Can't Stop the Shine Read online

  “Who are you getting loud with?” Shauntae demanded, rolling her neck. “I can’t help if Qwon knows what he likes, but like I said, he ain’t about nuthin’ no way.”

  Well, they did agree about that, thought Mari, watching Shauntae pick up the stilettos.

  “Colby. Girl, I bet you couldn’t even walk in these.” Shauntae laughed, holding up one shoe by the heel. “Your skinny foot would probably slip out of the front and you’d bust your butt.”

  Mari had totally forgotten that Colby was even with them. She walked over to where she was sitting and plopped down beside her.

  “I thought y’all were gonna throw some blows for a minute there,” said Colby.

  “I ain’t trippin’ over that girl.”

  “But you were trippin’ over Qwon.”

  “So,” Mari said a little too harshly.

  “I’m just saying, you should be happy that Qwon got with Shauntae. At least you know what kind of girl he likes,” said Colby.

  She didn’t see Shauntae behind her.

  “If you’ve got something to say to me, Colby, you need to go on and say it,” said Shauntae. “Personally I think you’re just hatin’ ’cause you couldn’t catch a holla if you walked through this mall butt-ass naked.

  “Well, at least half the dudes in this mall haven’t seen me butt-ass naked,” said Colby, shocking both Mari and Shauntae. Colby rarely stood up for herself.

  “Whatevah, trick,” said Shauntae, with a wave of her hand.

  “This is ridiculous. I’m tired of arguing, and I need to get some new clothes,” said Mari. “I’m going to Rainbow.”

  They all had attitudes with one another as they walked out of the shoe store. Mari was thoroughly annoyed and considered ditching her friends to finish her back-to-school shopping alone. As they walked through the mall, Shauntae did get the most attention, but Mari and Colby were used to it. Shauntae had had a grown woman’s body since she was thirteen and she knew how to handle it. Mari did wish she would slow up on the number of guys that she got with, but Shauntae was headstrong, and it was hard to tell her anything.

  “I’ma dip into Rich’s,” said Shauntae, finger-combing her curly hair and slinging her empty backpack over her shoulder. “I’ll catch up with y’all.”

  “Get something for me,” said Colby as Shauntae walked off. They knew the next time they saw Shauntae that her backpack would be full, but she wouldn’t have spent a dime.

  “Does that girl ever pay for anything?” asked Mari, already knowing the answer to her question.

  “Nope,” said Colby. “She’s got that thing down to a science. She racked up at the jewelry spot last week. Check out these silver hoops she got me. I hope she doesn’t get caught again.”

  “Don’t be putting that bad energy out there, girl,” said Mari.

  “Well, we won’t be minors anymore in a couple of months when we turn seventeen,” said Colby, “and if she gets caught stealing as an adult, she’ll probably get in some real trouble, not juvenile stuff anymore.”

  “Aw, you just said Shauntae had skills,” said Mari as they walked into Rainbow. “The only reason y’all got caught before is because she forgot about the cameras in the dressing room, right?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I’ve boosted for the last time. I’d just rather pay for my stuff and not risk it again,” said Colby.

  “That’ll probably keep you out of jail, which is good,” said Mari, “but I won’t front. I loved that CD player y’all got for me that one time. I still use it.”

  Colby stopped at the tennis dresses, picked one up and placed it in front of her thin frame in the full-length mirror. At nearly seventeen, she still had the underdeveloped body of a twelve-year-old, and her glasses sometimes made her look just that age.

  “This would be cute if I had something to fill it out with,” she said. “Shauntae would look like a Barbie doll in this.”

  “Nothing’s going on in here,” said Mari, ignoring Colby’s comments. “Let’s hit the food court. Shauntae knows we always end up over there anyway.”

  A half an hour later, Shauntae flopped down at a table with Mari and Colby and dropped her bursting knapsack on the floor.

  “I guess you racked up,” said Colby. “What did you get me?”

  “Now you know I don’t discuss the goods before I go home and check them out,” said Shauntae, grabbing one of Colby’s French fries.

  “You could have asked,” said Colby.

  “What are you going to say? No?” dared Shauntae, taking another fry.

  “Maybe,” said Colby, scooting her plate over. “Get your own food, greedy.”

  “With your string bean of a body I guess I should leave your food alone. That’s why I didn’t get your stingy butt anything,” said Shauntae. “I had a close call up in there, but I worked it out. I think this’ll be my last time for the summer. I basically got all the gear I need anyway. I’ma sell some of this stuff and get me a little dough to get some smoke, too.”

  Colby looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening to their conversation. “I wish you wouldn’t be so loud about what you do,” she whispered to Shauntae. “Everybody doesn’t have to know that you smoke.”

  “Fool, everybody in this mall is probably high right now,” said Shauntae with a sweeping gesture.

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t get caught. My grandma was pissed when she had to come and get us from the police station last time,” reminded Colby.

  “We probably would have gotten away if you knew how to handle the security guard, but your skinny butt doesn’t give a man much to look at,” said Shauntae.

  “You’ve got one more time to say something about me, Shauntae,” threatened Colby.

  “Or what, punk? What are you gonna do?”

  Colby just kept eating her fries.

  “At least your grandmama came and got you,” said Shauntae. “When I got home, my mama just told me I was too stupid to even know how to shoplift without getting caught.”

  “Your mama ain’t the brightest color in the box, you know?” Mari snickered. “Only Mrs. Washington would name her child after some old eighties rapper, Roxanne Shauntae. Your mama really wanted to be a rapper, huh? That is so funny.”

  “Shut up, Mari, before I have to come across this table,” said Shauntae, standing up. “Your mama ain’t all that, either. She looks like a played-out old hippie with that wild hair.”

  “Keep talking, Shauntae, and I’ll knock you so silly that you’ll feel as drunk as your mama always is,” said Mari, rising from her seat as well.

  “Y’all are just ridiculous,” said Colby. “Ain’t nobody’s mama perfect, so cool it now.”

  “What are you? The long lost member of New Edition?” teased Shauntae. She started singing the group’s old school hit “Cool It Now,” and when Mari joined in the singing, they drew some applause from tables nearby.

  Colby laughed at her friends, slightly embarrassed at the attention they were getting in the food court. “Y’all are so crazy, but I love ya,” she said. The mood was lifted, attitudes were gone, and all three girls laughed and joked the rest of the time they spent in the mall, shopping until they were nearly broke.

  All the talk about mothers made Mari think about hers as she was standing outside the mall later, waiting for Kalia to come and pick her up. She really wondered what other people thought about her mother.

  “Do you think Mama’s happy?” she asked Kalia, getting into the champagne-colored 2001 Camry she hoped her sister would be willing to share with her since she was a newly licensed driver.

  “I guess so. What do you mean?” Kalia questioned.

  “You know how she’s always acting so free-spirited and stuff, but lately she’s just been kinda down.”

  “Well, she and Daddy haven’t been really talking. Something’s going on.”

  “Something is always going on between them, but this something is a little different.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Kalia admitted, �
��but at least they put up a good front at the party.”

  “As usual. You don’t think they would ever get a divorce, do you?” Mari almost whispered.

  “No, of course not,” Kalia lied, knowing she’d been thinking the same thing for months. “They’re just going through it like they always do. There’s nothing really wrong. They’ll snap out of it soon enough, and things will be back to normal.”

  “Okay. If you say so,” said Mari, not really as comforted by Kalia’s reassuring as she wanted to be. “I just really worry about them sometimes. They’re never together really and when they are, they’re either ignoring each other or screaming and yelling.”

  “I told you they’ll be fine,” said Kalia. “They’ve just got a lot going on. Ma just finished with the Black Arts Festival and she’s nervous about that application for the loan to get her yoga studio. Daddy’s opening a new restaurant, and you know how he gets all crazy when he’s doing that. Plus, they were helping us plan our last party, and school is starting and all…you know, they’re just stressed.”

  “Umm, hmm, but I thought that married people were supposed to be happy. They always look happy on TV, even when they’re fighting. They always end up working it out, you know, and laughing about it,” said Mari as they pulled up to the house. “Our parents haven’t seemed happy to me in at least the last year.”

  “That shows how much you know about marriage, silly. TV is fake, okay? Married people are happy sometimes, and they argue a lot of the time. That’s just how it is,” said Kalia authoritatively.

  “Umm, hmm. Whatever you say. I hope I don’t have a marriage like that.”

  “Don’t worry. Nobody’s gonna marry you because you’re too messy.”

  “Shut up, neat freak.”

  A few weeks later Kalia saw just how serious things were getting between their parents when the night before school started, she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and caught her father sleeping in the guest bedroom. On the ride to school that morning, while Mari chattered away about her first day of tenth grade, Kalia debated about whether to tell her sister about her parents’ new sleeping arrangements.

  “Tenth grade better be fun. I mean, aren’t your high school days supposed to be the best days of your life?” asked Mari. “Well, if ninth grade was any indication of what the rest of high school is going to be like for me, I might as well quit now and work at the post office.”

  “I think you have to finish high school to carry mail,” said Kalia. “You’ve just gotta find something that you’d like to get involved in at East Moreland—some kind of activity or club or something.”

  “I don’t want to be in their boring old clubs. I wanna kick it.”

  “Too bad for you ’cause you sure don’t go to a kick-it school.”

  “Shut up. I know that.” Mari pouted. She hated going to private school—or at least the lack of people who looked like her at East Moreland.

  “You shouldn’t be so smart,” teased Kalia.

  “Well, smart and boring is the last thing I wanna be. What good is all this brainpower if I’m bored to death? You’re lucky. All kinds of stuff is going on at your school.”

  “I can’t help that I get to go to Williams. Like I said, you shouldn’t be so intelligent.”

  “I’ll trade you my brain for your talent,” offered Mari, getting out of the car.

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because creativity will take you farther than intelligence any day,” said Kalia, putting the car in Drive to pull out of the parking lot.

  “Thanks for the ride, chauffer.”

  “Later.”

  As Kalia drove toward Williams, she realized she had not told Mari about seeing their father sleeping in the guest room. “I guess I’m not supposed to tell her,” she said out loud. She watched the landscape of the city changing as she navigated her way downtown. Mari’s school was near the governor’s mansion, where there were gated estates and several country clubs with meticulously manicured grounds. She bypassed the upscale shops and boutiques that she’d only been in a few times with her mother, when Elaine was splurging on an outfit. The closer she got to Williams, the more skyscrapers and concrete she encountered. Sure, there were landscaped city parks carved out here and there, but the lush greenery of the East Moreland area was not duplicated downtown, and being that it was the last week in August in HotLanta, the heat was so stifling that steam was rising off the street at seven-thirty in the morning.

  Only in Atlanta could it be nearly eighty degrees first thing in the morning, Kalia thought, looking at many of her schoolmates mixed in with the throng of mostly businesspeople pouring out of the Five Points MARTA train station. As a senior, Kalia was finally going to get a space in the school’s parking deck, and she couldn’t be happier. She hadn’t ridden the train in from their Southwest Atlanta neighborhood since tenth grade, but now she would no longer have to hunt around for parking on the street.

  “Good morning,” said Dewayne, nearly scaring the life out of Kalia, opening the passenger door of her car and sliding in as she was stopped at a streetlight. “What did I tell you about locking your doors, girl?”

  “I know…I know,” said Kalia. “Somebody’s gonna jack me one of these days.”

  “And then whose house am I going to hang out at?”

  “’Cause it’s all about you, right? Who cares that somebody’s just grabbed your girl and probably hauled me off somewhere?”

  “They’ll bring you right back as soon as you open your mouth. Nobody but me can take all of that bossing around.”

  “Get out of my car, right now,” ordered Kalia.

  “See. You just couldn’t wait to tell me what to do.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And you can’t stop. It’s a good thing it’s all love between us,” said Dewayne. “So how do you feel being a senior and all? This is it. We’ve got one more year of frivolousness, then we’ll be thrust into the world as starving artists.”

  “I don’t know about you,” said Kalia, “but I’m not trying to miss any meals. I’ve got a plan.”

  “Oh, do you really? Tell me about this grand scheme, and of course don’t forget to include where I fit in. You know it’s all about moi!”

  “Look, moi, my plans are just that right now—my plans. I ain’t ready to share yet. I’ll let you know when I am.”

  “All right, OO7. Keep your little secrets to yourself. I’ve got some secrets of my own. Maybe one day we can rendezvous for a clandestine meeting and exchange classified information. You know the Chosen One is always down for adventure.”

  “Okay, you’re trippin’. Get out,” Kalia said, pulling into a parking space. “You need to disengage yourself from that creepy comic strip world and concentrate on some real art.”

  “How many times to do I have to tell you that the universe of the Chosen One is real art? People get major recognition for these types of illustrations. Plus, there are new ways that I’m finding to combine some Web stuff with animation and…” said Dewayne.

  Hustling down the steps of the parking deck, Kalia shook her head at her friend. “Boy, I just don’t want to see you end up at one of those comic book fairs with all the overtattooed, over-pierced grimy guys who only leave their mother’s basements to go to those weirdo conventions.”

  “You just don’t understand what I’m trying to do.”

  “Yes, I do. You’re trying to create some X-Men-Spider Man thingy, and I still say that’s not real art. What’s up with the styles of Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence? I’m sure if you worked at it, you could create art like theirs.”

  “But that’s not me, K. I don’t want some sterile, museum exhibit-type art style,” Dewayne insisted.

  “Well, you’re never gonna get recognition from the important people in the art community,” said Kalia as they entered the halls of Williams, which was teeming with a mix of urban hip-hop kids and alternative artistic teens.

 
; “Who says I want their recognition? Who cares what they say? I’m doing my thing, just like you,” said Dewayne, swooping around a dancer stretching against the wall and swerving to nearly miss getting clipped by a guitar case slung over the shoulder of another student.

  “What do you mean, like me?”

  “I know how well you can sing classical like Denyce Graves and jazz and stuff, but to me you’re more like an Alicia Keys. You’re always trying to appeal to the highbrow crowd, singing traditional stuff, but you’ve got some Jill Scott funk in you or something. You can create your own style with your talent. I know you wanna do it anyway. You blew everybody away at your birthday party.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, D? The only reason I sang that song is because Mari didn’t think I could,” said Kalia, quickening her step. “I’m a serious singer—a trained musician. I work hard on my voice and my playing. I do not…hold up…will not be pimped out in some skimpy outfit grinding on some man talking about how I can do it to him better than the next chick can!”

  “Slow down, mama. You’re missing the point. What I’m trying to—”

  “I know what you mean, and I’m not trying to hear it. I gotta find my first class, so I’m out,” said Kalia, turning on her heels and marching off down the hall, leaving Dewayne to make his point to himself. She hated that he knew how to break her down so well. How did the conversation get turned around to be about her anyway? she wondered. Weren’t they talking about him and his comic book obsession? She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she did enjoy singing that song by Alicia Keys, who was a classically trained vocalist and pianist. So if she performed more Alicia Keys-style music, would she really be turning her back on years of serious training?

  Chapter

  3

  Two weeks later, Kalia, Mariama and Dewayne were on the way home after Mari’s cross-country practice.

  “We need another car in this family,” said Kalia, “’cause I’m sick of hauling your stinky butt around.”

  “You were the one who was rushing me after practice. If you’d given me ten minutes, I could have taken a shower,” said Mari, stretching out across the backseat.