“Oh, we're just going to check into a hotel around the corner,” Uncle Cecil said. “No need to put you out.”
“You two could never put me out. I would be honored if you stayed with me. Really. I'd love the company.”
“You're so sweet, Tracee, but I want to be close to Ritz in case she needs us. I want to be minutes away,” Madalyn said.
The truth was that Madalyn didn't want Tracee to see her morning treatments and the sickness that followed. There was enough going on, and Madalyn wanted to make sure that everyone focused their attention and energy on Ritz, and Ritz only.
Tracee found a doctor and the three of them tried to see Ritz through a glass, but they really couldn't see anything behind all the machines and curtains. Dr. Paul Grevious didn't want anyone in the room. Not until she was out of the woods. It was too risky. Since they weren't able to spend any time with Ritz, Aunt Madalyn and Uncle Cecil decided to make their way around the corner and check into a hotel. Against their wishes, Tracee accompanied them to the hotel and insisted on putting the room on her credit card. She made sure they were comfortable and told them that she'd check on them later.
“Please get some rest, you two,” Tracee said. “I love you.”
“We love you, too,” Aunt Madalyn said. The three exchanged hugs and Tracee headed back to the hospital.
Tracee was determined to get in and really see Ritz. She needed to see for herself what was up. Tracee staked out Ritz's room and waited for the nurses' shifts to change. When a nurse finally left her post, Tracee saw her chance and took it. She slipped into Ritz's room.
What Tracee saw made her instantly burst into tears. Ritz was totally unrecognizable.
Her entire face was swollen. She looked like Mitch “Blood” Green after Mike Tyson busted his ass one night out- side of Dapper Dan's clothing store in Harlem. She had tubes going in and out of what seemed like every orifice of her body. One of her eyes was swollen to three times its normal size and there was purple all around it. She was on a breathing pump and all kinds of gadgets monitored her heart and blood pressure. Ritz didn't just look bad, she looked dead, and that was what had Tracee spooked.
She let out a wail, and a moment later, a nurse came scurrying into the room.
“What are you doing in here?!” the nurse said in an angry voice.
“That's my best friend. Is she going to make it?” Tracee said through uncontrollable sobs. “She looks so bad. She looks so bad.”
“Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Please come this way.”
The nurse grabbed Tracee by the arm. Tracee pulled away and got closer to Ritz's bedside. She just wanted to touch her to see if she was alive. Tracee grabbed Ritz's hand.
“Please, God, spare her life,” Tracee cried out. “Please, God, pleeeeeeeease!”
As the nurse was trying to pull Tracee away, Ritz's heart monitor began to quicken its pace.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
The nurse became a little more physical, pushing Tracee from the room, and then doctors and orderlies and nurses came rushing in with all kinds of equipment and trays and needles.
“Oh God, no! No! No!” Tracee screamed.
6
What the fuck?
That was all Ritz Harper could muster in her mind, which was racing at a million miles per hour. Amid the cacophony of thoughts, only one thought kept resounding, only one thought rang out like a gong inside her head: What the fuck?!
Ritz could not feel a thing. There was no pain. But if she strained, she could hear a faint beep that seemed to be far off in the distance.
Ritz Harper, who had worked her way to the top of her game, who was the undisputed queen of all media, the most talked-about woman in America, now was flat on her back and silenced.
“Okay. Okay. Okay!” Ritz screamed. Only, no sound came out of her mouth. The beep was becoming more rapid.
Where am I? She was trying to gain some kind of control.
Make some sense of this confusion. Her thoughts were lucid, but she battled consciousness. Was she conscious? Was she even alive?
Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
A bright light appeared out of the corner of nowhere. The light was surrounded by rings. The rings looked watery, like the rings made when a pebble is tossed into the center of a pond. There were translucent ripples around the light.
A figure appeared through the ripples. It was a feminine figure. The figure was saying something, but to Ritz it sounded like a record slowed down on a turntable. It was like a seventy-eight recording played at forty-five speed— slow and warped. Then, just as suddenly, everything was in sync.
“Ritzy?” The voice had sped up to flow with real time. “Ritzy? Sweetie.”
“Ma?!” Ritz could feel a lump build in her throat that almost choked her. In that moment, Ritz was ten years old again. “Mama?”
“Yes, baby girl. It's me.”
“Oh, Mama! I— I— I've missed you so much.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
“I've needed you so much!”
Was she dreaming? Ritz wasn't sure and didn't care. She had always heard of people contacting the dead and vice versa. Hell, Ghost was one of her favorite movies, even if she felt that Whoopi should have won her Oscar for The Color Purple.
But Ritz lived in the real world where things like that never happened. She even had a friend in college who said she could see spirits. But Ritz didn't believe any of that. Because if people could see spirits, then why had she never seen her mother? Why didn't her mother try to contact her? So spirits couldn't be real.
But here she was looking at her mother in a surreal environment with funny light. She could almost see through her mother, but she was there, standing in front of Ritz. She was so close that Ritz reached out to touch her.
“Ritzy, believe it or not, I've always been there,” her mother said. “I've always been watching over you.”
“How?” Ritz said. “Where? Why didn't I know it? And if you've always been there, why didn't you warn me, tell me to run or duck before I got shot? Why didn't you stop this from happening to me? Why didn't you stop so many things from happening to me?”
Ritz was mad at her mother. More than twenty years' worth of anger and other emotions came flooding back.
“Baby, it's not that simple. I could only watch. I've seen it all. Everything.”
Ritz felt a little heat of shame rise up in her. She could literally see her life passing before her eyes, and she didn't like what she was seeing: the night she slept with Jamie's boyfriend, Derek; the night she destroyed Delilah Summers; the day she outed a successful rapper, ruining his career; the day she outed a minister, throwing his family and congregation into a tizzy; the time she made an up-and-coming actress admit on the air that she had herpes, reducing her to tears and all but destroying her future in films.
But to Ritz, those were minor incidents. What really stood out was a flashback to the argument she had with her Aunt Maddie, the woman who raised her after Ritz's mother died. It was a nasty argument. It should never have happened. It had spun out of control.
Ritz had been wrong. She knew that now. If she was honest, deep down, she always knew that.
“Wrong and strong!” her mother used to tease Ritz when she would get in trouble, because Ritz never backed down when she was wrong, even when she knew damn well that she was wrong. Ritz felt bad for the things she said to Aunt Maddie, who only showed her love and always wanted the best for her.
Her aunt had only questioned why Ritz wanted to destroy her former friend, Delilah Summers. Aunt Maddie simply couldn't understand Ritz's ambition, her desire to be on top at any cost. Aunt Maddie and Uncle Cecil hadn't raised her that way. Maddie couldn't understand Ritz's level of envy and injustice that someone like Delilah could have so much success— success that Ritz believed should have been for her. Why couldn't Aunt Maddie understand? Ritz's envy stemmed from a sense of injustice; Delilah's success should have been
Ritz's, and she didn't understand why Aunt Maddie just didn't get it.
Why did she push me like that? Ritz thought. She should have understood.
Wrong and strong. Strong but wrong. In other words, wasted strength— strength that could have been used in such better ways.
All Aunt Maddie knew was that Ritz wasn't raised to be like that. Ritz was raised to be a lady, not a diva. Aunt Mad-die wasn't even quite sure what a diva was— to her, a diva was a fat woman who sang at the opera— but she didn't like it, and she knew that Ritz's mother would not have liked it, either.
Almost as if she could read Ritz's mind, her mother said, “Don't worry, baby. No judgment. Everything we do in life, good or bad, leads to a lesson or a blessing. Some of us have to learn our lessons the hard way. That has always been your way. And everything we do, baby, everything we do has a consequence.”
Ritz took a minute to let that thought sink in.
“That sounds like it's my fault that I got shot. So am I here now because of something I did? And where am I exactly? Am I dead? Is this heaven? Where's God…”
“Slow down. I'll answer most of your questions, but some of the questions you will have to answer for yourself,” said Ritz's mother as she put her arm around Ritz's shoulder, a tender gesture that Ritz didn't actually expect to feel.
But Ritz could feel her mother's touch, hear her mother's voice. And the air where they were had a scent. It was sweet, with a light hint of lavender.
“First, you are not dead, not really. You aren't alive, either. You are able to see me because you have left your physical body in that hospital room. I wanted to make sure I was here to send you back.”
“So I'll live?”
“Yes, you'll live. But before I send you back, I need to tell you some things. Baby, you have to think about what you're doing with your life. You'll be given a second chance. But please make the most of it. You were put on earth to do some incredible things, Ritzy. You're a leader. People will follow you. But with that comes a lot of responsibility. Remember when I used to tell you that your mouth would get you in trouble?”
“Yes, I remember… but you know I didn't mean anything bad when I talked back.”
“That's not the point, baby. Whether you intend for bad things to happen, your mouth makes them happen. Words are powerful. When you say something, it goes somewhere. And it usually comes right back. You have to learn how to control your words. Use them wisely. You can't say everything you want to say. You've hurt people. You've destroyed families and lives with your words. You don't see that? You don't see the tears and the broken hearts and the broken souls that you've caused? I see it and I cry. I cry for them, and I cry for you.”
“What about my tears? What about my hurt? What about my broken heart?” said Ritz.
“Baby, making others feel that way won't make your pain go away. It never does. It only brings more pain to you in the end. I didn't say you got what you deserved. Nobody deserves to be shot. Nobody deserves to be killed. Nobody deserves to be hurt, physically or emotionally— no one.
“I said that you hurt people, and now you've been hurt.
There's a relationship between what you've done and what's been done to you, and you have to examine that. You need to start asking yourself questions. You need to find out if it's more important to be what you think is a ‘success' in this world, or is it more important to be a person worthy of the people who follow you? Which person is my Ritzy? When you figure that out, you will know what to do.”
“I'm so confused, Mama. I am so angry. I'm angry at a world that tells you that you have to be a certain way to get to the top. I'm angry that when I was just good at my job, it wasn't good enough. When I was better than everyone and worked harder, it didn't get me ahead. I'm angry that it's a man's world and that I have to act like a man sometimes to get where I want to go. I'm angry that I can't find a man who completely understands me and accepts me. I'm angry that even my best friend doesn't get it. And I'm angry at you, Mama. I'm mad as hell that you left me all alone to try to figure this shit out for myself. Why did you do that? Why did you leave me?! Why?!!!”
Ritz broke into an uncontrollable cry. She cried as if her soul were dying. She had not cried like this since her mother died. She would whimper from time to time on occasion, when she would throw herself a small, but private, pity party. But those parties were infrequent. Ritz didn't allow herself to do much self-reflection or assessment. But she did believe in KIM— Keeping It Moving. KIM was Ritz's favorite hang-out partner. KIM never looked back, never made any excuses, and never asked for apologies.
Ritz's sobs seemed to want to drown her, which was strange, being in limbo between life and death. She couldn't feel any physical pain, but her emotions were so raw, she felt like her insides had been shredded and alcohol and salt had been poured on her wounds.
“Why, Mama?!”
Ritz's mother held her like the little baby she once was, rocking her back and forth.
“Baby, you're asking me something people have been asking since the dawn of man. You're asking me why I died. I can't answer that. I don't really know why. What I do know is what I told you before— everything happens for a reason. You're either getting a lesson or a blessing. Ritz, my death didn't happen to you. I didn't leave you. I died. It wasn't my choosing, believe me. And I didn't leave you, because I've always been here. Right here.”
She spread her hand over Ritz's heart.
“I've always been inside of you. Everything I have ever said to you since you were a baby is all inside you. My DNA is in you. I never left you. But that was a lesson I guess you never learned. Maddie tried to tell you that when she said I didn't raise you to be that way. She was trying to get you to remember who you were. She was trying to get you to remember that I was inside of you, always.”
Ritz's spirit was heaving as she tried to regain control and process what her mother was saying. She still didn't want to hear it. Ritz wanted her mother to tell her why she abandoned her, and she wasn't getting the answers she was looking for.
“And believe this, baby girl. By the time I left the earth, you had the foundation to handle everything the world would throw at you. The things I instilled in you before I left were more than enough for you to build on. And I gave you my sister— one of the most incredible people ever born— to balance you out. Everything that I wasn't, Maddie is. There were things to learn from her that you ignored. But you have time. Not much time, but you will have time. You will have all the time you need.”
“Mama, I don't care about time with them! I want time with you! We didn't have enough time, Mama. We didn't have enough time!”
Ritz's mother smiled. “Wrong and strong,” she said gently. “We had enough time. Compared to so many, we had so much time. Maybe not as much time as you would have liked, but more than enough time. We knew each other. We loved each other. I rocked you to sleep in my arms. I heard you tell me that you loved me. We were so blessed.”
“Mama, don't go.…”
“My baby, I have never gone. I will never go. When will you understand that?”
“Mama!”
“Don't be sad, beautiful girl. Be happy. Now you know the secret.”
“What secret?”
“The secret that will set you free: To know ultimate happiness, you must first know ultimate despair. You must first know what it feels like to die before you can truly appreciate how glorious it is to live.
“From now on, no more ‘wrong and strong,' baby girl. From now on, it's ‘right and strong.' I love you so much, Ritgina. I love you so much.…”
Ritgina. Mama had called her Ritgina. Why? She usually only called her by her birth name when Ritz had done something wrong.
Ritz felt her body jerk like she was being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Her mother's voice became warped again, like a slowed-down recording. And translucent ripples blurred the image. Ritz could no longer feel her mother's touch. She couldn't smell the lavender. She could hear the hea
rt monitor and through her lids see bright lights. And suddenly she felt pain. She felt physical pain and it was excruciating. She felt an electric bolt rip through her chest. She felt like she was on fire. She heard a man's voice say, “Clear!” And the bolt of lightning ripped through her once again.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Ritz heard the steady beep of the heart monitor, and the chaos around her was settling into a calm.
“She's back,” the man's voice said. “She's alive.”
7
The collect call came in at around nine in the evening, as it always did. Call from inmate number 96636.
“Yes, I'll accept,” Derek said.
“Hey, li'l bro!” It was Jayrod, Derek's brother, who was facing fifteen years for tax evasion related to his drug dealing. “Yo, thank you for taking care of that little thing for me!”
Jayrod couldn't say much more, because every letter, every correspondence, every single phone call was monitored from prison. The last thing he was going to do was implicate himself in a murder. He did, however, find some joy at the misfortune that befell Ritz Harper, and he wanted to let his brother know how much he appreciated him.
“Yeah, um. So how are you doing?” Derek wanted to change the subject.
“I'm feeling so good,” Jayrod said. “The next thing on my list is getting a new trial so I can get the fuck out of here. I mean, I'm well taken care of, but brother, this ain't home. And I'm itching to get back home. Can you imagine us riding side by side? We'll take over the world!”
Derek was uncomfortable with the notion of him and Jay-rod “reunited,” like Peaches & Herb. There was a part of him that really didn't want Jayrod to come home. Derek was running the business fine— better than fine, actually. He was able to take the enterprise to another level, a level that Jayrod could never attain.
He and his brother had totally different styles: Jayrod was loud, temperamental, and flashy. Derek was smooth and quiet. Jayrod would want to pick up where they left off. Derek had moved on, way, way on. He was looking forward to taking his profits and buying a few Laundromats and going completely legit.
Is the Bitch Dead, Or What? Page 3