“Yes,” Tamia said softly.
Naudia walked into the office and sat down. She knew for a fact that it had been more than fifteen days since Tamia had eaten anything other than lemons and maple syrup. While she had to commend her driven boss for holding on for so long, she had to admit that Tamia was beginning to look a little loopy. She’d lost more than twenty pounds and had stopped shaving her legs. This certainly wasn’t helping her office image. The lack of hair and abundance of colorful fabric in Tamia’s life made her the official topic of the cappuccino-machine crowd. They speculated and spectated and a few even separated themselves from her. And although the chatter was plentiful, not one of them had gone to speak to Tamia about what they claimed was so worthy of their cappuccino-laced concerns. In fact, it would be two more weeks until one of the partners, noticing that Tamia was wearing moccasins, would put in a formal complaint. But by then, she’d be preparing herself for a new life.
None of this mattered now, though. It wasn’t like Tamia cared or noticed anyway.
She was too busy contemplating the change of her laptop.
“I’m happy for you,” Naudia said, “that you’re going through with this.”
“Thank you,” Tamia said, grinning, but because her face had become so slender with the fast, it looked like she had the biggest smile ever.
“I mean, it’s a little crazy…and I hope they’re not serving punch at those meetings…but I can see how it’s making you happy.”
“Was I sad before?” Tamia asked.
“I don’t think you were sad…I think you were just like the rest of us,” Naudia said. “Okay.”
“I was.” Tamia nodded. “So, Naudia, what would make you happy? If someone said to you that you should chase bliss relentlessly, that it was the only way you’d be free, what would you do with yourself?”
“Go to law school,” Naudia said quickly. It was what she thought of every day. What she researched during her lunch break. What she dreamed of. What she knew she could do in the world. “I know I have what it takes. I just need a shot.”
“What’s holding you back?”
“Money,” Naudia revealed. “And it’s so messed up that money is what’s stopping me because I know I’d be a great attorney. I know the law. I know I have what it takes to take down these—”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” Tamia stopped Naudia.
“What?”
“I know what you’re capable of,” Tamia said. “Everything I can do, you can do. And probably better.”
“You really think that?” This was a gargantuan statement coming from someone Naudia respected so much.
“I know so. I’ve seen so.”
?
As Tamia mothered her assistant, Tasha fixed her mind on pretending her mother didn’t exist. However, as every New Yorker knows, the last thing you want to do is try to hide something in the big city with the bright lights. As the old saying goes, “Whatever is done in the dark shall always come to light.” Tasha, unfortunately, was doomed to learn this the hard way.
It was Porsche’s birthday. Her fiftieth. The BIG 5-0. And while Tasha kept telling herself it didn’t matter and she didn’t care and joking that she’d wished her mother was dead anyway, doing all three of these things at one time as she ran her last mile on the treadmill at the gym was proving impossible. Especially since she’d passed a Times Square billboard bearing Porsche’s image with the rest of the cast of Sinfully Yours on the way to the gym and a feature on Page Six of the New York Post announced Porsche’s fortieth birthday to the world. Turning her nose up at the Hollywood literary lie (and the fact that if that was even true Porsche would’ve given birth to her at ten), she chucked the newspaper into the nearest trash can and found an escape in a television that was propped just two feet from her position on the treadmill.
SOAP OPERA KITTEN TURNS 40 IN DUBAI!
It was an Access Hollywood story. Porsche’s secretive smile, dipped in a luscious red lipstick came flashing across the screen and Tasha sucked her teeth. The woman on the treadmill beside her watched as Tasha slowed down and struggled to press the little faded remote button to turn the channel.
“If I had a body like hers, I’d never come to the gym,” the blonde said when Tasha had successfully turned to the Good Times rerun when Willona adopts Penny. “I mean, these celebrities have such perfect bodies, no one can live up to it. I believe most of them have liposuction anyway.”
“I guess so,” Tasha said, readjusting her earphones to give the woman a signal that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Her lipo swelling was catching up to her and in order to stay in the dozen plus pairs of couture jeans she’d purchased to run around the city as she built her management empire, she needed to lose ten pounds in a month. After two kids, it was a straitjacket-worthy idea, but she was up for the challenge. She needed to focus her mind on something other than everything that was going on. Lionel. The girls. And she hadn’t told anyone about what happened at the Roosevelt Hotel with Lynn. She was determined to forget about it herself. Nothing happened, she kept thinking, so there was nothing to talk about. It was a crazy experience and now it was time to move on with plan B. She would use the contacts she’d made at the party and go out on her own. “But Porsche St. Simon doesn’t have much work to do anyway,” the woman went on even though she’d noticed each of Tasha’s cues. “You black women have such lovely skin. She could gain fifty pounds and still look good. If I gain three, everything will start sagging and bagging. Thank God for Botox.”
After finishing her workout, Tasha was in the locker room, looking at Porsche’s phone number on her cell phone. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since Tiara was born. Lionel was right, it had hurt her like a fresh, thin cut on her hand when Porsche, sounding rushed and tired, came up with a reason not to see her new grandchild. She’d just let Porsche back into her life when s
he had Toni and she’d done the same thing. Pretended to care, promised to be the perfect grandmother, and then walked away like all of Hollywood would dissipate if she took just a little bit of time to be with her daughter, with her family.
“I don’t need you,” Tasha said to the phone, but that was the opposite of what her heart was feeling. It didn’t matter how much she said and told herself she didn’t need Porsche, the emptiness she felt without her mother there, the emptiness she’d felt all of her life was unbearable. And just then, alone in the city, without any of the things she’d put in her life to fill the unbearable emptiness, it became too much for Tasha to hold inside.
“Porsche!” she hollered into the phone when she heard her mother’s voice. She was ready to curse her out, dig into her and say all of the hurtful things she was thinking. But then Porsche said something her daughter had only heard from her three, maybe four times in her life.
“I miss you, baby! How are the girls?”