Later that night I went to the premiere. I don’t remember if I had fun. I must have. When I saw Lee, I tried to suppress my embarrassment. I tried to avoid the pity in his eyes and declined his offer to let me stay at his apartment. Besides that, it was a pretty normal night. I mean if normal was to be at a Hollywood premiere broke. That night I slept on Crystal’s couch and the morning after the clerical problem was fixed and my family was allowed back into our apartment. Four months later, I got a day job and moved out.
Moving out on my own felt like a step toward becoming a successful adult. I thought my leaving would be great for my tiny three-person family. Mom would have more room and wouldn’t have to worry about providing me with food or anything else. Ahmed would see me surviving and figure out how to be his own version of an adult. He’d pick up the slack and start helping my mom with the rent and bills the way I had. Maybe he’d move out soon after me, and then Mom could move into a one-bedroom apartment in a nicer neighborhood. Maybe I’d soon make enough money to be able to make sure they lived better. I wanted to let Mom know that even though I was leaving I would still be a part of the family. I wouldn’t forget about them. I left my checkbook with her and told her that if she needed any help, if she needed money for any reason, she could call me and I’d come over and we’d talk about it and I’d write her a check. What could possibly go wrong?
I am not rich. I can afford my life, but not really anyone else’s. I have friends who think I can. Who say, when I ask what they want to do for their birthday, “You can pay my credit card debt for me.” And then there’s my family. I love the shit outta my family. When I started making more than phone-hoe money, I really wanted to help them as much as I could. I wanted to alleviate their financial fears as much as possible. At first, I would write both Mom and Dad checks whenever they needed them. I gave them gifts and treated them to dinners out. I sent them home in cabs and limos. I bought furniture and replaced broken appliances in their homes, and more times than I can count, I paid their rent. I paid their rent before paying my own. Sometimes I couldn’t afford to pay both, but my guilt wouldn’t let me pay mine without paying theirs. So I’d just pay theirs. They got used to this. Really used to it. My family started to call me less often, but when they did, the conversations ended with “Look. I need . . .” Certain family members began the call with “Look. I need . . .” I felt like an ATM machine, not family. Cousins I loved but didn’t often talk to would text me to ask for thousands of dollars to help save their house from foreclosure. Mom was featured on the show America’s Got Talent, and when it turned out she didn’t crack the top ten performers and was voted off the show, she didn’t go back to singing in the subway. She had a manager now and was putting a band together for her to perform with at talent showcases so people would hire her to sing in different venues around the world. All that cost money; and I was also paying for her to get her nails done; I was helping her buy makeup and wigs. Ahmed needed to borrow money to become a cabdriver (I don’t fucking know why!). Dad was truly relentless. He constantly asked me to invest in businesses, asked me to pay for his divorce from Tola, the woman he’d married behind my mother’s back (the fucking audacity, right?!). An aunt asked me to move her from Georgia to New York City and buy her nice wigs. All of a sudden I was reduced to how much money I could give out. Even if family members asked if they could “borrow” money, I knew that none of them would ever pay it back. I actually had more respect for the ones who just straight up asked for the money without bothering to convince me that I’d someday see it returned. Either way, no one has paid me back. Ever. No one was even nicer to me after spending my money. Wouldn’t it be nice if money bought love? But it doesn’t. It buys resentment.
I called my mom once to complain about my aunt asking me to move her across the country and buy her wigs. I was all like, “Why would she think it’s appropriate to ask me for that much money?!” Mom said, “The family knows how much money you have. We know you have two million dollars. Google said so.” I was floored. I had never thought to google how much money I had. I had never considered that Mom would. Or that anyone in my family would. Also, Google needs to mind her damn business! My family thought I was a millionaire because I had (maybe!) earned two million dollars (like in my lifetime, by the age of thirty!), and for some reason they thought I had that money just lying around. Like maybe I was diving into a vault of it like Scrooge McDuck and that I was so rich the laws of taxation and expenses didn’t apply to me!
My family thinks that I have more money than I actually have, and they think I make my living by pretending to jog after Lucious Lyon to tell him that Hakeem fell down a well. By pretending to cast spells and giving Kathy Bates’s head the business for being racist. By being super cute and a little bit drunk on nightly talk shows. My career—which I am working harder at than my family could ever imagine—doesn’t seem real to cabdrivers and certainly not to my family.
Money changes people. It changed the way my family saw me. It changed how they interacted with me. Perhaps more than it changed them, it changed how I saw them as well. When I was a kid, no one wanted anything from me. Mom didn’t need my help. When I became head of household, she realized that she could lean on me in a crisis. When that crisis came the first time, I was unable to be the savior, but every time after, I’ve been the hero. Moving out has made me a real adult. I’m head of my own household now but not done being the head of theirs. I continue to receive tearful calls from Mom. “We’re being evicted.” These evictions are not the result of clerical issues anymore. I don’t know what it’s about anymore. I just write the check and emptily threaten that it’s the last time. Somehow, with all the gifts, dinners, and the left-behind checkbook, I’ve handicapped my family. They have jobs and careers, but I don’t know what they would do if I stopped helping them. When we were all poor, we were on the Titanic together, but now that I’m no longer poor, I’m on a lifeboat to safety and my family is still sinking. I couldn’t have imagined the responsibility of trying to pull them to safety with me. I couldn’t have imagined how much it would hurt my back to try to pull them or that it would last forever. One of my famous friends has a family just as expensive as mine. Every time I get those pitiful money calls, I complain to him and swear that I’m not going to write the check this time. That they’ll just have to sink or swim. Each time my friend listens, and then says, “You can be mad all you want, but then you’ll feel guilty and you’ll write the check and then complain some more. Why don’t you just save us both some time and write the damn check? Accept your fate.” I grumble and then I write the check. I don’t know if I can trust that my family can swim anymore, and I could never actually bear to watch them sink.
I’m afraid I’ll be getting calls about evictions until my tiny family is gone. Then I’d pay any amount of money just to have them back. Don’t you just hate it when rich people complain?
16
Senegalese Crown