2. Riot St. James #2
While she walked away, I used this time to remove the sweatshirt that I was wearing, and from there, you could really see how tiny I was.
I was left in just a white undershirt, with my sweatpants.
Because I was facing the mirror, I could vividly see myself.
I didn’t have to sit here and try to look angry.
I just naturally had a face that had its own mug. Beautiful as hell though.
It was no surprise that I was beautiful.
My daddy was a handsome man, and the woman that was standing behind me was beautiful too.
I’ve been told since I was a little girl, that I had a face that was out of this world, and people used to try and convince my mom to put me in pageants and shit, but I was never the girly type, and I made it clear to my mom at an early age, that I didn’t want to be a part of pageants, modeling, or any of those other things that she wanted me a part of.
The same golden skin that my mom had, she’d passed that down to me as well. My grandma would often compare our skin to a butterscotch glow.
Looking at myself in the mirror, as I was slouched down in the chair a little bit, I paid close attention to my sculpted cheekbones, and the sharp jawline that I had.
My jawline didn’t make me look masculine, but it was very defined, and something that I would always get complimented on when people compliment my face card.
I had the same perfect cupid’s bow as my mom, Ari, and a lot of the women on my mom’s side.
The perfect way to describe my eye color was honey- amber eyes.
I used that description because my mom told me that that’s the description that my daddy used to use about my eyes.
They were a mixture between light brown and hazel.
It just determined how hard the sun was shining down on me.
There was a small beauty mark right up under my left eye, and if you paid close attention to my face, you would see the permanent scar that was right above my right eyebrow.
I had to get a few stitches there in my childhood because I was outside, playing football with my brother and his friends, and I fell right on the concrete, damn near busting that part of my head opened.
My hair was thick and heavy. Something that was passed down to me from my mother because we had the same hair type.
My father’s genes had given me the sandy brown hair color that I had.
My face card was lethal, and I didn’t have to do a damn thing to enhance it.
Most days, I just put on chap stick, and I went on about my day.
“Who put these braids in your hair?” my mom asked, standing behind me, looking at me through the mirror, as she already started to take one of the braids a loose.
“My cellmate,” I let her know.
“Ima take them out and give you a good treatment. I know you don’t like wearing your hair straight but just wear it straight for about one week.
I want to do a blow out on you, so that I can properly cut your ends.
You need your ends cut badly,” she responded, and I nodded my head, not going to even fight her on it.
Before she could say anything else to me, her phone started ringing. I watched her through the mirror, seeing as she pulled her phone from her back pocket, looked at the screen, so that she could see who was calling her, and then she answered it.
“What’s up Rah?” my mom answered. That was my auntie Rasheeda. She was Ari’s mom. She was the oldest sister out of the four of them.
“Nothing. What time Bean get out? I want to see her,” the phone was on speaker because I could hear my aunt clearly.
The fact that she didn’t know that I was home already proved to me that Ari hadn’t told her mom. If she had told her, then she would have told my mom, since the two of them were so close, and it would have ruined the surprise.
“My baby home. She right here,” my mom said proudly, and she tried to put the phone in front of me, but I waved it out of the way, as if it was contagious, and I didn’t want to talk.
I saw that it was a facetime call, and my aunt could see me waving the phone out of the way. My mom knew that I had my days where I could act funny with people, so she was behind me cracking up.
“Girl, you already came home on that funny acting ass shit,” my auntie talked shit into the phone, which was her specialty.
“Take the phone Bean, so you can talk to your auntie, and I can take these old ass braids out your hair,” my mom said, and that’s when I took the phone from her, held it in my hand, and I looked into the screen, my eyes on my beautiful auntie, that looked as if her and my mom could be twin sisters.
My mama, and all my aunties were ghetto as fuck, but this auntie right here was the hoodest of them all.
I’ve heard so many stories about my auntie Rah busting niggas windows out of their cars, flattening their tires, slicing hoes up in the face, the whole nine.
I tried to sit here and act all tough like I wasn’t happy to see her, but the smile eventually crept in as I looked over at her.
“What’s up? Where you at with all that noise in the background? It ain’t even 10 in the morning yet, and you already on the move. You can never just sit the fuck down,” I shot, and my mama laughed behind me because she knew it was true.
I carried on with my aunties like they were my friends. Plus, my auntie Rah was the cool aunt, so she wasn’t going to get on me about cursing at her.
“Girl, I’m leaving the gym. That’s the music that you hear playing. I’m getting ready to walk out now. Who picked you up from jail this morning?” she wanted to know.
“Ari,” I responded.
“I should have known that her ass was up to no good when I was trying to track her location this morning, and I saw that she turned it off. What’s your plans tonight? Ma know you home? How about we do something later at her house for you?” she suggested, and I looked at her like she was crazy.
“Rah, I just got out of jail. I’m not coming home from college, or war.
I don’t want to celebrate coming back home from jail.
My grandma don’t know I’m home yet. Ima go see her, and papa later.
I gotta surprise them. I was lying to them, telling them that I didn’t know when I was getting out, so don’t tell them that I’m home. I want it to be a surprise,” I shared.
You could hear the seriousness in my voice. I loved my grandparents to death. The two of them were probably the reason my ass was still alive. I know they were praying heavens gates down for me, hoping that I didn’t end up like my daddy, and my brother.
“I’m not going to say nothing. Ima go home and take a shower, and then I’m going to come to the salon, so that I can see you. You need something?” she asked me.
“No. I’m okay,” I assured her.
We talked for a little while longer, and then we hung up.
I handed my mom back her phone, and she placed it in her pocket.
She was moving fast, taking out my braids.
While she was doing that, she was asking me a bunch of questions.
She really was just asking me questions about jail, wanting me to go into detail about my stay, but I kept everything short with her, not wanting to talk about it.
She caught on quickly, reading the room, seeing that jail wasn’t something that I wanted to converse about, so she dropped it.
“You know you can come home, Riot. You don’t have to stay with Ari,” she said, once all the braids were out of my head.
“No. We butt heads too much when I live with you. I feel like it fucks up our relationship too. You have rules at your house that I’m not willing to abide by, so I think it’s best that I don’t live with you,” I let her know, and like I said something crazy, I could see her rolling her neck, and her eyes, not liking what I said.
“Riot, what rules would I possibly have for you at your age? Your twenty- one years old. If your ass wasn’t listening to my rules when you were a minor, I know damn well that you aren’t going to listen to shit that I tell you at this age,” she went on a rant, and I kept quiet, not saying anything else after that.
She waved me off, and then she turned the chair around that I was sitting in, so that I could face her.
She pulled her phone out, and when I suspected that she was getting ready to take a video of me, more than likely to post it on social media or something for her business page, I tried to stand up, so that I could walk away.
“Girl, don’t start. You know I want to get a before and after of you,” she fussed.
“Take a before and after of my hair or something. Don’t post me. I don’t want to be posted. You know that,” I fussed right back at her ass. She knew that I didn’t do that social media shit.
I’ve never had social media. All that Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok that people be talking about, I’ve never had any of those platforms. I never understood the logic behind it.
Why the fuck would I get on the internet, posting my location, posting the shit that I got, or any of my successes?
A lot of people on social media were monitoring spirits, just wanting to see the shit you post, knowing damn well that they didn’t like you in real life, or just watching you in general, so that they could pray on your downfall.
Besides, I lived wrong, so social media didn’t fit my lifestyle.
I’ll fuck around and post the wrong shit, and the feds will be kicking down my door, ready to take a bitch back to jail, so no, I didn’t do social media, and I didn’t like being posted on social media.
Even though I wasn’t on it, a bitch stayed trending on it.
While I was locked up, Ari would keep me updated, telling me that my newest mugshot was going viral again on social media.
Every mugshot that I’ve ever had, has gone viral on the internet, but the charge that I just went in for, it did numbers.
My shit had millions of shares. They weren’t sharing it for the charges, either.
People were sharing my mugshot because of the face.
The world has never seen a bitch as pretty as me before.
“Riot, sit still and let me take a damn video of you, girl. I’ll post the video when you leave because I know how you are about being posted in real time.
I hate that you move like that. You move the same fuckin way Grim did.
That shit can’t be good for your mental health.
You act like somebody is out to get you every second of your life.
Just one damn video!” she snapped, pushing me back in the chair, so that I wouldn’t move.
I gave in, giving this lady what she was asking for. I didn’t even try to hide the annoyance on my face, as she stood in front of me, taking the video.
“Girl, I don’t give a fuck that you sitting here looking mad, either.
You’re doing me a favor, beautiful. When I post this video, it’s an ego boost for me, knowing that my daughter is the prettiest, and all she gotta do is sit there, and look fuckin crazy, and the mug still going to eat!
The face on you is perfect. 10/ 10,” she hyped me, and cursed me out altogether.
If anybody in this life was my biggest fan and was going to constantly remind me how beautiful I was, it was going to be this lady right here. She didn’t miss a chance doing it.
Once she finished, and she got her video, she had me go over to the wash bowl, so that she could wash my hair.
My mom had a gentle touch, so while she washed my hair, I found myself dozing off a couple of times.
I didn’t get uncomfortable, and start moving around until it was time for her to blow my hair out, and flat iron it.
I hated that combo. It felt like the blow dryer settings would be on hell, and I hated the flat iron because I was anticipating getting burned each time.
With all the hair that was on my head, mixed with her having to cut my ends, she didn’t finish my hair until almost two hours later.
Now, here I was, with the salon cape around me, looking at myself in the mirror.
My hair hadn’t been straightened in years, so I didn’t know that it was this long.
I really looked beautiful right now. The outside was beautiful, but the inside was ugly because I was fighting so many things that I didn’t like to talk about.
I watched as my mom took her hands, sweeping my long hair forward, so that it was able to drape over both my shoulders. This way, you were able to see the length, and the fullness of it. As I was sitting, the hair was long enough to nearly graze my waist.
Instead of keeping my eyes on myself, I looked up, so that I could look at my mom, who was standing behind me in the mirror, looking at me with a gloss in her eyes, making it obvious that she was proud of her handiwork, and of the daughter that she had produced.
I might not have been the daughter that she thought she would have, but I’m sure that she was proud of me, nonetheless.
“You’re a beautiful girl, Riot. I love you so much.
I need you to know that you’re not the easiest to love because you make it so hard, and you do a damn good job at pushing love away, but girl, I love you.
You’re the only child that I have left. I’m not going to stand here and question you about your plan because I’m smart enough to know what it is.
I won’t stand here and try to tell you how to live your life.
I did that already. I did it until I was blue in the face, and I’ve finally gotten to a point where I gotta let you spread your wings, fly, and live life as you see fit.
When I come at you aggressive, it tarnishes the relationship that we have, and I don’t want that for us,” she started, and I knew that this wasn’t the end, so I kept quiet, allowing her to finish.
“Just know that your brother and your daddy are no longer here. The same life that you feel compelled to live, and like it’s the only option for you, just know that that life is the same thing that took them away from us.
All I ask is that you be careful. I can’t lose the only child that I have left,” her voice cracked a little bit when she said that.
“I got you ma,” I responded, leaving it at that.
There was nothing else that needed to be said. She knew the life that I was prepared to live. She wasn’t in support of it, but she’s come to terms to just accepting it.
I was home, and I was ready to get the ball rolling. I was ready to hustle.