by Joy, E. n.
"You know I don't drink," I said.
"Oh yeah, we don't call you Pure for nothin'," Sticky laughed.
"Dang, it does sound like y'all gon' be kickin' it though. I wish I could come," I said again.
"What's stoppin' you?"
"Work," I answered, disappointed.
"Call off."
I contemplated doing just that, but my manager already warned me twice about calling off sick too many times. The last time I called off really wasn't my fault, because Stone Cold, one of Benny's strippers, tricked me into drinking a strawberry daiquiri. After taking a sip, I realized that it didn't taste bad at all. It actually tasted sweet like candy. But after four of 'em, I was drunk as I don't know what. The next morning I woke up with one of the worst headaches I'd ever experienced in my entire life. I was so sick I had to call off work for the next two days. Later I found out that instead of Stone Cold making the daiquiris with Vodka, she had used brown Moonshine.
Ever since I started hangin' around Benny and her girls, my whole life had done a complete 360. Sticky had started taking me shopping to show me how to put the right outfits together. I also began wearing a little make-up to bring my natural beauty out. Leslie, the strip club’s personal hair stylist, permed, trimmed, and styled my hair. I looked like a different person when Leslie got finished with me. I was totally pleased with the outcome.
I stopped going to my night classes because it interfered with what I called 'my social hour', which consisted of having fun with Benny and her crew of girls. Even though I hadn't picked up any of their bad habits, like drinking, smoking bud, and having sex, I still considered what I did as kickin' it.
My mother let me know she was disappointed with my actions, but all the fussing she was doing was going in one ear and right out the other. Looking through my own naive eyes, I thought I was grown. I started coming home late, if at all. I dropped out of night school altogether, which hurt my mother to her heart. All she ever wanted was for me to finish school, and getting fired from my job just for calling off would send her over the edge. But shoot, my mother musta been a fool if she thought I was gon' miss Benny's grand re-opening party!
Chapter Eight
My mother tried her best to get through to me, but it was no use. I was no longer hers; in fact, I belonged to Benny, mentally. I lived, breathed, and worshiped the ground she walked on. Although I never wanted to be with her sexually, I loved her for her and would have done just about anything to take a walk in her shoes.
"I’m tellin' you, Hayden, I don't know what's gotten into you," my mother ranted as I got dressed for the club.
"Mom, you can miss me with all that fussin' you doin'," I said before glossing my lips.
"You are just runnin' wild, child. You don't know whether you’re comin’ or goin’ sometimes. I bet yo’ daddy is turning over in his grave right about now."
Just her mentioning my daddy sent chills through me. It had been such a long time since she mentioned my father. I vaguely remembered him. He was shot and killed when I was three, but still the thought of what he would think of me affected me in some strange way.
"Don't go throwin' Daddy up in this," I said as I grabbed my purse, pulling the strap up on my shoulder.
"He would be so disappointed in the way you've been acting."
My mother knew how I felt when she said things like that, so in order to make her feel the exact same pain I felt, I said something I knew would hurt her. "He would be here to let me know how he felt if you wouldn't have been cheatin' on him," I spat. The look on my mother's face let me know that I had succeeded.
My mother slapped the side of my face hard before running off to her room. Even though I felt my mother was the reason my father was shot and killed, it didn't give me the right to throw it up in her face. She had to deal with the pain every day of her life.
I never knew the whole story behind my father's murder, but I had heard bits and pieces through the rumor mill. It was said that my mother was cheating on my father with our next door neighbor, Mr. Bowman. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it, except for my father, so they thought. One day my father had left for work, like he did any other morning, but with a plan in mind. Mr. Bowman came in through the back door like clockwork, and he and my mother wasted no time hitting the bedroom. Supposedly, my father had sat around the corner from the house and waited for what he thought was the right time to bust my mother and Mr. Bowman in the act.
They say my father snuck in the house and got his gun he had planted earlier in the hallway closet. My mother and Mr. Bowman were so engrossed in their sexual act, they didn't even notice my father standing in the doorway with his gun pointed at them. Mr. Bowman was the first to notice my father. He knocked my mother from off top of him and jumped up. My father was so enraged, that instead of shooting Mr. Bowman, he threw the gun down and attacked him.
As they wrestled around on the floor, somehow Mr. Bowman got a hold of the gun and shot my father in the chest. Four days later, he passed away in the hospital. My father's entire family blamed my mother for his death, so they never spoke another word to her or me. Mr. Bowman ended up being sentenced to seven years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. I, too, blamed my mother for my father's death, but I never had the heart to tell her that until today. I felt bad for what I had just said to her, but it was too late to take it back.
As I stood in the doorway of the bathroom holding my stinging face, I realized that my life was heading for disaster. In order for me to get back on the right track, I had to talk to the one and only person that I knew could help me get over anything. I called Tashonna. It had been a while since I had last spoken to her. With her being in Ohio and me in Kansas, our friendship was heading in different directions, but I always knew if I needed her, she would be there for me, and I the same.
"Hey, girl," she answered the phone out of breath.
"What you do, run to the phone?" I asked, taking a seat on the edge of the tub.
"Yeah, I thought you were Jarvis or Javon callin', chile," she said.
Hearing those names brought back terrible memories. I still hated them two fools for what they had done to me. "Oh, where they at?" I asked, hoping she would say doing life in prison.
"Girl, they both locked up. They doing some serious time!”
A smile spread across my face. "What they in jail for?" I asked, hoping she couldn't sense the happiness in my voice.
"You remember Shari from the North End?"
"Don-Don's sister?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's her. Well, that ho lied and said Jarvis and Javon raped her," she said as if they weren't capable of doing an animalistic thing like that. "Can you believe that?"
You dang on right I can believe that, I badly wanted to say, but kept it to myself. It took everything in my being to keep from bursting Tashonna's bubble about her cousins. The more Tashonna rambled on about how big of a liar Shari was, the madder I got. I knew first hand what Shari accused Jarvis and Javon of doing was nothing more than the truth.
"Well, I gotta go," I said, not being able to hear her take up for her cousins while bad mouthing Shari any longer.
"Hey, wait. What chu call for? Is everything okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, everything's fine. I was just callin' to see how you were doin', since I hadn't heard from you in a while," I lied.
"All right then. Tell ya momz I said hello. Is she doin’ okay?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't she be?"
"It's just that the last time I saw her, she didn't look too good. Is she stressed out about something?"
My mom didn't mention anything to me about seeing Tashonna when she went home to visit Miss Lydia and the rest of her old friends from the hospital. "Where did you see my mom at?" I inquired.
"I saw her at the prison when I was out there visiting Jarvis and Javon," Tashonna replied.
My mind went blank, my body went numb and my heart stopped beating after Tashonna revealed seeing my mother out at the prison. The only person sh
e knew that was incarcerated was…John!
I sat quietly as Tashonna continued. "I didn't get a chance to talk to her, because she was pullin’ out the parkin’ lot when I was comin’ in," she said while I just remained quiet and stunned on the other end. "Hello…hello?" Tashonna called out.
"Yeah, I'm here, I'm here," I stammered in disbelief.
"Hayden, you okay?" Tashonna asked.
"I'm fine. Look, I'll talk to you later," I said, hanging up the phone. I would have never thought in a million years that my mother would be visiting the man who molested and raped her only child. You gotta be kidding. Where is the loyalty? I couldn't make it down the hallway to my mother's room quick enough. I swung her door open and stared at her with pure hatred in my soul.
"What do you want in my room?" she asked with straight attitude, looking up from the suitcase she was packing.
"Where you goin'?" I asked.
"I’m leavin’ for Ohio in the morning. I've already called Lydia to pick me up from the airport."
"What you plan on doin’ when you get to Ohio?" I picked.
"The same as usual. Why do you care? Only thing that matters to you is Benny and the rest of them dykes next door," my mother spat, harshly. I was surprised because had I had said something like that, my mom would have been all over me.
"Answer me this question will you?" My mother looked at me waiting for me to go ahead with what I had to ask. "What's more messed up? Me kickin' it with the dykes next door or you visiting the man that raped and molested me?" I shot, angrily.
The expression on my mother's face was priceless.
"Oh, you didn't think I would find out about you visiting John?" I toyed. My mother was speechless as I went on. "I don't know who's more messed up, you for stickin’ by John, or John for messin’ with kids." I was so disgusted by the sight of my mother I wanted to throw up.
"Hayden, I'm sorry," she cried as she took a step toward me.
I took a step back and studied my mother's face to try and get any inclination of what would possess her to go against her own child.
"You know what, Mom, you are sorry," I said.
Tears streamed down my mother's face as she stared at me. I couldn’t even feel sorry for the pain I knew she was in from me finding out the truth. The only thing I could do to keep from literally beating some sense into her was leave. That night I went to the club and tried to drink away all the pain that everybody had ever caused me. Needless to say, my life would never be the same.
Chapter Nine
Three months had passed since I last stepped foot into my mother's house. The night I found out about her visiting John, I moved out. I waited until she went to Ohio the next morning and cleared out my room. Benny said it was okay for me to stay with her until I found my own place. I didn't have a job. After getting fired for calling off the night of Benny’s party, I’d been in too much of a funk to go out and get another job. So Benny put me on with selling some X Pills to put a little money in my pocket. The pay was good and I didn't have to do much. All I did was sit at a back booth in the club and wait for people to approach me. I didn't have to talk because everyone knew when they sat down across from me that it was twenty-five a pill and fifty after midnight, so no words had to be exchanged.
In my eyes, my life was starting to improve until one day I saw the For Sale sign in my mom's front yard. It must have hurt her to see me everyday and to have me look at her as if she was a complete stranger. I couldn't blame her if she wanted to move somewhere other than next door.
"You moving, Ms. Parker?" I heard Benny ask my mom one day as she stood on the porch puffing on a cigarette.
"Yeah, baby, I gotta go."
"If you need help, let me know," Benny said.
“Thanks, but I'm moving back home."
I went over to the door so I could hear a little better. I could see both Benny and my mother, but they couldn’t see me.
"For what?" Benny asked. "I thought Hayden said wasn't nothing in Ohio but a bunch of prisons?"
"I don’t got nobody here," she said. "All my friends are in Ohio."
"That ain't true, Ms. Parker. You got Hayden here," Benny said, trying to lift my mom's spirit.
My mom shook her head. "Hayden is grown. She has her own life to live." With that said, my mom turned and walked back into the house.
I had to admit that I was gon' miss my mom, but she had a lot of demons to deal with, John being one of 'em. So the only advice I had for her was…”Do you.” Because I was certainly going to do me.
I had to get use to my mom being gone. Although we hadn’t been on speaking terms before she sold the house and moved, I missed seeing her every day. At least with her being next door, I knew she was all right. I felt alone in Kansas since mom had left. I had even thought about moving back home too, but I changed my mind. I just couldn’t bring myself to deal with my mom after betraying me again over that pedophile and plus, I’d made an agreement with the judge that I wouldn’t go back to Ohio. I had Benny and the rest of the girls if I needed someone to lend an ear or a helping hand, but it wasn't the same as having my mom around for those things.
It was crazy, because every time I started missing my mom, I would get drunker than a punk. My life was heading nowhere and fast. I was now not only selling X pills, but I let Sticky talk me into dancing to make extra money to get my own place. Benny was cool to live with, but lately I'd been catching her staring at me in a manner that made me feel uncomfortable.
She had lust in her eyes every time she watched me, especially when I walked with my towel wrapped around me coming from the shower. I started getting dressed in the bathroom before coming out; even then, she looked at me as if I was a piece of meat. I guess Sticky was starting to notice too, because they'd been arguing a lot lately about Benny's flirtatious ways. Benny always laughed it off with a wave and accused Sticky of being insecure, but Sticky and I both knew the truth. I definitely didn't wanna be the cause of them breaking up. My living arrangements had started putting a strain on me and Sticky's friendship, so to ease her mind, I promised her that as soon as I saved up a couple more thousand, I would leave. Truthfully, I had more than enough money to move out from selling the X pills, but I was scared of the thought of being on my own.
It had been over three months since I last promised Sticky that I would move out. I kept on making excuses. I couldn’t keep using the money bit, because I was making mad money stripping. I quit selling X pills because all the big time ballers' chicks stayed up in the club, keeping my g-string laced with fifties and hundreds. I gave a lot of 'em lap dances and a few even wanted to take me into the Champagne Room, but I declined the offers. I still wasn't sexually active, although I did get the urge to be pleased at times. But the past sexual abuse I had experienced kept me from acting on them.
Sticky and me had gotten to the point where we wasn't speaking at all. Every time we were in any spot at the same time, she would cut her eyes at me. I even walked in on her talking about me a time or two, but I just let her jealous antics roll off my shoulders like water. I really didn't know what Sticky's problem was. She knew I didn't get down with females and therefore really wasn’t a threat to her and Benny. I guess she was just mad at the fact that someone other than her had Benny's attention, and that somebody just so happened to be me.
Chapter Ten
"That was a good show," Rodney shouted as I walked off the stage and brushed past him. Rodney was somewhat of a regular up in the club.
I stopped briefly and smiled. "Thank you," I replied and continued on my way. I got dressed, counted my money, and headed out the dressing room.
Rodney was sitting at the bar when I walked back past. "Pure," he called out. Not only was that the nickname Benny and her girls had given me, but it was now my stage name too. I turned around. "Can I buy you a drink?" he asked almost in a begging manner.
I really didn't feel like being bothered with Rodney on a personal level, but I wasn't up to going to Benny's and listen
ing to her and Sticky fussing and fighting all night about me. "Sure, why not," I answered and took a seat on the bar stool next to him.
At first just dropping in here and there, Rodney was becoming a regular at the club. He made sure he never missed one of my shows and he kept my g-string laced with money. He was always requesting lap dances from me, which made the other strippers envy me. Rodney's paper was long and he paid well. Once he offered me a thousand dollars to have sex with him, but I couldn’t see selling myself for money. If I hadn’t learned anything else in life, I did know that my body was worth way more than what he was offering.
Word on the street was Rodney was some big time lawyer who represented numerous celebrities, big time ballers, and others that lived the elite lifestyle. He was nice and all, but he gave me a messed up feeling every time I was around him; kinda like the one John used to give me.
When I danced on stage, I would look out in the audience at Rodney and he would have this desperate look in his eyes, almost as if he was hypnotized by me. It was sort of frightening. Not to mention the weird noises he made when I gave him lap dances. He would whimper like a lost puppy and try to hump me while I danced, throwing my rhythm off at times. It was embarrassing to have him acting like that. The only thing that kept me from slapping Rodney across the face was the money he would hand me after every lap dance. The only thing I stayed focused on was the almighty dollar.
Two hours later, I was quite tired and tipsy. The bar was closing, so I thanked Rodney and stood up to leave.
"Can I give you a ride?" he grabbed my arm and asked.
"No thanks. I only live around the corner," I slurred, snatching my arm from his grasp. "I can take the short cut through the alley behind the club and I'll be home in no time."
Rodney stood from his seat. "Let me pay you to spend the night with me," Rodney said with that same desperate look that gave me the creeps every time I saw it.
No this joker didn't just go there. I am not Demi Moore and he damn sure ain't no Robert Redford, so he can save the Indecent Proposal approach. " Rodney, I told you before that I'm not into selling my body," I said as kindly as possible, hoping he'd understand that I did have some self respect, even though I was shaking my tail feather in a strip club for a living.