I didn’t give her the opportunity to hang up on me. Instead, I hung the phone up on her ass. I still sent her over the grocery list that I needed, not giving a damn about the heated exchange that the two of us just finished having.
I sat in silence, putting the color mix in Ariel’s hair. She was in her own world, tending to her phone, watching videos, so as I was doing this, we really didn’t talk much. I had all the color in at this point, and I placed a clear bag on top of her hair, so that the color could sit. Once it sat for a while, and I felt like she was ready for me to wash it out, I took us over to the sink.
There was magic in my hands because mostly every time that I would wash my clients hair, they would all fall asleep. It was no different with Ariel. She was in and out of sleep as I gave her a wash, along with a scalp massage. I took her back over to the chair, so that I could part her hair in sections, going to start the blow out process as soon as I finished with that.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping on your conversation or anything, but I heard Riot’s voice. How is she doing? I was locked up with her for a little bit. I only did like four months in there withher. I went home way before she did,” Ariel said, sparking up conversation with me, as I stood behind her, sectioning out her hair.
“Girl, Riot is Riot. I want to put my foot in her ass just about every other day,” I responded, and she laughed. After she laughed, her face turned serious as she looked up at me in the mirror.
“I’m just glad that she got out of that jail alive, you know? I often wondered about her when I was released, but you know that Miami is so small, so I heard through friends that she made it out a couple of months ago,” she shared with me, and I was a little taken aback by what she said, so I paused in what I was doing to her hair, so that I could look at her in the mirror.
“What you mean that your glad she made it out alive? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, folding my arms, waiting on her to respond.
She had a look on her face as if she regretted even bringing it up. Almost like she was shocked that I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. I watched her as she bit down on her bottom lip, and even through the cape that I’d placed on her, I could see that she was nervously bouncing her leg up and down.
“Shit, jail was hard for Riot. She was at it hard with this girl in there named Cam. She didn’t tell you about it? If she didn’t, I don’t want to have to be the one to expose her jail stay. If she never spoke on it, then it’s obviously something that she didn’t want her family to know about,” Ariel said, and I could feel my heart beating faster, as I listened to her talk.
I knew my child. From the moment Riot came home, I kept saying that something was off with her. She’s always been tiny in size, but when she stepped foot in this salon the day that she was released from jail, she was the smallest that I’ve ever seen her. I remember that jail sweatshirt and sweatpants that she had on. It was wearing her instead of her wearing it. Then, she was sofuckin angry that day. She seemed to be out of it. That had been bothering me for days, so I remember calling Ari, just to see how Riot was doing, and she told me that Riot was barely sleeping, and she wouldn’t eat.
I think about the evening she was at my house and fell asleep on the couch with Daylani. I had to wake her up from the nightmare that she was having. I didn’t have any answers on what was bothering her because she wouldn’t tell me. I was about to pull this shit out of Ariel, even if I had to tie her ass down, and force a confession out of her on what happened with my daughter while she was locked up.
The swivel chair that I had her sitting in, I turned her around, making her face me. Like a stern mother, I crossed my arms, placed my foot on the resting bench on the chair that she was sitting in, prepared to grill her.
“Whatever you tell me, I won’t go back and tell Riot that it was you that told me. What happened while she was in jail? I know your still young, and you don’t have children, but for a second, I need you to put yourself in my shoes. I have been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what happened with my daughter while she was locked up because she came home, and she wasn’t the same. She lost a lot of weight. She won’t eat anything that I cook, she’s barely sleeping, and her entire attitude just changed. What happened? Please tell me,” I was damn near begging at this point, eyes on her, waiting on her to confess.
My station was in the back of the salon, so I was a good distance away from the rest of the stylist. No one would be able to hear what Ariel and I were talking about.
I knew that I was making her uncomfortable. I saw it in the way that she was sighing, and how she could barely keep eye contact with me. She looked around the salon, as if she was making sure that no one would be able to hear her, and then shelooked up at me. She took another deep breath again, and then she began.
“Okay, so it was all kinds of rumors circulating around the jail about what started the beef between Cam, and Riot. Supposedly, the two of them had issues before Riot came to jail. Granted, a lot of bitches at that jail didn’t like Riot. She stuck to herself, and in jail when you do that, people can take it as if you feel like you’re better than everyone else. Even though it was bitches in there that didn’t like Riot, they didn’t really act on it, you know? Probably would roll their eyes at her when she walked by, maybe even bump into her, but they didn’t go as far with their shit as Cam would go,” she started, and I followed her, eyes on her, waiting to see where she was getting ready to go with this.
“I think it was her first or second week in jail when somebody poisoned her. She was fucked up. It was so bad that she had to go to the hospital. When she came back, she still wasn’t 100% herself. I remember walking past her cell and seeing her damn near hanging off the side of her bunk. They said that Cam did that shit, but there was never really any solid proof. Just speculation. Even though we couldn’t prove it, I think we all knew that Cam was responsible for it because she was the only one that was beefing with Riot like that,” she went on, and hearing that my daughter was poisoned while she was in jail felt like a blow to the fuckin chest. I had speculated it, but I wanted to be wrong so bad.
Again, I knew my daughter. Since she was a kid, she was very particular about what she ate. Riot spent a lot of time with her grandparents, and because of that, my child only liked home cooked meals. She didn’t do the whole fast-food thing because she complained that it didn’t taste the same. After being locked up for a year, you would think that she would break her neck to have some of my cooking, her grandparents, or even her aunties.
She wouldn’t eat shit that we cooked. I’m talking every time that I would put a plate of food in front of her, it was some kind of excuse on why she wouldn’t eat it. Ari told me that she was doing the same thing at her house. I called it out to Ari when Riot came home, telling her that somebody might have put something in her food while she was in jail that caused this change in her, but when I said it, Ari felt like I might have been looking too deep into it.
To know that I was right this entire time, and that there were bitches in that jail that was trying to take the one child from me that I had left was a terrible blow. I had to sit the hell down for this.
“Cam was brutal, man. She would go out of her way to fuck with Riot. Some of the guards there didn’t like Riot because Key, you know your daughter, and you know that she has a mouth on her. With the mouth on her, and with some of the guards there liking Cam, I swear they would turn a blind eye to some of the shit that Cam would do. Cam used to be able to get into Riot’s cell, and she would have like three to four girls holding her down in the bed, and Cam would beat the shit out of her. I’m talking, having Riot walking around there limping, face all fucked up, the whole nine. Riot didn’t break easily, and she would take those ass beatings to the chin, and I think the fact that what Cam was doing to Riot wasn’t breaking her was pissing Cam off even more. That shit went on just about the entire time that Riot was there. I only know that because when I left, I still had friends there locked up, and when they would call me, they would tell me,” she finished, and I felt my eyes get misty, and before I knew it, a lone tear fell.
“See Key, this why I didn’t want to tell you this shit. I’m sorry,” Ariel said to me.
“Give me a minute,” was all I had for her, standing up, and I went to the back.
Instead of going inside the restroom, I decided to go to the back where my office was. I closed the door behind me, locking it, and I posted with my back against the door, and just dragged my body down, sitting on the floor.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, and I broke. I broke the hell down, as the words that Ariel told me replayed repeatedly in my head. I thought about the times that Riot wouldn’t want to video call while she was locked up. This girl would tell me that she didn’t want to see us over on video because it would make her depressed that she couldn’t be home. You could forget about us coming down to the jail to see her because she made sure that she didn’t add us to the visitors list. My daughter wasn’t one of those people where it was easy for her to tell someone that she needed them, but as I was sitting here crying, I thought back to the times when we talked through video. Those big green eyes of hers would be pleading, telling me that she needed me, but of course she wouldn’t say it.
I took this news hard. I was never the kind of stylist to step away from my clients for too long because I’ve been doing this long enough to have proper stylist etiquette, knowing that when clients came to me, they probably had other things to do with their lives after getting their hair done by me, so I never wanted to hold them up.
It was hard to get up and go back out front. Each time that I would calm down, I would picture the things that Ariel told me that they were doing to my daughter while she was locked up, and before I knew it, I would cry again. Yes, I was hurt because of the physical pain that my daughter quietly went through while she was locked up, but then I was also crying because I could have received a phone call from that jail, telling me that my daughter was found dead in her cell. That would have broken me. To lose the only child that I had left was a feeling that caused me pain when I thought about it.
I eventually pulled it together, stood up from the floor, and I wiped my eyes. I looked in the mirror before going back out, and there was nothing that I could really do to hide these blood shot red eyes. Knowing that, I just went ahead back out front, so that I could finish with Ariel’s hair.
“I’m sorry Key. I hate that I even told you that. I would have never brought it up if I didn’t think you knew,” Ariel said to me the second that I stood behind her.
“It’s okay. It hurts, but I needed to know that. A lot of things make so much sense to me now,” I told her, and she just nodded, leaving it at that.