As a Black Woman, with a capital “B” and “W,” the beloved chanteuse was, in part, so beloved for her supposed advocacy for her fellow Black brethren. And yet, that advocacy didn’t quite compute with the fact that, upon her arrival to London for a slew of sold-out stadium dates at Tottenham Hotspur, Adoncé was effectively causing the ousting of a number of unhoused families, most of them Black, staying at formerly undesirable hotels due to the demand of actual, paying customers for rooms. In other words, “real” people. Because you’re only real when you can actively participate in and fortify capitalism. Thus, the Roddington family, among thirty others staying at the Enfield Travelodge were deemed less significant than ever as hotel employees helped shuffle them on their way. The local council was of little help; they were as responsible as Adoncé for causing the uprooting. They hadn’t planned well enough in advance with their bookings to prevent the eager legions of Adoncé fans from snapping up rooms at the hotel, a “convenient” thirty minutes away (on the Overground) from the stadium where their beloved idol awaited them.

Effie Roddington had never paid much attention to Adoncé to begin with. But she was forced to as the dates of the “biggest superstar” in the world coming to town approached. The only song she could actually recite the lyrics to was one from 2008—some ditty called “If I Had A Penis.” At the time, Effie was just seventeen, the whole world ahead of her. She hadn’t yet fallen prey to some deadbeat’s line about loving her, only to leave her after she bore two of his children. The second time she got pregnant, it was another accident, and it left her with three kids instead of one. That’s right, she had triplets. Of all the people to be saddled with such an explosion of spawns, Effie couldn’t understand why it had to be her. So here she was, fifteen years after “If I Had A Penis” came out, saddled with five kids and no affordable housing.

It was difficult not to blame someone for this. And why not turn her vitriol toward that fucking bitch, Adoncé? Adoncé who spoke of Blackness as though she had suffered any of its worst outcomes. No, her whole life, she had been sheltered by the benefit of having stage parents who worked only in service of making her famous. The gall of Adoncé to write a song about how good it feels to quit your job, therefore, was just another sham. At best, she had one “job” before she became famous, working for her mother, who owned a hair salon. Adoncé sure loved to dredge up her “working-class” tales of sweeping other people’s hair. Effie, meanwhile, was working multiple insufferable minimum wage jobs way before Adoncé deigned to pretend to clean up at Mommy’s salon.

As Effie hurried to pack up her and her children’s possessions for the fourth time this year, the only thing that kept her from breaking down in tears was the small comfort that the council was obligated to find her a new place to stay. And yet, for as depressing as the Enfield Travelodge was, she had actually grown quite fond of it. And so had Darren, one of her eight-year-old triplets. Because of Darren’s autism, it was difficult for him to adjust to new surroundings. He was finally used to this room they had stayed in for two months. Two months was positively “long-term” by the council’s standards.

Effie should have known better than to think they would extend her family’s stay at the hotel. She knew it wasn’t really Adoncé’s fault, per se. And yet, who could deny what a catalyst she was for proving that no one gave a single goddamn about her “kind”? Not even the one woman who had cultivated her career into a platform for “Blackness”? Shouldn’t Adoncé be aware of this situation? The one that Effie and so many other families had to suffer as a result of Adoncé’s presence in the London metropolitan area being more important than some unhoused, broke-ass “nobodies.” And because they were “nobody,” they could be shuffled around to accommodate concertgoers’ “needs.” The people willing to pay top tier prices for Adoncé’s Rebirth Tour. Because, again, only those who can afford to pay actually have rights. Effie knew she had lost hers long ago. All it takes a series of unfortunate events and here you are, at the mercy of a fucking Adoncé tour.

In transit to the Travelodge in Hertfordshire (three hours away from Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, so no real risk of being ousted by Adoncé concertgoers there), Effie gazed out the window as her brood expressed different forms of dissatisfaction over what was happening to them. Darren sucked his thumb, while his “matching set” of brothers, Isaiah and Amari, physically fought with one another, throwing punches and scratching skin. Effie was too worn down to bother intervening.

As for Effie’s thirteen- and fifteen-year-old daughters, Ella and Jasmine, the latter had tuned everyone out by blaring, of all people, Adoncé on her headphones, while Ella banged her head against the window repeatedly. Her family was losing faith in Effie’s ability to care for them, and she was very aware of it. She herself doubted any such ability. Before she knew it, Jasmine would follow in her footsteps by running off with some git and getting pregnant just to escape from Effie and her siblings with whom she shared no rapport. They were merely additional sources of rivalry for anything resembling “supplies” or “assets.” It was a bitter, miserable existence.

On the way out of the hotel, they had caught sight of so many people who felt the opposite about life. Who were empowered and “lifted up” by Adoncé. So much so that they were willing to pay her thousands’ worth of pounds to lift them up “in person.” Or rather, pay to get as close to her as the competition would allow. Meanwhile, the Roddington family was being ferried just about as far away from Adoncé as possible to prevent their next hotel from being encroached upon by the religious ecstasy of her fans. Then again, it was, from the capitalist viewpoint, the Roddingtons who were encroaching upon the Adoncé fans’ religious ecstasy.