Boss Lady

by Omar Tyree

  I kind of agreed with her on that. We needed a logo that people could see immediately. Otherwise, what was the point? But Charmaine had a different view.

  She said, “I consider a flyy girl one who moves and gets things done. So I wanted to design a sample that highlighted movement. And unless you walk with your arms stuck at your sides, people will eventually see the logo. But since it’s not in your face, it makes them more curious to know exactly what it is. You want to get people curious enough to ask about it, want to touch it, and see it up close, especially with a sample.

  “Good design also saves you from wasting all kinds of money to market your line,” she said. “The best marketing for your new line is the human body. But if you do what everyone else does, then why should anyone buy your line over an already established one, outside of the fact that you’re new? So I want to always think outside the box on how we can make a line work off the thought and creativity that went into the design itself, before we put any marketing money into it.”

  Once she explained her philosophy, her ideas made all the sense in the world. Charmaine Dearborn was a very controlled woman, too. I saw immediately that there was a lot we could all learn from her. She was a full-sized, deep-brown sister who kept her temper intact and explained everything that she did with poise. So whenever anyone got too excited around her, they made themselves look irrational.

  My cousin’s emotion-filled energy had little or no effect on Charmaine, which made her the perfect check and balance for business. It also allowed Tracy an opportunity to relax around her, because she realized that the sister knew what she was doing. And before we all knew it, we had a box of sample shirts and hats ready for our kickoff casting call in Philadelphia in June.

  The Quiet Before the Storm

  We were two days out from our trip to Philly in June. I had been home over the Christmas break in 2002, and my mother was still peeved at me about everything that had gone on between us years ago. However, she understood that I was a college student now and was out of her house. I was doing quite well, too, so she left me alone. But now she had to deal with my two younger sisters on her own, which was a lot more hectic than when she had to deal with me, or when she still had me around the house to deal with my sisters for her. So I gave my mother and sisters a long-distance phone call from the living room sofa, just to touch base with them and to test their temperatures before I arrived back home.

  I dialed the numbers to our North Philadelphia house and waited for an answer. It was after seven o’clock West Coast time, so I knew everyone would be home after ten in Philly.

  “Hello,” my mother answered. It startled me. I guess I expected to hear Veronica or Tiffany answer the phone. They were both teenagers now—seventeen and fourteen.

  “Hi, Mom,” I answered back. I never knew what to expect from my mother, so I waited again.

  She screamed, “Vanessa! Thank God you called, girl! Now talk some sense into your sister. I caught her dating a much too older man. The boy’s nearly thirty years old.”

  “Twenty-seven,” I heard Veronica state in the background.

  “Like I said, he’s damn near thirty,” my mother argued. “And that’s way too old for you.”

  Things were changing fast. My mother never allowed me to talk back to her like that without smacking me upside the head afterward. She was slipping. Was I the cause of that, or was it only a matter of time? But my sisters were a lot more hardheaded than I ever was.

  My mother wasted no time in giving Veronica the phone to talk to me. They had me on the spot. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

  “Hi,” my sister answered dryly.

  I had been around my cousin Tracy long enough to know exactly how to handle the situation. So I used a little reverse psychology and went straight for the jugular with my sister.

  I said, “I know Mom is right there breathing down your neck, so I’m gonna do everything in code language, where all you need to do is answer the questions. Okay?”

  My sister grunted, “Hmmph. All right.” She had no other choice.

  I asked her, “Do you like this guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he like you?”

  “Of course.”

  Veronica had much more body than I had. For guys who were into young girls with the junk in the trunk, she was a prime catch.

  “Does he have other women?” I asked her.

  She paused on that one.

  “No.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “No, he don’t have to tell me.”

  “Oh, you just know that for a fact, hunh? So is he ugly?”

  “Unt unh, I’on even go out like that.”

  “So he looks good?”

  “I think so.”

  “And no one else does?”

  She paused again.

  “They know what time it is.”

  “And he uses protection every time?”

  There was another slight delay.

  “I’m saying, what are you trying to ask me?”

  “I’m asking you if he uses protection.”

  “No, that’s not really what you wanna know. You try’na be smart, Vanessa, but I ain’t no dummy.”

  “Who are you talking to like that?” my mother yelled at her. “That’s your older sister on the phone.”

  Veronica said, “Yeah, and she still thinks she’s smarter than everybody. I can see what she try’na do. I don’t care if she went to some Engineering and Science and UCLA. I ain’t no damn dummy. Gon’ ask me if he uses protection.”

  “What?” my mother asked her.

  “That’s what she asked me,” Veronica explained.

  My mother said, “Give me that damn phone. Vanessa, what did you ask her?”

  I said real calmly, “Mom, she’s getting us off the subject. You shouldn’t be thinking about what I asked her, but what the answer is. So yes, I did ask her about protection, because I want to cut to the chase and see how serious she’s already gotten with this guy. Now, if she hasn’t gotten that serious with him, then she would have answered that she’s not into that.”

  My mother paused. I could immediately see her dilemma. If she agreed with me, then she was admitting that I could handle the situation better than she could. Nevertheless, she had given me the phone to talk to Veronica because she knew I could handle it. She couldn’t back out now and let my sister create a smoke screen. That would put my mother in another bad situation. Veronica was nowhere near as angelic as I had been.

  My mother finally said, “Well, answer the question, Veronica. Does he use protection or not?”

  “Mom, I don’t believe you’re taking her side on this.”

  “This is not about taking damn sides, girl. Just answer the damn question. Yes or no.”

  “Well, what if we’re not doing anything? Have you thought of that?” Veronica asked.

  I said, “Mom, does he have a car?”

  “Yeah, that’s where I caught her, climbing out the car with him,” she told me. “She tried to be slick by climbing out the car around the corner, but she didn’t see me walking out the corner store.”

  “And they haven’t done anything in the car?” I asked her.

  My mother relayed my question to Veronica.

  “You didn’t do anything in that car with this man?”

  “Is that what Vanessa told you to ask me?” I heard my sister ask. She was working a reverse psychology game of her own. I had to give it to her.

  My mother said, “You got one more time to say some smart shit to me before I ram your head through that damn wall. You hear me?”

  I didn’t hear my sister respond to that, so I guess she did hear.

  “Can I talk to her again, Mom?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Here, Veronica,” I heard my mother say.

  “What she want?” my sister responded.

  “Girl, if you don’t get on this damn phone . . .”

  “Yeah,” Veronica answered with snap. “
Ow!” she yelled into my ear. “I’m talking to her, Mom.”

  “Well, I don’t like your attitude. Now straighten it up,” my mother told her.

  I didn’t want to waste any more time with my concerns, so I moved to wrap things up.

  I said, “I apologize to you, Veronica. And you’re right, you’re no dummy. But I’m just trying to get you to ask yourself more questions about the relationship you’re in and why you feel you need to be there.”

  “Why do you feel you need to be where you are?” she asked me.

  I asked her, “You don’t want me here?”

  “You can be wherever you need to be. I don’t have any control over your life.”

  “I didn’t ask you that.”

  “Well, I’m telling you.”

  I said, “Are you acting like this toward me because Mom put me on the phone like she did, or are you mad at me for some other reason?”

  She gave me no immediate response. I began to wonder how much my sisters regretted me leaving the way I did. We never really talked about it. They just asked me general questions about moving to California and about the weather and everything. But we never got into any deep conversations about me leaving. I just figured they both understood my mental abuse. But maybe they didn’t, and maybe I didn’t understand theirs.

  Finally, my sister said, “Look, you got your life, and I got mine. That’s all there is to it.”

  “But you’re still my sister,” I told her. “I still care about you. And you should still care about me.”

  No response again.

  “You done talking?” she asked me

  What else could I say? A lot of things actually, but I didn’t feel like it. I would rather do it face-to-face. So I decided to wait until I arrived back in Philly to talk to my sister again.

  “Do you mind if I take you out to eat somewhere when I get back home?” I asked her.

  If she said no to that, then I would be convinced that something was definitely wrong with her, because my sister loved to eat.

  I said, “We can go to that Jamaican restaurant you like on South Street again.”

  She said, “Aw’ight. Whatever.”

  “Whatever? Do you want to go or not?” I reiterated.

  “I said, yes,” she told me.

  It wasn’t the truth, but I would settle for it. I guess I had a lot of catching up to do with my sister. She was seventeen and not a kid anymore. We needed to have more mature conversations, and that’s how I planned to regard her from then on, as mature.

  My mother got back on the line and said, “We’ve been hearing all over the radio about this casting call thing for Flyy Girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if a thousand kids showed up down there.

  “So when do you fly in?” my mother asked me.

  I guess my mother was finally loosening up, right as my sister was becoming sour to me.

  I said, “In two days?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At the Marriott downtown.”

  “The new one on Market Street?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. Tracy’s paying for it?”

  It was a rhetorical question. My mother surely knew that I wouldn’t be paying to stay at the Marriott for a week.

  I answered the question anyway.

  “Yeah, but I’ll still come up to the house.”

  “I know you will. Look, you wanna talk to Tiffany before you go?”

  I really didn’t. Veronica had already killed my energy for the night. But I had to talk to my baby sister. It wouldn’t have been right not to. Then I would have another sister upset with me.

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to her.”

  My mom screamed, “Tiffany! Vanessa’s on the phone for you!”

  I had to wait for Tiffany to receive the phone, which drained more energy out of me.

  “Hey Vanessa,” she answered. At least she was upbeat. She said, “Tell Tracy I want to be an extra in her movie.”

  I smiled and said, “Join the crowd. We all want to be extras.”

  Talking to my family back home in Philly really made me think about how far I had come in life, and how easily I could be back in North Philly, ripe for pregnancy by some penis-minded, wannabe street hustler, pimp, or thug. Of course, there were a lot more honest men to date and life paths to take, but after talking to Veronica, she reminded me of just how simple it was for a girl to lose her way while looking for love in the wrong places at the wrong times. You gotta have your own drive in life. That’s just all there is to it. Nobody can make things happen for you. You have to make things happen for yourself.

  “What are you thinking about now?” my cousin Tracy asked me.

  “Whoa, you scared me,” I told her.

  She startled me. I didn’t hear her walk up to the sofa from behind me.

  “Yeah, because you’re down here daydreaming. Who were you talking to on the phone, your mother and sisters?”

  I nodded. “Veronica got herself an older guy and, of course, my mom is all over her about it. She had me talk to her.”

  Tracy looked at me and chuckled. Then she took a seat next to me on the sofa.

  “So, she had you talk to Veronica about guys? Hell, that’s like me talking to a high school about wrestling. I know nothing about it.”

  I smiled. “Well, I do know something about boys,” I told her.

  “Well, what did you tell Veronica? Let me hear it so I can tell you what will happen and how to prepare for it.”

  “I mean, I just asked her a few questions and told her to think about why she’s really involved with this guy.”

  “Did she snap at you?”

  I smiled even wider. “Of course she did. But I got past that. We’re gonna have a sit-down over Jamaican food on South Street when I get back home to see her.”

  Tracy nodded again. “That’s good, that’s good,” she repeated.

  Then I began to study her. She had something on her mind. She was only waiting for the right angle to break it to me. I knew my cousin good by then.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked her back.

  She sighed deeply and said, “We’re about to do it. We’re about to get started with producing this Flyy Girl movie, and already my little friend is starting to act up.”

  I looked into her face and asked her, “He doesn’t want you to do it? I mean, he knows you have a career in films, right. What about when you’re shooting your other movies?”

  Tracy nodded. She said, “He knows that I’m on set for months at a time. I thought he was cool with it. Now he’s starting to say things like, ‘I don’t know if I can keep him in storage for one woman that long.’ Ain’t that some shit? Makes me not want to deal with him. I don’t know what ovens he’s gonna try and bake himself in.”

  I grinned. She had a nice way of putting it. Then I thought about my part in her troubles. Was my obsession with the Flyy Girl project breaking her up with her man?

  I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was gonna happen. I didn’t even think about it.”

  Tracy blew me off. “Girl, you have nothing to do with that. I’m always gonna be doing something. So any man who can’t handle that can’t handle me. I’m not the housewife type—yet.”

  I smiled, and didn’t want to continue on the subject. What was the use? Guys will be guys, and when a girl has plans of her own that don’t involve them, they can either support their woman in what she wants to do, or act like spoiled little boys. And there was nothing I or Tracy could do to change that.

  I asked her, “How far are you on writing the screenplay?”

  I wanted to stay excited about things. It’s so easy to lose your excitement because of complications. I didn’t want that to happen.

  But Tracy stopped all of my excitement when she asked me, “You think all of this is easy, don’t you?”

  I didn’t know what to say. She caught me off guard with that. She was dead serious, too.

  I answered, “No . .
. but it can be done.”

  “Obviously it can be done, but you have no idea what the process is like, even with a small film,” she told me. “I mean, I literally got lucky with Led Astray, Vanessa. It was a luck-of-the-draw movie. But after my last two films flopped, now I know, it’s not an easy thing to be here.”

  I said, “You just have to make sure you pick the right movies.”

  “It’s not just picking the right movies, Vanessa. It’s a lot more complicated than that. There’s a whole lot of other work involved. You really have to work this machine. And that’s what it is, a machine.

  “Every day you have to put more fuel in it just for it to turn on, let alone to work well,” she told me. “This is a real tedious lifestyle.”

  “But people get it done every day,” I argued. I just couldn’t see giving up the dream. I had traveled too far, and my cousin was already in. I had read and memorized her poem about it in her sequel book For the Love of Money. It was called “Prisoners of Fame.” So I quoted it to her:

  “I have a vault filled with gold / and thousands of Benjamins / that belong to my tribe. / And when I get horny at night / if I wanted a man / to even lick the crack of my ass / he would pay me to do it. / And I wake up every morning and step on / every little nobody / who wouldn’t give me the time of day / yesterday / but now them same motherfuckers beg / to see me for tomorrow. / And I have never worn a damn / red-and-white Santa Claus suit / so why is every day Christmas? / Then I become the Grinch / who stole it / whenever I say no.

  “Would you like to join my tribe? / It’s fun! / But once you join us / and the vault door closes / you can’t get back out / unless you fall out / and end up strung out / and begging / to get back in.”

  Tracy smiled hard at me, then joked, “Where did you get that from?”

  I played along with her. “Oh, I don’t know. I can’t even remember. I guess I must have read it somewhere.”

  She said, “And did you ever read this one:

  “The machine has no emotions / no face / no warm blood / no family / no friends / no loyalty / no memory / and no future.

  “The machine only knows the now / this year / this month / this week / this day / this hour / this minute / this second / and counting.