It’s proof. This is what I need to get my manman home.
Kasim is standing by the bathroom door when I come out. He kisses me on the cheek and leans in to say, “Come on. We got a VIP booth. I wanna toast Dray and then we could bounce. I can tell this ain’t your vibe. Dray said I could take his car.”
The VIP booth is lined with red and blue lightbulbs. Donna sits down next to Dray on a long narrow couch. Other girls surround them, too, but Donna doesn’t seem to care. In front of them is a small table holding a big birthday cake. It’s Dray’s twenty-first birthday. He’s holding a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other. Dray stares at me for a long minute before he offers the glass to me.
“Fabulous, come here,” he says.
I walk over to him and take the glass.
He picks up another glass and offers it to Kasim. Soon, we’re both standing around Dray, his cake, his girls, and his boys raising our glasses of champagne.
“I wanna shout out my man Kasim,” Dray says over the music. “I think he found the one.”
Kasim puts his arm around me and kisses me on the cheek. But out of the corner of my eye, I can tell that Dray keeps looking at me as he sips his champagne. I don’t drink any of it. Instead, I place the full glass on the table next to Dray’s cake. Donna is too busy talking and laughing with the other girls to notice when I leave the VIP booth with Kasim.
We’re out of the club and in Dray’s car. Again, I’m in Donna’s seat, on the passenger side.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask Kasim when I notice that he’s driving toward the tall buildings downtown. We’re on Livernois, and before long, after a few turns, we’re on Atwater Street pulling into a parking lot. I can see the dark stretch of water greeting me in the distance. I smile because rivers are Ezili’s home. Kasim comes around to open the door for me, and he places his coat over my shoulders.
The air is cold and sharp. There are tall and wide buildings on one side of the street and trees, walkways, and the river on the other side. It’s as if they were building this city until it reached the very edge of the river here. I pull up the hood of the coat and pull down the sleeves over my bare hands. When we reach the brightly lit walkway near the river, Kasim’s phone rings and he answers it.
“Yo, man, I just had to take Fab home right quick. I’ll be back soon—just save a bottle for me. . . . What?” He takes the phone away from his ear. “Fab, Dray wants to talk to you.”
My stomach twists. I start to shake my head, but I change my mind. I take his phone. “Hello?”
“Why you gotta bounce like that, Fab? Your cousin’s looking all over the place for you. I invited you to celebrate my birthday with me. I dropped some coins just so you look good for my boy. And you just gonna leave without saying shit?”
“I didn’t feel well.” I glance at Kasim, who is holding his head down with both hands in his pockets. “Tell Donna I’m sorry.”
“Oh, tell Donna you’re sorry? Even though it was my party? Okay.”
I don’t say anything and Kasim sees my face, so he takes the phone from me.
“Yo, Dray, I’ll check you in a few, a’ight? Happy birthday, man.” Kasim inhales long and deep and puts the phone in his pocket. “Dray just looks out for me, that’s all. Don’t matter if it’s dudes or girls—he just has my back.”
I turn to head back to the car. “Take me home.”
“No. Not yet,” he says, and grabs both my hands and pulls me in. “Can we just chill for a minute?”
I lean into him. He eases his arms around my waist and my whole body warms. I rest my head on his shoulder. But he steps back and takes my face and kisses my forehead, then kisses me long and deep.
I am two sides of the same coin. Ezili has made all of me like honey—sweet, sticky, and oozing under Kasim’s hold. But Ezili-Danto has lit a fire inside of me—with rage in my heart and a dagger in my hand, I want nothing more than to slice away this sore named Dray so I can free Donna and get my mother back.
NINETEEN
“WHY YOU NOT answering my calls?” Dray yells from downstairs. His anger seems to make the whole house shake.
Donna has locked herself in her bedroom. She called Dray this morning and cursed him out after someone told her that the police caught him hooking up with another girl. I was there that night when Donna got the text from a friend, and then a phone call, and then Pri and Chantal couldn’t stop talking about it, telling her to break it off with him for good.
Matant Jo is trying to make him leave, but he keeps calling Donna’s name. “Ma, Ma,” Dray says. “I just want to talk, that’s all.”
I don’t hear Matant Jo respond to him.
“Yo, D. I swear, I’m about to come up there and get you,” Dray says.
Then Pri bursts out of the room and yells down, “No, you better the fuck not come up here, or I got something for that ass, Dray!”