Boss Lady (31 page)

She leaned back from me and said, “What's this for?” She looked skeptical. That's how a lot of people react when they're not used to good things happening to them.

I said, “It's just because I love you, Mom.”

Tiffany said, “Does that mean you're coming back home?”

She had me on the spot.

My mother answered her before I could. She said, “No, Vanessa has things to do now . . .” Then she paused. “And I'm proud of her for it.”

My mother had no idea how good it felt for me to hear her say that. We had fought about everything for so long, and she was finally allowing me to spread my wings and fly.

I said “Thanks, Mom” and buried my head into her neck and shoulders. “I didn't mean to hit you,” I mumbled to her. “I didn't mean it.”

Tiffany said, “Aw, don't start that Sunday-afternoon-special crying stuff.”

My mother told her, “Shut your mouth, girl.”

Sure enough, I was crying into my mother's shoulder, and I didn't want to let go because I didn't want my sisters to see me cry.

“It's okay, Vanessa, I know you didn't mean it,” my mother told me.

“I didn't,” I mumbled again. “I just can't let nobody stop me, Mom. Nobody.”

“I know, girl. You have to do what you have to do,” she told me. “I understand.”

“Thank you,” I told her again.

I wiped my face before I let go of my mother because I knew my sisters were still watching me. I had a lot of pride, I guess. And when I turned to face them, they both had a lost look on their faces. They didn't know how to feel. They didn't know what it was like to go all out and experience the full emotions of life. So I had to get them to feel it. It was my job as the big sister to do that for them.

“Come here,” I told them.

They were both still hesitant.

“Come here,” I said more forcefully.

“You hear your sister talking to you?” my mother told them.

When they walked over to me, I grabbed both of them into a bear hug and pushed our heads together. I said, “I love you guys. I love all of you. And if you let me do what I need to do, I'm gonna hook all of us up. I promise you that. So just let me do my shit.”

Tiffany said, “As long as it don't stink too bad.”

We started laughing again, like sisters who love each other.

My mother shook her head and said, “That damn girl . . .”

I said, “It's all right, Mom. That's just who she is. But no cooking for you tonight. We're all going out to eat. Wherever you guys want. And I'm paying for everything, including the taxi ride.”

My mother looked at me and said, “Okay, you're the boss. Let me go and freshen up, and I'll be right back down.”

W
hen I got back to the hotel after dinner with my family, I felt like nothing could get in my way. Everything had to be successful. It was like I had a fresh pack of batteries in my brains, and I was just pulling them out of the pack.

So I walked right over to Maddy and Alexandria's room to clear the stale air between us.

Maddy answered the door with her face still bruised from our fight that morning. She had nothing to say to me.

I told her, “First of all, I want to apologize for our fight this morning. Second, I wasn't trying to get involved with Shamor, he was after me. And third, I had nothing to do with last night. You guys just happened to walk in at the wrong time.”

She said “Whatever” and began to close the door on me.

I said, “Just hear me out for a minute. I just want to talk to you.”

“Talk about what?”

“About life, Maddy. Life and aspirations.”

“What about it?”

“Can I come in?”

Maddy still wanted to get her revenge. I could see it in her eyes.

I said, “You can kick my ass if you want to, but I'm not here for that. I want to talk to you. Both of you,” I told her.

She said, “Alexandria's not here. You know where she is.”

“Well, let me talk to you alone then.”

Maddy continued to stare at me. Then she slowly opened the door wide enough to let me in. She was watching a movie and eating room service, a Caesar salad with grilled chicken, at the small desk. She had vanilla ice cream on the side for dessert.

I sat down on Alexandria's bed and took a breath. Maddy went back to eating her food and ignored me.

I said, “There are so many trivial things that get in the way of real progress in life. Small stuff, and we're not supposed to sweat it, but we do.”

Maddy paid me no mind. So I kept talking.

“I don't know what everybody else wants out of this, but I'm going for everything.”

Maddy still didn't say anything. She was busy eating and watching her movie on the television.

“Girls, in particular, will bicker about stuff that means nothing half the time. But I've never had the chance to hang around a lot of guys because they always want to get me. Even the smart guys get it confused. I try to do study sessions with them, and all they can think about is what my perfume smells like, even when I'm only wearing cocoa butter.”

“Look, if you came over here to talk about yourself, then you can go back to your own room and talk to your walls, because I don't want to hear that shit,” Maddy finally spoke up.

I asked her, “Well, what do you want to do with your life, Madison?”

I had just finished talking about life aspirations with my sisters. I guess I was on a roll with the subject.

Maddy spat, “I wanna eat my fuckin' food in peace. Is that all right with you?”

I sat quiet for a minute. Then I said, “We have plenty of time to eat food, but the real work gets done when we're hungry. You notice how they call it a lunch
break,
or
break fast
? Even dinner is supposed to cap off your long day of hungry work.”

Maddy took a deep breath and kept her silence.

I was rambling a bit, but I still had a point to make. There was so much that people could get accomplished in life, but they didn't because too much bullshit took up too much of their time.

She said, “If you don't eat, you die.”

That was what I wanted from her. I wanted a mental debate. I wanted to make sure that Maddy didn't stop thinking just because of our fight that morning. Sometimes conflicts served to shut you down, but you could use those same conflicts to get yourself started.

I said, “But if you don't work, you don't eat. So what comes first?”

“You don't have to work to eat. I know plenty of people who don't do a damn thing, and they get to eat every day,” she argued.

“Where are they getting their food from?”

“From other people.”

“Do those other people work?”

Maddy stopped talking again.

Then she said, “The point is, everybody doesn't have to work to eat.”

I said, “Well, why would anybody give a person food who doesn't work?”

She said, “You got babies, teenagers, old people, crippled people, crazy people, even bums, who don't work, but they all eat, don't they?”

“Okay, but none of those people are independent either,” I argued.

Maddy said, “Who said anything about independence? You were talking about eating.”

“I was talking about how eating relates to work, and when you do your own work you have independence. And when you have independence, you can eat whenever you want to, and as much as you want to, but not while you're working. It's better to be hungry while you're working so that you look forward to the food that caps off your day. That's what I was talking about,” I told her.

Maddy looked at me like I was crazy. And maybe I was. But somewhere in all of that, I still had a point to make.

I clarified my point and said, “We all have an opportunity to turn this work into our own independence, but instead we're fighting each other over some dumb stuff.”

Maddy looked at me and said, “How is this creating independence for us? We're out here working for your cousin. She's the only one benefiting from this. We're not even getting paid. We're getting to spend a week in Philadelphia while we bust our ass all day on some film we won't even star in. Well whoopty-fuckin'-do. I'm so excited.”

I said, “You took plenty of pictures that you can use for your own purposes. You're in contact with professionals you didn't know before. People are getting a chance to see you on stage and think of you in
ways of importance. And it's up to you to work your opportunities to your own advantage.”

I told her, “J. Lo was only a dancer once, and so was P. Diddy.”

“So fuckin' what?” she snapped at me.

“So they wanted to be more than that, and they worked hard to get there.”

“Well, maybe everybody doesn't want that, Vanessa. Maybe you're the only one who's all gung-ho about this shit. And maybe I just want to eat my fuckin' food, like I said.”

“That's why I asked you what you wanted,” I told her. “But if all you want out of life is to eat your food, then I guess you're no different from the crippled bums, babies, old people, and teenagers you talked about who eat but don't work.”

“I do work,” Maddy insisted.

I said, “Well, make it worth something then. And you can be mad at me all night, but the reality is, you're here, and you still have an opportunity to make something out of whatever you do. And beefing with me and Tracy has nothing to do with that. So don't blame us for your wasted opportunity.”

Maddy said, “Who do you think you are, Oprah Winfrey or somebody? You're a nobody without your cousin. Everything you're doing right now is through Tracy. You take Tracy away and you don't mean shit. So you need to stop your fuckin' frontin'.”

I said, “Yeah, but you take me away and you don't mean shit either.”

“So what do you think, that I owe you something because of this? Well, you know what, as soon as we get back to L.A., you don't have to worry about doing anything for me again, 'cause I see how you work now. In fact, you're worse than your cousin. At least she's not trying to paint some bullshit picture to us. I mean, you talk about sisterhood and all of that, but this is all about you. Well, you can have it all without me. And if you don't mind, I'd like to eat my food now, because I don't like being hungry.”

So much for talking to Madison. I started off good and ended up sounding very selfish. I probably made the situation worse. Then she would tell Alexandria.

I stood up from the bed where I sat. I told her, “I'll leave you
alone then.” I thought about apologizing again for my slipup, but I don't believe she wanted to hear it. I had said enough for one night.

Instead, I came up with a simple and overused cliché, “Life is what you make it, Madison. That's all I can say.”

Before I could walk to the door to let myself out, Maddy said, “Thank you, Vanessa. I never knew that before. Now I know that I can do anything I want to do in life. And I owe it all to you.”

I walked out the door and closed it behind me. I felt small and insignificant again. Madison had shot me down with her sarcasm. Did Sasha and Jasmine feel the same way about me? Was my head that damn big? I walked over and knocked on their door to find out.

Jasmine opened the door and said, “Hey.”

She wasn't bouncing with energy like she normally was.

I walked in behind her and took a seat at the desk chair.

“Hey, Vanessa? How'd the rest of your day go?” Sasha asked me.

“Actually, good,” I told her. “I got a lot of things squared away with my family.”

Sasha nodded to me. “That's good.”

They were both watching a movie from their beds. They had already finished their room service dinners. Their trays were on the desk and the floor.

“No South Street tonight, hunh?” I joked.

“I mean, how many times are we gonna see it?” Jasmine stated.

“I know what you mean. So how did you like seeing the rest of Philadelphia today?”

“I mean, we really couldn't concentrate on everything because of what went on this morning,” Sasha admitted.

I shook my head. They were letting the conflicts get in their way as well.

I said, “We can't allow something that happened in the morning to ruin our whole day.”

“That's easy for you to say, you got to get away from them. But we had to keep looking at their sour faces all day,” Jasmine told me. She had a point.

I said, “So, what happens for tomorrow? Do we keep this thing going, or do we move on?”

“I'm ready to move on,” Jasmine said, “but you can't make everybody feel that way. You need to talk to them about that.”

“I already did. And I think I only made the situation worse,” I admitted. “Maddy didn't want to hear anything I had to say, so we started arguing about the whole idea of this trip, the clothing line, the movie, and our sisters' support club. And she's ready to wipe her hands with all of it now, just because of me.”

“Well, what did you say to her?” Sasha asked me.

I answered, “Her main point is that she thinks I'm big-headed, and that I look at this whole trip as something that I put together.”

“You did put it together,” Jasmine told me.

“No,” Sasha countered. “You were a major part of it, but we all instigated it. Because at first, you started talking about starting something without Tracy. You didn't even want to use the Flyy Girl name. You were talking about an urban ladies club.”

She was right.

I said, “So Maddy felt like she wasn't getting anything out of this trip, and that it was all about me and Tracy, and that's part of the reason why we were fighting this morning?”

Sasha said, “Well, I feel they both need to be appreciative, but obviously they're not. They're trying to use this whole trip for their own purposes, and that's not right.”