Red Light Wives (28 page)

I
was so glad that Miss Rocky didn't take her kids to that lady's funeral that she had to go to. I was real sad about that lady dying, but in a way I was glad. With me having to babysit for Miss Rocky while she was at the funeral, I had a reason to get away from Mama and Daddy.

As soon as Miss Rocky called me up that morning and asked me to come over, I dropped the telephone while she was still talking. I took off running out the door, wearing mismatched shoes and a blouse with all of the buttons undone. But there was nothing strange about the way I was looking. I left my house looking like a slob to go to Miss Rocky's all the time.

I was just that happy about having a reason to get out of the house. And I know Mama and Daddy was just as happy about me having to babysit as I was. Old people like them had a real hard time dealing with me. It was one thing for me to be “limited,” as they said I was. I'd never been anything but that. But Mama and Daddy both sometimes acted just as limited as me! They were so forgetful that they would go out somewhere and come home in a cab because they couldn't remember where they'd parked our car. They'd hide money somewhere in the house and couldn't remember where until weeks later. My daddy left our house one time without his false teeth. He didn't realize that until he got all the way to his doctor's office. When I watched television with Mama and Daddy, I was the only one who could keep up with who was who on the screen. Now who couldn't tell Bernie Mac from Chris Rock?

Now, my parents' limits were not always bad. At least not to me. Mama would give me my allowance in the morning and by noon, she would have forgotten. She'd give me another allowance. Sometimes more than she gave me the first time. Sometimes she misplaced clothes I never wanted to wear in the first place. Daddy was even worse. Two days after he gave me my new computer, he came home with another one for me. I loved my parents, and I felt sorry for them, but in a way, I was glad that they got to see what it had always been like for me. They were glad we had Miss Rocky right next door. I knew that because I heard them say so a lot.

Just the other day I overheard my daddy say to somebody he was talking to on the telephone, “Rockelle Harper moving next door was just what we needed to help us cope with Helen. Maybe Helen can learn more about life in general from Rockelle. And those children of Rockelle's are a double blessing. The more Helen spends time at Rockelle's house, the more contented she seems.” Boy did Daddy get it right for a change. This particular day, I was babysitting for Miss Rocky for free.

Things had become so bad for Miss Rocky that she had been paying me to babysit on credit anyway. And lots of times, she just plain forgot to pay me at all. So, I told her before she even asked that I'd look after the kids for her today for free. If a funeral wasn't reason enough to do somebody a favor, I didn't know what was.

Before I told Miss Rocky not to pay me the night before last when she had to go out, she was like, “Helen, I had some unexpected expenses this week. Can I pay you later on in the month?” I wanted to laugh, but I didn't think Miss Rocky was trying to be funny. She didn't crack a smile. When she was serious, her face got so straight and spooky it looked like she'd strapped on a mask. And it was something you wouldn't want to see if you went walking all by yourself down a dark alley. But “unexpected expenses” was the same excuse she used every single time. The reason I wanted to laugh was because her latest unexpected expenses included a new DVD player and a three hundred dollar hair weave (on top of being fat, Miss Rocky's real hair was so scandalous, you could almost see her skull). I had almost forgot about that time Miss Rocky told me she couldn't pay me because she'd had a out-of-town emergency that she had to take care of right away. It must have been a doozy of an emergency because all three of her kids came over to my house to brag about how they were all getting ready to go to Disneyland that weekend.

Well, for one thing, my family was not poor. I didn't even need money from Miss Rocky. I didn't think she needed to know, but I never needed any of the money that I made from babysitting. My mama, my daddy, and even my pain-in-the-jaw big brother, David, and his pig-faced wife—they all gave me money, and all kinds of other good stuff.

I told Miss Rocky, “You really don't have to pay me at all today.” That's when I pulled this big ole handful of money out of the red brassiere I had bought. The one my men friends liked so much. If I didn't do nothing else right, I always made sure I was looking good when I had to deal with men. Yeah, I sometimes left my house wearing mismatched shoes, and my blouse unbuttoned or buttoned up wrong, but that was only when I went to Miss Rocky's or to the corner store. When Mama let me go shopping at the mall on the bus by myself, I never went there without my makeup looking perfect and my clothes looking like I'd just removed them off a rack.

 

I had a good reason not to give myself too good of a makeover when I went to Miss Rocky's house. I didn't want to make her feel bad standing next to a pretty girl like me. I figured that out after something Mama told me: “That Rockelle would be so much more attractive if she'd lose about forty pounds and get rid of that fake hair. I wonder what goes through her head when she's with those other beautiful women she hangs out with. I bet Rockelle feels like Moms Mabley standing next to slim women like Ester, Lula, and Rosalee. And she wonders why her husband ran off. Hmmph!”

Miss Rocky had enough problems. I didn't want her to feel bad about her weight or anything else on account of me. Sometimes I went to her house looking like a bag lady on purpose, just so she could say something like, “Helen, you would be a real pretty girl if you'd fix yourself up better. Comb your hair, put on a little lipstick. And don't walk around wearing mismatched shoes.”

Miss Rocky's words had hurt my feelings, but to make myself feel better, all I had to do was remind myself what Mama had said about Miss Rocky looking like Moms Mabley. That would always make me feel sorry for Miss Rocky. One thing my limitations didn't screw with was my feelings. I could care as much about another person as a normal girl.

Miss Rocky's eyes got real real big, and she gave me this look that made me tremble. Like I said, this woman could screw her face up like a mask. My face got real hot as Miss Rocky stared at me and all that money in my hand. I got nervous because I didn't know what she was thinking. Not only did I have on makeup that day and a tight blouse covering up my red brassiere, but I had on a pair of brand-new pumps. I couldn't have Miss Rocky thinking I couldn't look like nothing but a frump all the time. This particular day I looked like I was going out on a date, and I was hoping I was. All I had to do was wait for Miss Rocky to leave the house so I could send her kids to their rooms to watch television.

“Helen, where did you get all that money?” Miss Rocky snatched it out of my hand and looked at it some more. I bet she was thinking it was fake. She flipped through it, counting it out loud, her eyes getting even bigger. “Girl, there's more than two thousand dollars here!”

“And it's all mine,” I said, real proud of myself. As I should have been. Sarah Freeman, a girl my age who lived two houses down from me, worked at Burger King. Every time I saw her, she complained about the measly paycheck she got. I didn't have to complain about nothing. And that heifer was always making fun of me, calling
me
a retard. I wish her friends could have seen the look on her face the other day when I told her to kiss my rich retarded ass.

“But where did you get it?” Miss Rocky's voice was lower. She started glancing around, like to make sure nobody was listening. “You didn't do something you shouldn't be doing to get all this money, did you?” Miss Rocky's eyes looked me up and down, but she still didn't say nothing about how good I was looking today.

“Like…what?”

Miss Rocky cocked her head to the side. She looked at me real hard some more out of the corner of her eye, which by the way, had too much mascara and eyeliner. “Like, stealing? You haven't been in your mama's…or anybody else's purse, have you?” Right after Miss Rocky said that last part, she looked at her purse on the couch.

I shook my head so hard my ponytail slapped my face. “I would never steal from nobody.” I nodded toward her purse and added, “Especially you. I heard my mama say what a low-down, funky, dead-beat your husband was. I know it takes a lot of money for you to keep this house and pay for your three kids. And to go to that beauty parlor you go to on Ocean Street so they can sew up some hair on your head.” My eyes rolled up to look at Miss Rocky's fresh new hairdo. She said all the time she didn't like bangs, but she had them. She'd been wearing bangs ever since I told her they would hide the lines on her forehead. “I like them bangs, Miss Rocky,” I said, knowing a compliment would make her feel good and maybe forget about trying to get up in my business.

“Thanks, Helen,” Miss Rocky said, patting her hair, like she wanted to make sure all of it was still on her head. She let out a deep breath and rubbed the side of her face, closing her eyes so tight they almost disappeared into all the meat on her face. When she opened her eyes, she leaned closer to me and looked me in the eyes, like she was trying to see what I was thinking.

“What's wrong, Miss Rocky?”

“Helen, where did you get all this money?”

My stomach started doing weird stuff, like moving and hurting like somebody had hit me in it. I rubbed my stomach and turned my back to Miss Rocky. But that didn't do me no good. She grabbed me by my shoulders and spun me back around so we were eyeball to eyeball. “Uh, I made it doing stuff,” I managed, my chest getting so tight I couldn't hardly breathe no more. I was hoping I wouldn't pass out or die in front of Miss Rocky. That would have made me look real bad. She already had one funeral to go to.

“Your folks know you got all this money on you?” Miss Rocky shook me but I pulled away from her, shaking my head. “You sure you didn't steal this money? Tell me the truth now.”

“I didn't steal it, Miss Rocky. Honest to God. I got it from doing stuff.”

“Stuff like what?” Miss Rocky's mouth stayed opened, and I could see red stuff on her teeth. I hoped it was lipstick, not blood.

“Miss Rocky, remember that time you told me to mind my own business when I asked you about that pile of money I seen in your refrigerator locked up tight in that Tupperware bowl?” Miss Rocky's eyes got real narrow, like a snake's. She half turned her head and looked at me. I didn't even give her a chance to say nothing else about my money. “Well, I'm telling you the same thing you told me. ‘My money is my business.'”

“All right now. I just don't want you to be getting yourself into any kind of trouble.” Miss Rocky turned around and walked like a penguin out of the living room where we'd been standing and talking, next to the sixty-inch screen television she had bought for her kids. That big boxy thing was one of last month's unexpected expenses. The back of Miss Rocky's tight black blouse was still half unzipped. She looked like a great big sausage to me.

Miss Rocky was always trying to lose weight, but it never worked. She had Slim-Fast in her refrigerator, diet books on her bookshelf, a thing she was supposed to run in place on, and even some tapes that she was suppose to dance to. Every time she tried to exercise when I was around, she ended up falling out on the floor and I'd have to help her up.

“Miss Rocky, you are just like Oprah. She's still a great big fat woman, and she's been trying to lose weight ever since she got on television. Maybe you and her were meant to be great big fat women. That's what my daddy says about you and her both.”

“If you insult me again, I'm sending your smart ass home, girl,” Miss Rocky told me, tossing some chips into her mouth. “I'd be fine if I could lose some of this meat off my bottom.”

“But you got just as much meat at the top,” I reminded.

I didn't get sent home, but I got a dirty look from Miss Rocky that day.

 

Most of Miss Rocky's clothes were too small for her, but that didn't stop her from squeezing into them and then prancing out of her house to go take care of that sick old man. His name was Mr. Roy and he lived in Oakland, but that's all Miss Rocky ever told anybody about him. Oh, she said that he paid her real good money.

And another thing, I never could figure out why Miss Rocky always dressed up real nice just to go take care of a sick old man. I didn't have enough nerve to ask her, but I figured my mama would know.

“Mama, why do Miss Rocky dress up to go nurse an old man?” Miss Rocky had been going to nurse this mysterious old man since right after her husband took off. I couldn't figure out how she did that, and run around with that Clyde and those other three women, too.

“If he's straight, it doesn't matter how old and sick he is, he'll appreciate looking at a well-groomed woman. Even one as stout as Rockelle. Men are like dogs. Their eyes never stop roving,” Mama told me, looking me up and down as she talked, brushing my hair back off my face. She wiped a smudge off my jaw. I never knew what my mama thought about me being the way I was. All I had to go on was what I could eavesdrop. I did know from hearing bits and pieces of conversations she had with folks over the telephone, that she still worried about me getting in trouble with men again. “Well, at least there won't be any more babies for Helen for us to worry about no matter how many more men take advantage of her. But a baby would be a picnic compared to her catching something that could kill her,” Mama said into the telephone. I didn't like the fact that I was such a popular subject with my mama and her friends, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I wasn't sure what it was I could catch from a man that could kill me. I had a feeling it had something to do with Mama taking me to doctors all the time for them to draw blood out of my arm. Sometimes it seemed like my biggest worry was my mama. Daddy was too busy watching ball games and sleeping, so he wasn't too much of a problem to me. I don't know what would have become of me if it wasn't for Miss Rocky and her kids living next door.