All I Want is Everything

by Daaimah S. Poole

  “Hi, Aunt Kendra! Look what I can do!” He tried to flex his little-bitty muscle. I told him that was nice and took a seat. Then he began dancing, doing side flips and moving his feet real fast like he was a chicken running in place. We all began laughing. It was so funny because he was bony and couldn’t dance, but in his little mind he was doing good.

  “You doin’ it, Boy Boy. It’s your birthday. Get down,” Nitra said, encouraging him. Then he ran out of the kitchen.

  “You need any help?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I do. All these kids’ parents just dropped their kids off. I don’t understand people. When my kids go to parties, I stay there with them. Kendra, I just need help with putting the food out,” she said as she took a tray of chicken out of the refrigerator.

  I helped Nitra pass out the hot dogs and cleaned up all the half-finished soda cans. Then it was time to sing “Happy Birthday.” I scooped out ice cream and passed out cake. I was tired. That’s why I didn’t want to come in the first place, because I knew I would wind up doing work. Boy Boy ran in the kitchen and tapped my leg and asked, “It’s my birthday. What did you buy me?”

  “You’ll see when you open up your gifts,” I said.

  “We can open them now,” Nitra said as she gathered all the kids into the living room. John came down the steps with a camera and this huge Power Ranger game he was putting together. He gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  Boy Boy sat in the living room with all the other kids and began opening his gifts. He tore through the layers of wrapping paper. He was upset because all his gifts so far were clothes.

  “More stupid clothes,” he said as he threw the outfit I bought him on the floor.

  “Boy Boy, don’t do that,” Nitra scolded him.

  “Look in the other bag. Uncle Marcus got you something else,” Marcus said.

  “A truck! Thank you, Uncle Marcus!”

  “You welcome.” Marcus said as he palmed his head and shook it slightly. My mom and Bubbles came through the door with more toys.

  “How you get here?” Nitra asked.

  “We caught the bus,” my mom said.

  “Mom, why y’all catch the bus? We would have came and got you.”

  “I know but I was trying to wait on Bilal to come home. Then he didn’t come, and we didn’t want to miss the party, so we left. He’s somewhere playing with his friends.”

  “I’ll make you a plate, Ms. Joanne,” Nitra said as she got up.

  “Nitra, make that plate to go. I have to get out of here soon. My bus to the casino leaves at five. Can somebody give me a ride to the bus depot?” my mom asked.

  “We were about to leave anyway,” I said. “I have to go to work tomorrow and I’m tired.” I had fulfilled my auntie obligation.

  We dropped my mom off at the bus station. “Give me a lucky number,” she said as she got out of the car.

  “Ten, twelve, a hundred, two, and five. Mom, why does it matter? You’re not going to win,” I said. I was damn tired of her gambling.

  “Don’t say that. You don’t know that,” she said, irritated with me.

  “All you doing is wasting your time and your money.”

  “Whatever. This is how I like to spend my money and one day I am going to win, and when I do, don’t come and ask me for any money.”

  “I won’t.”

  After we dropped her off we went and grabbed something to eat, then went home and watched CSI Miami. I eventually nodded off.

  Marcus awoke me by whispering in my ear, “You ready to have a baby, Kendra?”

  I pretended to be asleep. My eyes were shut.

  I didn’t say anything. I was hoping he would just go to sleep if I didn’t answer him.

  “Kendra, you not ready to be my wife and have my baby?”

  “Not now. I’m sleeping,” I whispered.

  “Wake up. We’ve been together for all these years. I think it is time to start our family.”

  “I don’t know what I want to do with my life yet. And I definitely don’t want to bring anybody into the world when I don’t know what I want to do with myself. We still have so much to do with ourselves like get somewhere nice to live first.”

  “Kendra, you know I’m going to get you a house and make you my wife and then we going to have a baby. Now say yes.”

  “I’m not saying yes, I still want to wait. I want to get another job or go to school or something.” I said as I turned around to him.

  “I said we going to get married. You going to let me put a baby in there,” he said grabbing me around my waist. “I want you to stop taking your pills.”

  “No I’m not going to do that, not right now.” I was becoming more and more irritated.

  “No? You don’t want to have my baby?”

  “Marcus, leave me alone. I’m going back to sleep,” I said as I clutched my pillow and turned my back to him. I knew what had happened to him. He saw John and Nitra and now he felt like he wanted to have a family too. But I wasn’t feeling that right now. I had to do something else with my life.

  I was back at work. It was kind of slow. It was so ironic, I worked in a place that my mom can’t even walk in, but whatever. I sat there looking around. How did I stay in this place for all these years? It wasn’t exactly a dump, but I knew I could do so much more with my life. Like some people are just so smart they just know they are supposed to go to school without anyone telling them. And after college they are supposed to be able to get a good job and go to work every day. Maybe I didn’t care back then, but I sure did now. My daydreaming was interrupted with, “Kendra, give me a whiskey sour.” It was one of my regulars.

  “How you doing, Mike?” I asked as I put a napkin in front of him.

  “Not so good. I can’t go home—might as well stay here,” he said hunching his shoulder.

  “Why? What happened?” I asked.

  “My woman left me. Messed up right,” Mike said shaking his head.

  “Why she leave you?” I asked placing his whiskey sour in front of him.

  “’Cause she found out about my wife.” He laughed. He threw back that drink and said, “Can you give me one more?”

  I poured him another. I then sat and did a crossword puzzle.

  “Kendra, one more,” he said, calling me over. Then he said, “As a matter of fact make it a double.” He was up to four drinks. I sat down and then he waved me back over to him.

  “Kendra, I got to tell you something.”

  “What you got to tell me, Mike?” I asked.

  “Kendra, you know you got to believe in something. Well, I believe I’m gonna have another drink,” he said as he fell off the stool laughing.

  I looked over the bar, and there he was on the floor with his head bashed in with blood pouring from it. He pulled himself up, said he was okay and staggered to the bathroom. He came back five minutes later and said, “Pretty lady, I’m going to need one more for the road.”

  “No, that’s it, Mike.”

  “Bitch! Give me another drink,” he demanded. I wasn’t about to argue with his drunk ass, so I called Julius from the back. He came out and I said, “Tell him that’s it.”

  “Sorry, pal, no more tonight.”

  “Fuck it. I’ll get a drink from somewhere else,” he said as he fell one more time before walking out the door. “Isn’t that something—he wants to cuss us out for trying to save his life,” Julius said. I was beginning to hate my job and my life. I started getting a headache.

  I went home and just lay in the bed. I felt sad for no reason. I was still thinking about my life. What could I do and what could I do fast that would make up for the years I didn’t do anything with my life? The only thing I was ever interested in or good at in my life was singing. Singing was what made people pay attention to me. It was what made me special. I had forgotten how to be special. I remembered people coming up to me asking me to sing. I was missing my passion. I didn’t even remember why I stopped singing. I just did.

  When Marcus came home,
I asked, “Do you remember me wanting to be a singer?”

  “Yeah, you used to say you sung when you was little. Why?”

  “I was thinking about how happy singing used to make me feel.”

  “Okay, so what are you saying?” he said taking off his uniform at the edge of the bed.

  “What do you think about me singing again? Like really trying to make a living at it?”

  He looked at me like I was dumb and said, “Realistically, how are you going to be a singer, baby? You know how many people can sing, Kendra? And you sing great, but what, are you going to go audition for American Idol? I mean, be for real. Be serious. You’re twenty-five. That’s something you should have tried to do when you was a teenager, like at seventeen or eighteen.”

  “You’re right,” I reluctantly admitted.

  “No, listen, I support whatever you want to do. I’m behind you one hundred percent. I just think you can find something to go back to school for. And I support that, but being a singer…it’s not realistic.”

  “So you don’t think I could be a singer?” I asked him.

  “You can be a singer, but to make a living off of it—I don’t know, babe. You’re good, but it might be other singers that are better.”

  Marcus was trying to be supportive, but then again he wasn’t. He was saying. “Yeah, I believe in you, but I don’t think you will make it.” I looked up at the ceiling for an answer and all I saw was chipped paint. Why was I asking Marcus about moving on when he was still sleeping in the bedroom he grew up in? And the trifling thing was that I was lying next to him.

  Chapter 7

  I had a dream last night. In my dream I was at the old house I grew up in. Everything was still in the same place like right before the fire and I opened the closet door. When the door opened I saw light, so I kept moving forward and then I found another bedroom. I didn’t realize my mom’s house was that big. There was another bathroom and another living room. It was almost another apartment. It didn’t look like anyone lived here. I exited the room and then I awoke and called my mother.

  “Mom, you have your dream book?” I asked.

  “Why, what you dream about?”

  “I dreamed that there were extra rooms in the house.” My mom said, “Hold up,” as she found her book.

  “More rooms? Yeah. Room means 532. I’m going to play that today. It says here that finding rooms in your dream means that you have room to grow and unfulfilled dreams. You don’t have any unfulfilled dreams do you?”

  “I kind of do, Mom. I was talking to Marcus about trying to sing again. He said he thinks I’m too old. What do you think about me trying to sing at twenty-five? I’m too old, right?”

  “You’re never too old. If that’s your dream, you need to follow it. The way I look at it is, you’re going to be twenty-six next year, if you try to make it happen or not. So I think you should do it.” My mom was always honest with me.

  “Okay, but do you think I could make it?” I asked her again.

  “Kendra, um, I think you can. But it ain’t going to be easy.”

  “You right. But it is at least worth a try. Right?” As soon as I hung up with her I decided that I was going to look into singing again. I haven’t sung in years. The most I ever sang nowadays was in my car at a red light and in the shower. After everything happened, with the fire and us being homeless for a while, I just didn’t want to be bothered anymore. I didn’t think about writing a song or lyrics but now I felt like I wanted to sing—and what could it hurt if I try?

  I went to Borders and spent eighty-seven dollars on books about songwriting and breaking into the music industry. The first page I read was about defining your musical goals. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that was be a singer.

  I needed three songs for my demo tape. The book said you should have at least two original songs and maybe one cover song (you singing someone else’s song). At work I had all these tunes start coming to me. Like I was just thinking of beats and I just started humming them, and lyrics started coming back to me. Every time I got an idea I wrote it down, and by the end of the night I had all these little napkins with songs on them. I wrote this one song about not giving up on love.

  I looked online at work and found a studio that only charged twenty-five dollars an hour to record. It was run by a young white guy named Sam, whom I spoke to on the phone. He said he had all-new equipment and he made beats, or he could give me some instrumentals. I was going there on Thursday evening. I was so excited. I took off from work, and didn’t even tell Marcus. I wanted to surprise him. Actually, I think I really didn’t want him to talk me out of it.

  I took the address out of my bag and found the block. It was a small, narrow side street. I parked the car, then got out and rang the bell. A young redheaded guy came to the door.

  “I’m looking for Sam.”

  “He’s upstairs,” he said as he opened the door. We ran up about four flights of steps. The studio was a little room with a bunch of equipment, and keyboards with a small laptop computer. I was very disappointed and I was questioning his professionalism. The studio really looked like someone’s bedroom.

  “Kendra, I’m Sam. Hi,” he said, as the guy I’d talked to over the telephone stood up and shook my hand.

  “You don’t have a booth?” I asked, looking around for more in the room.

  “Oh. Yeah. See, you don’t really need a booth to achieve good sound quality,” he said as he began to show me his system.

  “Your neighbors don’t mind?”

  “No, ’cause the girl next door is a sculptor and the guy upstairs has a band. Everybody works different hours and makes noise and is artistic, so we all mesh perfectly.”

  “I’m going to play some of the beats, and you can tell me what you think.” He played ten tracks, but none of them was a fit for what I had written. I settled for an instrumental.

  I recorded all the songs straight through for the most part. I paid him his seventy-five dollars and he made me copies of the CDs. As I was leaving Sam said, “You’re good. You should really come down to North by Northwest on Thursday Nights. It’s open mic.”

  “Where at?”

  “On Germantown Avenue. You have to get there early to sign up.”

  I thanked Sam and left. I walked to my car, inserted the CD and played it the whole way home. I was so excited. I sounded good.

  I walked in and gave Marcus a hug and said, “Listen to this. I have something I want you to hear.” I put my CD in the stereo and played it.

  “It’s nice. Who is that singing?”

  “That’s me, baby.”

  “Really? Oh, you sound pretty good!” he said. “I would buy it. How did you get it made?” he asked

  “I went to the studio.”

  “You did? You didn’t even to tell me,” he said scratching his head.

  “I wanted to suprise you.”

  “It sounds just as good, if not better, than anything I hear on the radio now.”

  Chapter 8

  Now that I had a demo, I didn’t know how to get it in the right people’s hands. Nitra was listening to the radio and heard that Andre Scott, this popular R&B singer, was in town to promote his new CD. She said he was having a fan appreciation record release party.

  “Kendra you have to go. I will make John go with you.” Nitra was right. I went home and changed my clothes to go.

  The meet-and-greet line was around the corner. There was no way we was getting in. He had so many fans. They had pictures of him and magazines covers. I thought about jumping the line, but people who were in line were mean, mugging like “I dare you to bust.” I didn’t feel like getting into anything with anyone. So I walked up to the doorman and said, “How you doing.” I was trying to flirt, but it wasn’t really working. “I am a singer and trying to get in here.”

  The big bouncer turned to me and said, “Yeah, only way you not standing in this line is if you got something to put in my hand.”

  “Okay, I can do
that,” I smiled.

  “How many people with you?” he said, looking around to see if anyone would notice what was going on.

  “Just one.”

  “Okay, just give me thirty.” I pulled out thirty dollars, folded it very small and gave it to him.

  Once inside I saw the line for Andre Scott’s meet and greet. His fans were very serious about meeting him, and they would scream every time he answered a question and were taking pictures on their cell phones. The lights were just flashing, and he knew how to handle it. He seemed genuine. People were running up asking for pictures and autographs. I didn’t want to come across as one of those people, but how do you approach a celebrity without seeming like a fan? They get that every day—listen to my CD, I’m the next big thing. I couldn’t get anywhere near him.

  John went to the restroom, then came back and said, “The man at the door that let us in told me that he heard that Andre Scott was going over to Tragos after this. Let’s go there and then you can walk right up to him and give him your CD and he’ll probably actually listen to it.”

  I agreed and we left and drove to the other club. We sat at the bar for two hours, but it was worth every minute when Andre Scott came though the door. Nobody in the mostly white crowd had any idea who he was. He was with two guys and three girls. They walked over to a table and had a seat.

  John nudged me in the ribs. “This is much better now. You can walk right up to him, have a conversation and not seem like a groupie.” This was my opportunity to go over to him. This was my chance. He and his security were trying to get to the bathroom. I walked up behind him. I was about to tap him on the shoulder but then I got scared, and instead of handing him my CD I walked back over to John and had a seat.

  “I can’t walk up to a stranger. I can’t,” I said nervously.

  “Yo, how about if he sign you? You didn’t come out here tonight just to see him.”

  “You’re right, you’re right.” With that thought on my mind, as soon as I saw him walk out of the bathroom and sit down at his table, I walked over. His little entourage was looking at me like what the fuck do you want? I took a deep breath and said, “Hi. How you doing? I just wanted to tell you I really like your music, and I was wondering if I can give you my CD. I’m a singer.”