Red Light Wives (30 page)

If men stared and whistled at Miss Rocky when they seen her in makeup and sexy clothes, fat as she was, there was just no telling what my date was going to do when he seen me this time.

“W
ould you like
another
drink, ma'am?”

I could hardly lift my head to see who was talking to me. And when I did, my eyes burned when I blinked. It took me a moment to realize where I was and even then I was not sure. Looking around, rubbing my head, it all came back to me. I was in hell. I'd been sitting in the same bar for hours, reliving my life.

“Ma'am, are you all right?” The waitress was about what you'd expect. She had long, stiff orange hair with black roots, pasty complexion, too much dime-store makeup, bad teeth, and a dingy white uniform with a button missing.

“Uh, just some coffee please. Black.” I let out a long, painful sigh, raking my shaking fingers through my hair. “Are there any more bars in this neighborhood?” I asked hoarsely, the inside of my throat feeling like it had been scraped with a dull knife. I couldn't take a chance and visit a bar where I might run into someone I knew. And from the looks I received in this place, I didn't want to become too familiar with this crowd. I recognized some of the same brooding faces I'd seen on my first visit.

“I'm not sure, ma'am. I only work here. I live in Oakland.” Despite her grim appearance, she had a pleasant voice. Just the mention of Oakland made my head throb.

“Then how far am I from Market Street?”

The waitress gave me an impatient look and shrugged. “Like I said, I live in Oakland.”

“Just some coffee please,” I managed again.

Four cups later of what was supposed to be coffee, I felt sober enough to rise. But my legs felt like Jell-O. If I hadn't held on to the table, I would have landed on my face. All eyes were on me as I staggered to the rest room with the red door, a door that wouldn't shut all the way. I ignored the single unflushed toilet and peed in a trash can. There was no toilet paper. I splashed water on my hands anyway, dried them on the tail of my dress, and stumbled out. I clutched my purse with both hands as I eased toward the exit. A bearded man with a ponytail winked at me on my way out.

I don't know why I was surprised to find the Lexus intact. It had been broken into two times in the last year, both times on the street in front of my own house in broad daylight.

“Who would think that those thugs would even know how to get to Steiner from the ghetto,” Mom had scoffed.

I didn't comment when the perpetrator, the son of the judge next door, was caught trying to sell the CD player he'd ripped out of my dashboard.

I ignored the faces peeking out of the window from inside the bar, watching as I staggered and stumbled across the parking lot. By the time I reached my car, the same bearded goon who'd winked at me coming out of the rest room, exited the bar and stood blocking the door, watching until I fell into my seat and strapped on my seat belt.

Everything seemed normal when I got home. Almost every light in the house was on. Mom had left two messages. Heather had called from Europe and left a message that she'd changed her mind about the car. She decided to use the money to return to Europe, and backpack through France and Italy next Christmas with some new friends she'd made in Dublin. Robert had left a message saying he would be home in a couple of days.

My buzz had been downgraded to a light headache, but my mind was still a ball of confusion and fear.

A long hot bath, with a highball in my hand, made it easier for me to continue revisiting my past.

I'd never told any of my friends about my teenage pregnancy. In my fourth month, when I could no longer hide it, I was sent to Sacramento to stay with Dad's older sister, Rita, a bitter, divorced woman who reminded me on an hourly basis of the shame I'd brought on the family. “If you are lucky enough to find a decent White man who'll marry you, I advise you to kiss the ground he walks on,” Aunt Rita, her pale, sharp-featured face close to mine, told me. Her finger poked my protruding belly. “It'll take you the rest of your born days to live down this curse.”

Aunt Rita rarely mentioned the fact that my deceased sister had associated with Charles Manson. But I heard about my disgrace with a Black boy every day that I lived with my aunt.

I spent as much time as I could holed up in the miserable bedroom my aunt had prepared for me. And it was a dark, musty, congested little space. I was so depressed that I was in labor for six hours and didn't even know it. By the time my aunt got me to the hospital, I was delirious.

 

I chose not to hold or even look at my child. I returned to Oakland a week after giving birth, assuming Clyde and his grandmother had turned my child over to their relatives in Mississippi and that my shame would never be mentioned again.

For the next few years, I maintained a low profile and stayed close to home and out of trouble. That seemed to appease my parents. But they were disappointed when I flunked out of college and started wandering from one boring job to another. It was three years after Clyde before I was with another man.

Robert O'Rourke was the thirty-year-old nephew of one of the partners at Dad's law firm. Conservative, aggressive, ambitious was the best way to describe his personality. I overlooked his plain features and receding hairline and went out with him anyway because my parents adored him. And even though I didn't love him, I married him, hoping it would make up for the disgrace I'd brought to my family.

The sex was about what I'd expected: dull and perfunctory. Each of my two pregnancies—Josh first, and Heather two years later—constantly reminded me of the first one and the child I would never see. I couldn't stand to look at children who appeared to be biracial. And not a day went by that I didn't wonder what had happened to mine.

Keeping busy was more than an option, it was the distraction I needed to make my marriage work. Robert was a very successful architect so we traveled extensively. We lived in Dublin near his parents for a while before we returned to the States and settled in San Francisco, two blocks from my parents on the same street.

By the time Heather and Josh entered school my life had become routine. Carpools, PTA meetings, women's clubs, parties. The sordid shenanigans of my youth had become a blur.

With a maid to oversee the house and kids, Robert and I spent a lot of time socializing. But it wasn't long before that came to a standstill, at least for me. Robert spent most of his time entertaining his business associates and when he was around, he spent most of that time pointing out my faults. Like my out-of-control spending and my fading looks. I spent more time at the gym and the beauty parlor than I did with Robert. But my twenty-pound weight loss and face-lift didn't make much of a difference to him. Despite my improvements, I saw even less of Robert.

A divorce was out of the question and having an affair was not an option. I had too much to lose. Besides, it had devastated the marriage of my best friend, Joan Richmond.

“So, Joan's run off with some greasy Mexican,” Robert informed me during one of his rare appearances at dinner.

“She won't be the first and she won't be the last,” I scoffed. I was the one who had encouraged Joan to flee, and I was glad I did. She called me from Long Beach sounding happier than ever. However, I didn't have the courage to take my own advice.

“Well, the way she's consorted with
those people
, that's about all she deserves now.”

Robert's vision didn't include much diversity. He socialized with minority business associates, but he generally disliked Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and anything in between. And he viewed them all as lazy, useless criminals who had no right to the privileges we took for granted.

With the exception of my Jamaican maid, Robert made sure I had no relationships with people of color, and he wanted to keep it that way.

There was no way in hell I could let him know about Clyde and Keisha.

I
don't know why Sherrie's funeral made me so sad. We all knew she was going to die soon anyway. It was a bad day for me. I didn't want to go, but it was like I really didn't have no choice.

I knew Sherrie longer than Lula and Rockelle. She and I went all the way back to the old days. For a long time, she and I were the only girls working with Clyde. She used to make jokes about us being “wives-in-laws.” Sherrie joked all the way up the end.

Last Saturday when me and Lula went to see her, laid out in her bed like she was already dead, she managed to lift her head and move her swollen lips long enough to croak, “I got a huge bone to pick with God as soon as I get to Heaven for allowing me to live such a miserable life.”

Heaven. Yeah, right. Like women doing what we do gonna end up in a place like that. I ain't that stupid. You get to Heaven all you gonna see is a few billion babies and maybe a few thousand nuns.

We didn't stay long at that funeral. It was too depressing. Our turns would come soon enough. Me, Clyde, Lula, Rocky, we just stayed around that church long enough to satisfy our conscience and to pay our respect. Sherrie's family didn't know who we was, or what we was, and we didn't want to hang around long enough for them to find out.

What I did know was what Sherrie told me. Her family knew she had been turning tricks. Why she was doing it was something they probably wondered about as much as I did. The girl didn't need the money. But who could figure White girls from rich families? When you come from a family like Sherrie's—she used to have her daddy's chauffer drive her to her dates with her tricks—you turned tricks because you wanted to. Sherrie couldn't even put the blame on a man. No man had turned her out and no man had hooked up with her to take her money. Yeah, she had done that shit because she wanted to. And she could have stopped any time. Well, she had stopped for good now.

Getting into a straight life was something I thought about a lot. Especially after I seen my old friend Manny and the way he'd turned his life around.

“I'm gettin' sick of lookin' at y'all with them long faces.” I was surprised to hear Clyde say such a stupid thing when we got back to my apartment after we left the funeral. “Y'all ain't gonna make no money walkin' around lookin' like you been suckin' on lemons.”

“Man, we just came from a funeral, Clyde,” Lula said, talkin' loud and mean. She talked to Clyde like that a lot, but even more so lately. The mean looks he gave her didn't faze her one bit. Like me, Lula had other things on her mind that didn't include Clyde. After he'd acted weird for a while, Clyde seemed almost like his old self again. Whatever had been bothering him, he had kept to hisself. I was shocked when he wouldn't even tell me his problem. The closest we got to finding out anything was a few bits and pieces that Rosalee got out of him while he was drunk at the same bar Rosalee and her trick happened to be in. Something about a White woman Rosalee said he'd told her. And that was all.

“Well, I want all of y'all to get your moneymakers in gear. That computer geeks' convention starts in a few days and we gonna be busy as hell. We got a real important new client who wants to see you tomorrow night, Lula. This trick is from Hollywood and he parties with Tom Cruise, Denzel, and Sean Penn, so you know he's got some serious money. And we need to get our hands on some of it.” A glazed look swept across Clyde's face. He always got that look when we discussed really impressive tricks. “And, our good old faithful horny friend Mr. Bob done left three voice mail messages. He horny as hell. Ester, he asked for you.” Clyde sniffed and took a long drink from a bottle of beer he had snatched out of my refrigerator. Sitting down on the arm of the sofa next to Lula, he looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Ester, you hear me talkin' to you?”

“I'm on my period, Clyde. And, I got some bitch-ass cramps,” I said, talking soft on account of I wasn't as bold as I usually was. I was sitting next to Lula, hoping she'd keep her eye on my back.

Looking out for folks was something Lula not only was good at, but she seemed to like doing it. I guess when you lose your only baby, you'll use your mother-love on anybody that'll let you. She was real mammy-fied sometimes. When she noticed me drinking more than I was eating, she got in my face. “Ester, you lay off that tequila and get in the kitchen and feed yourself before I do it for you,” Lula told me once. We lived in my apartment, but to anybody who didn't know that, it seemed like Lula's place. I sometimes felt and acted like I was just a visitor. Now that's a damn shame to feel like that in your own place. But one thing I could say was, it made me feel good knowing somebody cared about me for something other than what I had between my legs.

I knew that Clyde cared about me as much as he could. But when it got down to the facts, he was still a man, and I was still a woman. He seen me first as something to be enjoyed.

“Your period ain't never stopped you before. Girl, if you don't get out to Marin and fuck that man, I will,” Clyde said, burping beer. He was the only one who thought he was funny, because nobody but him was laughing.

“I'll go,” Rocky said, standing in the window with her back to us. “I need the money.” Why she had wore a tight outfit to Sherrie's funeral was a mystery to me. Like, what man was going to make a date at a funeral? But at least the clothes she had on was black, so I couldn't get too upset about Rockelle's appearance. If I wanted to be real mean, I could have mentioned the fact that she'd gained a few more pounds.

Clyde waved his hand at Rocky like he was shooing a fly. “You ain't goin' no place, woman. The man asked for Ester, and if Ester don't go, ain't nary one of y'all goin'. Shit.” Clyde yawned and stretched his arms up over his head, waving that beer bottle at me. “Ester, Mr. Bob is still the easiest trick in the world. All he'll probably wanna do is lick your pussy, anyway. You know that.”

“I told you I'm on my period, Clyde,” I said.

“I'll check in with you.” He stopped and looked at his watch and buttoned up the jacket to the black suit he'd wore to Sherrie's funeral. “I'll check in with you at six o'clock. Tell Mr. Bob I said hi. Come on, Lula. Let's take Rocky home.”

I drove to Mr. Bob's house in Marin, bloody pussy and all.

 

As it turned out, Mr. Bob didn't care what he put his mouth on. He had turned into a pig. He even told me some story about how the Hell's Angels initiated new members by making them eat a woman's pussy while she was on her period.

Now, because of AIDS, and because Sherrie caught that shit from doing blow jobs without a condom, I wasn't stupid enough to let a man even lick me without protection. Mr. Bob wasn't no exception. It didn't bother him to have to cover my crack with Saran Wrap long enough for him to do his business. Like I said, Mr. Bob had turned into a real pig.

My period ended the next day. Damned if that Mr. Bob didn't call for another date with me. Clyde sent me back to Mr. Bob the very next night.

I knew that Lula was with Clyde, but that wasn't the reason why I didn't want to go home after I left Mr. Bob's house. Something was happening to me. I was wondering if it was because I was getting older. I wasn't having the fun I used to have no more. It seemed like I was feeling sadder than ever before. The tricks that were nice to me and fun to be with, the money, kicking it with Clyde and the girls, it all felt different. Sometimes I wondered if I was losing my mind, or finally coming to my senses.

Some of the things that Manny had said to me at his apartment kept coming back to my mind. Especially that thing he'd said about there not being no old gangsters. I seen women old enough to be my grandmother working the streets, looking so pitiful they could only get ten dollar dates and sometimes not even that. I knew that old age was a long way off for me. But I had to ask myself if I was going to wait until old age before I stopped dating, or now while I still had some time to do regular things. Like get married and have some kids. I didn't plan on it, but I just kept driving, and I didn't stop until I reached Manny's place.

Manny lived in a neighborhood with a lot of creeps. Even bigger creeps than Manny used to be. I didn't like leaving my car parked on the street in front of his building with all of them tacky lowriders lined up like pieces of junk. But I didn't have no choice. He didn't answer his door when I knocked, but that didn't bother me. He'd left his television on, so I knew he couldn't have gone too far for too long. Instead of waiting in my car, I walked the two blocks to Padre's, a run-down Mexican restaurant. I drank two shots of tequila and slid a lopsided burrito around on a cracked plate. I ignored the burrito after I seen a bug crawling out of it.

Like I expected, all kinds of thugs tried to play me, but I don't play that shit. Boys way younger than me, decked out in their gang colors and tattoos, was the ones trying the hardest. Latinas, some of them fat, ugly, and hairy, was working the street in front of Padre's when I got there and when I left. By now it was real late and I didn't have no weapons on me, but I wasn't scared. Not even when these boys, eight or nine of them, started following me.

Now, I come from the streets, so nothing that happened on the streets surprised me. I always expected some shit. But I was not prepared when somebody grabbed me from behind.

Being the little woman that I am, had a lot of advantages, but just as many disadvantages. It seemed like a hundred giant hands had ahold of me. Before I knew it, my feet wasn't even touching the ground no more. Something hit the back of my head so hard I saw stars that wasn't even there. And then I didn't see or feel nothing.

I don't know how long I was in that condition, but when I woke up, I was on the ground in the alley behind Padre's, on my back and naked.

The pretty blue silk blouse with matching skirt that I had wore to Mr. Bob's house was ripped to pieces and covered with dirt and blood. My shoes and panties was on the ground next to me. I tied my clothes around my top and bottom. Just to show you what kind of neighborhood I was in, the girls working the street in front of Padre's didn't even say or do nothing when I stumbled out of that alley carrying my shoes and covered in ripped, bloody clothes. If anything, they gave me mean looks for stepping on their turf.

 

I was hurting all over. I don't know how many of them motherfuckers fucked me, but my little pussy felt like a Mack truck had drove up it. My head was throbbing and so was every bone in my body.

Of all the shitty things I thought would happen to me sooner or later, I never in my life expected nobody to rape me! Tough girls like me never got all emotional about things like rape. I'd seen it happen to other girls when I was running the streets during my teenage years. Them same girls would get up off the ground, dust off their clothes, and then go on about their way until it happened the next time. And it usually did. I didn't like getting raped, but what bothered me more was getting fucked and not getting paid! My neck was hurting real bad because one of those motherfuckers had tried to strangle me. Nothing hurt me more than knowing that somebody hated me enough to leave me for dead in an alley. Twice!

I made it back to my car without getting jumped again. I don't know how long I sat there, but it was a long time. I prayed out loud to God that them assholes didn't give me AIDS. I wanted to see Manny more than ever. He woke me up by banging on the window of my car.

He was as glad to see me as I was to see him.