“I guess, yeah.” Laughing and chewing at the same time isn’t the best idea, but I manage.
Mom nods, taking a sip of tea. “I guess she’s owed. Young lady’s been making a name for herself. Nothing wrong with exposing to other young Black women and girls what God-given talents we have. What do you know about her, so far?”
I drop my crust onto the plate, squinting my eyes. “You don’t remember her, do you?”
“The Tori girl?” Her expression matches mine. “Why would I? I saw her fight one time at that sports bar Tabitha took me to a year or so ago. I hear her name everywhere, but remember her? What do you mean?”
Why am I feeling wounded? The shit doesn’t make sense.
“Tori went to Blakewood,” I try.
“Okay.” Her eyes are empty. My silence challenges her. “Oh! With you?”
I nod. “Briefly—well, toward the end. My last year. She was a freshman.”
“Oh.” Her eyes are still wild, now with questions of disgrace. She sips her tea again, blinking successively. “Was she friends with Aivery?”
A dry titter leaves my nostrils as I take a sip of wine. I don’t want to go there, but answer honestly. “No.”
She nods again, the cogs of her brain turning over visibly from my vantage point. “So how much of friends could you have been in just your last year?”
After taking a bite into the second slice from my plate, I wipe my mouth then recline in my chair, arms going over my head. “You really don’t remember her, do you?”
“I told you I don’t. What’s hard to believe about that?”
“She’s been to your house.” My arms drop and chin dips.
“In Newark?”
I nod, swiping my tongue against my teeth and gums to clean out the residual food. “Yup. And you intimidated the hell out of her.”
She sucks her teeth. “A child? She was a child, Ashton; I’m sure her shadow intimidated her!” My mother rolls her eyes to the other side of the kitchen. I stretch my palms over the table, shrugging. She collects her teacup from the table and stands. “Something don’t feel right about this.” Tell me about it. “I don’t know why, but it don’t.” She starts across the room before turning back to me. “You gotta travel with this one? I’m thinking about going down to Lamar for a few days. My aunt, Hattie, ain’t doing too well.”
Good ol’ South Carolina…
“Yup.” Unless this goes terribly wrong, I’ll be traveling with Tori during her training. “In a few weeks.”
She nods, lips tip. “I’ll take them with me…stay a few days, then go south to see the old mouse.”
I chuckle, eyes brushing over the half-eaten slice on my plate. “You know I couldn’t do this without you. Don’t you?”
She pivots to face me fully, chin touted in the air. “Ashton Spencer, you’re my only child. Ain’t too much on this side of glory I wouldn’t do. You’ve afforded me a wonderful life most women my age would give their drooping tits for. I don’t know what my fifties would be like if I didn’t make the worst mistake of my life.” She winked as I laughed my ass off.
My mother’s robust sense of humor knows no bounds. And people wonder where my charm comes from. I, personally, have no doubt.
-Then-
“It’s only been a few days, Tori.” Those words fell on deaf ears as I bounced my knees in the air from springing on the balls of my feet. My arms were crossed and eyes on the wall to the right of me. I didn’t give a shit how long it had been, I was ready to go home. “We explained it would be a difficult transition from New Jersey,” Trisha yapped off.
“It really is, Tori,” Collin, her assistant, jumped in. “This is an entirely different world here. It’s an opportunity many wish to have.”
“You’re probably bored,” Trisha thought. She was right and wrong. “Some organizations like the band and its whole ensemble moved in today. You should be able to meet more students. That may help with your homesickness.”
She typed away behind her computer as she spoke. I sat on the sofa against the wall in her small office. Trisha was the Athletic Director here at Blakewood State University. Sports was major here. I thought this place was…not as big as it is. The campus seemed as big as Millville, my hometown back in Jersey. Crazy thing was, I hadn’t been around the whole damn place yet.
I tried fingering through the dry strands of the weave my cousin, Renata, put in last month. My hair looked a mess and I had nobody to do it for me or money to get it done. And the people here… At first, the campus was like a ghost town; now that people were starting to move in, I was sure I wouldn’t fit in.
“Is that what it is, Tori?” Collin asked. He was a young white guy. I hadn’t seen many of them on this campus. I guessed it was because Blakewood was a historically Black college/university. But he flew out to Jersey when Trisha came to meet with my trainer, Uppercut, about me getting college level training and exposure to help with my career. “You want friends? If that’s the case, your roommate should be moving in by the end of the week.”
My head shot over to him. “No. I ain’t thinking about no friends, man.” I stood, ready to go.
I wanted to get this over with, this school shit. The problem was, I still didn’t know why I was here. School wasn’t for me. My grades had always been shitty. I didn’t know how a school like Blakewood accepted me. Along with those sucky ass grades, I had no money. Deep down inside, I remembered why I agreed to this. It was because I ain’t have shit else to do in dry ass Millville, New Jersey. The only exciting thing coming out of the city was Alton Alston being drafted into the basketball League. Outside of that was nothing that would bring any level of success in my life or anyone in my community.
On my way out the door, Trisha called me. I stopped and turned to face her.
“Your test scores are in.”
“What test?” I’d taken so many, probably flunking them all.
“Basic skills. All accepted applicants are required to take them upon their declaration of enrollment,” she answered, chin low while looking at me over her reading glasses.
I shrugged, halfway rolling my eyes as I tossed my hand in the air, giving up on trying to remember. I’d taken lots of tests since graduating in June.
Trisha rolled her eyes. “Anyway…” She sighed. “It’s a placement test to see where your weaknesses are in math, reading, and writing. Seems like you scored just above average in math, and average in reading, but in writing, you didn’t make the mark.”
Scratching the back of my head, trying to get underneath a cornrow, I asked, “What that mean? I go home?”
Trisha laughed. “No, quitting ass!”
“It means you’ll take a basic course to help get you up to speed,” Collin jumped in. “And they’ll assign tutoring.”
“Just for writing?” My face went tight.
Collin nodded, flipping through file folders.
Walking out the door again, I mumbled, “Ain’t nobody ‘bout to have no muthafucka in my face for no schoolwork.”