Page 1 of Corruption

1

Kiya

Mama called lip gloss, lipstick, lip stain and all its variations the devil's paint. Maybe she still does. I wouldn't know since I escaped her and her overzealous discipline. Regardless, it was her obsession with me not wearing it that has created my obsession with wearing and having it.

So when I see the new paint gloss from the Bianchi makeup line, I'm sorely tempted to break my rule about stealing only what I need to survive.

Over the last week, I've done this dance with this particular gloss line in this specific boutique,Bianchi's, every single day. I want this set so bad, it feels like I need it to survive.

Special edition holiday lip palette. Three sticks, two stains, one gloss, and a lip liner in an extravagant reusable package. Never to be seen again after this holiday season or when they permanently run out of stock. One hundred dollars a set. Affordable and accessible compared to most of the other specialty holiday makeup sets in other lines. It's a wonder that this one set has been here every day I've been here. Like it's waiting for me to buy it. Calling me. Taunting me.

I roll my eyes at myself. There's no taunting. There's no waiting. Just me and a stupid obsession with lip gloss because my stupid, religious zealot of a mother wouldn't let me have it.

I leave it there for now, pretending to browse the rest of the store to look like a legitimate patron who can afford to buy anything in here. Picking up an eyeshadow palette here. A foundation there. Dropping it into the cute, round cosmetic shopping baskets provided by the store. People in these places are much less likely to ask questions when it looks like you have every intention of going to the checkout counter.

All the while, I discreetly look around at the employees and check the cameras for blind spots, because cameras can’t pick up everything.

I circle back to the set once. Walk away. Discreetly knock it into my knockoff designer handbag the second time I walk past it. I stay in the store with my stolen loot long enough to look like I’m reconsidering my three items before I pretend that I’ve changed my mind, put the basket back with the items still in it and walk out the store into the streets of New York City.

Once I’m a few blocks away I relish in my accomplishment. Not even waiting to get to my way too expensive rat trap of an apartment to take the set out my purse, open it, and use my compact to put on the sparkling red tinted gloss.

I walk back to my apartment with a little pep in my step. The thought that I have to go back to my apartment in the first place to get ready for my terrible retail job is not even enough to damper my spirits.

What is enough to damper my spirits is the distinct piece of folded red paper in front of my apartment door. After living with a mother who didn’t believe I was owed the privilege of privacy in a house that she paid the bills in, I came up with clever ways to find out if she’d been in my room. Ways that the woman who claimed to know everything that went on in her house never noticed despite her proclamation of omniscience. The paper in the door was a simple but effective trick to learn if she’d been snooping around in my room.

Not that there was ever anything to find. I was smart enough not to keep anything I didn’t want her to find hidden in my room. No. Instead, I kept it in the one place she’d never search.

Her own bedroom.

It’s been a little over a year since I left. Right after my eighteenth birthday in July last summer. Maybe it wasn’t particularly smart for me to make my way to New York City after I was raised in a small town and hadn’t been further north than Atlanta, Georgia my entire life. It’s expensive, I don’t know anyone, and the people are openly rude and impatient. But it’s nothing I can’t handle. Nothing any different than the town I came from where you hide rudeness behind a smile and a southern drawl.

New York City is also the place I always wanted to go that my mother always said a small-town-girl like me could never survive on her own. So, of course, I had to spite her. The only downside, though, was that if she was ever going to bother coming to look for me, she’d know where to look first.

Looks like she found me.

I grab the unlocked doorknob and brace myself. I can do this. She has no control over me. I’m nineteen. I have all my important documents. My social security card, my state ID, my birth certificate. All stolen from the safe in her room after weeks of watching YouTube videos for how to crack a safe combo. I carry them on me at all times. Just in case. For times exactly like this.

I shake my head.

I’m being ridiculous. There’s nothing I can do to brace myself to face my mother. She always has a way of disarming me and making me think I’m wrong or am brainwashed or don’t know my own mind. But she can’t control me now. All I have to do is stand my ground and wait for her to leave. Threaten to call the cops if I need to.

With that pep talk to myself, I open the door.

Only to not find my mother.

Somehow, the two people I do find are more surprising than if my mother were here.

They’re sitting on my secondhand sofa in my tiny living room watching television of all things. Not even turning to glance my way.

Thinking I might have gone crazy, I close the door. Wait. Open it again. They’re still there.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman says without looking at me.

Her dark hair is braided and wrapped around the back of her head in an elegant bun, and she’s wearing a burnt orange jumpsuit with neutral-colored pumps. Both of which probably cost more than twice my monthly rent. On my chipped coffee table is her extra wide-brimmed hat. Her most signature clothing item.

She continues, “We just want to talk. But after this episode ends if you don’t mind. I’m invested in this little docuseries sitcom.”

The man with wavy blonde hair, blue eyes, and a severe looking scar over his right eye—dressed in casual black slacks, a white button shirt, a matching blazer and shoes, and a dark coat—turns his eyes in my direction but doesn’t move his head.

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