For the Love of Money

  “OOOOHHH!” we both screamed, hugging each other like two maniacs. We fought to get out the first words.

  “So how’s it been going?” she asked me.

  “How’s it going with you?” I asked her back.

  “Everything is beautiful,” she told me.

  I stopped myself and said, “Well, I can’t say all of that, but I can’t complain either. Not really.”

  “Yeah, because you’re the big star now,” she said. “Everyone knows what you have to offer.”

  I immediately felt guilty. What did Kiwana feel about me taking off my clothes for the camera? She had obviously heard about my movie. I guess I underestimated myself and the power of Hollywood films.

  I grabbed Kiwana by her arm and said, “We have to sit down and talk. Are you hungry?”

  She still had the prettiest brown skin that I’ve ever seen in my life, and she had put on the perfect amount of weight in her bright sundress, like a mother who had gotten her schedule in order. I couldn’t wait to ask her about everything, and to get her opinions on me. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and Kiwana was just what I needed at just the right time.

  “As a matter of fact, there’s a Friendly’s right around the corner that I was going to hit right after this,” she told me.

  “Have you picked out your shoes already?” I asked her.

  She held up a pair of brown and a pair of black leather sandals and smiled.

  “I’m trying to make up my mind about the color I want.”

  “What size?” I asked her.

  She looked at me suspiciously and answered, “Seven.”

  I got the attention of a saleswoman and pulled out my wallet from my bag. I didn’t want to delay our talk for another minute. I wanted Kiwana’s full attention, even if I had to buy it.

  “Can we have both of these in a size seven?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kiwana shook her head. “I can’t let you do that, Tracy. I pay my own way.”

  “You turn thirty-one on August seventeenth, right?” I asked. I had memorized her birthday. “Just consider this an early birthday present,” I told her. “I owe you a lot more for what you did for me.”

  “All I did was become your friend, Tracy. I don’t deserve a reward for that.”

  “Yes you do too, because you were the right kind of friend at the right time,” I argued.

  The saleswoman brought out the shoes, and I grabbed them before Kiwana could.

  “Would you like to try them on first?” I asked her with a grin.

  “Not if you’re buying them,” she responded.

  “Girl, cut it out,” I pouted. “It’s not like they cost a thousand dollars. I’ll even let you pay for lunch, and I’ll order enough for two doggie bags just to make you feel better.”

  She laughed and finally agreed to try on the shoes. They looked good on her too.

  Done deal. We headed to Friendly’s ice cream restaurant.

  “So, what do you think about me taking my clothes off in the movie?” I asked her quietly, as soon as we were seated and looking over our menus.

  “Are you ashamed of your body?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did they force you to do it?”

  I had to think about that one. “Well, not exactly.”

  “Was it written in your screenplay? You did write the movie, right?”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t supposed to star in it.”

  “Oh, so some other sister was supposed to drop her clothes?”

  She made me feel guilty again.

  “Yeah, somebody else was supposed to do it,” I admitted with a chuckle.

  “I think it was a good film, actually. It took Spike Lee’s Girl 6 to the next level, because a lot of people slept on that movie. I loved it.”

  “I did too,” I told her excitedly. “I bought the tape and watched it eight or nine times.”

  “Your movie also reminded me of I Shot Andy Warhol, starring Lili Taylor,” Kiwana added. “I guess the only people who can really understand the black woman actress are the people who do it themselves, you know.”

  “Are you still performing?” I asked her. I felt terrible about not knowing. It made it seem as if my work was more important than hers. Kiwana had been performing for years. I had just started. I was a rookie.

  “I just finished performing The Women of Honor on Broadway. I was the only African American in it.”

  I hadn’t even heard of the show before. I felt embarrassed, so I kept my mouth shut and let her continue.

  “I’d like to think that things are changing for the better for African-American performers, but it’s just a very slow process,” she told me.

  “Yeah, I just got lucky by meeting all of the right people,” I admitted.

  “And you probably used your Tracy charm, drive, and bull-headed determination too,” she assumed.

  I smiled. “Why, of course.”

  “Are you ready to order?” the waiter asked us. He was a young brother who was due for a haircut, and he was staring at me. However, I didn’t assume anything, especially while in front of Kiwana.

  I ordered a chicken dish. She ordered salmon.

  “By the way,” the waiter said after taking our orders, “I loved your movie. I saw it three times.”

  Kodak would have loved to capture the picture of the smile on his face, even with his lack of a haircut.

  I smiled back and said, “Thank you.”

  “You get a lot more men commenting on your work than women, don’t you?” Kiwana asked me.

  “It sure seems that way,” I told her, “but I’m not really sure. I think they’re just more aggressive about it. To tell you the truth, I think that most of them would probably love to sleep with me,” I teased.

  “A lot of them have been white men; white men with money,” I added. “A lawyer just handed me his card in the mall today, talking about visiting me in Hollywood.”

  Kiwana just smiled at me and was real poised. She reached into her brown canvas bag and pulled out a picture book of her two daughters.

  “Oh, my God! I didn’t even get a chance to ask you,” I responded. Her daughters looked light, very light, like Latinas.

  I flipped through the pictures and stopped at a blond-haired white man, looking as proud as he could be, cheesing with the two girls in his arms.

  Kiwana read my pause and said, “That’s my husband, Martin McNeil.”

  I was speechless. Kiwana married a white man, and had two kids with him?! I couldn’t believe it! She had taken me to the African Cultural Festival in Fairmount Park where I had first discovered my love for poetry. She knew African names and had given me one (although I rarely used it). I just didn’t know what to say.

  “What are your daughters’ names?” I finally asked her.

  “Our oldest, she’s four. Her name is Halimah. It means gentle and kind. I named her that after her father. Our youngest, she’s one now. Her name is Safara. That basically means fire, or passionate one.” She smiled and said, “Safara was very busy in my stomach when I was pregnant with her.”

  I still didn’t say anything. I just flipped through more of her picture book, asking myself, Who will her daughters marry? and How could a queen like Kiwana slip away from the brothers? I even asked myself if it was possible for me to go the other way and into the arms of ... the enemy. I didn’t know what else to call them. It was because of a long history of mixed children (with white men and black women) that sisters like myself, Raheema, Mercedes, Kiwana, and so many other colored girls had problems with our community and plenty of struggles with darker, more African-looking sisters. I couldn’t even look at a sister with my light brown eyes without her assuming a million things about me. Did Kiwana know what she was putting her daughters through by having them with a white man? I was a mess, and Kiwana had still not bothered to explain anything.

  “So...” I didn’t know exactly how to ask her.

  “How
could I do it?” she asked herself for me.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Kiwana looked up above my head and searched her thoughts before looking me in my eyes to explain it.

  “Life is so much more complicated than politics,” she said. “Politics are black or white, rich or poor, North or South, Democrat or Republican, male or female. But in reality we are all of those things. We’re just forced to choose.”

  The waiter interrupted her by setting our food down.

  “Are you an actress too?” he asked Kiwana. I was just praying that he didn’t ask us for autographs. I wanted to get down to business.

  “Something like that, yes,” she answered him.

  I waited for him to fade away before I asked her, “So what happened to your feelings about Black Nationtime?” She had shared with me a poem of that title years ago.

  “I’m still about cultural goals for our community, as well as my daughters and my husband,” she said. “He understands the importance of breaking down the walls of division. If he didn’t I couldn’t have married him.”

  “So you’re telling me that he never called any of us a nigger?” I was being childish, but I had to ask it.

  “Oh, I’m sure that he has,” Kiwana answered civilly. “But that doesn’t mean he feels that way now, or that he can’t learn from his mistakes and past prejudices, because he has. Now he fights for the rights, dignity, and history of African Americans and for all people, much more passionately than a lot of the darkest brothers who do nothing but put us to shame every day.”

  “Well, how did it happen? Were you in a performance together?” Her husband looked like an actor himself. He was good-looking with bright white teeth and a Colgate smile, but still...

  “Yes, he was. And he continued to ask me out, and I continued to tell him no,” Kiwana answered with a grin.

  “And then what? Because plenty of white men have asked me out too,” I told her. I thought that I would have fallen for a white man before Kiwana would have. However, I was strictly ghetto for a minute in my teen years. Maybe that ghetto mentality (that still surfaced in me sometimes) wouldn’t allow me to be anything but BLACK, and be all the way down with blackness, whether it was negative or positive. The ghetto protected you that way. Kiwana was from Queens, New York, and artistically inclined. Maybe she was a lot more open about things than I ever had the chance to be.

  She said, “;Basically, we began to go out as friends, and I continued to ask myself, ‘Why can’t this happen if just on a human level?’ And I set every trap in the book for him to fall off, including taking him to some hard-core New York clubs.

  “And he asked me real honestly about that. He said, ‘Kiwana, I am very much committed to establishing a long-term relationship with you whether we’re only friends or not, but you have to at least be real with yourself as to whether you feel comfortable with me instead of using other means to test me, expecting that I’ll fade away. I believe that you owe me that honesty, because I’ve always been honest with you.’”

  Kiwana’s eyes looked all dreamy. I guess that was the speech that did her in and made her fall in love on the other side.

  She said, “Tracy, as you well know by now, the more ambitious you are as a black woman in America, the less you find supportive brothers who can handle that. And that’s sad, but I just told myself that that’s no longer my problem, and I decided to move on with my life.”

  I just started to eat my chicken meal before it got cold on me, but it was too late. I had lost my appetite. I didn’t even feel like shopping anymore.

  Kiwana continued: “I don’t expect for you to see what I was able to see, Tracy. All I ask is that you don’t treat me any differently than you did before.”

  I smiled and said, “But what if I want to talk about white people?”

  “Then go ahead and do it,” she told me. “Just because I married a white man doesn’t mean that the whole world has changed. I wish that it would, because I would sacrifice myself in a minute to do that, but it just doesn’t work that way.”

  It damn sure don’t! I thought. I felt terrible about everything. Kiwana was like a long-lost sister to me. I loved her, but marrying a white man... I just didn’t know if I could love that! However, there were several white men who had stuck out their necks to help me along in my career in Hollywood. I owed them a big thank-you for that, but not marriage. I mean, opportunity is the American way. Or is it not?

  Damn! I had been home for less than a week, and all kinds of drama was jumping out at me from every direction. I didn’t even remember to ask Kiwana what brought her to the area until we separated, and once we separated I had a million other questions to ask her and no way to catch up to her until she made it back home in New York. Hopefully, she would get back in touch with me. I did leave her my cell phone number, but what more did we have to say to each other? I just felt terrible. When push came to shove, my girl Raheema would always end up on the other end of my stressed-out phone calls. In year 2000, she had two kids herself, a boy and a girl. She had married an intellectual brother, and despite what America seemed to represent, good, intellectual brothers did still exist. We just oftentimes ignored them, keeping our eyes wide open for roughnecks like my Victor Hinson, while sidestepping the sweet softies in our lives.

  If I only knew in my younger years what I know now...

  $ $ $

  When I was done attempting to shop, it was close to four o’clock in the afternoon. My girl/agent would be in full swing at her California office. I called her up on the cell phone to get an update on the book deal.

  “Hey, it’s me, Tracy,” I said.

  “How has your day been?” she asked me. She sounded really gentle, as if she was still concerned about the carjack attempt from the night before.

  “I’m okay. Stop sounding like I have cancer or something,” I snapped to lighten up the conservation.

  “Did you still do the radio interview?” she asked.

  “Yeah, and guess what rumor mill I was pulled into?”

  “What?”

  “Lesbianism. All because of the Grant name thing.”

  She got excited and said, “Uh oh! You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “No I don’t. What exactly does that mean?”

  “That means that you’re a hit! Trust me! In the business of Hollywood, any rumor is better than no rumor. That just means that people want to know more about you, and as long as it’s not true, I wouldn’t sweat it. They just want to see you paired up with someone, that’s all.”

  “What if I don’t exactly want to be paired up with someone?”

  “You just bear it and move on to your next project.”

  “But won’t that make producers and directors look at me funny for my next straight girl role?”

  She chuckled over the phone and said, “Please! Sexual preference is the last thing that Hollywood worries about. As long as it helps to sell you.

  “Just look at Ellen DeGeneres as an example,” she pointed out. “She may have been pulled from a conservative television network, but she’s had what, four or five movie deals since then? And that goes ditto for her girlfriend Anne Heche.

  “Tracy, I would not concern myself with that,” she told me.

  “Yeah, but they’re both white. The black community is much less tolerant for that kind of a thing,” I argued, just for the sake of arguing. I wanted to hear my girl’s complete view on it. After all, I did accuse her of being a lesbian when we first became friends out in California.

  “Remember there was a time when you were wondering which way I went?” she hinted with a chuckle.

  I laughed and said, “I was just thinking about that myself. Anyway, enough of the gay talk; what’s the deal with the book deal?” I asked her. I was pressed.

  “Well, I called Omar’s people this morning, and I was told that he’ll take another look into it.”

  It sounded as if they were stalling to me.

  I said, “Tell them
he better look into it fast, because the plot is thickening.” I was getting pissed with this brother. My life story in Flyy Girl was what put his writing career on the map, and he was fronting big-time to continue what we had started. I mean, didn’t he realize how big of a book my sequel would be? Maybe he didn’t.

  My girl said, “I told them that you would want to include some of your poetry. I think that would be a great thing to do. Poetry is really catching on again in a major way, all across the country. Pop singer Jewel’s poetry book was even a best-seller a few years ago.”

  Yeah, yeah, I thought to myself. I was really pressed to get that book deal done!

  “Well, just stay on them about it and let them know that we will move on if his answer is no. We don’t have all year to wait for his answer either.”

  I said, “Omar’s a good writer and I respect our history together, but now that I’m big I could get anyone I want to write it.”

  “Okay,” my girl said. She was putting on her “Tracy’s the boss” routine with a little woman’s high-pitched squeal that I hated. “Can I also tell you that I received a few more scripts for you to look at when you get back out to California, or do you want me to FedEx them to Philadelphia for you?”

  I smiled and said, “Okay, cut the shit. I’m just a little hyper about this book thing, that’s all. I didn’t mean to come off like a bighead.”

  “Your words, not mine,” she responded.

  “By the way,” I decided to ask her, “would you ever consider marrying a black man?”

  She paused. That was all I needed to know. She had probably never even thought about it.

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  I wondered if her face was turning red, but my agent was a dark-haired Jewish girl. Her face probably didn’t turn flushed.

  I answered, “No reason. I guess you’ll just find out about that when we finally get this book deal,” I teased her.