Dark Plums (17 page)

A girl screamed overhead. Adrianne heard the girl's pimp swear at her. Then she heard more screams, and something crashed in the room above. “Don't, please don't! Don't hurt me!” The girl screamed again.

“I wish she'd shut her goddamned trap,” said the trick on top of Adrianne. He was very fat. In fact, he was nearly suffocating her as he thrust inside her.

The next day Adrianne passed the girl in the lobby downstairs. Pencil thin, with pale skin and long bleached hair, she wore a black sweater and skirt. She was limping on her spike heels and her right arm was in a sling. Coming close to Adrianne, she whispered, “He sprained my elbow. He beat me so hard with a hanger I can't sit.”

“I heard you scream. I wanted to help,” said Adrianne.

“Thanks, but this is between him and me,” said the girl, clutching her injured arm beneath the sling.

Why didn't the girl leave him? Why didn't she herself leave Alfredo? They were both slaves, Adrianne thought, even as a voice inside her murmured, “Stay with him. Through Alfredo, you will be saved.”

When she thought of leaving him, all she could see was a vision of herself freezing to death in an Arctic wasteland.

That afternoon a cold wind blew in, and the temperature fell to ten degrees. Her face and hands felt icy, and Adrianne could not face the thought of working that night. She wished Lucille were here with her—Lucille as she used to be before she got so sick.

Acting on a bold impulse, she decided to take a taxi to a lesbian bar in the Village. There she sat at a long wooden table. A stench of beer mingled with the smell of sawdust. She had never been in such a place before, and she looked around with curiosity. Mostly butch women filled the place. They wore trousers, thick jackets, and leather workboots. Only a few had on makeup and feminine clothing. Several couples danced to songs by Patti Page. Their faces seemed harsh.

Bursts of laughter came from a group of women sitting near her. When the jukebox fell silent, the bartender, a cheery woman who must have weighed over two-hundred pounds, sang the chorus from “You are my Sunshine.”

Feeling relaxed after two glasses of burgundy, Adrianne shook a candle in front of her. She watched as the wax dripped down into a porcelain holder.

“Hey, what's the matter? You high? You afraid to speak?” a girl across the table jeered. Adrianne saw that the girl had African features but light skin. She looked even younger than Adrianne. “You're dressed like a hooker,” said the girl.

“That's what I am.”

“I thought so,” said the girl. She had a small delicate face and brown hair. She wore a black T-shirt under a huge worn leather jacket. “I used to turn out,” said the girl. “Only I had one experience that shook me up so bad I won't do it no more. I only hustle women now. They're safer. That is, I don't exactly hustle, but they help me out if you know what I mean.” She looked at Adrianne as if for reassurance. “By the way, my name's Tina.” She inhaled on a small corncob pipe.

“I understand what you're saying. Only I still dig men as well as women.”

She became aware that other women at the table were listening, eyeing Adrianne with hostility. They must view her as a traitor.

The candle cast flickering shadows over Tina's face. “Come home with me,” she said. Her frail child's hands reached out for Adrianne's.

Adrianne pitied her, but shrank from the coldness of her fingers.

“Don't be afraid of me,” said Tina. She let go and looked at Adrianne with a slight glimmer of fear in her own eyes, as if she sensed exactly how Adrianne felt.

“Okay,” said Adrianne. Why not, she thought, pushing down the knot of fear inside her gut. Let Alfredo wait up all night for
her
for a change, if he came home at all.

“I turned out for a man once,” Tina said softly. “I told you. I was only fourteen.” She took a sip of her beer. “But now I won't have
anything to do with men. They're evil. All of them. Wise up. You can stay with me for a while if you like. Come on, let's get out of here.” Tina's voice sounded a little frantic. When Adrianne looked at the glaze in Tina's eyes, she realized the girl was on something besides beer.

“Bet you have a pimp,” said a round-faced woman with glasses who sat on Adrianne's left.

Adrianne flushed and swallowed.

“Bet you give him just about every cent you make.”

“What does it matter,” said Adrianne.

“You're a sucker for him, I can tell.”

“Don't let her get to you,” said Tina.

Adrianne ordered another glass of wine and was silent as she listened to the women talking and laughing around her. Gradually, they forgot about her. Then in an alcoholic daze she once again felt Tina's soft hands, a little warmer now. “Come home with me,” whispered Tina. “Maybe you can help me out a little, if you can spare any change.”

Alfredo would be furious if she not only didn't come home, but walked in tomorrow morning without any money. Let him be furious, she thought. She was growing tired of giving. She was a sucker. Let him wait. Again, she pushed down the panic that was growing inside her.

“Come on,” pleaded Tina. Her eyes were dark velvet. There was something soft and honest about her to which Adrianne responded

As they walked out of the bar, Adrianne glanced at their reflections in the mirror behind the counter. There she was, a big, strong girl, yet thinner than she used to be, even though lately she'd gained back some weight. Her bleached hair had grown down to her shoulders. She wore her silver-fox coat and her burgundy leather boots. Although she looked physically strong, inside she felt very fragile and at this moment almost without will. There was Tina leading her by the hand in her huge man's jacket, olive trousers, almost hipless. Tina's delicate mouth tightened into a thin line of tension.

Outside, it was colder than before. As they shivered along MacDougal Street, vague questions about the nature of love ran through Adrianne's brain.

They took a taxi to Brooklyn. In the taxi, Tina kissed her. The girl's tongue tasted of peppermint from a lozenge she had been sucking, but underneath the peppermint was a smell of tobacco and flesh.

When they got out, it was dark and streetlights were on. Three elderly black men were warming their hands in front of a fire in a trash can. Their belongings were heaped on an abandoned sofa with partially torn-out stuffing which stood a bit back from the sidewalk.

“Got a quarter, got a dollar?” cried one of the old men. Adrianne fingered the clasp on her purse.

“Come on,” hissed Tina. “Speed it up or the rest of them will be on you like a pack of animals. A whole lot of them live right in front of my building.”

Tina's building was half-abandoned. Some of the windows were boarded up, but Adrianne noticed a mailbox which had mail sticking out of it at the entry. They climbed several flights of stairs to the apartment where Tina lived. Adrianne tripped over something before Tina lit a match. Through dark, narrow hallways they walked amidst an overwhelming stench of urine and garbage. Adrianne could scarcely breathe. She would have turned around to run back, but she knew she would not be safe on the streets outside. And so she huddled inside her coat with its scent of Chanel Number Five.

In the apartment, the wooden floor was littered with old newspapers. There were smells of rotting food, no electricity, and only a candle for light. A stained mattress was piled with clothing.

They took off their clothes and huddled on the smelly, clothes-heaped mattress beneath Adrianne's fur coat. Tina's skinny body wound around hers. She had small breasts, and her bones protruded.

Making love to Tina was like making love to a frightened, tender, and yet lustful child. Tina's cold feet and boyish body pressed against her as Adrianne heard rats scampering through the walls. Tina's peppermint-smelling tongue wove aggressively into Adrianne's mouth. Her small childish hands excited Adrianne along her inner thighs, then moved to Adrianne's genitals. In spite of her youth, she had a woman's sensitivity as to what would stimulate or soothe. Gradually, Adrianne forgot the surroundings and the stench of everything. She immersed herself in the lovemaking.

As the two of them held each other, some of the men Adrianne had lain with or sucked off or satisfied in various perverse ways during the last few months flashed through her mind. Each had wounded her. Even Alfredo wounded her in the way he made love to her, which lately was brusque and unfulfilling. If only she could press against Tina long enough and hard enough, perhaps she would somehow be healed. She bit Tina's tongue so hard that Tina gasped with pain. “Hey!” she cried. Then Adrianne soothed her with gentle strokes, and eventually each of them found release.

Later, in her sleep Tina cried out, and Adrianne clutched her closer.

Adrianne dreamed that Alfredo and Michelle were fucking right next to her. She tried to throw herself between them, and Tina mingled with the two. Their limbs interwove like tree branches. One of the branches stuck down her throat and was choking her. She sat up, struggling for breath.

When Adrianne woke up the next morning, wind was blowing through a jagged, broken window above her.

Tina was not there.

Adrianne huddled deeper inside her covering of clothes, but she couldn't get warm. “Tina,” she yelled. No answer.

On the wall was a poster of a naked girl on a beach. The girl was blonde, sprite-like, with pointed breasts, a sea nymph who leapt and danced with arms raised high in front of the ocean waves.

She heard a toilet flush. Tina came back into the room with a man's black overcoat over her shoulders carrying a tin can, a syringe, and a roll of gauze. Again Adrianne called out, but Tina did not seem to be aware of her presence as she walked over to the window and poured something from the tin can into the syringe. Then she sat down crosslegged on the floor and injected the needle into her arm. A beatific expression came over her face. At that moment she looked beautiful.

Adrianne stumbled around naked, shivering as she looked for her clothing. Tina had slumped back against the wall and breathed heavily through her mouth. Her eyes were shut. The needle and syringe lay next to her on the floor.

After Adrianne had dressed, she knelt down and kissed Tina's
forehead. The girl's skin felt feverish, but her breathing seemed to have returned to normal. Hurriedly, Adrianne left the building, sighing with relief when she felt the cold fresh air outside.

As she was walking along the street, a man on crutches called out to her for spare change. He wore a large cardboard sign around his neck with letters in black crayon that read “ACCEPT JESUS AS YOUR SAVIOR OR DIE FOR YOUR SINS.” Adrianne put a few coins into his tin cup while he wheezed something at her that she didn't understand.

The smells of rotting garbage and incinerator fires prevailed, although the air was so cold. A layer of powdery snow had fallen which softened everything.

She could take a taxi to the airport and fly. Where? Home to her mother? No. Then she would be even more alone. Elena was so cold and so self-absorbed.

What if she were to take her earnings tonight and get a room in the city far away from Alfredo, where he couldn't find her? Perhaps she could get a straight job as a cook or a clerk typist. If she lived alone, would she again experience the walls of her room threatening to suffocate her? Would she again suffer unbearably in the way she had before she met Alfredo?

Suddenly she thought she could hear Max's soft voice whisper, “
Meine liebchen. Poor child
.”

Max would despise her if he knew what she did for a living. She thought of other people who had crossed her path.

Slave mentality, jeered Alfredo in her mind.

Give me my fix, said Tina.

You're a damned fool not to leave him, Lucille would say.

Adrianne had called Lucille in Houston a few days earlier only to learn from the maid that Lucille was back in the hospital.

Lucille, I want to be with you, and now you are dying, Adrianne thought as she continued walking through the cold.

More often now, Alfredo didn't come home until dawn. Half-awakened by his entrance, Adrianne would hear him undress and take off his shoes with a thud. She would hear bathroom noises. The mattress would creak, and he would touch her thigh or her breast, as if simply to make sure she was there. Then he would roll over and go to sleep. She wanted to cry out with pain because she wanted him to caress her and whisper words of love.

When she got home this morning the sheets had been torn off the bed and stuffed into a pillow case, ready to be taken to the laundry. Adrianne could smell coffee and bacon. Alfredo's breakfast dishes were piled in the sink, and he was standing in the middle of the studio, dressed to go out.

“Did a rich trick keep you up all night, baby?”

“No. I slept with a girl. I was so tired, and I felt so sick of men. I went to a lesbian bar. Alfredo, don't be mad.”

As he stood there in his suede jacket, wearing a muffler and grey flannel trousers, he looked distinguished and a trifle older. Morning sun streamed down through the skylight, illuminating the lines in his face. On the wall there was a new painting, half-finished of black, purple, and ivory abstract swirling forms.

“I ought to beat some sense into you.” As he moved towards her, his look frightened her.

Adrianne laughed nervously.

Suddenly Alfredo's fist shot into her face. In seconds, she was on the floor and he was kicking her.

“Stop!” she screamed. He kicked her ribs. She curled up in a ball. All her muscles tensed as she waited for the next blow. Then she heard his footsteps recede. Sobbing, she held her hands against her face.

After a while, she limped to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her face was bruised, with a purplish swelling under her right eye. Her ribs ached where he had kicked her. Had he broken any?