I had to laugh. Her comeback line was clever.
“Yeah, well, that’s a whole other issue,” I told her. “You’re not old enough to vote yet anyway.”
I headed for Kelly Drive that ran alongside the Schuylkill River. I figured that we could find some peace and quite out there to talk. I was in a talking mood.
I pulled over in a parking area by the river and climbed out of the car.
Vanessa followed me out. “What are we doing?” she asked me.
“Come on, I wanna talk to you.”
There were rowboating teams practicing their strokes, up and down the Schuylkill. I walked over to the edge of the wall that overlooked the river and sat down on it. Vanessa stood there in her pretty dress, watching the boats go by in the sun. She looked beautiful. We both did.
“So, who’s your boyfriend?” I decided to ask her. She had to have one, unless she was another Raheema, running from boys like a horror movie.
I didn’t expect for Vanessa to answer me outright. She did exactly what I thought she would do. She smiled and tried to ignore what I asked.
“Come on, sit down and tell me about him,” I told her.
She looked at the wall, frowned, and shook her head. “Ducks and birds defecate on that wall. You should stand up.”
“Defecate? Oh, I forgot, you go to Engineering and Science. A smart girl.” I laughed and said, “So, you’ve been down here before.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I used to ride my bike down here. It’s close to my house.”
I had forgotten. I never lived in North Philly.
“Okay, well, let’s not get away from the subject. Let’s talk about this boyfriend of yours,” I pressed her.
“How do you know I have one?”
She was stalling.
I said, “Look, girl, do I look like I was born yesterday.” I sounded like my own mother. Funny how things change.
Vanessa looked away and paused. She dug into her brown leather purse and pulled out a wallet-sized picture.
She handed it to me facedown. I flipped it over and looked at it.
“Was that so hard to do?” I asked her.
She just smiled at me.
I looked at the picture again. This light brown, confident brother with dark, almond-shaped eyes, and shiny dark hair stared back up at me.
“Mmmph,” I grunted. Little cousin had some taste! I said, “He looks like one of Da Youngsta’s. What’s the youngest one’s name? Taj?”
She grinned and said, “Taji, but they don’t call themselves Da Youngsta’s anymore.”
“Well, is this him?” I asked her.
She shook her head, “No, they just look alike.”
“Mmm, hmm,” I mumbled. “And how old is this guy?”
“Nineteen.”
“Is he a sophomore in college then? You’re a sophomore in high school now, right?”
She nodded. “I am, but he doesn’t go to college.”
I looked up at her standing in the sunlight with her eyes shaded by her right hand. Vanessa looked like a video girl herself, the one that the singers chase all through the song.
I asked, “Isn’t college where you want to be?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you protecting yourself?”
She paused, smiled, and shook her head. “I haven’t done anything with him. We’re just talking. I only met him a couple of weeks ago.”
I looked at the picture again. I wondered if this pretty boy was passing out wallet-sizes to all of his prospects.
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
She answered way too fast. I started chuckling to myself, knowing better.
I said, “Don’t tell me. He told you that he just broke up with his old girlfriend, right, and now he’s looking to take things slow? And let me guess. He likes you a lot.” I knew all of the bullshit games that guys played from A to Z.
“Well, I still haven’t done anything with him yet.”
Vanessa was slipping. I said, “Yet? So you already have plans?”
“No, I mean, I think about it, but . . .”
“Oh, I know you think about it,” I said, taking another look at the boy. “Shit, I’m thinking about it right now, and this boy is too damn young for me,” I joked.
She broke up laughing.
I thought about Staci Madison, who I had just met inside of Springfield Mall that morning, and the boyfriend she had just cut loose.
I said, “Let’s look at it this way. This boy is nineteen years old, and he’s not in college, so what is he doing?”
“Working.”
“Working where?”
She didn’t even know. “Somewhere,” she answered.
“Is he in some kind of trade school?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And what do you think he’s going to be doing in ten years? Hell, in five years?”
Vanessa was clueless.
I said, “Now you go to Engineering and Science High School. What’s the college enrollment rate at your school, something like ninety-eight percent?”
Germantown High School was probably less than half.
My little cousin smiled, bashfully.
I asked, “Do you know what guys are at age nineteen? Potential. That’s all they are. Because there’s nothing that you can really do at nineteen to raise a family, unless you graduated from high school like Kobe Bryant and went straight to the NBA, or you can sing or act or something. And that’s it! Unless you’re a genius who finished college early, and you already have big-time companies calling you to offer you a job.
“Is this guy a genius?” I asked her.
She smiled again. I could tell that she wasn’t expecting a lecture from me, and that just made me want to keep going with it. Like I said, I felt like talking that day because I couldn’t fucking shop in peace at the malls!
“You know what you are at age sixteen?” I asked her.
She just stared at me.
I said, “Potential, just like a nineteen-year-old boy. You don’t know how to be a homemaker yet, and you can’t earn any more than he can. And it’s not just a money thing; it’s a family thing. You have to be ready for it mentally, economically, and everything.”
Vanessa said, “Well, you went through your stage.”
I guess she was getting fed up with me.
I said, “I know, right? I can’t tell you anything because I did everything. But I survived it.”
“Are you saying that I won’t?”
“I’m saying that you shouldn’t have to,” I told her. “My girl Raheema is happily married now with two kids. She may not have as many stories to tell as I have, but right now, I don’t have the happy marriage or the kids.”
“Well, maybe everybody doesn’t need that,” Vanessa responded.
I smiled. “Yeah, that’s what we all say.” Now I was sounding like my father.
I reminisced on my own teen years in Philly. I said, “I had a nineteen-year-old guy once too, right down here in North Philly.”
Vanessa started to smile again. “I know.”
“And you know what I was to him?”
She went back to staring at me.
“I was a sweet, tight push in between the legs,” I told her. “I was so sweet and tight that he couldn’t even control himself when he got me. He was screwing me like a rabbit, two minutes and it was over.”
Vanessa broke out laughing and turned away, embarrassed by my candor.
I said, “But that’s all that I was to him, a fancy piece of ass, and I’m just being real about that, since that’s what your generation talks about so much, being so damn real. Because we didn’t think about being real in my day, we just did shit. But now y’all talk about being real as if that’s supposed to make it all okay.
“I even wrote a poem about that, ‘Real Verses Fake,’ because which one is which now?” I asked hypothetically. “So you know what you’ll be to this nineteen-year-old boy? A sweet, tight pu
sh in between the legs, just like I was to mine. Because if you were to turn around and tell this boy, ‘Baby, I love you, I want to have your kids and never leave you,’ that motherfucker would run like fire caught to his ass. ‘Aw, girl, I just wasn’t ready to be tied down.’ I know, because I’ve already been through it.”
Vanessa broke up laughing again. I bet she never had anyone talk to her before like I was, but I couldn’t front on her. I went through all of that crazy shit.
I stopped and said, “I need to write a poem about that. Let me jot that down. ‘A Sweet, Tight Push.’”
I asked her, “Did you think that I would get back with Victor when he got out of jail?”
She smiled. She didn’t even have to answer me. I knew her answer already. Too many girls believed in that damn fairy tale.
I said, “The truth is, he was still a boy, trying his hardest to hold on to his girl from jail, but I can’t front because he’s a man now. He just didn’t become a man with me. And that’s real.”
I looked out at the water and had nothing left to say. I was all talked the hell out and feeling lonely for some reason. I had a long-ass journey in my life, and for what, to come home to nobody? Something didn’t seem right with that, and the money and fame changed nothing.
I took a deep breath and stood up.
Vanessa smiled and said, “You need to wipe off your skirt.”
I didn’t care about any damn skirt. If I did, I wouldn’t have sat there in the first place. I could take the whole damn suit to the Salvation Army and buy a new one. I just couldn’t buy it at a mall in my hometown where everybody knew me. However, since I had to drive my father’s car, I had to brush off my skirt anyway.
“They have water fountains near the building to wash your hands,” Vanessa told me.
I grunted at her. “Okay, Ms. Neat.”
I washed my hands and dried them against the front of my skirt. I looked at Vanessa. She looked shell-shocked, as if she didn’t know what to say to me, so she looked away.
I chuckled and said, “I’m sorry, little cousin. I shouldn’t take my frustrations out on you.”
She looked back at me and asked, “Frustrations about what?”
She didn’t get it. No one seemed to get it! That’s why I had to write a new book about it. Fame was not all good.
I said, “I can’t shop at the damn malls. I almost got carjacked right around the corner from my parents’ house. People have a million different opinions about my movie. Some people think that I’m Mrs. Santa Claus now with a bunch of presents and goodies for everybody. I just found out yesterday that one of my most positive girlfriends married a white man, and now she tells me that brothers can’t handle women like us, who have something we would like to do in our lives. Then my best girlfriend Raheema, who was terrified of guys when we were next-door neighbors, ends up with a smart, handsome brother, and she just invited me up to their house in New Jersey for the weekend, so they can smile all up in my face with their two kids and have a great damn time while I sit there looking like a fool with no damn man, and no damn family of my own.
“And I need to put all of this shit in a new book somewhere, but Omar Tyree won’t fucking write it, because he’s on some other shit now, and my agent feels that if I write it myself, it may not sell as well because too many people wouldn’t be able to make the connection between the two. Or I may not write it as well as Omar can, nor do I have the time to write the shit in the first place.”
After all of that, Vanessa just stood there motionless with a grin on her face and didn’t know what to do.
I said, “Now can I get a big hug, cousin? Famous people need love, too. Real love.”
She didn’t say a word. She just smiled, stepped over, and hugged me.
I said, “And I’m not a lesbian either.”
Vanessa leaned back and said, “What?”
“I guess you didn’t hear about that on the Williams Wendy Show then?”
“The Wendy Williams Show?” she corrected me.
“Yeah, whatever. Her. You know who I’m talking about.”
Vanessa laughed and said, “Nobody believes all that stuff she says.”
“Good,” I said. We walked back to the car together.
I asked, “Okay, where do you want to go? And if people come up and bother me, I’ll just tell them, ‘Look, I’m out with my cousin right now, and this is our time to be family.’”
Vanessa climbed into the car and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I took a deep breath and turned the ignition.
“All right then, we’ll just go wherever. I’m okay with that. As long as you do know where you want to go in your life,” I told her. I backed out of the parking space and hit Kelly Drive again.
“Age nineteen is not the end of the world,” I added. “I just want you to realize that before this pretty boy calls you back trying to promise the world to you, because he can’t give it to you. Nor will his ass even try.”
When the Sweet Turns Sour
My momma told me
when I was young,
“Don’t eat too much of that chocolate.”
She said it only tastes good
when it’s a bite.
But I was hard headed,
so I bought the whole box
and ate every piece
until the sweet turned sour in my mouth.
Not sour like candy,
but sour like rotten milk.
Lumpy.
And I hurled,
because I was sick
to my stomach,
sick
to my heart.
And I had to wrap it back up,
and throw it away,
even when it still looked good.
Copyright © 1997 by Tracy Ellison
January 1997
Yolanda was right. Conditions of Mentality, a science fiction show, turned out to be a valuable strategy for my future, and once the writing staff realized that I was pretty good at looking over their scripts, I was able to roll along smoothly in my first Hollywood job. I even felt confident enough in my new employment to go out and finally buy some furniture.
Working for an hour-long science fiction show topped employment for a black, half-hour sitcom by a long-shot! It wasn’t so much a money thing, but an experience thing. Number one: Conditions was not just another funny show, but an intelligent action drama, utilizing scripts that flowed with plenty of edginess to keep you guessing. So I learned the formula of writing intelligent scripts that moved and kept you on edge. Number two: Since we did not use the same actors every week, we worked like a mini movie production team. Number three: A lot of our scripts were actually submitted from outside writers, so I had a chance to see a variety of different styles and who used them. I also had a chance to see plenty of B- and C-list actors, so that I could study what made the difference between them and the higher-paid, more recognized A-list actors. To be honest about that, it looked to me as if a lot of it had to do with better looks, powerful agents, and more confidence in your dramatic delivery. I had the good looks and the confidence to act, but a powerful agent I did not have; a strong agent and a few acting classes, of course. However, first thing was first, breaking into the writing game.
After a while, I started coming up with ideas of my own for the show, but I dared not to bounce them around with the other staff members until I could complete a script that I felt confident enough to have produced. Otherwise, my ideas would have been developed either without me, or as a cowriter. Not on my life would I allow that to happen. I wanted the entire credit like other writers were getting, whether I was an “assistant” to the show or not.
However, before I actually completed anything, I took a couple of days off at the end of January for Raheema’s wedding back home in Philadelphia. It turned out that Ernest, her fiancé, had an older cousin who preached at a church in North Philly, right off of Broad Street near downtown. Hotel accommodations were made at the Four Seasons. Very n
ice!
$ $ $
After being away from home for five months, and as dry as I was with no love life established in California, I pressed my luck and called my old friend Mike when I got back into town on a Thursday night. We had stayed in touch with each other off and on, but not on any serious note. For all I knew, Mike had a new woman.
“I’m not intruding on anything am I?” I asked him outright over the phone. I guess my girl’s wedding occasion made me ask him that question. I wanted to respect the space of a sister who Mike could have been getting serious about.
“Naw, I’m still a free man,” he told me with a chuckle.
Typical; even if there was another woman, Mike was willing to pick right up where we left off. I guess if I were the other woman, I would have been pissed. Since I was not, his freedom was my good fortune.
“Well, I’ll try and call you tomorrow night or Saturday to hook up. I have to see how loaded my schedule is first.”
“That’s cool with me. I look forward to seeing you again.”
I repeated his words to myself when we hung up. “I look forward to seeing you again.” That didn’t sound like much of anything to me. I thought, Whatever happened to something like, “I missed you so much that I can’t wait to see you!” I guess that Philadelphian cool can be a blessing and a curse sometimes. Sometimes you want a brother to act like he really cares.
After talking to Mike, I called my parents.
My mother asked me, “So, how do you feel about this wedding?”
Translation: Are you jealous?
I said, “I’m happy for Raheema, Mom. That’s my girl.”
“Well, I know that, but, you know . . .”
Translation: I still want to know if you’re jealous.
I took a deep breath and sighed. “What do you want me to say, Mom, when it will happen for me?”
She got defensive. “I didn’t say that.”
“Well, you’re thinking it.”
“How are you gonna tell me what I’m thinking, Tracy?”
I didn’t hesitate for a second. “Because you’re my mother,” I told her. Hell, after twenty-five years, if I didn’t know what my mother was thinking by then, I needed to be shot.