Boss Lady

  Out of the blue, I asked Alexandria, “And how do you think my cousin Tracy is gonna feel about this?”

  Tracy paid strict attention to me.

  “I mean, she doesn’t like me?” Alexandria questioned.

  I didn’t know how to take her question. It sounded to me like she wanted sympathy, and that she knew Tracy didn’t like her.

  I said, “What if she doesn’t?”

  Alexandria paused. “I don’t know why. What did I do to her?”

  You snuck up on her kid brother and whipped him, I thought to myself. But Jason wasn’t a kid anymore, and he had been with enough girls by then to know better than to let his guard down that easy. So it was all on him.

  I said, “Let me speak to Jason again.” I didn’t even want to answer her question.

  Alexandria hesitated before she said, “Okay.”

  Jason came back on the line. “What’s up?”

  “Do you realize what you’re doing with this girl?” I asked him. “We are flying back to L.A. Sunday afternoon. Then what?”

  I was beginning to sound like Tracy.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Jason asked me back. “I know how to get back out there. And she knows how to get here.”

  I looked over at Tracy again. She began to shake her head. I guess she could tell that it was a lost cause for her brother. Jason would need his nose repaired back to its normal size.

  I wanted to ask him the same question I had asked his love slave. They were slaves to each other. Or at least for that night, because I still had my doubts about how long their hold on each other would last.

  “How do you think Tracy is gonna feel about this?” I asked him anyway.

  He said, “Vanessa, let me ask you a question. If Tracy has someone she likes and wants to kick it with, you think she’s gonna ask me for my opinion?”

  He had an excellent point. How long would the eldest child rule apply to the younger siblings? Alexandria had an older sister herself. So they were both rebelling.

  I nodded my head and said, “All right. I see your point.”

  He said, “I know you do. And as long as you stay out there under her roof, Vanessa, she’ll try to control as much as you let her. But eventually, you gon’ have to do you. And that’s with everybody.”

  * * *

  When I disconnected the phone call with Jason and Alexandria, Tracy was awaiting the results.

  “So what happened?” she said in a monotone.

  She sounded as if she already knew.

  I took a breath before I answered.

  “To make a long story short, they said that they have their own lives to live and to make mistakes with, just like you have yours and I have mine.”

  Tracy exhaled and nodded to herself.

  “He’s making a mistake,” she stated.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked her. “At least give them a chance.”

  “A chance to do what?”

  It appeared to me at that moment that Tracy might have been blocking Jason. Did she prefer he remain unattached to alleviate the pressure of having to link up with someone herself? You never know what people are thinking, even when you believe you know them.

  I asked, “What would be so wrong with the two of them being together if it’s sincere? They look good together. I can’t even lie.”

  I said, “They remind me of your parents, actually. The only difference is that Alexandria has the light eyes instead of Jason.”

  Tracy said, “Yeah, and my parents spent eight or nine years separated because they got married too young.”

  “But they’re together now. And they came together when it counted,” I reminded her. I could only dream of having a father come back home to stay at my house like hers did.

  Tracy settled down. “Leave it alone,” she told herself. “Even though I know it’s a mistake.”

  I thought about it and said, “Tracy, remember when you first decided to go out to Hollywood, and your mother was skeptical, but your father supported it?”

  She began a slow working smile.

  She said, “I already see where you’re going with that, Vanessa. Okay. I’ll leave Jason alone. But I still don’t have to like your friend.”

  I grinned at her and said, “That’s on you. But we’ll see how long they last anyway.”

  “So, is she even coming back to the hotel tonight?”

  “Why should she? She has what she wants over at Jason’s crib.”

  Tracy said, “Because she’s still on my clock until this trip is over with, and if she ends up coming back home with a biscuit in the oven from my damn brother, then I’ll be held responsible for it, whether they think they’re both grown or not.

  “So let me call these damn kids back over here,” she told herself. She jumped right on her cell phone to make the call. But they didn’t answer.

  “Okay, so they’re gonna answer your call and not mine. I should just drive on over there and get her myself. And see how she likes that,” my cousin stated in her insanity.

  I had heard enough for the night, and I was starting to yawn. It was after midnight again, and I was bone tired myself. It had been an extra long day for all of us.

  “Well, I’ve said all I can say,” I told Tracy. “I’m going to bed now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  When I started to walk to the door, she said, “All right, I’ll call you up and tell you what happened.”

  Hell, I was thinking about turning my cell phone off and taking the hotel phone off the hook, because I didn’t want to hear it. The horse of Alexandria and Jason was officially dead, and I was putting my whip away. Tracy needed to think about doing the same.

  Locations

  I grew up a while back / and took off my tight jeans / and those other little, skimpy things / to liberate my body.

  I put away my / old love letters / from long-gone boyfriends / to liberate my heart.

  I discarded my false notions of / how young ladies should act / in male-dominated societies / to liberate my mind.

  I dared to picture myself a heaven / so that I could reach / for a better tomorrow / to liberate my soul.

  And then I flew / far away / like a bird / in no cage.

  “A Woman’s Liberation,” by Tracy Ellison.

  I remembered my cousin’s poem, published in her sequel book For the Love of Money, and I thought about all of the distractions that seemed to get in our way and cripple us from progress. And I didn’t believe that liberation was a onetime event. A person could be liberated several times in life. And each liberation should create a new direction.

  It was obvious that Tracy needed a new liberation and direction. And I didn’t believe that the grind of a new film would satisfy her needs. My sister Veronica had said that everybody wants to belong to somebody. Well, Tracy seemed to belong to us, the urban, inner-city brown girls who read her truth in the book and believed in it. We gave our imaginations to it and let it feed us social nourishment. We just needed her to finish the job now and let us see it on the big screen. We needed that final validation to see ourselves larger than life, and in full color. I just didn’t know if Tracy was fully up to the task.

  Petula was right. If my cousin was ready to spend so much of her energy on small stuff, then I would surely need to take over with more plotting to do. So I was up bright and early that Saturday morning after falling asleep late. I had notes of ideas all over my hotel bed. It may sound crazy, but I was able to think better by using individual pieces of paper instead of using a joined notepad. The notepad represented the box of ideas that became one, but the individual pieces of paper represented freedom, and the ability to collect ideas from various sources.

  Tracy told me once that the best filmmaking was all about collecting visions, words, sounds, events, colors, emotions, angles, responses, confusion, illusion, and excitement. I believe her comment to me about it was a poem that she hadn’t written yet. Tracy could be so creatively vibrant when she wanted to be. Neverthe
less, like everything else, creation took a lot of energy out of her.

  I was up early and full of energy, but no more ideas came out of me. I had a case of writer’s block, or thinker’s block, I should say. So instead of beating myself over the head with nothing more to explore, I turned the television on and started watching Saturday-morning cartoons. Imagine what the creators of cartoons have to come up with? Some of those cartoons had been on the air for more than thirty years, and new cartoons were always popping up. But what made one cartoon stick and other cartoons fall to the floor?

  That was the question of the century. What made some things hot and other things not? What would make Flyy Girl hot?

  I stopped and thought about that question.

  I nodded my head and told myself, “I should ask other people that question. I should even post the question on Tracy’s website.”

  We had started a new website for the clothing line, and instead of us racking our brains about all the new ideas, we could ask our supporters their opinions on clothes as well. We could post a poll on the website of “Hot” or “Not,” and a list of ten reasons why Hollywood should make Flyy Girl into a movie.

  Once my ideas started to flow again, I grabbed my pen and wrote them down on separate pieces of paper. I just had to make sure that I collected them all. It would be a disaster not to be able to find the hottest of my ideas, lost in the room somewhere.

  Before long, someone was knocking at my door. I looked over at the clock, and it was a quarter after eight in the morning. Obviously, someone else was up early.

  I walked over to the door and looked through the peephole to find Maddy standing out in the hallway in her pajamas. I opened the door and waited for her to speak.

  “Are you gonna invite me in?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I was startled. I didn’t think Madison wanted anything else to do with me.

  She walked into my room and turned to face me.

  She said, “I still don’t like the fact that you think you know so much. But I just wanted to tell you that I’m not here because I don’t want to do anything with myself. I’m here because I do. I got plans and ideas for myself, too.”

  She said, “And sometimes I may not have the best patience with things, but I’m trying. I also don’t have a famous cousin like you to look up to, so I just do what I can do.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I just stood there and waited. Madison had really surprised me with her visit. I didn’t even think she was a morning person.

  I finally asked her, “Were you up all last night like I was?”

  She said, “I kept waiting for Alexandria.”

  “She never came back?”

  Maddy shook her head.

  She smiled and said, “Your cousin made me call her three times last night.”

  I said, “She made me call her, too.”

  “That’s all I came to say,” Maddy told me. She began to walk back toward me at the door. Then she said, “And by the way, I owe you one. So don’t ever think I forgot. And I’m gon’ win the next round.”

  She was eye to eye with me and talking about fighting again. She actually scared me with it, too. Not that I was afraid of fighting her, but that she could calculate another round and let me know about it in advance. That was kind of clever. I already knew that Maddy would be thinking about our fight, because that’s the kind of person she is. She wanted the first and last punch. But letting me know that she thought about it would force me to respect her at all times, knowing that we could fight again at any minute.

  I nodded to her. I said, “I hear you. And hopefully we won’t have another round.”

  Maddy said, “We’ll see,” and she walked out the door.

  When I closed the door, I smiled to myself. Maddy was showing me that she could get along to accomplish what she wanted to do. We all realized how big Flyy Girl was, and Madison was in no way trying to lose her position. I had to respect her for that as well.

  * * *

  Alexandria arrived just in time to shower, change her clothes, get herself together, and rush out to meet us inside the limo that was parked in front of the hotel. It was 10:15 AM, and Tracy had wanted to leave by 9:45. She was already hot at Alexandria about Jason, and then she didn’t return to the hotel at all Friday night, so she was flying over an active volcano in a parachute.

  “We were two seconds from leaving your ass here,” Tracy snapped at her.

  I don’t believe Alexandria would have cared. All she had to do was call Jason back over and finish spending time with him. Everyone inside the limousine knew the deal between her and Jason by then. It was no longer a secret, and it hadn’t really been one. Everyone already assumed correctly about them.

  Tracy had a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News in her hand. She had it folded back to a page that she was reading that morning and brought it to our attention.

  “I want everybody in here to read this,” she told us before she passed it off to Jasmine. Jasmine was sitting the closest to her.

  Jasmine read the article with wide eyes and began to comment on it. But Tracy silenced her immediately with an index finger to her lips.

  She said, “Not a word. I want everyone in here to read it first.”

  I received the article third after Maddy had read it.

  The caption read: “Flyy Girl Catfight Breaks Out at the Marriott.” They had a picture of my cousin walking away from the hotel looking pissed at us and everything. The article didn’t have our names or a lot of the details, but it surely named Tracy Ellison Grant and what she was trying to do with the Philadelphia-based movie. I was so embarrassed.

  When we all finished reading the article, Tracy said, “Needless to say, I am very disappointed with all of you right about now. You have to understand that I’m no longer a private person, and anything that goes on around me gets reported, especially in my hometown. Now I was pissed as hell when my mother called me this morning to bring this shit to my attention. But then I stopped and thought about how this would be a lesson for you. Because you all need to understand what you’re dealing with when we actually start shooting this movie.”

  She said, “This kind of shit will not stop. And they always do this to black films. They try and report any damn thing they can just to make us look bad. But I decided that I’m not going to let them ruin my day because I still have things to get done, and I do plan to finish them.”

  We were all soundly checked that morning, and none of us said a word. What could anyone say? Our catfight at the Marriott could have derailed the entire movie, and we hadn’t even finished casting yet.

  * * *

  We pulled up to a playground on Germantown Avenue in Mt. Airy, with Robin and her New York casting crew in cars and equipment vans behind us.

  Tracy stepped out of the limo and immediately started directing the camera guys on the scene before they even got a chance to pull out the cameras and size things up.

  “This is the basketball court where we shoot the first scene,” she told them. She said, “But no one will be playing basketball. We’re going to turn this into a playground party, nineteen-eighties style. So I want you to shoot tight on the DJ spinning the records, and then angle out at the people—fashion, dances, and activity going on around the court.”

  Shamor and the camera guys all nodded to her and began to take pictures and general measures of the surrounding area.

  Robin said, “This is a good location for the scene, but what about the sounds coming from this major street out here?”

  Her sound guy turned and listened for all the street noise and cars driving by on Germantown Avenue.

  “We may have to block off the street for a couple of days,” he stated.

  “How many scenes are you trying to shoot here?” they asked Tracy.

  She said, “Well, on the first scenes, we can just let the DJ’s music play while we shoot over and through the crowd. That way we don’t have to worry about the street noise
so much.”

  She then looked at us. “Can you guys do some of the latest dances?”

  Everyone looked at each other. We were not exactly the partying type. I mean, we went to parties, but actually dancing was not a top priority for us.

  Tracy snapped, “Do you all know how to dance or what? We need some movement for the cameras here.”

  Some of the New York crew started to dance, then we followed suit with a whole lot of laughing and goofing around.

  Jasmine started singing the summer party anthem from 50 Cent, “We gon’ party like it’s your birthday.”

  Shamor sized us up and moved through us with a make-believe lens.

  He nodded and said, “You could do several moving shots from different angles.”

  “Then I want you to gradually move toward those steps over there,” Tracy told them.

  Behind the basketball court was a flight of steps on the left and on the right that led up to another part of the playground.

  Tracy said, “I want a group of guys gambling right here against this wall as the camera works its way up the stairs.”

  Jasmine jumped into place and said, “Ay yo, put the money back down, man. Put your money where your mouth is, yo.”

  We all started laughing. That girl was crazy.

  Tracy corrected her and said, “The word is ‘cuz.’ ‘Yo, cuz, put your money back down.’ ”

  “Yeah, cuz, put them ends up,” Sasha spoke. She was right on it, but she had family still in Delaware, so she was more familiar with Philadelphia lingo.

  “What do they say now?” Maddy asked us.

  “Fam’ or family,” I told her.

  “So they all think of each other as family and cousins here?”

  I laughed again. “I guess you can say that,” I told her. “But the guys generally use more slang than the girls.”

  “That’s in every city,” Alexandria commented.

  Tracy said, “Now let’s move up the steps.”

  We all followed her up the steps to a higher level of the playground where they had the football field.

  “Now up here we shoot the football game,” she told everyone.

  The camera guys looked around at the wide field of grass.