by Mary Monroe
LoBo had come from an even rougher neighborhood than mine, so he was pretty savvy when it came to the ways of the world. He always had a hustle going. He was a low-level thug who took care of his business without interference from the cops. Though he had several relatives who were in and out of jail on a regular basis, he had never even been arrested. He prided himself on being too slick.
Despite the fact that he was moderately corrupt, LoBo was good to his mama, Freddie, and the kids. Like Daddy and James, he was a family man. He had a job that he didn’t like to reveal unless he had to, because it embarrassed him. As hard as it was for me to believe, some thugs had pride. LoBo was a garbage man, but he referred to his line of work as “waste management.” After a few drinks he described himself as a “sanitation engineer.” He made decent money, too. But because he liked to live high on the hog and everywhere in between, even with Freddie’s salary, they lived paycheck to paycheck.
People contacted LoBo when they needed something they couldn’t afford. Like a new television set, or a new DVD player. LoBo always seemed to be present when something “fell off a truck.” Even large appliances like refrigerators and stoves. He had furnished the apartment that he shared with Freddie with items that had fallen off trucks. He only dealt with popular brand names so people knew that if they bought something from LoBo it was going to be worth every nickel that they paid for it.
After work the next day, I accompanied Freddie to her apartment on Blane Street. The section of town that Freddie lived in was one step, and I do mean one step, above my neighborhood. There were half as many liquor stores and the crime rate was lower, but it attracted a lot of hookers. And there was a massage parlor that attracted a lot of men. Old Mr. Clarke, Daddy’s horny employee, was seen stumbling into that particular massage parlor several times a month when he should have been at the liquor store helping Daddy.
I sat next to LoBo on the brocade couch in Freddie’s neat little living room. She had only two bedrooms, and her kitchen was barely large enough to accommodate a table and four chairs. She had bar stools, but no bar. Freddie sat across from me and LoBo, perched on one of her high-back brown leather bar stools, looking from LoBo to me. She wore a white turban that had slid high up on her head. The turban, her big ears and her narrow face made her look like an extraterrestrial.
Even with Freddie’s plain looks she always managed to snag some of the best-looking men in town. LoBo was tall and well-built from working out at Gold’s Gym five days a week. He liked to show off his body by wearing outfits like the sleeveless shirt and tight jeans he had on now. He had a nice neat goatee and a smooth bald head that he had Freddie shave and wax with lotion on a regular basis. It had been years since I’d seen a strand of hair on his head. His smooth dark brown skin and baby face looked like they belonged on a man ten years younger. LoBo was thirty-five. The three kids he had by Freddie, all under the age of six, were in the back bedroom quietly watching television. Freddie had three of the best-behaved kids I knew. I hoped to be as lucky some day.
“LoBo, can you get me a fake ID?” I asked in a determined voice.
CHAPTER 33
LoBo gave me a serious look, rubbing and thumping the top of his shiny head like he was inspecting a melon. Freddie had shaved and oiled his head just before I’d arrived. But small dots of shaving cream clung to his ears and the sides of his face. “Girl, I can get you anything you want. A fake ID won’t be no problem at all.” LoBo gave me an odd look. His eyes got big and his lips quivered like he was holding back a laugh. “Can you tell me why you need a fake ID?” he asked, scratching his chin and giving me looks that made me suspicious and nervous. I just sat there for a few uncomfortable moments, blinking and trying to decide what to say and what not to say. LoBo coughed and glanced at his watch. “I’m listenin’.”
I slid so close to him our knees touched. “Uh, do you remember how I had to file for bankruptcy when my uncle died and left me with that outstanding loan I got for him?” I slowed down long enough to lick my lips and reorganize my thoughts. “Well, because of that I can’t get credit in my name for a while,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Ten years! Ha, ha, ha. I’ll be almost forty. I don’t want to have to wait that long just to get more credit. That’s . . . why I need a fake ID.” I didn’t want to reveal any more information to LoBo than I had to.
LoBo nodded. “From what I hear you seem to be doin’ all right,” he teased, giving me a suspicious look and a wink. I looked at Freddie.
“He knows. I told him,” she confessed. Her eyes glanced at the floor, then back up at me with a mild smug that irritated me in a major way.
I gasped and shot Freddie a blistering look. That was enough to let her know that I was not too pleased with what I’d just heard. “You already told him?” I blinked at Freddie so hard my eyes watered. I knew that if I expected LoBo’s assistance I had to tell him what I was up to. But when and how should have been my choice, not Freddie’s. That’s what was so upsetting.
“My woman tells me everything,” LoBo hollered, waving his hand. “And I tell her everything.” He shifted in his seat, crossed his legs, and gave me a sideways glance. LoBo looked like he had been working out more than usual. His shoulders and arms seemed bigger and more defined, making his head look smaller. He must not have noticed the change in his appearance because a vain man like him wouldn’t do anything to minimize his good looks. With his overdeveloped body and small head, and Freddie’s big ears, they made an interesting-looking couple. It didn’t matter that some people compared Freddie’s looks to a cyclops; LoBo still treated her like she was the most beautiful girl in the world. They were made for each other. It was no wonder she worshipped the ground he walked on. However, that didn’t make me feel any better about Freddie blabbing my business to her man without checking with me first.
I felt slightly betrayed by the only woman in the world who I trusted with some of my deepest and darkest secrets. A painful lump formed in my throat. When I swallowed I lifted my chin, but the lump still hurt. It helped when I sucked in a deep breath and counted to ten in my mind, but even that didn’t ease my anger. My eyes were on Freddie’s face as I replied. I wanted to see her reaction. “Yeah, but this was supposed to be between me and Freddie. I tell my man everything, too, but I didn’t tell him about this.” I hissed the last sentence and enjoyed watching Freddie flinch, squirm, and cast her eyes toward the floor. She had made it clear that she didn’t like what I was doing with Ann’s name. I decided that she thought that by sharing the information with her man, she could feel less guilty about not turning down the gifts and lavish lunches that I bombarded her with.
It would do me no good to get upset with Freddie. I knew I was still her girl, but she had more of a vested interest in LoBo than she did me. After all, she lived with him and was the mother of his babies. I respected that. She was a woman in love. She and LoBo shared the kind of passion that was missing in my love life. Love, and money, made us do some pretty crazy shit. I was just sorry that finance was more of a weakness for me than romance. Had I been totally in love with James, or any other man, I probably would not have stolen Ann Oliver’s identity. Sometimes I envied Freddie’s position. I gave her a dirty look anyway.
“Freddie, who else did you tell?” I wailed, looking at her through narrowed eyes. Freddie was particularly close to her parents and siblings, her father especially. She had told her daddy stuff about me that I hadn’t authorized her to. My jaw twitched while I waited for her to respond.
Freddie looked at LoBo before she answered. “LoBo is the only person I told.” She paused and left her mouth hanging open as she gave me a pleading look. “I had to tell him,” she insisted.
Freddie had already told me a long time ago that she and LoBo didn’t have any secrets between them. He had confessed to several one-night stands, but Freddie was fiercely faithful to her man. She went out with her girlfriends and flirted with other men, but sleeping with them was something she would never consider. LoBo meant that much to he
r. It went without saying that no matter what I told her, she’d tell her man sooner or later, no matter how confidential it was.
I had no intention of ever letting James, or any other man, have that much power over me. I only had one daddy and keeping him off my back was a full-time job.
I wanted to slap Freddie for having such a big mouth, and for having such a committed relationship with her man. Her life was so much fuller than mine. In some respects, I would have given anything to trade places with her. Especially now that I’d stepped into a situation that I wasn’t sure I could control.
“Don’t let the air out of your titties, Trudy B,” LoBo said casually, holding his hand in front of my angry face. “I know all about that bitch you work with. She thinks everybody wants a piece of that uptown pussy of hers. Me, I wouldn’t touch her with another man’s dick. If I was in your shoes, I’d be doin’ the same thing to her, maybe even more. Shit.” LoBo snapped his fingers and clucked his thick tongue. In a much more controlled and softer voice he told me, “You know me well enough to know I ain’t gonna blow your cover. You done stumbled up on a chance of a lifetime. The Mother Lode. Girl, get all you can, while you can. You deserve it.” LoBo cleared his throat and gave Freddie a thumbs-up. After she blew him a kiss, he turned back to me. “Now exactly what do you want?”
“Can you get me a driver’s license in Ann Oliver’s name?” I asked in a shaky voice. Freddie gave me an incredulous look, but she remained silent.
“Done,” LoBo said, letting out a huge belch and massaging his chest with his fist.
“You may as well get the whole package?” Freddie said with a heavy sigh. It was bad enough that I had dragged her into the hole I had dug. Now here she was helping me dig that hole even deeper. However, she had a choice: fall in with me, or climb out while she still had a chance.
I looked at Freddie with a curious expression on my face. “What do you mean?” I asked sharply, surprised that she would encourage me to do anything more than I had already done.
“If you are going to do this thing, you should do it right. Get a copy of Ann’s birth certificate. If that travel agency lets you take some trips out of the country, you’ll need a passport,” Freddie said, twisting on her stool, and crossing her legs at the ankles. She snatched off her turban and dropped it to the floor, revealing one of the meanest hairdos I’d ever seen. Her braids looked like horns, but that didn’t stop LoBo from looking at her like she was something good to eat.
I cleared my throat to get the attention back on me. “I won’t take trips through the company in Ann’s name,” I said quickly with an anxious grin. “That’s hitting too close. I’m not that bold . . . or stupid.” I gave Freddie a thoughtful look. Then I looked at LoBo. “Never mind! Get me the whole package,” I said, speaking so fast my words almost ran together.
Each time I made a move in the wrong direction I immediately gave it more thought just to be sure that I was aware of what I was doing. After thinking about a passport for just a few moments, I realized that it was a much more serious document than a credit card.
“Uh, never mind about the passport,” I said, rubbing my neck. “I don’t know about that. Those passport people are pretty sharp. Ann travels a lot, so her name is probably in computers everywhere from here to Nome, Alaska. If something happens to me while I’m sipping margaritas on a beach in Mexico, while I’m traveling under her name, I could get in a serious mess. Then they would find out everything.”
“You don’t want nothin’ then?” LoBo asked, frowning. He was clearly disappointed.
“Just the ID and the birth certificate for now.” My eyes burned when I blinked.
CHAPTER 34
There were a lot of people in South Bay City who would not have been caught dead in my neighborhood. Mainly because “dead” is how they predicted they would end up if they based their beliefs on our history.
We had gone from a slow, peaceful, quiet little dot on the map occupied by a mostly minority, blue-collar crowd, to a hellhole overrun with baggy-clothes-wearing gangbangers. Hardcore rap music, in Ebonics and Spanish, could be heard blasting from everywhere all hours of the day. Our house, a no-frills stucco on West Cambridge Street, had even been burglarized a few times.
Even when we averaged a murder every other week during a three-month period a few years ago, Daddy refused to consider moving. I could still hear his words ringing in my head: Them crooks could steal my bed with me in it but I ain’t gwine noplace. He tried to pretend that staying in the house was all about economics, but I knew better. There was a lot more to it than that. I knew Daddy better than he knew himself. Except when it came to me, Daddy was not one to show his true feelings too freely. And I knew that our house meant a lot to him. For one thing, it was a huge investment. Not just money, but feelings and history. It was the one thing left that connected us all together: himself, Mama, my late brother, Gary, and me.
Before Daddy had even paid off the mortgage, he’d remodeled the kitchen, added a bedroom, and had a new roof installed. The sentimental value meant even more to him whether he admitted it or not. It was the first and last place where we’d all been together at the same time. Mama and Gary were gone physically but their spirits could still be felt in every room. My brother’s spirit had even been seen once, by me.
I had been alone in the house at the time. Daddy was outside in our driveway with all kinds of tools in his hands doing whatever men do under the hoods of their cars. It was a Saturday morning in July when I was fourteen. My brother, nineteen at the time, had not come home the night before from a party he’d attended in Sacramento with a bunch of his homeboys.
After losing Mama, Daddy got real possessive when it came to the important things in his life. Gary, being a boy and older than me, had more freedom than I had. He could pretty much come and go as he pleased, day or night. He could also stay away from home as long as he wanted to. All he had to do was call to let Daddy know he was okay.
Gary had never stayed out all night without calling home. When he had not called by the time Daddy and I got up that Saturday morning, Daddy grabbed his tool box and headed out to the driveway, instructing me to stay off the telephone so that the line would be free for my brother to get through.
Fifteen minutes after Daddy had shuffled out of the house with an extremely worried look on his face, I walked out of the kitchen into the living room and there was my brother. Gary was even darker than me, but he had blond hair and blue eyes like Mama. Females of all ages and races loved him to death. He stood in the middle of the floor dripping wet. It looked like he had been swimming in his clothes.
“Gary, boy are you going to get it!” I hollered, hopping from one foot to the other, pounding my fist against the palm of my other hand. “You didn’t call home last night like you were supposed to, and now here you are getting water all over the floor!” I yelled, more relieved than angry.
That year, July was one of the hottest months in the South Bay area. Even with our windows open and a fan whirling in almost every room, our house usually felt like an oven during the summertime. That morning, with Gary standing there soaking wet, the living room felt as cold as Siberia.
“Trudy, I just wanted you and Daddy to know that what happened wasn’t my fault,” Gary said in a voice so hoarse and low I had to lean forward and cup my ear to hear him.
There were three entrances into our house. The back door through the kitchen, the side door connected to the garage, and the front door leading into the living room. The only time we used the back door was to take out the trash or to go into the backyard for some particular reason, like to barbeque on the grill that Gary and Daddy had built. There was no way my brother could have entered through either the side or the front door without running into Daddy in the driveway. I assumed that he had come in through the back door. However, that seemed unlikely because our backyard had a high fence around it and was always locked from the inside.
“Did you tell Daddy that?” I asked, rubbing the g
oose bumps that had popped up on my bare arms from the cold. Before Gary could respond the telephone rang. At the time the only telephones we had in the house were in the kitchen and in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. I smiled at my brother before I galloped across the floor toward the kitchen with my well-worn house shoes flapping like long tongues.
I grabbed the telephone on the third ring, expecting to hear Uncle Pete’s voice. He’d called several times to check to see if we’d heard from Gary even though he had his own problems. His oldest son, Curtis, had caused the whole family a lot of concern. In the past few years, the boy had become far too familiar with drugs and the outside activities that went along with them. Cops in three different states were looking for him. Curtis had been on the lam for over a year, calling every now and then from locations he refused to reveal. But the important thing was, we all knew that my wayward cousin was all right.
The phone call was from Mr. Hardy, the daddy of one of the boys who had gone out with my brother the night before. Mr. Hardy reported that my brother had lost control of his car during the drive back from Sacramento while crossing the Sacramento River. The restored Mustang that my brother had always been so crazy about had ended belly up in the river. Almost choking on his words Mr. Hardy said, “All four of them boys drowned.”
With a deep sigh of relief I pressed my hand against my budding breasts. “Uh-uh, Mr. Hardy. My brother’s here . . . right now,” I said, twisting my head around to face the doorway. I dropped the telephone and ran back into the living room. There was no sign of my brother. But there was a wet spot in the middle of the floor where water had dripped from his body.
We had his funeral three days later.
CHAPTER 35
My father believed me when I told him about my experience with my brother’s spirit. But it upset and frightened him so much that he made me promise not to tell anybody else, or even mention it to him again. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Freddie. “News like that could be a real shock to a person’s system. Most folks ain’t strong enough to hold up under too much stress, like me and you,” Daddy decided.