“Girl, that ain’t no nature,” she responded with a smirk. “If you want a natural, then grow an Afro.”
Tracy smiled herself. “Unt unh, mom. I don’t believe you said that. See, white people got us hating our hair,” Tracy rebutted, finally sitting up.
Patti said, “A nature is not using chemicals and whatnot, but you can still comb it. ’Cause my little do looks good, girlfriend. You hear me?” Patti chuckled, looking inside of Tracy’s dresser mirror. “I got you an appointment with Donna tomorrow,” she informed Tracy as she left the room.
“What?” Tracy asked, standing up to get herself together for school.
“You heard me,” her mother responded before heading down the steps.
Already running late, Tracy took extra-long to shower up and get dressed. By the time she had arrived at school, it was after nine o’clock.
The security guard stopped her at the front door. “Excuse me, young lady, but are you just coming into school?” asked the heavyset and hungry-looking guard. He had a bunch of unnecessary hair on his face, untrimmed.
“Yeah,” Tracy snapped.
“Well, you’re gonna have to go to the office.”
“I know that. That’s where I was going.”
Tracy rolled her eyes.
The security guard grabbed her by the arm and said, “In that case, let me escort you.”
Tracy violently yanked away from him. “GET OFF OF ME! I CAN WALK!”
“That’s it, young lady, you’re in more trouble now,” he warned her.
“Yeah, whatever,” Tracy responded, unmoved.
Staff members came out of their offices, hearing the argument that erupted. Tracy strutted into the disciplinarian’s office herself, ignoring their stares. She knew what was coming. She sat in the empty room, waiting for her case to be heard. Dirty, hairy, greasy man, she fumed to herself.
“Okay, I see we have a lot of problems going on here,” Suit-and-tie said to Tracy. He was well-groomed as usual.
Tracy was a junior, believing she was old enough to demand respect from anyone. “No we don’t, ’cause he shouldn’t have put his hands on me.”
Suit-and-tie let Tracy know. “Look, young lady, don’t come in here with an attitude problem with me, ’cause you’ll find yourself home for a few days, on suspension. Now, first of all, you’ve been late nearly every day for the past two weeks, and you have the audacity to come in here with this two-cent attitude as though we did something to you.”
“And?” Tracy asked carelessly.
“Okay, that’s it.” Suit-and-tie pulled out a pink slip from his desk. “Now I was gonna let you off the hook with a couple more detentions and a last warning, but it seems to me that you don’t want any warnings.”
“I don’t care, ’cause I need to be away from this place for a while anyway.”
Suit-and-tie picked up the phone, pulling Tracy’s file. “Is your mother at work?”
“I don’t know,” Tracy lied, rolling her eyes again.
“Yes, may I speak with Mrs. Ellison please? . . . Yes, this is Mr. Waters from Germantown High School. It seems your daughter, Tracy, has a problem. Now I was originally going to give her three days suspension for her attitude, but now I think she needs five, unless you can come and talk to me about her. Okay . . . Mmm hmm . . . All right then. Well, I’ll send her home, and you can come in on Monday with her to talk with me,” Mr. Waters said, hanging up. He then filled out the pink slip and handed Tracy a copy. “Now you go on home and think about things,” he told her.
Tracy left school, but she wasn’t planning on going home. She headed down to Cheyney’s campus after catching a taxi on City Line Avenue to pay Carl a surprise visit. There was no sense in going home. Tracy decided it would be better to stay on campus until it was time to pick up her brother.
“What’s up?” she asked with a grin as Carl opened his door.
“What have you done now?” he asked.
“I got suspended.”
Carl sighed, sick of all of her drama. “What the hell is wrong with you, Tracy?”
“Who you talkin’ to like that?”
“I told you I have to study for my midterms this week, and here you come, crashing in here talking about you got suspended, as if you don’t give a damn.”
“So let’s take a break and go to the movies.”
Carl sat back at his desk. “I don’t have time, number one, and no money either.”
Tracy could not hold it in any longer. “You know what, Carl? I’m tired of just sittin’ the fuck around while you do your homework, and then you wanna get some. You don’t take me nowhere, you don’t buy me nothin’. AND I’M TIRED OF THIS SHIT!”
Carl stopped studying. “Tracy, what the hell are you talking about?” he asked her. “You’ve been doing your thing, watching them damn television shows and BET videos for the past couple of weeks. I think you must be confusing characters or something. This is me, Carl Thompson, from college. Remember me? Earth to Tracy.”
“All that smart shit can walk,” she snapped at him.
“Yeah, and that’s exactly what I feel like telling you.”
Tracy was shocked. “Oh, is that the way you feel about it?”
“Yes, that’s how I feel, Tracy!”
Tracy left his room without another word and slammed his door, hoping that Carl would come out after her, but he didn’t.
Tracy got a ride back to the city and caught a bus downtown. She wandered around on Chestnut Street and looked over a pair of jeans inside of a retail store.
“Hey, bright eyes, you want a job?” an olive-complexioned Italian man asked her.
“Who, me?” Tracy responded with a smirk.
The Italian man walked over to her wearing an opened silk shirt that displayed his hairy chest. He wore two gold chains, and his black, curly hair shined as he slung his right arm up on a clothing rack, getting comfortable. “Yeah, you,” he said.
Tracy stared at his gold-nugget bracelet.
He looked at Tracy’s hairstyle and held back his comments. He wanted to hire her first. Tracy was obviously attractive, despite her twisted hair.
He smiled and said, “See, this is my store. I’m in charge of who gets hired here. Now I got a girl leaving soon for a spring break or something. You could replace her for me.”
“What about when she comes back?”
“We’ll worry about that then. But if you’re interested, give me call. I’ll hold the spot for you, but you gotta let me know by next week.”
“Okay,” she said, following him to the counter, where he gave her a store business card.
“Pamela! Come here a second. Wouldja’? This here is Tracy. She’ll be in to work with us in a week or so,” he said to a tall, light-skinned black woman. He assumed that Tracy would take him up on his offer.
“Hi you doin’?” Pamela asked, shaking Tracy’s hand, lightly. She had huge gold earrings herself, with a sketch of Manhattan, New York, set inside of their circular shape.
Tracy responded, “Hi,” while observing her earrings and her clothing.
“Now, Pam will give you all the details when you come in to work for me next week,” the Italian man interjected. His name was Joseph Bamatti. Tracy liked his name. She thought it sounded like a designer suit in GQ magazine. She walked out of the store, looking into several outside mirrors as she strolled along Chestnut Street, proud of her pretty face and attention-getting eyes.
“Mom, I’ll straighten up now. I promise. I just needed something to do,” Tracy was saying, after twenty minutes of arguing with her mother about whether she could accept the job offer.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because, I just needed something to do to stop being bored, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m still gonna have to go and talk to Mr. Waters to get you back in school.”
“I know,” Tracy said, glowingly. She was very excited about her first job offer.
Patti conceded. “All right, gi
rl, but you act up again, and that’s it. And I have to tell your father first, to see what he has to say about it.”
Why you gotta ask him? Tracy almost slipped and asked. She still had to get used to the shared chain of authority, since her father had returned. “Oh,” she responded, walking away from her mother solemnly.
Patti went down the stairs and left Tracy in her room to think.
Jason walked in and asked, “Tra-cy, where’s Carl at?”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause, I wanna know.” Jason was decked out in another attractive Oshkosh outfit.
Tracy answered, “I don’t know, and I don’t care. He’s a dumb jock anyway, that’s trying to be a nerd now.” She laughed and added, “That stupid pussy. Oops,” she responded, catching herself.
Jason smiled. He didn’t seem to make a big deal out of it, but he knew Tracy had said a bad word.
“I’m sorry, little man. You’re not gon’ tell on me, are you?” she begged him.
“No.” he told her with a smile.
Pleased with his answer, Tracy said, “All right. I’ll get you some cookies then, for being cool.”
“And some milk, too,” he told her. He was about to turn six years old, and was growing taller and getting smarter by the minute.
Tracy responded with a grin, “Oh, you’re getting greedy now.”
Jason said, “You shouldna’ said it then.”
Tracy chuckled to herself and headed down the stairs to get her brother the promised milk and cookies. Dag, that’s a shame. I’m being blackmailed by my little brother, she thought.
“Girl, I got some news for you,” Jantel told Tracy over the phone that evening. She was attempting to make up with Tracy after her slip of the tongue the night before.
“What?” Tracy asked flatly. She wanted to make up with her friend, but she was still hurt by what Jantel had insinuated about her.
“Guess who’s pregnant.”
“Who?” Tracy asked.
“Carmen. And she four months at that.”
“For real?”
“Yup, ’cause I had just found out today.”
“See, I told that tramp about runnin’ around with everybody,” Tracy said excitedly.
Jantel fell silent. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing again. “I think she did it on purpose though, ’cause I heard that this guy got money,” Jantel finally said, thinking that her comment was safe.
“That don’t mean shit. She ain’t gon’ get none. That girl is dumb,” Tracy commented.
Jantel sat silent again. I wonder how you feel about me, Tracy? she thought about asking. Tracy had been good friends with Carmen, but she seemed two-faced when she talked bad about her, a friend one day and talking about her the next.
Tracy was beginning to see the picture. Who was she to throw stones? “Well, I shouldn’t say that,” she commented apologetically. “Anyway, what else is new?” she asked, deciding to change the subject.
“Nothin’. What’s up with you and Carl?” Jantel asked.
“Fuck that boy!” Tracy exclaimed, without another word about it. “Oh yeah, I got a job offer downtown on Chestnut Street today,” she said.
“For real?” Jantel asked.
“Yup,” Tracy told her, beginning to warm up to her again.
“I can’t even get a job with track and all. My schedule is too busy,” Jantel commented.
“Ain’t outdoor season ’bout to start?”
“Yup, next month.”
Dave poked his head into Tracy’s room and gestured to her.
Tracy held the phone away from her mouth. “Yes?” she asked him.
“I wanna talk to you for a minute.”
Oh my God!Here it comes, she thought to herself, nervously. “Jantel, I gotta call you back,” she told her friend before hanging up.
Dave took a seat on her bed while Tracy sat in her desk chair, anticipating their first father-daughter confrontation since he had moved back in almost a year ago. She knew that the moment would come eventually. It was only a matter of time.
“You know you have one more year of high school before you graduate, right?” he asked her. His tone was calm and conversational.
Tracy nodded, speechlessly. She wondered where her father was heading with the conversation.
“Do you plan on going to college?”
Tracy thought about how much fun she had had on Cheyney’s campus with Lisa, Joanne, Kiwana and Carl. “Yeah,” she told him with another nod. “I wanna go to college.”
Dave nodded back to her. “Well, everybody don’t get to go to school. Did you know that?”
Tracy paused. “I haven’t really thought about it like that,” she admitted.
“Most teenagers don’t, until the last minute. And then they end up not being able go to the college that they wanted to, because they were unprepared for it.”
Dave let the idea sink into his daughter’s head before he commented on it further.
“Now what college would you like to go to?” he asked her next.
“A black school.” Tracy told him.
“A black school? Why?”
Tracy hunched her shoulders. “Why not? Because I want to be around black people, I guess,” she told him.
Her father began to smile at her. “I’m glad that you’d like to go to a black school and all, but it should be more than because you want to be around black people. You can go to Community College downtown and do that. You have to have a goal in mind when you start thinking about your future. I just want you to think about that before you start acting up in school, because you’ll end up putting yourself in a bad situation that you’ll be struggling to get out of.”
He got up to leave her room and added, “By the way, congratulations on your new job. Maybe now you won’t be digging in my pockets so much.”
Tracy smiled at her father before he returned to his room. She was pleased with his method of getting across to her. My dad really is cool, she told herself, continuing to smile. She was proud to have such a thoughtful father. He ain’t nothin’ like Mr. Keith at all.
Monday morning, Tracy and her mother held the conference with Mr. Waters in his office. Several teachers had filed complaints on Tracy’s lack of focus in class, but her grades did not seem to suffer. She had maintained A’s and B’s. She agreed with everything though, just to get the hour-long conference over with. She was dying to catch Carmen in school. She had a few words for her.
“Ay girl, I heard something big about you,” she said.
Carmen was cutting her classes inside of the lunch room again. “I know, I know, but life is life,” she retorted, annoyed with the gossip. Tracy was not in school when Carmen’s pregnancy news hit the fan and blew around.
“See, I told you about running around.”
“Tracy, you’re no better than I am. You just didn’t get pregnant yet.”
“That’s right, and I ain’t gettin’ pregnant no time soon, either. I’m going to college.”
“Yeah, well I’m happy for you. Anyway, I lucked up this time, ’cause he wants to marry me,” Carmen informed Tracy cheerfully. She had not given her boyfriend an answer yet; she was simply proud that she had been asked.
Tracy said, “Well obviously, somethin’ is wrong with him. And you’re only seventeen.” She was trying to cover her surprise. She was jealous.
Carmen took a sip of her Sprite soda. “People used to get married young. And my grandmother was fifteen when she got married.”
“Yeah, well that was then, and the cost of living is much higher now,” Tracy refuted, still shocked by Carmen’s announcement.
Carmen said with a grin, “Well, his father is an engineer, and he’s studying to be one, too. Plus, his mom is a physical therapist, and he said they make a lot of money.”
Tracy was doubtful. It all sounded too good to be true. “Aw girl, that boy can tell you any damn thing, ’cause you don’t know.”
“Yeah, but I do know that he’s treating m
e nice. He got a car, he’s going to college this year, and since I’m carrying his baby, I got something that’s a part of him forever.” She got up to leave. “So now, Ms. Too-Fine. Or at least you think you are,” she added, chuckling as she left.
Tracy had no words. Her plans to bring Carmen down had failed. She was the one who had crumbled. Security was something she had never known. Her father had only recently come back to the family, and her relationship with Carl was practically over, like the rest of her short-term flings. Well, I wish Carmen luck, she told herself, ’cause I sure ain’t had none. At least my father is back home though, and my mom is happy again. But what about me?
Tracy played with her left earring, watching the younger freshman girls flirting with the older boys. It was evident to Tracy that none of them knew what love and romance were. They were all too immature, looking for adventure, thinking it was love and falsely believing that they were grown.
The school day ended quicker than Tracy expected. She felt the usual stares while walking home from school. But they were coming from younger guys, who hadn’t known her. She had been on a college campus and to college parties with a college boyfriend. What could a high school boy offer her? They were getting on her last damn nerves with, “Hey, baby. Can I get to know you better?” “You look like a movie star, sweetheart. Can I be your manager and keep that body healthy, with a little bit of work?” And one guy even got nasty. “Can I lick you where it feels good? Please. You know you would like it.” Tracy told him off. “You a nasty little muthafucker. Do you know that? What kind of a mother would raise you?” Then she thought that Carl was nasty for doing it. Nevertheless, Tracy’s attractive appearance drew attention, whether she liked it or not.
She walked around the same corners of Wayne and Chelten Avenues, seeing the same faces. The same older guys hung out in the playground, running ball, since Tracy could remember. And in the middle of that long playground block, in a blue Mercedes Benz, sat Victor Hinson.