Boss Lady (2 page)

We finally met and hung out in the spring of my sophomore year, and Tracy was very open with me about everything. She complained about how much her life had changed since breaking into Hollywood, but at my school, we were still sweating her for her book. I don't think she understood how much of an impact her book had had on urban American girls. Tracy was more concerned about her present and future, like most go-getters are. They don't live in the yesterday, they live in the now and the tomorrow. So I accepted my cousin's complaints and allowed her to say her piece about fame and fortune, and the ups and downs of wealth and popularity. She even had a frank discussion with me about boys, just when I had one who could have broken me. Talk about your perfect timing.

Nevertheless, my mother wasn't having it. She bitched about me hanging out with Tracy as if the world was coming to an end. She gave my cousin no respect at all, as if she was still a teenager looking for a hot boyfriend. Tracy deserved much more respect than that. She worked damned hard for hers, and no man had gotten in her way.

So when my wildest dream was realized—Tracy asking me if I wanted to spend a summer in California with her—I was blown away. I mean, like, wow! I had waited my whole life for that. Not that I would have died if it didn't happen, but I surely wasn't going to turn it
down once it did. That's when the shit hit the fan. My mother went into overdrive and started nagging me about everything. She was getting on my last damn nerve!

Honestly, I saw nothing left that I could gain from my mother. She couldn't pay my way to college. She couldn't help me with my ideas and aspirations. And she didn't have anything left to teach me. I could even get better jobs than she could once I finished high school, because my mother never applied herself enough to master anything. But there she was trying to deny me the opportunity of a lifetime instead of supporting me. It wasn't as if I would just up and leave the family. It was only for a summer.

Tracy's invitation to Hollywood was the end of the end for my mother and me. The beginning of our problems had started a long time ago, and we were both ready to explode. So when I started reading up on Hollywood to prepare myself for Tracy's world, my mother went right ahead and pressed my last button.

She snatched my
Entertainment Weekly
magazine right out of my hands and shouted, “Do your fucking homework!”

I mean, that wasn't even called for. I was just sitting on the living room sofa, minding my own business, when she walked in from work and said that to me. It was nearly nine o'clock at night, and my homework had been finished before seven. My mother knew that. I always completed my schoolwork early. She was just trying to pick a fight with me, like a jealous hater. She wouldn't even allow me to work after school. My job was to look after my younger sisters every day. And I was just tired of it; tired of everything.

I stood up and said, “Mom, I've already finished my homework. Now can I have my magazine back, please?”

I knew she wasn't going to give it to me. I was already preparing myself to fight her. I had backed down from my mother before because I had nowhere else to go. But once Tracy offered me somewhere else to go . . . Well, that was it for my mother's bullshit.

She responded to my request by smacking me upside the head with the magazine and shouting, “You're not going to any damn California. So you don't even need to be reading this shit.”

Isn't that pitiful of a grown woman? I couldn't believe she was acting like that. So I grabbed the magazine to stop her from hitting me
with it, only for her to smack me in the face with her free hand. I used to cry when my mother treated me like that before, but not anymore. I mean, how much can a daughter take just because someone's your mother? It's not as if I was running the streets and getting into trouble like Tracy had done. I was an obedient, intelligent, and dutiful virgin like Tracy's girlfriend, Raheema, and I was being ignored and disrespected in the same way that she had been.

I had no more tears left to cry over my mother. She was wrong. So I backed away from her and let her have it with a straight right hand to her mouth. My mother's head popped back like a rag doll and it shocked both of us. I felt for sure that my life was going to end right there, but when my mother tried to attack me, I held her away from me with both hands and was actually stronger than she was. I couldn't believe it! I'm not a strong girl at all, or at least not physically, but it was just in me at that moment to fight her for my life and for my own dreams.

I'm not telling every girl to do what I did, but that's just how it went down for me. And if someone wants to blame my cousin Tracy for that . . . Well, I can't stop them. But I look at it as if it was fate. As crazy as it may sound, it was like my whole life had been preparing me for a meeting with my cousin, and my mother had started it all when I was a kid. It was like she knew all along that I would leave her for Tracy, and my mother was already preparing herself to hate my cousin for it.

So after my mother threw my high yellow behind out, I ended up at my great-aunt Patti's house in Germantown, where she called Tracy in California. Tracy was back out in Hollywood to shoot her next film, a thriller called
Road Kill.
I explained to her what happened with my mom, she listened to me, and the next thing I knew, arrangements were being made for me to join her for the summer in California. But since Tracy didn't really have time to spare while she finished filming her new movie, she planned to fly her brother Jason out to California for the summer as well, just to keep an eye out on me.

I
was prepared to fly out to California on Monday, June 19, 2000, with my cousin Jason, who was supposed to watch over me while Tracy finished filming her movie,
Road Kill.
Or at least that was the plan. But I could tell immediately that it wouldn't work out that way. And it wasn't that I was against Jason looking after me. It was no big deal to me. I was just happy I was getting a chance to go to California and expand my horizons. My cousin Jason felt the same way. He was really into expanding his horizons—or I should say, his opportunities. He was feeling himself a little too strongly on our plane ride from Philly.

Jason sat next to me wearing Cool Water cologne, with a fresh haircut, Rocawear clothes, and brown leather Timberland shoes.

He said, “I can't wait to get out to L.A. I hear it's a whole different world out there.”

My cousin had bright stars shining in his eyes already. I just smiled at him. I was trying to keep my cool and stay focused. I had never been on an airplane before.

He asked me, “Aren't you excited?”

I looked into my cousin's eager face and imagined what he was thinking about. Girls! His breath even smelled good. He had a pocket full of peppermint chewing gum just for talking that talk.

“You want some gum?” he asked me.

I hadn't even gotten a chance to open my mouth. Jason was that overzealous about our trip, and for some reason, I didn't see that as a good thing. I felt like I should have been the one who was extra-excited. Not that Jason couldn't be, but just not as much as I was. He was supposed to be the more mature one.

I nodded to him and held out my hand for a stick of gum.

I answered, “Yeah, I'm excited. Of course I am. But why are you so excited?” I asked him. I still had my hunch.

Jason smiled it off. He said, “I'm just planning on having a good time out there, that's all.”

I was betting that he was. I turned away and looked out the window.

“So, you leaving a boyfriend behind or something?” he asked me.

My cousin caught me off guard with that.

“Why?” I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don't know. Girls are always leaving guys behind.”

“Who are you leaving behind?” I asked him back. Jason looked good enough to leave a few girls behind. He was tall, dark, and handsome with not a blemish on his smooth brown face. And I'm sure he knew it.

He laughed and turned away.

“I don't have no ties,” he mumbled.

I smiled in Jason's direction and told him, “That's what they all say.”

He just grinned and chuckled at it.

As our plane raced down the runway, lifted up into the air, and started rattling around, I was as nervous as I don't know what. Jason saw me clenching the armrest and began to tease me.

“We may not make it, Vanessa. Maybe we both should have stayed home.”

I couldn't believe he said that. He was joking at the wrong damn time. Even some of the other passengers shot looks at him. But Jason didn't care. It was all a joke to him.

I told him, “Don't say that, man.”

I was dead serious. I had too much to live for to go down in an airplane crash. Especially on my first plane ride. All I could think about was not landing safely in California on my very first airplane ride. All of my dreams would go up in smoke. So I was a nervous wreck.

Jason nudged my arm and said, “Stop sweatin' it, girl. Be brave like you was when you clocked your mom.”

Now that was low. I was beginning not to like Jason, and we had a six-hour plane ride before we landed in L.A.

I started to say something, not anything nasty, but just to ask him why he would say something to me like that. I mean, I wasn't a bad
girl. My mom was just . . . she just went too far that day. But I didn't want to be reminded of that all of the time. Everybody makes mistakes. Then again, fighting my mother didn't even seem like a mistake to me.

I told Jason, “I just did what I had to do.”

I wasn't planning on saying that. It just rolled out of my mouth. But I really meant it. I didn't want anybody to hold me back anymore. I didn't care who it was.

Jason looked at me and nodded.

He said, “I heard that. You not goin' for it.”

I didn't want to talk about it anymore so I let it be. But Jason seemed majorly insensitive to me. I tried my best to ignore him for the rest of the plane ride. When he fell asleep, I looked at it as my good fortune. However, I wasn't able to sleep at all. I kept thinking that if that plane went down, I would at least want to be prepared instead of having to wake up and find out. I even pictured myself jumping over people to wrestle the last parachute out of the closet if I had to. I was that nervous about it.

*  *  *

We arrived in L.A. safe and sound, and Jason was after the girls just as I had expected he would be.

“Hey Vanessa, you see that Asian girl I was talking to on the plane?”

“Who?” I was still trying to pop my ears with both hands pressed against my eardrums.

“That Asian girl. Was she good-looking to you?” he asked me.

He was pressed to holler at someone before we even got off the airplane.

I just shook my head and blew it off. I didn't care about anything he had to say. But Jason wouldn't let me be.

“Here she go right here,” he whispered to me.

I had to at least take a look at the girl. My cousin was practically forcing me to, and I didn't want him to make more of a scene if I didn't look.

Sure enough, I looked, and the girl wasn't bad. She wore a pink Bebe tank top, blue Giraldi jeans, and pink loop earrings to match her

shirt. I can't even front, the girl had it popping. She even had a little bit of height and some curves on her. More curves than I had. She looked like a magazine ad on a hip, fashion page. She had her own style about her. I was even ready to warn her not to talk to my lame cousin because I knew he was ready to put something on her. She looked approachable to a black guy. I could see it in her face. She had that “I know you're feeling me” look about her. I was almost certain that other black guys had tried to talk to her before.

My cousin wasted no time. He strolled right over to her as soon as she walked out of the bridge behind us.

“So hey, Ma', where you goin' from here?”

I couldn't believe it. He sounded like a hip thug. And my cousin was not at all the thug type. He was more like an irritating comedian pretty boy. But there he was trying to use gutter street slang on this girl. He had his head dipped to the side and everything.

I was so embarrassed. Why couldn't he just say, “Hi, I'd like to talk to you for a minute?” But no, he had to take it all the way to the street corner. Then people wonder why black people get stereotyped so much. To make it worse, the girl responded to it.

She answered, “I have to hook up with my family. But once I do that and settle in, you know, it's whatever.”

Jason asked her, “It's whatever?” He seemed as surprised as I was. Maybe he was still joking around, but she was taking him seriously.

She smiled and said, “Well, it's not just anything, but, I mean, what do you have in mind?”

The girl was game, but she still had a lot of innocence about her. Trust me, I had been around enough hard-core girls to know the difference, and this girl was not giving me those vibes. She was more on the multicultural, MTV side of things. So I sized both of them up. They were both playing the role. She wanted to go for a stereotypical black guy and my cousin was willing to give her one.