Drama Is Her Middle Name Read online

  2

  Ritgina Harper was a little annoyed when the principal called her to the office over the loudspeaker during Mrs. Johnson’s second-period class at George W. Carver Elementary School in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Ritgina loved school and she particularly loved Mrs. Johnson’s class. She made her students do things like watch Roots and write a paper on how the miniseries changed their views, and she had them memorize every capital of all fifty states.

  Mrs. Johnson was having a competition that morning. The student who could get the most state capitals correct would win a special prize. Ritgina wanted the prize—she didn’t care what it was. She just loved to win. Her mother, Gina, had stayed up late last night quizzing her.

  “Come on, Ritz! You know Mommy has to get up early in the morning,” her mother complained after going through all fifty for the eighth time. “You are going to do fine, I just know it.”

  “Mommy, just one more time, please, please, please!” Ritgina said. “I’ll give you extra kisses and I’ll get up extra early and make your coffee for you.”

  “You sure drive a hard bargain, young lady,” her mother said, rubbing her weary eyes. “Okay, okay. What is the capital of Alaska?”

  “Anchorage! That one was easy, Mommy. Give me a hard one.”

  “How about South Dakota?” A minute passed. “Ah-ha! I stumped you. It’s Pierre. Write it down and study it. I’ll grill you some more after you make my coffee in the morning. Now take your little tail to bed.”

  Ritz kissed her mother good night, and grabbed her notebook, in which she wrote Pierre, South Dakota; Montpelier, Vermont; and Concord, New Hampshire—the three states that stumped her, which she had to master by the morning. And master them she would.

  “I love you, Mommy!”

  “I love you, my beautiful young lady!”

  Gina doted on her daughter. It was just the two of them since Ritgina was a baby. Ritchie didn’t stick around but a week after Ritgina was born, leaving the eighteen-year-old Gina to fend for herself and her baby. Gina hated Ritchie for that and didn’t want to be reminded of him. So she started calling her little girl Ritz. As early as she could, Gina started filling Ritz’s head with survival skills.

  Around the age of nine, Ritz’s mother started talking to her about adult issues: “Don’t let no man take advantage of you, sweet talking you to try and get funny with you! I haven’t met a man yet who wasn’t up to no good.”

  “Maaaaaa!” Ritz would protest. “Nobody’s even thinking about all of that.”

  “You’d be surprised, young lady, what these men are thinking about,” her mother would say. “I don’t want you ever to be dependent on no man for nothing. You are going to use that brain of yours, get an education, and take care of yourself. And maybe you’ll even make enough money to take care of your old mother one day.”

  “You are a smart little girl,” her mother said on another occasion. “But if you want to be the best, you have to work hard—outwork everyone. Hard work is what separates the good from the best. And you will be the best!”

  Gina led by example. She never finished high school, but she always worked at least two jobs. She refused to be a statistic. She was a single mother, but she wasn’t going to be a poor single mother on welfare whose children grow up to follow in her footsteps. For one, she was determined to make sure that Ritgina would be an only child. It was hard enough taking care of one child; she was not going to have any more. To make sure, Gina didn’t date. There would never be a man to come in between her and her daughter. There would never be any threat to break that bond. She had plans for her baby girl, and those plans started with a solid education. Gina started saving early for Ritgina’s college education, even though she knew her little girl would qualify for a scholarship. Just in case, though, Gina would make sure she had not only enough for school, but for books and any other incidentals her child would need.

  With every paycheck, Gina bought a savings bond. It wasn’t much but she had been doing that since Ritgina was a baby and had more than ten thousand dollars in saving bonds—not including interest.

  Gina was determined to have the best of everything for herself and her daughter. Her day job as a café waitress started at six-thirty in the morning. She finished work there at two in the afternoon, giving her enough time to meet Ritz at school and walk her home, help her with her homework, cook dinner, and get her ready for the next day. She had an evening job from seven until ten, cleaning offices. During those hours Ritz was a latchkey kid. She was mature enough to take care of herself for about three hours, and she knew the rules: “Don’t answer the phone or the door for nothing!” Gina and Ritz had a special code. Gina would let the phone ring once, hang up, and then call back. Then and only then was Ritz to answer the phone.

  Ritz spent the three hours reading. She loved to read— everything from Judy Bloom to V. C. Andrews. She also loved mythology.

  By the time Ritz’s mother dragged herself into their tiny three-room apartment around ten-thirty, Ritz would usually be asleep. Gina would never turn in herself until she grabbed her little girl and gave her a big hug and a sloppy kiss on her pudgy, dimpled cheek. Gina loved her little girl’s dimples and her smooth, perfect chocolaty complexion.

  “She looks so much like her father,” she thought. “Damn him! He is missing the best part of himself—the best thing he has ever done.”

  “You know Mommy loves you, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Ritz would say. “I love you, too.”

  Ritgina Harper, please come to the principal’s office immediately!

  “Oooooh!” a chorus rang out among her classmates. Ritz Harper was apparently in big trouble.

  A puzzled look crossed Ritz’s face. She was mischievous and loved to play practical jokes, but never during school hours. In school she was all-business and was never in trouble.

  She collected her books and put them in her book bag, then shot another puzzled look at Mrs. Johnson, who was preparing the class for the contest.

  “Don’t worry, Ritgina, you will have a chance at the prize when you come back,” said Mrs. Johnson, not knowing why the principal wanted Ritz but couldn’t imagine it was anything to worry about. “Okay, class, settled down. Let’s have a practice round. Let’s start from the beginning. What is the capital of Alabama?”

  Ritz walked out of the classroom, down the long corridor, and headed to the left, to the west end of the building where the principal’s office was. She kept trying to think “What did I do? What could I have done?” She kept coming up blank. But as soon as she entered the office, she knew it was something really bad.

  Her aunt Madalyn was there with reddened, swollen eyes. Her bottom lip began to tremble as she grabbed Ritz in a tight hug and started crying uncontrollably. Trying to collect herself, Aunt Madalyn finally managed to speak. “Sweetie . . . there has been a terrible, terrible accident. Your—your mother . . . your mother is . . . she’s gone.” Aunt Madalyn lost it.

  Aunt Madalyn’s words didn’t register immediately. Gone? Gone where?

  Gina had used her thirty-minute break from the café at ten A.M. to rush a couple of blocks to the local bookstore. She wanted to surprise Ritz with the next V. C. Andrews book as a reward for the hard work she had been doing in school. On her way back to work, Gina ran in the middle of the street. A Budweiser beer truck came whipping around the corner at the same time. The impact was so horrific that witnesses hoped that her heart stopped immediately. Gina was, however, alive for an hour after the accident, but she never regained consciousness.

  The funeral and the weeks that followed were a blur for Ritz. She was eleven years old and had lost her best friend, her biggest champion. She loved Aunt Madalyn and her husband of twenty-two years, Uncle Cecil. But they weren’t a substitute for her mother. Her mother was still vibrant and young. Uncle Cecil and Aunt Madalyn were only in their mid-forties, but they were raised in a time when forty was more like sixty. Aunt Madalyn was fifteen years older than her
sister Gina. She was more like a great-aunt. And she had old-fashioned ways, which in the long run benefited Ritz by refining her. But a girl of eleven didn’t appreciate that refining process. On one of her few days off, it wasn’t unusual for Gina to take Ritz to a water park or on a picnic. Aunt Madalyn would take her to the theater. Her mom was young and hip and didn’t mind Ritz dressing like a kid. Gina sometimes dressed like a kid herself. Aunt Madalyn had Ritz dressing like a “lady”—an old lady. But even though Ritz didn’t realize it until later, living with Aunt Madalyn and Uncle Cecil was one of the best things to happen to her.

  Ritz got to see that all men weren’t really that bad, as her mother had led her to believe they were. Uncle Cecil was not only one of the nicest people Ritz had ever met, he absolutely adored Aunt Madalyn and said all the time that he was “tickled pink” to have a daughter, because he and Aunt Madalyn couldn’t have kids. Ritz never knew whose “fault” it was, but she did know that living there, she was treated like a porcelain doll, a little princess. While her mother worked hard to give her little things, it seemed like Uncle Cecil and Aunt Madalyn always had money for big things. Aunt Madalyn didn’t work. Uncle Cecil owned a contracting company and while he kept long hours, he always had a pocket full of cash. When he got home, he would take his ladies out for ice cream after dinner. Aunt Madalyn always had dinner ready for him when he came home. To Ritz, it seemed that Aunt Madalyn and Uncle Cecil were a throwback to those 1950s shows like Leave It to Beaver, except they were dipped in sepia.

  3

  MARCH 2005

  Ritz punched the alarm code to her Jersey City apartment, set her keys on the tiny, marble-top table at the front door, sat in her comfortable, chenille-covered chair, and grabbed the remote and the unfinished Black & Mild blunt from her Orrefors ashtray. This was her routine. Ritz loved routine and order because so much of her life had been chaos, beyond her control. From the death of her mother to the crazy course of her career—there was so much that Ritz could simply not control that the things she could control, she controlled to the extreme.

  Smoking a blunt gave her a strange sense of control and power. It was her secret rebellion—a breaking away of always doing the right thing. It was also something she did that no one—virtually no one—knew.

  “Girl, you are already crazy, the last thing you need is some weed on top of all of that!” Tracee had said, the first time she saw Ritz roll a blunt. The two had been hanging out for a year, but it was the first time Ritz really let her hair down in front of Tracee.

  “This is what keeps me from being completely crazy,” Ritz said. “Here, you should try it. It might loosen your tight ass up, Miss Prude.”

  “Everybody I know smokes. It’s the one thing that sets me apart,” Tracee said. “It was the one thing I thought we had in common.”

  “So are you going to stop liking me now?” Ritz asked as she took a long pull on her blunt and blew a thin smoky stream into the air.

  “Who said I liked you?”

  The two fell back on the couch and giggled and ate. Tracee didn’t need the munchies to enjoy eating. And Ritz didn’t need her blunt to know that Tracee was the best friend she had ever had. In both radio and the music business there were few mentors for women. Every successful woman looked at newcomers as competition, potential threats to their position. It was next to impossible to have a female friend to trust in those businesses. Ritz was happy she had Tracee and vice versa.

  Ritz took another toke of her blunt. Pangs of loneliness were starting to set in. The smoke was quickly absorbed into her Ionic Breeze air filter.

  Why did she have to move all the way the fuck to Florida?

  Daydreaming about missing her friend had become part of her routine. It had been about a year since Tracee had moved. And Ritz was realizing how empty her life was. The weed and the daily grind of the station provided some comfort, filled in some of the spaces. But . . .

  Girl, you need a change. You need a real change.

  Ritz’s routine was too routine. Her show was nearly perfect. Her intros, flawless. She read commercials better than most. She was a great interviewer. She even handled her outrageous callers with aplomb. Ritz was a pro. A pro’s pro. But for some reason, she still wasn’t satisfied. It didn’t seem to be good enough.

  She had been doing her night shift for four years. For four years her time checks had been perfect. Her intros were perfect. She was perfect. But her show wasn’t spectacular. It didn’t stand out. Ritz wanted to stand out. She didn’t want to be just another jock.

  She dozed off in her comfortable, oversized chair, waking up to reruns of the Honeymooners at three in the morning. She dragged herself to bed, thinking about what she needed to do to distinguish herself, to get into a drive-time slot. The phone woke her up at nine on the dot, as it had every day since she moved to New Jersey.

  “Hey, Auntie M,” Ritz said, sounding as if she had been up for hours. She liked calling her Aunt Madalyn “Auntie M” because it reminded her of the Wizard of Oz. Ritz had always felt connected to that story of a little girl with no parents, raised by an aunt. Ritz felt she had a lot in common with Dorothy, including an Auntie Em.

  Ritz always looked forward to the call that came every morning at nine, a wake-up call that Ritz had grown to depend on. No matter what time Ritz got in—some nights if she had an appearance, it would be nearing four when she got home—her aunt would call at nine. Aunt Madalyn’s call jump-started Ritz’s day and got her off on the right foot. It was almost a superstition. Aunt Madalyn, who listened to Ritz online on the computer Ritz set up for her and Uncle Cecil, would critique Ritz’s show from the night before, and Ritz loved getting the reviews.

  “That was a nice first hour, sweetie,” Aunt Madalyn would say.

  “Tell the truth! You only heard the first hour.”

  “You know me too well, baby. I fell asleep. Your uncle Cecil had me rubbing his back, and I got so tired I just shut down the computer and went to bed.”

  “I bet you did! You fell asleep? Sure. I know y’all got your freak on!”

  “Ritz!”

  Ritz loved embarrassing her aunt, who was always so prim and proper.

  In the three years since Ritz took over the night shift on WHOT, her aunt called every day to encourage her, to give her advice, and to just be an ear for Ritz to sound off to.

  “Auntie M, I don’t know why I’m stuck on this night shift.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Aunt Madalyn. “It’s just a matter of time. God is just preparing you—making you sit in the sauce until you’re ready. Just be patient. You always want everything yesterday, but a beautiful flower takes time to root.”

  “I know I’m better than everyone on my station, Auntie M. My program director keeps telling me how much he loves my work ethic and my delivery and all of that, but three years on nights is getting real tired.”

  Ritz’s career was building. When she got the shift four years ago, there wasn’t a happier person. How many jocks just a couple of years out of college land in New York City—the Big Freaking Apple? Media capital of the world! She was most proud that she didn’t have to start on overnights— midnight until five in the morning. Most rookies started on overnights. It was more of a tryout spot. You either got bumped into a better shift or bumped off altogether. Some people got stuck on overnights, usually those who either had marginal talent but rarely made mistakes or those who were perfectly suited for overnights—a rare find.

  Ritz started on the evening shift—six to ten, which followed the coveted afternoon drive shift. Drive time was close enough for Ritz to smell. After about two and a half years, that smell turned into a stench. She watched her station fire one sorry afternoon jock after another and never once look her way. They brought in Dr. Mark, a best-selling author whose specialty was sex. He was a cross between Dr. Ruth and Dr. Phil with a little Dr. Strangelove thrown in for good measure. He had a devilish wit and a nasty sense of humor that would make R. Kelly blush.

&
nbsp; His show had taken off with female callers wanting to know how to find a good man. He had capitalized on the trend of lonely women, which was only getting worse. Women didn’t know where to turn for a good man.

  There was “on the down low,” and JL King and gay men pretending to be straight. There was the rash of “good men” with good jobs and professions marrying Asian and white women, leaving the “sisters” in the lurch. There were already five women for every man in most major cities, and those numbers were far worse in the black community. Tyler Perry made a mint doing plays and movies like Diary of a Mad Black Woman that basically celebrated the plight of women dealing with low-down-dirty dogs. There were enough of those women to keep a show going indefinitely. Dr. Mark had more than enough material, and he was becoming very popular because women viewed him as their savior. He had all of the answers—or at least enough to keep them calling in for advice. WHOT saw big numbers. Ritz saw red.

  She called a meeting with her program director, Ernest Ruffin, whom everyone called Ruff. “Ruff, I don’t get a shot at the afternoon drive?! Not even a chance?”

  “Come on, Ritz. You’re not ready,” Ruff said. “Next to morning drive, this is our biggest moneymaking shift. Dr. Mark comes with a new audience that we need to reach, and sponsors love his success in publishing.”

  “I understand the business!” Ritz shot back. “Look at the numbers, Ruff. I have quite a following, too.”

  Ritz was No. 3 in the evening in New York. It was nothing to sneeze at. She had a loyal following that was more than a million strong.

  “But Dr. Mark has a national audience, and we’re looking at syndication,” Ruff said. “Ritz, you know we love you here. I believe in you. But business is business. You’ll get your turn, just be patient.”

  Ruff reached out and pulled Ritz close to him to give her a hug. It was an uncomfortable moment that could have turned sexual quite easily if Ritz allowed it. She knew that Ruff had a slight crush on her but she never fed it. She’d watched too many women make it to the top of their field by being on top of their boss, grinding him into submission. But Ritz wanted to make it on her own merits and on-air talent.