29. Asha
Asha
The text came through at nine in the morning while I was setting up my station at the salon. Unknown number, no name.
I stared at it for a second, my heart hammering. Then the contact Crown Heights Color Correction lit up separately: Today. Someone's coming. Let her in.
My hands were shaking when I put the phone down on the counter.
I picked up my flat iron, set it back down, picked it up again.
Cee was in his chair by the door scrolling through his phone like every other day.
My nine-thirty was due in fifteen minutes.
Everything was normal. Everything was exactly the same as it had been yesterday and the day before that.
Except today was the day I was leaving.
I did my nine-thirty. A silk press for a woman who talked the entire time about her sister's wedding.
I nodded, asked questions, laughed when she made a joke about the bridesmaids' dresses.
My hands were steady on the iron. My voice was steady in the conversation.
Underneath all of it my brain was running logistics.
The bag was in the bathroom behind the dryer.
I'd packed it two days ago, the night after Omar's text about putting something together.
Smaller than the last one. One change of clothes, my phone charger, my wallet with the cash card.
No toiletries this time, no extra shoes.
I could buy that stuff later. The bag needed to be small enough that I could grab it and go without Cee noticing a bulge under my jacket.
My eleven o'clock came in looking apologetic. A color correction, a woman named Tricia who'd box-dyed her hair three times in two months and the underneath was practically orange. She sat in my chair and started explaining what she'd done while I sectioned her hair and assessed the damage.
"I know, I know," Tricia said, watching my face in the mirror. "My sister told me not to do it at home but the salon prices..."
"It's okay, we can fix it." My voice was calm, professional. My hands were steady on the clips. Underneath the counter my knee was bouncing so hard the station was vibrating. "It's gonna take a while though. The layers of color need to come off one at a time."
"However long it takes."
However long it takes. I mixed the corrector, applied it to the first section, set the timer. Twenty minutes per section, four sections minimum. The math put me finishing around one-fifteen, which gave me forty-five minutes before Shanay arrived.
Forty-five minutes. My chest tightened.
The salon door opened. My head snapped toward it before I could stop myself. A woman I didn't recognize walked in, looked around, said she had the wrong address, and left.
My heart was slamming against my ribs. Cee was ten feet away in his chair. He hadn't looked up from his phone. The door had opened and closed. It was nothing, it was nobody. I was standing here with color corrector on my gloves, my pulse going so fast I was dizzy.
I breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Tricia was talking about her sister's wedding colors and I nodded along while my hands worked on autopilot, painting the corrector through each section with strokes I could do in my sleep.
The timer went off for the first section. I rinsed, checked the lift, moved to the next. The orange was fading but the process was slow. My eyes kept going to the clock above Cee's head. Eleven-forty. Eleven-fifty. The second section timer went off. I rinsed again.
The salon door opened. I flinched. A regular client coming to pick up product she'd ordered. Cee glanced up, clocked her, went back to his phone. My hands were shaking inside the gloves. I gripped the applicator brush tighter to steady them.
"You okay?" Tricia asked, watching me in the mirror.
"Long morning." I smiled. "Just need some coffee."
Twelve-fifteen. Two more sections. I worked through them methodically, my body doing one thing while my brain ran the extraction sequence over and over.
Shanay arrives at two. Cape on, consultation, five minutes of hair talk.
Bag from the bathroom. Walk to Cee, tell him we're going to a supplier.
Walk out. Car around the corner. Drive to Bed-Stuy. Gone.
The door opened again. My whole body went rigid. A delivery driver with a package for the nail salon next door. Wrong address. He left.
I finished Tricia's color at one-ten. Blew her out, styled it, showed her the result in the hand mirror. She loved it. She paid. She left. I cleaned my station, swept the hair, organized my products. My one-thirty had cancelled that morning, which left the gap I needed.
One-twenty. Forty minutes.
Nene texted at noon: You good?
Yeah. Two o'clock.
I'll be praying for you, girl.
Pray hard.
I deleted both messages.
Every minute between one-twenty and one-thirty felt like ten.
I reorganized my product shelf twice. I cleaned my mirrors.
I checked the contents of my bag in the bathroom one more time.
I stood at my station pretending to scroll through my booking app while Cee sat ten feet away and the clock ticked forward in increments that seemed to be getting slower.
At one-thirty I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and pulled the bag out from behind the dryer. I unzipped it, checked the contents one more time, zipped it back up. Tucked it under my jacket on the hook behind the bathroom door where I could grab it in three seconds.
The mirror showed me what it always showed me. Same face. Same eyes. Same woman who'd been living a lie since Atlanta. In thirty minutes someone was walking through that salon door and I was going to leave with them and I was never coming back to Supreme's apartment.
I was terrified. My hands were shaking again. I ran them under cold water, dried them, pressed them against the counter until the shaking stopped.
Then I went back to my station.
At exactly two o'clock the salon door opened and a woman walked in.
She was tall, beautiful, dressed in something simple and expensive that said money without trying. Her hair was natural, pulled back, her skin flawless. She looked around the salon and smiled.
Cee glanced up from his phone, clocked her, went back to scrolling.
"Hi," she said, coming to my station with a warm smile. "I called about a consultation? I'm Shanay."
"Hey, girl. Come on over." I gestured to my chair. "Sit down, let me have a look."
Shanay sat down and I put the cape around her shoulders, smoothing it at the back. She looked at me in the mirror and her smile didn't change but her eyes said everything. I'm here. We're doing this. Stay calm.
"So what are you thinking?" I asked, running my fingers through her hair like I was assessing it. "What are we working with?"
"I've been wanting to do something different," Shanay said, her voice light and conversational. Cee was ten feet away. "Maybe some highlights? Something to switch it up."
"Your hair's gorgeous as it is," I told her. "But I could see some caramel tones working around the face. Warm it up a little."
We talked about hair for five minutes. Real talk, real suggestions, real consultation. Shanay knew enough about hair to hold the conversation convincingly. Cee didn't look up once.
Then Shanay leaned closer to the mirror like she was examining her ends. "You ready?" she asked quietly.
My stomach dropped. "Yeah."
"Bag?"
"Bathroom. Give me thirty seconds."
I put down the comb, told Shanay I was going to grab some product samples from the back, and walked to the bathroom. I closed the door, grabbed the bag from behind the bathroom door, put it on under my jacket. The bulk was minimal. If Cee looked closely he'd notice but Cee never looked closely.
I came back to the station and picked up the consultation like nothing had happened.
"You know what," Shanay said after another minute, "I just remembered my friend told me about this amazing product supplier on Fulton. She said they have exactly the tones I'm looking for. Could you come check it out with me? I'd love your professional opinion before I commit."
I pretended to think about it. "I got a gap before my next client. Let me just tell Cee."
I walked over to where he was sitting. "Hey, Cee. I'm gonna walk with my client to a supplier on Fulton real quick. She wants my opinion on some color products. I'll be back in like thirty minutes."
Cee looked up from his phone. "You want me to drive y'all?"
"Nah, it's two blocks. We'll walk."
He shrugged. "Aight. I'll be here."
I grabbed my phone from the counter. Shanay was already at the door holding it open for me like a client waiting on her stylist. We walked out together, turned left, walked past the bodega on the corner, turned right.
Shanay's car was parked halfway down the block. A black sedan with tinted windows. She unlocked it with the fob as we approached.
"Get in," she said, her voice shifting from salon warmth to something quieter, more serious.
I got in the passenger seat. Shanay pulled into traffic heading toward Bed-Stuy.
For a full minute neither of us spoke. The streets passed outside the window. Crown Heights giving way to the border, then Bed-Stuy proper. I kept my eyes on the road and my hands in my lap.
"You okay?" Shanay asked.
"Ask me in an hour."
She glanced at me, then back at the road. "You're safe now. You know that, right?"
"I'll believe it when Cee stops texting me asking where I am."
As if on cue my phone buzzed. Cee: You coming back soon?
Yeah, the supplier had way more stock than I expected. Might be another twenty minutes.
That bought me time. Enough to get to the apartment.
Shanay parked outside the building in Bed-Stuy.
I recognized it from the times Omar had brought me here.
The same entrance, the same staircase, the same third-floor hallway.
But this time I wasn't sneaking. I wasn't watching the street for Supreme's people.
I wasn't counting minutes until I had to get back to Cee's car.
Shanay unlocked the apartment door and held it open.
Portia Baptiste was standing in the kitchen.
She'd barely aged in the fourteen years since I'd last seen her.
Pristine silk press tied up, freshly pressed clothes.
Petite, elegant, already making herself at home in Omar's space.
She'd been cooking because the counter was covered in containers and the stove had something simmering.
She looked at me when I came through the door and her whole face softened.
She crossed the kitchen and pulled me into her arms before I could say a word. Her hug was tight, warm, the same hug my mother used to give me before the cancer took her when I was twelve. I hadn't been held like that in eighteen years. By anyone.
"Oh baby," Portia said against my shoulder. "You're here now. You're safe."
I started crying. I hadn't planned on it but I couldn't stop. The tears came from somewhere deep, old, exhausted. I stood in the kitchen sobbing into her shoulder while she held me, rubbed my back, said nothing except "I know, baby. I know."
When I finally pulled back she held my face in both hands and looked at me properly. "Look at you. Omar told me you were beautiful but I don't think I remembered just how much. You grew up good, sweetheart."
I laughed through the tears. "You remember me?"
"Baby, how could I forget? You used to sit at my kitchen table eating everything I put in front of you." She let go of my face and turned back to the stove. "Now come and eat. I made rice, chicken, greens, and cornbread. You're too skinny and I'm fixing that today."
I sat down at the kitchen table. Shanay sat next to me and squeezed my hand once under the table. Portia put a plate in front of me piled so high I couldn't see the pattern on the china.
"Eat," Portia instructed. "All of it."
I ate. The food was rich, warm, seasoned properly.
I ate every bite because Portia Baptiste told me to, because for the first time since I could remember I was sitting at a table where nobody was watching me perform.
Nobody was timing my responses or monitoring my face or waiting for me to say the right thing at the right moment.
I was sitting in Omar's apartment eating his mother's food with his brother's wife beside me and the door to Supreme's cage was closed behind me for good.
My phone buzzed again. Cee: Miss Asha, everything good? You been gone a while.
I looked at the screen for a long moment. Then I turned the phone off, set it on the table face down, and went back to eating.
Portia watched me finish the plate, then put another spoonful of greens on it without asking.
"Good girl," she said.
I ate those too.