The Boss

by Aya De León

  “Protégée?” Tyesha said. “Wow, that’s—that’s great. She’s gonna be over the moon.”

  “I have a flight out at midnight,” he said. “Is there any way we can meet this evening?”

  “I think it’s fair to say that Deza would never forgive me if I said no,” she said. “Why don’t you come by my apartment?”

  “Okay,” he said. “See you tonight.”

  * * *

  Tyesha called Deza, and after ten minutes of shrieking, she calmed down enough for Tyesha to get a word in.

  “So we’ll be meeting with him at the house,” Tyesha said. “I just need to text Woof that I’m running a little late.”

  “Oh my god oh my god oh my god!” Deza squealed.

  “Uh-oh,” Tyesha said. “I can’t text Woof. I deleted his number from my phone. Maybe Marisol still has his number.”

  “Why would your old boss have his number?” Deza asked.

  “Long story,” Tyesha said. “Lemme jump off and call her.”

  “No need,” Deza said. “I have his number.”

  “What?” Tyesha said. “How’d you get Woof’s number?”

  “I stole it from your phone,” Deza said. “Duh.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Tyesha said. “That’s a violation of my privacy.”

  “I thought I might need it someday,” Deza said. “And now here we are. You’re welcome.”

  Tyesha laughed. “Shut up.”

  “Oh, Auntie Ty,” Deza said, “I can’t believe you did this for me.”

  “Now that you’re nineteen, you can just start calling me Tyesha.”

  “Aww,” Deza said. “But I’ll always think of you as my auntie.”

  “Of course,” Tyesha said. “But we’re gonna be peers soon—agewise, I mean. Anyway, I’m gonna text him now.”

  * * *

  That evening, Tyesha sat with Woof and Deza in her tiny kitchen. The orchid sat in the middle of the table, which was covered with music industry paperwork.

  “So I was thinking we could start the tour off in Chicago,” Woof was saying. “Young talent is at their best with the home court advantage. It’ll be a big reunion for your fans. They’ll have missed you since you’ve been in New York. And for this first tour, you’ll need a family member as a chaperone.”

  Deza turned to Tyesha. “Auntie?”

  “Sorry, baby, I already have a job,” Tyesha said. “But you know who might be available? Your mama.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Deza said. “In what universe?”

  “I’m just saying.” Tyesha put a hand under Deza’s chin. “She’s gonna be your mama your whole life. I think she’s learned some lessons now that you and Amaru stood up to her. Not to mention that you’d be the one in the power position for the first time. Promise me you’ll think about it?”

  “A chaperone isn’t optional,” Woof added.

  “Fine,” Deza said. “What’s the next step?”

  “We need to meet with some executives at Paperclip,” Woof said. “Again, you should have someone there to represent you. An attorney or a family member. Tyesha, I know you’re busy, but I’m glad to work with your schedule. How’s Friday?”

  “Friday’s fine,” Tyesha said. “I want to check with Eva Feldman, as well. She’s an attorney.”

  “Great,” said Woof. “I’ll be back in town by then and can join in.”

  * * *

  The next day, Tyesha and Marisol met with Teddy and Etta Hughes in advance of their meeting with the union. This time the couple came to the clinic, and the four of them met in Tyesha’s office.

  “So we just want to give you a heads-up on the demands,” Tyesha said.

  The husband and wife were seated on the couch, and Tyesha had offered them all drinks to celebrate. Marisol poured herself and Tyesha glasses of rum as Tyesha made a vodka with cranberry juice for Etta and a scotch for Teddy.

  The four of them raised glasses and drank.

  “Just to clarify,” Tyesha said, “the union wants a raise, vacation and sick leave, health insurance for full-time workers, and a 401(k) account.”

  “Actually,” Teddy said, licking a little scotch off his lips, “I changed my mind. I don’t really want a union in my club.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tyesha said. “We gave you the gun last week.”

  “What gun?” he said. “I don’t have any gun.”

  Marisol turned to Etta. “I thought you said we could trust him. That you would make sure he kept his word.”

  “Teddy, what are you doing?” Etta asked. “When you threw that gun in the river, you said you’d keep your promise.”

  “I finally got my club back from the mob,” he said. “I’m not about to turn it over to a bunch of chicks. I didn’t get into this business to be pussy-whipped. Not by you and not by my employees.”

  Tyesha smiled. “So that’s your plan, Teddy? Backstab the women who rescued your ass?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not backstabbing. It’s just business.”

  “What a shame for you,” Tyesha said. “It’s really too bad that I never trusted your ass, and I gave you a duplicate gun. And the original gun is in a bank security vault somewhere in Manhattan. Feel free to look for it.”

  “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “Am I?” Tyesha asked. She pulled a glossy photograph out of her briefcase of a safety deposit box with a gun in a Ziploc bag inside.

  “And you know what else?” Marisol said. “If we were to turn in the gun to the cops, I can’t imagine what Uncle Viktor would do if he figured out you manipulated him into killing Ivan, his own flesh and blood.”

  Tyesha shrugged. “So while we were prepared to let you negotiate with our union, now we’re just gonna own you outright. So I think you’ll be agreeing to those demands. Plus, for the 401(k), we’d like you to contribute matching funds from your profits, as well.”

  “I fucking told you to play it straight with these girls,” Etta said. “But no. You can’t fucking listen. You’re just always trying to take advantage. You keep trying to fuck people over, and you just keep fucking up.”

  * * *

  That night, Tyesha brought home a bottle of champagne.

  “Do I get some, too?” Amaru asked.

  “Just enough to toast,” Tyesha said. “We’re celebrating Deza’s big break in hip-hop and the union victory on my job.”

  The three of them toasted and then ate dinner.

  “I gotta go out to my friend’s game,” Amaru said and headed out.

  As Tyesha and Deza cleared the table, Deza asked, “So Woof broke his contract with Car Willis, and he’s obviously still into you. Why is it you’re not fucking with him?”

  “He’s a rap star,” Tyesha said. “He’s not relationship material.”

  “Why not?” Deza asked. “Because he’s on stage? Because he’s famous. It’s just as easy to get cheated on by some trifling nigga down the block as a superstar.”

  “Yeah, but with the trifling nigga, you don’t have your whole life on blast.”

  “You know who you sound like?” Deza asked. “My ex.”

  “What?”

  “You’re just like him,” Deza said. “Attracted to the performer, but then resentful of the spotlight. That’s how DJs are. They want to be the invisible hand that controls everything. Move the crowd from a little booth with a bunch of toys. Head down, barely even acknowledging that they’re outside they mama’s basement. Passive aggressive motherfuckers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean we emcees have issues, but at least we’re up front about it,” Deza said. “We want attention. We ask for it. We earn it. We get it. DJs want attention but they also don’t want attention. He picked me because he thought he could control me. That I would be the cute girl who made his set hot. But I started to fill up that limelight. Then he had to find another little cute girl. Fuck him. I’m through with DJs. Never again.”

  “What the hell are you trying to say abou
t me?” Tyesha asked.

  “Can I speak my mind?” Deza asked. “Now that we’re heading for being peers or whatever?”

  “Please do.”

  “No. For real,” Deza said. “You ain’t gonna kick me out if I say something you don’t like, right?”

  “No. I might be pissed for a minute, but we’re family.”

  Deza took a deep breath. “When you were in high school, and me and Amaru were living with you and Grandma in Chicago, you used to rhyme just as hard as me. But when it was time to get up in front of people, you always pushed me forward. Just like nowadays. The other night, I was rapping into a wooden spoon, and you straight grabbed it from me and started some crazy rhyme about strippers needing health insurance. And I never would have tried to rhyme ‘insurance’ with ‘prurience,’ particularly because I never even heard of that shit before, but that’s what I mean. You feel that passion for the spotlight, and you’re attracted to that passion for the spotlight, but then you turn around and hold it against Thug Woofer. Why don’t you ever get up and do your own thing in front of people, instead of trying to be the chaperone for my career?”

  “Deza,” Tyesha said, “everybody in the world can’t be an emcee. Somebody’s gotta clean the studio and run the health clinics of the world.”

  “See, Mama’s the same way,” Deza said. “I don’t want her on the tour with me, because she’ll be trying to live out some part of her own dreams through me.”

  “You’re comparing me to Jenisse?”

  “I’m saying there’s a way you both be trying to live your lives through your men,” Deza said. “She wants the money. You want the power. There, I said it.”

  “You’re wrong,” Tyesha said. “You’re totally wrong about me.”

  “Fine,” Deza said. “Then prove it.”

  “How?”

  “At the hip-hop open mic.”

  “What?”

  “And you’re getting on the mic.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes,” Deza said. “You remember that rap from when I used to stay with you in your college dorm. Your friend used to beatbox.”

  “What?” Tyesha said. “Absolutely not.”

  “You rapped that damn song into hairbrushes, broom handles, kitchen spoons, and flashlights,” Deza said. “Now you can rap into a fucking microphone. You do this, and I’ll perform at your clinic’s benefit after I get famous.”

  “You’re gonna do that anyway,” Tyesha said.

  “I’ll make some of my famous friends come along,” Deza said. “And hopefully you’ll be back with Thug Woofer, and he can spit something, too.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, they were standing on stage at a small Brooklyn club. It was located in the basement of a sneaker store and packed wall to wall.

  The host doubled as the DJ. He was a young Puerto Rican man in a dashiki and a giant set of earphones pressing down his afro. As he faded down a Latin house remix he introduced them. “Give it up for Deza Starling and Tyesha Couvillier!”

  “Wassup, New York?” Deza asked.

  Several folks whistled. She was starting to develop some fans in the city.

  “I been here a bunch, but this is my girl Tyesha,” she said. “She’s a little nervous so show her some love.”

  The audience applauded and cheered.

  “I’ll show you some love, sexy girl,” a guy in the front said.

  “So this is a rhyme we wrote a while back, and we’re performing it together in public for the first time.”

  The DJ put the beat on and Deza began:

  “Black girl Black girl, so much to say

  So many obstacles get in the way

  But we ain’t scared of this big, bad world

  We gonna be there for you, badass Black girl.”

  Tyesha sort of murmured along in the background. The spotlight was blinding. Deza had warned her about that and suggested she use it to block all the people out. Just pretend they were alone in the apartment.

  Deza did her verse, and Tyesha could feel her heart beating faster and faster as it got closer to her turn.

  When it was time, she missed her cue, so Deza came in and did the chorus again.

  “Black girl Black girl, so much to say—come on, Tyesha.”

  Tyesha closed her eyes and chanted along with Deza.

  Then after the chorus finished, she just kept going, from memory, eyes still closed:

  “My name is Tyesha but you can call me T

  So much of this world that I want to see

  They tell me that I’m sexy, they tell me that I’m fine

  But I want to be respected for the power of my mind . . . ”

  As she rapped, she blocked out the audience and recalled the girl she’d been, about Deza’s age, when they’d written the piece. She was away from home for the first time in college. She hadn’t taken any of the boys seriously because she was afraid that falling for some guy would throw her off her game. That she would get distracted and not do her best in school. It was her only shot to get out of the hood, and she couldn’t fuck it up. But now she was in New York, and she had the good job. Wasn’t her position secure enough that she could take a chance with Woof?

  She closed her eyes and nodded her head and the lyrics fell from her mouth, automatically. This had been her subconscious anthem for all these years. Before she knew it, she had looped back to the chorus, and Deza was singing along with her.

  Tyesha opened her eyes and saw Deza alternately crouching to reach out to the audience and striding across the front of the stage. She began motioning for the crowd to chant along with them. Finally Deza stuck the mic back on the stand and swung both hands up in wide arcs, clapping above her head and pressing the crowd to yell the final lines. Deza turned to the DJ and drew her finger across her throat, cueing him to cut the music. For the final line, the crowd’s voices rang clear throughout the crowded club:

  “We gonna be there for you, badass Black girl!”

  “Yes!” Deza said snatching the mic back up. “Give it up for my girrrrllll Tyesha!”

  The audience roared and Tyesha just stood there for a moment, grinning and blinking back tears.

  Chapter 21

  On the subway ride home, Tyesha recalled one of her first conversations with Woof. She had asked him, “How do you get up in front of all those people? I swear that would scare the shit out of me.”

  He had shrugged. “Er’body scared by different things,” he said. “Me, I freeze up during tests. That’s why I didn’t graduate high school. My mind goes blank. I can’t say I’m scared, but I don’t know what you call that.”

  Tyesha had always been good at tests. Always good at putting her thoughts down in writing.

  Maybe that was also part of her stage fright. She had been letting Marisol write the words. Tyesha needed to speak her own words. She pulled out her notebook and began scribbling furiously.

  “You writing rhymes?” Deza asked.

  “No,” Tyesha said. “I’m writing my speech for a press conference day after tomorrow.”

  The train pulled up at their stop, and Tyesha and Deza walked above ground. The evening was warm and the foot traffic was light.

  “Auntie,” Deza said quietly. “Why’d you move to New York?”

  Tyesha sighed. “Too much family drama,” she said. “I thought I might never finish college.”

  She opened the door to the apartment, and the two of them walked in to find Amaru already asleep on the couch. Tyesha motioned for Deza to come into her room to talk.

  Deza sat down on the bed and took a deep breath. “You didn’t need to get two degrees and move to New York to run a health clinic. Auntie Lucille’s clinic in Chicago been waiting for you since the day she died. It was supposed to be you there running it. Not some old white lady from Hyde Park who got cultural competency.”

  “I couldn’t—” Tyesha began. She started to straighten one of the pillows that was slumped down. “We hadn’t even buried her yet, an
d already people were standing out in front of the funeral at Gatling’s talking about how I was gonna take over the center. I was only fifteen. Besides, it was Auntie Lu’s dream, not mine. All those boys. Like I was supposed to be able to be their leader? They were all trying to fuck me. She was the caring mother figure they never had. Not me.”

  “Mama said you saw her get shot,” Deza said.

  Tyesha nodded and could feel her eyes filling.

  “But I still don’t understand why you had to leave,” Deza said. “You didn’t have to take over the damn center if you didn’t want. Buy why’d you have to leave?”

  How could Tyesha explain it? She had given up her full-ride scholarship at Northwestern because her grades were slipping by virtue of being too close to home. Deza coming to stay when she “ran away”; last-minute requests from Jenisse to babysit Amaru; late-night calls from her nephews—who were nearly her age—to help them out of scrapes when they had gotten on Jenisse and Zeus’s bad sides.

  Even moving to New York wasn’t enough. At the end of her junior year in college, she lent the younger nephew her tuition money for bail. He promised to have it back to her within the month, but skipped out on his court appearance, and she lost everything. She was forced to drop out of school for a semester. And when she lost her Columbia housing, she learned firsthand how expensive New York really was. It ended up taking her nearly five years of hustling in the city to save up enough to go back and finish her degree.

  “Our family is fucked up,” Tyesha said. “Your mama. My mama. Your brothers. I couldn’t—I just had to get out of Chicago.”

  “Stop talking about leaving Chicago,” Deza said. “You didn’t leave Chicago, you left us. One day you were there and the next day, you called to say you were moving.” Deza began to cry.

  Tyesha wanted to protest, but she had learned at the clinic to just let people cry. And to comfort them. She sat down next to Deza and put an arm around her, but Deza pushed it away roughly.