“So, can I crash at your place for a week, or what? Do you have a kinky boyfriend that I need to know about in advance?” I joked. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but sometimes I just said the first thing that came to mind, particularly when I was pressed, and I was pressed to see Hollywood.
Luckily, Kendra found my joke appealing and laughed.
“They have a different kind of black man out here. They’re more laid back,” she said. “Too laid back sometimes. I dream every now and then of inviting out a few in-your-face Baltimore brothers from home.
“‘Hey girl, come here, yo’,” she mocked them.
I smiled. “Do they use ‘yo’ for everything in Baltimore?”
“Yes they do.”
“So, you mean to tell me that guys out in California are not really roughnecks like they show in these movies?” I couldn’t believe that they could lie that much. Were movies that much make-believe?
Kendra said, “Girl, do you think I would waste my time out here with them fools? Yeah, they have those crazy gangbangers out here, but I’m talking about professional and college-educated men, not no ’hood rats, but they do have them out here, and they are just as ignorant as they are in those movies.”
“So where do you live out there?” I asked her. I almost forgot about my poetry reading.
“Carson. It’s right next to Compton, and right above Long Beach.”
“So you’re right in the midst of the music makers.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you something else too. All that crazy stuff they talk about in their music, they’re not even lying. Some of these people out here are downright foul, and they use the N-word, the MF-word and B-word in regular conversation.
“On the East Coast, at least we know when to change it up,” she said. “Well, they don’t change anything out here, and then they want to complain about a lack of jobs. Well, who wants to hire you walking around with plaits in your hair, your pants hanging down, underwear showing, no education, and a filthy mouth with no shame to it?”
I didn’t realize that Kendra was so fiery. I didn’t know what else to say, but I realized that I was running late.
“So, when are you planning to come out here?” she asked me, right on cue. I had to go.
“I guess in mid July or early August,” I told her. “I still have to buy plane tickets. Will you still be there this summer?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here. I have plane tickets to fly home to Baltimore next week. I’ll spend the last week of June back at home, and fly right back out to LAX. The weather and the terrain is beautiful out here. Wait until you see it.
“We didn’t have any palm trees in Baltimore,” she joked.
I told her that I was running late for my poetry reading and got her number.
“Yeah, you did write poetry,” she remembered. “You think you might want to write screenplays or something out here? I have connections if you do. I know a woman who works with the screenwriters guild.”
Man, talk about things moving fast! I began to wonder what took me so long to try that big move to the West Coast myself.
“Well, we’ll sit down and talk about all of that when I get out there,” I promised her.
I left for my poetry reading with the biggest head in the word. I just knew that I would put my thing down once I got out to California. I was cruising in my black Toyota Camry on Lincoln Drive and heading toward downtown on air. You couldn’t tell me anything!
When I arrived at the Philadelphia Arts Bank Cafe on Broad Street, I was still smiling. It was a typical cafe with tables, chairs, coffee, tea, and pastries that opened up for nighttime events with a small front area that they used as a performance stage. You could look right inside from the busy traffic on Broad Street.
Lil’ Lez’ said, “Damn, Tracy, was it that good?” She was referring to sex. Leslie Pina, a half-pint of a sister with the cute looks that made guys love to call her their shorty, could sound as horny as three women. When she wasn’t doing a poetic rap thing, she usually wrote about love and fucking, and not necessarily in that order.
I said, “This has nothing to do with sex. I’m just feeling good tonight.”
She smiled at me and asked, “Are you sure?”
I just shook my head at her and grinned. I found a table with an open chair, which was hard to do, because the place was packed that night. I took a seat right as Stephanie Renee was taking the stage, a poet/performer/ writer/singer/actor/events coordinator and publisher of a newsletter called Creative Child.
Stephanie’s style was part everything, like mine. Humor. Frankness. Love. Community. Dialogue. Human politics. Theatrical, and many times she was very spiritual. Her poems were much more spiritual than mine. She could sing too. I couldn’t hold a note to save my life.
I sat there and listened to Stephanie do her thing, and my smile faded away. I thought, What makes my writing any better than hers? Stephanie had more range, more performance experience, and had been pushing her creativity for years, but she was more or less local. I wanted to be bigger than that with everything that I did.
Next up was Jill Scott. Jill could be as sexual as Lil’ Lez’ sometimes, but Jill’s shit got raw and real deep on you. In fact, if I had to pick one sister to represent in a national poetry contest from Philly, Jill Scott would be very hard to deny. She cleared your ears and mind out whenever she performed, and filled you back up from head to toe with whatever the hell she was talking about. However, her style could be mundane, because you already knew what you would get with her.
I sat there and listened to everyone’s poetry before I did my three pieces. I didn’t even feel like reading them anymore. Everyone there would have loved to take their art to the next level, and I was sure that screenwriting and acting would have ten times as many talented and driven people out in California.
I did my first two pieces with little energy, then I introduced my new poem.
“I just wrote this one on Monday, but this is how I’ve been feeling lately, because I realize that all of us would love to shine on a major stage one day. I mean, that’s just the American way. Chase your dream, right?
“Anyway, here it is, ‘Recognition’:
“I had a big date yesterday
with King Kong
on top of the World Trade Center.
Helicopters swung in,
news cameras taped it,
and reporters took notes with flashing light bulbs
all around me.
“But my King Kong got pissed off, y’all,
with all of the noisy cock blockers.
So somebody shot him.
And he fell waaay down.
BOOM!
“Then I cried
while the whole world watched me
in silence.
But when I awoke,
I realized that my King Kong
was only a little brown Teddy Bear
that my momma gave me.
And nobody knew me.
Even worse,
nobody cared
to know.”
Simply put, my poem was a short fuse that night that fizzled into nothing. At first the audience just sat there, as if they were waiting for more. I received a slow and steady applause, but they were clapping just to send me the hell off of the stage. I could tell. I guess “Recognition” was too short and melodramatic for them, and I didn’t really care what they thought because poems serve as references to your life, and they are meaningful whether an audience is into it or not.
A silly-ass brother then decided to be a comedian.
“I wanna know you!” he yelled at me as I walked off from the stage.
Lil’ Lez’ spoke to me again before I left that night.
She said, “I felt you, Tracy. That shit was real. We all feel that way sometimes. I know I do. Some people just don’t want to admit it. And that’s why they didn’t get it. It went right over their heads.”
$ $ $
I left Broad Street in my
car, and was disappointed. I had to pump myself up as I drove back home close to midnight.
“I can do this shit!” I yelled. “Just put my mind to it like my girl Raheema said. She knows I can do it, and she’s smart. She’s the smartest person I know. And she’s right too. I’m the most driven person that she knows. I can do anything I put my mind to.”
I found myself cutting down everyone else while pumping up myself. I was taller than her, prettier than her, better than him, smarter than her, and I was going to show them all that I was the shit!
“You just wait,” I told myself.
Another bag of sugar filled up my veins. I was hyped again, and I had no idea how I would fall asleep that night before my last day as a teacher at East Germantown Middle School. I just had too many battles going on in my mind that night, but there was one thing that I did know.
I screamed, “HOLLYWOOD, HERE I FUCKIN’ COME!”
I was still defiant, just like I was when I was a teenager.
Big Girls Don’t Cry
Tears may roll down my face,
but tissues wipe them away.
Today it rained on my parade,
but tomorrow starts a new day.
Copyright © 1989 by Tracy Ellison
April 2000
My agent was hollering at me through the cell phone, while I sat in a daze behind the wheel of the new Infiniti SUV I had bought for my father’s birthday.
“TRACY! Are you still there?! Answer me!”
“Yeah, I’m here. I just blanked out for a second,” I told her.
She calmed down and took a deep breath. I could hear her through the phone.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“If I’m not, then I’ll tell you tomorrow. But tonight, I just want to go inside and lie down.”
“Okay, well, I’ll get right on that call for the book deal tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I responded to her, “you do that.”
“And what about the radio interview in the morning? Will you still be up to that?”
I had agreed to do the Wendy Williams Show on Power 99 FM. That Wendy chick loved to gossip. I would need a lot of energy to deal with her. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be representing for my hometown, and if I canceled they may take it that I was too big to do the show as promised. It was a no-win situation, and I had to keep pushing forward.
“Yeah, I’m still doing it. I just need to get some rest.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” my girl asked me again. “Don’t force yourself to do it if you’re really not up to it. We can reschedule. I mean, it’s not as if you’re promoting anything. You’ll be home in Philly for another week, right?”
She had a point, I was just showing up to give the station love, but I just couldn’t allow myself to punk out like that. I had to suck it up and keep going. I convinced myself that I would be fine in the morning.
“No, I’ll do it, and I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon sometime, which will be your morning,” I joked, to loosen myself up.
“Okay. I’ll be waiting for that call.”
I hung up my cell phone and took a deep breath of my own. I thought, Do I still feel like announcing my gift to my father, or should I just let it sit out front for a day and tell him about it after he gets home from work tomorrow. With my bad luck, somebody would decide to steal it right out from in front of the house. I decided to wait anyway, because my parents would be able to tell that something was wrong with me if I didn’t show the proper enthusiasm about the gift that night, and in my present state of mind there was no way in the world for me to act all jovial.
I tossed the car keys and paperwork in my purse, took another deep breath, and started toward the house. As I was closing the door to the Infiniti, my girl Mercedes was walking out from her parents’ house next door.
“Haaay, Tracy! I knew I’d catch up to you sooner or later.”
She approached me for a hug. I was not in the mood for it, but I had to hug her, right? She would have thought that I had my nose all up in the air if I didn’t.
I said, “Yeah, you caught me,” and forced a smile.
Mercedes immediately looked at the Infiniti. “That’s real nice. You just got it?”
I guess she could tell that it was brand-new. It had that straight-off-the-lot shine to it.
“It’s a gift for my father’s birthday,” I told her.
She nodded, still checking it out. “Oh, well, that’s nice. How much did it cost you?”
Did I really want to answer that question? ... No. Of course not.
“It wasn’t free,” I told her. I left it at that.
Mercedes said, “Shit, don’t I know it. Ain’t nothin’ out here for free.”
She had lost weight during her period of addiction to drugs years ago, and she had never regained it. Although she didn’t look unhealthy or anything. She was just thinner than she was when she was flyy. She still had the knockout looks though. Hell, Mercedes was the one who had turned me on to materialism, but I couldn’t blame her for everything that I went through, and I still managed to turn myself around and go to college.
Mercedes straightened up her act and ended up working at the drug addiction clinic where she first received help. She even worked her way up to a management position there, but she couldn’t move up in salary until she went ahead and received more formal education, which she refused to do. Raheema and I had already discussed it. Mercedes was just plain averse to going back to school, and to think that she used to be a straight-A student in grade school. Drugs can really mess up a person’s head.
I was really in no mood for chatting with Mercedes that night, so I told her how long a day it had been for me and promised to catch up with her later on in the week.
“Oh, well, don’t let me hold you up. Go on in and get yourself some rest.”
I sensed a touch of sarcasm in her response to me, but I didn’t have time for bickering with her, so I let it slide.
“Okay, well, I’ll call you up later on.”
“Later on, like tonight?” she asked me. She seemed real pressed to talk to me.
I shook my head. “No. I mean, later on like tomorrow or something.”
“Oh. Well, all right then, I’ll talk to you. I have something important to ask you anyway.”
It was a setup. I felt like one of Mercedes’ old boyfriends, as if I was about to be used for her personal gain. I had been the same way for a few wild years back in the eighties, so I knew Mercedes as well as I knew myself. However, I let that slide, too.
“Okay,” I told her with a nod. I was ready to head in the house.
“So we can talk, right?”
She was trying to twist my arm into promising her something, something that probably had nothing to do with us being girlfriends. You get that a lot when you start making money. Stardom can make you think that everyone is after some of it, and usually, they are, but I didn’t bust my ass to make it big in Hollywood just to become a year-around Santa Claus. I’m sorry, but that was not my damn job!
I took another calming, deep breath before I got irritated. “Yeah, we can talk.”
Mercedes said, “I don’t want to make it seem like I’m bothering you or anything.”
It was too late for that, and I was already bothered.
“Just let me go inside and rest tonight, and we’ll deal with whatever when we see each other again,” I told her.
She gave me one of those deep-eyed looks of hers and nodded. “Okay. That’s cool.”
Mercedes was as good at reading people as I was. She was probably better at it, but I thought she would have matured past the petty shit, especially if she was supposed to be helping other people. Excuse my French, but she was thirty-four fucking years old and still playing head games! Was life still that damn trivial to her? When I thought about her while shooting my movie Led Astray, I was only acting, but in real life, Mercedes was obviously still going through the bullshit.
I walked inside the house
with my old key. My mom and dad were nestled on the sofa watching Chris Tucker’s Rush Hour on video. I looked at them and just started smiling. They had it good, they just didn’t know it. I was envious.
“Tracy, did you ever see this Rush Hour movie?” my mother asked me. “That damn Chris Tucker is a fool!”
“Yeah, I saw it. He’s a big man in Tinseltown. They tried to hold him back but couldn’t.”
“Why,because they had Will Smith out there already?” my father asked me with a grin. Black men were always suspecting racism. It was as if they had a built-in radar for it. Even my brother Jason was hip to it.
I smiled back at my dad and said, “You know the game, but right now there are just too many black stars out there for Hollywood to continue working from those strict quotas anymore. And if they did, then I could have never broken out, because Halle Berry, Regina King, and Lela Rochon were just snatching up everything for a while,” I joked.
I looked at my parents all snuggled up on the sofa again, and decided that I wanted a piece of that. I took my behind right over to the sofa and tried to force my way in between them.
My mom said, “;Tracy, what are you doing? You go get your own man. You’re not a little girl anymore to squeeze in between us. What’s wrong with you?”
I ignored her and said, “Mom, stop blocking the love.”
My father just laughed at us.
“I got two girls fighting over my attention again,” he teased.
Mom gave him the evil eye. “Well, she’s going back out to California in two weeks.”
I looked at her and said, “Are you trying to get rid of me, Mom. What do you think I came home for? I need some love too. I had a rough day,” I pouted. I was slightly offended by it.
She said, “Girl, I was just playing with you. You know I love you. I just didn’t expect for you to run up in here and jump in between us.”
My mother was close to fifty herself and still looked like a thirty-something honey chaser. She had all of the honey that she needed with my father though. He was aging the way that only black men could, like fine, dark wine. After a minute or two, I decided to step out of the way and return to my old room. I guess I had a long face when I did it.