“Well, Carl, what are we going to do tonight?” Tracy asked. She was stretched out on Carl’s bed inside of his dorm room.
“First, I have to take you home, and then I have to study for this upcoming test,” Carl told her from his desk. He closed his book and stood up to leave.
“How come you all strapped into your grades, all of a sudden?”
“Look, would you get off the bed and come on.”
“Oh, you don’t want me down here or somethin’?”
“I didn’t tell you to come down here anyway. I mean, you’re just getting to the point now where you’re inviting yourself.” Carl opened his door.
“Okay then, since you have to study so much.” Tracy jumped up from his bed and snatched her bag from off the floor. Not a word was spoken on their City Line Avenue ride toward her Germantown home. It was February, a new semester of college for Carl and the second half of Tracy’s junior year of high school. She hadn’t been able to spend a good deal of time with him since Christmas. It wasn’t her fault that he was on academic probation. Or was it? Tracy had been occupying a lot of his time, but so was football and DJing. Carl simply had his marbles in too many different jars.
“All right, I’ll call you when I get in,” he said. He had double-parked his small Nova out in front of Tracy’s house.
“Oh, you not even gonna walk me to my door, hunh?” she huffed at him.
Carl looked at her as if it pained him. “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, getting out to open her side. Just as he did, Victor Hinson and four of his rough-looking friends approached them from the corner.
“YO, TRACY! COME HERE!” he hollered, drunkenly. He was staggering from side to side as he walked, obviously filled to the rim with alcohol.
Tracy didn’t know what to do. Oh my God, he’s doing this shit again, she reflected, remembering when Victor had intervened to save her from Timmy. “What do you want?” she asked him, nervously.
“Fuck you mean, ‘What I want?’ I said to come here. NOW!”
Tracy, noticing his drunken condition, tried to laugh it off. “You had a little too much to drink,” she told him.
Carl walked behind her cautiously. He was aware that Victor’s friends would intervene if he was to try anything bold and courageous. And they didn’t look like the types to allow any Action Jackson stunts to go down.
Victor said, “Oh, okay. You gon’ get new on me now, since you got this muscle-headed pussy with you, right?” He walked up on Tracy’s sidewalk with his friends laughing in the background.
Tracy held in her own laugh. Carl did have a massive-sized head.
Carl turned and looked Victor in the face, as if he wanted to hurt him for embarrassing him.
“Yeah, what ’chew want? We got the whole fuckin’ street,” Victor responded to Carl’s glare. “I’ll break your punk ass up!” he shouted, heading out into the middle of the street.
Victor took off his jacket and sweatshirt as Tracy watched, astonished and tickled brown. Victor was still black and beautiful in his own muscular frame. His gold link-chain and small V around his neck, glittered from the night lights along with the gold-nugget bracelet on his right wrist. “Come on, punk,” he insisted, challenging Carl. “Come the fuck on out here.”
Carl was contemplating about his friends.
“Ay Vic, stop that shit, man,” one of his friends said, still chuckling. “Come on, cuz’. Put your shirt back on, you gon’ catch a damn cold out here.”
“Naw. FUCK ’DAT!” Victor hollered, staggering.
His crew continued to laugh.
Victor then kicked Carl’s car. BOOM! “Now what, pussy? I wouldn’t let you kick my muthafuckin’ car. I’d put my foot in ya’ ass, if it was my car. But I guess this piece of shit you drivin’ don’t mean much.”
Victor’s friends pleaded, seriously, “Vic, man, you drunk. You gon’ have neighbors comin’ out here, man.”
Carl gritted his teeth, not budging, but he was starting to get worried. And Tracy’s father was not in from work yet. If this guy kicks my car again, I’m gonna have to fight all of them, Carl mused.
Victor put his Adidas sweatshirt and winter ski jacket back on with his black Sergio jeans and Timberland boots. He had a fresh haircut to boot. Victor was the shit, even when he was drunk.
“Yeah, aw’ight,” he said, straightening out his clothes. “That’s my young-girl you dealin’ wit’, boah’. You treat her wrong, and I’m gon’ break you the fuck up. Aw’ight, boah’?” he asked Carl.
Carl stared as if he wanted to hurt Victor. They were both about the same height, but Carl was thirty pounds heavier. Nevertheless, Victor was older and much more intimidating.
“You hear me talkin’ to you, cuz’?” he asked, as he walked closer to them.
Carl and Tracy had not moved from the sidewalk since Victor started putting on his scene.
“Ay Vic, leave him alone, man. Dude don’t want shit,” his friend said, ushering Victor down the street.
“Fuck off of me, man! I can walk. And I know that big-head pussy don’t want shit.” They headed down Tracy’s block, with Victor leading his friends. He then yelled, “PUNK!”
“Who was that?” Carl asked Tracy as they left.
Tracy lied. “Oh, that’s just some guy that wanted to talk to me a while ago.” She was surprisingly excited about the event. Victor was ready to fight for me, she thought.
Carl said, “That boy has a big mouth. I hate guys like that.” He headed to his car and said, “I’ll call you when I get in.”
“Jantel! Guess what?” Tracy quizzed, jumping on the telephone as soon as she got inside.
“Okay, what Carl do now?”
“Nothing. It was Victor,” Tracy told her.
“Victor? What about ’im?”
“He was ready to fight Carl over me.”
“Get out of here! Victor?”
“Yeah. And he said I was his young-girl.”
“For real!” Jantel shouted, getting excited herself. She then calmed herself down, starting to think for the both of them. “Yeah, but Victor still a damn dog. That boy done had more girls than I had track meets.”
Tracy laughed and said, “I know.” But she still could not help thinking about him. She added, all in a hurry, “I wonder if he gon’ stop by and see me tomorrow. I wonder what he wanted. He might of asked me to come over to see him.”
Jantel butted in and said, “No, girl. I can see it now. You gon’ end up being his little plaything again.” She was surprised she said it. Jantel always thought that way about Tracy and Victor, but she had never said it. She was slightly afraid of Tracy.
“WHAT?” Tracy fumed.
“I ain’t mean it like that, Tracy. I just meant that Victor’s just a dog, and that’s all that he be wantin’.”
“No. You ain’t mean it like that. You callin’ me a whore.”
“No I’m not, Tracy. For real.”
“Yes the fuck you are!” Tracy responded acidly, hanging up on her friend. She sat there in her room in a state of turmoil. She’s right, she told herself. I am still fuckin’ hooked on him. She was disappointed with herself for still liking Victor. Carl had become a drag like all her other previous boyfriends. Only Victor remained exciting for her. Yet he was the ultimate dog.
What the hell is wrong with me? she asked herself. She decided to push the thought of Victor out of her mind. I’m not gonna be nobody’swhore, she insisted.
Tracy began to watch more television in Carl’s busy absence. She even started taping shows when she knew that she would miss them. And every effort to stop from watching them and find something more constructive to do, only made her anxious to find out what she had missed. Tracy was a television junkie.
The glamour on television became the only perfect world. Adventures of Dynasty, Knots Landing, Falcon Crest and other network shows and movies of non-black people occupied a good portion of Tracy’s imagination. She began to long for her own riches, imagining herself hosting large, elegant parties where handsome bachelors drooled over her and catered to her every desire.
“TRACY! GET UP OUT OF THAT BED, GIRL! Do you know what time it is?” Patti shouted, waking Tracy from dreamland. It was Thursday morning, and a school day.
“Hunh?” Tracy responded sleepily, tossing the pillow over her head to drown out her mother’s screaming.
Patti yanked the pillow from her and turned the light on. “Girl, I’m sick and tired of you getting these damn late slips and detentions. Now get up, I said! What is wrong with you?”
“Nothin’, mom.”
Patti wore her white work coat, with a new wrap hairdo, looking good and young. “Are you pregnant or something?” she asked her daughter. Tracy had been at a loss of energy for weeks.
“No, I’m not pregnant,” Tracy answered her with a frown.
“Well, what’s your problem? All you’ve been doing is lying around watching those damn shows, with this nappy-ass hair of yours!”
“It’s natural,” Tracy retorted with a grin.
Patti had not said anything to her about the twisted-up hairstyle since Tracy had started wearing it. She figured it was a stage that her daughter was going through. But it was getting close to springtime, and Patti felt that Tracy would not be able to straighten her hair out in time to apply for a summer job.
“Girl, that ain’t no nature,” she responded with a smirk. “If you want a natural, then grow an Afro.”
Tracy smiled herself. “Unt unh, mom. I don’t believe you said that. See, white people got us hating our hair,” Tracy rebutted, finally sitting up.
Patti said, “A nature is not using chemicals and whatnot, but you can still comb it. ’Cause my little do looks good, girlfriend. You hear me?” Patti chuckled, looking inside of Tracy’s dresser mirror. “I got you an appointment with Donna tomorrow,” she informed Tracy as she left the room.
“What?” Tracy asked, standing up to get herself together for school.
“You heard me,” her mother responded before heading down the steps.
Already running late, Tracy took extra-long to shower up and get dressed. By the time she had arrived at school, it was after nine o’clock.
The security guard stopped her at the front door. “Excuse me, young lady, but are you just coming into school?” asked the heavyset and hungry-looking guard. He had a bunch of unnecessary hair on his face, untrimmed.
“Yeah,” Tracy snapped.
“Well, you’re gonna have to go to the office.”
“I know that. That’s where I was going.”
Tracy rolled her eyes.
The security guard grabbed her by the arm and said, “In that case, let me escort you.”
Tracy violently yanked away from him. “GET OFF OF ME! I CAN WALK!”
“That’s it, young lady, you’re in more trouble now,” he warned her.
“Yeah, whatever,” Tracy responded, unmoved.
Staff members came out of their offices, hearing the argument that erupted. Tracy strutted into the disciplinarian’s office herself, ignoring their stares. She knew what was coming. She sat in the empty room, waiting for her case to be heard. Dirty, hairy, greasy man, she fumed to herself.
“Okay, I see we have a lot of problems going on here,” Suit-and-tie said to Tracy. He was well-groomed as usual.
Tracy was a junior, believing she was old enough to demand respect from anyone. “No we don’t, ’cause he shouldn’t have put his hands on me.”
Suit-and-tie let Tracy know. “Look, young lady, don’t come in here with an attitude problem with me, ’cause you’ll find yourself home for a few days, on suspension. Now, first of all, you’ve been late nearly every day for the past two weeks, and you have the audacity to come in here with this two-cent attitude as though we did something to you.”
“And?” Tracy asked carelessly.
“Okay, that’s it.” Suit-and-tie pulled out a pink slip from his desk. “Now I was gonna let you off the hook with a couple more detentions and a last warning, but it seems to me that you don’t want any warnings.”
“I don’t care, ’cause I need to be away from this place for a while anyway.”
Suit-and-tie picked up the phone, pulling Tracy’s file. “Is your mother at work?”
“I don’t know,” Tracy lied, rolling her eyes again.
“Yes, may I speak with Mrs. Ellison please? . . . Yes, this is Mr. Waters from Germantown High School. It seems your daughter, Tracy, has a problem. Now I was originally going to give her three days suspension for her attitude, but now I think she needs five, unless you can come and talk to me about her. Okay . . . Mmm hmm . . . All right then. Well, I’ll send her home, and you can come in on Monday with her to talk with me,” Mr. Waters said, hanging up. He then filled out the pink slip and handed Tracy a copy. “Now you go on home and think about things,” he told her.
Tracy left school, but she wasn’t planning on going home. She headed down to Cheyney’s campus after catching a taxi on City Line Avenue to pay Carl a surprise visit. There was no sense in going home. Tracy decided it would be better to stay on campus until it was time to pick up her brother.
“What’s up?” she asked with a grin as Carl opened his door.
“What have you done now?” he asked.
“I got suspended.”
Carl sighed, sick of all of her drama. “What the hell is wrong with you, Tracy?”
“Who you talkin’ to like that?”
“I told you I have to study for my midterms this week, and here you come, crashing in here talking about you got suspended, as if you don’t give a damn.”
“So let’s take a break and go to the movies.”
Carl sat back at his desk. “I don’t have time, number one, and no money either.”
Tracy could not hold it in any longer. “You know what, Carl? I’m tired of just sittin’ the fuck around while you do your homework, and then you wanna get some. You don’t take me nowhere, you don’t buy me nothin’. AND I’M TIRED OF THIS SHIT!”
Carl stopped studying. “Tracy, what the hell are you talking about?” he asked her. “You’ve been doing your thing, watching them damn television shows and BET videos for the past couple of weeks. I think you must be confusing characters or something. This is me, Carl Thompson, from college. Remember me? Earth to Tracy.”
“All that smart shit can walk,” she snapped at him.
“Yeah, and that’s exactly what I feel like telling you.”
Tracy was shocked. “Oh, is that the way you feel about it?”
“Yes, that’s how I feel, Tracy!”
Tracy left his room without another word and slammed his door, hoping that Carl would come out after her, but he didn’t.
Tracy got a ride back to the city and caught a bus downtown. She wandered around on Chestnut Street and looked over a pair of jeans inside of a retail store.
“Hey, bright eyes, you want a job?” an olive-complexioned Italian man asked her.
“Who, me?” Tracy responded with a smirk.
The Italian man walked over to her wearing an opened silk shirt that displayed his hairy chest. He wore two gold chains, and his black, curly hair shined as he slung his right arm up on a clothing rack, getting comfortable. “Yeah, you,” he said.
Tracy stared at his gold-nugget bracelet.
He looked at Tracy’s hairstyle and held back his comments. He wanted to hire her first. Tracy was obviously attractive, despite her twisted hair.
He smiled and said, “See, this is my store. I’m in charge of who gets hired here. Now I got a girl leaving soon for a spring break or something. You could replace her for me.”
“What about when she comes back?”
“We’ll worry about that then. But if you’re interested, give me call. I’ll hold the spot for you, but you gotta let me know by next week.”
“Okay,” she said, following him to the counter, where he gave her a store business card.
“Pamela! Come here a second. Wouldja’? This here is Tracy. She’ll be in to work with us in a week or so,” he said to a tall, light-skinned black woman. He assumed that Tracy would take him up on his offer.
“Hi you doin’?” Pamela asked, shaking Tracy’s hand, lightly. She had huge gold earrings herself, with a sketch of Manhattan, New York, set inside of their circular shape.
Tracy responded, “Hi,” while observing her earrings and her clothing.
“Now, Pam will give you all the details when you come in to work for me next week,” the Italian man interjected. His name was Joseph Bamatti. Tracy liked his name. She thought it sounded like a designer suit in GQ magazine. She walked out of the store, looking into several outside mirrors as she strolled along Chestnut Street, proud of her pretty face and attention-getting eyes.
“Mom, I’ll straighten up now. I promise. I just needed something to do,” Tracy was saying, after twenty minutes of arguing with her mother about whether she could accept the job offer.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because, I just needed something to do to stop being bored, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m still gonna have to go and talk to Mr. Waters to get you back in school.”
“I know,” Tracy said, glowingly. She was very excited about her first job offer.
Patti conceded. “All right, girl, but you act up again, and that’s it. And I have to tell your father first, to see what he has to say about it.”
Why you gotta ask him? Tracy almost slipped and asked. She still had to get used to the shared chain of authority, since her father had returned. “Oh,” she responded, walking away from her mother solemnly.
Patti went down the stairs and left Tracy in her room to think.
Jason walked in and asked, “Tra-cy, where’s Carl at?”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause, I wanna know.” Jason was decked out in another attractive Oshkosh outfit.
Tracy answered, “I don’t know, and I don’t care. He’s a dumb jock anyway, that’s trying to be a nerd now.” She laughed and added, “That stupid pussy. Oops,” she responded, catching herself.
Jason smiled. He didn’t seem to make a big deal out of it, but he knew Tracy had said a bad word.
“I’m sorry, little man. You’re not gon’ tell on me, are you?” she begged him.
“No.” he told her with a smile.
Pleased with his answer, Tracy said, “All right. I’ll get you some cookies then, for being cool.”
“And some milk, too,” he told her. He was about to turn six years old, and was growing taller and getting smarter by the minute.
Tracy responded with a grin, “Oh, you’re getting greedy now.”
Jason said, “You shouldna’ said it then.”
Tracy chuckled to herself and headed down the stairs to get her brother the promised milk and cookies. Dag, that’s a shame. I’m being blackmailed by my little brother, she thought.
“Girl, I got some news for you,” Jantel told Tracy over the phone that evening. She was attempting to make up with Tracy after her slip of the tongue the night before.
“What?” Tracy asked flatly. She wanted to make up with her friend, but she was still hurt by what Jantel had insinuated about her.
“Guess who’s pregnant.”
“Who?” Tracy asked.
“Carmen. And she four months at that.”
“For real?”
“Yup, ’cause I had just found out today.”
“See, I told that tramp about runnin’ around with everybody,” Tracy said excitedly.
Jantel fell silent. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing again. “I think she did it on purpose though, ’cause I heard that this guy got money,” Jantel finally said, thinking that her comment was safe.
“That don’t mean shit. She ain’t gon’ get none. That girl is dumb,” Tracy commented.
Jantel sat silent again. I wonder how you feel about me, Tracy? she thought about asking. Tracy had been good friends with Carmen, but she seemed two-faced when she talked bad about her, a friend one day and talking about her the next.
Tracy was beginning to see the picture. Who was she to throw stones? “Well, I shouldn’t say that,” she commented apologetically. “Anyway, what else is new?” she asked, deciding to change the subject.
“Nothin’. What’s up with you and Carl?” Jantel asked.
“Fuck that boy!” Tracy exclaimed, without another word about it. “Oh yeah, I got a job offer downtown on Chestnut Street today,” she said.
“For real?” Jantel asked.
“Yup,” Tracy told her, beginning to warm up to her again.
“I can’t even get a job with track and all. My schedule is too busy,” Jantel commented.
“Ain’t outdoor season ’bout to start?”
“Yup, next month.”
Dave poked his head into Tracy’s room and gestured to her.
Tracy held the phone away from her mouth. “Yes?” she asked him.
“I wanna talk to you for a minute.”
Oh my God!Here it comes, she thought to herself, nervously. “Jantel, I gotta call you back,” she told her friend before hanging up.
Dave took a seat on her bed while Tracy sat in her desk chair, anticipating their first father-daughter confrontation since he had moved back in almost a year ago. She knew that the moment would come eventually. It was only a matter of time.
“You know you have one more year of high school before you graduate, right?” he asked her. His tone was calm and conversational.
Tracy nodded, speechlessly. She wondered where her father was heading with the conversation.
“Do you plan on going to college?”
Tracy thought about how much fun she had had on Cheyney’s campus with Lisa, Joanne, Kiwana and Carl. “Yeah,” she told him with another nod. “I wanna go to college.”
Dave nodded back to her. “Well, everybody don’t get to go to school. Did you know that?”
Tracy paused. “I haven’t really thought about it like that,” she admitted.
“Most teenagers don’t, until the last minute. And then they end up not being able go to the college that they wanted to, because they were unprepared for it.”
Dave let the idea sink into his daughter’s head before he commented on it further.
“Now what college would you like to go to?” he asked her next.
“A black school.” Tracy told him.
“A black school? Why?”
Tracy hunched her shoulders. “Why not? Because I want to be around black people, I guess,” she told him.
Her father began to smile at her. “I’m glad that you’d like to go to a black school and all, but it should be more than because you want to be around black people. You can go to Community College downtown and do that. You have to have a goal in mind when you start thinking about your future. I just want you to think about that before you start acting up in school, because you’ll end up putting yourself in a bad situation that you’ll be struggling to get out of.”
He got up to leave her room and added, “By the way, congratulations on your new job. Maybe now you won’t be digging in my pockets so much.”
Tracy smiled at her father before he returned to his room. She was pleased with his method of getting across to her. My dad really is cool, she told herself, continuing to smile. She was proud to have such a thoughtful father. He ain’t nothin’ like Mr. Keith at all.
Monday morning, Tracy and her mother held the conference with Mr. Waters in his office. Several teachers had filed complaints on Tracy’s lack of focus in class, but her grades did not seem to suffer. She had maintained A’s and B’s. She agreed with everything though, just to get the hour-long conference over with. She was dying to catch Carmen in school. She had a few words for her.
“Ay girl, I heard something big about you,” she said.
Carmen was cutting her classes inside of the lunch room again. “I know, I know, but life is life,” she retorted, annoyed with the gossip. Tracy was not in school when Carmen’s pregnancy news hit the fan and blew around.
“See, I told you about running around.”
“Tracy, you’re no better than I am. You just didn’t get pregnant yet.”
“That’s right, and I ain’t gettin’ pregnant no time soon, either. I’m going to college.”
“Yeah, well I’m happy for you. Anyway, I lucked up this time, ’cause he wants to marry me,” Carmen informed Tracy cheerfully. She had not given her boyfriend an answer yet; she was simply proud that she had been asked.
Tracy said, “Well obviously, somethin’ is wrong with him. And you’re only seventeen.” She was trying to cover her surprise. She was jealous.
Carmen took a sip of her Sprite soda. “People used to get married young. And my grandmother was fifteen when she got married.”
“Yeah, well that was then, and the cost of living is much higher now,” Tracy refuted, still shocked by Carmen’s announcement.
Carmen said with a grin, “Well, his father is an engineer, and he’s studying to be one, too. Plus, his mom is a physical therapist, and he said they make a lot of money.”
Tracy was doubtful. It all sounded too good to be true. “Aw girl, that boy can tell you any damn thing, ’cause you don’t know.”
“Yeah, but I do know that he’s treating me nice. He got a car, he’s going to college this year, and since I’m carrying his baby, I got something that’s a part of him forever.” She got up to leave. “So now, Ms. Too-Fine. Or at least you think you are,” she added, chuckling as she left.
Tracy had no words. Her plans to bring Carmen down had failed. She was the one who had crumbled. Security was something she had never known. Her father had only recently come back to the family, and her relationship with Carl was practically over, like the rest of her short-term flings. Well, I wish Carmen luck, she told herself, ’cause I sure ain’t had none. At least my father is back home though, and my mom is happy again. But what about me?
Tracy played with her left earring, watching the younger freshman girls flirting with the older boys. It was evident to Tracy that none of them knew what love and romance were. They were all too immature, looking for adventure, thinking it was love and falsely believing that they were grown.
The school day ended quicker than Tracy expected. She felt the usual stares while walking home from school. But they were coming from younger guys, who hadn’t known her. She had been on a college campus and to college parties with a college boyfriend. What could a high school boy offer her? They were getting on her last damn nerves with, “Hey, baby. Can I get to know you better?” “You look like a movie star, sweetheart. Can I be your manager and keep that body healthy, with a little bit of work?” And one guy even got nasty. “Can I lick you where it feels good? Please. You know you would like it.” Tracy told him off. “You a nasty little muthafucker. Do you know that? What kind of a mother would raise you?” Then she thought that Carl was nasty for doing it. Nevertheless, Tracy’s attractive appearance drew attention, whether she liked it or not.
She walked around the same corners of Wayne and Chelten Avenues, seeing the same faces. The same older guys hung out in the playground, running ball, since Tracy could remember. And in the middle of that long playground block, in a blue Mercedes Benz, sat Victor Hinson.
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 really 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.”
“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.