Like she was doing with my cousin Jason, I thought to myself. Alexandria had broken him off in secret, while claiming to be sick.
I told Petula, “You’re downright spooky, man.”
She laughed and said, “But these are just my opinions. Africans can be very opinionated, you know.”
“You don’t say,” I joked to her. “Well, let me do you.”
“Oh, no, don’t do me. I don’t want to be a part of this,” she whined.
I read her anyway, because she wanted me to.
I said, “You’re the outside leader. You’ll let me lead from the inside, and all the while, you’re just taking things in so you can redirect us later. You’re like the off-the-field coach, while you allow me to be the team captain on the field.”
Petula laughed hard at it. She said, “You got me. I wait for you to make your mistakes, then I speak. Like now, you’re calling me because something happened, right? Now you want to know about all of us. So, you call me to explain.”
I laughed hard with her. I said, “Girl, we got into a big fight this morning because of everything you just said.” I stopped and told her in lowered tones, “And this is between me and you.”
“You know I’ll never tell,” she promised. And she wouldn’t. Petula loved having inside information. She would share only pieces of it when she wanted to. I had already witnessed her in action.
I said, “Well, here it is: Alexandria is doing my cousin Jason, and they think I don’t know about it.”
“Oh, no, she really went there,” Petula squealed. She had never met Jason, but she heard about him, read about him, and knew about him.
I said, “Yes she did. And then Madison got upset with me over this camera guy from New York that she liked, when he liked me, and I didn’t pay the boy no mind. And then she got upset with me and Tracy for busting her groove with my cousin’s friend when they were on their way up to their room with them last night. So me and Maddy got into a fight this morning.”
“No-o-o.”
“Yes. But that was after Alexandria told Jasmine to shut her mouth, and they got into a fight.”
“Oh my God! And all of this happened this morning?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. So I’m calling you to stop myself from going crazy.”
“Yeah, don’t do it. Keep your sanity. I need you in the game to make everything happen,” Petula told me. “Then I can be proud of playing my part in it.
“So what did Tracy say about all of this?” she asked me.
“Oh, Tracy called us all fools and went back to work. She just put us in separate orbits until we all cooled off.”
Petula screamed laughing. She said, “She’s the queen, she’s the queen! Tracy has no time for that nonsense. Let’s fix the broken wheel and get the show back on the road.”
I loved Petula’s little notes of wisdom.
I said, “That’s what she did, too.”
“But let me tell you something else,” Petula told me.
I was all ears. I said, “Spit it out.”
“All right, here we go. You know who I think is going to play the most important part in this whole Flyy Girl thing?”
I paused for a minute. Petula was dropping the African wisdom on me. I hate to stereotype, but that’s what I was thinking.
“Who?” I asked her. I honestly had no one in mind. I was a baby waiting to be fed. Then I would determine whether I liked the food or not.
Petula said, “The most important person in this whole thing is you.”
My heart stopped and started up again.
I backed away from it and I said, “No, we all know that Tracy is the key to everything. You just called her the queen yourself.”
“Yes, she is the queen. And I meant that. But that is why she can no longer do the work that needs to be done.”
I began to see Petula’s point. I was hungrier than Tracy. She was eating too well now to finish the job as handily as I would. But she was still in the queen position.
Petula continued before I could respond to her.
She said, “Tracy has already completed her journey. But you have just begun yours. And the only way she can be a bigger queen is for her helpers to push her there and keep her there. That is the basic law of nature. And her biggest helper is you.”
She said, “It was not by accident that you fought your mother to get here. You were supposed to be here. And eventually your story will be as important as Tracy’s. And she knows it. That’s why she invited you to live here. And now it’s your time to push her where she needs to go.
“It’s already started,” Petula told me. “And as we get closer to everything happening, Tracy’s going to hand the keys over to you. And I’m not just telling you this because I’m your friend and I want to see this Flyy Girl movie and legacy happen. I’m telling you this because it can be true. It can be true if you make it true.”
She said, “Because if Tracy had the ability to do it on her own, it would have been done already. But it has not been done, because she needed you to help her finish the job.”
I was speechless. Petula wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t know. Tracy had already admitted it to me herself. But imagine being told that you held the key to a multimillion-dollar industry, and you were still only a teenager? It was scary, but that’s where I was. I was another urban American phenom; Serena Williams behind the big sister Venus, and it was nearing my turn to shine.
“Well, I don’t know what to say to all of that,” I told Petula.
She said, “It doesn’t matter. You’re just gonna do what you’re gonna do, Vanessa. And I’m gonna watch you do it. And when it all happens, I’m gonna be the first one to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”
The hotel phone rang while I was still on my cell phone with Petula. I wouldn’t dare use the hotel phone to call long distance. Tracy told us all that long-distance phone calls was a sure way for a hotel chain to stay in business.
“Hold on, Petula.”
She said, “It’s Tracy.”
I smiled and said, “We’ll see.”
“Hello,” I answered on the room phone.
“You’re not in bed yet, are you?”
It was Tracy. I started smiling.
“No, I’m still up,” I told her.
“Good, I need to talk to you up in my room.”
“Okay.”
I hung up the hotel phone and returned to the cell phone with Petula.
“Was it Tracy?” she asked me.
I chuckled. “Yeah.”
Petula laughed and said, “I told you so.”
“Whatever,” I told her. “I’ll call you back later.”
“Yeah, you make sure you do. I want to hear all about it.”
Smoke Screens
As soon as I walked into my cousin’s hotel suite, she said, “That damn Alexandria. I told you I didn’t trust that girl.”
“What did she do?” I asked her.
“She got Jason to bring her to dinner with us, and he introduced her to my parents, like he’s about to marry this girl or something. Now how in the hell did she get him to do that in one week? She got his damn nose wide open.”
She was pacing the room like a woman ready to overdose on coffee.
I tried to stop myself from smiling and couldn’t. Alexandria was working her thing. I had to give it to her. But it was no longer my concern. If Jason liked her, then so be it.
Tracy read my smile and said, “I don’t think it’s funny, Vanessa. Did he ask you anything about this girl?”
She was acting as if she didn’t know Alexandria from a can of paint.
I said, “Tracy, she’s been in your house plenty of times. You’ve been around her for at least a year now.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never known her like that. She’s your friend. Miss ‘I’m-So-Sick,’ ” my cousin snapped. “Yeah, I know what she was sick doing now. I thought Jason was talking to Sasha anyway.”
I shook my head. “He knew
he wasn’t getting her years ago when he was still out in L.A. with us.”
“But he can get Alexandria, hunh?”
“Evidently,” I told her. “But why is that such a problem for you?”
“Because it seems like she’s scheming. How is she gonna go out to dinner with a boy’s parents when she just met him. And with my family at that. She’s rubbing her shit all up in my face. Got me sitting there looking like a fool.”
I said, “Well, what did you say to Jason about it? He was the one who invited her. All he had to do was not call her or not pick her up.”
“Yeah, I talked to his silly ass,” my cousin told me. “And he sat up there and told me that he was just trying to come clean.”
She said, “So we had a new argument about him using me to get some. That’s what he did when he was at my house for the summer. He would invite girls over to the house, knowing that they would ask him about me. And he thinks he’s so fucking slick about it.”
I smiled again. I couldn’t help it.
“It’s not funny, Vanessa. Nobody seems to be learning anything from my book. I mean, you really need to talk to that girl.”
I said, “Why didn’t you talk to her? She was right there with you.”
Tracy looked at me and said, “Oh, she doesn’t want me to talk to her. Because if I do it, she’s not gonna like me at all. I already had to restrain myself and act cordial to her while my parents were around.”
“You could have asked to speak to her in private,” I suggested.
Tracy said, “No, you’re not getting me. I didn’t trust myself to talk to that girl tonight. I need you to talk to her. She’s your friend.”
“Well, where are they now?” I asked.
“Call her and find out.”
I said, “You think she’s left Jason yet?”
“I doubt it, but call her ass anyway. Bust up her cell phone.”
I hesitated, while waiting for the punch line. I just knew that she couldn’t be serious.
Tracy stopped pacing the room and told me, “Vanessa, I am not playing. Call that girl up right now.”
I took out my cell phone and called her. The cell phone line rang, and rang, and rang again with no answer.
Tracy said, “Okay, call Jason then.”
I stopped the call to Alexandria and called Jason with the same result. No answer.
As soon as I hung up the line again, my cousin said, “They’re fuckin’.”
She was embarrassing me. I had to hide my face in my hands to stop from grinning.
She said, “Look, when I was doing my thing at your age, you at least had to talk to me for a while and buy me some stuff. You had to visit me a few times, call me up for hours on the phone, sit out and get to know me. But this damn girl, here. She can’t know Jason. And he surely doesn’t know her ass.”
She said, “I wasn’t that damn fast. This girl is as fast as Carmen and Carmen got four kids now.”
I said, “My mother has three.”
Tracy looked at me and said, “Exactly. And your mother made the news in our family papers, too.”
I smiled and shook my head. Tracy was only telling me the truth, and I had to stand there and take it.
I said, “Alexandria is twenty years old, and Jason is what, twenty-three, twenty-four now?”
“And he’s still not out of school yet,” Tracy reminded me. “I was doing my graduate studies by then.”
“Well, Jason is not you,” I told her.
I could see my sisters’ point of view now. I couldn’t judge them on what I was able to do, nor could Tracy judge Jason based on her life. At least he was finishing college. It was just taking him a little longer.
Finally, Tracy took a seat at the desk chair in her office suite. She took a deep breath and raised her hands to her temples.
“This has just been a long-ass day,” she told herself. “You guys start off by fighting in the damn hallway, Victor has two damn wives now, and has me to thank for it, and now my damn brother went ahead and got pussy-whipped by some too cute for everybody . . .”
She couldn’t even finish her sentence. I walked over to my cousin and put my hand on her shoulder. She was really working herself up.
She took another breath and asked me, “You think I should have been his second wife, Vanessa?”
She knew better than to ask me that. But I think I shook my head a little too soon. Was I being selfish about it? I wanted Tracy to stay out in Hollywood so I could do what I planned to do. I didn’t want her to become a loyal and obedient housewife. But it was obvious that she continued to fight with the idea.
I told her, “Most likely you’re older than both of his wives. So that doesn’t even add up right. You would be the first one, or none. He even knows that.”
I hated to be that real about it, but that’s what it was. You don’t become second to a younger woman. I don’t even believe Qadeer would have allowed that. He would have been asking for trouble, especially from a woman as hyper as Tracy could be.
She said, “There’s a million fine-ass men out here to choose from, and I’m still sittin’ around here sweatin’ this motherfucka’.”
Tracy was breaking her language down into straight ghetto talk. I was smiling at it, but she was beginning to worry me. Selfishly, I didn’t like the husband talk. It would get in the way of business, just like her friend Dalvin was already trying to do by giving Tracy ultimatums and such. So unless she found a Russell Simmons or a Sean Combs type, who would help her push her career forward, I didn’t want it, and I was ready to cock-block if I had to. Tracy had to be ready to just get up and go, and I was ready to go right with her. I didn’t need her to have to get permission from somebody, and that’s what having a husband would mean to me.
So I was ready to remind her about the difficulties she was already having with her friend out in L.A. when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out and answered it while my cousin watched me.
“Who is it?” she asked me.
I looked and read the number.
“It’s Jason.”
She got her spunk back and said, “Okay, find out where they are.”
I answered, “Hey, Jason. You got my call?”
Tracy was already pointing at me to make sure I asked him where he was, and if Alexandria was with him.
“Yeah, I had to get my phone out,” he told me.
“What, you were driving?”
“Naw, I’m just chillin’.”
“At the house in Germantown?”
He said, “Naw, at my apartment. You know I don’t stay home anymore.”
“Okay, so, what, there’s nothing to do on a Friday night?” I asked him. “You’re not trying to hang out with Alexandria?”
I was asking him a line of questions that he wouldn’t suspect anything from. Tracy watched and listened in silence.
Jason answered, “I am hanging out with her.”
“What, she’s over at your apartment?”
He said, “Yeah. She went to dinner with us and everything. Tracy ain’t tell you?”
Instead of answering his question, I asked, “She’s over at your apartment, right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me talk to her.”
Tracy smiled. “That’s how you work it,” she whispered to me. “She shouldn’t even be over there.”
I smiled back at her.
Alexandria came on the line and said, “Hey, Vanessa. Make sure you tell Jasmine no hard feelings.”
Why, Jasmine got the best of it, I thought to myself.
I said, “Okay. I’ll do that.”
She said, “Yeah, we need to squash that. For real.”
I guess Alexandria was feeling much better now that she had her man.
I said, “But what are you doing at my cousin’s apartment, that’s what I want to know.”
She said, “He told you already, we’re just chillin’.”
“And you went to dinner with him, and Tracy, and their parents
. What is wrong with you, you don’t know them like that?”
“He invited me.”
“Well, you should have turned him down. I mean, you just met my cousin.”
Tracy was nodding her head to me in full agreement, while I did her dirty work.
Alexandria said, “And what does that mean? Sometimes you just know.”
“You just know what?” I asked her. At first I was speaking more for Tracy, but now I was curious myself. What was on Alexandria’s mind?
“Jason said he never really wanted to introduce a girl to his parents before. I mean, sometimes, it’s just that right time.”
Her answer was deep, if I allowed myself to believe it. But I know Tracy didn’t.
I decided to continue playing devil’s advocate, going to the extreme.
“So, you would actually have babies for my cousin?” I asked her.
Dating was dating, but having a guy’s baby was totally something else. I wanted to get straight to the point to see if Alexandria was bullshitting.
However, Tracy looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“What are you saying?” she whispered to me. “I don’t want any nieces or nephews from that girl.”
I ignored my cousin and listened for Alexandria’s answer.
She said, “If he wants me to.”
That’s when I lost my own cool. I said, “Are you crazy? What are you talking about? You just met him on Monday.”
She said, “Yeah, but we just clicked so well. It’s like, we can talk about anything.”
Yeah, but he called your behind bossy, I thought to myself. He thinks he’s going to be arguing with you all the time.
Tracy asked me, “What did she say to that? What did she say?”
Too much was going on at once. Alexandria was talking, Tracy was talking, and I was thinking a mile a minute.
I said, “I don’t believe this.” I was talking to myself while still holding the phone.
Tracy just stopped and stared at me.
Then I thought, I don’t even care. That was Alexandria and Jason’s life. I figured they’d get over each other in a month when their long-distance phone bills started to rack up anyway.