Can't Stop the Shine Read online

  “Mari, I’ve got to stop by home for a minute, then I’ll take you home. You wanna call your parents? You can use my cell,” said Roxie. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you tell your folks that you’re going to have dinner with us tonight? I’m making my famous turkey burgers.”

  Hmm, a night with the Wrights, thought Mari. “Well…I don’t know, Mrs. Wri—I mean, Roxie. I have homework and—”

  “Yeah, Mama, you know midterms are coming up, and she’s probably got a lot of studying to do,” Asha broke in, narrowing her eyes at Mari in the visor mirror.

  “Well, she’s gotta eat, doesn’t she? She might as well do it at our house,” said Roxie. “Plus, you never bring anybody home. I don’t even know who your friends are. Do you even have any?”

  Asha glared at Roxie. “Yes, I have friends. Fine. Mari, do you want to come over for dinner?”

  “Uh, well,” stammered Mari, feeling caught in the middle of a mother-daughter battle, the kind she knew all too well.

  “Great, it’s settled,” piped Roxie. “We’re gonna have beauty night at the Wrights—I love it when I rhyme—and you are going to love my turkey burgers, Mari. They are off the chain.”

  After Mari left a message for her father on his cell phone that she’d been invited to have dinner at Asha’s house, she began to pay attention to the neighborhood through which they were driving to get to Asha’s house. She realized they were in the Cascades area of Southwest Atlanta where prominent black families had lived for decades. The houses were humongous, Mari thought. Her place could be the guesthouse behind the two- and three-story all-brick homes she was seeing with their balconies, bay windows, wraparound decks, manicured grounds, oversized pools and winding driveways.

  The ride to the Wrights was filled with get-to-know-you conversation, spearheaded by Roxie, which Mari thoroughly enjoyed. She liked Roxanne Wright and her Farrah Fawcett hair. The cut was so precise that when she bent her head, the wings stayed in place. Roxie wore her feathered do like she’d invented it. Her makeup was flawless, almost like she’d had her face done by a professional makeup artist. Mari wondered how many shades of eye shadow it took to blend that smoky sunset look Roxie had going on on her lids, and the lipstick was a perfectly matching high-gloss color. She wore a cream designer suit—the kind that didn’t come from a department store. Her meringue bag and shoes matched, and her three main pieces of jewelry consisted of a pair of dainty but substantial diamond studs, a thin platinum necklace with a heart-shaped diamond pendant and a diamond ring on her right ring finger that had more baguettes than Paris.

  She was crisp in style, but her personality was entertaining. Somehow, she knew all about the hottest singers, and Mari was really impressed when she recognized the voice of rapper JD who was being interviewed on the radio about his recent signing to Fire Records.

  “You sure know a lot about hip-hop, Mrs. Wri—Roxie,” said Mari, shaking her head, correcting herself.

  “Well, you know, I gotta keep up with you young bucks,” said Roxie. “It’s part of my business, staying up on the trends. I’m trying to get with Alicia Keys and Fantasia. I’m looking into getting them to promote my products.”

  “Oh, what type of product do you…” Mari tried to ask.

  “You’ve got the Wright Touch, baby,” Asha sang, and very well, Mari thought.

  “The Wright Touch?” Mari exclaimed. “You’re like Roxanne Wright of the Wright Touch? My girls wear your makeup, but it sure doesn’t look like that on them. Your makeup is great. Asha, why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Baby, you never told your friend about the Wright Touch?” said Roxie, furrowing her brows. “I thought I asked you to tell all your friends.”

  “My mama owns the Wright Touch line, Mari,” said Asha. “You know, the kind all the celebrities wear.”

  “That is really cool, Roxie,” said Mari.

  “Thank you, Mari. Now what do you think about my idea to approach Alicia Keys and Fantasia? I like to get the opinions of my target market.”

  “I think it’s a great idea. I really like Alicia Keys. She has really cool style. My girls like Fantasia. They’re both really pretty and talented,” offered Mari.

  “Geez…Ma, this is why I don’t like to tell a whole lot of people what you do,” said Asha.

  “Why? Why not?” asked Roxie.

  “Because everybody gets all crazy about it, excited and asking me for products and stuff. You know how it is when I tell somebody.”

  “And you know I don’t mind giving your friends product either. I wanna know what they think. Stop being so silly,” said Roxie. “Mari, I’m going to hook you and your friends up when we get home. So what are you, a lip gloss girl?”

  “Oh my gosh. How did you know?” asked Mari.

  “That’s my business, baby—Roxie is always Wright, right?” Roxie smiled, looking at Asha.

  “Right,” replied Asha.

  Asha groaned as they turned onto the long winding driveway to the Wrights’ house.

  “Wow, you’ve got a really nice crib. It is so big. You must have twenty-five rooms,” said Mari to Asha.

  “About that,” answered Asha nonchalantly. As Roxie parked, she sang the lyrics to one of the most played songs on the radio, “Game Boy” by Ace, a rapper from Decatur, an Atlanta suburb.

  Getting out of the car, Mari and Roxanne joined in for the chorus.

  As they were all dancing up the walkway, Mari nearly tripped looking at her surroundings.

  “Your lawn is really nice, too,” she said. “Is that what you call a yard this big? A lawn?”

  “Thank you, Mari,” said Roxie. “We have a gardener who comes in once a week to maintain it. Can you imagine Asha out here pulling weeds?”

  “Very funny, Mama. C’mon, Mari. I’ll show you around,” said Asha, sauntering past dozens of sculpted bushes and shrubberies on the massive landscaped and manicured front lawn.

  As soon as she entered the front entryway, Mari knew she was in a home that was different from hers. Everything seemed like it was in its right place. African art and artistic photos graced the walls and bookshelves, the rooms were spacious, and there were hardly any doors downstairs—Mari just turned a corner and she was in a different room. There were rounded adobe-styled entryways, and she could tell that Roxie or a wacky interior decorator had gone a little hog wild in the Southwestern motif.

  The colors were coral and teal, and there were occasional reds, greens and yellows. Everything complemented everything else—the intricately handwoven rugs, the hardwood floors and the seat cushions in the wood lounger, the maple dining room set complete with an ornate set of china in a regal marble cabinet and the kitchen bar that was complemented with comfy colorful bar chairs.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes, ladies. Asha, fix Mari something to drink and show her where we kick it,” Roxie shouted from the top of a wide spiral wooden staircase in the back of the kitchen.

  “Your house is great,” Mari said to Asha.

  “Okay, you’ve said that,” Asha reminded her. Mari immediately missed Roxie’s presence.

  “Well, it is,” she said, wondering why she was there in the first place. If her daddy had shown up on time, she wouldn’t be stuck with Asha, whom she was beginning to wonder whether she could ever really like.

  “It is nice, ain’t it?” Asha admitted. “I do wish it was bigger. I wish we could have a real gym. That would be fabulous, then I’d have somewhere for Pierce to hook me up in the mornings. You know I gotta keep my edge over you,” she added, opening the door to the largest stainless steel refrigerator Mari had ever seen.

  “Thanks. What kind is this?” Mari asked, taking a bottled water from Asha.

  “That water is enhanced with minerals. It’s the only kind I drink. You never know what’s in tap water, girl. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Cool. And hey, you’ve got one more time to bring up track, and it’s gonna be you and me. I’m in a slump, but that’s how I set up my prey.”
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  “Umm, hmm…okay. This is my room,” said Asha, flinging open the door with a grand sweeping gesture.

  Mari felt like she was in a fairy tale. Asha’s room had everything any teenager could ever want. First of all there was so much space in it, Mari knew she could do three back flips and not hit a wall or a piece of furniture. Asha’s huge cherrywood four-poster bed, draped with a butter-yellow spread and yellow curtainlike material over the posts, sat in the center of the room on an expansive plush yellow rug into which her feet were disappearing. There were butter-yellow window treatments that matched the cushions in the rocking chair and ottoman set in the corner and the window seats in the side window that nearly rose to the ceiling.

  Every piece of furniture was a rich cherrywood, including several overflowing bookcases against the walls, an old-fashioned stand-alone rounded full-length mirror, an entertainment center that held a flat-screen television, a DVD player, a stereo and tons of CDs and DVDs, and the intricately designed desk and chair where Asha did her homework. The multicolored throws and blankets draped across the bottom of the bed and on the window seats matched the green, orange and red throw pillows on the bed, the rocking chair and the cushions of another couple of comfortable oversized chairs placed on either side of a huge walk-in closet that was filled with designer clothes, shoes and bags.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Mari, walking around the room. “Asha, you’ve got everything in here, plus, enough space to host a track meet. I bet I could run the 100 in here. At least I could long jump.”

  “I thought we weren’t talking about track.” Asha laughed.

  “Shut up.”

  Asha kicked off her shoes into the closet and fell backward onto the bed, observing Mari looking at the different paintings on the wall of young black women and then walking over to a wall-mounted photograph of a field with wild yellow flowers growing for miles and miles. The flowers seemed to meet the horizon. Something about the photo gave Mari the feeling it was taken in another country.

  “Where was this taken?” she asked, then noticed the outside through what she’d thought were floor-to-ceiling wood-trimmed windows. “You have a balcony, too?” asked Mari, switching gears and swinging open the floor-to-ceiling glass-and-wood doors to step on a balcony that overlooked the side of the house where the gardener maintained a beautiful spread of flowers. Asha joined her on the balcony, and they both sat in a swing that was suspended from the ceiling of the overhang.

  “The photo was taken in a little town not too far from Paris,” said Asha.

  “You’ve been to Paris? Like overseas?”

  “Yep.” They were swinging back and forth now.

  “So what was it like?”

  “The shopping was crazy. I mean, everything in Europe is like three years ahead in terms of fashion. We racked up on all kinds of gear, and of course everybody smoked a lot and spoke French. Thank God I speak French, too.”

  “Paris! That’s what’s up. When did you go? Was it cold? Were there any black people? How was the food?” Mari was excited.

  “We went last spring. Yes, it was kinda cold, but not too bad because my mama got us these beautiful Burberry wool coats, and we were chauffeured around, so we hardly felt the cold at all. The food was different—really rich with lots of creamy sauces. Paris has way more white people than black people, but we saw a lot of blacks, especially Africans. Probably because my mama was there to scout out models for Wright Touch.”

  “Did she find one?”

  “She found a ton. I think they are going to choose one soon to do some kind of European marketing campaign. We’ve been to Jamaica tons of times and London, too. I think she’s trying to go to Brazil later on this year. I’ll probably get to go.”

  “That’s really cool that you get to travel like that.”

  “Well, you know that’s how it is when you’re a baller,” said Asha. “One day we’ll probably have a private jet and everything.”

  “A lot of people wish they could have a life like yours. I mean I’ve never been out of the country,” said Mari, closing her eyes to think. “Well, I take that back. When we went to a wedding in Detroit when I was young, we drove across the border to Canada, but we were only there for a few hours. We used to go on a family vacation every summer to places like Disney World and Washington, D.C. We did go to L.A. and New York City, but I don’t think I really know any black people who live like you.”

  “There are a bunch of us, just not all in one place. Maybe you can come back sometime when my mama is throwing one of her fabulous affairs. You’ll really see how the grown and sexy get down then. It’s catered, and there’s a live band and champagne flowing everywhere.”

  “That sounds like a video.”

  “Well, there are usually celebrities everywhere,” said Asha, hopping off the swing to lean against the wood railing of the balcony.

  “Ooh, like who?”

  “Just some singers, rappers and a few actors and models—the regulars. I’m going to take a shower,” said Asha, changing the subject. “I’ll use the one down the hall and you can use mine. Towels are in the closet, and just get a T-shirt and shorts out of the top drawer.” Asha grabbed a towel and some clothes and disappeared from the room.

  After dinner, Asha took Mari on a tour of the Wrights’ home. Every room, all sixteen, not including the full basement and the four bathrooms, were just as impressive as Asha’s room. There was all kinds of art—from sculptures to paintings and state-of-the-art technology all over the house. When they entered the foyer, Mari noticed the grand piano between two sets of spiral staircases and asked Asha who played.

  “Not me,” she said.

  “I play,” said Roxie, coming around the corner, “and Asha sings.”

  “You sing, Asha?” said Mari, a bit surprised.

  “Well, I can do a little something,” said Asha.

  “Sing a little something for Mari, baby. I’ll play,” said Roxie, sitting down at the piano.

  “Mama, I’m kinda tired from practice, plus, I don’t know what to sing,” said Asha, moving closer to the piano.

  “Girl, please. You know you wanna sing. Stop all that fake modesty,” said Roxie.

  “Okay, I’ll do a short something,” said Asha, grinning.

  “What do you want me to play?” asked Roxie.

  “No, Mama, I don’t need accompaniment. I’ll just do something a cappella,” said Asha.

  “All right, Mari. Get ready,” said Roxie. “You’re gonna get the real deal now.”

  Asha opened her mouth and a whole ’nother person came out—one who clearly was blessed with such natural vocal abilities that it seemed eerie. She sang Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love.” When Asha sang, she seemed to reach deep down in herself, and her emotion drove the song. Her voice was rich, like that of a seasoned singer’s, and her range was wide. There were no falsettos in her high notes, and her low ones scraped the bottom of the barrel. Nearing the end of her short performance, Asha was leaning so far back to get those last notes that she was holding her stomach and the banister behind her simultaneously, seemingly needing to steady herself.

  “Damn my baby is good,” said Roxie, standing up and clapping furiously before Asha finished singing the last word.

  Mari was shocked. She didn’t expect that much soul to come from Asha. “You can really blow,” she said. “How long have you been singing?”

  “Oh, I had Miss Asha in vocal classes when she was four years old. She can sing anything, anytime, anywhere,” bragged Roxie. “I don’t know why she wants to sing that old stuff though. She needs to be singing something more contemporary, like Mary J. She can do it, too.”

  “Mama, you know I don’t like to sing that stuff. That old-school Mariah is a great ballad,” said Asha.

  “Fine, sing some Jill Scott. I know you like her,” said Roxie.

  “Okaaaay,” Asha gave in—again.

  Sitting down again at the piano, Roxie started playing “He Loves Me,” and Asha sa
ng effortlessly. As she got into the song, Mari couldn’t tell that there was ever any reluctance in Asha. She was ripping it, not as well as Jill, but close.

  “I didn’t even know you could sing. You should enter the talent show,” said Mari.

  “She is,” said Roxie, “and she’s gonna win.”

  “No I’m not,” said Asha. “I am not singing in a talent show.”

  “Why not? You’ve definitely got the talent,” asked Mari. “You know my sister sings. I’ve been trying to convince her to get in the show, too. What is it with you singers? Y’all can sing and you don’t want to. That is so weird.”

  “I’m sorry for your sister ’cause my baby’s gonna run away with that contest,” said Roxie. “Anyway, Asha, you’re entering that contest, and that’s final.”

  “I don’t want to, Mama,” Asha whined. Mari couldn’t really tell if she was serious.

  “You’ll have some great competition if I can get my sister to enter,” said Mari. “You should go ahead and do it.”

  “So your sister sings what? Jazz? R & B?” asked Roxie. Happy for the opportunity to brag about her sister, Mari wasn’t going to miss this chance to let Asha know she wasn’t going to be able to win easily.

  “Kalia’s incredible. She can sing anything—classical, jazz, R&B—anything you throw at her. She goes to Williams High, downtown.”

  “Crunk High? That’s where your sister goes to school?” Asha huffed. “I hope she’s in the performing arts program because that’s the only reason to go to Crunk High.”

  “Of course she’s in the PA program, and I don’t know what you have against Williams. It’s the livest school in the city. It’s sure got way more going on than East Boredom,” countered Mari.

  “Anyway.” Asha waved off Mari and turned to her mother, suddenly changing her mind. “I’m picking out what I wear and definitely what I’m gonna sing.”

  “Sure, baby,” said Roxie, winking at Mari. “Whatever you want, we’ll talk about it.”

  “Umm, hmm,” said Asha. “Don’t think I didn’t see that. Mari, don’t let her suck you in. She’s convincing. She’s a marketer. That’s what they do.”