Page 61 of Shâhzâdeh

I felt my eyes water and I shuddered a deep breath. “Is that why she’s the voice in my head? Telling me I’m not doing it right? That I’m not good enough?”

She moved from her spot and gave me a hug. She knew how badly my adoptive mother messed with my head and I accepted the comfort she wanted to give me.

“Yes. So as soon as you tell that bitch to shut the fuck up, you’ll realize you don’t have to earn approval in the Black community when you’re Black. And yeah, shit is a lot more progressive than it was when we were younger. You have it until you don’t. And even now there is such a range of acceptance of Blackness in our community that you would have to be one of the fools Harriet would’ve left behind to lose your Black card.”

“But that’s what has me worried. The lies I was fed as truth. The amount of work I still have to do to unpack everything.”

“And are you?”

I wiped my face and tried not to look at her. “Am I what?”

“Doing the work?”

“Of course but—”

She turned my head in a big sister way despite us being the same damn age. “Then there’s no but. Your effort and desire to improve is what you need to focus on. You can have missteps. But remember that you always have belonged. Even though they told you that you never would and they were your only saving grace. It’s not true. Don’t let them stop your growth. You hang out with us and absorb. And guess what, Vannie, none of us will ever know everything. And that’s fine. But every aspect of this family unit that you and your kids will have surrounding you will embrace you. Look at how they’ve done it with Nyima.”

I laughed at how she eased that kids thing in there like I didn’t notice. “She’s from a whole other country, though.”

“I mean, we can treat that Mormon shit like that too cause it’s foreign as hell.”

I cut up laughing at her because she had the craziest look on her face. “That makes me feel better.”

“Y’all’s kids will be more than good. Gonna be dropping bars in English, French and Farsi. Might give birth to the nextKung Fu Kenny.”

My comfort immediately vanished as she made another reference I had no context for. “And that would be…”

Frankie looked absolutely horrified. Exactly how she did when she made a Black culture reference and I stood paralyzed since I didn’t understand what she meant.

“Girl, go pull up YouTube so you can be a part of the Black culture phenomenon you missed last summer. See, it all started about a year ago when Kendrick Lamar released a verse on theLike Thatrecord…”

“Vannie?”

“Yes, Frankie?”

“I’m about to show my ass in this store okay?”

“Wait, what?” I looked up from the rack I’d been looking through since we’d come to South Park mall. We’d gone through the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef, which was really a Drake massacre, if I was being honest.

She was pulling the two braids that she had down her back into buns as she kept her eyes somewhere else. “I said—”

I put my hand on her arm to get her attention, but she refused to take her eyes off of whoever had pissed her off. “No, I heard that part. Should I be asking why? Why are you about to show your ass in this store?”

“Because I see a bitch who was allowed to live and it just don’t sit right with my spirit.”

“Allowed to li—Francesca Merrick what the hell?” I had to stand in front of her again because she was seriously going after someone. Her beautiful cocoa brown skin was glowing, as though the thrill of going after whoever this was invigorated her. Since we’d been lying around the house, we were in leggings and t-shirts. It was as if the universe made sure Frankie was appropriately dressed to beat some girl’s ass and smile in her mugshot.

“Quentin?”

“Yes, Mrs. Frankie?” Because yeah, he was downstairs waiting on me when we left out of my apartment to come shopping and insisted on going with us. Frankie had no problem telling me to just hush and go along with it because he wasn’t going to not come. So I did. ‘Cause we would’ve been fighting if he’d tried to send me back in the house like a child.

“You see that girl over there working?” She pointed to a Black girl with long blonde hair standing in the men’s department.

Quentin had his head dipped down so that Frankie could speak into his ear. He seemed all too happy to do whatever it was she wanted. “What about her?”

“I need you to get her to come with you.”

He glanced around like he was already formulating a plan. “Where?”

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