Flyy Girl (38 page)

“Well, you shouldn't have been pimping him, and buying him all that stuff,” Raheema told her.

Tracy smiled at her neighbor's choice of words. “Pimping him?” she repeated. “Let me find out Raheema's trying to sound hip.”

Raheema grinned. “Well, that's what you were doing, dressing him up and showing him off and stuff.” Raheema secretly liked Charles herself, yet Tracy practically jumped down his throat to get his phone number when they had first met him at The Gallery.

“Yeah, well fuck him,” Tracy fumed. “And see if I spend
my
money on another boy in
my
life.”

Raheema chuckled. “I wish I could have went with him,” she revealed. “I would have never let him leave.”

Tracy looked at her neighbor's pimpled face and felt sorry for her. Raheema was living off of her life. “So you would have had sex with him?” she asked, still wondering if the myth was true that sex could clear up acne.

Raheema thought about it. “I don't know. But I mean, why not?” she piped.

Tracy shook her head at her, remembering her first experience with Victor and how she had turned into his plaything. “You don't wanna do that. Just hold out until you get married.”

“You didn't,” Raheema reminded her.

Tracy paused, thinking about what she had actually gotten out of having sex, and why she had been so quick to engage in it the first place. “I think I just got ahead of myself and got mixed up into boys for the wrong reason,” she admitted. “I mean, I had no business at all
being with a guy like Victor. He wasn't no good for me. And I can see that now. He was
way
out of my league. And after him, I just kept doing it.”

“What about now?” Raheema asked, curiously.

“What, me and Victor?”

“Yeah? Do you think he's still out of your league?”

Good question,
Tracy thought. “Umm, I don't know.”

“Whatever happened to Keith?” Raheema asked, changing the subject. She had begun to enjoy talking to Tracy about boys since she was older and more interested in them. And Tracy had many stories to share.

“Fuck that boy. He thought he was better than somebody,” she snapped.

Raheema frowned. “You do too.”

Tracy grinned, feeling guilty. “Yeah, but I don't do it the way he did. I mean, I don't really think that I'm better than people. I just—”

“Yeah, whatever,” Raheema said, cutting her off.

Tracy chuckled to herself. “Have you seen your sister lately?” she suddenly asked.

“No,” Raheema answered quietly.

“She might just don't want to see y'all.”

“Are you saying that my sister hates us that much?”

“No. Maybe she's too ashamed.” Tracy was speaking more for herself than for Mercedes. She was ashamed. Mercedes had been her big-sister figure as well.

Raheema was speechless. She was utterly confused about what road to travel in her life. She definitely did not want to go through the things that Mercedes and Tracy had been through, but yet they still had lived fuller lives. Raheema continued to believe that she was being cheated.

Raheema asked out of the blue, “Tracy, when was the last time you had sex?”

Tracy was shocked. She laughed and asked, “Wow, where'd you get that question from?”

“I don't know. I guess because I never had sex.”

“Well, Cash was, when he took me to Atlantic City, last September.”

“Dag, I didn't ask you
who.
I asked you
when.”

Tracy laughed. “You probably was gonna ask me that next, anyway.”

“But you only
did it
with him once, though?”

Tracy grinned. “Well, you can say that, if you're talking about on different dates.”

“He didn't try you again?”

“Not really, 'cause he was embarrassed. He got other girls though.
I
just wanted his money. His jeep was nice, too.”

Raheema quizzed, “What do you mean, ‘he was embarrassed'?”

Tracy smiled and said, “Because, he didn't
last
too long.” Then she chuckled and said, “Look, I gotta go get my brother. I'll be back.”

Tracy left. She shook her head on the way, thinking of how much Raheema appeared to be missing out on. It was no surprise to see Victor again when she turned the corner. He was close enough to speak to her.

Tracy could sense him watching her as she walked. She then turned and caught him smiling at her, still giving her tingles up the spine. She was immediately angry at herself.
I don't believe that I still get nervous
around him,
she told herself.

“Ay Tracy, can I walk with you?” he said to her.

Why not?
she told herself. “I'on care.”

Victor walked up beside her and grinned. “So I hear you been keepin' some big-time company.”

“What 'chew mean by that?”

Victor always seemed to have information on her.

He took out a roll of twenty-dollar bills and said, “Cash Money.”

Tracy sucked her teeth and responded, “Oh, he ain't nobody.”

“You was even talking to my man, Bruce. And that young-boah' ‘Charley' schoolin' all the girls after dealin' with you.” Victor smiled and said, “I guess I must have trained you well, hunh Tracy?”

“No, I don't
think
so,” she responded.
I don't believe he said that to
me,
she thought.
He makes me sound like a whore.

“Anyway, I hate that boy Charles,” she told him.
I'm starting to
hate your ass, too,
she mused.

Victor said, “You know, hate is confused love sometimes, for real. You probably said you hate me to somebody. I mean, we both know you still like me. Don't we, Tracy?”

Tracy was speechless. “Oh my God,” she mumbled with a helpless grin.
I was just thinking that.
“Why were you asking about me and stuff?” she wanted to know. It was obvious to her since he knew what she had been up to.

Victor cracked a smile, displaying all of his charm. “I'm just keeping tabs on you, making sure you're all right.”

“Why?”

Victor grimaced at her. “Would you rather I just forgot about you, like we never did nothin', and we never knew each other? Just like that,” he said with a snap of his fingers.

Tracy thought about it, experiencing an unexpected moment of panic.
What if Victor never even knew me?

Victor was smiling again, in love with his own wit. “You know what? You don't even have to answer that. I'll just see you around.” He then turned and stepped off in the springtime breeze.

Tracy stared at the white sweatshirt that covered his back, still in a daze. Then grinned at herself. “I guess I'm not in his league,” she told herself. Victor still had her hooked.

Another summer rolled around, and the years were passing by like days. Tracy's “sweet sixteen” would be at the summer's end, and she planned on moving up the social ladder. She had already been accepted into a new clique of older college girls that she had met at the Ayunde Cultural Festival downtown on South Street. Her popularity had escalated, but Tracy wanted to change her priorities as far as guys were concerned. She desired more intelligent relations. She was tired of dealing with guys who had nothing on their minds but sex and life out in the streets.

“Tra-cy! Pick up the phone!” Patti yelled up the steps.

Tracy sprinted to her room from the bathroom. “Okay! I got it! . . . Hello.”

“Yo, it's ‘Brucie.' ”

“Well, I haven't heard from you in a while.”

“Yeah, I told you I'd be away. But what have you been up to?”

“Nothin'.”

“Well, who's your new boyfriend?”

“I don't have one.”

“Yes you do.”

“Boy, how you gon' just come home and tell me that I got a boyfriend.”

“Because, you can't function without one.”

“Yes I can. I don't need y'all.”

“Yeah, you need
us
more than you think.”

“Well, if I do, I don't need
your
ass,” Tracy snapped, getting annoyed.

“I know, because I'm not a celebrity.”

Tracy sighed and said, “You know what Bruce? You need to get a life.”

“What?”

“I said you need to move on from me.”

Bruce thought about it. “What if I don't want to?”

“Well, I don't know what to tell you, but you can't keep calling me up and acting as if we still have something going, because we don't. I'm just trying to be straight with you. I mean, we can be friends and whatnot, but we're never gonna be anything more than that.”

“That's all I wanted to be.”

Tracy smirked.
Yeah, right,
she thought to herself.

Bruce said, “So that's how you feel about us, hunh?” He still had visions of being her only man.

“I'm just trying to be truthful with you.”

Bruce was silent for a moment. “All right then, if that's the way it is . . .”

Tracy could only wish that there was some other way to ease his longing for her, but there wasn't. Bruce did not attract her in a long-term relationship way. There had only been small moments of pleasure between them, and nothing that would last.

“Look, Bruce, I'm about to go out,” she told him. “I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to find yourself someone else.”

Frustrated by love, Bruce hung up on her. He did not slam down the phone, but he simply did not know what else to say. The girl of his dreams had shattered them.

Tracy looked at the phone in her hand and exhaled. “God, that was tough,” she moaned.
But it was no sense in leading him on about it,
she pondered.
The sooner I told him, the better.

On the way with her mother to a Cheltenham store that sold boxes of party snacks and accessories, Tracy thought of Mercedes.

Not a word was spoken on their half-hour journey. Once they had arrived at the store, a young cashier was guilty of watching Tracy with
lustful eyes and undercounted their total. Tracy laughed when Patti brought it to her attention, but it was not funny enough to disperse her depressing thoughts about Mercedes.

She got back home and stretched out across her bed, reflecting on her own life. A photo on her dresser of when she was ten reminded her of the times when she had first begun her interest in boys. She smiled, remembering the arguments she had had with her young girlfriends inside of the schoolyard.
I wonder what they're up to now,
she pondered. Then she began to frown, remembering the misguided things that Mercedes had told her. “Boy, was she wrong,” she mumbled to herself. “That stuff she told me ain't get me in nothing but trouble. And look where it got her.”

Tracy wished that she could return the favor and give Mercedes some advice. Yet her advice would be of a much more constructive nature. She did come to a realization, however, of the double standards of gender through her experiences. Boys were much less inhibited. They could sex over a hundred girls and be “the man.” A girl would be considered a whore if she did the same. And guys never had to worry about monthly cycles slowing them down.

“It just ain't fair,” Tracy told herself. She then giggled and said, “I wish that some of them could experience a period.”

Tracy's sweet-sixteen party was packed, but she did not invite her college friends. She didn't want to remind them how young she was.

Patti felt a lot safer about having Tracy's party with her husband around. The rowdy boys who showed up at their front door immediately took notice of him. Dave had never looked like a pushover. He had come up through the Philadelphia gang era, so a group of rowdy youngsters did not ruffle his feathers at all.

Raheema had even enjoyed herself, while hanging out with Jantel. They made good companions. Jantel was a lot more stable with her virginity. “You just have to find something for yourself to do,” she advised.

“Like running track, hunh?” Raheema asked, with a cup of punch in her hand.

Jantel smiled. “Well, everybody can't run track, but find something that
you
like to do, and something that you're good at.”

Like what?
Raheema asked herself. She had participated in dance class, but she did not consider herself
good
at it. Dance had taken too much out of her. Neither she nor Tracy had taken another dance class. It was a one-time event, for sure.

All that Raheema could think about that gave her any kind of enjoyment was reading books and gossiping, which basically did the same thing for her; both took her away from thoughts about her own dull life. She figured if she could not do some of the wild and crazy things that other people did, she could at least read or converse about them. Raheema could write her own book on the things that Tracy had told her about her life. And it was far from over.

Tracy had a way of drawing engaging life stories in everything that she did, yet her junior year of school was boring from inception. Her elaborate style of dress slacked off, allowing the other girls at school to steal her show. What was the use of it? She had already been flyy. She was more interested in moving on.

Tracy began to think about her friend Carmen while she walked through the halls. Carmen was still living fast. She did not seem to care about reevaluating
her
life. She had started
doing it
earlier than nearly everyone. Carmen was the one girl that Tracy knew of personally who had had venereal diseases. Nevertheless, she kept right on
doing it.

Tracy began to daydream as she sat in class, cringing at even the
thought
of having a socially transmitted disease. “What did you say, Tasha?” she commented, catching a whisper about her less-than-fashionable jeans. She had borrowed the bell-bottom style from her college friends, and bell-bottom jeans were not yet acceptable among high school circles in Philadelphia.

“I ain't say nothin' to you,” Tasha lashed out at her.

“Girl, I heard you.”

“How you know I was talkin' 'bout you?”

Tracy grimaced and said, “I'm the only one I see in here with bell-bottoms on.”

The class then broke into wild laughter. Tracy had a lot of courage trying to establish her own dress code in high school. Conforming to what was hip and what was not was the basic rule among teens in any town.

“What is the problem?” the teacher interjected.

“No, she gon' accuse me of talkin' about her,” Tasha said, speaking up first through a smile.

The teacher grinned at their youthful silliness. “Girls, cut out the pettiness and finish reading the two paragraphs, please.”

Class ended shortly after the outburst. Tracy then went and joined Jantel inside the lunch room. They had the same lunch period.

Jantel announced, “I hate that little bitch!” She had gained a few pounds and looked good in her toned brown frame, like the track star that she had become. Jantel never wore anything glamourous, and she kept her hair short for sprinting purposes.

“Who are you talking about?” Tracy asked her.

“That freshman girl with the Gucci sweat suit.”

Tracy smiled. “You're getting jealous, hunh?”

“No, but I mean, that girl think she's
it.”

“So what? You got your own life to live. People know you all over the city. Especially after the Penn Relays. Y'all almost beat William Penn last year,” Tracy alluded. She was proud of her good friend, and she was glad that they had squashed their differences.

“Yeah, we're gonna go up against them again this year. This is the fastest team we've had in a while,” Jantel added with a smile.

Tracy nodded and said, “See that? That girl won't be running in the Penn Relays with thousands of people watching her. She's just having her fun.”

Jantel thought it over and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”

The Gucci-girl flirted in the lunch line. She was pretty and dark brown-skinned, with a big butt. The guys were all up on her info.
Who
is that?
they asked of themselves.

Tracy said, “We did the same thing our freshman year.”

“Yeah, but I didn't have three-hundred-dollar sweat suits on either.”

Tracy grinned. “Oh, that's why you don't like her?”

“No, not only that, but they be actin' like they own the school or somethin'.”

“Come on now, that's kid stuff. We're getting too old for that,” Tracy commented. She went to her next class after lunch break and daydreamed about being married with kids, and living in a nice house with a charming husband. Her urge for security was rising, especially after her father had come back home. With the lack of a boyfriend, she was becoming envious of her mother's happiness. Tracy wanted what Patti had, a handsome guy to be there for her.

“Okay, Tracy, I just want you to know that college is a different atmosphere from high school. Things move extremely fast here.”

“I can handle myself, Lisa.” Tracy folded her legs in the back of Lisa's blue Toyota.

“See y'all, she think she's grown, and she doesn't know anything about college life,” Lisa responded to her two college friends. They were headed for City Line Avenue, on the west side of Philadelphia, to attend a Cheyney State University party.

“Unh hunh. I got a little sister like that who's pregnant now,” said Joanne, sitting in the front passenger seat. She was dark and thick-bodied, wearing African Kente fabric wrapped around her head that matched the cloth bag that she carried. Lisa, on the other hand, was real light-skinned, or “damned-near white.” She had her hair twisted in baby dreadlocks.

“Well, I'm on the pill,” Tracy said proudly.

“Oh, well excuuuse me. Girlfriend is ready for the world,” Joanne retorted sarcastically.

Lisa added, “Yup, and we better watch out for who tries to get her. Because you know those pressed freshmen boys are dying to get their hands on some fresh, high-school meat.”

“Unt unh,” Tracy grunted with a grin. “Ain't nobody gettin'
this
meat.”

“Do your parent's know that you're on the pill?” the girlfriend sitting in the backseat with Tracy asked.

Tracy looked at her as if she was crazy. “Unt unh.”

Kiwana was a shade darker than Tracy. She had long silky hair, looking like Mercedes used to look. Kiwana had been in music videos, and aspired to be an actress and a playwright. Tracy was impressed with her, and she secretly coveted her name. She repeated it to herself as if it was her own:
Kiwana Ellison. Kiwana Ellison.

“Yeah, they have that confidentiality rule,” Joanne informed her.

“Oh, yeah, that's right,” Kiwana said with a nod.

Lisa said, “Well, birth control doesn't have anything to do with being a tramp or not. And we got a ‘Ms. Goodfoot' in here, y'all. She thinks she knows all the right moves.”

Lisa loved to talk. She hadn't stopped since they picked Tracy up. Everyone else was enjoying the ride.

When they pulled up at Cheyney State, the campus grounds were packed, and it was an interesting change of scenery for Tracy. The students possessed an air of importance. But a lot of them dressed like black hippies to Tracy. She chuckled at that. And she had already begun to copy their fashions.

After paying to enter the party, fraternity members were bouncing around, dancing and screaming, “WE ARE THE BROTHERS!” from such and such. Sorority sisters began meowing like cats. Others made hooting noises. Fraternity members wearing purple and gold then barked into the party in a single-file line and began removing their shirts and pants, displaying their underwear while they entertained the crowd with their ritual of a dance. The whole thing was a totally different world to Tracy.

So this is college,
she thought with a smile.
They are bugging out in
here.

Tracy turned down her first dance offer. The second guy was more handsome, so she danced with him. She had been used to dealing with
older guys, but none of her flings were with college types. Tracy was curious.

“So, are you a freshman?” Mr. Handsome asked her.

“Nope. I'm still in high school,” Tracy answered, too proud to lie about it.

He gave her a second look and said, “Damn! You look old as hell to be in high school. You got a boyfriend?” he asked.

“No.”

“Naw? A pretty girl like you?” He began to stare into Tracy's hazels, but his tone turned her off. Mr. Handsome was too damned simple-minded for her idea of a
cool
college guy. She thought of him as a nag.

“Look, I'm about to go get some water,” she told him, stepping away.

“Well, I wanna talk to you when you come back,” he said, as Tracy faded into the crowd.

Lisa asked, “So, did anyone try to talk to you yet?”

“Yeah, that tall dude right there,” Tracy responded, looking through the crowds and spotting Mr. Handsome.

“Oh, that's Sax.”

“
Sax?
His name is
Sax?”
Tracy asked quizzically.