Prize of a Lifetime

Sasha bit back a chuckle and kept her eyes straight ahead as the Lexus crawled by her. She could almost feel the cuss words bouncing off her driver’s-side window. She turned off the car, gathered her purse and tote bag and went inside as quickly as she could, eager to get out of the sticky heat and into the cool interior of the family domain.

CC had been in business for more than twenty years, starting off in her mother Grace’s kitchen on Kennisaw Road where she did “favors” for close friends who were having small gatherings or surprise family events. Grace Carrington’s homemade soul-food dinners and desserts became so popular that she outgrew her kitchen and rented the space CC now occupied. Once they were old enough, Sasha and her younger sister, Tristan, helped out. Their dad, Frank, who also knew his way around a stove, handled the books and the deliveries.

Fortunately, the recession had been kind to them. While many businesses in downtown Savannah were suffering or had closed, CC still managed to do well, all things considered, and maintained a profit. Grace firmly believed that food was the best comforter in good times and more so in bad. However, with more people becoming health-conscious and a flurry of government studies on obesity in the U.S., Sasha had been trying to convince her mother and her sister to broaden their menu to include some healthy alternatives. She urged them to serve more than the fried, buttered, gravy-laden, ham-hock-seasoned, sugar-coated foods that CC had built its reputation on. Grace and Tristan were not interested.

Sasha opened the heavy wood door and was greeted by the mouth-watering aroma of CC’s famous seasoned collard greens. Her stomach jumped in delight, but she fought back the urge. For the past four months she’d quietly embarked upon a lifestyle change, cutting back or eliminating many of the foods she’d grown up on. It was a struggle, but she was slowly winning the battle, having lost nearly twenty pounds for her efforts. Her mother’s high blood pressure, her sister huffing and puffing over the simplest activity, not to mention her Aunt Shelia’s heart attack a year earlier had put Sasha on notice. She’d gone from a solid size eighteen to a curvaceous size fourteen. She had plans, and she wanted to be around to see them fulfilled, and if she had to take her mother and her sister with her kicking and screaming, she was going to make sure that they were around to enjoy her success.

“Hey, Charise. My mom around?” Charise was Sasha’s first cousin on her mother’s side, her Aunt Shelia’s daughter. She came in after school to help out a couple of days a week.

Charise was busy on her iPhone. She didn’t make a move without it, and she barely glanced up. “In the back.” She angled her head toward the kitchen.

“Thanks. How’s school?” She patted her cousin’s shoulder as she came around the front counter.

“Graduate next year,” Charise said, as if by rote.

Sasha smiled, shook her head and walked toward the kitchen. At least Charise was still in school and didn’t have an infant on her hip like so many of the young girls in the city.

“Hey, Mom.”

Grace looked up for an instant from her task of rolling dough for the crust of her famous peach cobbler. “Hey, baby. Hand me that brown sugar,” she said with a slight lift of her double chin.

Sasha did as she was asked to the tune of banging pots and stirring spoons coming from the other side of the wall that divided the baking area from the ovens, supervised by Clyde, the only person who wasn’t family that Grace allowed in her kitchen. “Hey, Clyde,” she called out.

Clyde poked his head out, his dark brown face gleaming with sweat. He flashed her a toothy grin. “Hey, yourself. How you be?” His eyes rolled up and down her body. “Get any thinner you gone blow away.” He chuckled.

“I doubt it,” she tossed back. The Hasting women were all “big-boned” as they liked to call themselves. Her mother’s sisters, Linda and Shelia, were both double-Ds and size twenty-plus. Her grandmother had been big, too, and Sasha’s sister, Tristan, was well on her way to winning top prize. Sasha worried about all of them, but they swore that their men loved it and no one could pay them enough to pass up a good meal.

“So when are you leaving?” her mother asked, not interested in hearing another one of Sasha’s lectures on food.

Sasha leaned her hip against the counter. “My flight to Antigua leaves at seven tomorrow night.”

“You sure picked a fine time to take off on vacation. You know this is a busy time of year for us, with graduations and weddings,” her mother complained as she wiped sweat from her brow with a paper towel.

“I know. But if I don’t take my vacation now I won’t get a chance to go.”

“I still don’t know why you have to go to some island.”

Sasha had no intention of telling her family the real reason for her trip. If things didn’t work out, she didn’t want to hear “I told you so.”

Sasha went to the sink and washed her hands. She moved next to her mother and began kneading dough for the pies. “I know this is a busy time, Mom,” she began, “but this is really important to me.”

Her mother turned and looked at her daughter curiously. Her brows drew together. “What’s so important about a vacation in Antigua?”

Sasha drew in a breath. “It’s just that I’ve planned this for a while. I can’t back out now. This is the first time I’ve been out of the country.” Her voice began to bubble with enthusiasm even as she hoped her mother would share in her excitement.

Grace’s full lips were tightly pursed before the glimmer of a smile loosened them. “Be sure to bring me something. And I don’t mean a T-shirt,” she warned, wagging a rolling pin at Sasha.

The two women laughed.

“I promise I’ll do better than a T-shirt.” Sasha rolled out some dough. “Is Tristan stopping by? I was hoping to say goodbye.”

Grace shook her head slowly as she poured fresh peaches into the pan. “I sure wish you would talk to your sister. Tristan won’t listen to me.”

Sasha stopped rolling the dough and looked at her mother. “What happened now?”

“Gary again…staying out until all hours. Won’t hardly talk to Tristan. She’s making herself crazy, crying all the time.” Her mother’s heavy chest heaved as she took a breath.

“I’ll talk to her. I’ll give her a call before I leave.”

“Thank you, baby. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Sasha offered a faint smile as they worked side by side. What her mother really meant was that she depended on Sasha for everything, she always had. It was Sasha who had taken care of the house and her younger sister while their parents built the business. Even after Sasha and Tristan were old enough to help out, it was up to Sasha to make sure that Tristan was looked after, got up in time for school, dressed, did her homework, ate and attended her activities.

She must have done a pretty lousy job, Sasha thought, seeing as how Tristan had wound up with a creep like Gary. A part of her felt guilty for leaving, but it was finally time that she did something for herself.

After they’d finished with the pies, Sasha prepared to leave.

“I’ll call you before I leave. Okay?” She kissed her mother’s cheek. “If I’m not running behind, I’ll try to swing by before I go to the airport. I want to see Daddy.”

“He wouldn’t forgive you if you left without him seeing you first.”

“I know. I was hoping he would have been back by now with the deliveries.”

“Well, you go on. Just be sure to see him tomorrow. I’ll let him know you were here.”

“Thanks, Mom. Love you.”

“Love you too, sugar.” She pulled Sasha into a hug and kissed her forehead. “Be sure to call,” she said releasing her.

“I will.”

Back inside her car, Sasha had a momentary flash of guilt. What if something happened while she was gone? What if her brother-in-law did something crazy, and she wasn’t there to look after her sister? What if her mother’s worrying about Tristan made her blood pressure skyrocket even higher? Sasha looked toward the storefront. Maybe her mother was right. Although she didn’t come right out and say that Sasha was being selfish, it was implied in her tone and her reference to this being a “busy time.” She glanced at her purse on the passenger seat. The letter beckoned her, strengthened her resolve:

Dear Ms. Carrington, Congratulations! The producers of Heartbreak Hotel have unanimously selected you for the first-round competition…

Sasha drew in a deep breath, stuck the key in the ignition and pulled out into the light evening traffic. She had things to do. Tomorrow she was going to Antigua!

The moment Sasha stepped through the door of her one-bedroom apartment, she kicked off her shoes and turned on the air-conditioning. Instinctively, she ran her hand over her bulging ponytail that had been struggling to be released from its hair clip all day. She passed by the hall mirror and winced. Her face was framed with a thick halo of damp, unrelaxed hair and the ball at the nape of her neck resembled a mini Afro-puff. Fortunately her hair appointment was for nine in the morning and her stylist had promised that she’d hook her up with a style that would withstand the sun, heat and seawater and even some good loving.

“Humph, this I gotta see,” she mumbled peering a bit closer at her reflection.

As she headed for her bedroom she began stripping out of her standard white blouse, navy-blue skirt and matching pumps. By the time she hit the threshold she was down to her black lace undies and feeling cooler by the minute. She tossed her discarded clothing on the armchair in the corner of her room. Passing by the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her bedroom door, Sasha did a double-take. A smile broke the tight lines of her mouth as she gazed in appreciation at what her hard work and discipline had wrought. Her upper arms, which were once on the verge of “doing the bird,” were firm, with just a soft ripple. Her stomach, which normally had to be held in place by the strongest body shaper on the market, was flat and firm, curving out to the swell of her hips—not much she wanted to do about that—down to her still thick but tight thighs and dancer’s legs. She unhooked her bra and beamed when her 38Cs pointed out, not down. Then she turned sideways and—BAM. Yes, yes, yes! She did the happy dance all the way into the shower. She couldn’t wait to show off her new and improved self on the beaches of Antigua.

Chapter 2

“I am so excited for you,” April said as the airport came into view. “I know you are going to kick butt.” She made the turn into the departure lane. “I wish I could be there with you, but I’m there in spirit.”

Sasha and April had met in sixth grade, and for reasons that they could never put their fingers on, they had simply clicked. They complemented each other. Where Sasha was more reserved, April was outgoing and never hesitated to say what was on her mind. Sasha was always “thick,” as the saying goes, and April could eat a grown man under the table and never gain an ounce. April was flamboyant and Sasha was understated, preferring to stay in the background. It was April who had always been able to draw Sasha out of her shell, push her when she otherwise would have stood still. She believed in Sasha’s dreams and ambitions when not even her own family did. Had it not been for April, Sasha would have never gone through with submitting her application to the Heartbreak Hotel competition.