Boss Lady

  I said, “They were talking about me and your sister in their room and beefing with us because of last night apparently. And when we all met up in the hallway to leave this morning, it all came out.”

  “So, you started fighting Alexandria?”

  “No, she told Jasmine to mind her business, shut her damn mouth, and some more stuff, so Jasmine surprised us all and went to town on her. Then Maddy jumped in it. So I tried to break Maddy away from the fight, and that’s when she turned on me.”

  “So y’all were all fighting this morning?” he asked me.

  “Everyone but Sasha. She was still trying to figure out why we were fighting in the first place.”

  Jason said, “That’s crazy, man. I thought y’all were friends.”

  I said, “I thought so, too. But you know how crazy things can get when the opposite sex gets involved.”

  “Yeah, I see,” Jason told me. “So where are you now?”

  “I’m at my mom’s house. She should be back home from work soon, then we’re all going out to eat together.”

  “Tracy’s supposed to do that with us tonight, too.”

  “Yeah, we’ve all been busy at work all week.”

  “So umm . . . what do you think about Alexandria? You think I should just leave her alone?” he asked me.

  “Is that what you want to do? I mean, do you have any real feelings toward her? You just met her and you hardly even know her, right?”

  He said, “Yeah, but . . . I mean, she bad. And she likes me.”

  I asked him, “Were you really just walking her to the elevators last night?”

  “Naw, I was just trying to keep her out of trouble with Tracy,” he admitted. “That’s why I didn’t say that you introduced us. I didn’t want Tracy pointing her fingers at you either.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” I told him. I said, “But if you really like Alexandria, then Tracy’s gonna find out eventually. I mean, what’s the big secret about?”

  I wasn’t planning on getting in their way whether we were all fighting or not. If Alexandria wanted the boy, and Jason wanted her, then they should be together.

  Jason seemed hesitant. He said, “Yeah, I just gotta figure out . . . I mean, y’all flying back to L.A. Sunday anyway.”

  “Yes we are,” I told him. “But what does that mean? You have money to fly out west, and Alexandria has money to fly back east.”

  “Yeah, but she’s still in college, I’m ready to get out of college. I’m in Philly, she’s all the way in L.A.—”

  I cut him off and said, “Well, just leave it the way it is then, Jason. If you don’t want to push it any further, then don’t.”

  He didn’t respond to me. Alexandria had his mind twisted. I guess it felt too good to him. Puppy love must be nice.

  Veronica looked over at me from the sofa and said, “It sounds like somebody got somebody’s nose open.”

  I smiled at her and nodded my head.

  Jason said, “You should see how people look at her when I’m out with her.”

  I shook my head and smiled wider.

  I said, “I know how they look at the girl, Jason. But is that all you think about? I mean, do you like her personality?”

  “I don’t know. She seems a little bossy sometimes,” he answered.

  “Don’t we all,” I told him. “So you want a pretty little mouse girl?”

  “I’m not saying that, but I’m not trying to spend a lot of time arguing with a girl either.”

  I said, “Well, do whatever you plan to do then. I have nothing else to say about it. Every decision you make is between you and her now.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m glad you do.”

  When I hung the phone up with Jason, Veronica asked me, “Jason fell for one of your model girls?” Tiffany was off in the house doing something else.

  I nodded to my sister and said, “That’s what it looks like.”

  “And he doesn’t want Tracy to know about it?”

  “Not yet.”

  Veronica studied me for a second. She said, “Is Tracy intimidating all like that? I mean, I read a little bit of her sequel book, For the Love of Money, but I couldn’t follow it. She kept confusing me with the dates and stuff.”

  I said, “She can be very intimidating if you don’t come correct with her. But I get along with her because I always come correct. At least so far,” I added with a smile.

  Who knows when Tracy would fire off at me for some reason. I could be just holding on by a string with her myself.

  “Is she ever getting married soon?” my sister asked me.

  I grinned and said, “We were just talking about that this morning. Why is marriage so important for her? I mean, is Mom ever gonna get married? Nobody sweats her about marriage.”

  Veronica frowned at me and said, “They’re totally different, Vanessa. Mom is overweight and just making it, with three kids. But Tracy is a Hollywood star with her own money and no kids. They are so different it’s a shame.”

  “So nobody would want to marry Mom, but everybody would want to marry Tracy? Is that your logic?”

  She said, “I hate to admit it for Mom, but yeah.”

  I had a lot of comments about that, but I decided to take it one step at a time.

  I said, “Do you think Mom would marry anyone who asked her?”

  Veronica paused. “No, not anyone,” she answered. “But she can’t be too choosy either.”

  “What about Tracy?”

  “Oh, now, she can choose who she wants to.”

  “What if the person she chooses is already taken?”

  Veronica eyed me with confusion. She said, “Well, choose somebody else. It’s a million guys out here who would want to marry Tracy.”

  “But does that mean she wants to marry them?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it may not be the right fit for her.”

  “Well, what kind of man does she want? I’m sure she can get him. All she has to do is put her mind to it like she does with everything else.”

  “So it’s that easy to you, hunh?”

  “For her, yeah.”

  I had lost my train of thought. Was it that simple? Could it be that simple? You just walk down the street and say, “Hey, you, let’s get married.”

  I gathered my response and said, “You have to find a man who wants what you want, basically. And Tracy wants her freedom. But can you be free and be married at the same time?”

  I was asking myself the question just as much as I was asking Veronica.

  She said, “Well, this may sound crazy to you, Vanessa, but everybody wants to belong to somebody. That freedom stuff”—she shook her head—“it may sound good, but all I can see is an old, lonely woman with a bunch of pets and plants in her house, walking around talking to herself with no man and no kids.”

  I started laughing. I said, “Well, what about a man who never gets married or has kids?”

  She said, “Either he just don’t have no game, or he’s a con man and a criminal who doesn’t want any ties that can be used as his weakness. Like in that movie The Usual Suspects when that guy kills his own family to let his enemies know how ruthless he was. That was insane. So I don’t trust guys who don’t have kids or families either.”

  My sister had me forgetting everything I wanted to say. It was cut and dry to her; either you marry and have kids, or you were crazy.

  She said, “There’s a reason why marriage has been around for so long, Vanessa. And I don’t care what you say, everybody wants to be with somebody.”

  I said, “Okay, I can agree with that. But let’s just say this about Tracy; her career aspirations may conflict with marriage and kids right now, but once she decides where she wants to go and what she wants to do with herself in the future, then she can decide on her own about a man and having kids and stuff.

  “Is that fair enough?” I asked my sister.

  Veronica was hesitant to agree with me. She smiled and said, ??
?I know I would have me a gorgeous husband right now if I was her.”

  I was able to respond to that. I said, “Well, that was not Tracy’s goal when she went to Hollywood. And if it was her goal, she probably wouldn’t be who she is right now.”

  I said, “You still have to be focused on doing you, and if you find someone who you enjoy on the way, then so be it. But there’s a lot of women who are trapped right now because they didn’t get an opportunity to do things before they ended up married with kids. Like that scene in Waiting to Exhale, when Angela Bassett burns all of her husband’s clothes in his car after she found out he was cheating on her and hiding his money.”

  I said, “It was like she had to start her life all over again.”

  Veronica grinned and nodded. I guess she had finally gotten my point.

  Out of the blue, she said, “I would have shot his ass if he wasted my life like that.”

  Wow! I was stuck again. How could Veronica go from one extreme to the other? On the one hand, she begs for the husband, and on the other, she shoots him when he fucks up. It didn’t make any sense.

  I shook my head and said, “Okay, I give up. Because I can see that this discussion will never end between us.”

  Veronica laughed and said, “I was just joking. I wouldn’t shoot him. Besides, she had all that money after that. Shit, I would have gone out and gotten me a new man.”

  That was it for me. There was no sense in even talking about it anymore. I wanted to leave the subject alone with my sister. But out of curiosity, I asked her, “What about me? When do you think I should settle down with a man?”

  Veronica looked at me and said, “Oh, I already know, you’re gonna be one of those women I talked about, with the cats and plants and no man. I mean, Tracy had like ten boyfriends by now. You’ve had about what, two? And you treated both of them like they were on punishment. ‘You can’t call me at this time. You can’t call me at that time.

  You can’t come over to my house. I can’t come over to your house.’ I mean, what the hell was the point?”

  I screamed out laughing. My sister had been eavesdropping on my conversations.

  She said, “So I don’t even worry about you. But I thought Tracy liked guys.”

  I said, “Well, there was a time when dating had rules, you know. But now I guess anything goes, like your tight-ass jeans.”

  Veronica said, “Not anything, but a lot more than what you had going.”

  We heard the key turning in the lock at the front door and knew that our mother had arrived.

  Veronica looked at me, and I looked back at her.

  “Here she comes,” my sister told me.

  I stood up to greet my mother when she walked in. I was a little nervous again, so I wanted to get the greeting over with as quickly as possible. And since my sister had already assumed my mother’s lack of prospects on a workable marriage, I felt sorry for her.

  My mother walked through the door bent over with brown shopping bags in both her hands and arms, and I immediately grabbed them from her to help her out.

  She looked up at me and said, “Thank you, Vanessa. I miss having somebody around here to help me out when I walk through that door. I’m gettin’ to be an old lady already, and I’m not even forty yet.”

  Veronica heard her but didn’t respond to it. Then Tiffany scrambled down the stairs.

  “Hey, Mom, what you got to eat?”

  My mother just looked at me. I could feel her pain already. It was everyday use for her. She was a mule. No wonder she was so mad all the time. Sometimes being away from it all gives you a chance to see things more clearly. So I stepped up and hugged my mother at the door for love’s sake.

  She leaned back from me and said, “What’s this for?” She looked skeptical. That’s how a lot of people react when they’re not used to good things happening to them.

  I said, “It’s just because I love you, Mom.”

  Tiffany said, “Does that mean you’re coming back home?”

  She had me on the spot.

  My mother answered her before I could. She said, “No, Vanessa has things to do now . . .” Then she paused. “And I’m proud of her for it.”

  My mother had no idea how good it felt for me to hear her say that. We had fought about everything for so long, and she was finally allowing me to spread my wings and fly.

  I said “Thanks, Mom” and buried my head into her neck and shoulders. “I didn’t mean to hit you,” I mumbled to her. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Tiffany said, “Aw, don’t start that Sunday-afternoon-special crying stuff.”

  My mother told her, “Shut your mouth, girl.”

  Sure enough, I was crying into my mother’s shoulder, and I didn’t want to let go because I didn’t want my sisters to see me cry.

  “It’s okay, Vanessa, I know you didn’t mean it,” my mother told me.

  “I didn’t,” I mumbled again. “I just can’t let nobody stop me, Mom. Nobody.”

  “I know, girl. You have to do what you have to do,” she told me. “I understand.”

  “Thank you,” I told her again.

  I wiped my face before I let go of my mother because I knew my sisters were still watching me. I had a lot of pride, I guess. And when I turned to face them, they both had a lost look on their faces. They didn’t know how to feel. They didn’t know what it was like to go all out and experience the full emotions of life. So I had to get them to feel it. It was my job as the big sister to do that for them.

  “Come here,” I told them.

  They were both still hesitant.

  “Come here,” I said more forcefully.

  “You hear your sister talking to you?” my mother told them.

  When they walked over to me, I grabbed both of them into a bear hug and pushed our heads together. I said, “I love you guys. I love all of you. And if you let me do what I need to do, I’m gonna hook all of us up. I promise you that. So just let me do my shit.”

  Tiffany said, “As long as it don’t stink too bad.”

  We started laughing again, like sisters who love each other.

  My mother shook her head and said, “That damn girl . . .”

  I said, “It’s all right, Mom. That’s just who she is. But no cooking for you tonight. We’re all going out to eat. Wherever you guys want. And I’m paying for everything, including the taxi ride.”

  My mother looked at me and said, “Okay, you’re the boss. Let me go and freshen up, and I’ll be right back down.”

  Focused

  When I got back to the hotel after dinner with my family, I felt like nothing could get in my way. Everything had to be successful. It was like I had a fresh pack of batteries in my brains, and I was just pulling them out of the pack.

  So I walked right over to Maddy and Alexandria’s room to clear the stale air between us.

  Maddy answered the door with her face still bruised from our fight that morning. She had nothing to say to me.

  I told her, “First of all, I want to apologize for our fight this morning. Second, I wasn’t trying to get involved with Shamor, he was after me. And third, I had nothing to do with last night. You guys just happened to walk in at the wrong time.”

  She said “Whatever” and began to close the door on me.

  I said, “Just hear me out for a minute. I just want to talk to you.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “About life, Maddy. Life and aspirations.”

  “What about it?”

  “Can I come in?”

  Maddy still wanted to get her revenge. I could see it in her eyes.

  I said, “You can kick my ass if you want to, but I’m not here for that. I want to talk to you. Both of you,” I told her.

  She said, “Alexandria’s not here. You know where she is.”

  “Well, let me talk to you alone then.”

  Maddy continued to stare at me. Then she slowly opened the door wide enough to let me in. She was watching a movie and eating room service
, a Caesar salad with grilled chicken, at the small desk. She had vanilla ice cream on the side for dessert.

  I sat down on Alexandria’s bed and took a breath. Maddy went back to eating her food and ignored me.

  I said, “There are so many trivial things that get in the way of real progress in life. Small stuff, and we’re not supposed to sweat it, but we do.”

  Maddy paid me no mind. So I kept talking.

  “I don’t know what everybody else wants out of this, but I’m going for everything.”

  Maddy still didn’t say anything. She was busy eating and watching her movie on the television.

  “Girls, in particular, will bicker about stuff that means nothing half the time. But I’ve never had the chance to hang around a lot of guys because they always want to get me. Even the smart guys get it confused. I try to do study sessions with them, and all they can think about is what my perfume smells like, even when I’m only wearing cocoa butter.”

  “Look, if you came over here to talk about yourself, then you can go back to your own room and talk to your walls, because I don’t want to hear that shit,” Maddy finally spoke up.

  I asked her, “Well, what do you want to do with your life, Madison?”

  I had just finished talking about life aspirations with my sisters. I guess I was on a roll with the subject.

  Maddy spat, “I wanna eat my fuckin’ food in peace. Is that all right with you?”

  I sat quiet for a minute. Then I said, “We have plenty of time to eat food, but the real work gets done when we’re hungry. You notice how they call it a lunch break, or break fast? Even dinner is supposed to cap off your long day of hungry work.”

  Maddy took a deep breath and kept her silence.

  I was rambling a bit, but I still had a point to make. There was so much that people could get accomplished in life, but they didn’t because too much bullshit took up too much of their time.

  She said, “If you don’t eat, you die.”

  That was what I wanted from her. I wanted a mental debate. I wanted to make sure that Maddy didn’t stop thinking just because of our fight that morning. Sometimes conflicts served to shut you down, but you could use those same conflicts to get yourself started.

  I said, “But if you don’t work, you don’t eat. So what comes first?”