by Z. Z. Packer
The prostitutes—Tia assumed they were prostitutes—wiped sweat from their faces, slinking around in abbreviated versions of evening wear. It shocked her that not all the prostitutes were women in the strictest sense: men—transvestites, she imagined—looked like catwalk versions of the real women: their legs longer, their skirts shorter, their faces more carefully drawn on. When men cruised up to the curbs, they were so nonchalant about their business it seemed as if they were merely giving directions to a passing stranger. It fascinated her, and Dezi seemed to register her fascination, occasionally slowing the car to a cruise.
The children seemed unaware that anything was wrong. When Dezi stopped at a red light, she watched a chubby girl wield a snaky water-spouting hose, sending a throng of shirtless kids flying into alleys and abandoned lots. On a sidewalk, a Puerto Rican—looking kid bounced a ball to a black kid, and the black kid caught the ball with one hand, taking a drag off a cigarette with the other.
“Here it is,” Dezi announced, parking the car. “The famous Stanford Gardens.”
She got out and shut the car door. The closest thing to a garden she saw were the geraniums a few people were trying to grow from windowsill mayonnaise jars. Dezi laughed at the look on her face and took her hand. “C’mon, Miss Tia, laugh sometime.”
She unlatched her hand from his, pretending to attend to her scrape. “I wonder if it’ll heal?” she said, knowing that it would, but needing something to say to account for her hand’s removal.
“I’ll take care a that.” He put his hand around her shoulder and before she could think of a way to remove it, a group of kids appeared, wreathing about them.
A little boy about seven years old with smooth brown skin and hair as straight as an Indian was apparently the leader of the group. “Dez-zeeeee!” he singsonged, blocking their path. Dezi playfully tried to fake the boy out, but he would not let go of Tia, dragging her along. “Go away, Gerard. Can’t you see I got a young lady here who ain’t used to little hoodlums stinking up the way?”
All the children except the one named Gerard made twinkling voodoo motions with their fingers. “Oooooo! Dezi’s got a new wo-maaaaan!”
The boy named Gerard flicked his palm open while his entourage clung to Dezi. They hugged his legs, yanked his arms, all the time squealing his name. Gerard’s face turned serious while the others laughed and shouted. “Gimme some money,” Gerard said, his palm still out, “the kind that folds.”
“Nuh-uh,” Dezi said. “Not today.”
The other kids all began to plead with outstretched palms, explaining why they needed money.
“My tooth hurting me and I need some candy to make the pain go away.”
“See that spot? See that spot on my arm? Doctor say that spot gone kill me. He say money make it go away, though.”
Gerard kept his face wise and smileless, his hand outstretched.
“I’ll tell,” he said to Dezi, his eyes steady. “I will tell.”
“These kids,” Dezi said, shaking his head with mock weariness. He pulled out the folded, rubber-banded wad of money from his pocket and then tugged at some bills. The kids crowded around Dezi and Tia so closely she could smell their sticky kid fragrance. Dezi began pulling off five-dollar bills, and the kids’ silence was so profound that for a moment the only sound she heard was the canned laughter from a faraway TV.
DEZI PILOTED her through a maze of walkways and into his apartment. It was the first time she’d seen a place in which a man lived by himself. The carpet was a worn, nubby beige, the color carpet she’d expected all the Stanford Gardens apartments to have, but Dezi covered his with randomly placed sheepskin rugs—one under the glass coffee table, one leading to the small kitchen, one out in the area that passed for a hallway. Everything else was black acrylic made to look like lacquer, trimmed with thin gold accents. Everything was the same shiny black, the coffee table upon which sat a thriving philodendron, the stand that held his stereo system and television, the frame of Dezi’s one print: an airbrushed night skyline that could have been any city, anywhere. The apartment was neat, the air weighted with coconut incense.
Tia could not shake the sight of that bundle of money. She’d seen it earlier that day, but now it set off alarms: it was at least twice more than what she’d seen on the collection plate at church. Once, when her aunt had fallen asleep, she’d watched a TV special called Gangland Diaries. It showed drug dealers making so much money and living so recklessly that some made up wills at the age of fifteen.
After Dezi had sat her down and gone into the bathroom to get alcohol for her wound, she stood up. He walked out carrying an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.
“Listen,” she said, “I really should go. Really.”
“No. I don’t think you should.” He took hold of her arm so that the cotton ball hovered over her scrape. “Atlanta’s a dangerous city. This’ll only sting for a second.”
She didn’t know him, and she’d gotten into his car as if it were nothing. She began to think of ways he might kill her, or more likely than not, according to the TV special, she’d become his enemy’s hostage.
He pulled her even closer to him, the smell of his cologne overpowering the rubbing alcohol. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
In one quick motion, Dezi grazed the cotton ball along the scrape. She didn’t yelp until she saw him grinning at her. “That didn’t hurt,” he said.
“It did! You were supposed to tell me when you did it.”
Dezi kissed her cheek, and threw away the cotton ball as though the two actions held the same value. Though it was the first time any male had kissed her, she didn’t feel the import of this until after it was done. She had always imagined that when someone kissed her, her eyes would be closed in anticipation, she would be waiting to receive the kiss, and her beloved would be waiting to give it—waiting, of course, for the proper moment. Dezi had taken something away from her when he kissed her, but she could not name it.
He cooked two slabs of steak while she waited on the couch. It was the first time in a long while that she’d stopped moving. Sitting Indian-style, she tried to imagine herself a yogi thinking back into all her past lives. She closed her eyes, but all she saw was the orange from the blood vessels of her eyelids. Dezi brought out two plates of steak, no vegetables. It was tough, chewy, and oversalted; his cooking philosophy was to add generous shakes of every spice he had available.
“So,” Tia said, “your pockets seem pretty full. You must have a good job.”
Dezi caught the accusation in her voice and smiled. “You see any banks ’round here? Where would I put my hard-earned dough?”
“The hard-earned dough you make doing what? Dealing drugs?”
Dezi shrank back as though stung, hands flying up in the air, offended. “Why black women do us this way? Why does every man with a roll gotta be a drug dealer?”
Tia cut a piece of steak and looked at him.
“Let me ask you a question. How’d you get here?”
“Bus.”
He stopped cutting and forking the meat, utensils in his hands like crab claws. “I mean, what were your circumstances?”
“I’m doing a genealogy project,” she said.
“You came from some country-bumpkin town by yourself to do a genealogy project?” He nodded, waiting for the real reason.
Tia hadn’t wanted to tell him, she had been doing a good job talking tough, but the words came out by the gallon. She told him about church, about Marcelle and Sister Gwendolyn. She told him about the bus ride and not being able to find a place to stay, about sleeping in the woman’s car, and getting chased. She told him about her mother, and finally asked, “Do you know a woman named Rosalyn Dunlovey?
He looked up to the ceiling and then a wave a recognition crossed his face.
“Is she, like, sort a medium height? Long hair like yours? Pretty brown eyes?”
Tia put down her fork. “Where is she?”
&n
bsp; Dezi laughed and waved his hand. “Naw. I don’t know her.”
She began to hit him, slapping at him wherever she could, but he caught her, hugging her so that her hands would stop hitting him. She wrestled with him, inflamed that he could keep her down without much effort. “Hey. Hey. Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean to joke like that.”
She had never hit anyone that way, but doing so made her feel closer to Dezi, as though they’d weathered some ordeal together.
He told her about Gerard. “His mama’s an addict. A real addict. She suck your dick and shit.” He looked at Tia, eyes apologizing for the language. He shook a Newport out of its package and lit it. “I give them kids money, and you know what? All them other kids buy candy and shit. They money gone”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. Not Gerard. He take that money and get on the MARTA. He buy him some chocolate bars like schoolkids be selling and go to white neighborhoods. He puts on a little limp and gets some big TB-sounding coughs going and say he’s selling for the Leukemia Foundation. Them white folks eat it up. Homeboy buys his own clothes, shoes. Not fancy ones. Just ones that fit.”
“Sounds like he’s a good kid.”
“Hell yeah.”
“Sounds like you’re setting a good example for him.”
He turned on the TV as if to tune out what she’d said. The TV movie was one in which a kid gets left home when his family goes on vacation. Burglars come after him, but he eludes them at every step. Dezi laughed the whole way through, sometimes actually slapping his knee. When it ended, he said, “Next time you run away, do like that white kid and unstring some pearls. Then when dudes be chasing after you, you can trip them up.”
THE NEXT morning, before he left, Dezi told Tia that maybe she should go home. It baffled her; he’d seemed so intent on making her stay. He tried to give her money, but she refused. Dezi paused at the door’s threshold, taking her hands in his, and seemed like he was going to tell her something, but didn’t.
The previous night, Tia had slept on the couch, Dezi on the bed. She’d thought she’d woken once and seen him staring over her. The only light was that of streetlamps, filtered through the window blinds so that Dezi’s face seemed to be caged. But in the dream, when she tried to speak, she couldn’t say anything, and when she tried to move, she was unable to. She assumed it had been a dream, assumed that if it weren’t a dream, he would still be standing over her come morning, but he wasn’t.
After she showered, Tia took out her clarinet and began playing from The Marriage of Figaro. She loved fingering the succession of B-flat–C combinations that sounded like a tickle. The succession began to go up a half-scale that fluttered into a series of alternating D’s and E’s. Then the waterfall of the music began. The trumpets had the main part for a while, and she had never had a need to play it. In band, the clarinets sat back and played whole bars of tut-tut-tut-tut while the trumpets did their thing, then the flutes, then the baritones. Tia tried to play the trumpet part. She pressed variations of the silver side keys that looked like the lazy flats they played; she tested the round finger keys that circuited the tube’s holes in halos of thin metal. Within an hour, she had figured out the trumpet part and played it, then replayed it. She went into the bathroom so that she could look in the mirror as she played, but she was so proud of herself, she couldn’t get through three bars of music without seeing a goofy smile creep up around her mouthpiece.
She left the bathroom and was about to put the clarinet away when she saw a woman sitting on Dezi’s sofa. She did not know how the woman got in, but there she was, swallowed up in the velour folds of the couch, shins spread like a colt’s. She wore a purple fitted jacket with a tiny purple skirt, a set of keys fanned out against her thigh. Her hair fell about her shoulders in thick black waves, and her pockmarked face was covered in makeup a shade lighter than her neck. She looked up at Tia, not startled so much as studious, as though Tia were an enigmatic painting.
“Who are you?” Tia asked. She realized she was holding the clarinet like a spear.
“Who am I? Who the hell are you?”
Tia waited a while before answering. “I’m a friend of Dezi’s. Are you a—customer?”
The woman pushed herself from the couch and stood up, walking into the kitchen. “Naw, I ain’t no customer. What the hell make you think that?” Water ran from the faucet, the fridge opened, bottles and jugs and wrapped packages sounded as if they were being thrown onto the counter.
She came back into the living room, where Tia was still standing, still holding on to the clarinet. The woman had a good half of a bologna sandwich hanging from her mouth. Through the bread and meat she asked, “How’d you meet Dezi?”
Where one might have expected a blouse underneath the purple jacket was nothing but an expanse of chest and cleavage. Her earrings dangled, grazing her shoulders. She laid what was left of the sandwich on the arm of the couch and began to unbutton her jacket.
“I’m hot. You hot?” She undid all five buttons and took off her blazer as though Tia were merely a curious pet. She stood nonchalantly in a lacy purple bra, sighed, then picked up the sandwich again. During bites she muffled, “I don’t even have to ask if you hot. Black folks always hot.” She swallowed another bite of sandwich. “Plus you dressed like you fell off the Amish wagon.”
Tia looked down at her blouse and skirt, but before she could even think of a response, the woman fanned herself with the sandwich hand and said, “Good God, I wish that boy’d get some AC up in here!” She stopped fanning and eating long enough to pick up Dezi’s forgotten Newports. She peered down the hole ripped through the top, pried one out, then crumpled the empty pack in her fist.
“I met Dezi a few days ago when I was looking for a job. He said I could stay for a while.”
“Ohhh ho.” The woman smiled, lighting the cigarette. Two columns of smoke swirled from her nostrils. Her head bobbed up and down, amused.
“He didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend.”
The woman laughed, then pushed Tia’s shoulder as though they were longtime friends. “Baby, you don’t even know which end is up!” She laid the burning cigarette against the saucer of the coffee-table plant and steered Tia to the couch, sitting her down. She sat next to Tia and made a smiling pantomime of introduction, daintily offering a bejeweled hand. Tia shook it, sending the woman’s bracelets rattling.
“My name is Marie. What’s your name, Miss Lady?”
“Tia. Tia Townsend.”
“All right, Miss Lady Tia. You didn’t exactly answer my question, so let’s start over. How did you meet Dezi?”
Tia blinked hard, trying to remember. Although it had only been two days ago, it seemed like much longer. Her head flooded with many lies she could have told, but the way the woman sat, in her purple bra, her eyes the sort even liars couldn’t lie to, she blurted out the truth. “I ran away from home. And I didn’t have a place to stay and he said I could stay with him. If he’s your boyfriend or something, I didn’t do anything. I swear—I mean, you’re not supposed to swear, but I promise I wasn’t trying to be his girlfriend or anything.”
Marie picked up her cigarette and stared at the airbrushed skyline on the wall, then embarked on a long series of thoughtful puffs. She quickly turned to Tia and said, “Wanna sandwich? I didn’t even offer you no food, girl!”
Tia declined.
Marie put out the Newport in the plant’s saucer where it sizzled in the water and died. “Well,” Marie said, turning to Tia as though she was trying to make her understand something she should already know, “Dezi and I are business partners. And I don’t push no drugs, either.”
Tia nodded her head slowly, now comprehending, but to be sure, she used the delicate term she’d heard her great-aunt Roberta use. “Are you a lady of the evening?”
This sent Marie howling, her head shaking back and forth like women in church getting happy. “Girrrrl! I ain’t heard that word since I was sporting pigtails in Savannah! Who taught you that!”
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Tia said quietly, “I just learned it somewhere.”
Marie kept laughing, finally ending it with the luxuriant sigh of one who’s had a good time. “‘Lady of the evening,’” she said in bright soprano. “You must a come a long ways from home.”
BEFORE TIA left the apartment, she folded up the sheets and blankets she’d slept on and placed them in a soft cube on the couch. She left a note for Dezi saying that she thought it was time for her to go back home. She did not mention that she’d found out that he was not only a drug dealer, which was bad enough, but a pimp. She knew she was not going back home, but she had to tell him something to explain why she’d left. She thought about going back to the park, then going to the far south side of town where well-off black people lived. Surely someone there would take her in.
She sat in the park but hadn’t the energy to play music for money. She watched for what seemed like hours as the park groomers cut the lawn; in the wake of huge riding mowers, the grass stretched in a carpet of green, reminding her of the cemetery near her home in Montgomery. She looked down at her open clarinet case, the pieces of the instrument glinting limousine black in the sunlight. She was filled with a sickness and longing, wanting to hear the simple sound of air blown through a wooden tube. Her clarinet case and backpack were too cumbersome to carry around the city, and she tried to think of a place to store them while she searched for somewhere to sleep for the night.
Then she remembered the bus station lockers. She found out how to take the MARTA from Stanford Gardens to the bus station, and there they were in front of her, a row of lockers with combinations. She put her change into an empty locker and was about to lift her case when she saw the photocopied flyer on the next locker. “Missing,” it read, and below the large lettering, despite the poor copy job, she could make out her own face, a picture of her from junior high, her smile forced from the school photographer.
“Tia!” a voice called.
Tia looked around the bus station, expecting to find her aunt Roberta, the pastor, and church members, standing in unison like a choir. And there would be Marcelle, feigning surprise as if she hadn’t seen Tia since Sunday school.