Red Light Wives (24 page)

“I didn't know. I had no way of knowing. I never saw her.”

“I know all of that shit.”

“Well, is she normal? I mean, does she get by all right?”

“Hell no.” With that, Clyde snatched back the blanket and revealed legs that were not only crooked, but unusually thin. “Because of that damn accident, her blood couldn't keep circulatin' the way it was supposed to. With her still a growin' child when it happened, her legs didn't grow straight and strong like other girls.'”

“Can she walk? Can she get around all right?”

The more Clyde talked about Keisha, the softer his voice got. “She gets around all right, one way or another. Sometimes she gotta use two canes. Sometimes, I carry her.”

I covered my mouth and stumbled to a metal chair in front of the desk. Clyde handed me a Styrofoam cup of water and sat down on the corner of the desk.

“Do you keep her at home?” I asked in a voice that was low enough to be considered a whisper. Clyde cupped his ear and leaned toward me. “Do you keep her at home?” I repeated, much louder.

He gave me an incredulous look. “What's wrong with you, woman? Of course we keep her at home. This is my child. Where else am I gonna keep her? See, that's the problem with you White folks. First thing y'all wanna do is hide somebody like Keisha in one of them asylums. Well, my girl ain't crazy, she ain't retarded, and she ain't got no other problems that me and Grandma Effie can't handle.”

“That's not what I meant. It's just that, well, trying to take care of someone with physical limitations must be difficult.”

“Look, lady, just livin' is difficult. Even for folks like you and me. Yeah, it's hard takin' care of Keisha, but I been doin' it all this time. Me and Granny Effie. And as long as I'm alive, I goin' to take care of my child.” Clyde lowered his voice and added, “Which is more than I can say for some folks.”

“I have to go now.” I set the cup on the edge of the desk and rose. “I'm happy to see that you, your grandmother, and Keisha are all doing well, Clyde.” I sighed and nodded. “I really mean that.”

“Where you live?” he asked abruptly, looking at me with contempt. “We don't get too many customers like you,” he added with a sneer.

“I presume you work here, too?” I asked, looking around the congested office.

He nodded. “C and L Used Cars. I'm the C, my buddy Lou out there, he's the L. Now, answer the question I just asked you. Where you live at?”

“Uh, we live in the city.”

“You been in the Bay Area all this time and I ain't seen you? I got me a place in 'Frisco, too. How come I ain't seen you until now? You know me, I get around. I done run into everybody I knew from when I first moved to California. Everybody but you, until now.”

“We lived in Sacramento for a while after we were married. We don't get out much. The house and the kids keep me busy. And, we travel a lot. We just got back from visiting Robert's family in Ireland. My daughter might remain there until she starts college this fall. My son's in the navy.”

Clyde nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, I doubt if I'll go to Ireland any time soon. Too much mess is goin' on at them airports these days. Mexico is about as far as I go.” Clyde sniffed and scratched his neck. “Y'all got a phone?”

“Why?” I gasped. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out and roll across the floor.

“Just askin',” Clyde said, holding up his hand. He returned to the cot and sat on the side, crossing his legs. He pulled the blanket back up to Keisha's shoulders and looked at his watch. “I'll have to get her up in a little while. She can't lay on her side for too long. Fluids might drain and settle on the side of her head where she got the most injured. That's the way it's goin' to be for her 'til the day she die.” Turning to me with a look I could not interpret, Clyde folded his arms and cocked his head. Words slid out of his mouth like venom. “I hope I see you again real soon, Mrs. O'Rourke.”

Just as I was about to attempt to leave again, Keisha sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

“Hello, Sleepin' Beauty,” Clyde cooed. Nodding in my direction he blurted, “This is your mama.”

I gasped and stumbled against the wall.

Keisha looked from me to Clyde and back to me with a warm smile. “Daddy said I got my good looks from you,” she said.

“Hello, Keisha,” I managed, furious that Clyde had put me in such an impossible position. “You…you are lucky to have a daddy who loves you so much,” I stuttered.

“Did you come to see me?” Keisha asked, struggling to swing her legs to the side of the cot. She groaned, shuddered, and rubbed the side of her head.

“You all right, baby?” Clyde asked.

“Daddy, I'm fine,” Keisha insisted, keeping her eyes on me. “So why did you come?”

“Uh, I came to buy a car.” I had almost forgotten the real reason I had come to Oakland. “I didn't expect to see you,” I mumbled.

“I'm glad you came. I always wanted to meet you, but I didn't think I ever would. Daddy said it was better for you.”

“There's a lot more to it than that, Keisha. I was very young when you were born. I was scared and unmarried.”

“So was Daddy,” Keisha reminded me, rising. With a great deal of effort, she stumbled over to me. “You can hug me if you want to.”

I hugged my precious daughter for the first time. It was too late for tears, but that didn't stop them from coming. Clyde handed me a paper towel.

“Mama…” Keisha stopped, moved away from me, and looked at Clyde. “Daddy, what do I call her?”

“Her name is Meg, girl. You know that.”

Turning back to me, Keisha said, “You can come see me whenever you want to, Meg. If you want to.”

For the first time in my life, I couldn't talk. I dropped the soaked paper towel to the floor. Then I snatched open the door and ran all the way back to my car.

I didn't look back, but through my rearview mirror I could see Clyde and Keisha in the window watching me as I sped out into the street.

I
t had taken Clyde long enough to take me on that damn cruise to Mexico that he had been promising me, but I'm sorry I went. We had a lot of good margaritas, smoked some good dope with some locals in Puerto Vallarta, but I didn't really have the good time I thought I would.

It was nice to be around all them Mexicans. So what if I'm probably Mexican, and California is crawling with people who look and talk like me, but being in that country made me sad. It
could
be the place where my family really came from. Somewhere in Mexico, there was probably an old woman I should be calling my
abuela
, my grandmother. Maybe she had a daughter she helped sneak across the border so she could have a better life. The lady got herself in with the wrong man and he left her when she got pregnant with me. And that's how I ended up in that Dumpster.

Even though I never liked to talk about it with Clyde, or anybody else, what happened to me when I was a baby was always on my mind. Day and night, seven days a week. It didn't make me feel no better when I read in the newspaper or seen on television how somebody else found another thrown-away baby. And it seemed to be happening more and more every day. I wondered what kind of world I lived in where people were making babies and throwing them out with the trash, or in a toilet. I was one of the lucky ones. The last one I read about somebody had tossed into a furnace to burn up. A cleaning man had found what was left of that poor little baby.

The same morning that Clyde and I got back from Mexico, was my birthday. I had cheated death out of twenty-six years.

“Ester, are you all right? You been actin' real strange all day. You sure you don't wanna do nothin' special for your birthday?”

I shook my head. “Lula, I got some things on my mind. Close the door and leave me to myself.” I was in my lonely bed, with sticky shit in the corners of my eyes and dribble on my lips. Lula gave me a mean look and acted like she wanted to get in my face. But she didn't. She left me to myself.

Clyde, acting like he was still high from all that shit we smoked in Mexico, was out in my living room with Lula. It was her job, which she decided on herself, to tell Clyde everything that went on while he was out of town. Just like she was somebody mama! And, as much as I hated to admit it, she was. It didn't take me long to realize that.

Lula got mad when I crawled in her bed when I had cramps, or when I just didn't want to be in my own bed alone. But she let me stay with her, cradling me like she probably would have cradled the baby she lost. I wasn't the only one who went to Lula to be babied. Rosalee was always calling up on the telephone or coming to the apartment to talk to Lula about one problem or another. Lula was a good listener, and she sometimes doled out good advice. Whether we took her advice or not was another thing.

It was just good to have a woman like Lula around to go to with a problem. Dr. Lula. She hated to be called that. “It makes me feel old and like I should be shoulderin' everybody else's problems,” Lula complained. But it didn't make no difference.

Clyde was nobody's fool. He knew when he was not around, his wives did whatever they wanted, no matter what he'd told us to do. Me included. We'd run off to Vegas and lose a few thousand dollars, pick up a stray trick to get more money to fly to L.A. to go shopping on Rodeo Drive, and eat at the same restaurants where the stars ate. Sometimes we would do all of that and Clyde would never know about it. Sometimes we would sneak out on dates with our regular tricks. That meant more money for us to do shit with other than grease Clyde's palm. We would only admit it when the tricks blabbed to him.

Clyde was the coolest, most kicked-back man I knew. Other than his child and his grandmother, sometimes it seemed like he didn't give a damn about nothing else. He never got into the kind of violence his rivals got into, beating their girls with coat hangers and stuff like that. And taking all of their money. But Clyde wasn't no wuss, and he did get tough with us when he felt like he had to. He used to slap me around a little when I got on his nerves. He stopped when he got tired of me fighting him back. He still had scars from where I bit and scratched him. The last time we ended up on the floor, bleeding and laughing about how stupid we looked. Violence was not really part of my relationship with Clyde anymore. When Clyde got mad at one of us, he would pull out his Glock and point it at us. But it was always a joke. Because we'd take it from him, cuss him out, threaten to leave him, and things would go back to normal. Why he even bothered to carry that damn gun was a mystery to me. He didn't even need it.

The last time Clyde got violent was with that Rockelle. She got so desperate for more money, she tried to take some from his wallet when she thought he was drunk. Anyway, Rockelle was always bad news, and we all knew it. That's the real reason Clyde didn't hook her up on as many dates as he did the rest of us but he still cared enough about her to let her stay on his agenda. Besides, he loved them kids of hers. And couldn't nothing tame Clyde like kids. Nobody on this planet could say that man wasn't a good man when it came to kids. Clyde, Lula, Rosalee, and even Rockelle and her kids, they meant a lot to me. They were the closest I could come to having a real family. But that didn't stop me from feeling lonely.

I waited in my room until I heard Clyde and Lula leave my apartment. Then I got dressed and left myself. I didn't always travel in my shiny red Jetta, especially when I went over to the Mission District. I stopped doing that shit when I got tired of coming back to my car and finding some motherfucker had broken in, or stole my goddamn tires.

I took a cab downtown. From there I rode the bus to Valencia Street. For some reason, every year on my birthday, I had to go back to that place where Clyde found me: the alley that was meant to be my grave. The same place that so many drunk people go to pee, throw up, or to rob somebody. If somebody was to find out about me going back there and ask me why, I couldn't tell them.

Anyway, there was something about the alley that drew me like a magnet every year. That was the only time I went near that place. The building the alley was behind used to be a restaurant, but they turned it into a bar. Some pretty rough characters hung out there, but I never let it stop me. I just
had
to go there and feel it. Just like those people who go to that Wailing Wall I read about.

When I got to
my
alley (it was hard for me not to think of that place as mine), there was a drunk man on the ground in a puddle of his own piss and vomit. There was still a Dumpster there, but for years it looked too new to be the one I'd been left in.

For one whole hour, I sat on the ground on the side of that Dumpster with my eyes closed, making up shit in my mind. It was not a pretty story. I seen a lady, very young and pretty. She was scared. She couldn't take care of herself or the baby she just had. I was feeling that place I came from, wondering what my mama was thinking just before she dumped me. Before I could get to the worst part of my thoughts, the drunk woke up. Right away he gave me the “lady can you spare some change” look. I gave him a five dollar bill and he went on his way.

Birds was flying all up above my head, dropping their shit on the ground around me. The sky was gray, like I felt. My head was aching and my stomach was turning upside down. When I had felt enough, I got up, brushed off my jeans, and walked down to Army Street on shaky legs. I'd stayed longer than I usually did, and the drunk had come back with some of his friends looking too hard at my expensive leather jacket. The first few times I visited my spot, I'd cried when I left. I didn't cry no more. The years had made me too tough for that.

 

A lot of the people I used to know when I lived in the Mission District was still hanging around on the street, doing nothing, going nowhere, but to the street. I guess you could say they got as far as they was going.

It turned out to be a better birthday this time. I seen somebody I hadn't seen in years, and it was somebody I was glad to see.

“Ester Sanchez, is that you all grown up?” Coming up to me was Manuel Vasquez. He used to run these streets. He had fought with every weapon you could name, with everybody who got in his way, so that he could keep his control. He used to sell all kinds of shit out of the trunk of his lowrider. Mostly stuff that him and his homeboys got from breaking into houses in rich neighborhoods. But he'd sold weapons and dope, too. I was fifteen the last time I seen Manny. I was one of the faces in the crowd that stood around watching some racist cops stomp the crap out of him.

“Manny!” I hugged him like he was a paying trick. “You look good for an old man.” Manny was only about ten years older than me, but he had the eyes of a much older man. He was still one of the best-looking Latinos I ever seen.

“
Aye yi yi! Mamacita
, you lookin' like a little Jennifer Lopez these days.” He tried to widen his hooded eyes, and that made him look even older. Poor Manny.

My face got hot, and I blushed. “I only wish I had J.Lo's money and her butt.” Finally, I felt really glad to be alive. My heart started beating like crazy. I couldn't remember the last time seeing an old friend had made me feel so happy. Especially one who I thought was either dead or on death row.

“Where you been, girl?” Manny lifted my chin with a shaky hand and looked at me real close with his mouth hanging open. “I thought you was dead!”

I laughed and slapped his hand. “No, not yet. Maybe closer than I wanna be, though.” After my little pilgrimage, it was hard for me not to have such a grim thought.

“What you doin' here? Everything is okay?” Manny leaned back on his long legs and looked me over, rubbing my sweaty hand. “You look hungry. You want somethin' to eat? I can cook somethin' for you. I got a place over the way on Penn Street.”

“I don't need no food. I-I'm just a little tired, that's all. Today is my birthday.”

“Well, in that case, let me help you celebrate. You old enough now to have one of my margaritas.” Manny wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kept it there all the way to his apartment four blocks away.

Manny's apartment didn't look no different or better than any of the other places I'd been inside in the Mission. It was kind of dark in his teeny-weeney living room, like the inside of a bar, even with the lights on. And like every other Latino home I'd ever been in, one wall had dollar-store pictures of this saint, that saint, the baby Jesus, and the Virgin Mother. I couldn't take my eyes off the picture of St. Jude, the saint who the most hopeless people prayed to. I never left home without a picture of St. Jude in my wallet, and I prayed to him every day of my crazy life. I believed that my prayers had kept me from getting into too much trouble. And I think it had a lot to do with me wanting to do something better with myself someday, besides selling my body.

“You got a wife now, Manny?” I asked that question because Manny's place looked too neat for a man. Even though the carpet had holes and was faded in some spots, it was clean. His lumpy couch had a nice plastic cover on it, and everything else was in place. His plants even looked nice.

“Not no more. Remember that girl from Tijuana that I used to go around with?”

“The one with the mustache?” I asked, sitting on the couch. The plastic squeaked and made a crackling noise.

“And the bow legs. Well, she married me.”

“Oh.” I started standing back up. The last thing I wanted to do on my birthday was fight off a jealous wife. “Lucia's a big-ass woman,” I said, making a face.

“Sit back down.” Manny laughed. “She left me last year. I think she's back in Mexico now.” He rolled his eyes, with a sad look about them, to the side, like he couldn't face me when he said what he said next. “Back to the mama I took her from when she was fifteen.” Manny looked at me now with his chest pushed out. That sad look was still in his eyes.

“Oh.” I sat back down. “I guess she got tired of the gangster life, huh?”

“Oh yeah.” He sighed and let out a low whistle. “And so did I. Ain't no old gangsters, just dead ones.”

It was only then that I noticed the long ugly scar on the side of Manny's face, but I didn't mention it.

“What do you do with yourself these days, girl? You married?” he asked with anxious eyes. No matter how much he smiled or how he tried to express his face, his eyes never changed. It was too late and even though he was not really an old man, the eyes were. And I had a feeling they had been that way for a long time. Lately, I'd been seeing that same tortured look in my own eyes. I was lucky because I could hide mine with makeup.

“Not yet,” I told him, tapping my foot on his puckered, faded carpet.

“Don't worry. A pretty girl like you, when you get ready to marry, you can choose any man you want.” Manny snapped his fingers and winked at me.

All of a sudden, I didn't feel like I belonged in the same place with Manny. I stood again.

“Listen, I have to go now,” I said real quick.

Manny seemed disappointed, but he didn't try to stop me. “Now that you know where I live, maybe you will come visit me sometime and let me cook you some dinner and make you a margarita.”

“I don't know about that, Manny.” I was moving to the door.

“You work around here? Live around here?” he asked, following me.

I shook my head.

“Well, don't hide yourself for another umpteen years, girl. Come and visit with me sometime. I got a job cookin' at El Sol restaurant, so I know how to fix anything you want.”

“So, you don't do your hustle no more?”

Manny looked at his saints and made the sign of the cross.

“Like I said, ain't no old gangsters,” he told me. “But I didn't turn into Holy Moses now,” he admitted with a grin. “I still smoke a little weed with my homies, I still buy shit that fell off a truck, but nothin' like before.”