“Tracy, you can stay here if you want,” my mother compromised. “I heard that you Hollywood types are spoiled, but God!” she joked to rub it in.
I shook my head and grinned. “I was spoiled long before I went to Hollywood.”
My father laughed out loud. “Tell us something we didn’t know.”
I made my way up the steps and into my old room. I fell to the small, twin-size bed and thought of all of the memories I had there: Mom and Dad arguing in the hallways at night, sleepovers with Raheema, Bruce hiding inside of my closet for dear life, Timmy sneaking up to my room after school, late-night phone calls on the cordless, and many fantasies about Victor spending the night in my bed with me. I even pulled out my pen and notepad and wrote a poem about it: “My Old Room.”
Before long, all of my worries that night had slipped away, replaced by soothing flashbacks of the past, as I crashed into a much needed sleep.
$ $ $
“Tracy! You have that interview on Power 99 this morning, don’t you?”
My mother was standing at my door. I looked up at the alarm clock. It was six thirty-seven in the morning. I forgot to set it.
I mumbled, “Yeah, I know,” and didn’t budge.
“Well, that Wendy Williams is very popular here. A lot of people listen to her. I listen to WDAS myself. I like the older music.
“Are you doing Mary Mason while you’re here, on WHAT?” she asked me.
“On Thursday,” I told her. “I do NBC that same morning.” I was showing everyone love. It was all a part of my homecoming celebration.
“NBC? With Steve Levy? Well, what are you gonna wear?” my mother asked me.
I smiled and said, “Why, you want to pick something out for me, Mom?”
“No, you do okay with that, because I would tell you if you didn’t. I just figured I’d ask.”
My father stuck his head in the door and said, “I’ll see you later on, Ms. Grant.”
My mother grinned at it.
“I’ll need to explain that today,” I told her. “I hear a lot of people are assuming things about it.”
My mother shrugged her shoulders. “Do what you have to do. I have to get ready for work myself,” she said, walking back out.
I climbed out of bed to pick out my clothes for the day. I didn’t plan to look all spiffy for a radio show. It wasn’t as if anyone could see me. However, if I did look fabulous, maybe Wendy Williams would say something about that over the air. Nevertheless, I went with some loose-fitting blue jeans and a lime green cotton shirt, like an ordinary Josette.
I had to decide whether I would take the Infiniti for the day or catch a taxi. I guess I should have thought about that once I decided to wait an extra day to surprise my father with his birthday gift. The original plan was to take my father’s Buick after I gave him the Infiniti. Maybe he could sell the Buick, store it in a garage, or use it just to drive to work at the hospital. That way he could cut down on unnecessary mileage on his new SUV.
Despite the carjack attempt from the night before, I figured I had to take the Infiniti. I didn’t feel like jumping in and out of taxis all day, and I wanted to make a run to King of Prussia Mall for a big-time sale that they were advertising.
So I took the Infiniti that morning and arrived at Power 99’s studio in the Roxborough area around fifteen minutes of eight. I couldn’t even get inside of the place. I walked from the front door to the back, and back to the front again, only to have to walk a second time to the back to get in.
“Office hours start at nine o’clock?” I asked the quiet brother who finally let me in.
He grinned and said, “Yeah.”
It was a good thing I was determined to do the interview. Otherwise, had I been an egotistical star, I would have walked off and driven back home for more sleep. My parents only lived fifteen minutes away from the station.
I walked in the studio and met Wendy Williams, a tall, big-eyed, busty sister. She had the natural energy of five cups of coffee with plenty of cream and sugar added.
“Tracy Ellison Grant! I’m so glad to finally meet you! Here, have a seat,” she said, tossing the belongings of Dee Lee (one of her two male cohosts from the Dream Team Morning Show) to the floor.
“Yeah, just throw my stuff on the floor. I don’t mind,” the light, bright brother cracked at her.
“It shouldn’t have been there. You know that’s my guest chair.”
“Well, just maybe I had it set up so I could politely move it for the lovely sister to sit down.”
“So, in other words, I busted your groove.”
“Yes, you did. Like always.”
“Well, Dee Lee, learn to stop harassing my guests then.”
“Oh, now Wendy, don’t you dare go there, because I have nada to say to you when you invite the entire Philadelphia Eagles backfield up in here so you can foam at the mouth.”
She broke into a laugh and said, “;Oh my God! Just don’t tell my husband.”
“Treat me with some respect then,” Dee Lee told her. “I’m not a punk named Robin to your Batman. I’m like Bruce Lee playing Kato, and I’ll kick your ass up in here. Then it’ll be me and your husband fighting.”
Wendy actually jumped out of her rotating chair and threw a couple of karate moves on him. They were acting as if it was lunchtime or something. They were having big fun! Eight o’clock in the morning!
“Excuse us, Tracy, because we are adults in here. At least some of us are,” Wendy joked again.
I grinned and said, “This is your house. I’m just a visitor.”
I wish Hollywood was that fun. After you’ve been on the set for a few days, doing useless repetitions of the same small scenes, the fun just leaps out of it. Until, of course, you wrap and get ready for editing. That’s when it begins to be fun again, waiting for your show to air on television or your film to premiere in the theaters. At least for the people who make the final cuts with standout lines and scenes.
When the red light flashed to go back on air at Power 99 FM, Wendy and Dee Lee took their silliness from the break and went right on air with it.
Wendy pushed her chair up to the microphone and said, “Our guest for the day is Philadelphia’s own movie star, Tracy Ellison Grant, of the Hollywood film Led Astray, who many of you also know from Flyy Girl, a book written about her life growing up right here in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, and the fast life of the 1980s. Well, Tracy is here in our Power 99 FM studios everyone, and Dee Lee, my infamous cohost, has already tried to hit on her, but I busted his groove. So now he’s all upset with me and he’s threatening to tell my husband about all of the Philadelphia Eagles that I bring on the show just to flirt with. But it will never work,because my husband loves me, trusts me, and he knows that everything I do at Power 99 FM is only a business thing, and a business thing alone.”
Dee Lee said, “Yeah, right. I’ll tell him a few things that were entirely not business.”
“Yeah, Dee Lee, like what?” she called him out. “What exactly are you gonna tell my loving and secure—which is a very big word in working marriages, by the way, for all of you new couples out there—husband?”
“Oh, now, Wendy, don’t let me get started on the time you took home-boy in the back and ah—”
“Anyway,” she said, cutting him off with a laugh.
“He won’t be so secure after that,” Dee Lee continued.
“Yes he will, because I haven’t done anything, and I’ll just tell him, ‘Honey, these are all lies because I busted Dee Lee’s groove with our guest, Tracy Ellison Grant, and now he’s trying desperately to get back at me.’
“So, anyway we have Tracy Ellison Grant here in our Power 99 FM studios, and we’re going to come right back to her after a break, and before Dee Lee starts making up any lies to get me in trouble with my sweet, dear, and loving husband. Kiss, kiss.”
“Oh, now she’s trying to butter him up,” Dee Lee said. “We all know what that means.”
“It means wh
at?”
“It means that you’re guilty.”
“Yeah, whatever. So, we’ll be back everyone, with Tracy Ellison Grant.”
As soon as we were off of the air for more music, or they were off of the air, because I didn’t have a chance to even breathe in the microphone, Wendy asked me about the name thing.
“Okay, now I have to ask you about this Grant name thing, because my sources in Hollywood say that you have a husband back here in Philly, and my Philadelphia sources say that you have a man back out in LA. And I don’t know what to think, so I just have to ask you that.”
I smiled. “I just spoke to my mother about the name thing this morning, and it’s a real simple explanation to it.”
“Okay, well, let’s save that for the Power 99 FM audience out there, because everyone is like, so confused about this whole name thing. I mean, some people were even saying that you had added the Grant name on to hide that you had turned into a lesbian. And I said, wait a minute. After reading about your early life in your book Flyy Girl, I just couldn’t see how you could go from that, with all of the cute guys and everything, to wanting just... girls. You know what I mean? That just didn’t add up to me.”
Dee Lee looked at me and broke out laughing. “That’s Wendy,” he told me. “She will go there.”
“Well, I’m just giving Tracy a chance to clear all of this up, you know, because that is what I’m hearing, and before I just jump to any conclusions.” She gave Dee Lee a mischievous smile.
He said, “Oh, you’ve never done that before. That’s not even your style.”
Wendy laughed it off and turned back to me. “Anyway, before I jump to any conclusions, I just wanted to give you the opportunity, in your hometown and all, to set the record straight.”
“Or crooked, if the case may be,” Dee Lee added jokingly.
“Well, I’ll straighten that all out immediately,” I told them. I was not the least bit amused by it. Can you believe that?! A lesbian?! Was Wendy just making that shit up for effect or did she really hear that?
We went back on air and got right into it.
“Okay, we’re back with our guest for the day, movie star, slash screen-writer, slash author, Tracy Ellison Grant, and the first thing we want to do is have her clear up the whole Grant name thing, because some people, and I’m not going to say any names, but you know who you are out there, have been saying some cruel things about the homegirl. So we, at Power 99 FM, are going to give Tracy a chance to defend herself.”
“That’s right. We got your back, Tracy,” Dee Lee added.
“Well, I should have had more coffee this morning for this,” I began. “So this is how you guys have taken over Philadelphia and killed the Carter and Sanborn show?” I cracked for general purposes. I had to let them know that I was not a damn plaything or a pushover!
“Oh-kay,” Wendy responded.
Frankly, I didn’t give a fuck! I said, “The Grant at the end of my name was added because once I went from sitcom writing to screenwriting and then to acting, I found there was a Tracy Ellis and also a Tracy Ells already in the books. So instead of being caught up between those two, I just decided to add Grant. Plain and simple.”
“Wow. Just like that,” Wendy said. “So there was no funny business going on with the name change at all, it was just a professional thing?”
“Yes, that’s all that it was,” I responded. “So everyone out there adding their own particular twist to it needs to grow up.” I was still appalled by the whole lesbian thing. I wondered how far the rumor had traveled.
Did Mercedes know about that? She was still connected to the streets more than anyone else I knew. My concentration was blown again. I just couldn’t believe how twisted things could get once you become a celebrity.
Wendy said, “;So, have you already been asked a bunch a questions about that? Is it an old story for you by now?”
“Actually, I haven’t been asked a lot about it,” I told her. “That’s why I knew that I would have to say something to someone sooner or later. I guess I just didn’t know what kind of rumors were out there about it, but I did realize that some people would assume I had married someone named Grant. That crossed my mind when I first decided on it.”
“Well, yeah, especially for the people who read your book,” Wendy said. “We were all thinking, What’s up with this Grant thing? We all thought that you were waiting to marry Victor Hinson. Then the brother went to jail and changed his name to Muhammad, right? So what was up with this Tracy Ellison Grant?”
I had to give Wendy one thing: she knew her shit. She had obviously read my book.
I said, “Well, that’s all true, but it didn’t happen like a big old fairy tale. I had to move on, but that does not mean that I moved into the closet and tried to cover it up with a name change, for all of the people out there who somehow got it twisted.”
I just could not seem to keep my mouth shut about the lesbian matter. It really bothered me. I guess because I was so un-lesbian.
Dee Lee jumped in and said, “Well, why didn’t you just use your middle name or initial? Isn’t that what a lot of other Hollywood stars do?”
I said, “I thought of that, but I wasn’t too fond of using my middle initial.”
Wendy took my earlier cue regarding lesbianism and ran with it like a fox who had just spotted the rabbit. “Well, let’s talk about this fear of being labeled a lesbian when we come back. Because it seems like a lot of successful sisters have been called lesbians at one time or another, simply because they could not be attached to a man.”
Once I realized that I had let the cat out of the bag on the air, I felt like kicking myself in the mouth. Wendy had only mentioned it off of the air. Nevertheless, if the rumor was floating around that I was a lesbian, then I had to face it and have it corrected. I couldn’t tiptoe around it and hope that those who believed it would know what I was referring to. That idea seemed silly. It would also seem as though I had something to hide. So I had to get it out in the open. There was no other way around it.
Wendy Williams had set me up perfectly. Just by bringing that crazy shit up she made me address it. I had no intentions of dealing with something like that on a popular morning show in my hometown of Philadelphia, while my parents, fans, and family members were all listening in. I felt like a damn fool! I began to feel really hot and clammy with a headache coming on. I had to compose myself and deal with it like a professional.
When we came back on the air, I said, “Wendy, you know what this is? It’s all about sexism. A woman is not supposed to have her own money without a man being attached to it somewhere. Even Oprah had to bring her man Stedman all up on her show and parade him around so that everyone would know that she had one. You remember that?”
I decided to get the hell off of that show as smoothly as I could. I had heard that Wendy idolized herself some Oprah Winfrey and would just about kiss the ground that Oprah walked on.
She got excited immediately and said, “;Okay, now that’s true. Oprah Winfrey is my girl and all like that, but it’s not like I would bring my husband or boyfriend all up on my show so that people will know that I have one just to stop the rumor mills. You know what I’m saying? I’ve never had to go that far.”
“Then again, you’ve never had Oprah Winfrey’s money either,” Dee Lee interjected for another laugh.
“But you do talk about your husband a lot on the air,” I reminded Wendy. I heard that about her as well.
Dee Lee nodded and said, “Yeah, you do.”
I don’t know where the third member of the Dream Team was that morning, nor did I care. I just had to fight my way through it and still come out smelling at least halfway decent. By the end of my interview I had done a fairly decent job of turning Wendy back on her heels.
She said, “Well, this has really been fun. So come back real soon, Tracy, and let’s do this again sometime.”
I didn’t make any promises, and by the time I made it back out to my father?
??s Infiniti that morning someone was ringing me on my cellular.
Should I even answer this? I thought to myself. I just knew that it would be more bad news. Whoever it was, they had obviously just listened to the show and felt that it was urgent to talk to me directly afterwards. So I ignored it until my cellular phone rang with two more calls.
I finally answered it, about to be teed off again. “Hell-lo.”
“Tracy, this is your mother.”
“Oh, Mom.” She was calling me straight from the nursing home cafeteria where she still worked as a dietitian. I felt like apologizing to her for my attitude, but I didn’t because I was sure she had something to say about the show that I may not have liked. My mother always thought that I responded with my heart too much and not with my head. She said that I was a lot like her in that way, and like far too many women who were down on their luck in life. “We have to learn to think more before we do things,” my mother told me. “That’s a lesson it took me years to learn, and I’m still learning it.”
She said real calm over the phone, “Tracy, you know you did it again, right?”
I sighed and let her go on. It was no point in arguing with her. That only would have run up my cellular phone bill.
“Now you have to realize that when you decided to become an actress, you became public property for everyone to talk about you, just like when that book came out. You remember how many people were talking about our decisions?”
My mother would never let me forget that Flyy Girl exposed her life as well.
“Yeah, Mom, I remember.”
“Well, now you’re doing it to yourself again, and if you allow yourself to get sucked into these petty games of he say, she say, you won’t get any sleep at night.”
“So, what am I supposed to do, Mom, just ignore it? In my own home?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what you do. Ignore it,” she argued. “People who know you know that you’re not a lesbian. And those who even want to think that don’t know you.”