“What are you doing?” I stammered in horror.
“I’m going into a room so we can conduct our transaction.”
“I’m not going in there,” I said.
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. Do you want to do this in the hallway?”
“I’m not going in there,” I repeated.
She had the nerve to pretend to be confused, and then leaned back and looked at the door. “Oh, snap, my bad. I didn’t even realize that this was the room that you killed your best friend’s husband in.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said through gritted teeth.
“You got that lethal coochie!” Sabrina joked.
“Oh, my God, you are so disgusting!”
She giggled. “Girl, come on. They’ve cleaned the room up. No sign of a dead body.”
“I’m not going in,” I repeated.
“Okay,” she loudly said. “We can stand out here in the hallway and you can give me the money for black—”
I covered her mouth. “Fine,” I hissed as I motioned for her to go inside. She laughed like this was really entertaining.
As soon as we were inside, she turned to me and held out her hand. “May I have my money, please?”
I inhaled. Exhaled. Then said, “Sabrina, I couldn’t get the money.”
“Aww, hell naw,” she said, starting to head toward the door.
I jumped in front of her to stop her. “Please, listen. I couldn’t get it, but I did get five grand.” I reached in my purse, pulled out the wad of money, and stuffed it in her hand. “It’s all I can get.”
She cut her eyes at me, then glanced down at the money. I was hoping it was more money than she’d ever held at one time, and it would be enough to buy me some time. She continued glaring at me as she said, “I thought you were resourceful. I mean, if you can steal my boyfriend and sleep with your best friend’s husband, you’re capable of anything.”
I was surprised at this accusation. “Is that what this is about? You’re mad over some stupid freshman-year relationship? For the thousandth time, I didn’t know Earl was your boyfriend!”
“No, I’m mad because you get everything you want—including my boyfriend—because you think you are so much better than everyone else. You had this whole high-falutin, saddity attitude, and I was just the poor girl from the ghetto that you took under your wing—never hesitating to let everyone know when you’d given me a pair of shoes or some other hand-me-down.”
“Are you serious?” I said. “I did nothing but try to help you, and I only let one person know that you were wearing some of my hand-me-downs.”
“Yeah, but it was the person with the biggest mouth on campus—Shayla Green.”
I couldn’t believe that nearly two decades later we were having this discussion. “So, this is what you’re ruining my life for? Some beef we had in college?”
“I’m not ruining your life. An opportunity just presented itself, and I took advantage of it.” She shook her head. “You’re a prime example of why people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“I didn’t throw stones!”
“Yeah, you did. You said if I was doing my job, I wouldn’t have to worry about my boyfriend cheating.”
“Sabrina, I was nineteen and foolish. And we were fighting. I seriously thought we had moved past that.”
“No, you had.” She rolled her eyes, thumbed through the money, then waved it at me. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Use it to get started. It will cover a couple months’ rent in LA. I will work on getting you the rest.” I knew that I never had any intention on giving Sabrina another dime, but I had to say something. “Please. Just take it for now.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when, after a brief hesitation, she stuffed the money in her purse, which was crisscrossed on her body.
“Can I have the video?” I asked.
“Girl, you must be crazy,” she said. “You get the video when I get my money. All of it.” She started walking toward the door. “I can’t appreciate you trying to play me.”
“It’s all I have,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was groveling to this woman.
“Fine. It’ll do. For now. I won’t send the video. This week,” she added with a chuckle.
“Sabrina, don’t play with me.”
“Don’t play with my money,” she said, losing her smile. “I want another payment in two weeks.”
I nodded, even though I knew that wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t live with her threat of blackmail hanging over me. I knew that I couldn’t continue torturing myself, trying to come up with money. I knew that I couldn’t sink any lower than stealing from my daughter. And that meant I had only one choice—it was time for me to come clean.