by Tracy Brown
Ava nodded. “He was wrong for that.”
Sunny finally addressed the fact that they were pulling into Jada’s driveway. “What are we doing here?” she asked. “I’m sure Jada doesn’t want to see me right now. We had words this morning.”
Ava put the car in park and cut the engine. “I heard. You’re on a roll today.” She climbed out of the car, and waited until Sunny followed suit. Together they approached Jada’s door. Ava rang the bell and waited, marveling at what a lovely day it had turned out to be, but aware that a storm was brewing on the other side of the door.
Jada opened the door, greeted the women, and ushered them into her home. Sunny stepped inside, but stopped in her tracks when she saw her mother, Jenny G, and Mercedes sitting side by side on Jada’s sofa. Mercedes avoided making eye contact with her mom. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on Sheldon, who sat on the floor close by.
“What’s all this?” Sunny asked, eyeing Jenny G so intensely that the woman averted her gaze. Sunny turned her attention to Marisol. “Ma, what are you doing here?”
Jada stepped forward. “Come in and sit down, Sunny.” She motioned toward the armchair. Born’s chair, or at least it used to be.
Sunny looked around the room. She had a ton of questions but she surmised that no answers would be forthcoming until she sat down as she had been asked.
She walked over to the chair and sat down, unaware of how small she looked now. Her clothes, and even her jewelry, seemed to swallow her thin frame.
Marisol spoke first. “Sunny, this is an intervention.” Marisol’s heavy accent couldn’t go unnoticed.
Sunny actually laughed, amused by the fact that her loved ones found this necessary. She looked around the room, her gaze resting on Jada. “You’re kidding, right?”
Jada shook her head. “No, we’re not. This is serious.”
Sunny’s smile faded. “Come on, man. Don’t be ridiculous!”
Marisol sighed. “Sunny, listen to me.” Marisol’s voice wavered, her eyes flooded with tears. “I hate … hate that I have to have this conversation with you, mija. It is breaking my heart that the shit has come down to this.” Marisol shook her head as several tears made their descent down her face. “You have a problem, Sunny. It is not a game. All of these years, I’ve watched you out here living life like it’s all about bling, and power, and having fun. There’s more to life than that. And you are going to lose all of the things, all of the people that really matter to you if you don’t get it together.”
Marisol wept softly, clearly agonizing over her daughter’s plight. Jada cleared her throat and tried to steer the conversation smoothly.
“Sunny, after I saw you earlier, I called your mom to discuss the whole situation. I was talking to her when Ava called to tell me about what happened at the firm today. So we all decided that it was time for this. We all love you so much. And one of the things that we love about you is your outlook toward everything. You’re the queen of keeping it real. So we want you to let us say what we have to say, and then we’ll all come up with a plan for the best way to move forward. Deal?”
Sunny stared at her friend without answering. She wanted to storm out of there and tell each and every one of them where to stick their fucking intervention. But when she glanced over at Mercedes, Sunny’s cold heart melted. She saw Mercedes watching her through hopeful eyes, and any thoughts of resistance dissipated. Sunny nodded.
Jada breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay,” she said. “I think your mom should go first. Then we’ll each have a chance to say what we need to say.” Jada glanced over at Sheldon, then looked at Sunny apologetically. “Your mom feels that Mercedes needs to be here for this, too. She has a lot that she wants to say. And Mercedes insisted that she needs Sheldon here for moral support.”
Sunny looked at her daughter. So Mercedes had a lot to say. Sunny was on pins and needles to hear it, since Mercedes had barely spoken two words to her since she’d gotten back from Mexico. Again, Sunny nodded in agreement.
“But just because the kids are here doesn’t mean that we’re going to hold back. Because we’re not.” Having said that, Jada took a seat on the large leather ottoman and Ava sat beside her.
Marisol had pulled herself together by this point. The wet and teary eyes were replaced by a steely, determined gaze, which she fixed now on her daughter. Marisol was no longer the weeping, grieving mother. Instead Sunny looked into the eyes of a fed-up mother, who was willing to do whatever was necessary to get through to her child.
“Mija, this is no joke. We have been down this road before, so let’s not pretend.” Marisol clapped her hands together loudly to punctuate her words, and sat forward in her seat. “Enough is enough. It’s been too many years of this … shit! I’ve known about it for years, God help me. I’ve known that you like to—” Marisol sniffed dramatically, wiping her nose animatedly to spare herself the horror of having to utter the words in front of her grandchild. “I’ve known ever since Dorian died, God rest his soul. You were a mess, and after you had Mercedes, you went completely crazy. We got you in rehab, cleaned you up, and you swore to me, Sunny … you swore to me … that you would be clean for the rest of your life so that you could raise this baby girl. And now this. What the fuck happened? Where did it go wrong, I want to know? What would make you choose sticking that shit up your nose over your baby?”
Sunny tapped her foot rapidly as she listened to her mother. Anger bubbled up within her like a volcano. Her mother’s words echoed in her head in a warped loop.
“You risked everything you worked so hard for. And for what, Sunny? To be high?” Marisol continued on and on.
“Ma,” Sunny shifted in her seat. “You only knew that I was getting high when Dorian died?” Sunny watched her mother’s face morph into an expression of utter horror. “Are we being serious? I thought this was ‘Keep it 100 Day.’ So let’s keep it one-hundred percent real, Mami. You said it yourself. You’ve known about it for years. But how many years? Huh? Ten years, twelve years, fifteen years? Maybe twenty years?”
Marisol shook her head defiantly. “No, I did not! I did not know that you were getting high back then.”
“Why not? Weren’t you being the perfect parent watching over me all the time?”
“I never said I was.”
“Well, that’s what you said I need to be doing for Mercedes, right? I’m choosing other things over my baby, that’s what you said. So what did you choose over me, Madre?”
“Sunny—” Jada interrupted.
“Nah, Jada, fuck that.” Sunny frowned, looking at her mother and noting that Marisol’s tears had returned now. “Didn’t you know that I was dating one of the biggest fuckin’ hustlers in New York City? Didn’t you know that Dorian’s name carried so much weight that he lifted the whole family out of a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle?” Sunny looked at her mother innocently as if she really wanted answers to her questions. Inside, though, she was enraged. “Didn’t you think that maybe he was an older man? More experienced than me.” She shook her head sadly. “Who could I talk to when I got bored sitting at home while he built his empire? Did you ever think I might get bored? Eighteen years old and stuck at home with thousands of dollars and nothing to do. Nobody asked me if I was having fun. So I looked the part, while Dorian paid the way, and as long as he was paying nobody asked any questions. And I came to you, Mami. You remember? When I first got wind that he was cheating on me, I came to you crying. You stroked my hair.” Sunny’s voice cracked.
Jada looked away, unable to watch her friend cry.
“I had my head in your lap, and you stroked my hair, and you said, ‘Mija, he loves you, what more do you want?’” Sunny looked at Jada and Ava and laughed through her tears. “I said, ‘Ma, what if love is not enough?’” Sunny looked at her mother. “And, what did you say?”
Marisol closed her eyes and shook her head.
“You told me that the mortgage was two payments away from being paid off. And you reminded me that Reube
n worked with him, and Daddy had enough to retire now, and Dorian was part of the family now.” Sunny shook her head. “I knew right then that I couldn’t come to you anymore. Dorian was family, but what was I?”
Marisol was flooded with guilty tears. Ava spoke next.
“So, is that when you started ‘partying’?” Ava used air quotes as she repeated the term that she’d heard Jada use over the years when she and Sunny were out getting high and carrying on.
Sunny nodded. She sat back in her chair, and willed herself to relax. “Yeah. I was hanging with all the fancy people, wealthy people. Dorian was well connected. It was a glamorous life. And the girls on the arms of the ballers back then were getting high. Dorian warned me, but I was young.” She looked at Mercedes. “I was dumb.” She shook her head. “I started it, and it seemed like … like I could stand it as long as I was having my own little party.”
Jada nodded. “I know what that feels like.”
Sheldon watched his mother. He watched everyone silently, analyzing each person’s reaction.
Sunny looked at Jada. “When you and me were out there taking this city by storm and in love with the men of our dreams, I was on top of the world, Jada. And then Dorian died.”
The weight of those words resounded in the otherwise silent room for several moments after she said it. Dorian had been her world for most of her life. Losing him had sent her life into a tailspin.
“I looked around and the party was over, and then I had Mercedes.” She thought back on holding her beautiful brown bundle of joy in her arms for the first time. She had been so lonely without Dorian there to share in the happiness with her. Soon she found herself back on drugs again. “I cleaned myself up again, and I didn’t relapse until about a year ago.” Sunny knew the moment she said it that the words had come out all wrong. “It’s not an excuse,” she insisted. “But, once again, I found myself needing to feel … needing to feel something.” Sunny feverishly laid out her case, doing her best to explain what had driven her to coke again.
“So, why couldn’t you come to me now?” Marisol asked. “I know what I said years ago … it was wrong. But I have always loved you, Sunny.”
Sunny had never doubted that. “I know,” she said. “I love you, too. But our relationship changed once I became old enough to make my own decisions. I started being responsible for everything. It’s never been just about me and what I need or what I want. I can’t turn to anybody because I’m the one everybody depends on.”
“You could come to me,” Jada offered. “Sunny, we’ve been friends for so many years. You are my best friend. And I’ve been down that road myself. So why not come to me when you felt yourself slipping?”
Sunny sighed. “Do you come to me every time you feel the urge to get high again?”
Jada wanted to say that she would, but it was not true. Over the years she had fought each day for her sobriety, and it had not always been an easy battle. She usually waged those wars alone, and understood the point that Sunny was making.
“You still want to get high sometimes?” Sheldon asked, his eyes on his mother.
Jada shrugged. “Not really.” She looked at Sunny, and thought her friend could use a lifeline right now. She decided to be honest. “Sometimes I do. Being addicted to something is like going to war every day with the same enemy. So when things get bad and I feel stressed, yes. Sometimes I do have to fight the urge to get high again.” She looked at Sunny. “But I took my rehab seriously, and I use the tools they gave me to stay sober.”
Sunny lit a cigarette, a nasty habit she’d resumed while locked up in Mexico. “Well, rehab didn’t work for me. Clearly.”
“You could have called me,” Jada said. She walked to the nearby kitchen. Filled a plastic cup halfway with tap water, and brought it to Sunny to use as an ashtray. “Why didn’t you?”
Sunny blew out some smoke, which Ava discreetly fanned away.
“Because you have your own life, Jada.”
“That’s bullshit, Sunny. You’re family to me.”
“You have Sheldon and his problems,” Sunny reminded her. “And where’s Born?” Sunny wasn’t saying it meanly. Still, the poignancy of the question struck a lull in the conversation as booming as a bell tolling in the center of the room. “I wasn’t gonna burden you with my problems on top of everything else.” Sunny took another drag.
“What about me?”
All heads turned toward the speaker, and Sunny slowly doused her cigarette inside of Jada’s makeshift ashtray.
Mercedes watched her mother through narrowed eyes. “Why couldn’t you talk to me?”
Sunny felt her heart shatter in a thousand pieces.
“You always say that I can come and talk to you about any and everything. So why should I come to you if you won’t come to me and tell me the truth?”
“Mercedes, you don’t understand.” Sunny shook her head.
“You’re right. I don’t.” Mercedes shook her head as well, almost mockingly. “I don’t understand why I have to go to school with kids who already think they’re better than me because of who their parents are. My dad is dead, and my mom is all over the magazines that all the boys jerk off to at home.”
Ava shifted uneasily in her seat.
“Then you go and get arrested with cocaine. And I have to go to school and hear all of the kids call me ‘crack baby’ in the hallways.”
“You are not a crack baby!” Sunny said, defensively. She realized too late that Sheldon was paying close attention, and she shot a look in his direction. “I’m saying that those kids don’t know what they’re talking about, Mercedes.”
“Now I’m the school joke. Last day of school and all the kids go home laughing at the girl whose mother got arrested for trying to sneak coke on a plane home from Mexico.”
“Mercedes…” Sunny’s voice was pleading, though the right words escaped her once again. “I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Tell me why you did it. Why did you do it, Mommy?” Mercedes was crying, though doing her best to keep a brave face.
Sunny looked at her daughter for a long time. “Baby girl, there is no answer I can give you that will be enough.”
Mercedes wasn’t satisfied with that. “What happened to Malcolm?” she asked. “Why wasn’t he doing the perp walk with you at the airport?”
Sunny was tempted to ask her thirteen-year-old daughter what the hell she knew about a perp walk.
Mercedes didn’t leave time for Sunny’s questions. She had enough of her own. “Does Malcolm get high, too?”
Sunny shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. Malcolm had nothing to do with what happened in Mexico.” In that moment, for the first time, Sunny realized how true that sentence was. None of what happened there had been anyone’s fault but her own. The cocaine, the dead man, the arrest, their breakup. It had all been Sunny’s own doing. The gravity of it hit her for the first time.
Mercedes looked at Sunny as if seeing a stranger, or a distant relative. Sunny was usually all glammed up. But today she looked worn down. Her hair was a mess, and she wore no makeup. Her nails were chewed down to the gristle, and she looked sick. Mercedes wasn’t used to seeing her mother this way. This was not the Sunny she had grown up in the glow of. Mercedes wanted her mother back, the old Sunny. She cleared her throat, and reminded all the adults in the room that she was Sunny Cruz’s and Dorian Douglas’s daughter, and wise beyond her years.
“Aunt Jada,” she said. “The reason I wanted Sheldon to be here for this conversation is because he needed to hear all this as much as I did. Lately, Sheldon’s been giving you a hard time about the drugs you used to use. He found out that you got high, and he can’t seem to let it go. Somebody told him that your drug use is the reason he has a hard time behaving in school. So now he uses it as an excuse.”
“I do not.”
“Shut up, yes you do!” Mercedes was tired of everybody bullshitting. The time had come for some truth telling. “You use it as an excuse for all
the dumb stuff you do.” She looked at Jada again. “It’s all because he’s mad. He’s mad and he can’t forgive you for getting high. So I told him that my mom got high, too. But Sheldon likes to pretend that he’s the only one who ever had to deal with a parent who was addicted to something.” Mercedes looked at him now. “So now you see. My mother’s still using cocaine. At least yours quit like she said she would.”
“Mercedes!” Marisol chastened.
Mercedes shrugged her off and continued. “Sheldon, I understand how you feel. In fact, I feel worse because I can’t even go home because of the cameramen hiding outside. At least the whole world is not talking about your mother right now.” She looked at her mother. “But even though they talk about her, I still love her.” She watched Sunny’s hands tremble with emotion.
“You embarrassed me, Mommy. I’m so mad at you for using drugs again.” Mercedes fought the tears back. “But I love you. And I can forgive you as long as you get help. If you go into rehab that will make me so happy.”
Sheldon stared at the floor. He felt convicted. He loved his mother, and he knew that she was miserable since Born was gone. Sheldon couldn’t really understand why he did the things that he did. What he knew for sure was that he was getting his way, and he loved that. He was also enjoying having his mother all to himself. He didn’t have to share her attention and affection. Sheldon envied Ethan, because Ethan had his dad. Sheldon had no memory of his. And he was torn somewhere between wishing that Born was his dad, too, and hating him because he wasn’t. But as he watched Mercedes pleading with her mother to get help, Sheldon felt terrible for the way he had treated Jada. Jada had proven more than once that she would do anything for Sheldon. He sat there watching the exchange between Mercedes and Sunny, and felt guilty that he hadn’t been more cooperative lately.
“Mercedes,” Sunny pleaded. “I don’t need rehab, baby.”
Mercedes shook her head, defiantly. “That’s the only way we can move on. It’s rehab or nothing. Either go get clean once and for all or I want to go and live with Grandma Gladys.”
