna leave, go back home, cancel the meeting? We can do that if you’re not ready for this.”
She shook her head. “N-no. I need to get this over with. It’s just…I hate this woman, and I hate hating her. I don’t think I realized how much I despise her until right now.”
“After that shit she pulled in that video, I can’t stand her ass, either. We can go if you want to, and I’ll understand.”
“I…need to do this before she fucks up my career. I just…”
“Hey, look at me.”
Her eyes jumped from her hands clasped in her lap to my face.
“You’re a lotus, remember? A lotus in full bloom. Beautiful as hell and full of so much damn love that I gotta be the luckiest man on this planet. Whatever she says, whatever she tries to do? It can’t change that. You grew out of that mud that she’s still stuck in and she wants to dim your light, but she can’t, baby. She can’t, and she won’t.”
She stared at me for a moment or two before finally climbing out of my car. Once I was on my feet, she walked into my arms, and whispered, “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
We met in the conference room, the space where we’d done table reads for Floetic Lustice. It was a room with a glass door whose four walls were made entirely of windows, so anyone could see inside of it, but it was a Sunday, so no one was there but us. The long table was sleek and silver; the rolling chairs were padded, comfortable, and a gorgeous shade of teal. This was where I came face to face with my mother for the second time in more than twenty years, if you counted the Loretha Halter ambush.
She was wearing that same wig from the show and the video, but despite it looking dull, it was on her head straight. The orange lipstick wasn’t smeared, and someone had applied winged eyeliner and dusty pink eyeshadow to her eyes. She was wearing a red t-shirt with an image of a black woman with an Afro on it. Underneath the Afro woman was the word queen in gold lettering. She also wore a pair of pink, white, and purple patterned leggings with black ballerina flats. She was clean but thin, excruciatingly thin, and I couldn’t find even a hint of the pretty woman from my childhood.
The room was quiet as I took her in, almost finding it unbelievable that she’d bullied her way into my world, into the delicately-balanced peace I’d managed to achieve in spite of the horror of my past.
“It’s good to see you, Jessie Mae,” she said, her mouth spreading into a smile that made me wonder if she’d progressed from crack to meth.
When I didn’t respond, Nolan, who was seated next to me, grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
“I saw the video,” was how I chose to reply, because I wasn’t going to sit there and act like I believed her little happy mother act was real.
“Yeah, I had to do something to get your attention. And it worked.”
“So you just wanted to see me? After all these years?”
“I been wanting to see you, Jessie Mae. The courts wouldn’t let me, and then you ran off here to Hollywood.”
“Please stop calling me that.”
“It’s your name,” she said, sounding insulted.
“No, my name is Bridgette Dominique Turner. Wanna see my driver’s license? That name you gave me never fit,” I gritted.
Nolan squeezed my hand again.
“Why didn’t you ever call me back? Why you ain’t come to my mama’s funeral?”
I bugged my eyes at her. “Are you serious? You actually thought I’d go to her funeral?”
“Yes! That’s your family! I don’t know what them social workers and shit told you, but blood is blood no matter what! She loved you, talked about how much she missed you all the time. We knew you was out here, because Carmen, Dawnetta’s girl, told her mama she’d seen you here. I was glad Dawnetta told me that, because them damn county workers wouldn’t tell me shit. And then you started popping up on TV in your expensive clothes talking about this new movie that’s coming out. You sitting here next to this man in this suit. I guess you think you better than me now.”
“That’s why you popped up on the Loretha Halter Show? To try to prove I’m not better than you? How did you even get on there?”
She shrugged and scratched at her cheek. “I called that number they put on the screen at the end of the show after they kept advertising that you’d be on there to talk about that movie. I knew it was you even though your name is different, ‘cause you look just like you did as a little girl. Tall and skinny, but it look like you done bought you some ass and titties.”
“No, I took them after my daddy’s side,” I said, arching an eyebrow.
“He’s dead,” she said smugly.
Nolan shifted in his chair.
&
nbsp; I assumed that was supposed to hurt me, because she knew I was always crazy about him. But I already knew, thanks to Karen, and had dealt with that grief. “I know,” I said.
“Died in the pen. Got shanked,” she continued.
“I know that, too. Just like I know you’ve been in and out of jail for stealing shit and selling pussy.”
Her eyes widened and then narrowed. “He wasn’t your real daddy, no way. Did you know that?”
I couldn’t tell if she was lying just to hurt me or if she was telling the truth, and although my heart was stuttering in my chest, I couldn’t let her think she’d gotten the best of me. So I said, “Why are we here, Arlette? What did you disrupt my life for? For money? Well, you ain’t getting none from me. So you may as well keep posting videos and looking like the desperate crackhead you are.”
“I wanna know why you ain’t come to my mama’s funeral.”
“Because I hated her. I still hate her. Why else?”
“You still mad about some shit that happened when you was little?”
“You mean her beating me, locking me in closets, and calling me names just for kicks and giggles? Your mother was an evil drug-dealing whore who you let terrorize me for years!”
“You need to let that go. Shit, I had it harder than you when I was growing up!”
“Then why would you want that for me?!” I screamed. Nolan stood from his chair and moved behind me, placing his hands on my shoulders.
“Because I knew it wouldn’t kill you. It didn’t kill me.”
“Yes, it did! You’re a fucking career crackhead! You’ve been a member of the walking dead for years!”
“You ain’t no better! You tell this fancy man of yours you was a ho’?” Her eyes rose to Nolan. “She tell you that?!”
“I ain’t never been no ho’ like you and your damn mother, swapping men and shit! Men in and out of the house screwing both of y’all at the same time while I was locked up in her damn closet and had to hear it. She locked me in there because I wet the bed. I was fucking six! Six and nervous from living in a hell hole!”
“You were a ho’! Nothing but a little slut, fucking grown men before your ass was twelve!”
“You let that happen to me! If you’d been half a mother, you would’ve protected me! But you were too busy tricking for crack, weren’t you?! You were never a mother to me!”
She hopped up from her seat and slammed the palm of her hand on the table. “You tell your man about that baby your ho’ ass had? Huh? You tell Mr. Money Bags about that, Miss Better-than-everybody-else?!”
After the words left her mouth, the room began to spin, the air became shallow, and my heart raced in my chest to the point that I began to feel light-headed.
Then everything went black.
28
Bridgette flew across the table and was on her mother so fast, I didn’t have time to react to the whole baby revelation. She was making sounds that weren’t in the same stratosphere as any English-language word I’d ever heard, her long, graceful fingers clutching her mother’s neck. I hopped over the damn table, too, grabbing Bridgette from behind, but to be so damn thin, my woman was strong as hell and had a death grip—no pun intended—on her mother.
I pulled and tugged and begged Brigette to let go, because yeah, I knew people who could make the body disappear—like I said, I had the connects—but I didn’t want Bridgette to have to deal with the mental strife of having killed her own mother.
“Baby, please let go!” I shouted, and felt her almost release her hold, then it hit me. Like I couldn’t resist her pussy, she couldn’t resist my commands. So I put a little more bass in my voice, just how she liked it, and said, “Bridgette, let her go! Now!”
Her hands fell to her sides so quickly, I almost thought I dreamed the shit. Her mother grabbed her own neck and fell against the window wall, gasping for air while Bridgette stood there and stared at her. Then Bridgette turned and looked at me, eyes full of tears.
I grabbed her, pulled her to me, and whispered, “It’s okay, baby. I got you. I got you.” Fixing my eyes on her mother, who at that point, I wanted to fucking strangle myself, I said, “You can go now.”
“She tried to kill me! I’m calling the police!”
Bridgette was so out of it, I don’t think she heard that bullshit, which was a good thing. So I led her to the nearest chair, sat her down, kissed her forehead, and told her I’d be right back. Then I took her mother at the elbow and led her out of the room.
“Get your hands off me!” she screamed.
I let her go, then got in her face, and said, “Take your ass back to Alabama or wherever you came from and don’t look back. No more videos, no more phone calls, no more popping up on talk shows. Stay away from Bridgette.”
“Jessie Mae!”
“I don’t give a fuck if she calls herself Sideshow Bob. That’s what I’ma call her, too, not no Jessie Mae.”
“I ain’t going nowhere until she pays me! She got all this money now, and she’s gonna share! If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t even be here! And I had such a hard time having her, they took my stuff out of me and I couldn’t never have no more kids. I am her mother and she supposed to take care of me!”
“Having a baby doesn’t make you a mother.”
“She knows that better than me. Ask her.”
Scratching my forehead and rubbing my hand down my face, I said, “So all of this, you disrupting her life, is about money, not about your mother’s funeral?”
“It’s about both!”
I shook my head and wanted to put my fist through a wall since I didn’t, couldn’t, hit women. “I’ll get you your money.”
“Mm-hmm, I knew you was rich. I want—”
“You’re gonna take what I give you and sign an agreement to leave her the fuck alone, or I will ruin what’s left of your pathetic life, and I mean that shit.”
“I don’t want nothing to do with her ass, no way. Like I said, she ain’t nobody. Just give me the money, and don’t be threatening me. You don’t know me!”
“And you sure as hell don’t know me or what I’m capable of.”
She rolled her eyes. “You ain’t gon’ do shit.”
“Keep believing that—you know what? I don’t have time for this. You can go now. I’ll be in touch.”
“You better be.”
I watched her leave, then returned to Bridgette to find her with her head resting on the table and tears streaming from her eyes.
*****
Stepping into the foyer of my house, I eased the front door shut and made my way to the kitchen, placing the two containers of breakfast on the counter and then heading to my bedroom, freezing in the doorway at the sight of the empty bed. She was asleep when I left that morning, had climbed into bed and drifted off shortly after we made it home, didn’t even eat dinner. I peeked in the bathroom to find that she wasn’t in there either. I searched the entire house—no Bridgette. Her car was in the driveway, so she couldn’t have gone far.
For some reason, I went back to the bedroom, and just as I was about to pull out my phone to call her, I glanced out the bedroom window and spotted her sitting on the beach, facing the ocean. It looked like she had on one of my t-shirts, and when I got closer to her, I saw that she had on a pair of my jogging pants, too. Without a word, I sat down next to her and placed a hand on her thigh.
With her eyes still on the ocean, she asked, “You’re sitting in this sand in your nice white pants?”
I shrugged. “It’s just clothes. I don’t know if you noticed, but I have a lot more where these came from.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, you got more clothes than me, and that’s saying something.” Her face was wet when she turned to look at me. “I can’t stop crying.”
“Maybe you need to cry. I read somewhere that it’s good for you. It releases toxins or some shit like that.”
She nodded and wiped her cheeks. “Where’d you go? Why didn’t you wake me up before you left?”<
br />
“You needed the rest, and I just had some business to take care of. Had to meet up with the club’s assistant manager since I haven’t been able to spend as much time as I want to there lately. Got us some breakfast, too.”
“Oh…thank you.”
“You’re always welcome, baby.”
“And you can call the assistant manager Jesse. It doesn’t bother me anymore. The first few times I heard you say it, it came on the heels of my mother first trying to contact me, and it was just…a lot.”
“Okay. Hey, I saw that post you put on IG.”
“Yeah, I’d seen a lot of people wondering about what happened on the Loretha Halter Show, and quite a few of them seemed genuinely concerned. So I thought I’d let them know I didn’t sign on to air my family issues on TV, but that I was okay.”
“I’m glad you did, but it could’ve waited.”
She shrugged. “Um, Nole, I…I don’t ever want to see my moth—her again. I lost control, and I didn’t like how that felt. She just…she brings out the worst in me.”
“I don’t want you to see her again, either, and I promise she won’t bother you anymore.”
Her eyes brightened and then narrowed. “What’d you do? You know an assassin or something?”
“I actually do, but I didn’t do anything that drastic. I just took care of things. I’ma always take care of things when it comes to you.”
“Thank you, I think.”
I laughed. “No problem, baby. Oh, and you can expect an on-air apology from Loretha Halter in the next few days.”
“Damn, you really don’t play, do you? At least you didn’t get her fired.”
“Only because it seemed to bother you that I got Mike and Rourke fired.”
“Well, thank you for that, too.”
“I got you, Bridge. Always.”
“I’m thankful for that. Um, I think I’m going to call my old therapist. I need to work through this in a healthy way, and I don’t wanna burden you with it.”
Let Me Show You (McClain Brothers Book 3) Page 16