Mama Dearest Read Free Page A

to do something about it. In the cramped dressing room I looked into the tiny mirror on the wall that was chipped in two places and gave myself a much needed pep talk.
    I spoke swiftly and with great conviction. “Yancey Harrington Braxton, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You a bad bitch! It’s time to show the world what you’re really made of. What you’re capable of. It starts tonight when you open the stage door. You’re as good as Vanessa L. Williams, Angela Bassett and Gabrielle Union. No! Not as good as, better than all those pretend divas. A setback is a setup for a comeback, bitch. Now let’s get to work.”

CHAPTER 2
    All Ava Middlebrooks wanted was for those loud-ass broads to quiet down so she could watch
American Star
in peace. Ava didn’t know who she hated more—ghetto-girl whores or white trailer-trash bitches. Sadly, this prison was filled with both.
    Her favorite singer, a teenaged girl from a little town in Ohio, was up there on the stage right now. Ava stared at the screen, mesmerized by how the satin-smooth notes of “Summertime” could ride such a big voice in such a little body.
    “Yawl betta change the channel to
Dancing with the Stars
,” Sheronda Jenkins shouted as her hulking figure blocked the TV in the beige-walled rec room of the women’s prison.
    “Get out the way!” Ava yelled, standing up. “You watched your show last week. It’s our turn. So move!”
    Sheronda stomped toward Ava, coming at her like a bull in orange cotton. The fluorescent light glowed on the shiny skin between Sheronda’s fresh cornrows. She squinted and spat: “That’s yo ass, old bitch.”
    Unfazed, Ava crossed her arms and sat down on the couch between her girls, Lyrical and Cheryl. She craned to look around Sheronda to focus back on that girl with the magic voice on TV. That child represented everything that these prison broads didn’t. Success. Talent. Reaching for your dreams. Living life to the fullest.
    And that was exactly what Ava planned to be doing twenty-four hours from now, in the comfort of her own home in the free world. Her whole body tingled with the thrill of resuming her prominent place in society. She would go to the salon and stay there until she’d achieved perfection with her hair, nails, toes and skin. She would dine on gourmet meals. She would sink into the buttery leather seat of a luxury sedan. And her daughter had better have a big dinner party to welcome Ava home if she knew what was good for her.
    “You hear me?” Sheronda shouted, standing at Ava’s feet.
    Ava looked up with a bored expression.
    “I’m out of this hellhole tomorrow,” Ava snapped, with a haughty tilt of her chin. “And I’m not about to jeopardize my freedom by stooping to your ghetto ways.”
    “How is your ass getting out anyhow? Didn’t your crazy ass shoot somebody? I thought they gave you fifteen to life.”
    “I know important people,” Ava snapped.
    “I bet you do but let’s see how they treat you now that you’re a convicted felon. I don’t think the country club types take too kindly to people like us.”
    Ava stared up at Sheronda with disgust and pity. She and her ghetto girl crew were no different from the white trailer trash chicks who hung together. Black or white, they all came from the lower rungs of society, and because they didn’t know any better, were destined to languish there forever.
    But not Ava. She was about to rise back up to where she belonged. She simply shook her head and told Sheronda, “You
need
to get yourself some anger-management classes. Now move!”
    Sheronda glared down at Ava with hate in her eyes. Her wide chest rose and fell with her heavy breathing. Those dark blue tattoos up and down her caramel-colored forearms rippled like a creeping rash as Sheronda clenched and unclenched her fists, over and over.
    “Girl, move!” a woman on the couch behind them shouted. “We tryin’ to watch!”
    “Will you please move!” a white woman