The yelling upstairs woke her up. But when she grabbed her phone on the nightstand and saw the time, she was grateful for her loud neighbors upstairs or she would have overslept again.
Joynetta Johnson threw the covers off of her slender body, slung her legs out, and sat on the edge of her bed yawning and stretching her arms. She was so accustomed to the constant noise in her apartment building that she rarely paid it any mind anymore. But the neighbor upstairs was particularly vicious that morning as he kept yelling at his wife like she was nothing to him.Didn’t I tell your ass to do this, didn’t I tell your ass to do that. Like she was his child. Why was she putting up with his nonsense? Why didn’t she just leave that fool?
The same reason it took Joynetta three long years to finally leave Sanchez. She thought it was love too.
But she was used to the yelling and the music playing and all the constant noise inside that Fifth Street apartment building in her hometown of Bridell, Indiana. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t sick and tired of it. She was. But as a twenty-four-year-old waitress working double shifts and still barely getting by, where else could she afford to live? That was why being sick and tired didn’t mean shit to her.
She quickly got up, hopped in the shower, and had brushed and gargled and put on her clothes within forty minutes of waking up.
But as she stood in front of her dresser mirror and checked out the mini skirt she wore with the tucked-in sleevelessblouse and her mid-height cute little heels, she slowed down. Because everything seemed so stark to her. The way she was dressed, you would think she was going to a nice office job rather than to a restaurant to work overtime. And as she removed the net from her hair, and as her soft, thick hair cascaded in huge curls of bounciness below her neck, it only highlighted the disparity between how she tried to present herself to the world, and the reality of her life.
In two short weeks she would be twenty-five years old. Twenty five long years on God’s green earth and she was still trying to figure it out. She’d been pretty much on her own since she was a kid and her mama preferred partying with her men friends rather than raising a little girl.
She could remember, beginning at the ripe old age of ten, how on payday she would hurry to her mama’s job at the factory to get the money to buy food for the house and pay the light bill and the gas bill before her mama and her male friends could spent it all up on partying and boozing and Lord only knows what else they were doing.
Then she would take the money to a neighbor she called her grandpa even though he was no kin to her, and he’d pay the bills and spend up the rest on groceries for her and her mama to take them to another payday. And sometimes, when her mama would get away from her on payday and she wasn’t able to get a dime to pay anything, Gramps would get groceries and bring them to the house anyway. The lights would be off many times, but at least she had food to eat. They lived in Bridell, Indiana, a small town three hours from Chicago, and nobody on her side of town had any money to spare. But Gramps looked out for her. Back then, Gramps was all she really had.
Now she was about to turn twenty-five. And Gramps was still all she had. Gramps and her job as a waitress at the only full-service restaurant in town. It was called “full service”because it served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which meant it opened at six and closed at ten. She tried to pull double shifts every chance she got to pay her own household bills. It was a job she started working when she was sixteen years old. She thought it would only be for a little while. A couple years tops. She was still there almost ten years later. But would she be thirty and still there? Or like many of her coworkers, would she be forty or fifty and still there?
But as she put on her cardigan sweater, grabbed her backpack and headed for the front door, she knew she had to make a change in her life or she was going to end up like most of the people working at Maylene’s who started when they were teenagers too, and now were middle-aged and bitter. Would that be her fate too? Was that all there was for her in this life? No solid career. No husband. No children. And when was the last time she even went out on a date???
Not that she didn’t get offers from the brothers. She did all the time. But the ones interested in her were either thugs or creeps or good for nothing lay-abouts who wanted her to take care of them when she could barely take care of herself. None of the uptown go-getter brothers would give somebody like her the time of day. They married those uptown go-getter sisters with similar background and breeding and educational status to theirs. And Joynetta Johnson, with her GED and mad waitressing skills, was never going to be that girl in their eyes no matter how nicely she dressed.
But that didn’t mean she was content with her lot in life. She was putting in applications left and right for better-paying jobs. Day in and day out she was applying for jobs as far away as Florida. But nobody showed any interest whatsoever. Nobody.
She knew her work experience was the problem. Employers dismissed her job, as if anybody could be a waitress so her entire life’s work didn’t account for anything to them.And whenever she tried to take night classes to gain a better skillset, a shift would open, she would be forced to take it to make ends meet, and her schooling would have to take a backburner to survival. She didn’t have the luxury to put her life on that backburner until she got a skill that wouldn’t even guarantee a better-paying job anyway. Which made her feel, sometimes, as if life was stacked against her. As if she was in a rut that wasn’t of her own making, and she couldn’t get out of it. And that bitterness she saw in her older coworkers began to creep into her too.
But she refused to let it happen! That was why she grabbed her keys off of her cute little elephant hook, put on her best smile, said out loudyou got this girl, and then hurried out of her apartment. The chips might have been stacked against her, but she wasn’t going to stack those chips against herself. Whatever her lot in this life, she was going to be happy.
But Contessa Martin, her best friend and coworker, didn’t know what happiness meant and wasn’t trying to find out either. She was sitting on the top stair waiting for Joy, and she was none too pleased that she had taken her pretty time coming out. “One of these days I’m gonna leave you in the dust,” Contessa said as she stood up and they hurried down the stairs.
Joy laughed, caught up with her, and gave her a big squeeze-hug because she knew Tess wasn’t about to do any such thing. They’d been best friends since third grade. They were best friends for life.
Contessa didn’t smile when Joy hugged her as they hurried down those six flights of stairs, but her sour mood lessened. “What took you so long anyways?”
“I got up later than I planned. Greg and his foolishness woke me up again.”
Contessa shook her head. “Still beating on his wife and that stupid wife of his still taking his beatings. I called the copson his butt. You called the cops on his butt. Everybody in this building done called the cops on his butt. But what does the cops do? Absolutely nothing!”
“That’s because Vera keeps telling them he didn’t do nothing to her,” Joy pointed out. “He never leave bruises on her face or any place on her body where those cops could see his abuse. That brother’s more diabolical than that. He beat her in the stomach with body blows that would knock out Mike Tyson. I know this because Vera told me. He put rods up her ass and freaky shit like that. Oh Craig knows what he’s doing.”
“And she lets him do it, year in and year out. I used to feel sorry for her. Oh how I used to feel sorry for her. But I don’t anymore. Some part of that woman is enjoying that shit.”
Joy doubted that, but she kept her opinion to herself as they made their way out of their apartment building. They got into Contessa’s old blue-and-white Chevy Astro Van her boyfriend gave to her as a birthday gift. When the van made a backfiring sound as they drove away, Joy laughed. “What boyfriend buys his girlfriend an old, broke-down van like this? I mean who does that? A broke-ass boyfriend, that’s who.”
“At least I got a boyfriend,” Contessa shot back. “At least I got transportation to get both our black asses to work. You ain’t got shit.”
Even though Contessa didn’t crack a smile, Joy laughed even harder because she’d said nothing but the truth. But as they rode along, her smile decreased. She was soon to turn twenty-five years old and barely had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. All of the girls they grew up with had husbands and babies. That was something. Or they had great office jobs and great careers. That was something too. Joy had none of the above. That stung.
Then Contessa, who was a blunt person by nature, looked over at her best friend hoping she hadn’t hurt her feelings withthatyou ain’t got shitcrack. Joy was everything in her view. The sweetest person with the biggest heart she’d ever known. Joy would give her last dime to a stranger if that stranger was in need. And she was so stunningly beautiful to everybody who knew her, even though she didn’t believe it for a second. But life never treated her right, and men treated her even worse. “How do you feel about him coming back?” Contessa asked her.
Joy didn’t understand. It seemed like a question that had no context. “How do I feel about who coming back?”
“Girl you know who.”
“No, I don’t, Tess. Who?”
“Z.”
