by Omar Tyree
Tracy slowed her pace, watching him as he talked on his car phone, hoping that he would look her way. She could not help herself. Empty of an outlet for excitement, Tracy found herself praying for him to light up her life for just a minute, but Victor did not seem to notice her.
Tracy speeded up to her house, dashed up the steps to her room, closed her door and threw her face into her pillow like a baby having a tantrum.
BRRRIIIIINNGG!
“Hello,” she answered the phone snappishly.
“What’s up?”
Tracy sat up. “Who is this?” she asked, just to make sure.
“What, you don’t recognize my voice on the phone?”
“Well, you haven’t called me in like years.”
Victor adjusted the channel on his car phone. “Well, that was then. I see you gettin’ older now.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna be going away to college soon and educating myself,” she bragged, hoping that it would interest him. Victor was never the unintelligent type. And his older brother had gone to college, so Tracy was confident that he valued it.
“Oh, yeah? So that means that I could come down there and visit you, and spend the night in your dorm room?”
Tracy’s heart raced as fast as when she had first met him. “We’ll see,” she teased.
“Do you still go with that dude?” he asked her, referring to Carl.
“Not really,” Tracy told him. Their split was not official, but Tracy was ready to move on from Carl.
“Well, you know I was drunk that night,” Victor said, stopping short of apologizing. He was not quite ready to fully apologize to a young-girl.
Tracy smiled, accepting it as an apology anyway. She knew about the male ego, and Victor had one of the biggest. “You know, I heard somebody say before that your real feelings come out when you’re drunk. And it seemed to me like you were jealous,” she alluded.
Victor chuckled. “That’s what it seemed like?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, maybe, maybe not.”
Tracy was filled from head to toe with bliss, but then Victor’s phone line beeped. “Yo, I’ma call you back. All right? I was just thinkin’ ’bout you,” he told her immediately.
Tracy wanted to ask why he didn’t say anything to her when she had walked past his car earlier, but since he was on the phone at the time, she suspected that he was probably busy. She hung up the phone and headed out of the door to go and pick up her brother, and was energized. Victor was gone from the playground, but she was satisfied with his call.
She called Raheema over as soon as she got back home with Jason to toll her the news. Maybe Raheema would have a different perspective on Victor than Jantel. However, Raheema came over with her own news to tell.
“Mercedes is coming over to talk to my father tonight,” she said.
“For real?” Tracy asked, shocked. Raheema’s news was more important than her news. “Do your parents know?”
Raheema looked at Tracy as if it was obvious. “Yeah, they know. My aunt told them. Mercedes had started stealing and stuff.”
“Oh my God!” Tracy exclaimed. “So what she wanna talk to your father about?”
“She wants to move back in while she goes to this rehabilitation place.”
“Is he gonna let her?’
Raheema shrugged. “I don’t know. But I doubt it, knowing him.”
Tracy paused, thinking the news over. “Well, how do you feel about it?”
“She’s my sister and she needs help. I would say to help her. But it’s not my decision.”
Tracy shook her head and grunted, “Mmm, this deep. Well, you know you gotta tell me what happened.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Girl, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. You gotta tell me tonight,” Tracy insisted.
“I’ll have to see,” Raheema told her, making no promises. She was still apprehensive about the family meeting herself. She wanted to give herself time to digest it all before she would tell anyone.
Beth was apprehensive about what her husband would say concerning Mercedes’ plea to move back into their home. Keith had only grumbled to her when she mentioned it to him a few days ago. “She walked out on us and now she wants to come back, hunh?” he muttered. So Beth was not optimistic about their meeting at all. But she nervously told him that if he did not agree to at least talk to Mercedes, she would be on her way out with her other daughter.
Raheema, on the other hand, felt that he would allow Mercedes to come back. He had never actually allowed his first daughter to leave, as much as he had talked about her. It was as if her image was imprinted on his mind. Raheema was only unsure about how she would take it. Mercedes had been an attention-stealer ever since she had started living in the fast lane, and Raheema feared being blatantly ignored again.
Mercedes rung the doorbell close to eight o’clock that evening. Her mother answered the door, and they greeted each other with a hug. Mercedes then followed Beth over to join Raheema and her father at the dining-room table, completing the four-member family again.
Raheema stood up to hug her older sister herself before retaking her seat.
Mercedes looked clean but thin. She had made sure to look her best and to be on her best behavior. She had to swallow a lot of her pride before finally deciding to ask her parents for forgiveness. She felt that her survival depended upon the support that only a caring family could give her.
Keith stared at his daughter, unstirred by emotionalism. “Why should we let you come back?” he asked, ice-cold.
Both Raheema and Beth stared at him, ready to defend Mercedes. Mercedes, however, kept her composure. After asking many questions of herself, she had finally learned to understand her father. He was as stubborn as she was, searching for an outlet to ease his frustrations. Their entire family was introverted and guarded. They all needed outlets. Mercedes was only able to understand that about them after leaving home.
“I’m not your enemy, dad. I’m a victim like you are,” she told him. “And I know that I brought this on myself, but you have to understand that, in a sense, you forced me into making some stupid decisions.”
“I didn’t force you to do a damn thing.”
“And nobody forced you to be so uptight with us,” she responded, on beat. “I mean, you gotta understand that everybody has to have something to be happy about in life. There has to be something that they love to do. And we didn’t have that here.”
“You could have participated in anything you wanted to,” he told her. He looked over at Raheema and said, “Your sister was in a dance class. We all went out to see her perform. Where were you?”
Raheema wanted to speak up about how afraid she had been about keeping her grades up, and how she had given up her weekends to study. Dance class had been more pressure on her than enjoyment. The only enjoyment in it was her final performance, and she had never participated in dance again.
“And I bet you found a way to make that hard on her,” Mercedes commented, hitting the nail on the head.
Raheema was pleased with Mercedes’ thoughtfulness. Beth nodded her head, remembering the night her daughter had come home in tears, fearful of the pressure of keeping her studies together while attending dance classes.
“You do what you’re supposed to do, and you can do whatever you want on the side,” Keith said.
“But that’s just the point. Life is more than doing what you’re supposed to do. Life is about living it while you’re here. I mean, sure, you would like for us to get good grades and to go to school and all, but that ain’t what makes people wake up every morning. They wake up every morning because of the exciting things that may happen that day.”
Keith was suspicious. He did not believe that Mercedes could carry out such a clear and concise argument by herself. “Who been puttin’ this stuff in your head?” he asked her, realizing that her points were valid. He had been living for a paycheck for so long that he had forgotten how to re
ally enjoy himself.
Mercedes sighed, realizing that selling her program to her father was going to be just as tough as she thought it would be. “We love each other, dad, but we think too much alike to admit it,” she told him.
Beth looked at her daughter and smiled. She had known that fact for years. Mercedes and Keith were both bull-headed.
“Yeah, well, this is still my house, and if you’re planning on moving back in here, then you know that I have the final say-so.”
“Do you?” Mercedes asked him.
“What?” he responded, confused. “You damn right!” he fumed, ignorant of Beth’s feelings about it.
“So if Raheema walks out of this house with straight A’s, can you guarantee her a college education?”
“If she continues to get the grades that she’s been getting, then yes I can.”
“And after she’s finished college, can you guarantee her a job?”
Keith paused, knowing that there was no guarantee. “If she gets good grades in college, then she’ll get a good job.”
Mercedes nodded. “Maybe. But you can’t guarantee that.”
“What are you trying to get at, girl?” he snapped, weary of playing Q & A with her.
“What I’m trying to say is that, no matter what you do to prepare yourself for the world, there is no guarantee. You can only do the best that you can do to survive, but ultimately it’s gonna be your will, and not how smart you are or how disciplined you are, that gets you over.
It’s a lot of people in the world who are just like you, dad. They come home mad at the world every night and end up taking it out out their loved ones because they don’t know any better.
“And by the way, I’m not a girl,” she told him. “I’m a young woman in need of some help. And I’m also your daughter.” Mercedes could not help the tears that swelled up in her eyes. It wasn’t part of her speech, it simply happened. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. Beth jumped up to get her some tissues while she comforted her.
“Thank you,” Mercedes said with a sniff.
Keith sat silently. There was not a word at the table for a couple of minutes. Keith loved his daughter. He loved his family. And Mercedes was right.
Beth felt optimistic after hearing his silence. She knew her husband, and silence from him meant that Mercedes had made a good-enough case to stay. Raheema knew it, too. She was no longer concerned about her sister getting too much attention. She looked at Mercedes as an important ally.
“So what do you want us to do?” her father asked her.
“I’m going into this rehabilitation program, and I just wanted your support and somewhere to stay when I get out in a couple of months. I need for somebody to come up there and see me and tell me that everything is gonna be all right. The counselors told me that the best way for me to pull through it is if I have my family’s support.”
“And when are you getting out?”
“As soon as I feel I’m strong enough.”
Keith nodded and looked at his wife. “We can do that, Beth.”
Overjoyed, Beth stood up from the table and said, “Now, can I see you two hug? I’ve been dying to see that.” She began to choke up and cry herself.
Mercedes stood from her chair and walked around the table, eager to feel her father’s arms around her. Keith slowly rose from his chair and approached her. Mercedes reached out and tenderly embraced him. Keith, feeling his daughter’s frail body in his arms, began to choke up himself.
“Come on over here, Raheema,” Beth told her youngest. She grabbed Raheema’s hand and pulled her into a three-way embrace with her father.
“Thank you, dad,” Mercedes told him, tearing uncontrollably. “Thank you so much.”
Tears came leaking out of Keith’s eyes for the first time in over twenty years. “Damn, girl, now you done got me crying,” he told her, unable to stop them.
Beth kissed his cheek and said, “It’s good for you. We needed this. All of us.”
And after all that they had been through, Raheema could not agree more.
destiny
Early on a Saturday morning, Tracy headed for Chelten Avenue to catch the bus to the Broad Street subway. She was decked out in white Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and a turquoise silk shirt, carrying her black leather Coach bag. She was on her way downtown for her fourth week at work in Jeans & Shirts. It had rained the night before, so the pavement was still damp, and a chilly wind blew through her asymmetric hairdo. She had done away with the baby dreadlocks, reverting back to the honey-blond-tipped asymmetric look, donning her triangular-shaped Tracy earrings again with her neck laced with gold.
Victor Hinson cruised up behind her in his blue Mercedes Benz. He stopped alongside her, rolled down his passenger-side window and leaned over the seat. “Hey, pretty. You want a ride?” He looked handsome, almost coal black with moon-white teeth.
Tracy was not sure if she wanted to oblige. After Raheema’s news about Mercedes going into a rehabilitation center, the awareness that Victor dealt in drugs made him no longer acceptable to her. Morally, Victor was no better than Cash. “I don’t think so.” she told him.
Victor speeded up the street and double-parked. He then popped on his hazard lights, jumped out of his car and walked over to the sidewalk to wait for her.
Tracy was apprehensive as she slowly approached him. Oh my God, I don’t have time for this, she thought to herself. She had to be at work in less than an hour.
Victor, in a sky-blue and white terry-cloth sweat suit with white BK shoes and no socks, danced to the music that rocked from his car, as he waited for Tracy to get closer to him. His sweat-suit jacket was zipped down to his stomach, and his gold V dangled from his chain and glimmered against his black chest. He then stepped in front of Tracy and grabbed her hands, ever so gently.
“I just wanted to hold you again, but I guess that you’re over me now,” he said to her with a smile. He knew that she wasn’t.
Tracy stood there with him, at a loss for words, and was motionless. Am I over him? she asked herself, feeling his touch for the first time in nearly three years.
“I can’t even give you a ride to where you’re going?” he asked her. “Where are you going this early anyway? You got a job or something?”
Tracy was still trying to gather her thoughts. Am I over him? she continued to ask herself. “I gotta get to work,” she finally told him. “I have to be to work in like forty-five minutes, and I need to get to Broad and Olney to take the subway.” She still had not released herself from his hold on her.
Victor pulled her to his car and said, “Come on, then.”
Tracy didn’t want to get in, but she found no desire to pull away from him. She had never been inside of a Mercedes Benz, and before she knew it, Victor had shut the door on her and run around to the driver’s side. Tracy found herself quickly relaxed as she leaned back into the blue leather interior, admiring the Mercedes Benz dashboard and the car phone. And the sweet strawberry incense that dangled from his mirror was pleasing to her senses. Damn, this car is decent! she could not help but thinking.
Victor glanced over and smiled at how sexy and tempting Tracy continued to look to him. He had a confession to make to her. “You know what? I don’t know what it is, but every time I see you, I keep getting these urges to say something to you. And it’s like I can’t help it.
“I mean, to be straight up about it, I’ve been with a whole lot of good-lookin’ girls, but none of them held my interest like you do.”
Tracy cracked a huge smile. “Because you like me,” she suggested to him.
Victor chuckled to himself and asked, “Why would you think I liked you, out of all the girls that I’ve had?”
Tracy thought as quickly as she could and responded, “Because I didn’t sweat you like they did.”
Victor burst out laughing. “Come on now. What are you trying to say? Are you trying to say that I never had you waiting for me at the playground and whatnot?”
&n
bsp; Tracy grinned, embarrassingly. “That’s when I was younger.”
“So what ’chew sayin’? I couldn’t do that to you now?”
“Hell no,” Tracy snapped at him.
“But do you still like me though?”
Tracy paused. “Have you ever loved a girl before?” she decided to ask him.
Victor thought about it. “Love? You mean, like, ‘I love you’ love?”
Tracy laughed. The idea sounded alien to Victor. “Yeah. Have you ever loved a girl?”
“Damn, that’s a good question. I mean, I remember girls that I liked a lot, and I still talk to them and all, but I ain’t never said that I loved them or no shit like that.”
“Why it gotta be ’shit?’ ”
“Well, I don’t mean ‘shit,’ like in unimportant, I mean, ‘shit,’ like in complication. You know what I mean?”
Tracy sucked her teeth and stared at him. “Do you love me?” she asked. She was surprised that she had asked him, but once it was done, she felt good about it. She was finally beginning to assert herself with Victor.
Victor looked straight into her hazels with his piercing blacks. “Do you think that I love you?”
“Sometimes. Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because. I mean, you’ve been looking out for me and stuff, like I’m your little sister or something.”
Victor shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve done that with a lot of girls.”
“Have you done it with them?”
He shook his head. “Naw, not really. But you were big for your age, so I had to have you.”
Tracy cracked up as they approached Broad Street a little too quickly for her. “You sound like a pervert,” she told him.
“Come on now, I ain’t that much older than you. How am I gonna sound like a pervert?”
Tracy grinned at her ill reference of him. “I was just playing with you. Don’t take it personal.”
“Well, ain’t this your stop?” he asked, pulling right up beside the subway entrance.
Tracy was enjoying her conversation with him too much to leave. Fuck it! You only live once, she told herself. “You wanna ride me downtown?” she asked him.
