Sweet Giselle

by Karen P. Williams

  “Sir, can you give me another month? Our father died, and my mother lost her—”

  Snatching his arm away from me, the overweight Hispanic man said simply, “Not my problem.”

  “Please just listen to me!”

  He waved a hand at me and walked away.

  Wow. Just like that.

  I started to approach the other man, an older black man, who was loading my dad’s car, but he had already hopped in his truck.

  I felt helpless. I couldn’t do or say anything to get them to not take my parents’ cars. And most of all, I felt scared. What if the house was next? True, I was paying what I could, but the letters still hadn’t stopped coming with the threats to foreclose. Maybe in a matter of a few weeks or even days they would take the house away from us. That terrified the shit out of me.

  I broke down crying in the middle of the street. My shoulders started to shake as I did. “I can’t deal with this,” I whispered to myself. It was too hard. I was busting my ass, and still, I couldn’t afford all these bills. With only a high school diploma and no real job experience, I knew I was not going to find a job paying more than the minimum wage I was making now. So what was I going to do?

  I wiped the tears off my face and dug out the new ones that had formed in the corners of my eyes with my nails, almost scratching my face. I then took a deep breath to regain my composure. I knew regardless of whether I could deal with it or not, I had to, because no one else would. I was starting to resent my mother. If she would get out of her self-pity, then maybe she could put a stop to this!

  I turned about to walk toward the front door, when for the first time I noticed Brandon standing on the porch steps. My brother’s expression slowed my steps a little bit. He looked just as lost as I was.

  Chapter 3

  Little by little the small control I had over things was going away. The way I handled all the stress of the finances, and my mother acting pretty much dead, was to try not to think about “what-ifs.” Because I was just too damn busy to focus on fear or “what if this happened or that happened?” I felt that my time should be put to figuring out how to handle what we were dealing with, not fearing the worst. But when I wasn’t strong enough to shove the bad thoughts and the dread that we would be on the streets out of my head, I made sure that I was nowhere near Brandon, because that fear always had me in tears. Ever since the cars were taken, I had been stressing nonstop. I didn’t think I would be able to hold this together any longer. I had started having so much anxiety that I couldn’t sleep at night, which made me exhausted at work and always sent me home with headaches. I was also filled with fear that it had me running back and forth to the bathroom. Which meant my nerves were being affected.

  My boss took some serious pity on me. I guess he noticed how uncombed my hair was and the serious bags under my eyes and how slowly I was walking because of the strain in my back. It just wouldn’t go away, despite how much Icy Hot I put on it. The ache felt like it was on fire.

  One evening at work I was making a move to grab the broom to sweep up when he put a hand over mine. “Go home, Giselle.”

  “I’m not off until nine. Did I do something wrong?” I still had three hours to go. I hoped he wasn’t letting me go permanently. I started to panic, thinking of what I could have possibly done to get fired.

  “No, don’t worry. I will still pay you as if you worked ’til nine. Just go home and get some rest. You need it.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Roberto.”

  And even though I lived down the street, I was too tired to walk, so I called Lexi to see if she could pick me up. After going to the job advertised on Craigslist, she came back with so much dough, she was able to buy herself a little bucket car, and she was always rolling through Carson in it. It was a 1993 red Honda Civic. I was not going to lie. I was a little low-key jealous that she was mobile and I was still on the bus.

  I dialed her number quickly and took a deep breath.

  “Hello?”

  I hoped she didn’t have any plans and could come pick me up.

  “Hey, Lexi. It’s Giselle. You busy?”

  “Nope. Just lying down. Why? What’s up?”

  “I’m super tired. So I was wondering if you could pick me up from work.”

  “What? You’re finally getting off early for once.”

  “Yeah. My boss took pity on me.”

  “He should. He got you working like a slave. Hey, I’m kinda hungry. Are you?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Let’s go eat somewhere. My treat. And hang out.”

  “You sure you can afford it?”

  “Girl, hell yeah. I got you. Let’s go to The Pike.”

  “Okay.”

  “All right. Give me a few minutes, and I will be on my way.”

  I rushed in the bathroom with my purse. I pulled out my comb and tried to tame my tresses. My mother used to take me to get my hair done every two weeks before my father got sick and passed. I pulled it back into a ponytail.

  I was wearing a pair of jeans, a black tank top, and some tennis shoes. I knew I should have gone home and changed but I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t want to walk in my house, period. It was far too depressing that my mother still had not snapped out of her depression and was utterly lifeless on a daily basis. It was like a dark cloud was hovering over our house and it never left. I knew my brother felt the same way. I knew I had to go back. Just not right now. I needed a long-overdue escape. Because the more pressure that came over me, the more enraged I became at the weakness I saw in my mother. Why should I have to deal with all of this? She was the mother. She had brought us into the world, and now it was like Brandon and I were the parents.

  I heard a car honk, so I pulled off my work apron and rushed out. I was so grateful to Lexi for inviting me out somewhere. I didn’t care if it was to Taco Bell. I made it to her car, opened the door on the passenger side, and hopped in.

  “Hey, girl!” she said excitedly.

  “Hey!” I said, just as excited. Since I had been working these long hours, Lexi and I had not been able to hang out like we used to. But I was relieved to see that it didn’t feel funny or awkward. She seemed genuinely happy to see me. I felt the same.

  Once I was comfortably inside, we both reached over and hugged each other.

  “All right, let’s roll.” She let me go and started the car.

  I quickly put on my seat belt.

  She turned down Avalon and made a right on Albertoni and headed toward the 91 Freeway. She was bumping to 50 Cent’s “I Get Money.”

  “So what’s up, Giselle?” She hopped on the freeway heading east.

  “Nothing much. Just working.”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “The same.”

  “Brandon?”

  “Good.”

  “Cool.” She started punching eighty while talking to me. “Well, girl, I’m so glad we get to hang tonight. I’ve been busy as hell, too. Ever since I went to that job you flaked out on me about.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Oh. It’s cool.” She slid over to the 710 South. “I wasn’t playing, though. I went and made that muthafucking money!” She started laughing, forcing me to give a fake smile.

  I started to ask her what she had to do, but I stopped myself. There was no reason for me to know, since I didn’t do it and didn’t plan on doing it. And she wasn’t volunteering any information either. She just turned up her music and rapped along with 50 Cent.

  We got off the freeway and turned down Pine Street. A few minutes later, she drove toward the parking center at The Pike.

  “Where do you want to eat?” she asked. “We can go to Chili’s, Outback, Sharky’s. There’s a Roscoe’s down the street from here. Or we can order food out of Game-Works, bowl, and play games and shit.”

  She drove into the parking center.

  “You’re the big spender, so it’s up to you,” I joked.

  “Well, I wanna see some niggas! Y
ou know me.”

  I laughed as she pulled her car into a spot. She then put the car in park and turned off the ignition. She turned the lights on in her car, and for the first time I noticed how fly Lexi looked. Her hair, layered around her face, was so silky and shiny. She had on this really pretty diamond bracelet and a matching ring, and her nails were done. When she hopped out of the car, I noticed she had on a pair of True Religion jeans and a cute powder blue tank top. They matched the powder blue Jordans she had on. She reached in the backseat for her purse. It was a Dooney & Bourke. It was the super cute one with the pink and blue hearts on it. She was wearing a tan-colored leather jacket. I looked so tacky in comparison.

  So I told her, “You know what? I’m still tired, so let’s just go sit down and eat, Lexi.”

  She zipped up her jacket and said,” Okay.”

  We settled for Chili’s.

  After a twenty-minute wait, we were seated and given menus. I picked the crispy honey-chipotle chicken crispers and fries with a side of corn, while Lexi picked the steak fajitas and shrimp. She also ordered some tortilla soup for us both.

  We were both silent while we sipped lemonade.

  When the waitress sat our cups of soup in front of us, I couldn’t resist anymore. I had to know what Lexi had done to get all the money she had. And most of all, I wanted to know how much she got. It was stupid to press the issue, since I didn’t go. Spilled milk ... but I have a habit of beating myself up for making the wrong choices in life, and at that moment, looking at all the stuff she had that my parents had always provided for me, except the car, I had to know that I made the right choice by not going with her. So before she could even get a scoop of her soup in her mouth, I asked, “What did you have to do, Lexi?”

  She looked at me and burst out laughing. “I knew you wanted to know! What took you so long to ask?” She slid her spoon in her mouth.

  I shrugged her question off. “What did you do?”

  She chewed and swallowed quickly, while looking around to see if anyone was listening. Then she beckoned me closer and lowered her voice. “It was at this big-ass mansion, girl, in Westwood. And that place was so fly! Fly! I envy whoever the dude’s lady is. Anyway, when I got there, they had eleven other girls there. So I was a little discouraged, because those bitches were all beautiful, so I just knew that my ass was going to get sent home. I mean, I ended up late. Thanks to a certain flake.”

  I gave her a remorseful look.

  She smiled and continued, “Anyway, girl, the owner has a bomb-ass studio built in the mansion.”

  I didn’t care about that. “So what happened?”

  “They started us off with the first scene. We were pretending we were at a party. We all had on skimpy dresses, and we had to dance as if we were really having a good time. We were in the ...” She paused. “South wing of the house. Yeah! That’s what they called it. This seemed like a separate house and shit. The south wing was huge. Huge! There were five rooms inside, and each had a number on it. After we finished the first dancing scene, we were told to go to one of the rooms. Some rooms were assigned to more than one girl or more than one guy. Each room has a camera guy that films. It wasn’t nothing complicated. No script. The camera guy tells you what to do. Real simple. Then you get paid.”

  I gasped. “What kind of scene?”

  “If you could see your face!” she exclaimed, chuckling. She gobbled down some more soup before continuing. “You have a choice. You can take some nude pics and leave it at that, or you could up the ante. You can also be filmed. You can do a scene by yourself, masturbating with toys. You can do an oral scene. Either you give or receive or both. You can do a full intercourse scene or anal. You can even do a scene with a girl, two girls, two guys, a girl and a guy, or an orgy. You choose. They don’t force you to do shit. There are way too many participants out there. But the more you do, the more money you get.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing hard-core. I posed naked in six nude shots. I got three-fifty for every shot. Then I did a scene by myself. That was as far as I was going to go. And I made forty-two hundred.”

  “In one day?”

  “In one day, and I could have made more. But I didn’t want to be greedy.”

  “Are you worried that someone will recognize you?”

  “If you are such a lowlife that your form of entertainment is looking at porn and nude mags, then you just as bad as I am, and you gotta know you a lowlife, so you ain’t going to confront me on shit. I’m just a young, pretty girl having fun and getting paid for it. Look at all them dumb broads on Girls Gone Wild. They don’t even get paid for that shit, and they doing all kinds of crazy stuff on camera!”

  I never thought about it like that. She had a point. But I would still be scared of someone who knew me seeing me in the films or in print.

  The waitress brought our food and placed it in front of us. I hadn’t even eaten my soup yet.

  “They are always looking for pretty girls, Giselle,” Lexi added.

  “I don’t know if I could do that. Not that I’m judging you, though.”

  “Girl, I wouldn’t care if you were. I’m making my own money, and that’s all that matters to me. I don’t care what anyone has to say about it. Pretty soon I will be able to move out of my grandparents’ house and get my own crib.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I ate my food, while Lexi rambled on about her new, fabulous life and job.

  When I got home, I noticed that Brandon was not there. I figured he was probably out with his friends. He was eighteen now.

  Normally, I would go check on my mother. But the last thing I wanted to see was her looking miserable. I simply went to my room. I just wanted to sleep. I was dog tired. Once there, I stripped down to my underwear and lay down on my bed. My mind raced and raced yet again before sleep took over.

  The phone was ringing nonstop. I didn’t feel like getting up, so I ignored it, hoping whoever the person was would just stop calling. But they wouldn’t. I sucked my teeth and pulled my covers off, climbed out of my bed, and snatched up the phone in my room.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Giselle. It’s me, Brandon. I’m in jail!”

  Chapter 4

  I bit my nails nervously as I rode with Lexi over to Twin Towers. It was three o’clock in the morning when I got that phone call from my brother saying he had been arrested. After I hung up with him, I looked up his case online. It said he’d been arrested for a two-eleven. That was robbery, and his bail was set at two thousand. Just finding this out gave me a serious panic attack. Once I was able to calm myself down, I called Lexi and begged her to take me to see him during visiting hours. I was so upset after I got the call from him that I was unable to go back to sleep. Just the thought of him being locked up with murderers and rapists was too much. What if they killed or raped my brother? I cried and prayed that nothing hurt my brother while he was in there.

  Once we got to the jail, it took us, like, forever to go inside. We waited for over two hours in that long line.

  I was so relieved when I was able to sit in one of the booths and the inmates finally came out. Seeing my brother behind that mirror, in that jail garb, instantly had me sobbing.

  He refused to look me in my eyes. But he snatched the phone and put it to his right ear.

  “Brandon, what in God’s name did you do?”

  “Something stupid. But, look, I did it for us. We are doing so badly. I was just trying to help. I took some money out of the register at work.”

  “Brandon!” I exclaimed. “Why would you do that? We were doing okay.”

  That was when he finally looked at me. “Oh, we were? Last time I checked, we lost both our parents’ cars and were on the verge of losing a house both of our parents worked hard to buy. And if that wasn’t enough, you were going to do some shit that would have ruined your whole life and humiliated the both of us!” There was so much anger in his voice.

  “Brandon, listen. I know it
is hard for us. And you are right about everything you just said. But you don’t have to do stuff like this. This could ruin your life. Your record, for God’s sake.” I feared that it already had. I feared that even if Brandon were to go to college and get a degree, he wouldn’t be able to get a job with a dirty record.

  “I know, Giselle.” His eyes got watery. He wiped them quickly and looked around, I assumed to make sure no one else saw that he was crying. “I was tired of seeing you so stressed out. I hated that you couldn’t start school. All Mom and Dad worked for was to make sure we had a future, a foundation. Daddy died because of it. Mom is walking death. And now, after all we’ve lost, we don’t have a future.”

  I fought back tears, trying to be strong. “We will have a future! Brandon, I’m going to work on getting you out of here. I called a bail bond company. They told me I would need two thousand to bail you out. Since this is your first offense, hopefully, they will consider only giving you probation. Either way ... Brandon, don’t stress. Give me some time to work on this. Most of all, trust me.”

  “I do trust you. I love you. I hope to God you can get me out of here. I will never do something so stupid again.”

  I looked away so he didn’t see the doubtful look in my eyes. I couldn’t let him see it, because he was depending on me.

  I was quiet the whole way back. Lexi rattled on and on, asking me what I was going to do. Truth was, I had no idea what to do.

  As soon as we got into my house, I went straight for the phone. I planned to do the only thing I could ... beg my grandparents to let me borrow the money or give me what they could for the bail.

  “Girl, this house is disgusting!” Lexi exclaimed, looking at the messy living room.” Let me help you out.”