The crowd and the staff manage to pull me off Donna. One of the managers goes to call the cops, and someone in the crowd says, “The hell you will! Do you know who this girl is right here? That’s Rosalie Bosia’s daughter. I wish you would call the cops. You won’t make another sale in this neighborhood ever again.”

I follow the voice. It belongs to an older lady, Mrs. Wright. The man standing an aisle over cosigns: “Hell nah! After what they did to that woman, you call the cops and we will be boycotting this CVS. Trust.”

“I’m glad she got beat down! That lady stay touching my hair too!” a Black girl with bantu knots adds, rolling her eyes and sucking her teeth. It doesn’t take long for a shouting match to erupt between the staff and the Black customers. The small amount of Black staff watches it play out, standing back and nodding to themselves as the customers talk.

“And why you holding her like that?” a Black man in a suit says to the manager, who has me by my elbow.

“Let that child go!” Mrs. Wright demands. “She was just defending herself against your employee, who came up and touched her without her permission. We can leave it like this, or we can get See Us down here. And you can explain to them why you think it’s okay to touch your customers without their permission.”

“Look, we don’t tolerate anyone touching anyone else without permission. That’s not a policy of—”

“Yeah, well, best let her go, and then you can tell my son, the civil rights attorney over there, all about your policy,” Mrs. Wright says, pointing at the man in the suit.

The man nods and folds his arms across his chest. The manager releases me. Mrs. Wright whisks me out the doors before I get a handle on what the hell just happened.

“My friends are waiting for me to—”

“Let your friends know what’s going on. And tell them you’ll be late,” she orders. I text my friends but don’t go into any details. I just tell them that I’m with Mrs. Wright and will join them as soon as I’m done. Mrs. Wright starts walking down the street and signals for me to follow her.

“Don’t you want to wait for your son?” I ask.

“I don’t know that man,” she replies.

“He’s not your . . .” One look into her smiling face lets me know it was all a bluff. “Why did that guy go along with your lie?” I ask.

“Girl, did you think we weren’t going to stand up for you after all the things your mama done did for us?”

“No, I guess not,” I admit.