Escapades of an Erotic Spy - Part 1 A Spy is Born (6 page)

"That'd look mighty nice on my little
Imogene." The fat deputy took the garment roughly in his pudgy
fingers. "Too bad no white woman would wear it now. Not after it's
been on her."

Truthfully, other than trying it on in the
store where I bought it, I hadn't even had a chance to wear it yet.
I doubt that would have prevented the fat deputy from doing what he
did next, which was hurl the dress in a heap into a corner of the
room. I never did get to wear that dress. In fact, after that
night, I never saw it again.

"Both of you, get your clothes on," he
sneered.

Four days later, I sat across a narrow pine
table from my mother, who had come to the jail where I was being
held. Shortly after my arrest, I contacted her about my predicament
by telephoning her laundry partner. She was one of the few people
in the neighborhood who had a telephone. In a corner of the dingy
yellow cube that served as the visiting room was a guard who passed
his time mostly by reading a newspaper. He displayed no interest in
our conversation.

"I talked to the judge this morning," my
mother whispered. "He's willing to go easy on you if you
cooperate."

"Cooperate how?"

"It's the boy they're really interested in.
They want to make an example of him so other college boys don't get
any ideas. Apparently, the chancellor of the university is fit to
be tied."

"It wasn't just his idea. I—"

"Shhh!" She held an index finger to her lips
and glanced in the direction of the disinterested guard. "As far as
anyone's concerned, you're just an impressionable girl who got
swept up by the glamour of the boy. And, lucky for you, this judge
is of the mind that girls have little to no self-restraint when it
comes to such things. So here's what's going to happen. You're
going to be released today with a summons to appear in court for
trial next month. In addition to answering your own charges,
they'll expect you to testify that this boy seduced you. You'll
have to bring along whatever letters he sent you. I'm told they've
already got the ones you sent to him. I assume you've still got his
tucked away somewhere?"

I sighed heavily.

"Sure," she smirked without amusement. "No
girl gets rid of those."

"Do I have to?" I whimpered.

"Play along, and you'll get a light
sentence. Time served. Maybe a small fine. Like I said…you're not
the one they want to make an example of."

I started to cry. "But I love him."

"So you came all the way to Crackertown
where you could get arrested just for being in the same hotel room
with him." My mother huffed and leaned back in her chair. "Has my
example taught you nothing?"

* * * *

My mother's life was indeed a cautionary
tale. As a young girl, she was living an upper-middle-class
existence with her family in Washington when she met an assistant
to a visiting diplomatic consul of an independent African nation.
As the saying goes, one thing led to another, and soon they were
sneaking about, searching for secluded spots to conduct their
romantic trysts. The diplomat and his staff were recalled to their
homeland, but not before the assistant left his seed inside my
mother. The shame of the unmarried 19-year-old's pregnancy was
eclipsed by the family's horror when the child was born. Its skin
tone told the whole and, in their eyes, unspeakable story.

According to my mother's account of it, she
gave birth to me in her bedroom. The doctor left the room shortly
after I was delivered, and thirty seconds later my grandfather,
ashen and perspiring, charged in and saw me lying in a crib that
had been prepared for my arrival. He pushed aside a midwife, whom
the family had retained, and went directly to the crib to stare at
his new granddaughter. There was a lit kerosene lamp on some nearby
table. He grabbed it by its base and shoved it dangerously close to
me. The illumination gave him the conclusive evidence that turned
his stomach. He stormed out a few seconds later, and my mother said
she heard him bellow, "As soon as she can walk, she goes!"

My mother was banished from the family home
and left to make a life for herself and her daughter anyway she
could. It wasn't easy. She was forced to sell everything she owned
just to be able to afford the rent of a dilapidated little
apartment. White society shunned this girl with her mixed race
child. So she could find a place to live only by going into
Washington's black neighborhoods. Sadly, even there, her acceptance
was only marginal. As a white woman, she wasn't really seen as one
of their community.

* * * *

"I won't do it." I folded my arms in
determination. "I won't testify against Beau."

"You're being foolish!"

"Even if I did, his family would never allow
anything bad to happen to him. They'll fight it. They've got
money."

"His family won't lift a finger." My mother
leaned in. "This is their ultimate humiliation. They've publicly
disowned that boy. He's on his own."

"How do you know?"

"The judge was very informative. We had a
long talk. Fortunately, he's a man who can be reasoned with."

"Would you like me to tell you what you can
do with your reason, Mama?" I squinted, fire practically shooting
from my eyes.

"Shhh!"

"Did you think you could just decide all
this for everyone?"

"Well, you can see how well your
decision-making skills have worked out."

"Oh!—and you've been such a
stunning role model! Haven't you, Mama? What?—did you tell the
judge how close you and I are, and how you couldn't live knowing I
was in jail? We both know what bushwa that is! Or did you promise
him you'd do his laundry for a year? Or share your booze with him?
Tell me, Mama. What's the going rate for
reasoning
with a judge?"

"I sucked his dick."

The words stung when I heard my mother speak
them. What's more, the way she said it—sharp, businesslike, cold,
cruel. I shivered.

"That's right," she continued with a breathy
quiver in her voice, "it's come to that. I did it so my daughter
wouldn't have to rot in some prison where white guards would mete
out whatever treatment they think deserving of a… And, well, you're
welcome." She was practically spitting the words. "There's a memory
for you. May it bring you pleasant dreams when you're sleeping in
your own bed rather than some prison cot."

She dabbed at her eyes with a discolored
handkerchief.

As for me, I felt sick. I
didn't know what to say.
What can you
possibly say to your mother after hearing something like
that?

"I know I haven't given you much of a life,"
she went on. "I've barely had one for myself. But as far as I'm
concerned, we're even now." She tucked the handkerchief into her
sleeve. "They should be letting you out pretty soon. I'll wait for
you outside."

I was released within the hour, a summons in
my hand. My mother and I rode home silently on the train. We had
nothing to say to each other. The silence continued once we got
back to our apartment. It wasn't all that late when we reached
home, but I went to bed immediately. I had no energy, no appetite,
no spirit. I barely had the stamina to cry myself to sleep.

The next morning, I went to the bank and
withdrew all my savings. Then I proceeded directly to Union Station
where I bought a train ticket to New York. I stopped at a trash
basket and deposited the tiny bits of paper that had once been my
cherished correspondence from Beau. Though it absolutely killed me
to do it, I tore the pages into the teeniest of pieces rather than
leave them to be used as evidence against my love. I couldn't take
a chance they'd fall into the wrong hands. The authorities would
have neither me nor those letters to use against him.

I boarded the train at 10:30 a.m. and set
out for my destination. I had never been to New York, but I wasn't
going to be there long enough to see the sites. I was just passing
through. Somewhere in that city's harbor was a ship I'd be taking,
although I didn't yet know which ship that would be.

I had left behind in the
apartment a short note of explanation for my mother. In spite of
everything, I didn't want to worry her further. But, of course, my
mind's real focus wasn't on her. It was on Beau.
My beautiful, beautiful Beau.
The last I had seen of him, he was being roughly ushered out
of the hotel room by two of the deputies. Tears streamed down my
cheeks as I thought about never seeing him again.

Arriving in New York, I
walked toward the Hudson River and wandered along West Street until
I found an open office of a steamer line. There was an outbound
listing of a ship scheduled to depart that evening, bound for Le
Havre, France. I bought the cheapest ticket available. It still
cost most of the money I had saved. But when the ship sailed that
evening, I was aboard. From the deck, I watched as the light from
the Statue of Liberty's torch flickered away into nothingness. At
that moment, it seemed like something very permanent had occurred.
Good-bye, America;
bienvenue
, France.

* * * *

Which brings us, once again, back to
Monsieur Robinet's Pigalle photo studio and his naughty naked
ladies.

"I think I can use you,"
the photographer said. "You are a girl
exotique."

"I am?"

"You are not like the other
girls. You are
different
. And, as I said, different
is good."

"Different how?" I asked.

The old man stroked his
beard. "You are not French. You are not small of the chest
or
derriere
like
so many French girls. You are not the typical wife or daughter of a
Frenchman. You are not the girl next door even. You are not,
uh…"

"I'm not white."

"Exotique."
The grandfatherly photographer leaned back in his
chair. The point had been made. "Can you be here tomorrow at one?"
he inquired. "I'd like to start shooting right after
lunch."

"Sure," I said. "What should I wear?"

He puckered his lips to the side in a rather
dopey expression that gave the answer completely.

"Oh," I said.

CHAPTER 2

Naughty Ladies

Montmartre:

I awoke the next morning to the sound of
Elie and Mendel Bardach humping in the room above me. They
were…well, how can I put it? They were a randy couple. Yes, that's
accurate—but not fully descriptive. How does one describe in a
sentence the complexity of the Bardachs? I suppose one could say
they were a stout, graying, Jewish, artistic, freethinking,
bohemian, long-time married pair who also happened to have a sexual
appetite that could make a sailor feel insecure about his own
prowess. Yes, that sums it up nicely.

Not that I minded. I had
tasted the delicious fruits of the flesh myself. So I couldn't very
well claim I didn't know what all the fuss was about. I'd say it
was a justifiable fuss, and if a woman and man
enjoy…well…
really enjoy
each other, what's wrong with that? And if
they're all right with letting the world in on the nature of their
love by kissing in public or hugging when others are around or
allowing their hands to glide down their partner's back without
first waiting until they're alone, then who's to judge? What's
more, after witnessing the reserve most American married couples
practice in the presence of others, I thought it refreshing to see
such uninhibited passion in a husband and wife who simply didn't
seem to care that anyone else knew how much they wanted each
other.

Sure, I had to endure
listening to their late evening and early morning love-making, but
I couldn't begrudge them. They were kind enough to rent me a small
room in the upstairs of their Montmartre home on Rue Durantin. Most
white people wouldn't when I approached them my first day in town.
You should have seen me—the pathetic little foreign girl carrying a
big carpetbag that contained everything I owned in the world. I
made my way through the streets, looking for any sign of cheap,
available lodgings. While growing up, I had heard that Caucasian
Parisians were more liberal minded than Americans, and that was
true. However, that liberal attitude was not boundless, and it
often found a boundary when it came to a mixed-race person moving
in. That was a little too
laissez-faire
, even for some
Frenchmen.

I'd almost lost hope and began to wonder
where I might find shelter on the street for the impending
nightfall when a dark skinned, young girl—possibly originally from
Africa—asked me something in French. She carried a large
breadbasket in which there were various common items such as wads
of cloth, yarn, paper, ink bottles, brushes, and everything but
bread. Her brow furrowed with concern. My eyes were probably
tearing up when she spied me standing at an intersection, looking
lost and disoriented. I mumbled something in response, and when it
became apparent to her that I was an English speaker with almost no
knowledge of her language, she spoke to me in a broken version of
my native tongue.

I never got that girl's name. However she
was a true godsend in that, once she understood my plight, she took
a pencil out of her basket and wrote an address and drew a crude
map on a piece of paper. She handed it to me with verbal
instructions: "Go here. Good people."

That address, as you've probably already
guessed, was the home of the Bardachs. How that girl knew them,
I've no idea. Perhaps the Bardachs were just locally famous for
their eccentricities, such that their whereabouts were essentially
common knowledge. Whatever it was, I wasn't about to look a gift
horse in the mouth. I trudged up the hills of Montmartre to where
the handwritten map said I'd find Rue Durantin, and there, in a
modest, unpretentious neighborhood was a white three-story building
with a second-hand clothing store on the first level. It was inside
that shop where I initially encountered its owners, the most
hospitable pair I've ever known—Elie and Mendel.