"Still moving on and up in the world and still working at the big company, my life was singing many happy songs without the language of love.he math did spoke a language all its own. I was making twenty-one thousand dollars a year, had become extremely credit savvy and had credit cards showing up in my mailbox nearly as regular as the regular mail. I was feeling myself that summer.

I ended up paying off the Honda and upgraded to a higher-end Honda and gifted Twin my first Honda, his rambunctious tail in less than three months and almost killed him self in the process-he had to have his spleen removed. Now since the accident, he climbs into everybody else’s car, telling them to remove their air fresheners and not to wear perfume around him as a result of it.

I was busy making reckless decisions myself: flexing my instant-credit-worthiness, taking out personal loans to help out family and friends and just because I could. I was opening up high-end jewelry store credit cards mostly so that my bestie Kierstin and I could ride around in style-blinging; diamonds sparkling like blocks of ice while riding in the hot summer sun with the moon roof open and blasting rap music. Kierstin and I couldn’t get enough of it. We were hyped, hot and two peas in a pod.

I would roll by and toot the horn-that was always warning number one because Kierstin was Ms. Ever-Ready Never Ready.

Warning number two: as if there was a fire outside her door, I’d get out and ring her bell repeatedly-tapping my feet and snapping my fingers to the faint sound of the music from my car that was pulled in her driveway.
Kierstin would buzz me in and routinely, she would always be applying lipstick in the mirror. It was always her last step in getting ready-that always meant she was ready to head out the door.

Like giggly girls running through the grass, we would head back down the little grassy hill.
Kierstin’s little purse would be swinging from left to right and she’d be smiling and giggling from ear to ear. When we would reach the bottom of the driveway, she liked to re-enact her dreams of wanting to be a rapper by yelling out like one of our old school faves-Ice Cube: “Drop ‘a old-school beat!” she’d yell and start dancing around.

We loved gangster rap.

I would hop inside the car and slide in “My Summer Vacation,” and it’d be on and poppin’ from there. The moment that the beginning of the song began to play out: “This is the final boarding call for flight 1259 departing from Los Angeles destination to St. Louis. Thank you,” it became out theme music before hopping into the car to ride off to. Keirstin would begin to dance right outside of the car; twisting her big ole’ lips and moving about all wild singing the first line of the song and pointing at me as if Ice Cube was singing and talking to me: “Damn G. The spots gettin’ hot. Now how the fuck am I supposed to make a knot. “

I would start dancing and crossing my arms b-girl style. We were a mess together. If Lucky was ever corrupted with anything, it was that CD and that song-courtesy of Kierstin and me.

Kierstin couldn’t dance for shit, but she was so cute and animated that it made it look like she could. She would be standing there doing a combination of waving her body and snapping her fingers like Michael and striking poses while blowing kisses-twisting her lips and laughing.

“Girl you ought to be in pictures!” I would yell up and out the moon roof at her.

“Cali’s not ready for Kierstin!” she would yell back-laughing and striking poses as if the world was looking at her and snapping pictures.

She would jump in the car with that little purse that was only big enough to carry her mirror and her Wet-N-Wild red lipstick. Routinely, with her little fat and curved fingers, she would hop in and adjust my mirror to re-apply her lipstick-for the second time-after having already applied it while in the house.

I would laugh and shake my head and laugh uncontrollably about Kierstin and that damned lipstick. If she spoke too long in conversation, in her mind, somehow, her lipstick had worn off within the moment and she couldn’t bare the thought of that being so. She would pop it right out of her little purse of hers and apply it all over again. That was her thing-it just was.
I never knew anyone who could apply red lipstick perfectly-without a mirror. The only time she would pull out the mirror to apply it was if she simply wanted to look at herself, and out of habit and perhaps too much conversation and time having passed, she would apply more lipstick but merely using the mirror to play with her bangs from too much wind hitting it.

She would grab the passenger mirror-look into it, and then grab my rearview mirror-looking into it-as if she, her bangs and her red lips was going to look different in the two. Her test of perfection and to see if she got it right would be while we would be driving. She liked to blow kisses at the first cute or ugly boy that look like he needed one. After she got the response she was looking for, she would turn the music up and start bouncing up and down in her seat, clapping her hands to the beat, laughing and smiling-twisting those thick-painted red lips of hers like it was part of the dance.

Kierstin and I had been riding shot-gun since fourth grade at the artsy school and nothing in the world would ever come between the two of us-nothing.

Over the years, a few of my girlfriends would come live with me off and on for a little bit of R & R: regroup and restarting. My apartment had an extra room for luxury and relaxation-away from the world and the hum-drum of it, where anyone that I loved and cared for always had a place to stay-to regroup or restart a new life plan. It would be a revolving door for some-but I never minded, because it was always something financial or emotional going on in their lives-all of our lives, really. It was funny like that. Although we all had our emotional shit going on, I was under the microscope of scrutiny from my father even since my innocent years.

And although we fell out in my pre teen years and I was estranged from him for many years thereafter; we reconnected a short time after I had Lucky. It was like we picked up right where he left off before that fateful Super Saturday that caused my being estranged from him; staying on me, trying his damnedest to not feel like a failure as father by applying the pressure on me about staying on my get-right.
His thing was: you had to always pay the cost to be the boss. Whether you paid the cost that afforded you to having something, or whether you paid the cost that caused you to lose it something-either way in his eyes; you paid the cost to be the boss of that: you own that, because that it what you worked for and towards. And hell, in belaboring the obvious: if you had to literally pay money to put you ahead of the game-any game-that would make you the boss and on top, in his eyes, you still paid the cost to be the boss of that, too.
Everything had its price and in everything-there was a price to pay.
Ever since my innocent years and that day he got the notion to drag me from out of my third-grade class to talk paperwork with me about auditioning for the artsy school-to train me to be the boss of the big-screen and those plans fell through-I had some making up to do.
Where I didn’t make him proud, I had to show him that I had the amazing ability to make (and keep) money.
As a trade-off for him having to accept the fact that I killed his dreams of being the daughter he had dreams of me being, I had making up to do.

I had making up to do even more so when that shattered dream was killed in an accident, and insult of injury resulted was the birth of Lucky. My having Lucky did not ease any expectation that he had of me, not one bit-the makings of making up-to-do was always in full effect. Some part of him wanted to ignore the fact that I even had Lucky. He tried hard to work around that feeling, but as long as he made me feel like I had making up to do, it seemed to comfort his pride, failed plans and ego.
I had to make up for it all by being the boss of my life, and in that-I was the boss: I kept a job, moved out at seventeen, kept a nicely-furnished apartment with all the bells and whistles, a nice car and money in the bank with more to spare and lend. Where I didn’t meet his expectations in dreams, I overcompensated for that in the realities of real-life, which was where many of my friends benefitted.

When Kierstin needed to regroup and restart her life plan; she came to live with me. Thanks to the big company that I was currently working at, and as privacy and space had it; our hours complimented one another very well. I was working Thursday through Sunday ten-hour days and she worked Monday through Friday from 8a-5p at the bank that I had previously worked at. She paid her bills and although I didn’t require it, she would give me money every two weeks that she got paid, to help out around the house. Kierstin was a lot like me and on her business. She wanted to prove to me that her stay wasn’t a vacay-she really wanted to utilize the opportunity for what it was for: the chance to regroup and restart a new life plan, then move out-to California-that is.

If Cali was not ready for Kierstin, Kierstin made Cali ready to make way and room for her. She ended up moving out there because that’s where her dad and sisters lived, for years. She hung back and stayed here because her extended family all lived here. But things weren’t going so well-she needed a change and some consistent sun in her life, so she moved out to sunny California so those red lips could kiss the sun and talk a mile a minute in the phone horn to me-running up one another’s phone bills talking as if we lived right next door to each another. She even took her trademark finger-popping, lip-twisting, striking poses-waving dance to the big the screen where she got a gig out there, dancing on a popular weekly television dance show-red lipstick and all, this time-blinging right underneath that blinging disco ball.

I was pretty sad when Kierstin moved out and away because I loved coming home on days to find her nesting up underneath my red designer chair, wrapped up in her favorite white flannel blankie like a burrito. It looked as if she would roll the blanket out on the floor then lay her body on one end of it, then: stop, drop and roll herself to the other side of it until it was tightly wrapped around her like a newborn baby.”

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