Tracy sucked her teeth disdainfully. “Yeah, he can buy anything that he wants with his drug money.”
Raheema watched Tracy take off the long black leather. “Didn’t he buy that coat you’re wearing?”
“He got me a lot of stuff, but ta’ hell with him though,” Tracy insisted. She walked into the kitchen.
Raheema followed her. “You’re a trip, Tracy. You just go from one guy to the next, and you don’t even care,” she said, wishing that she could do the same. In a way, Raheema was beginning to admire Tracy’s free spirit.
“You can’t care, ’cause then they try to get new on you, and start acting all differently, like they got you in check or something.”
Raheema sighed. “Why can’t boys just like you and be with you for who you are?”
Tracy washed the dishes, glad that her mother was picking up Jason after a field trip his kindergarten class was having. She would not have to worry about seeing Cash for at least another day.
“Here you go talking that trash. You probably got boys who like you, but you don’t like them,” Tracy assumed. It was the same with most girls. If you look even half decent, somebody is gonna like you, she told herself. And in her opinion, light-skinned, long-haired and virtuous Raheema still had a lot going for her.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Raheema responded with a smile. “But when do you get the guy that you really want?”
“I guess when you get married. But some girls don’t even get him then.”
Raheema said, “Yeah, like my mother.”
“Everybody ain’t meant to play the same role in life, Raheema.”
“You right, but my role is stupid.”
“No it ain’t, Ra-Ra. You might get that ‘Mr. Right’ before I do. And men love to marry virgins.”
Raheema was caught off guard. Neither of them knew how to react after it had been said.
Tracy decided to laugh it off. “Why do people get all upset when you call them a virgin? That ain’t nothin’ negative.”
“It’s because of the way that people say it, like it’s something to be ashamed of.”
“Well, it don’t make no difference, as long as the guy knows what he’s doing.”
“Why can’t he be a virgin?” Raheema asked with a smile.
“Because, girl, you don’t want no guy who don’t know what he’s doin’. And if he’s still a virgin by the time he gets married, then most girls must didn’t like him anyway.”
Raheema suggested, “Maybe he was saving himself.”
Tracy cracked up at that one. “Oh my God! You really don’t know anything about guys, do you? Because I guarantee you, any man who’s still a virgin by the time he’s like twenty-one has a serious social problem.”
Dave had finally gotten over his inhibitions about moving back in with Patti and his children, but he wasn’t prepared to take the dive overnight. He took his sweet time about it. And with his work schedule as it was, he still did not seem to be home much. He and Patti had to get used to sharing the same bed and bathroom again, and it was no cake walk for either of them. They had both gotten used to having extra space.
I hope that this shit wasn’t a mistake, Dave would routinely tell himself. It felt weird being away from home for so long and then suddenly coming back for good. For nine years, he could leave in and out whenever he wanted to, and that liberty was gone.
This shit seems more stressful than him not being here, Patti thought, apprehensive herself. She was not sure if she could cuddle or hold him at night without scaring him away. Dave coming back home was nothing like being newlyweds. They were more like a couple coming home after a marriage-counseling session, and every move between them was tentative.
Tracy was confused as well. I wonder how things are gonna change with my father moving back home for good? she pondered. She was not quite sure how to take it. What if Dave became restrictive about who she went out with, where she went, and how long she stayed. Yet Dave was not as pressed about it as she thought he would be. He knew that he had been absent, so he planned to walk his way through a new understanding with Tracy, and that understanding did not include stepping in and controlling her life. He simply wanted to guide her from a man’s perspective.
For Jason, having both mom and dad home more often was heaven. He even wanted to stay up longer just to see the two of them in bed together. His reaction to the move in eased all of their doubts, making the new transition they were going through a hell of a lot more hopeful.
Tracy had moved on from Cash and began to date “respectable” guys, to impress upon her parents that she too had matured.
Keith Branch was a popular basketball player at Cheltenham High School, outside of Philadelphia. He was the talk of the school, tall, brown-skinned, well-dressed and well-spoken. He was exactly the type of young man that Tracy could introduce to her parents. Yet he had a problem with correcting her speech and making her feel illiterate. She could stand that, but his pretentious attitude was unacceptable. She had been around too many sociably astute guys to settle for a phony who pretended to be better-than. So Tracy dropped him in a heartbeat.
Her next friend, Charles Webster, was from Chestnut Hill, west of Germantown. Tracy had met him downtown inside of The Gallery while out boy-shopping with Raheema. He was half-white, or “mixed,” and he had never met the white side of his family. His German-born mother had been shunned, so Charles only knew his black kin, from down south.
Charles had a yellowish-tan complexion and floppy light-brown curls. The only boy who could match him for sheer prettiness was Bob. In fact, Tracy only talked to Charles because of his looks. She never listened to anything he had to say. “Light-brown curls, with pretty, smooth skin” was all that she talked about. And she took him with her wherever she went, protecting him possessively, as if he was the girl.
After they talked on the phone for a couple of days, Charles began to meet Tracy at her house nearly every day after school, and they would sit around and innocently do homework. Soon though, his eager peers began to pressure him into asking her for their first sexual encounter. Tracy was only sporting him, and did not consider herself in the sexual market anymore. Those days are over for me, she told herself.
Less concerned about her own wardrobe, Tracy began buy and pick out things for Charles to wear. She felt that his gear was not flashy enough for her taste, and in no time at all Tracy had him wearing clothing that quickly boosted his young image. She even paid for his haircuts, getting his curls cut the way she wanted them to look.
Tracy had reversed the roles, but unfortunately Charles’ new status attracted girls who were still in the sexual market. A Chestnut Hill girl, three years older than Charles and four years older than Tracy, made a strong move for him. Charles went over to her house to help lift a new television set into her bedroom when no one was home to help her. According to Charles, she then closed her door and locked him inside with her, where she proceeded to take off all of her clothes and supposedly lick him from head to toe before forcing him to have sex with her.
Tracy was furious after he told her. She didn’t believe one word of it. She felt as if he could not control himself, and that he knew what the girl was up to when she had invited him over to her house. “And if he thinks that his story is gonna make me wanna give him some, he can forget about it,” she had huffed to Jantel after telling her Charles’ story. They had become good friends again, and Jantel was by then one of the most popular track stars in the city.
Tracy could not believe that Charles had played her after she had bought him clothing and taken him places with her money to make him who he was. Girls were only attracted to him sexually after Tracy had schooled him. He was nothing but a slow-wit suburban boy before she had met him, but after Tracy, Charles ran free like a teenaged stud, getting all of the girls.
• • •
“That’s it, Ra-Ra. I hate all guys!” Tracy snapped after school.
“Why you say that?” Raheema wanted to know.
/>
It was April. Raheema was turning sixteen in another month. Tracy’s birthday was not until September.
“That pussy-ass Charles is actin’ like he’s all that now,” Tracy hissed. She took a seat on her steps, with the April sun shining through the breeze. She winced, looking up at it.
“Well, you shouldn’t have been pimping him, and buying him all that stuff,” Raheema told her.
Tracy smiled at her neighbor’s choice of words. “Pimping him?” she repeated. “Let me find out Raheema’s trying to sound hip.”
Raheema grinned. “Well, that’s what you were doing, dressing him up and showing him off and stuff.” Raheema secretly liked Charles herself, yet Tracy practically jumped down his throat to get his phone number when they had first met him at The Gallery.
“Yeah, well fuck him,” Tracy fumed. “And see if I spend my money on another boy in my life.”
Raheema chuckled. “I wish I could have went with him,” she revealed. “I would have never let him leave.”
Tracy looked at her neighbor’s pimpled face and felt sorry for her. Raheema was living off of her life. “So you would have had sex with him?” she asked, still wondering if the myth was true that sex could clear up acne.
Raheema thought about it. “I don’t know. But I mean, why not?” she piped.
Tracy shook her head at her, remembering her first experience with Victor and how she had turned into his plaything. “You don’t wanna do that. Just hold out until you get married.”
“You didn’t,” Raheema reminded her.
Tracy paused, thinking about what she had actually gotten out of having sex, and why she had been so quick to engage in it the first place. “I think I just got ahead of myself and got mixed up into boys for the wrong reason,” she admitted. “I mean, I had no business at all being with a guy like Victor. He wasn’t no good for me. And I can see that now. He was way out of my league. And after him, I just kept doing it.”
“What about now?” Raheema asked, curiously.
“What, me and Victor?”
“Yeah? Do you think he’s still out of your league?”
Good question, Tracy thought. “Umm, I don’t know.”
“Whatever happened to Keith?” Raheema asked, changing the subject. She had begun to enjoy talking to Tracy about boys since she was older and more interested in them. And Tracy had many stories to share.
“Fuck that boy. He thought he was better than somebody,” she snapped.
Raheema frowned. “You do too.”
Tracy grinned, feeling guilty. “Yeah, but I don’t do it the way he did. I mean, I don’t really think that I’m better than people. I just—”
“Yeah, whatever,” Raheema said, cutting her off.
Tracy chuckled to herself. “Have you seen your sister lately?” she suddenly asked.
“No,” Raheema answered quietly.
“She might just don’t want to see y’all.”
“Are you saying that my sister hates us that much?”
“No. Maybe she’s too ashamed.” Tracy was speaking more for herself than for Mercedes. She was ashamed. Mercedes had been her big-sister figure as well.
Raheema was speechless. She was utterly confused about what road to travel in her life. She definitely did not want to go through the things that Mercedes and Tracy had been through, but yet they still had lived fuller lives. Raheema continued to believe that she was being cheated.
Raheema asked out of the blue, “Tracy, when was the last time you had sex?”
Tracy was shocked. She laughed and asked, “Wow, where’d you get that question from?”
“I don’t know. I guess because I never had sex.”
“Well, Cash was, when he took me to Atlantic City, last September.”
“Dag, I didn’t ask you who. I asked you when.”
Tracy laughed. “You probably was gonna ask me that next, anyway.”
“But you only did it with him once, though?”
Tracy grinned. “Well, you can say that, if you’re talking about on different dates.”
“He didn’t try you again?”
“Not really, ’cause he was embarrassed. He got other girls though. I just wanted his money. His jeep was nice, too.”
Raheema quizzed, “What do you mean, ‘he was embarrassed’?”
Tracy smiled and said, “Because, he didn’t last too long.” Then she chuckled and said, “Look, I gotta go get my brother. I’ll be back.”
Tracy left. She shook her head on the way, thinking of how much Raheema appeared to be missing out on. It was no surprise to see Victor again when she turned the corner. He was close enough to speak to her.
Tracy could sense him watching her as she walked. She then turned and caught him smiling at her, still giving her tingles up the spine. She was immediately angry at herself. I don’t believe that I still get nervous around him, she told herself.
“Ay Tracy, can I walk with you?” he said to her.
Why not? she told herself. “I’on care.”
Victor walked up beside her and grinned. “So I hear you been keepin’ some big-time company.”
“What ’chew mean by that?”
Victor always seemed to have information on her.
He took out a roll of twenty-dollar bills and said, “Cash Money.”
Tracy sucked her teeth and responded, “Oh, he ain’t nobody.”
“You was even talking to my man, Bruce. And that young-boah’ ‘Charley’ schoolin’ all the girls after dealin’ with you.” Victor smiled and said, “I guess I must have trained you well, hunh Tracy?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she responded. I don’t believe he said that to me, she thought. He makes me sound like a whore.
“Anyway, I hate that boy Charles,” she told him. I’m starting to hate your ass, too, she mused.
Victor said, “You know, hate is confused love sometimes, for real. You probably said you hate me to somebody. I mean, we both know you still like me. Don’t we, Tracy?”
Tracy was speechless. “Oh my God,” she mumbled with a helpless grin. I was just thinking that. “Why were you asking about me and stuff?” she wanted to know. It was obvious to her since he knew what she had been up to.
Victor cracked a smile, displaying all of his charm. “I’m just keeping tabs on you, making sure you’re all right.”
“Why?”
Victor grimaced at her. “Would you rather I just forgot about you, like we never did nothin’, and we never knew each other? Just like that,” he said with a snap of his fingers.
Tracy thought about it, experiencing an unexpected moment of panic. What if Victor never even knew me?
Victor was smiling again, in love with his own wit. “You know what? You don’t even have to answer that. I’ll just see you around.” He then turned and stepped off in the springtime breeze.
Tracy stared at the white sweatshirt that covered his back, still in a daze. Then grinned at herself. “I guess I’m not in his league,” she told herself. Victor still had her hooked.
Another summer rolled around, and the years were passing by like days. Tracy’s “sweet sixteen” would be at the summer’s end, and she planned on moving up the social ladder. She had already been accepted into a new clique of older college girls that she had met at the Ayunde Cultural Festival downtown on South Street. Her popularity had escalated, but Tracy wanted to change her priorities as far as guys were concerned. She desired more intelligent relations. She was tired of dealing with guys who had nothing on their minds but sex and life out in the streets.
a college boy
“Tra-cy! Pick up the phone!” Patti yelled up the steps.
Tracy sprinted to her room from the bathroom. “Okay! I got it! . . . Hello.”
“Yo, it’s ‘Brucie.’ ”
“Well, I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Yeah, I told you I’d be away. But what have you been up to?”
“Nothin’.”
“Well, who
’s your new boyfriend?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Yes you do.”
“Boy, how you gon’ just come home and tell me that I got a boyfriend.”
“Because, you can’t function without one.”
“Yes I can. I don’t need y’all.”
“Yeah, you need us more than you think.”
“Well, if I do, I don’t need your ass,” Tracy snapped, getting annoyed.
“I know, because I’m not a celebrity.”
Tracy sighed and said, “You know what Bruce? You need to get a life.”
“What?”
“I said you need to move on from me.”
Bruce thought about it. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but you can’t keep calling me up and acting as if we still have something going, because we don’t. I’m just trying to be straight with you. I mean, we can be friends and whatnot, but we’re never gonna be anything more than that.”
“That’s all I wanted to be.”
Tracy smirked. Yeah, right, she thought to herself.
Bruce said, “So that’s how you feel about us, hunh?” He still had visions of being her only man.
“I’m just trying to be truthful with you.”
Bruce was silent for a moment. “All right then, if that’s the way it is . . .”
Tracy could only wish that there was some other way to ease his longing for her, but there wasn’t. Bruce did not attract her in a long-term relationship way. There had only been small moments of pleasure between them, and nothing that would last.
“Look, Bruce, I’m about to go out,” she told him. “I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to find yourself someone else.”
Frustrated by love, Bruce hung up on her. He did not slam down the phone, but he simply did not know what else to say. The girl of his dreams had shattered them.
Tracy looked at the phone in her hand and exhaled. “God, that was tough,” she moaned. But it was no sense in leading him on about it, she pondered. The sooner I told him, the better.
On the way with her mother to a Cheltenham store that sold boxes of party snacks and accessories, Tracy thought of Mercedes.