by Noire
When I was younger Grandmother used to have this old Singer sewing machine that was so ancient it had a knee pedal instead of one for the foot. I would get the scraps they threw away in the fabric stores and make fly-ass dresses for all of my dolls.
When I started taking classes at Fashion, G bought me an expensive sewing machine and I shopped at fabric stores up and down 125th Street and on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. G liked to shop for me and bring me nice things, so I still stepped out in designer shit left and right, but every now and then I would sew for two days straight then show up at the Spot wearing a “JuicyOriginal” and shame every other sister in the place to death.
That’s how I spent most of my time. Designing my private line of clothes, chilling at the Spot looking luscious, and going to school three days a week, grateful to get a break from the fast life and to be around people my age who were actually about something.
Marguerita Gonzales was a Puerto Rican girl who sat next to me in my English class. Blacks and Hispanics were cool with each other in Harlem because basically we were all poor and all had the same issues. Rita was one of those real dark Puerto Ricans. She had the prettiest brown skin and a head full of long curly hair just like mine. She was neat about herself, too. Always dressed real nice and made sure to fold her blazers and leather jackets on the crease before hanging them over the back of her chair.
I liked Rita, but I was slow about letting anybody get in my business. I had a lot of respect for her too, because Rita seemed like the kind of chick who could hold her own in any situation. She told me her father had fucked her for ten years, and then on the night of her fifteenth birthday she had held open her sheets, then stuck a knife in his heart and watched him bleed to death naked in her bed. She didn’t serve a single day in jail for doing that skag, and now at twenty, Rita was the top computer programming student at Fordham and she’d just gotten a side job writing programs to help support the two younger sisters she’d won in a custody battle with her mother.
I was scribbling in the Juicy Journal when Rita leaned over and whispered, “This shit is so boring.” I tuned in to catch the professor running her mouth about predicating a bunch of verbs. Rita hated English class and anything that had to do with writing, but math? Please. Now, I knew I was sharp with numbers. I could memorize number sequences and detailed equations like it was nothing. But Rita? Rita was math-momma. Her brain worked numbers and logic equations ten times faster than mine did, which is why she was such a good programmer. Damn right she was bored up in this class. Wasn’t no numbers being thrown around for her to chew on.
I nodded at her and smiled, then tried to get back into my journal. I was deep into a story where this sister was getting her toes sucked like they were seedless grapes. Her niggah was paying attention to her whole foot, too. Starting at the arch and working his way around. I wiggled my toes. There was no way in hell I’d ever know what that felt like. Not unless I was ready to twist my body up like a pretzel and suck ’em my damn self.
“Wanna go to a party?” Rita almost yelled.
“Sssh!” Just like a Puerto Rican! Girl was loud!
“What?” I whispered, frowning.
“A party. Can you come to a party next Saturday night? In Brooklyn?”
I shook my head. Hell no. Weekends were for getting fly and striking poses at the G-Spot. I had to sit up there and look damn delicious, as G would say, because everybody needed to know that I represented him.
“Okay.” Rita shrugged. “But it’s a Naughty Girls party so don’t blame me if you miss out.”
Naughty Girls? I waited until the teacher turned around to write on the board. “What’s that?”
Rita grinned. “You don’t know? Don’t worry. I’ll break it down to you after class.”
I could barely wait until the period was over. I had a finance exam next, and Rita had a two-hour break until her logic class. “C’mon,” she said, swinging her hips in a pair of brown Guess jeans. Rita was really skinny up top with little titties, but she had wide hips and cute legs. “I’m heading to the math building to hook up with a few programmers.”
“I thought this was a free period for you?”
“It is. Got a meeting. Through the Back Door. You know, we hack shit up!”
“Girl, it’s hard to believe you’re one of those crazy nerds who go around letting loose viruses that shut down banks and shit. You don’t even look like no damn computer geek.”
Rita laughed. “That’s the whole idea. Why do you think we call it Through the Back Door? Besides. We don’t shut down banks and don’t think we tap into the school’s mainframe and change people’s grades neither. It’s not about that. It’s about revealing programming weakness to keep the folks at Microsoft on their game.”
I waved my hand. We were almost at the math building. “Whatever. Tell me about this Naughty Girl Party thing.”
“Gurlfriend.” Rita’s eyes got all big and this sly look was on her pretty brown face. “They got an arsenal of shit up in there. Rabbits, butterflies, you name it, they got it. Last time I bought me a hammerhead and I rocked my own pussy so good I didn’t even need no man!”
Didn’t need no man? Rita was laughing her ass off and I tried to join her, but my mind was racing. I wanted to know more! Like, what the hell was a rabbit? And a hammerhead! Have mercy! What kind of stuff did they sell where you could beat your pussy up by yourself all night long?
“You sure you can’t get away for one night?”
I frowned. Rita didn’t know much about my life in the G-Spot, but she was from around my way so I knew she’d heard of G. Everybody had. “I don’t know,” I said. We were right outside of my finance class and I stood there frowning with my hand on the doorknob. Rita looked hopeful. Like there wasn’t an ounce of stress on her plate. It must be nice, I thought. To be in control of your own damn life. Free to come and go when you wanted to, and free to make your own decisions about where you spent your Saturday nights. The way G had me clocked was almost just as bad as living under Grandmother’s roof, and suddenly I was pissed off. Mad at G for making me old before my time, and for all the fun stuff I had to miss out on in the name of being his woman. Shit. Fuck him. G wasn’t my goddamn daddy. I smiled at Rita. “I’ma try, girl. I’ll see what I can do.”
The Spot was jumping, especially for a Monday night. Greco had hired some new meat to work the poles, and all of that fake-fucking up on the stage had created an aura of sex so thick you could lick it from the walls. The stage was on fire and Honey Dew was up there leading the charge. With her butter-smooth skin and bodacious titties, she had those new girls grinding those golden poles like they were flesh and blood dicks. And it was working, too. The hoes were burning up the back rooms; running men in and out the doors so fast the housekeeping crew had run out of clean sheets. Nothing made G happier than taking in bank, and I could tell by the way he was walking around nodding and shaking hands with the rappers and high-rollers that he was pleased.
But his attitude had been a whole lot different earlier in the day. The ice machine was acting up and he’d sent me in his office to get the number to the repair shop off an invoice. I looked in the filing cabinet where all the warranties and stuff were kept, but I couldn’t find it. I had just given up and was stepping out the office when I damn near got hit by a guy Pluto, one of G’s bodyguards, was slamming against the stairwell door.
I screamed and jumped back, looking down at the bloody brother who was balled up on the ground moaning and crying. His head had rammed the door so hard the metal was still shaking as G fumbled for his keys. I stared into the man’s face and he looked back at me with pleading eyes, begging for help.
“Stupid motherfucker!” Pluto kicked the guy in the stomach so hard he spit out blood. I stood there with my hand over my mouth as G unlocked the Dungeon’s door. All I had a chance to see was blackness with the hint of a light coming from the bottom of the stairs, and then Pluto kicked ole boy straight into the darkness and G, his eyes glow
ing mad, gave me a look, then stepped through the doorway and locked it behind him. It took me a minute to get my shit together after witnessing that. I kept thinking about how bad the man looked, the scared look on his face, that darkness down in the Dungeon.
Pluto came back upstairs after that, sweating like he had just run a race. I figured he had kicked old boy’s ass real good, maybe even killed him, so I walked real close to the wall when I passed him and acted like I didn’t see him grab his dick and shake it at me.
A few hours later I was sitting at the bar drinking a ginger ale when I felt somebody plop down beside me.
“Juicy!”
I turned around and smiled. Dyneatha Jones was a live one. She was about thirty-five, and had a big yellow pie face that was covered with freckles and a head of kinky red hair that wouldn’t lay down no matter how many times she permed it. Dicey had a loud voice and a loud personality. She was one of the few people Grandmother had trusted around me and Jimmy when we was little, even though she took a fall when she was in her twenties and had just gotten back on her feet a few years ago. As a kid I’d looked up to Dicey a lot because she did things for me that nobody else did. She took me shopping on Delancey Street and down in Chinatown, rode me and Jimmy around City Island and bought us ice cream, and a couple of times we spent the day at South Street Seaport, just chilling like tourists. Dicey was the first person to tell me about sex, hustling, and even my period, giving me the whole low-down on Kotex, tampons, and whatnot the year I turned eight.
But G couldn’t stand Dicey. He said her mouth was too big for her own good. Dicey had only been working at the Spot for a couple of weeks. She’d been living with her sister in Queens for a while and had just come back to Harlem recently. Even though he didn’t like her, G had hired her anyway. He gave her a job working upstairs in the cut room because he used to be good friends with her father, and some even claimed G was Dicey’s godfather.
“Hey, Dice!” I said, and reached out to hug her. I looked at my watch as she climbed up on a stool beside me. “What you doing down here so early?”
Dicey shrugged and touched her stomach. She’d put on regular clothes to come downstairs, but up in the cut room Dicey had to wear what everybody else wore: a paper-thin smock and not a damn thing else. G didn’t take no chances in his distribution center. He was paranoid like a mother that somebody might try to steal some dope from him. Females who worked upstairs weren’t even allowed to wear panties to work, and they were barred completely from the cut room when their Aunt Mary was visiting.
“I got my period, girl. Shit came on without me even knowing it, so you know what your man said. ‘Care your bloody ass on home!’ ”
We laughed because as street as G was, he could sound real country when he was mad. “But at least he still pays us full-time while we’re on the pad,” Dicey said, and signaled Moonie for a drink. “And that’s more than I ever expected from a coldhearted playa like G.”
“G ain’t all that bad,” I said. Moonie sent his stuttering sidekick Cooter down to us, and Dicey ordered a double shot of gin and I asked for another ginger ale.
Dicey turned to me. “Is that right?” She laughed and threw that gin down her throat like a natural man. “I forgot, Juicy. You a young thing so you probably can’t remember some of the stuff the rest of us here remember. You been fuckin G for what, two, three years?”
“We been together two years.”
Dicey chuckled, then sat back and rubbed her fat stomach again. “Like I said, you don’t know jack shit.”
Cooter brought her another drink and Dicey tossed it back so fast I almost missed it. She nodded toward the door. “Here comes that mining-ass I’ll-suck-your-brains-out-through-your-dick country-apple bitch from Alabama.”
I looked toward the door and saw that Money-Making Monique had just walked in, rolling her firm body and turning heads left and right. Everything about her was perfect, from her weave down to her shoes, and men laid out top dollars just to watch the way she stepped out of her panties.
Dicey laughed again. “You need to check that ho around your man, with her three-titty self.”
“I ain’t worried about G. Monique ain’t his type cause titties ain’t his thing and he don’t roll like that.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Dicey nodded. “That nigger’s particular.” Then she leaned in toward me and said, “You a cool girl, Juicy, and I love you. Your grandmother was my ace, and I used to see your mother and Ree up on Lenox Avenue back when I had just come out and was still selling pussy. You know, before I got myself cleaned up.”
I groaned. Everybody knew how stupid my mother had been, and how much it had cost me and Jimmy. I hated hearing about her, even if it wasn’t on the regular, because people like Dicey seemed to give my mother life from the grave.
“Your mother was a little older than me, Juicy, and I looked up to her and even tried to swing my ass the way she used to be swinging hers. But don’t you get fucked up by the game the way she did, baby girl. The worst thing Cara coulda done was dip on Big Sonny. Maybe she ain’t know whose dope she was stealing when her and Ree tricked Ice Man up, but who else’s fuckin dope could it have been? Sonny was a blackhearted motherfucker who owned every nigger in Harlem back then, including G. But look at who’s long gone, and who’s here still here now, standing on top. As mean as Sonny was, he didn’t have shit on G, cause when G stepped up strong he treated Sonny like he was somebody’s bitch. Took everything Sonny had, except his woman. I bet you ain’t heard nobody talk about laying eyes on Big Sonny since right after Cara got shot, have you?”
“G is a businessman,” I said, wishing Dicey would stop scaring me and take her cramping ass on home. “He’s all about making money, and you know yourself that when people try you, you gotta put them in check. And that don’t make G no monster, Dicey. He feeds his people lovely and he’s really a good-hearted person when you get to know him.”
“Tell that shit to the Haitian sister used to be around here a few years back. Real cute chick. Built just like you, but shorter hair and not as pretty. Ain’t nobody seen her well-fed ass lately neither. Or”—she pointed toward Cooter and Moonie at the top of the bar—”how bout you run that ‘good-hearted’ shit past Cooter Jackson. His baby sister used to lay up with G, too. But I bet you can’t even get Cooter to stutter her damn name up in here, and that girl wasn’t much older than you when she turned up dead.”
I swallowed hard. If it was one thing I had learned from my grandmother it was to heed the wisdom of warnings. “What you trying to say, Dicey?”
She lit a cigarette and took a drag that was so long it steamed the tip. “I ain’t sayin shit, Juicy. I know better than to fuck with G. Especially up in his Spot. But let me ask you this: He ever tell you about his wife? The fine Puerto Rican girl from over on Saint Nick he had his son by? The boy who goes to college out in Cali?”
“No, but I saw her picture on his desk.”
Dicey nodded and took another drag, then signaled Moonie again. “Uh, huh. I bet G ain’t tell you she been missing for over ten years, did he? I heard they got to scrappin’ one night and she disappeared just like that. Cops never even bothered to look for her neither. Some say she went to Puerto Rico, and one time I heard she was living downtown in Brooklyn, but don’t nobody know what really happened to her except G. And he ain’t telling.”
I liked Dicey, but she was messing with my head. I knew G was dangerous, but damn. She was really scaring me. My doubts must have shown on my face.
“Okay, okay, lemme ask you something.”
I sighed and rested my elbows on the bar. “What?”
“You got any money?”
“What?”
She sucked her teeth. “Money! Duckets! Dollars! Ends! Do G give you any goddamn cheddar?”
“What do I need money for, Dicey? G takes damn good care of me, and trust me, I got everything I need.”
“He ever put any cash in your hand, or do he just go out and buy what you ask
for?”
I thought for a minute. Whatever me and Jimmy said we wanted, G made sure it showed up at the crib. He shopped for all of my clothes and even ordered in the groceries.
“Juicy,” Dicey pressured me, “how do you get your goddamn tampons every month? Do you go to the store and pull the money out your bra to pay for them yourself?”
Hell no. Like I said, G ordered in the groceries, and that included my tampons and pads, too. “You tripping.” I gave her the hand. “I get my cotton sticks the same way you get yours. I march my little ass into the store and pick them up.”
“Uh-huh. I thought so. Your black ass is broke. So what if G decides to cut you loose? What if he tell you to let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord split you. Then what? You and Jimmy are just ass-out with nowhere to go, right?”
I didn’t answer. What could I say?
Dicey stood up and mashed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the bar. Her eyes got soft, almost sad, and she spoke quietly before turning to walk away. “Go home and listen to you a Millie Jackson CD, Juicy. That old girl know what the fuck she be singing about. Get you your own money, little sister. Don’t count on G to see you through, cause when a motherfucker like him decides he don’t want you no more you better start digging toward China or have enough cab fare to jet your ass to the other side of the world. Be smart, honey. Go get you some shit in your own name. Collect your pennies and save your spare change so you can open you up a secret bank account. Get you your own money, Juicy-Mo. Even if you gotta steal it.”
Chapter Six
Dicey’s warnings wouldn’t get out of my head. Her words were steady ringing in my ears, worrying me almost as bad as my nightmare had. She was right though. I needed my own cash. G could act the fool at any moment and I needed to be prepared to take care of me and Jimmy. Plus, I wanted to know more about the other women who had been in G’s life. I wanted to know what had happened to them, especially his wife. Dicey made it sound like G had a closet full of skeleton bones and part of me believed her, but I was also scared to find out if she was right.