Boss Lady (19 page)

She said, “Anyway, what's up with the casting calls for
Flyy Girl
? Can Tracy put me in the movie as an extra or what?”

I could see Tiffany in a movie scene as clear as day. She was a medium brown, lanky, and humorous teenaged girl who could crack jokes with the best of them.

“Can you write your own lines?” I challenged her.

Tiffany went right into her own scene:

“That girl Tracy swear she the shit. But she need to wipe her ass, 'cause I can smell her from over here.
Bitch
.”

I had a delayed response to it. At first it was shocking, but then I began to smile. It was a sour kind of humor that you had to think about.

I said, “This is not an R-rated movie, Tiffany.”

She said, “So, let me get this straight, we can't cuss in this movie, after all the cussing she did in her book?”

It appealed to me at that moment that Tiffany had always had a foul mouth, but she got away with it because she used a humorous touch.

I said, “Actually, the screenplay doesn't have as much hard language as the book. And there's not a whole lot of speaking scenes for extras. That's why I asked you if you could come up with something.”

“Oh. Well, let me play the Jantel role. You know I'm going to Simon Gratz this year. I might go out for the track team,” my sister told me.

I paused. I didn't want to get her hopes up for something too big.

I said, “I think you need to focus on just a role as an extra. I'm not even going to talk about any other role with you. These people are professionals.”

“And I'm not?”

I said, “I think you could be a professional one day, but you're not right now. You're not even in high school yet.”

“Tennis players become professionals at my age.”

“You're not a tennis player either,” I told her.

“I could be,” she responded. “I'm built like a tennis player. You could even call me Tiffany Williams.”

I could see that my conversation with Tiffany would end up all over the place. She always had a flighty mind like that. She would jump from one illusion to the next.

I asked her, “What time are you planning on coming to the auditions? I can have someone looking out for you at the door. You can at least see what everyone else looks like.”

We were narrowing down the performers we wanted to call back for quality roles and screen time.

Tiffany said, “Can you pick me up and take me down there? I'm a little weak on bus fare right now.”

“If I pick you up, it'll be around eleven-thirty, and I'll have no time to wait for you to get ready. Or better yet, you could just ride your bike over?” I suggested.

She said, “Ride my bike? All the way to Freedom Theater? What do you think, I'm going out for the Tour de France sometime soon, and I need training? That's a long way.”

I smiled again. I said, “If you really want to be there, you'll be there. I won't be picking you up every day when we start shooting this film.”

“Yeah, but I might have money by then,” she told me.

“What, you're getting a summer job?”

“No, but I play the lottery. I'm gonna win any day now. You watch.”

Tiffany was full of jokes.

I joked myself and said, “Okay, you can buy yourself a role then.”

Tiffany paused and mocked me.

“Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. You're not even funny. Get ready for early retirement.”

“Whatever. Well, I was just calling to check up on you,” I told her.

“When you coming to the house?” she asked me.

“For what? She don't want to come over here. She's a California girl now,” I heard Veronica pipe in the background. I wondered how much of the conversation she had listened to, or if she had just walked back into the room.

“PMS,” Tiffany whispered to me again. “I hope I never get it bad like that.”

Tiffany had me locked on a smile. I was glad she was there to talk to. She had lessened the pain of talking to Veronica.

I said, “If I come back home, it sounds like Veronica'll be there camped out to beat me up.”

Tiffany said, “Please. Only one sister in this house had heart enough to put her hands up to Mom. But I'ma do it too soon . . . when I wake up.”

That joke wasn't funny. I didn't know how I felt about that. Hitting my mother was like a permanent black eye to my character. Anyone could bring it up at any time. And they did.

However, I was curious.

I asked, “Do you and Veronica talk about that a lot?”

“Umm . . . what do you consider a lot?”

“More than five times since it happened.”

I was just throwing out a number.

Tiffany said, “Oh, well, we always talk about it then. We talk about it five times a week. We make sure we mumble it under our breaths though. ‘That's why Vanessa bust you in the mouth.' ”

I had to force myelf not to laugh. Tiffany must have fallen on her head too many times as a baby, because she had obviously lost a lot of her marbles.

I said, “Don't let that slip out on you. But I have to start getting myself ready now. It's almost eleven o'clock.”

“So, you're not gonna pick me up then?”

She was pressing me.

I said, “I'm gonna be with a group of people and I won't be driving.”

“Yeah, Veronica said you was hanging out with the Oxygen Foundation now.”

“Oxygen Foundation?”

I didn't know what she was talking about.

She said, “Yeah, your crew got their noses all up in the air, sucking up the oxygen. Won't you tell them to save some for us.”

That was about enough for me. Tiffany could run her mouth for hours, and all about nothing. So I cut her short and said, “Okay, I will.”

*  *  *

When my girls and I were all dressed and ready to go, wearing our third set of Flyy Girl Ltd. clothes for the week, I found myself itching to ask Alexandria how her night had gone and what all she had done. She had never been one to talk too much about her personal life. Nevertheless, I couldn't think straight without knowing something.

“Did everybody sleep good last night?” I hinted. We were standing at the elevators, ready to catch one down.

“Like a baby,” Jasmine responded. She responded to everything.

One down, three to go,
I told myself.

“What about you, Sasha? The bedbugs bite you hard last night?”

“Oh, I was up watching HBO. They always have those good original movies at night.”

“So, we came from the movies, and then you went right back to watching more movies?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I was just up,” she told me with a chuckle.

“You stayed up, too, Maddy?” I moved down the line and asked.

Maddy answered “No,” real curt. She seemed like she had an attitude with me, and I knew exactly why, but I didn't want to comment on it out in the open with everyone.

Before I could get to Alexandria, the elevator doors opened. Four people were already riding it down from the higher floors. I knew I couldn't get Alexandria to talk in that environment, so I waited for us to reach the bottom. When we finally did, Robin, Shamor, and the rest of the New York camera crew were all waiting for us.

“Hey, it's time to go, girls. Let's go, let's go, let's go.”

Robin practically pushed us through the hotel lobby toward the limo that was parked outside at the front entrance. Tracy was already waiting inside. I didn't want to get into a conversation about Alexandria being out with Jason in front of Tracy. I still had to figure everything out first.

“So, what did y'all do last night?” Tracy asked us.

“We went to the movies, South Street, Delaware Avenue,” Sasha answered.

“Any guys try to get those digits?” Tracy joked to us.

“That's always,” Jasmine answered.

Tracy looked at Alexandria and said, “What about you, Alexandria? You find anything you like in Philly?”

My heart jumped into my throat. I just didn't know what to think about a Jason/Alexandria connection. But what could I do about it? If they liked each other, they liked each other. Then again, Jason had forced me to introduce them.

After Tracy's question to her, Alexandria cracked a smile. I sat there and watched her every move.

She said, “Maybe. You never know.”

Maddy grinned and looked away.

“What are you grinning about, Madison? You meet somebody here, too?” Tracy asked her.

I looked away after that. It seemed that the same guy had somehow intertwined himself with Maddy and me without my even trying to be involved in it.

Maddy answered, “Not exactly,” and everybody got real quiet.

Then my cousin looked at me.

“What about you, Vanessa? Any old fling get your eyes open?”

I didn't feel like having that kind of conversation. But since she was asking me, I decided to play devil's advocate.

I said, “What if they did? And what if I had company over last night? How would you respond to that?”

I knew that a good discussion would throw things off of me, so I was willing to give it a try.

Robin looked over at Tracy in the limo with a raised brow.

It was weird. We had all read about how wild Tracy was as a teenager, but there we were, walking on eggshells with her about our own personal lives.

She asked me, “What would you expect me to say? I'm not your mother.”

Jasmine spoke up again. I guess she just couldn't help herself.

She said, “Yeah, but you did bring us out here. And I think we all
feel like we don't want to let you down. Especially Vanessa. She has to live with you.”

For once, Jasmine's big mouth actually made some sense.

Tracy nodded to us. She said, “You guys have all read about me in my books. I've made mistakes, so you already know that I'm far from perfect.”

Sasha said, “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. And we all understand that . . . and you know, you've made some great accomplishments. So even though we know what you've been through, we also see where you are now.”

Maddy said, “In fact, since we know you're not perfect, we can't really front like you don't know what time it is. You know what I mean? It's like, you already know the ropes.”

“And that's all the more reason for you guys to open up to me,” Tracy argued. “I know what it's like trying to make the right decisions as a girl. And I don't even have kids yet, so please don't treat me like a parent.”

We all laughed a little. Her joke loosened up the tension in the back of the limo.

“I see what they're all saying though, Tracy,” Robin stated. “I mean, you do understand that you're not just a regular person anymore. Whether you like it or not, these girls look up to you now, and I'm not just talking about the girls in this car. You literally have
thousands
of urban American girls who have read your book and who swear by you. That's why making this movie is so important, so the girls who still haven't read it can be affected by your story now.”

“And you guys all think my story is that important?” Tracy asked us all.

“Yeah,” we all responded to her.

Robin said, “Tracy, you have
theee
coming-of-age book. No other book comes close to it.”

“Sister Souljah's,” Maddy commented.

Robin said, “Yeah, but everybody's daddy is not a drug dealer. I'm sorry, but I did not relate to that one.”

“A lot of people do though,” Maddy argued.

“Generation gap,” Robin commented. “
Flyy Girl
has less of a generation gap, and I believe that more black
women,
in general, will relate
to it. So this film can reach a much wider audience. Hell, even white girls can relate to running too fast after the wrong boys.”

“Asians, too,” Sasha spoke up with a proud grin.

“And Latinas,” Jasmine told her.

“I can't see why we can't do both movies,” Maddy suggested. “We have a lot of different perspectives in the black community.”

Robin said, “Oh, believe me, if
The Coldest Winter Ever
or
Flyy Girl
gets made, and either one of them is successful at the box office, you can plan on seeing many more of them. That's just how Hollywood works.”

“They didn't make a lot more movies after
Set It Off,”
Alexandria finally spoke up. She had been quiet for most of the ride.

Robin smiled and said, “Yeah, you're right. But they didn't need to make more movies like that one. That movie had the wrong messages everywhere you looked.”

“But it was about sisterhood,” Alexandria commented.

“That movie was about
foolishness,”
Robin argued strongly.

Alexandria smiled it off. She said, “Sisters can be foolish, too. That's all a part of real life. Everyone can't play the good-girl roles.”

“Yeah, but it seems like the bad girls get all the attention,” I commented myself. I had been quiet, too, just listening to everyone.

Tracy nodded to me. She said, “That reminds me.” She held her index finger up and kept her thoughts to herself for the moment.

But when we arrived at Freedom Theater for that third day of casting, she pulled me aside and said, “I want you to go out with me to dinner tonight. Raheema's coming into town this afternoon, and I'm going out to eat with her and Mercedes, and I want you to be there to vibe with us.”

I was speechless. It was an honor.

I said, “Okay. But what about my girls?”

I didn't want to just abandon them in Philadelphia.

Tracy answered, “I'll have Robin hang out with them tonight.”

So what else could I say?

“Okay.”

*  *  *

I was sitting at a four-chair table with Tracy and Raheema at the Zanzibar Blue restaurant and jazz club on Broad Street downtown. And I was nervous. I had met Raheema a little earlier at the casting call when she stopped by, but to have her and her sister Mercedes at the same table was different. It was as if I could feel the tension before Mercedes even arrived.