Red Light Wives (21 page)

“I don't know. I met him at the park,” I insisted, almost believing my own lie! My brain felt like it was going to explode, ticktocking like a time bomb. I could even hear bells ringing. Then something real crazy happened. While I was standing there, something inside me popped and water ran down my legs. My stomach started hurting so bad, I had to lean against the bathroom sink. Then everything went black.

 

I woke up in the hospital. My head had stopped ringing and my stomach had stopped hurting. And, my stomach was flat again. Mama, Daddy, David, and Annabel were all hovering over my bed like balloons with faces.

“What happened?” I wanted to know, trying to sit up.

“Baby, everything's going to be all right now,” Daddy told me. Him and Mama, and even my brother and his wife, all looked so much older than I remembered. I wondered if I'd slept as long as Rip Van Winkle, twenty years, I think. I got real scared. Because that meant that I had got real old, too!

“Where's the bathroom?” I hollered. I didn't even wait for anybody to answer. I must have scared them all when I jumped up out of that bed and ran to the bathroom just to look in the mirror. I looked real tired, but I didn't look like an old woman. I padded back into the room and climbed back into the bed.

“Dr. Mason took real good care of you,” Mama told me. Something that looked like a smile was on her face. Her lips were so dry they had cracks in them.

They didn't tell me much and what they did tell me, didn't make much sense. I'd had a baby! I couldn't take it home with me to play with, or even see it. I didn't know if I'd had a baby boy or a baby girl. That made me cry. It would go to a nice home where somebody normal could raise it. And, Mama told me again, “Dr. Mason took real good care of you. You won't ever get pregnant again.” That made me kind of sad. Because I always thought that someday I'd have a child of my own to raise. But, like everybody kept telling me, girls like me had too many limitations to live normal lives. I guess I did. Because half of the stuff that was said to me that day didn't make no sense.

It wasn't long before things got back to normal again. If you could call it that. Mama and Daddy started acting like old people again, sitting around reading books, watching television, and running back and forth to the doctor.

The only thing that was different was my brother, David, started coming to the house more often. He was some kind of businessman. I don't know what he did, but he carried a briefcase. When he wore his glasses and a hat, he looked like a Black Clark Kent, who was really Superman up under his clothes. I'd seen my brother without his clothes; he wasn't no Superman. He had an office downtown where he bossed people around.

My brother's wife started taking me shopping and to their house out by the beach. “I'll keep an eye on Helen,” she told Mama.

Well, after a while, Annabel got tired of keeping an eye on me. When I was allowed to go out by myself, I ran into a few of the boys who had been my boyfriends. But I never let another boy touch me again,
unless
he gave me money or something nice. And some of them did.

Before I could get bored with those boys, my brother started inviting me to go places with him. Being the witch that she was, my sister-in-law didn't like to let my brother out of her sight for too long. But she didn't care where he went as long as he had me tagging along. It was always a movie and the mall. He treated me to pizza and stuff. Then, one day we went to visit some lady on Noriego Street. A real pretty Chinese lady. Mai Ling.

David and his Chinese lady friend would leave me in her living room watching television or playing with her poodle while they went off to another part of her house. Each time on the way home, David stopped and bought me a pizza or something else good. Sometimes he gave me money, too.

“Our little adventure is a secret between you and me.” David said that, or something like it, every time he took me with him to the Chinese lady's house.

I wasn't as dumb as they all thought I was. I knew what David and that lady were up to. I peeped in the lady's bedroom and saw them naked on the bed. But I never told nobody. I was just glad to have something to do. And, I was always glad to get them pizzas and that money.

It was bad enough being limited, but I was unhappy, too. I went to parks, dances, and other places for kids like me, with other girls like me from the special school I'd attended. But they were just as retarded as I was, if not more. And there was nothing more boring to me than hanging out with a bunch of retarded kids. We'd go places and get picked on by normal kids. And a few times when I got lost and confused, the police had to bring me home. Then, Miss Rocky next door became my friend. Finally, I had something else to do with my time.

Miss Rocky was my only normal friend, so I really liked her. I did everything I could to keep her happy. As soon as she had her kids, right off the bat she started asking me to come next door to babysit. The good news was Mama and Daddy didn't have to worry about me coming home in a police car when I went places with Miss Rocky. So in a way, Miss Rocky was also babysitting me.

 

It had been a long time since I'd had a boyfriend. I was glad when that man called Miss Rocky's house and asked me for a date. I didn't want to go to his house, like he had asked me to. And I didn't want to meet him somewhere downtown. It was my idea for him to come to Miss Rocky's house the other night.

He was White, just like he sounded on the telephone. His first name was Arthur, but he wouldn't tell me his last name. Or where he lived or worked, or anything else. He wasn't as cute as I had hoped he would be. Me, I was more into Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise when it came to White men. Arthur was more like a Homer Simpson, and just as old, if you could imagine a real man looking like one from a cartoon. Well, even if you couldn't, that's what Arthur looked like. But the man really knew how to dress up in a way that made him look better. He had on a San Francisco Giants cap with a matching T-shirt, Nikes, and some blue jeans. I don't know what kind of car he had because he'd parked it down the street and walked the rest of the way in the dark to Miss Rocky's house. Except for his looks, he was the perfect man.

“You have to be real quiet so you won't wake up the kids,” I told him when I let him in the front door.

“Kids? You have kids?” he asked, stopping in the middle of Miss Rocky's living room floor, looking around. The way he started scratching his head and chin, and frowning, I thought he was going to change his mind. But then he stared at me real hard, bobbing his head as his eyes looked me up and down. He looked at my chest longer than any other part on me. When he finally looked in my face, he smiled and smoothed back hair that looked like yellow wires. The sparkling beads of sweat on his forehead reminded me of diamonds.

“Oh no. I had me a baby a long time ago, but somebody else took it home to raise. You want some beer?” I led him across the floor, pulling him by his arm as he waved his hand like a lobster. But instead of sitting down, he just stood in the middle of the floor looking around at all the nice stuff Miss Rocky had. “Miss Rocky likes to shop,” I explained, shrugging. He seemed to like Miss Rocky's nice furniture and thick carpets as much as I did, because that smile was still on his face. And so were the beads of sweat. I was glad when he reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe off that sweat. “Don't you want to sit down?” I asked, waving him to a seat. I sat down on one end of the brocade couch Miss Rocky was so proud of, wondering if the White man was going to spend the rest of our date standing in the middle of the floor smiling. White people were so strange. I guess I would have been strange, too, if I'd been born White. As if I didn't have enough problems just being retarded.

Arthur glanced around real quick and started scratching the side of his neck. “Uh, you don't look the way I expected,” he told me, finally sitting down next to me.

“You don't either,” I said, lying, because he looked a lot like other White men I had seen. He was older than he sounded on the telephone, and only had them few strands of blond hair on a head shaped like a peanut. He had on glasses, reminding me of Dr. Mason, the one who had fixed me so I wouldn't have no more babies.

“Uh, when we talked on the telephone, you said you'd make this date worth my while,” he grinned, showing gums as pink as bubblegum.

I nodded. “Well, I'll do whatever you tell me to do,” I told him. That must have been what he wanted to hear because he pulled out his wallet and fished out some bills and handed them to me. “Three hundred dollars?” I looked at him with my mouth froze open like a dipper. “You giving me three hundred dollars?” The words almost scorched the inside of my mouth. I would not have been surprised if smoke had floated across my lips.

Arthur's face got stiff, like his hair. “Hey, that's what I've always paid you girls,” he said real quick, holding up a hand, shaking his head. “If you got something else in mind, maybe I should wait for the other girl.”

“Don't you like me? I thought you wanted a date with
me
,” I said, pouting.

“Sure—”

“This is a lot of money! More money than anybody ever gave me! Except that time my aunt Irene gave me five hundred dollars for Christmas!” I said, losing my breath from talking so fast. I unfolded the three one hundred dollar bills and looked at them real close and long, running my fingers back and forth.

Arthur laughed and patted my arm. “Calm down, there's plenty more where that came from. If you be a good girl, you'll get a lot more.” He cleared his throat, sniffed, and smiled. “And don't worry, it's all real.” Arthur looked at me for a long time. “You know, you really are a beautiful girl,” he said, rubbing my thigh. He reached up behind me and put his arm around my neck. Then he pulled me close enough for him to kiss me on the jaw. He leaned back and started grinning. “I would never try to stiff one of you girls,” he told me, crossing his legs, which was hard for him to do because he had a big stomach. He rubbed along the side of my thigh, making moaning noises under his breath. The same way that Donnie Reese and his friends used to do when they were with me. Then he started to poke me between my legs with his finger.

“You rich?” I asked, squeezing my thighs because his hands were making me tingle. My eyes were still on the money in my hands.

Arthur gave me a strange look and didn't answer my question. “Have you done this before?” he asked, rubbing the hair on the back of my neck. I was glad I had a perm. My hair could get pretty mean if I let it.

“Oh, yeah. Lots of times.” I looked at his face. He seemed nervous, because he kept looking toward the door. And, he was sweating so much it was dripping off his face onto his shirt. “Don't you like the way I look?” I asked, getting nervous myself.

“Sure. Sure, you're beautiful. Nineteen, huh?”

I nodded so hard my neck hurt. “Yep.”

“You seem, I don't know, innocent, I guess.” Now he was kissing me up and down my neck. “Do you have a room we can use?”

“For what?”

He gave me an even stranger look this time, blinking at me like he had something caught in his eye.

“Listen, you seem a little out of it. Maybe I should wait until Rockelle is available,” Arthur said in a serious voice.

“Miss Rocky had something else to do,” I said. “She won't be back until late. Real late.” Miss Rocky had left the house with that Mexican woman named Ester. God knows where they went. I had asked Miss Rocky if she was going off to take care of the bedridden old man she had told everybody she took care of. She must not have heard me because she didn't answer. But that Mexican woman had laughed. Who could figure out normal people? I know I couldn't.

“Where is your bedroom?”

“Uh, this way,” I answered, leading him to Miss Rocky's room. As soon as I shut the door, he got naked and grabbed me around the waist. He ripped my blouse trying to get it off me so fast. I didn't like what he did to me, ramming two fingers inside my pussy for a long time. He let me go, and then he ran over to where he'd left his pants on the floor and took out something. Before I knew what was happening, he ran back to me, stopping close to my face. I didn't know a man his age could move so fast.

“What is that?” I asked while he played around with his dick and that thing he'd removed from his pants pocket.

He moved back a few steps, his eyebrows shot up. “It's a condom.” His face froze and he stared at me for a minute. “Honey, don't you use protection?”

“Huh?”

“You don't use condoms to protect yourself and your partner?”

“Oh yeah. I do.”

Arthur finished putting that rubber thing on and pushed me down real hard and fast on the bed. He let out a grunt and climbed on top of me, but he didn't stay long.

I was glad when it was over. Happy now, Arthur started rubbing my titties and butt, and kissing me. His spit leaked all over my face.

After he got tired of doing all that, we got up off Miss Rocky's bed, got back in our clothes, and went back into the living room. That's when he lit up that nasty cigar and stunk up the whole house.

Before Arthur left, he kissed me some more and he told me to call him in a few days. But I made him promise not to tell Miss Rocky, explaining that she was the jealous type. He frowned when I told him that Miss Rocky would probably want more money, and that it would take him a lot longer to get her out of her clothes because she was so fat. He thanked me and kissed me again before he left.

I didn't know it that night, but it wouldn't be long before another man called up looking for a good time. Two nights later I had another date in Miss Rocky's house. Others had called, and I promised to see them when I could find the time. I didn't know that there were so many more men in this world just like Arthur. I was lucky they all brought the condom things with them, but they seemed upset because I never had any.