by Omar Tyree
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.
when it’s vacation time
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
April 2000
Tracy, 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!”
“You didn’t doubt me, did you?”
“No, of course not, but while we’re on the subject of getting things done, what’s up with the book deal?” I asked her.
“I came up with an idea,” she said. “Since we both know that we want to use some of your poetry, and I’ve let them know, I need you to print out, I guess, twenty-five or so selected poems that you would use in the book, so that I could send them out and let them see what we’re trying to do. Last time you guys just sat down and did it, but this time you’re both moving forward with your careers and everything, and you really need to agree ahead of time on how everything is going to be executed.
“I would also look at other books that use text and poetry to figure out the best way to integrate the two without destroying the flow that you guys created with Flyy Girl,” she advised. “I would say that this book should definitely be a little different too, because sequels are very hard to do. You can’t give your fan base the exact same thing, even though they may ask for it, because they’ll become dissatisfied. You have to take it up a level.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean. People are quick to say, ‘It wasn’t as good as the first one.’ So I think that the first thing for me to do would be to use my own voice instead of third person, so that they can really feel me.”
“Well, that will take away from the minor characters involved, but I do agree with you,” she said. “A first-person narrative would be a major change.”
I was impressed! My girl was really stepping up the game plan, and she was absolutely right; we had not approached it in a business-plan format like we needed to.
I said, “I’ll get on that right away, and pick out the poems that would relate the most to what I would like to cover in the book.”
“Do your parents have a computer at home?” she asked me.
“Yeah, but I didn’t bring my notepads out here with me.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess you’ll have to get started on that when you get back out to LA.”
“No problem. My girl Raheema was just telling me this weekend that I should start typing out my poetry and storing them on disk anyway.”
“Yeah, she’s right. But tell me again how you came across the first book deal with Omar. I never really asked you the details about that. I may be able to use some of that information for this new book deal.”
“I met him at a poetry event in Philly,” I told her. “I had performed this poem about the materialism that I got caught up in during the eighties, and we got to talking about it and reminiscing on how flyy the initial hip-hop generation was, you know, with the gold and fancy clothes and hairstyles and all of that.
“Well, one thing led to another, and he started saying that my life story might make a good book. And at first, I thought he was joking,” I added. “So when I agreed to do it, I wanted to make up a name, but he convinced me to write it straight up and keep it real. And that’s how it happened.”
My girl said, “Okay, that’s good to know. Now we have to convince him to keep it real again and produce a sequel, because your fans want to know the rest of the story.”
“Yeah, so let’s get to it,” I commented. “And I’ll start thinking about what poems to use.”
“All right, well, I’ll talk to you as soon as you get back out to LA.”
I hung up that phone and went right back to my bed. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t think from my bed. I was relaxing. I hadn’t even put on any clothes that day. I stretched out across my bed and thought about all of the things I wanted to say in my sequel, what poems to use, when to start it, how to finish it, the whole shebang. The next thing I knew it was three o’clock and the phone was ringing again. I didn’t even feel like answering it, but I did.
“Hello.”
“It’s Vanessa.”
“Hey, Vanessa. You weren’t kidding when you said that you would call after school today, hunh?” I joked.
She said, “No.”
“So how was your school day?”
“The same-old same-old. Nothing new.”
I knew what she wanted to get around to, and both of us were stalling, so I decided to come right out with it.
“Okay, so we have to figure out a way to get you out to LA this summer,” I said.
“I know,” she agreed. “My mom is so shortsighted. I told her this could really expand my horizons for the future.”
I mocked her mother and asked, “Expand your horizons for what, so you can be another Hollywood hoe?”
&
nbsp; Vanessa laughed and said, “Yup, that’s what she said, and I told her, I don’t have to be in movies, just behind the scenes with it. A lot of people make good livings behind the scenes.”
“Not as many black people do,” I leveled with her.
“But that’s why it would be so wide open for people like me.”
I sat there on the phone with my cousin and got a little nervous. My mother was right, I had started something. I was just asking Vanessa to come out to California for the summer in the essence of family love, not to get her started in the business of Hollywood. She was jumping way ahead of me!
“You were thinking about this all day long, weren’t you?” I asked her.
She laughed and said, “I couldn’t even sleep last night.”
SHIT! I thought to myself. Momma knows best! This is crazy!
I had to cool Vanessa down a bit. I said, “Hollywood isn’t for everybody, Vanessa, and it’s just not that easy. I don’t want it to seem like anybody can just jump right in.”
“But if you know the right people and you get schooled on the business side early, then you can make it. I’m smart enough to make it. I know I am,” she insisted.
With one quick conversation I had created a monster, but my little cousin was smart enough, I just didn’t know what kind of stamina she had. A lot of people had that start-out energy, but not many of them had the energy to finish what they started.
“Well, like I said, the first thing for you to do is to keep your grades up in school, and I’ll work on your mother little by little, if she’ll even talk to me,” I joked. “Maybe I’ll sit down and write her a couple of letters or something.
“In fact,” I said, “that’s a good way for me and you to stay in touch, because I have to head back out to LA on Wednesday now.”
Vanessa said, “For real? I thought that you were staying until Sunday.” She sounded disappointed.
“I was initially, but now I have a meeting for a lead role this Thursday.”
“Oh. Well, what’s the name of the movie?”
Boy did she sound deflated already.
“Road Kill. It’s a female action flick. A thriller.”
“It’s coming out next year?”
“Hopefully.”
“Okay.”