Red Light Wives (26 page)

I
t had been three weeks since my encounter with Clyde that Saturday. I'd appeased Mom that day by telling her that I had not made it to Oakland and had gone to have lunch with a woman from my exercise class instead. And, Robert, well he had not even asked if I'd found a car for our daughter. He'd been in Baja on a fishing trip for the past ten days. With him and my mother out of my hair, I had more space and time to think. But even with all of the space in my house, it felt too claustrophobic, and there were too many things in it to remind me of the life I had with Robert.

I was nursing my fourth drink in the same dingy bar I'd ended up in after seeing Clyde that grim day the month before. But I had to relive it all before I could figure out how I was going to handle my future.

My mind traveled back in time again. I replayed some of the things I'd already filtered through during the previous weeks.

A month before my sixteenth birthday, my sister, Fiona, died from an overdose of heroin. My parents were still mourning the death of my brother at the time. Losing another child almost destroyed us all so I promised my parents that I would not cause them any further grief. And I probably would have kept that promise if Clyde had not reentered my life. This time, he had accompanied his grandmother to work so that he could earn a few dollars doing odd jobs around our house. He cut our grass, washed the three cars we maintained, and groomed our three collies.

Clyde was more handsome than ever. However, I couldn't take advantage of his good looks the way I wanted to. I had too many other distractions to keep me occupied at the time. Like my upcoming birthday party and my cool friends who always seemed to know where to get the best dope. I never got that heavy into drugs, not after what happened to my sister. But everybody I knew smoked pot. To me it was no worse than smoking cigarettes. I was usually too stoned out of my skull to pay too much attention to Clyde until the night of my party.

Effie had made all of the snacks, and agreed to work late that night to serve and clean up afterward. Of course, Clyde had not been invited, but he wandered into the recreation room in back of our house facing our kidney-shaped pool, just as my party was winding down.

“Granny said for me to bring y'all the last of them sandwiches,” Clyde yelled, strutting past Dennis Russo on the floor, the only boy I knew personally who came close to being a drug dealer. Dennis had just come in from our back patio where he had puked for fifteen minutes. His face was red, his eyes dilated, and his legs so weak he couldn't stand. Clyde hopped around Dennis's prostrate body, then looked from Dennis to me, handing me the platter of sandwiches. “I guess dude done did enough partyin' for one night, huh?” Clyde glanced around the room with an amused look on his face. There were only four other kids left. I was the only one still able to stand.

“Oh, he's fine. He had a little too much to, uh, eat,” I lied.

“I bet he did,” Clyde said, smirking, then added in a low voice, “and another thing, I bet he had too much of the bad shit.”

I set the platter of sandwiches on the pool table. “And what do you mean by that?”

“Girl, you know damn well what I'm talkin' about. You people wouldn't know good dope from a bale of hay.”
You people?
Clyde glanced toward the door, then leaned closer to me. “If you ever want to feel real good, just let me know.”

Effie's sweaty Black face floated into the room on a body that had spread in the most peculiar way over the years. From the neck down, she looked like a lumpy pyramid. “Clyde, get your narrow butt movin'. Lickety-split!” she yelled, clapping her hands and stomping her foot. Still facing Clyde, she spoke in a sharp voice. “And, Miss Meg, Miss Carmody said I can clean up tomorrow. On account of I don't want to be out too late waitin' on no bus with all them rapists on the loose.” Effie paused and gave me a sly glance over her shoulder. A huge crooked black vein bulged out on the side of her neck like a snake. She casually cleared her throat and continued, speaking with her hands on hips that looked like they had a mind of their own. “She says if we go now, she'll give us a ride home and we won't have to take that bus.”

“Can I ride along, too?” I asked quickly, intrigued by Clyde's remarks about making me feel “real good.”

“What about your friends?” Effie wiggled her nose and made a sweeping gesture with her hand. Dennis was moaning and twisting around on the floor. One thing I had to say about my parents, they never disrupted my parties unless some busybody neighbor called the cops when the music got too loud. Tonight's party had been tame compared to the last one I had when Lynette Sweetser attacked Deborah Retner with a punch bowl for dancing with her boyfriend.

“Oh, they all live around here. They can find their way home,” I insisted, already rushing from the rec room to get my purse. “I'd like to see where you live.”

When I had opened the back door on the passenger side of Mom's Buick for Effie to crawl in, Effie ignored me and snatched open the front passenger door and sat down, looking at me with a smirk. “I don't sit in the back of nobody's vehicle no more. In the state of California or in Mississippi. Ain't got to no more,” she purred with defiance. A glare from her deep-set, shiny black eyes alone was enough to make any normal person tremble. Mom trembled and turned beet red. Like I said, Effie always did what she wanted, and she would have, whether the civil rights law said she could or not.

One of the many things that puzzled me was, if there were other Black people as proud and fierce-looking as Effie and could control a situation as well as she could, why was the Black race in such a mess? I didn't even think that Effie could answer that question, so I never even thought about asking.

“Clyde, where is your manners, boy? Don't you see Miss Meg standin' here waitin' on you to help her into her mama's car?” Effie said smugly.

With a look that displayed both surprise and annoyance, Clyde stepped aside and held the back passenger door open for me. The cool breeze from the night air on my face helped clear my head. But I became even more alert when Clyde's knee touched mine. It stayed there all the way to Effie's dreary street.

We were in an area in Oakland that I had never been in before in my life. It was a foreign-looking neighborhood with old houses in desperate need of paint and repairs and boatlike cars that looked older than I was. Garishly dressed dark-skinned people with outlandish hairdos occupied the corners, staring hungrily at every moving car. Surprisingly, I was not the least bit afraid. For some reason, I felt safe with Effie and especially Clyde. If anything, I was curious about these mysterious people. I felt like I was on an African safari.

 

I got so curious during the next few days, that I decided to pay Effie and Clyde a visit on my own. I had recently acquired my driver's license, but I was only allowed to drive Mom's car. I knew enough about East Oakland to know that it was not a safe place for an expensively dressed White girl to be alone and driving a nice car. Short of putting on an Afro wig and a dashiki, I made myself look as inconspicuous as possible. Even though it was night, I had on dark glasses, a scarf, and dark clothing.

As soon as I reached Clyde's street, I slowed down so that I could see the houses better. When I stopped, a scowling, bearded man leaped out of nowhere. He tapped on my window and held up two fingers. I stepped on the gas and didn't stop until I was back on the freeway.

I didn't know why then, and I don't know why now, but I stopped at the first pay phone I saw and dialed Effie's number. I prayed that Effie would answer so I could just hang up, but it was Clyde who answered. I was surprised to hear soft, easy listening music in the background. If anything, I had expected either some of Effie's wailing gospel music, something Motown, or one of the many disco tunes that Clyde and every other teenager I knew liked.

“Clyde, this is Meg.”

“Meg who?” he said, sounding more annoyed than curious.

“Carmody.”

“Oh. What the hell do you want?”

“Uh, I drove by your house a few minutes ago.” I don't know what I was feeling at that moment, but I had come too far to turn back now.

Clyde took his time responding, clicking his teeth in a way that made me think he was doing it on purpose to annoy me. “For what?” He didn't even try to hide his impatience.

His arrogant attitude did annoy me, but I didn't want him to know that. “I thought maybe I'd see you.”

“You drove by my house thinkin' you'd see
me?
What would I be doin' roamin' around outside the house this time of night? That's what cats and puppy dogs do when they got to do their business.” He laughed.

“I just wanted to talk. I've known you for so many years, and I really don't know you.”

“Well, what you want to know, Miss Meg?”

“Clyde, you don't have to call me ‘Miss' if you don't want to. You're just as good as I am. We're equals.”

Clyde was silent for a long time before he responded to my patronizing comment.

“I can call your White ass anything I wanna call you. And fuck that ‘we equal' bullshit. You ain't nowhere near my equal.” He laughed. “I don't believe your sorry White ass. Now what the fuck you want with me, bitch? I got more important things to do with my time than stand here on this phone listenin' to your whinin' ass.”

I was so horrified, I could barely speak. I surprised myself when I did. “Clyde, I didn't mean to offend you. I just want you to think of me as just another one of your friends. Do you call the Black girls you know ‘Miss?'”

“Fuck no! Is that what you called me up to talk about?”

“No, I—”

“Then quit pussy-footin around the damn bush, and say what you got to say. Shoot.”

I took a deep breath and glanced around to make sure I was still alone. I gripped the telephone so hard, my palm ached. “You got any good pot?” I whispered.

“Everything I got is good. And I do mean
everything
. When you want it?” he asked eagerly, in a more pleasant tone.

“Uh, can you meet me somewhere?”

“Yeah, I can do that. Where you wanna meet at?”

“How about one of those motels off 880, just before the airport turnoff?”

“I ain't got no car, so wherever we go, I got to take a bus to get there. Unless you wanna come out here and pick me up,” Clyde told me. The harshness had returned to his voice.

“Can't you get to one of those motels off the freeway by bus?”

Clyde cursed under his breath. “Look, girl, I know you don't know nothin' about the way folks in the
real
world live. You been livin' the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle all your life. Now if you want to hook up with me, that's fine. But I ain't about to drag myself around, transferrin' to two different buses, and then havin' to walk part of the way, just to get to one of them motels off the freeway. Not for you or anybody else. Goddammit. There is one bus I can walk to from here, one block, get on it, and it'll bring me all the way downtown. There's motels, hotels down there. I…wait a minute. What's wrong with me? I ain't got to go through all them damn changes. You want some good weed,
you come to me
. Plain and simple. Like everybody else. Shit.”

I swallowed hard. “All right. Be standing in front of your house. I will pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

“That'll work.”

“Uh, what do you have?”

“What you want?”

“You said you had something, uh, real good.”

Clyde was taking too long to answer.

“Clyde?”

“I'm still here, baby.” He sighed. “And like I said, everything I got is good.” He laughed.

“Clyde, are you coming on to me?” I teased.

“You would think that. Let's get one thing straight right now, not every brother want to get down with you just 'cause you White. Sure, if you was to let me, hell yeah, I'd hit it. But I'd do that even if you was purple. With my eyes closed, I can't tell one pussy from another. I'm all for equal opportunity. Get it?”

I let out a noisy sigh. “Let's just concentrate on getting high.”

“That'll work for me. You the one brought up all that other shit. Shit.”

“I'm on my way, Clyde.”

“That's cool. But if you ain't here in fifteen minutes, I'm gone.”

 

I picked Clyde up ten minutes later. There was never any doubt in my mind that it would be up to me to cover the motel expenses, but I brought it up anyway.

With a sharp gasp, Clyde leaned against the side of the passenger door of Mom's car and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Fuck no, I ain't payin' half, a third, or no other part of no motel bill.” He laughed and shook his head. “For you people to be so smart, y'all sure can come up with some dumb-ass shit. What do you be thinkin', girl?”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“It means a lot of things, Megan. Like, why would a girl like you be out here by yourself with somebody like me?”

I shrugged. “Don't you like being out here alone with a girl like me?”

“Don't flatter yourself. Rich White girls come at me everywhere I go. You ain't nothin' special. Look at you,” Clyde said, tilting his head to look at me out of the corner of his eye. “You ain't even cute.”

I decided to keep my thoughts and comments to myself until we reached the motel.

Less than an hour in that first motel, we fucked. When we needed money for more pot and motels, I was always the one responsible for that, which was usually no problem. But when it did get to be a problem, like my folks demanding to know what it was I suddenly needed so much money for, I got real creative.

I knew of several girls at my school who worked for escort services. And as hard as it was for me to believe, there were men out there willing to pay good money just to have a cute young girl like me do the same things with them that I did with Clyde for free. I signed up with two services, using a fake ID with a fake name.