Now staring down at Momma’s remains, I was certain that she was never going to “wake” again. Wearing a black dress that Mr. Sharp made for her, and designer shoes, a short-length stylish wig, and a string of pearls that I had no idea about, Momma was dead for sure, because she did not look anything like a memory or photo of herself. And she didn’t leap up to complain about the outfit she had been laid to rest in. Since my mind would not move beyond 1994, Momma’s corpse appeared to be a complete stranger. Since the people inside me had worked feverishly hard to convert Momma into an angel in my mind, she couldn’t be the crackhead in the box with the bullet wound in her face. She couldn’t be the lady pile of deflated flesh that looked much cheaper than the conservative but expensive clothes she wore now.
Still my tears were spilling onto her face, as my heart knew for sure that Momma was “no more.” Crouched over the opened coffin with my head in the box and my back to the empty seats in the room, I was wretched. Wretched, a word I learned from Elisha’s book of synonyms when I was searching for new ways of describing my family sorrows: wretched, miserable, unfortunate, sorrowful, pitiful, contemptible, and downright melancholy.
The night before the wake I had not slept, not even for three seconds. Nothing could calm me. Due to the lessons of loving Momma, I hated drugs, wouldn’t take an aspirin, a sleeping pill, an upper, a downer, a drink of any alcohol, a puff, a snort, an injection, a tab of ecstasy, or even something prescribed. I was so cozy with pain. We go so way back, that when it shows up, I let it fully fuck me head on, till it almost breaks me. Then I fight back. Eventually, I recover. There’s no formula for a recovery date. It could be hours, days, weeks, months, even as long as a year.
“Momma, remember you said one day I would be a great dancer and that people would pay me millions to move my hips?” I cried into the coffin. “Well, you were right. Don’t worry; I’m no stripper or stuck-up ballerina. I’m a showgirl in fancy expensive places, on the main stage, facing audiences of hundreds and thousands. Nope, I’m not a ‘showgirl,’ Momma. As you would say, ‘I’m the motherfucking show stopper!’ It’s true.
“A hair hustler who lived in a tree house, and played a meanass drum in the wilderness underneath a full moon, got a gig in a casino owned by some Natives. He was so confident in my dancing, Momma, that he produced a show featuring his drumming and my dancing.
“I am the finale, Momma, the headliner. No one tells me what to wear. After my first performance, and a second sold-out show, I caught a big budget for costumes and styles, anything I wanted. I’ve been a beautiful bird, an exotic zebra, an alluring leopard, a black lion, even a lady cobra. Months later, I was given an orchestra. At rehearsals I’d sit and tell them, I want the sound of thunder, lightning, or a light rain. I want the French horns to make the ‘sound of fog,’ and the saxophone to make the feeling of love. I want the tuba to fill the air with fear, or the violin to send the scents of sweetness. I want the bass to arouse me, then the guitar to make me cum. I want the piano to calm me down. I want the xylophone to feel like moonlight and the trumpet to call out the sun.
“No matter how unique my requests are, they listened to me. They would perform their music, to be hypnotized by my hips and movements. The Natives think of me as a Native telling their story through dance. But it’s just me, Momma, Porsche, dancing away my sorrows.” I laughed a low laugh that came from somewhere in my gut.
“I know, Momma, what you wanna know? How much did it pay exactly and what the fuck am I complaining about when a rich bitch should be happy? The least it ever paid me was $2,500 a show. The most it ever paid me was $100,000, a weekend night performance. How often did I work? Every night for more than a year. My contract ended weeks ago. They offered me even more money per show to stay on. I wanted to refuse, but I was saving up that paper to buy back our Long Island palace for you, Momma. I wanted to be so caked up I could buy it in cash, and still have enough money left over to chill for a few years. I figured if you got your house and a new badass Benz, even flyer than the one Poppa got for you, you’d be ready to heal and hold your head up high. So, I gobbled up the extra dough and trained an understudy. She never got a chance to perform in my place. I was always ready, on time when the curtain lifted. Besides, everyone knew the audiences were on their feet for me.
“When my body began moving and expressing, I was dancing away my emotions, memories, and my strongest unfulfilled desires. I began dancing at first in one Native casino. Then I caught a cross-country Native casino tour. It became so popular that a rich European promoter booked our tour to France and England and Germany, as well as places I never heard of before, like Belgium and Poland. You should see those Europeans, especially the Germans, cheer for a young black girl moving her hips to some drumming so powerful it put me into a trance.
“When I got more comfortable on stage than in real life, I added on a hip-hop set. I never knew hip-hop would cause such fever worldwide. But it did, as I moved inside of those driving beats.
“What am I complaining about? I’m so angry, Momma, so angry. I promised to get back all of the things that were taken from you, but I didn’t deliver to you in time. I let you down, and it hurts, Momma.”
I remained crouched there in the coffin for five hours. Mr. Sharp tried to move me, but I was “inconsolable.”
Me and Momma talked bad about our relatives who didn’t even fucking show up on Momma’s death day. Aunt Laurie, and all her sisters and brothers, their children, nephews and nieces, cousins to me, none of ’em came through.
Siri didn’t come, but she and I had already discussed that. Momma didn’t like Siri, didn’t like Riot. Both of them were the two women who loved me the most. And if I had invited Riot to the wake, she might’ve fooled Momma. She looked so different. When she had told me back when I was thirteen and she was seventeen that she was working on something big, I pictured her holding up an armored truck packed with millions just for the fun of it. I thought maybe she would swipe a huge diamond from a secured vault, just to showcase the mastery of her mind. Instead, she used the profits from her hustle to change her face and prints.
“Not for vanity, like some stupid fucking robot,” Riot said, but for her survival, her hidden identity. She said she wasn’t ever gonna get knocked and locked down again. She’d kill her captors before she ever let them take her. I could dig it.
“Now Riot’s an owner of a management company, Momma. She does deals, big deals, and she plays hard. Her brother Revolution got an army that protects her, her money, investments, and clients. She manages me, Momma. I gladly pay her that fifteen percent to suck all of the stress, drama, and filth out of my life as a young, famous-anonymous dance phenomenon. She talks the business. I simply dance, shop, and chill. See how the tables turn, Momma, when you love hard, push hard, and fight and hold on to the very end? Now Riot works for me. Imagine that.”
I wish Momma had liked Siri. Siri would have hummed a beautiful song for Momma’s send-off. Instead, Momma laid there surrounded by silence thicker than cake, my random interruptions, and my tears.
By early evening Big Johnnie, Esmeralda, Bernard the Butcher, even the flower lady showed up. Even though they believed Momma was only my aunty, they had grief in their eyes. After all, they believed that I already lost my mother first and now my aunt who raised me after my mother’s death. They were grieving for me. Who was grieving for Momma?
Mr. Sharp had a photo collage of Momma at the wake. He promised to keep it for me. The piano lady he paid looked bored and frustrated. The undertaker showed up and said, “If you want to say a few words, you should say them now. I’m sorry to say time is almost up for this ceremony.”
Moments later, I pulled my head out of Momma’s mahogany coffin, turned to face the almost empty room, and spoke my heart.
“Momma was an angel. No one loved her more than me. No one ever will.”
Chapter 45
Wired and without rest, I jumped up and down on the mattress in my hotel room. It was now
the morning of Momma’s burial. I felt a peculiar rush of energy. Siri and I showered. As I moisturized my skin, seated before the mirror, I looked in and saw behind me Momma’s rejected death clothes, Gianni Versace and the stilettos.
“I’m gonna wear those,” I told Siri.
“A white minidress to a burial!” Siri said, “No one would do that.”
“Momma would!” I said. “Today is Momma’s last day and I’m gonna represent her how I know she would want to be seen.”
• • •
Mr. Sharp was in my hotel lobby. “I’m going to drive myself,” I told him.
“It’s not a good day to drive yourself,” he warned me calmly.
I flashed him our secret sign and left.
Heads of hotel workers and businessmen were turning as I walked. They loved to see my hips sway. I ignored every eye, every word overheard. I jumped in my Benz soon as the valet brought it around. I was “Lana the stunner.” Pushing an eleven-day, brand-new whip worth one hundred thousand dollars more than the red Benz Poppa had bought Momma, that Momma never got to drive or enjoy. I pumped up the music and said out loud, “C’mon Momma, let’s go out in style!”
• • •
Mr. Sharp’s throwback Benz was in the distance behind me, far off enough, but not so far that he wasn’t captured in my rearview mirror. Switching lanes and radio stations, I was searching for a song Lana would like to play and hear. I was hoping she felt comfortable in this outfit I wore for her. Maneuvering around the traffic with the notorious New York rough riders, rough drivers crowd, it was hard to think straight and drive straight, but a Benz floats and glides over New York potholes and around the cones, obstacles, and trash on the roads and highways. Besides, a Benz was Momma’s favorite ride and only choice. That’s why I copped it.
I looked to my passenger side when I heard Siri humming. She wasn’t sitting there. Was I tripping? Nope. She wasn’t. Her voice was coming through the radio and sounding incredible on my Bose speaker system. “What song is she singing?” I asked.
Momma wanted me to switch stations or just cut it off. I couldn’t. It was a love song so sweet it stirred my insides and moved me to tears. Siri was singing and someone was strumming that guitar so magically the strings sent a vibration between my thighs. It was two guitars, one electric, one acoustic, so arousing.
The radio DJ announced, “That song is moving up the charts and heating up the countdown. It’s the title track from a new film debuting this weekend. The song track is ‘Elisha,’ and the movie is called A Love Supreme. Highly anticipated! New York City, we’re taking your calls.”
My thoughts were suspended. I rolled off the wrong exit ramp and pulled over on a curb beneath a tree.
“You’re caller number seven,” the radio DJ said.
“Y’all should have him in the studio!” the caller said.
“Who?” the DJ asked.
“Elisha Immanuel!” the caller shouted and some girl was screaming in the background of her call. “He shot the film in Brooklyn, and everybody wanna see it. He’s a crazy cutie!” she said.
“Caller, gives us your name,” the radio DJ asked.
“It’s Takia from Brownsville!” she screamed.
“Guess what? We have Elisha Immanuel in the studio with us this morning. Say hello!”
“Oh, shit!” the girl screamed and dropped the phone.
“Whassup Takia, it’s Elisha. Hope you bring all of Brownsville out this Friday. Everybody check out my new movie, A Love Supreme, when it opens this weekend!” There was applause. “Brooklyn don’t wait! New York don’t wait! BX don’t wait! Queens don’t wait! . . . Money-making Manhattan don’t wait!” Elisha was pumping it up.
“Have you been getting this kind of reaction as you’re promoting your first independent film around the country? Do you hear the excitement of the caller!” the radio DJ asked Elisha.
“Girls tend to like me,” Elisha said calmly and laughed some.
“But fellas, take it easy. I got mine, won’t grab yours,” he said confidently.
“That’s whassup,” the DJ responded.
“We’re in the studio with seventeen-year-old Elisha Immanuel, upcoming, independent, talented, young black man, and film director. There’s talk about Sony Pictures and other big movie houses trying to sign you to a big seven-figure deal even before your first film debuts this weekend. Is that right?”
“True, but I’m feeling this independent route real strong. I’ve used the opportunity to boost a group of smaller businesses and Return Address Entertainment is taking a chance in this industry, that we can produce big box office hits without the Hollywood machine behind us. Our motto is, ‘Show the people what they want to see.’ ”
“You’ve been touring the country, pumping up and promoting this film big time. So if all hoods show up strong in theaters across the country this weekend, you’re like ‘ching ching.’ Your pockets gonna fatten like crazy! Talk to us about why you named your company Return Address Entertainment.”
“Well, see there’s this girl I love . . .,” Elisha said.
Then the studio audience and DJ started cheering him on.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the radio DJ suddenly said, interrupting him. “You’re about to break a lot of hearts . . .,” the DJ said.
“A man should be able to say when he loves someone, right?” Elisha asked. Things turned silent.
“There’s a girl I love, she travels all around the world. She sends me postcards and sweet letters and gifts, but there’s never a return address,” Elisha said.
“Sounds deep. Why do you think she does that?”
“She’s afraid to let me love her. But she made me a deal. She said after I make my first film, she would let me wife her. She probably can’t hear me right now, but if you listening, meet me in your wedding dress on Friday at three at our spot.”
The DJ hit the applause button again and there was nothing but clapping on top of the moving beats. A song by Jagged Edge, “Let’s Get Married,” played, leading into commercials.
“That was Elisha Immanuel, y’all, one of Brooklyn’s Finest. You also heard him playing guitar on the title track, named after himself, ‘Elisha.’ He’s a hell of a promoter, marketer, and director, and a huge hit with the ladies, just another young black Brooklyn millionaire.”
My heart with the five holes in it was swelling. I think it dropped into my lap. Parked beneath a tree, I didn’t know the feeling of a nervous breakdown, but my nerves were pulsating, my whole body shaking. I was Porsche. I was Lana. I was Siri. I was Ivory. I was Onatah. I was splitting into little puzzle pieces that I couldn’t put back together.
Elisha was doing that to me, again. He was loving me in a way I had longed to be loved by others in my family, with passion, loyalty, strength, and with battle in his blood.
Oh no! Elisha’s love was highlighting the bitter, tasteless, and poisonous love I got from F A M I L Y. His love was turning Momma the angel back into Momma the crackhead. His love was turning Poppa the king into Poppa the fuckup. His love was turning Winter into the conceited, selfish bitch that never came to get me while she was free and balling, the same big sister who laughed at and never saved Momma. Elisha’s love was turning Lexus and Mercedes into the little rich girls who forgot their roots and lost their feelings for their momma who birthed them. I fucking loved Elisha so much, that I couldn’t love them no more.
I caught a migraine headache, felt temporarily blind, and was weeping all over.
• • •
Plowing into the graveyard, I jammed the brake so suddenly my floating Benz jerked. I took a deep breath in and blew out.
This is the day I bury them all, I thought to myself.
Finally, looking through my windshield, I saw armed full-geared-up police guards in the firing position. I froze.
“That’s right, fucking kill me! Why not! I’m so sick of being a fugitive.” I wiped away my tears in the mirror and slid on my Chanel sunglasses. When I finally pushe
d open my door, Busta Rhymes was wilding on the mic the way only he do. My Dolce & Gabbana stilettos were sinking into the moist earth. I grabbed my Birkin bag. “You’re in a movie scene, Porsche, like when you were helping Elisha with his auditions. Except you’re the star now. You were betrayed by all of these people. Don’t let them see you hurt. Show them what they love more than they ever loved you, these fashions and styles, these whips, beautiful hips, and this fucking money.”
Standing beside Winter, cause of everybody living she cared the least about me, I didn’t have to say too many lines to her. I delivered each one without a sprinkle of love or affection in it. The same way she would’ve if it was the other way around. Winter was defeated. It was all in her eyes. Poppa was still sweating Winter, as normal. Poppa cried over Momma.
“Too late!” I mumbled to myself. Mercedes and Lexus stayed stuck on Midnight and to themselves. The armed guards crowded their cuffed prisoners, Poppa, and Winter.
As the closed coffin was lowered into the ground I kicked dirt over it with my stilettos. My heart cracked some more. I kicked some more. I was burying Momma and Poppa and Winter, all at the same time.
• • •
They were all gone back to their balls and chains and cells. I sat in the graveyard soil in Momma’s white death dress and cried until my heart could feel free.
Chapter 46
Riding in the backseat of my blacked-out, black Mercedes Benz 600, I was watching Midnight through my rearview mirror. He was chauffeuring me, as he had chauffeured Ricky Santiaga many times in the past. His beautiful black silhouette was all I could see at the moment.
As I was exiting the graveyard gates, he had eased off of the brick pillar and walked calmly in front of my vehicle, sure that I would stop my car before running him down.