For the Love of Money (41 page)

“Yeah. I'm not used to that. I mean, I'm used to it, but not like you.”

“Anyway,” I told him, getting back to my poem. Since he was honest about things, I leaned over and kissed him on the lips, good and wet, with a tiny bite to let him feel it. I wanted him in a sexy mood when I read to him, and not that silly shit. After I kissed him, his mood was right.

I said, “Listen to me in silence, and I'll let you know when you can move. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“‘A Homemade Twinkie,'” I read to him:

“I was made from priceless flour
grounded from the sweetest grains
and mixed with collected honey
from swarms of African bees
who protected my nectar
with STINGS
that were fatal.

“I was stirred with milk
so filled with nutrients
that it fed entire plantations
of children
because the Master loved
his sons and daughters
and Mary Sue's milk
was NEVER as nurturing.

“I was thickened with eggs
that began the world
and produced the seeds
who built the Pyramids
who built the Great Wall of China
who civilized America
BEFORE it was discovered
AND who landed on the moon
seeds from MY eggs
EVE
in case you caught worldwide amnesia.

“I was flavored with sugar
straight from the cane
cut down by Abel men
cut down by Cain
cut down in sin
then Nations came
Nations addicted to sugar
that ROBBED their brains
of sanity.

“I was sprinkled with natural oils
that allowed my hair
to stand at attention
unwashed
and still clean
nappy
and still breathe
kinky
and still grow
short
and still sexy
LONG
and braided.

“Then I was baked ALIVE
and molded in the heat
of slavery
in the heat
of dehumanization
in the heat
of bigotry
in the heat
of poverty
sexism
racism
classism.

“Until I was finally left alone
a cold
loveless
hollow shell
of my past greatness
needing YOU
with your cream
to fill me up
and start the world again
with a treat
of our sweet
and completed
love.”

When I was finished, I leaned over and kissed Coe on the lips and told him, “Now you can move,” before I pulled him onto my bed with me.

i dream of peace and quiet
i see beaches and ocean water
i hear laughter and bare feet
running
sisters wear bikinis and
brothers bare their chests
while i just chill
drinking strawberry coolers
or piña coladas under colorful umbrellas
drunk with the feeling of relaxation
finally
with no one knocking at my door
no one ringing on my phone
no one yanking down my skirt
my hands are no longer writing or typing
or ironing or cooking
my mind no longer pressed for thought
or at least not in urgent organized patterns
because now i can think of anything
on my own time
like
what if i were a mermaid?
stranded upon shore
would a black fisherman rescue me?
would he freak out and scream and run away?
or would he take me home with him?
to hide me and love me in fresh salt water
see?
when it's vacation time
i can think of anything
with no commas or periods or capitals in my way
only thoughts and questions
like
what if i were a moon woman?
whose skin glowed like 100 watt light bulbs

would a black man astronaut find me there?
on my moon
could he be able to handle my glow?
or would he always wear moon shades?
and lie
that i do not hurt his eyes with my illumination
maybe i need a vacation from thinking
about black men
now that would be a vacation
but when would i go back home to him?
if i went back home at all
and if i had a real him to return to
then why did i vacation alone?
like he does
he is always on vacation
or saying that he needs one
so that he can think to himself
he says
but when will he come back home to me?
see?
when it's vacation time i can think
of anything
and i like it
my freedom thought
maybe i should vacation more
maybe we all should
vacation
so we can think of anything
to take us away from bondage
to everything

Copyright © 1993 Tracy Ellison

T
racy, the telephone is for you,” my mother told me in my old room. I looked over at the clock. It read quarter to eight in the morning. I had nowhere to go that day, and it couldn't have been my agent, because it was only a quarter to five out in California.

My mother read my confusion and said, “It's Vanessa.”

“Oh.”

My little cousin was calling me, probably on her way to school that Monday morning.

I cleared my throat and answered the phone. “Hello.”

“I told you how my mother was,” Vanessa announced to me.

“Are you at school?”

“I'm on my way.”

“Well, we'll talk about it,” I told her.

“Did I wake you up?”

I paused. “Well—”

Vanessa started laughing. “I'm sorry then. I'll call you when I get back home today.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

I hung up the phone, and my mother was still standing there waiting for me.

She said, “You see that, you've started something.”

I sighed and said, “Mom, I can't be a mentor to my little cousin? What's so wrong with that; she's blood, ain't she?”

“Okay, well, get prepared to bleed then. You asked for it.”

“I asked for what? Vanessa's not bad at all.”

My mother nodded, knowingly. “Tracy, when people start to depend on you and hold you accountable for their welfare, things can get very hairy, but I guess you wouldn't know that; you don't have any children yet, nor do you have—” She stopped herself and said, “I'm not even going to say it,” before she walked out to finish getting ready for work.

I caught on quickly and hollered, “I don't
need
no man, Mom! I'm making it just fine without one!”

“That's what they
all
say!” she yelled back at me.

I remained in bed that morning and relaxed. Sometimes you need relaxation. I had been home for a full week, and all I did was run, run, run. I was exhausted, obviously, but I was also used to a hectic schedule. If you're
not
running in the business of entertainment, you miss things; that's just the way it goes. I went out to California with my track shoes on, expecting to run and run far, and I had. I wanted to run farther too; that's just the way that
I
was, always pushing forward with something new.

Before I went to bed that Sunday night, I had tossed my mother's
Ebony
on the floor to read. She said I was quoted in an article for their May issue discussing the black actress and the new millennium. I remembered the interview. I was very open with them. I wondered how much of my openness they had captured in the article, or bothered to print. That was what I hated about the media. They asked you questions, but they only wanted to print what they wanted to hear, so they wait for you to say it, and ignore everything else that you say. In feature stories, they focused only on the external things: what you're wearing, who you're dating, where you live, how much money you're making; all gossip information. What about discovering the artist within, the
internal?
I guess no one was really interested in what artists
think.
That's why I needed to continue my story for those who
would
like to know, but maybe since I had become a star, even my
Flyy Girl
fans would want to ignore me. I no longer “represented” a reckless teenager for them. I no longer had my roughneck man in Victor. I no longer ran the streets of Philadelphia. I was highly educated at that, with a master's degree in English (of all things, with my yuck mouth as a teenager, right?) and no man. Higher education and no man was like poison to a black woman, and my parents wouldn't let me forget that. So what was a girl supposed to do, finish high school and get married at age eighteen, like they did in 1952? I don't
think
so!

The comedian Chris Rock said that the black intelligentsia was no longer valued in our community, only athletes, actors, musicians, and comedians
like himself. I saved the
Notorious
magazine issue in 1999 that quoted him. He called the black intelligentsia “wack.” I even wrote a poem about it, “Wacky Intelligence.” Was Chris being sarcastic when he said that? Was he misquoted?
He
was labeled intelligent for his award-winning concert
Bring the Pain.
Intelligent humor was what put him on the map, but he seemed to be caught between his intelligence and his fear of not representing for the 'hood:
Bigger & Blacker.
He was caught up in the great Black American contradiction, just like I was, the flyy girl who grew up and expanded her mind, only to return to the bullshit of Hollywood before anyone noticed her again. No one paid any attention to me as a schoolteacher. Maybe Raheema was right. Who wants to hear an intelligent story of success when we love to struggle so much? Crabs in a barrel.
Happy
crabs, dancing around and snapping at each other for wanting to jump out of the barrel and explore.

I was thinking so much in my relaxation that I didn't open the
Ebony
magazine for another thirty minutes or so. When I did, I found that they had interviewed ten black actresses for the article, including Cicely Tyson and myself. Cicely Tyson spoke on our need to find more vehicles that expressed a balance of our culture. She felt that in the year 2000 and beyond, we
owed
ourselves that mission, not just to star in films, but to star in films that meant something for the younger black girls who watched us.

Of course, Cicely Tyson was right, and she had starred in plenty of smaller films to prove her dedication and commitment to black culture. She presented another contradiction for me: How could I complain about the media not taking me seriously while I starred in a movie like
Led Astray
? As expected, my quotes in the article were marginal. I talked about how surprised I was to be offered the starring role in my first green-lighted screenplay. The article went on to discuss more sisters, like myself, writing our own scripts as new vehicles. I felt good about that.
Ebony
captured the fact that I was a pioneer. I closed the magazine with a smile on my face, but I still wanted to tell more of my story, and I wanted that damn book contract signed and sealed before the summer was out. So I planned to call my agent again and ask her what the progress was on the book deal, and to begin exploring new options.

I thought about Raheema's older sister Mercedes, my second idol. Of course, my mother was my first. Anyway, I had written a poem called “Mercedes” that related her to the car that she was named after, expensive, hard to keep, hard to repair, but forever valuable and always noticed on the road. I guess that
I
was more like a BMW myself (even though I owned a Mercedes).
I was faster to accelerate, technologically hip, and I didn't cost as much, so I never paid the price of my flashiness like Mercedes had paid. Nevertheless, even though I had gotten much farther than her with my education and drive, Mercedes would always be more complicated than I was, and more expensive. Would I turn down her plea for twelve thousand dollars like I told Raheema I would? ...In reality, I didn't know. Maybe if I got the starring role in
Road Kill,
I would give Mercedes the down payment on her house anyway, as long as she understood that she would have to keep up her own mortgage and maintenance to keep it, because I would
not
bail her out of anything, and I meant that!

I relaxed and thought, and relaxed some more, being as lazy as I wanted to be that morning until I fell back asleep again and didn't wake up until after one o'clock that afternoon. I thought of calling my girl for a progress report.

Should I wait another hour before I call her?
I asked myself.
It's only after ten in California. Maybe she could use another hour or so to get things done before I call.

Right as I hovered near the phone, still indecisive about the timing of my phone call, the phone rang and startled me.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Hey, Tracy.”

I smiled. “I was just about to call you. I was sitting over here stalling to give you more time.”

“Well, I don't need it,” she told me. “You got what you want. The producer said that
Road Kill
is not yet green-lighted, but if they could decide immediately on the lead, it would push things ahead much faster. So he wants to meet with us for lunch on Thursday.”

I said, “Okay, so I have to get out of here by Wednesday to prepare for this meeting. Good job, girl!”