“Sugar, come over and say hello to Papa Pedro.”
I walked over as if I were being introduced in my mother’s living room.
“Buenos días, Señor Pedro.”
His eyes left my flat chest and narrow hips. “Oh. Hablas español?”
My mind flinched at his use of the familiar. It should only be used between family members, close friends and lovers, according to my high school teacher.
“Sí. Yo lo puedo hablar.”
“Okay, Sugar. Take him in the back and show him a good time.”
Bea’s voice hacked through from the corner. “Yea, Pedro. If she don’t give you enough, you can see me after. Remember the last time?”
His glance didn’t stay two seconds in her direction.
Clara took us both by the hand. “Come on, you two. You’re wasting time.” And drew us to my bedroom door. “Get in there and have fun.”
I found my voice. “Viene con migo, señor.”
He stood in the middle of the floor, looking like a bemused Akim Tamiroff. I had to say something but didn’t know how to say “take your clothes off” in Spanish, so I asked how he was. He said well. I pulled off all my clothes during the long pause and he opened his pants. Dignity rode his face bareback.
I washed him and all I remember of my first great slide down into the slimy world of mortal sin is the scratching of the man’s zipper on my upper thighs.
—
At sundown Bea washed her face and spent a few minutes in Clara’s bedroom. She came out clicking her purse shut.
“I’m nearly shamed to show this little money to my daddy. I’ve spoiled that man.” She looked at me, and without the cosmetic she was ten years younger. “How you feel?”
I didn’t know how I felt. I said, “All right, thank you.”
“Clara, you ought to get the news over to the camp. Tell them that you got a cherry. Maybe that’ll stir up some tricks.” She walked to the door, shaking her hips from side to side. “You won’t be a cherry long, little girl. Better git it while the gittin’s good. See you all in the morning.” She slammed the door behind her.
Clara followed and snapped a double lock, then drew a chain across the door.
“Sugar, you better take a long bath. Put some Epsom salts in the water. Take out the soreness.”
I said nothing because I thought nothing.
“Don’t worry, you didn’t do so good today, but then, you’re just starting. I’ll give you a few tips. Don’t take off all your clothes. It takes too long. And remember, the men come here to trick, not to get married. Talk to them dirty but soft. And play with them.”
She hmphed to herself.
“You got it easy. I was turned out with white men. They want to talk all the time. They tell you how beautiful you are and how much they love you. And wonder what you’re doing being a whore all the time they’re jugging in you and paying for it. Then when they get finished they got the nerve to ask you how you liked it. And talk about your freaks! White men can really think of some nasty things to do.”
She started to her room and turned. “One thing I can say about my daddy”—her lips prissed and she lifted her nose and wiggled it—“he doesn’t want me to do anything freakish. No matter how much money is involved. I like that.” She rubbed her hands down her sides complimenting herself. “Better get your bath. Dinner’ll be ready soon.”
I sat thinking about the spent day. The faces, bodies and smells of the tricks made an unending paisley pattern in my mind. Except for the Tamiroffish first customer, the others had no individual characteristics. The strong Lysol washing water stung my eyes and a film of the vapor coated my adenoids.
I had expected the loud screams of total orgasmic release and felt terribly inadequate when the men had finished with grunts and yanked up their pants without thanks. I decided that being black, I had a different rhythm from the Latinos and all I had to do was let myself learn their tempos.
Clara gave me salts and bath oil and I continued examining the day in fingernailfuls. I was intelligent and I was young. I could teach myself the craft and make loads of money. L.D. might be able to settle his debts before the month was up.
The woman who came in daily at five o’clock to cook reminded me of my grandmother and I had to avert my eyes when she placed dinner on the table.
I reassured myself. I was helping my man. And, after all, there was nothing wrong with sex. I had no need for shame. Society dictated that sex was only licensed by marriage documents. Well, I didn’t agree with that. Society is a conglomerate of human beings, and that’s just what I was. A human being.
—
For the next week I vied with Bea for the attentions of Pedros, Josés, Pablos and Ramóns. I brushed up on my Spanish and tried with little success to include tú in my enticing come-ons. The women’s conversations interested me more than the tricks’ visits. Men came to Clara’s house singly, and rather than having an air of celebration, they all seemed to be ashamed of their own presence and at the same time resigned to be there. I never found one man who considered how I might or might not enjoy those three-minute sojourns in the cell-like room. And for my part, I accepted Clara’s signature on my tablet as a symbol of being paid in full.
Bea made an attempt at friendliness one morning. She came into the house early and settled on a stiff chair opposite me.
“Sugar, how do you like it?”
Her voice was kinder than usual, which surprised me, and as I had no ready answer, I muttered, “Well, it’s … a new—”
“New? Screwing ain’t new, is it?” She slipped back into sarcasm easily.
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. You’ll break in.”
“I won’t be doing this long.” I had to separate myself from the insinuation.
“Like hell. Wait till you make a nice piece of money. Then your daddy will give you a little white girl.”
“A what? What would I do with a white girl?”
She laughed a tight little laugh. “Not ‘a’ white girl. You don’t know what ‘white girl’ is?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” I was trying to withdraw.
“They call cocaine ‘white girl.’ Some people call horse ‘white girl,’ too. I don’t mess with heroin, though. It makes me sick. But wait till your daddy gives you some coke. Kiss the baby!” Hugging herself, she coasted away for a second on her thought.
I wouldn’t tell her that L.D. didn’t even want me to smoke pot, but she seemed to pick the thought out of my mind.
“They won’t let you smoke hemp, though. They say it makes a ’ho too frisky. ’Hos get their heads bad and forget about tending to business.”
Clara came in bringing coffee, and Bea plunged into conversation with her.
“You know what we did last night? Daddy took me down to a gambling game in Firebaugh … You know who I saw?… Haven’t seen that bitch in a month of Sundays …”
I didn’t know the people she was talking about and couldn’t have cared less what she did the night before, but she had given me something to think about. Since she spoke from experience, she was probably right. But she was talking about pimps and I knew L.D. wasn’t a pimp. He was a gambler. I couldn’t allow myself to entertain corrosive thoughts. All I had to do was do my best to help him and keep my thoughts clear and unpolluted. I decided I wouldn’t even mention the conversation to L.D.
In the long waits between customers, Bea and Clara talked about money, their old men, other whorehouses and their old men and travel to nearby towns and their old men. They both called their men “Daddy,” and when speaking of them even when relating the beatings they had received from “Daddy,” their voices tightened into lurid imitations of baby talk. Their faces softened and their lips pouted (Clara could wrinkle her nose and wiggle it like a bunny).
I wondered if prostitutes as one suffered from an Electra complex and were motivated by a need to have a daddy, please a daddy and finally make l
ove to a daddy.
“My daddy said he’s going to take me to Hot Springs ‘for the season.’ ” Bea sat in her chair by the door and shook her delight.
“Daddy and I went to the Kentucky Derby last year. We had a ball.” Clara began to shake her nose. “Everybody was there. I met sports from New York City and Detroit and Chicago.”
“My daddy says those Eastern pimps are colder than a whore’s heart in Nome. I believe him too. Look at their faces. They chilly. If they don’t kill their whores, they make them wish they were dead.”
“Well, my daddy didn’t never hit me except when I needed it. Oh, he whip my ass then. Better believe it. But no scars. He ain’t never left a scar on me.”
Bea grinned as if she had outwitted the men. “They ain’t crazy. They wouldn’t hurt their little moneymakers.”
Their conversations were tightly choreographed measures, and since I didn’t know the steps, I sat on the sidelines and watched. They would hardly be interested in my dance career, or my son, or the books I’d read. And I flatly, on principle, refused to call L.D. “Daddy.” I mean, I protested to myself, my father, Bailey Johnson, Sr., was in San Diego, posturing and er’rering his pretentious butt off. Daddy Clidell was my one-time stepfather, but he and Mother had signed divorce papers. Mother’s men, whom I had called Daddy Jack, Uncle Bob or Hanover Daddy, came and went with such regularity that whatever name I tacked on after the paternal title escaped me after a few months. I decided I wouldn’t discuss L.D. at all. They were too cynical to understand that we were in love and that after I had helped him out of trouble, after he had a divorce, we were going to be married and live in a dream house with my son and lots of flowers. I would not share my plan with hard-hearted whores.
Despite my youth and high school clothes and stilted Spanish, I wasn’t popular at Clara’s. The men preferred Bea. She had a swing to her hips and a knowing smile that I couldn’t imitate. Then, Mexican farm workers obviously had no erotic fantasies starring black teen-age girls; they came to a whorehouse for a whore, and Bea answered their needs.
—
“Have a good time, you all.” Clara waved to L.D. and me from the steps. He didn’t acknowledge her but I turned and waved.
In the car he wore the same sour face he’d had when he returned from talking with Clara in her bedroom. Fear that he didn’t love me any more iced my bare arms. When I first went to Clara’s he had assured me, “Don’t worry about going to bed with other men. It’ll just make me love you more. You’re doing it to help Daddy.” He hugged me too. Now I remembered and supposed he had thought so at the time. But when face to face with the reality, he found me disgusting. For the first time since I went to Clara’s, I began to feel unclean. I was Lady Macbeth. All the waters in the world wouldn’t wash away the fingerprints of the men who had mauled me. I had been stupid to let him talk me into doing something that would turn him from me. He needed love. He needed a good woman to love him, especially now while he was in trouble with the big boys. But instead of using the brain I was inordinately proud of, I had let him down. His life was so unstable (the big diamond ring and expensive car were symbols of insecurity), and when I had a chance to introduce some order into his world I had fluffed it. It was clear I’d never see him again, since waves of hate radiated from him as rhythmically as the heat trembled up from the highway. We rode in silence until we reached Stockton.
“Where do you want to go?” His question popped like a whip.
“To pick up the baby.”
The steering wheel almost came off in his hand.
When he parked the car, he made no move toward getting out, so I opened my door and had to ask, “Will you take us for a ride?”
“Close the door, Rita. I better talk to you.”
Now it would come. The bad words, the insults, and all rightly placed. I closed the door.
“I talked to Clara. And there wasn’t hardly any money at all. I don’t think you tried.”
“L.D., I did. I tried with all my heart.” Relief flooded my brain. If that was all he worried about.
“Clara says you sit around like a judge, never saying anything to them. And that you talk to the tricks in Spanish like a goddam schoolteacher.”
“L.D., I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do. But I promise, I’ll try harder. Don’t be angry, Lou.”
“Another thing, you haven’t called me Daddy. All the—I’m supposed to be your daddy.” He was fierce suddenly. “Remember that.”
I said, “Yes, Daddy,” and hated it. Later on I’d be able to tell him the Electra story and explain why I hated my own father, and expand my theory about prostitutes and their men. I knew he wouldn’t appreciate being thought a pimp and we’d be able to lose “Daddy” from our vocabulary, unless he allowed my son the right to so address him.
“I can’t take you all out today, but here, pay the woman, and here’s ten dollars. You all go to a picture show, but don’t keep him all night. Take him back to her and I’ll come over to your place this evening.”
“Yes, Lou.” He wasn’t angry any longer.
“Daddy?” he prompted.
“Daddy.” I smiled and bided my time.
CHAPTER 28
My baby’s joy at seeing me instantly erased the odor of disinfectant that had clung to the lining of my nostrils. Clara’s house and its inhabitants and its visitors were a puff of smoke sliding behind the farthest hill. I paid Big Mary, and gave no answers to her blunt questions about my new job.
I gathered my son in my arms, and told Mary I’d bring him back in the early evening.
“Ain’t you got time for him to spend one night with you? How come you all of a sudden so busy?”
I couldn’t explain the tenderness of a great love. And under no pressures could I confide to her the month I planned to spend at Clara’s. She’d simply make the common moral judgment, totally missing the finer point of sacrifice and purpose.
The baby, beautiful as a China doll, chattered all the way to the movie, in the movie house and all the way back to my room. He had picked up Big Mary’s run-over-shoes accent. I kept repeating the proper pronunciations as he dropped past tenses and plurals. L.D. was right. I had to try harder. My son needed to be with me. I would read to him every day and get the long-playing albums for children of “The Little Prince” and “The Ugly Duckling.”
I turned down the path leading to my house, my arms numb to aching with the weight of my son.
“Home, James.”
“My name ain’t no James.”
“My name isn’t James.”
“No. Yo’ name Mother.”
“Your name is Mother.”
“No, my name ain’t no Mother.”
When I tried to put him down he folded his legs up under his body and held on to my neck.
“I’m not going to leave you.” His heart was thudding on my shoulder, so I carried him into the house.
“Rita.” The landlord met me in the hall. “You got lots of long-distance phone calls. From San Francisco. You better call home.”
I forced the baby’s legs and arms from my side and put him on the floor. He set up an alarm of screaming and I stood at the pay phone waiting for someone to answer.
Papa Ford accepted my collect call. “Girl, I been trying to get you.”
Maybe Mother’s aim had been good to the extreme and the bail bondsman’s magic wouldn’t work. I would be very little help, with my own man in trouble at the same time. Of course, there was no contest. Mother came first.
“Your mother’s in the hospital.”
My Lord. For once she wasn’t quick enough. “For what? And how is she?” My calm voice was a lie.
“Operation. Pretty goddam serious. She keeps asking for you. You’d better come home.”
I took my son back to Big Mary and told her I had to leave town for a few days. Baxters never tell family business to outsiders, so I left her with no explanation, and my son screaming his motherlessness out, shut up in a back room.
>
I thought about L.D., but I had no phone number for him, so I asked the landlord to tell him that I had to go to San Francisco … trouble in the family.
I turned my thoughts with the Greyhound, toward San Francisco.
—
My mother’s head dipped into the pillow like a yellow rose embedded in a pan of ice. Her forefinger stood sentinel over her red lips.
“Sh. Bailey’s over there.” A small figure, semaphored on a chaise longue in the corner of the hospital room.
“Eunice died today. He’s completely broken up. Today is their one-year anniversary. I got a sedative for him, so he’s been asleep for an hour.”
Her face and voice showed the strain of worry and illness.
“How are you?”
She dismissed her illness. “Just a female operation. The things I had removed have been used and I wouldn’t be needing them again.” She still whispered. “I’m glad you came home, though. Bailey needs us. I don’t think he’ll pull through without one of us around. And I’m going to be in the hospital at least a week. Can you take off from your job?”
“Yes.” Sure could.
“Try and wake Bailey up and take him to the house. Have you got somebody good taking care of the baby?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“And make him something hot. He hasn’t eaten all day. Remember, he’s the only brother you’ve got.”
I sat on the seat beside my only brother and gently shook him. He came out of sleep reluctantly. I called his name and he opened his eyes, sat up, looked around. His eyes found Mother, examined the room, came back to me, stunned. He couldn’t grasp who he was or where he was.
“My?” His childhood name for me was nearly a cry. His eyes knew something was very wrong, but for the first seconds couldn’t remember. The recall split his face open and tears poured down his cheeks.
“Oh my God, My. My. It’s Eunice. They’ve … oh, My.”
I took him in my arms and cradle-rocked his body. The sounds of Mother’s crying mingled with his muffled moans.
“Let’s go home, Bail. Let’s just get to the house and we can talk. Let’s go home, Bail.”