by Omar Tyree
“The machine is only programmed / to laugh / to smile / to lie / to market / promote / and sell / to consume / the hopes / of humanity.
“While the line of seduction / moves the humans / rapidly forward / into the mouth / of the machines / like next / next / next / next / next . . .
“Swallowed alive / and never to return / to their innocence.”
I could only smile at my big cousin. I mean, what could I say? Tracy was Tracy. There was no replacing her. She was an original human, and I was impressed by her creative vision as usual. Her poetry was just so . . . so . . . relative. I mean, you just get it, and you ask no questions.
I said, “It reminds me of The Matrix.”
“And the Matrix has been around for a million years. Even the Egyptians talked about sacrificing the individual soul for the dream of the masses,” my cousin told me. “So how do we maintain our sanity in the midst of it all? Well, you’re about to find out, little cousin.”
She smiled at me real wide and repeated herself, “Yup, you’re about to find out.”
Philadelphia
We all arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday morning, June 14, 2003—me, Tracy, Sasha, Madison, Jasmine, and Alexandria—to fly to Philadelphia. Petula and Tonya were staying put in L.A., but they met us at the airport to say their good-byes and to help with our luggage. Petula was taking summer college courses and Tonya was still involved in summer sport activities, which kept them both from being able to spend weeks at a time on the road with us.
“You guys let us know how everything goes,” Petula told us.
Jasmine said, “Oh, of course.”
“You think her big mouth wouldn’t?” Maddy joked about it.
“Whatever.”
“IDs, girls,” Tracy told us at the curbside luggage booth.
We all scrambled to pull out our IDs and hand them over to the skycap. He was an older black man with plenty of gray hair. He looked over our IDs, matched them up with our faces, and prepared our tickets. Then he smiled with straight, white teeth and said, “Philadelphia, hunh? Must be a model convention going on there or something. ’Cause every last one of you look fine.”
“Well, thank you,” Tracy told him. She gave him twenty dollars for handling our bags. I thought he looked a little too old to be grabbing luggage the way he did, but he was obviously stronger than I thought. He grabbed those bags and tossed them on the luggage belt like nobody’s business.
He slid the twenty dollars into the wad of cash he’d taken from his dark blue uniform pants pocket and said, “Thank you. And you ladies have a good trip.”
“Oh, we will,” Jasmine told him.
That next second, some unknown white man on a motorbike stopped right in front of us and whipped a camera from his neck to snap about eight fast pictures of Tracy helping us with our airplane tickets. It happened so fast, it took all of us by surprise before we could respond to it.
After the man sped off, Alexandria frowned and said, “What was that about?”
“Paparazzi,” Sasha explained.
Maddy grinned and shook her head. “Now you know you’ve made it big when that shit happens.”
Jasmine said, “If you ask me, I think those people need to get a life.”
Maddy looked at her and smirked.
She said, “Jasmine, you seem like the type to do that shit yourself, as crazy as you are about stars.”
Tracy smiled it off and kept us moving. “Let’s go, we’re running late.”
We hurried over to the security lines and started stripping down to the basics to pass through their carry-on belts and metal detectors. What can I say? I was excited about the entire experience. I was taking notes on everything.
We moved through the airport in a hurry and made it to our gate as travelers continued to notice my cousin.
“Isn’t that Tracy Ellison Grant?” someone asked.
Tracy heard them like we all did. She turned to smile and wave to them, but she had no time to stop for any autographs.
As we moved through the gate, down the bridge, and toward our waiting flight, Tracy told me, “I have to get my attitude right before talking to a lot of people.”
She said, “I don’t have to do that as much in L.A. But in Philly . . .” She shook her head and didn’t even have to say it. I was from Philly. I already knew.
Philadelphians forced you to speak to them. Either that or be called out and talked about in nonappreciative ways. Tracy couldn’t afford any negativity while trying to produce a Philadelphia story that had become legendary in less than ten years. She knew what she was up against before we arrived anywhere near Philly.
We moved through the jam-packed airplane and took our seats on
the left side, right below the exit rows in the middle. Tracy had a left window seat next to my aisle seat.
I looked at her and was confused. I could understand me and my girls flying coach, but I expected Tracy to fly first class. We all expected that.
I said, “You didn’t get a first-class seat for you?”
She grinned at me. “I have my reasons.” That’s all she had to say about it. So I sat down beside her and didn’t sweat it.
“Excuse me, aren’t you an actress?” a white-haired older woman asked my cousin from the seats in front of us. She popped her head up just enough to peek over the headrest.
Tracy smiled and answered, “Not today I’m not. Today I’m just another traveler.”
The woman smiled and nodded. She said, “Oh. Okay. But you are an actress when you’re working.”
“Yes,” Tracy told her. “I am.”
I had gotten used to people responding to my cousin by then, and I was always impressed with how she handled herself, even when she ignored them or got upset with certain people. After you’ve been around a person long enough to really feel them out, you know how they’re going to react sometimes before they do.
My girls continued to talk about each other all the way up until the flight hit the runway.
“You just keep bragging about how you handle everything like a pro. But we’ll see how you handle yourself once we get to Philly,” Sasha was saying to Alexandria. “We’ll see.”
“I don’t know what you expect to happen. I am always in control of my game,” Alexandria stated.
Tracy overheard her and began to smile. I wondered what my cousin thought about Alexandria. She was definitely the closest to Tracy in looks. Yet Tracy never really responded much to her.
“You think they bicker too much?” I asked her about my friends.
Tracy shook her head. “I think it’s cute,” she told me. “I’d rather hear them doing that than being all friendly with each other. Bickering is real. And it keeps my writing skills sharp.”
I thought about that for a minute.
I said, “But don’t you think we do a little too much of that in our movies?”
I was using the term we in reference to black women. It seemed that we were always running off at the mouth in our films.
My cousin surprised me when she answered, “Yes, and that’s why I always have to remind myself to keep the nonsense to a minimum. So in a sense, it’s good to hear it so I can always judge when it starts to wear on me. But you have to have it there, or your girl movie is not going to be authentic.”
She looked me in the eyes and said, “We’re women, Vanessa. Bickering is what we do.”
I just smiled at her and dropped my head. She was telling the truth, and I was embarrassed by it. I bickered with someone every day of my life, and I barely realized it.
Tracy said, “And since you’ve been asking about it so much.” She reached down into her carry-on bag, pulled out a fresh script of Flyy Girl, and set it on my lap. My heart nearly jumped in my throat.
She said, “Keep your composure, and don’t talk to me about it until you’re done.” Then she gave me a notebook and a pen. “This is for your notes.”
Sasha looked over at me from her aisle seat
beside me and asked, “Is that it?”
Maddy, Jasmine, and Alexandria were all sitting beside her in the middle section.
“One at a time,” Tracy told them. “So don’t bother her while she’s reading it. Sasha, you can read it next. But no talking about it. You all read it, take your notes, and then you talk to me.”
The boss lady had spoken, so we all nodded our heads and agreed to her terms. Then I jumped into reading the first draft of the Flyy Girl screenplay. I took a deep breath and turned to the opening scene.
* * *
My cousin was taking the excitement of her book by the horns. Her opening scene was a Germantown playground party, with a DJ and turntables on the basketball courts. She had red Kangol hats, box haircuts, dyed hairstyles, Gucci pocketbooks and shoes, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, Adidas sweat suits, hip-hop dancing, thugs slap-boxing, hustlers tossing dice up against the walls, flyy girls profiling, and plenty of camera movement to capture the full sounds and sights of Philadelphia during the 1980s.
Nearby, on the playground football field, we zoom in on a wide-eyed cheerleader (TRACY ELLISON) standing with her teammates on the sidelines of an ongoing game. The attractive teenaged girl eagerly watches the team’s star running back (STEVE) score on a long touchdown run as the fans of the home team cheer him on.
At the end of the football game, we leave the playground crowd and focus on the cheerleader and the star running back on a one-on-one walk to her house, where she talks him into giving her his jersey, straight off his back. We immediately see TRACY’s manipulative powers over unsuspecting boys.
From there, we meet the obedient next-door neighbor (RAHEEMA) right before her wayward older sister (MERCEDES) drives up and hops out of the passenger side of her boyfriend’s Mustang 5.0. MERCEDES’s glamorous appearance and original flyy girl attitude impresses TRACY, while it repulses her younger sister RAHEEMA, showing us the connection, goals, and polarity of the three Germantown-raised girls. Then we meet their mothers, BETH in MERCEDES and RAHEEMA’s home, and PATTI in TRACY’s home.
As I rapidly read the screenplay, I could see and feel all of it. It was extremely visual and sensible. Every scene had a purpose. Nothing was wasted. I could feel my heart racing as I read it. Tracy had started with the beef of the book, and she had tied in every important component, while killing all of the drag time that would not translate well on-screen. It was just a splendid job, right down to all of the Philadelphia slang; cuz, trippin’, straight up, chumpees, jawns, thorough, decent, all that, bangin’, chicken head, gettin’ new, et cetera. She had detailed everything!
I finished reading the screenplay before our airplane landed, but I didn’t have many constructive criticisms to offer my cousin. I even teared up at the end with VICTOR’s letter from jail. Tracy had somehow managed to wrap up the screenplay in one hundred twenty-four pages from a four-hundred-fifteen-page book, and she had maintained all the beef. What more could I ask for?
“What do you think?” she asked me with a grin. I believe she already knew how tight her screenplay was. I decided to humor her anyway after wiping the small tears from my eyes.
I asked her, “What happened to your poetry?”
She shook her head. “I told the story I needed to tell on-screen. They can get the rest of it from the book.” She smiled and said, “And I’ll make royalties off of both.”
Sasha asked me, “Can I read it now?”
I gave her the screenplay with the notepad and pencil that I didn’t bother to use.
I told Tracy, “I didn’t really see anything to comment on. I think you did a good job.”
“What about finding typos or spelling errors?” she asked me.
I said, “You know what? I really wasn’t even focusing on that. Maybe I can read it again and be more technical. But on the first read, I was thinking more about how you would do it, and now I know.”
I said, “But by killing the poetry, you also killed the line where Raheema says that you’ll be rich and famous one day if you keep writing. I mean, I think that’s important, especially looking at where you are now. You are rich and famous from writing. Raheema was right.”
She said, “Yeah, but in listening to girls talk about the book over the years, and getting the emails and everything, I really didn’t see where too many readers got the poetry. And for the ones who did get it, if they care enough about it, then they’ll tell me about it after they see it missing from the movie. And then I can sell them my books of poetry online or something.”
“Good idea,” I told her with a nod. “Well, I have nothing else to say then. I’m just looking forward to going through the process of casting, producing, and shooting the film.”
“And marketing and selling it,” Tracy added. “It’s not over with after shooting it. The machine wants to eat everything,” she joked.
Sasha looked over at us both and said, “Can I read it now without you two giving away the ending?”
“My bad,” I told her.
Sasha then looked past me to Tracy.
She said, “And Tracy, I did get the poetry, but that’s just me. Because I write poetry, too.”
My cousin had already made her decision.
She said, “That’s great, Sasha. But like I said, you’ll just have to get more of those details from the book. It’s there.”
Sasha said, “Yeah, but the poetry made you much more than just a regular girl growing up in the ’hood. It gave you depth, especially in your sequel book.”
“However, the sequel book would not stand up to the first book on the big screen,” Tracy argued. “It’s too cerebral. Look at the mess John Singleton made of Maya Angelou’s poetry in Poetic Justice. Some things are just better done in book form.”
Sasha nodded and finally agreed with her. “Yeah, that’s true. I’ve already fallen asleep on the first two of those Harry Potter movies. They were just a little too drawn out for me. So I’m not planning on seeing the third one.”
“I know that’s right,” Maddy commented. “I didn’t even see the second one.”
Tracy said, “All right, no more talk. It’s your turn to read it, then you write down what you think, and we’ll discuss it later.”
So Sasha got to reading as we continued on our long plane ride to Philly.
* * *
When we arrived at the Philadelphia International Airport, we had a limo driver waiting there to pick us up. He helped us gather our luggage, and we made our way over to the black stretch limousine. Tracy, however, was still busy saying hi to more fans who recognized her at the airport.
When we finally climbed into the limo, Jasmine said, “Oh my God, I’m loving this. This is how life is supposed to be.” Then she joked and said, “Tracy, can you adopt me? You can carry me around like luggage and I’ll just sit on the floor or in a corner and stay out of your way. I promise.”
We all laughed at her crazy behind as we drove off from the airport.
“Now, I’m not even gonna comment on that,” Maddy told us.
Tracy ignored it and got us all situated.
She said, “Now, I hate to give you girls a curfew, because I know you think you’re grown and everything, but while I have you out here with me, I don’t want to be looking for any of you. So I want you to all stay together, no matter what. And when I call Vanessa’s cell phone, somebody better answer it.”
We were all older than eighteen, but Tracy had a point. We were on her time, doing a job for her that we all wanted to do. So we had to agree to her rules.
Sasha was the oldest at twenty-one, and she spoke up first.
“You’re the boss. I’m just happy to be working with you. But I do want to visit my family in Delaware.”
“And you’ll probably take Jasmine with you, right?” my cousin asked her.
“If she wants to come, yeah.”
“Oh course I want to come,” Jasmine told her. “You’ve been talking about Delaware ever since I first met you.”
I looked at Alexandria t
o see if she would go, but she shook her head and declined.
“I’ll probably just get some rest tomorrow. I’m feeling jet lag,” she told us.
Tracy ran with that and spoke to Sasha and Jasmine. “Well, you two just let me know when you’re going and when you’re getting back,” she told them. “And keep that cell phone working.”
Sasha nodded to her. She said, “We’ll probably go tomorrow morning and get back by the afternoon.”
“Wait a minute, how early tomorrow morning?” Jasmine asked Sasha.
We all laughed again. Jasmine was not a morning person.
Tracy looked at Alexandria for about the first time and spoke to her individually.
She said, “Well, this is it, girl. Can you handle Philadelphia?”
Alexandria looked my cousin straight in her eyes and said, “Who, me?”
“Do you see me looking at anyone else?” Tracy asked her.
Alexandria laughed it off and looked a little unsure of herself.
She said, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Okay,” my cousin responded. “I’ll say no more.”
Then she got on her cell phone and started making calls regarding our arrival at the hotel. Tracy had a New York–based casting agent and camera crew that would be joining us at the hotel, and we all planned to set up for the casting calls that would go on that week at Freedom Theater.
* * *
We arrived at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Philadelphia at 7:32 PM, and Tracy’s New York team was already waiting there for us.
“Hey, Tracy, are you ready for all of this?” an ebony brown sister in short dreadlocks asked my cousin. She was wearing the rust-colored Flyy Girl Ltd. shirt with blue jeans and brown leather sandals. By then, Charmaine had come up with various different styles of shirts, but they all had the same summer color schemes with rust as the wild card.
“Hey, Robin. I’m as ready as I’m gonna get with this monster,” Tracy told her.
“Well, I love these Flyy Girl shirts and hats you’re working,” Robin stated. She spun around to show it off. She said, “You’re gonna make a killing with this line. I wish I had thought of it first.”