Flashback Friday | Jazz’s Mom Finds Out She’s Gay
A flashback to Jazz in the 9th grade…
I wanna start doing little flashbacks to give the characters more depth. Let me know how y’all feel about that!
Here’s a playlist I put together for this mini!
“You sure yo’ mama ain’t comin’?”, Tanisha asked as she looked out the bedroom window.
She was perched on her knees in Jazz’s bed, indiscreetly peeking through the blinds.
In all reality, if Jazz’s mother had been out there, she would’ve had a clear view of her right now.
“You scared?”, Jazz chuckled as she chewed on a Capri Sun straw. “Yeah, she workin’ late tonight.”
She turned up the music on her stereo and swiveled in her desk chair.
“Besides, my mama don’t know I like girls no way. She would think we were just friends.”
Tanisha smirked. “We are just friends. You ain’t ask me to be your girl yet.”
Jazz stopped swiveling and furrowed her brow.
“Yeah, but we been kissin’ and shit like that,” she rebutted, a hint of defensiveness in her tone. “That pretty much makes us official.”
Tanisha turned and sat at the edge of the bed. The tips of her toes barely grazed the floor as she looked at Jazz pointedly.
“So if that’s the case,” she replied. “Then Jayda’s your girlfriend too, right? ‘Cause I heard you kissed her at the movies a couple weeks ago.”
“Jayda?!”, Jazz scrunched her face in disgust. “Man, ain’t nobody been kissin’ that girl! Especially, not me.”
Tanisha didn’t have to speak. Her pursed lips and folded arms did all the talking.
Jazz smacked. “You don’t believe me?”
“Whatchu think?” She replied, head cocked to the side.
Jazz got up and sat next to her on the bed. She could smell her Japanese Cherry Blossom body lotion.
“Alright, my bad. You right,” she admitted.
“I did kiss her, but that was before I found out you liked me. I would’ve kissed you instead if I knew.”
Tanisha blushed and covered her face. She was wearing chipped blue nail polish and about ten of those little beauty supply gold bangles.
Jazz gently grabbed her wrists and pried her hands away from her face.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” she asked.
Tanisha smiled giddily, revealing a set of braces with bubblegum pink brackets.
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Alright, cool,” Jazz responded, grinning. “Then you my girl now.”
“You sure Jayda won’t get mad?” Tanisha asked, cocking a brow. “I ain’t tryna get jumped by her and the Gross sisters tomorrow.”
Jazz waved her hand dismissively. “Maaann, they can get handled if they want to. You won’t even have to get your hands dirty.”
Tanisha giggled. “Hmm, ok. We’ll see.”
“Yup, we will.”
The girls sat there a while, nodding their heads and mouthing lyrics as Cassie’s Me & U played.
The music filled what would’ve undoubtedly been an awkward silence.
Jazz nervously chewed her bottom lip.
“Sooo…I guess we gotta kiss now. Right?”, she said, bouncing her leg. “Like to make it really official?”
Tanisha giggled again, her light brown complexion reddening. “Yeah, ok.”
Jazz took her by the chin with the grace of a clumsy and inexperienced teenager.
Tanisha closed her eyes and waited with puckered lips.
Mentally preparing to get sticky gloss on her, Jazz leaned in slowly.
What she hadn’t prepared for though, was her bedroom door suddenly swinging open.
“Jazmine! I told you about all this loud mu—”, Her mother stopped mid-sentence, mouth agape.
Tanisha gasped and jumped about a foot away from Jazz on the bed.
Jazz’s mother reached over to the stereo and turned it off.
The silence that followed was almost as loud as screaming.
Jazz swallowed.
“Hey, mama. We was ju—“
“No,” she cut her off.
“Ma, listen we—“
“No, I don’t wanna hear it!”, she yelled. “Stop talking.”
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and shook her head as if trying to forget.
Jazz glanced at Tanisha who was looking on with genuine fear in her eyes.
“You ok?”, she mouthed.
Tanisha shook her head “No”, her eyes desperate for a solution. Jazz wished she had one.
“This is a God-fearing household”, Jazz’s mother continued, eerily calm. “We don’t do this here. Period. You have to go.”
Tanisha scrambled to her feet and put her sneakers back on.
When she grabbed her backpack, a notebook slipped out, but she didn’t even bother retrieving it.
She scurried past Jazz’s mother like a mouse slipping past a cat, spitting out a quick “Sorry, Ms. Norwood” before run-walking down the hall.
She raced down the stairs so quickly that it sounded like she was falling. The front door slammed loudly behind her.
Again, there was that silence that Jazz wished wasn’t so damn loud.
Her mother looked at her like she was a stranger on the street. Someone she didn’t have any love or malice for.
Detached was the only way to describe it.
“You didn’t hear me?”, she asked.
Jazz was confused. “Ma’am?”
“I said you have to go.”
Jazz couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Surely, her mother wasn’t actually kicking her out. That was something moms didn’t really do.
Not her mom, at least.
“But, mama I—“
“You can’t stay here!”, she shouted. “Not after what I just saw.”
Hot tears stung Jazz’s eyes.
She looked at her mother pitifully. Like a cub being left behind.
Her bottom lip quivered as she tried her best not to let the floodgates open.
“You think I’m playing with you, Jazmine?”, she asked coldly. “You got ten seconds.”
It was as if somewhere between now and kissing each other goodbye this morning, she had become her mother’s enemy.
Jazz hesitantly got up and opened her backpack. Her skinny arms shook as she dumped out her books and replaced them with clothes and a few other things.
When she was done she looked into her mother’s eyes searchingly. She spoke with caution.
“Mama, you really gon’ do this?”, her voice quivered helplessly. “I ain’t got nowhere else to go.”
“I’m not your mother anymore,” she bit out, shaking her head. “And I don’t ever want to see you back here. I mean that.”
She turned on her heel and went into her bedroom, slamming the door so hard that it made Jazz flinch.
Almost immediately, Jazz broke down sobbing.
She was two months shy of fourteen years old and officially on her own.
She had no money, no plan, and now she didn’t have a mother either.
Her breath hitched in her chest as she tried to calm herself.
She was in a state of agony and disbelief but decided she would have to deal with those feelings later.
Right now, she had to go.
“I’ll figure this out,” she sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I have to.”
Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she walked out of her childhood bedroom for the very last time.
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