by Tracy Brown
Octavia nodded and Toya pinched her cheek playfully. “You can always call me if you need to talk,” Toya said. “I give good advice.”
Together, they reentered the living room where Misa had set up shop on the floor with some nail polish and nail files. Seeing the look on Octavia’s face, she smirked. “Yeah, um … I raided your room for some nail polish. Your mother’s colors are boring, and the last thing I need is boring pale nails.”
Octavia laughed. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think I’ll do my nails, too.” She joined Misa on the floor, while Camille, Toya, and Dominique took seats on the sofa and chaise, digging into the shrimp and hors d’oeuvres. Toya, Misa, and Dominique each poured a glass of Rémy and Octavia wished she was old enough to indulge as well. The playlist Dominique chose was perfect, a mix of old-school and newer music. Her job at Def Jam gave her access to an enviable music library and they enjoyed it as they made small talk. Finally, Toya got down to the nitty-gritty.
“Misa, are you okay? I mean, that’s a dumb question ’cuz I know you’re not okay. But…”
Misa nodded. “I understand. Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay. I got the chance to see Shane and he hugged me. He still loves me.” Misa smiled, and it seemed as if she had won the lotto. “That’s all I need to keep me going.” She looked at Octavia, unsure if she knew what was going on. Dominique cleared up any doubt.
“She knows what happened. We’ve been talking so much over the past few days that—”
“It’s all right. She was bound to find out,” Camille said, shaking her head. “It’s all over the news and in every paper in town.”
Misa glanced at her sister, aware that negative press was Camille’s worst nightmare. She lived her life desperate for the approval and even envy of others.
“Who cares?” Misa said. “Seriously, what difference does it make? Those reporters don’t know me. They don’t know Shane.”
“Exactly,” Toya chimed in. “What matters is that you know in your heart that you did the right thing. All of us agreed that we would have done the same thing if we were in your shoes.”
Misa looked at her sister again. Camille didn’t seem so certain. The look on her face told Misa that Camille would give her right arm to go back to that night and prevent Steven’s murder.
“How is Teresa going to handle your defense?” Dominique asked. She and Teresa were good friends and Dominique had always admired her hustle.
“She said that it was good that I didn’t say too much when they picked me up. Now all I can do is tell my story when it goes to trial and pray that the jury sees it as a case of self-defense.”
Dominique hated to pry, but she couldn’t resist. “Can you talk about what happened that night?”
Octavia was so eager for the raw and uncut details of the night her mother’s friend had killed a nigga that she was damn near breathless with anticipation. She prayed that Misa would take a sip of that brown juice and spill her guts.
Instead, Misa did what Teresa had advised her. “I’d rather not even think about it, to tell you the truth. It’s gonna be hard enough to relive that night when I get up on that witness stand.”
“I understand,” Dominique said quickly.
“But, I’ll tell you this,” Misa said, opting for a shade of polish the same color as Shane’s favorite red Matchbox car. “I don’t feel bad about it. Nobody’s gonna make me feel bad about it.” Misa smiled. “Shane is getting more comfortable around me now. At first he was kinda scared. He would cry if I came too close. But now, he comes and he runs to me, gives me a hug. He still gets a little mad at me sometimes. I can tell that he still has some trauma over what he went through.” Misa thought about how it broke her heart whenever she heard about Shane’s repeated nightmares and his refusal to let anyone near his rear end, even at bath time. She knew that the effects of what had been done to Shane would be with him for a long time. But she was confident that soon they could begin the work it would take to repair his damaged psyche. “But nobody’s ever gonna hurt my baby again,” Misa said. “Never again.”
Toya couldn’t let it go. “I just want to know. When you pulled the trigger, were you scared?”
Misa looked at Toya and nodded. “I was scared to death. But I wasn’t gonna let him get near me. He kept coming towards me and I fired until he stopped.” She trusted everyone who was present, so she told the truth. “I wished I’d had more bullets so that I could shoot him some more. I would have shot him all night if I had the ammunition.”
No one knew what to say after that. Octavia cleared her throat and said softly, “Can you pass the top coat?”
Misa handed the polish to her and looked around the room at her friends who were all suddenly silent.
Camille stared back at her sister. “Misa, let’s not talk about the case,” she said. Camille wished she could have a drink. Her pregnancy prevented that, so instead she shoved a tortilla chip in her mouth.
Sensing some tension, Toya changed the subject. “I had lunch with my father the other day.”
Dominique and Camille both looked surprised and Misa looked around in confusion. “What happened with your father?” she asked.
Toya had forgotten that Misa was absent for her explanation of her mystery dad. “I hadn’t spoken to him in years because he was a dope fiend, crackhead, alcoholic bastard.”
Octavia couldn’t mask her amazement at Miss Toya’s vocabulary. Her mouth hung open in shock. She recovered quickly, though, and listened closely. Of all Dominique’s friends, Toya was definitely Octavia’s favorite.
“Anyway, he crawled back from the dead the night that Misa—”
Not knowing how to finish the sentence, Toya searched everyone’s faces and saw that they all understood what she meant.
“Anyway, he wanted to tell me that he’s dying, and to ask me if I would talk to him, hear him out.”
“Dying?” Misa asked, her face contorted in a frown.
Toya nodded. “Cancer.” She seemed to try to shrug it off. “Yeah, so he’s very persistent. He kept calling and finally I gave in. I had lunch with his ass.”
Octavia and Misa seemed astounded.
“What did he say?” Camille tried to picture what Toya’s father must look like.
“He wants me to forgive him. That’s all he says he wants. No money, just forgiveness.”
“So,” Misa said. “Do you forgive him?”
Toya looked around the room and knew that they all expected her to say no. She had a reputation as a hard rock, but truth be told she had a soft core that she guarded fiercely. She shrugged. “I want to. But I can’t.”
No one responded and the music filled the void.
Misa finished her pedicure and sat back, admiring her work. She looked at Toya finally and said, “He must have been a real fuckup for you to have held a grudge for so many years.”
“He was,” Toya said. “And I want to keep hating him. I’m used to that. He deserves that.” She shrugged. “But, truthfully, hating him is hurting me. And it’s a new year, a clean slate. I want to start fresh.”
She held her glass up as if to toast. Octavia quickly poured herself a glass of Sprite so that she could join in. Camille had been yearning for apple juice desperately and had claimed the bottle of Motts Toya brought all for herself. She held the bottle up as part of the toast. Misa, Toya, and Dominique clinked glasses with the rest of them and downed shots of Rémy in one gulp.
Sitting back afterward, they all listened to Michael Jackson singing about “Human Nature.” Octavia thought of Dashawn and wondered if he was thinking of her. She hadn’t told him about the abortion yet. She looked around the room at all the seasoned older women surrounding her and knew that none of them was perfect. Toya, although tons of fun, was often brutally blunt and a borderline bitch. Camille was estranged from her husband, the notoriously sexy and paid Frankie B, and Misa was under indictment for murder. Octavia’s own mother was pining over a recently released convict. Still, she cleared her throa
t and asked for some advice.
“What do I say when I speak to Dashawn?”
Each of the women, particularly Dominique, seemed stunned by the question. Dominique cleared her throat and poured herself another drink as she answered. “Tell him what you decided to do. Let him know how you feel about it, how you feel about him and the way he handled everything.”
“How do you feel about that?” Toya asked. “The way he handled everything.”
Octavia rolled her eyes. “He played me.” She shook her head and thought about how it felt to hear him tell her that he didn’t want to be a father yet. He had promised to stand by her side and had quickly proven himself to be a liar. “I don’t want to talk to him anymore or ever see his punk a—” She remembered her audience and caught herself. “Again,” she finished.
“Tell him that!” Toya yelled. “Don’t say nothing else but that! When he calls you, you pick up that phone and let him talk all that shit he thinks you want to hear. How he’s sorry, how he was overwhelmed, et cetera. And when he stops talking, you tell his bitch ass, ‘fuck you!’ ”
“Toya!” Camille objected.
“Okay, okay, don’t say that. But say, ‘I don’t have nothing to say to you and I don’t want to see you ever again.’ ” Toya had to remember to tone it down for Octavia. Even though her hot ass had gotten knocked up already, in reality she was still a baby. “Women have to stop beating around the bush and trying to be nice. Tell that son of a bitch to eat a—”
“Toya…” Camille warned.
“Tell him to get the hell out of your face.” Toya took another swig of the brown juice and sighed.
Misa had to laugh, and it felt good to do so. She hadn’t had much amusement in the past few weeks.
Octavia laughed, too. But she heeded the advice she’d been given. She decided that when and if Dashawn got in touch with her again, she would cut right to the chase. For now, there was no use crying over him since he surely wasn’t wasting his tears on her.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling at her mother and standing up carefully so as not to smudge her polish. “I’m going to chill in my room now so you old ladies can really talk and get your drink on.”
“I got your old ladies!” Misa said, tossing a cotton ball at Octavia.
“Good night,” Octavia called over her shoulder as she left for her sanctuary.
Camille turned to Dominique. “She’s a good girl; I’m so glad that she’s back here at home with you and that she’s okay.” At least somebody’s story had a happy ending. Camille knew that her own wouldn’t wind up as nicely.
Dominique nodded. She was glad, too. She had prayed so hard for her daughter’s safe return and was thrilled about it.
“I love her so much,” she said of Octavia. “I just want her to know that she’s not defined by any man. She has to stop worrying about guys and focus on building up her self.”
“Well,” Toya said, as nicely as she could. “She’s watching you. Have you learned that same lesson yet?”
Dominique looked confused.
“What I mean is she’s seeing you go upstate in the middle of the night to see a convict. Packaging up goodies for him like he’s in Iraq fighting the war on terror instead of stuck up in the mountains somewhere doing hard time. I’m not putting you down,” Toya clarified. “But I’m just showing you how it must seem to her. She sees you busting your ass at your prestigious job, meeting celebrities and making wonderful connections. And she sees that you still allow yourself to get involved with a man who has no future, no potential whatsoever. Not even a pot to piss in. That has to be one of the reasons she saw no problem with being the girlfriend of a nobody. Thank God you have a second chance to get it right, but you gotta get it right this time.”
Normally, Dominique would have argued that Jamel was different. She would have cited the fact that he wasn’t just your average hustler on the corner who got caught; that he was intelligent, well read, and articulate. But this time, Dominique let Toya’s words sink in and realized that she was absolutely right. She sipped her drink.
“We all have to stop doing that,” Toya said. “Women in general. We dumb ourselves down for the men we choose to be with. My mother did it, I did it, we’ve all been guilty of spending precious time with men who don’t deserve it.”
Dominique gripped her glass and groaned in agreement. “Jamel came home from jail yesterday. I was at the doctor with Octavia while she was having her procedure. When I came home, I had a voice message from Jamel. He’s out and he’s safe and he said he was gonna call me later on. I waited all night for that phone to ring. And all day, too.”
“You still haven’t heard from him?” Misa guessed. She was familiar with that kind of story.
Dominique shook her head. “Not a peep.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s hurt or if he’s locked up again.”
“Who cares?” Toya said, waving her hand. “He’s probably a faggot!”
“Toya!” This time it was Misa who said it.
“What?” Toya asked, her face frowned up. “He’s been in jail for years! Now he’s home and in no rush to get to some ass … what does that sound like to you?”
Misa laughed again. “Every man that does time in jail isn’t gay, Toya.”
Toya shrugged. “Men nowadays are gay until proven straight in my opinion.”
Dominique smirked. Toya was a trip. “Well, regardless, I just want to know that he’s okay. After all this time, I think I deserve at least a phone call!” She swirled the ice around in her glass and shook her head. “I realize now that I made a mistake with Jamel.”
Toya gasped dramatically, clutching her imaginary pearls. “What did you just say?”
“I look back on it now and I can see that I wasted time traveling, writing, talking on the phone. All that time I should have been focused on Octavia. I should have seen that something was going on with her but I was too busy being thirsty for the wrong man.”
“Well, when did you get this new epiphany that he’s the wrong man?” Toya asked, intrigued. This was a complete about-face for Dominique.
Dominique shrugged. Toya’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“You still celibate?”
Dominique tried not to smile, and her friends began to giggle.
“I slept with—”
Before she could even finish her sentence the room erupted in shouts of joy. Dominique laughed as her friends celebrated as if she had hit the lottery.
“Who?” Toya asked eagerly, once they had composed themselves.
“Just some guy I do business with,” Dominique allowed, careful not to reveal the kind of business she was doing with Archie. “It’s nothing serious, but … I like him.”
Camille smirked. “It was good, wasn’t it?”
Dominique closed her eyes dreamily and nodded. Opening them, she looked at her friends. “But I felt a little guilty about it, to tell you the truth.” She shrugged. “Not anymore, though. Jamel obviously doesn’t even think I’m worth a phone call.”
“Who was better?” Toya asked, being nosy.
Dominique pretended not to understand.
“Jamel or the business associate? Who fucks you better?”
Camille and Misa leaned forward and waited. Dominique knew she shouldn’t entertain the question, but the liquor had her feeling buzzed. Whispering so that Octavia wouldn’t overhear, she said, “I’ve never been handled the way this man handled me. Jamel ain’t got shit on him.”
Cheers and applause came then and Dominique found herself wondering why she was so concerned about whether Jamel called or not. Still, she couldn’t help hoping that he was safe.
“I know how that feels,” Camille chimed in, her apple juice balanced on her lap.
“How what feels?” Misa asked.
“Not hearing a word from him. Wondering where your man is or if he’s okay.”
Dominique felt so sorry for Camille. Here she was complaining about Jamel—a man who added nothing to her life other
than a financial drain—while Camille was struggling to get used to life without her wealthy husband. “Camille, I promise you that Frankie is gonna be sorry for how he’s treated you. Eventually, he’s gonna see that he’s dead wrong.”
“I went over there last night to raise hell. That bitch Gillian called the cops on me.”
“What?” Dominique was dumbfounded.
Toya frowned and set her glass down since this was the first she was hearing about this. Misa shook her head, so sorry for having brought more problems to her sister’s already troubled marriage. Misa had warned Camille about Gillian, though. Long ago, she had pulled Camille’s coat about her husband’s so-called best friend, only to be ignored and assured that everything was fine. Things were damn sure not fine now.
“It was late and I couldn’t sleep. I was up thinking about my marriage and how Frankie has been carrying on. I got mad and went over there to talk to him. Gillian and I had some words. I threw a vase at the bitch’s head and missed. I was so mad that I missed!”
Toya tried to stifle a laugh, but failed. Dominique and Misa joined in and they laughed hard at the thought of Camille going all Tom Brady on Gillian. Even Camille had to join the laughter.
When they recovered, Dominique looked at Camille in amazement. “Frankie stood by and let Gillian call the cops on you?”
Camille nodded. “Sure did. When they got there he told them that I wasn’t really trying to hit anybody. But he did ask them to make me leave.”
“So what did you do?” Dominique asked.
“I left,” Camille said as if it was obvious. “No point in me going to jail, too.”
Dominique and Toya winced a little, but Misa seemed to ignore her sister’s remark.
“What are you gonna do about all of this, Camille? I mean you can’t keep going on like this without any money. Frankie can’t expect you to sit by and just let this all happen.” Dominique couldn’t believe that Camille’s once doting husband was behaving so coldly.
