CHAPTER FIVE
When she left the shelter and got in her beloved Mustang, she had to pump the brakes a few times to get it to crank up. Then she was off to work.
She loved her Mustang. She was proud when she saved up enough to buy it used.
And although it still gave her decent miles to the gallon, she knew it was on its last legs.
She was going to have to invest in another one sooner than she could afford to, but she knew it was just a matter of time before she had to get it done.
But positivity, she thought. Remember positivity? Stop looking at the negative and be positive!
But she still turned off Kendrick Lamar singing Luther and turned on JHud singing Spotlight.
Which was spot-on. Because she got tired real quick of living under everybody else’s critical gaze, too, and how they complained about everything she did.
And how they treated her as if she wasn’t worthy of love or happiness or anything but what she could do for them or what they could get out of her.
Especially all those trifling-ass, sorry-ass men she used to know and love.
The only thing good that came out of all of those bad relationships was that their cheating and conniving only made her shell harder and harder to crack.
Now she didn’t take crap from anybody. Including those catty-ass ladies at the salon who claimed to be her friend but was only watching, keeping that spotlight on her, to see her fail too.
But this time next year she was going to open her own salon, have her own clients rather than the clients the salon assigned to her, and do her own thing.
It was tough in Brooklyn to launch out on your own with those high-behind rents and the fact that there was a salon every few feet in her neck of the woods, but despite those odds she was still going to do it and going to be successful at it.
That belief was what got her up in the mornings.
That belief was what kept her going during the day.
Forget that it had been nearly ten years since she first made that pledge, and she’d made it every single year since.
The closest she’d ever gotten to opening anything at all was when she went in together with her then-boyfriend/partner who took the downpayment money she’d been cobbling together for years and skipped town.
She got so angry with that fool that she got a gun from a drug guy she knew and started searching for that asshole like she was Dog the bounty hunter.
Thank God she never found him or he would have been sleeping in his grave and she would have been sleeping in prison for the rest of her life.
When she came back to herself, she decided that nobody, nor any amount of money, was worth ruining her life over. She moved on.
That was two years ago. She had to start over from scratch. Again.
When she stopped at a red light and looked further up the block and saw somebody she knew standing on the corner jabbering with another guy, she couldn’t believe it. “What the hell? No he didn’t lie to me like that!”
As soon as that light turned green she hurried through that intersection and slung her car over to the side of the road. She sat her coffee in her cupholder and her croissant on the armrest and quickly got out. She hurried across that sidewalk.
“JoJo?” The guy standing next to him on that corner was hitting him on the arm. “JoJo, ain’t that that girl?”
JoJo Riley frowned. “What girl? And stop hittin’ on me, man, what’s wrong with you?”
“Look!”
JoJo finally looked where his friend was pointing and that was when he saw Ricki hurrying his way. “Ah shit!” he said as he stomped his feet and turned around in frustration. Because he knew it was too late for him to make a run for it now.
“Where my money at, JoJo?” Ricki was saying loudly as she was hurrying toward him. “Where my money at?”
JoJo stared at the girl he’d known since they were in elementary, middle, and high school together. She was the most beautiful girl in the world to him then, and she still was now. Although he couldn’t stand her attitude. “And hello to you, too, Rasheda.”
“Where my money at, boy? I ain’t playing with you!”
“You know I’m good for it girl. Why you trippin’? I told you I’m gonna give it to you.”
“You also told me you was gonna be out of town. You said you wouldn’t be back until next week and as soon as you got back you was coming to see me. And pay up.”
“And I am.”
She reached out her hand. “Then give it here.”
“Damn bitch,” JoJo’s friend said to her. “You’re mighty aggressive to be so little.”
“Ah fuck you!” Ricki shot back. “Just because I don’t take crap from y’all I’m a bitch?
Call me whatever you want,” she said as she looked at JoJo again, “but I want my money. You was in a jam. Charlie Red was gonna kill your ass if you didn’t get up that money.
And I gave you all I had. It was all my savings to save your trifling life. And this how you treating me?”
She could see he felt bad about his decisions. “You did me a solid for real, Rick, and I know it. But you gotta give a brother some time. And if you get from around here,” he added, “then maybe I can do some business and make some green.”
Ricki looked at him with disgust on her face. “Still selling that junk. Still destroying our community when your ass said you was gonna stop that shit. You was gonna pay Charlie Red what you owed him and stop that shit.”
JoJo showed regret in his eyes too. “I am gonna stop.”
“When JoJo? How many lives do you have to ruin before you stop?”
“Girl, get on from round here,” JoJo said with irritation in his voice.
“That’s why you ain’t got no man. Always acting like you better than everybody else.
I’m not ruining nobody’s life. I don’t put no gun to their heads.
I don’t make them buy this shit.” Then he yelled at her. “I’m earning a living over here!”
He was sincere in his outrage, but so was she.
“I need my money, JoJo, like I told you when I fronted you for it. I emptied my savings helping you out. I don’t have no four hundred dollars to just give away.
Do you realize how many heads I have to do over at Geraldine’s to get up that kind of money? It took me months to save that up.”
JoJo’s voice softened. “I told you I’m gonna pay you.”
“Why can’t you pay me now?”
“Because I don’t have it now, okay?” She could tell he hated admitting it. “I don’t have it.”
Ricki knew he was good for it or she would not have given it to him. “When will I get my money?”
“Today. I’ll bring it by the shop today.”
Ricki knew he was lying. She could see it in his regretful eyes. But what could she do? And besides, she had to get to work.
She pushed him on his chest, which caused him to stumble back and caused his friend to look at her as if she was crazy. “It better be today,” she said to JoJo, and then she headed back to her Mustang.
JoJo’s friend was astonished. “You let that bitch beat on you like that, man? I mean she’s fine,” he added as he watched her walk away, “but her ass so mean who the fuck cares?”
“She’s good peeps,” JoJo said.
“Good? That mean woman? How you know her anyway?”
“I’ve known her since we were kids. We’re from the same hometown.”
“But why would you borrow money from that steamroller of all people?”
“I had no choice. Your ass was broke. So was everybody out here trying to deal. I shorted Red nearly a thousand bucks and he had a hit ready to go on my ass. She ponied up four hundred of that money. That gave me some time to get up the rest. She helped me out of a jam, man. She’s good peeps.
She just don’t take no stuff. She’s always been like that. ”
His friend shook his head. “I’d rather borrow money from the KKK than from that bitch.”
JoJo couldn’t even smile as he watched her drive away. He always respected Ricki. But even as a kid he knew he wasn’t man enough for a firebrand like her. He doubted if any man ever would be. Or would ever want to be.
“She aw’ight,” he said, in so many words, yet again.