For the Love of Money (65 page)

“And oh,
he's
doing
great!
”I told her. “He's into real estate and entrepreneurship; the real grassroots work in the community. Victor has
never
been a dumb man, he's just not mine anymore,” I said. I began to tear up again. “But he never was to tell you the truth. You read the book, Susan. I was just his young girl. But I'm not that young girl anymore, and he had to embarrass me that night to make me finally realize that. I had to grow up and face reality.”

I really didn't need that shit on my damn mind at the time. I stopped my tears from falling by holding my palms up to my eyes.

Susan moved to comfort me but I shook it off. “No, I don't need that shit. I'm trying to shoot a movie here. I'm supposed to be a tough bitch, remember. Alexis, from Chicago. But it hurts. Lost love is
always
painful. But how long are you gonna allow that pain and that damn dream to control your life, when there's so many other things that we need to be doing for ourselves?

“We gotta let these niggas
go
when they want to
go
! We can't hold on to
the
bullshit
anymore!” I yelled. I looked Susan in her face and said, “I'm not even supposed to be saying this to you. This is
insider
information.”

Susan stood up and asked, “Would you like me to leave?”

“No,” I told her. “We're both human, and we're both women. And if you can't feel my pain, then yeah, leave. But if you
can
feel it, then sit down and listen to me.”

Susan sat back down with tears in her own eyes, probably because she had never seen me vulnerable before, and it was scary for her. I was the tough, super black girl from the streets of Philly who wasn't
supposed
to cry, which was all bullshit!

I said, “Susan, we're gonna put this sequel book out anyway. And then I'm going to take all of this money that I make over the next three years, and produce
Flyy Girl
the movie, because we
still
haven't had any sister stories to set us straight. And we
need
one. So if Tom Cruise can get twenty million dollars to make
Mission Impossible,
then I'll just have to get twenty million dollars to make
Flyy Girl.
”

“I'm well behind you on that,” my girl told me. “But what are you going to do about the sex scenes in that?” she asked me with a smile.

I smiled back at her. “We need to grow up from that too. My mother told me that sex was how I got here. Did
you
get here some other kind of way?”

Susan said, “I don't think so.”

“Well, we have to deal with it then. In the meantime, I'm really interested in how well this sequel will do
without
Victor as my man. And I'm not doing this for the money; I don't need it. I'm doing it for the art, and for inspiration to all of the sisters out there who need to learn how to move on.”

Susan smiled and said, “You
go
girl!”

I looked at her and said, “Susan, if Martin Lawrence could collect just
five
dollars every time someone used that line, he'd be a
billionaire.
Then we could just go and ask
him
for the money.”

When Susan left me and I had another moment alone, I came up with my opening and closing poem for the sequel, “Happily Ever After” and “Prophecy.”

$   $   $

“Tracy, your mother phoned the office trailer with a message for you to please call home, ASAP,” one of the production assistants told me when my next break was on.

I took a deep breath and said, “Now what?”

I called my mother from the trailer and asked her what was so urgent.

“Your cousin Vanessa,” she told me.

I stopped breathing. “What happened to her?” I was thinking any- and everything, a car accident, a drive-by shooting, pregnancy (God forbid), you name it!

My mother answered, “She got kicked the hell out the house.”

I exhaled. I could deal with that one. I even chuckled at it. My mother had threatened to kick
me
out when
I
was Vanessa's age. It was just a “girls will be girls” kind of thing, and you get over it.

“Well, what did she do?” Vanessa was a Goody Two-shoes compared to me.

“I'll let you talk to her about that. And I don't think the shit is funny,” Mom snapped at me. “So when can you fly her out to LA?”

I stopped smiling and said, “What? Mom I can't—”

“Tracy, you gon'
have
to,because
this
ain't
my
problem,” she responded, cutting me off. “I told you about instigating shit, but you wanted to be the big, bad boss lady because you're all
grown up now
and making Hollywood money. Well, now you're gonna have to deal with it.”

“Mom, you can't call up Trish and work it all out?” I couldn't fly Vanessa out to LA! I was in the middle of shooting my damn movie!

“What do you think I've been trying to do, Tracy? Vanessa has been here for
three days
already, and Patricia is acting a damn
fool!
So you're just gonna have to deal with your little cousin.”

I took another deep breath.
I can't
believe
this!
I thought to myself.
What am I gonna do now? I can't baby-sit no teenager.

“Let me talk to her,” I finally asked my mother.

She went and put Vanessa on the phone.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“My mom is just tripping, that's all.”

“How so?”

“Ever since that night you talked about me going out to LA, she just kept bothering me about
little
stuff. And then I was reading this magazine, and she just snatches it out of my hand, talking about, ‘You don't need to be reading this' and threw my brand-new magazine in the trash. So I went to get it out, and we got in an argument about it.

“A
magazine!
”Vanessa told me. “Now you tell me that's not
tripping.
”

“Was it a Hollywood magazine?” I asked her. I could just imagine where my little cousin's head was.

Vanessa paused. “It was
Entertainment Weekly.
”

I nodded my head. Her mother had lost it, and it was
all
because of my meddling. However, I still couldn't imagine Trish kicking her daughter out because of
that.

I asked, “So, is that it? You got into an argument over a magazine, and she kicked you out
for that?
”It just sounded too unbelievable. I was doing
far
more than
arguing,
and my mother let
me
stay.

Vanessa said, “Well, when we started arguing and stuff . . . she hit me, and, you know . . . I hit her back.”

Oh my God!
I thought to myself. I never even
thought
about hitting
my mom
back when she whipped my ass up against the refrigerator in
my
teen years. Vanessa had lost her damn mind!

I just shook my head. I didn't know what else to say. That introverted shit was crazy. I
knew
Vanessa had some craziness in her. The kind of girls who hit their mothers back are usually the ones who get sent the hell away to group homes and shit.

I asked, “So, what do you plan to do now?”

“I don't know. I was hoping you'd let me stay with you.”

SHIT!
I cursed myself. My mom had jinxed me again. I nodded my head and said, “I have to call you back. Okay? I have to figure this all out.”

“Okay,” Vanessa whimpered.

I immediately called my brother Jason at his apartment, praying to God that he would be in.

“Hello.”

“Thank God,” I told him. “Jason, this is Tracy. I need a
big
favor from you.”

“What, you need another idea for your movie?”

I ignored him and said, “How do you get along with Vanessa?” I had no time to waste.

“Our
cousin
Vanessa?” he asked me to make sure.

“Yeah.”

He said, “Oh, she's aw'ight. She's kind of quiet, but you know, she's cool. I guess.”

No she's not,
I thought.

“Well, how would you like to come out to LA with her? I'll get you that Lexus,” I blurted out. I was desperate.

Jason laughed and said, “It sounds like you're trying to blackmail me.”

“I am, I need you,” I admitted to him. “I have a movie to make, and Vanessa got in trouble with her mom.”

“What she do?” I guess he hadn't heard yet.

“I'll tell you about it later.”

“Well, you got a
job
for me out there?”

“I can get one, for
both
of y'all.”

Jason said, “Aw'ight, I'm down with it. You gon' get me the Lexus too?”

I had second thoughts already. “Well, we'll have to talk about that when you get here.”

“Aw, here we go,” he responded.

I had solved my problem for at least the summer, but what would I do after that?

I called Vanessa back at my mom's house and gave them the news. After that, it was Mom's turn to laugh.

“Well, you've made your new bed,
Boss Lady,
” she joked. “And I'm just
scared of you.
”

I hung up with her and shook my damn head again. “This is just fucking great!” I told myself out loud. “What the hell
else
can happen?”

I went ahead and called my answering machine at home in Marina Del Rey, expecting more bad news. First, I had nothing but the usual business and pleasure calls. Then the bad news came:

“Hey, Tracy, this is Mercedes, girl, back at home. I thought about writing you a letter about the house thing, but you know I ain't writin' no damn letters, girl, so I had to look up your phone number and call you.

“Well, I just wanted to tell you that I agree to it. You buy the house, and I'll just pay off the mortgage for it. So call me back and let's talk about it when you get a chance. All right?

“And thanks, girl. I love you too. And I mean that. Really.

“...All right, well, bye. And make sure you call me back.”

I hung up the phone and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Mercedes actually agreed to my proposal. I had set myself up to have to deal with her once a damn month when mortgage time rolled around. I thought that maybe I should just buy her the entire house and have her out of my hair already.

“Shit, shit, SHIT!” I ranted to myself.

Another PA knocked on my trailer door. “Tracy, they're ready for you on the set.”

I stood up, took one last deep breath, and stepped out of my trailer. I had to face the facts of the crazy shit that I had just got myself into.

I took it all in and nodded to myself. I said, “Well, here comes the Boss Lady, Mom,” and I went right back to work.

I had a big date yesterday
with King Kong
on top of the World Trade Center.

Helicopters swung in,
news cameras taped it,
and reporters took notes with flashing light bulbs
all around me.

But my King Kong got pissed off, y'all,
with all of the noisy cock blockers.
So somebody shot him.

And he fell waaay
down.
BOOM!
Then I cried
while the whole world watched me
in silence.

But when I awoke,
I realized that my King Kong
was only a little brown Teddy Bear
that my momma gave me.

And nobody knew me.
Even worse,
nobody cared
to know.

So I held that
little brown Teddy Bear
close to my heart
and squeezed it.

Because somebody did
recognize me.
And somebody cared.

And once I realized that,
I got my King Kong anyway,
and I was as happy as I could be.

Copyright © 1996, 2000 by Tracy Ellison Grant

I
n December of nineteen ninety-nine, I did my girl Kendra's wedding in Baltimore, and in February of two thousand, after everyone had gotten past the hype of the Y2K bug, Kendra did my movie premiere back in West Hollywood for
Led Astray,
because the world could
not
shut down before my movie premiere. No way, no how!

I spent five thousand dollars to fly my family out for the big event, including Raheema and her family from New Jersey. I rented limos to transport all my entourage to and from the hotel. To where? Mann's Chinese Theater. I was lucky again. Lucky with hard work, that is, but I didn't want to arrive with my friends and family. It was my moment in the bright lights to shine alone. So I took a limo ride solo from my home in Marina Del Rey and arrived on Hollywood Boulevard at seven twenty-two, eight minutes before our seven-thirty start time.