Free For the Love of Money by Omar Tyree Page B

off of that show as smoothly as I could. I had heard that Wendy
idolized
herself some Oprah Winfrey and would just about kiss the ground that Oprah walked on.
    She got excited immediately and said, “;Okay, now
that’s
true. Oprah Winfrey
is
my girl and all like that, but it’s not like I would bring
my
husband or boyfriend all up on my show so that people will know that I have one just to stop the rumor mills. You know what I’m saying? I’ve
never
had to go
that
far.”
    â€œThen again, you’ve never had Oprah Winfrey’s money either,” Dee Lee interjected for another laugh.
    â€œBut you
do
talk about your husband a lot on the air,” I reminded Wendy. I heard that about her as well.
    Dee Lee nodded and said, “Yeah, you do.”
    I don’t know where the third member of the Dream Team was that morning, nor did I care. I just had to fight my way through it and still come out smelling at least
halfway
decent. By the end of my interview I had done a fairly decent job of turning Wendy back on her heels.
    She said, “Well, this has really been fun. So come back real soon, Tracy, and let’s do this again sometime.”
    I didn’t make any promises, and by the time I made it back out to my father’s Infiniti that morning someone was ringing me on my cellular.
    Should I even answer this?
I thought to myself. I just
knew
that it would be more bad news. Whoever it was, they had obviously just listened to the show and felt that it was urgent to talk to me directly afterwards. So I ignored it until my cellular phone rang with two more calls.
    I finally answered it, about to be teed off again. “Hell-lo.”
    â€œTracy, this is your mother.”
    â€œOh, Mom.” She was calling me straight from the nursing home cafeteria where she still worked as a dietitian. I felt like apologizing to her for my attitude, but I didn’t because I was sure she had something to say about the show that I may not have liked. My mother always thought that I responded with my heart too much and not with my head. She said that I was a lot like her in that way, and like far too many women who were down on their luck in life. “We have to learn to
think
more before we
do
things,” my mother told me. “That’s a lesson it took me
years
to learn, and I’m
still
learning it.”
    She said real calm over the phone, “Tracy, you know you did it again, right?”
    I sighed and let her go on. It was no point in arguing with her. That only would have run up my cellular phone bill.
    â€œNow you have to realize that when you decided to become an actress, you became public property for everyone to talk about you, just like when that book came out. You remember how many people were talking about
our
decisions?”
    My mother would never let me forget that
Flyy Girl
exposed
her
life as well.
    â€œYeah, Mom, I remember.”
    â€œWell, now you’re doing it to yourself again, and if you allow yourself to get sucked into these petty games of
he say, she say,
you won’t get
any
sleep at night.”
    â€œSo, what am I supposed to do, Mom, just ignore it? In my
own
home?”
    â€œYes. That’s
exactly
what you do. Ignore it,” she argued. “People who know you know that you’re not a lesbian. And those who even want to
think
that don’t know you.”
    â€œWell, have
you
heard any of those rumors?” I asked her. I was curious to see if she was already ignoring them and hadn’t said anything to me about it.
    â€œNo I haven’t, and don’t you think that I would have
told you
something if I heard anything like that. I mean, shit, you’re still my daughter, Hollywood or not.
    â€œI wouldn’t let
anyone
say that kind of thing about my daughter. Are you
crazy
?!” She sounded as pissed off about it as I was. That made me smile. I felt better about it. Mom had my back.
    â€œAnd why did you tell