by E. R. Frank
“Shut up,” Daddy warned. When he glanced at his new watch, I noticed an even newer ring on his finger. A thick gold band that looked real with a flat top edged in tiny diamonds. Real. All of it real. It was the first ring I ever saw him wear. It looked good. Solid and serious. How much did a ring like that cost? How many dates’ worth? My insides were still fists clenched and unclenched, spikes, and lava.
“Nice, right?” Daddy asked me quietly. He had noticed my glance.
Pretend. “It’s really nice.”
“Sometimes I don’t sleep,” Lollipop was explaining. “Sometimes they call in for a live show. Then I have to wake up and do stuff.”
Brandy wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting.”
“You looking run out,” Daddy murmured to me. “Since down south.” The spikes in my belly burned. “You getting skinny.”
“I’m good,” I lied. Don’t let him read your mind. Where would I go?
“I’m a get you a ring like this,” he whispered. “Cheer you up, Beautiful.”
I ducked my face the way I guess I always did. I tried to look shy the way I guess I always did too. He kissed my forehead and whispered again. “Brandy a complaining little bitch.” His breath was warm on my ear. “She do good to learn from you.”
I made my face do what it must have always done before when he was close, talking to me like that, like I was his beautiful best. But the searing in my belly felt nothing like the slow melt that used to feel so good.
“Her in the bedroom means you off the track, ho,” Daddy told Brandy. “Stop sweating me when I’m making life better for you.”
* * *
Daddy and Eagle drove us to work. Eagle drove a black Lincoln town car and Daddy still had the Escalade. He paid for two hotel rooms next to each other inside a big hotel that had bulletproof glass at the front desk and a little store with T-shirts and candy. We switched off locations—outdoor or indoor—depending on things only Daddy understood.
I didn’t know where Eagle stayed, but now he also drove us to outcalls at indoor locations other than the main hotel: apartments and other hotels and motels. Sometimes to a room in an office building. At parties the men were louder and ruder and showed off more. It was harder to smile and pretend you enjoyed it. There was never a safe moment to allow your face to arrange itself naturally and get the disgust out. It was tiring always having to pretend without any love anywhere, and it made it hard for me to think, hard for me to make a plan, to remember that maybe I needed a plan.
I didn’t like Eagle, either. Mostly I didn’t like him because I was afraid of him. In the down south house, I’d seen a minute of what he could do and what he seemed to enjoy doing, and I didn’t want to be alone with him in a car or anywhere. But I had no say. So far, he hadn’t given me more than a glance. He never spoke to me or to any of us, unless he had to. I don’t know where he lived, unless maybe it was in the town car. I couldn’t tell if Daddy paid Eagle or if it was the other way around. Daddy must have been texting him and talking to him on the phone, because Eagle always knew when to pick us up and where to drive.
I saw things I’d never seen, driving around Newark. The huge courthouses with their wide lawns, like parks. So many churches built out of gray or wine-colored stones, like castles. Twice, at dusk, a pair of girl-boys walking a track for their pimp. The train station with its curved, decorated entrance. The river beneath all those bridges sparkling in a winding band. And a group of greened statues halfway up the front of a building, guarding a massive arched doorway. I’d noticed them a few times before I noticed the letters below: FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY. It was the main branch—the one where that librarian had said she usually worked.
I saw a lot driving to outcalls, but I would rather have stayed in the hotel room. It was comfortable with a real bed and air-conditioning and a bathroom. And a lot of the time, I could shower between tricks. And I could sit or lie down instead of walk and walk and walk. Whippet and Stone weren’t around to stress me out, and I usually only had one client at a time. The hotel wasn’t far from the airport, for the johns. I could hear the planes all the time. I liked hearing those planes. I liked imagining where all the people on them were going, where they were from. Imagining that distracted me from myself, from the panic of having nothing. Imagining cooled down the constant fire in my gut.
Best of all, though. Best about being indoor was that sometimes, between dates, I could read. And when I read, I could be inside my shell on a boat, far away.
* * *
I had cleaned To Kill a Mockingbird so well that you could hardly see what L.A. had done to it with her pink gum. Five pages had torn, but I taped them with the Scotch tape I smuggled into the hotel room from the bottom kitchen drawer at home. And the day I sat next to Scout in the courtroom, falling asleep and then waking to Tom Robinson being found guilty, I was so upset that I begged Eagle to send my next date elsewhere and text Daddy that I was too sick to work.
“You do not look sick,” Eagle had said.
I tried to keep back the tears, hating what Maycomb County had done to Tom Robinson, hating how unfair it all was.
But Eagle sent in my john anyway, and I knew he texted Daddy.
When I finished the book, it was back home, inside my sleeping bag with the flashlight. My head was aching from the pounding Daddy had given me for mouthing off to Eagle and trying to skip dates. My empty stomach simmered. I turned to page one and began to read it all over again. It was as good as anything by Stephen King or Suzanne Collins. Better.
* * *
Daddy had more money than ever. He wore a new outfit almost every day now, including shoes. He never took off that flat-topped ring, but now he had a different watch for each day, and he switched out his chain and earring almost every day too. He didn’t overdo it like pimps in the movies. He never chose anything too big or wore too much at once. But everything on him was real. You didn’t have to be an expert to see that.
He bought us all new work clothes too. We got to pick what we liked and not share anymore. He let us get our hair done properly. And our nails. He gave us each a fourteen-karat gold chain with the letter D on it, to match his tooth. Mine matched my name, too—before down south I would have thought he planned that out for me somehow. We looked better than we ever had. We smelled better.
But we still lived in the same apartment. I had it best, except for Lollipop. Because the alcove, especially with the cardboard boxes for a headboard and footboard, was a little bit private, and private meant you could read or imagine yourself anywhere else. Maybe L.A. wasn’t acting as mad as Brandy those days, because she had the couch and Brandy was back on the floor, nose to nose with the box of tampons. L.A. thought the couch was the best, since she was up off the floor. I wasn’t going to argue. It was better if L.A. thought she was getting more than I was. She’d be mad enough when she found out I was going to be a Bottom Bitch too. Even if it was down south.
“This such bullshit,” Brandy said. “I don’t even have no phone yet.”
“Keep fussing and you not getting no phone,” Daddy told her.
“L.A. fusses all the damn time, and she got a phone.”
“L.A. Bottom Bitch, and she been got her phone, so shut up about the goddamn phone.” Then he winked at me when Brandy couldn’t see, as if to say, Don’t worry. When you get down south, you going to have you own phone. It made the heat in my stomach lurch up into my mouth, a sour, burning clump.
The first time that clump came up was when he had taken me earlier that day. He had been tender, and I tried to look at him the way I used to, and I faked flying, hoping he wouldn’t be able to tell. It was harder—much harder—than pretending with dates. I was afraid of what Daddy would do if he realized. If he put me out, George and Whippet might take me for theirs. I didn’t want to have to drink and stay high for George, and I didn’t want to have to pick a specialty for Whippet, the way he made his girls do. I didn’t want to have to be a ho anymore. But I chose it, so now that’s all there
was for me.
Brandy was looking at Daddy with her face twisted into an expression I’d never seen on her before. “You got enough coins to get me a stupid phone,” she said. “You just a asshole.”
Even L.A. got still.
“Brandy!” I hissed. If Daddy decided to beat her to death, I wouldn’t have one friend left in the world.
She ignored me. “You a motherfucking dog.” Her voice was quiet, but her chin was up, under her twisted face, like that Russian girl’s had been down south.
Daddy kicked her right in the middle of that twist. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lollipop go statue while Brandy went down. Daddy kicked her again. I looked away to see L.A. smirking.
Daddy stopped as suddenly as he had started. “Get back to work,” he told Lollipop. “Take care a her,” he told me, meaning take care of Brandy. “Come on,” he told L.A. “You going on a outcall. Overnight.”
L.A. beamed, flashing her gap the way Daddy flashed his gold D. She loved overnights. She liked how easy she thought they were. Truthfully, L.A. seemed to like the sex sometimes. Not on the street on a long, hot day, and not when we were down south. But there were times since we’d been indoor, or before when I’d had to do three-ways with her in the alley, when it didn’t seem like she was pretending. Not that a date would know the difference. But I might.
I’d been on two overnight outcalls, and I hated them. One john tried to talk to me about normal things, like where did I grow up, and what was my favorite color. He had another girl there too. She was white, and she said she worked for herself with no daddy. She said she kept all her money and lived with her cousin in their own apartment. She said they were paying for college doing outcalls. She didn’t want to three-way with me, maybe because I was black or maybe because it was obvious I had a Daddy and wasn’t going to college. But the john offered her more money to cooperate, so she did. That might be the date I hated the most in all my time working.
The other outcall that went all night tied me up. When he finished, he left me trussed up for hours before he came back. The only good thing about that one was he left the TV on and I got to see the entire documentary about those elephants.
“Eagle driving me?” L.A. asked.
“You mess with Eagle, and I will kill you.” Daddy didn’t want anybody getting anything for free from one of his bitches. And he didn’t want any of us catching feelings for anybody but him and then making any mad moves.
I gathered ice, a few Ziploc bags, and some paper towels. Lollipop went back to her room quietly, her face staying so still. Daddy and L.A. left. I helped Brandy onto the couch.
“Better not let me bleed all over L.A.’s pillow,” she told me.
“When did you get so uppity?” I was hoping to make her laugh. Uppity was L.A.’s word.
She didn’t laugh. “I’m not uppity,” she said. “I’m just wore out. Getting locked up wore me out. That cop wore me out. Down south wore me out.”
I slid my fingers along the edge of a Ziploc bag, sealing in ice. Then I wrapped it in a paper towel. I lay the ice bag down on her right ribs as best I could.
She winced. “You going down south and I’m stuck up here with L.A. and I ain’t never going to Disney World.”
I dropped the other ice bag. It burst, sending ice everywhere. How did she know? Had Daddy told her? “Disneywhat?”
She tried to shrug, but winced again instead. “You heard me.”
“He’s taking you to Florida?” I knew I shouldn’t let the ice melt into cold puddles, but I couldn’t look away from Brandy.
“He’s not taking me to shit,” Brandy said. “He said if I brang home fifteen hundred every night for two weeks straight, he would, and I was almost there.”
I was thinking fast to follow what she was saying. She knew Daddy was planning on sending me down south. Did that mean that L.A. knew too?
“But now he about to have two stables to run, and I can’t earn for days until I heal up, and I’m going to be stuck up here with L.A. behind all of that.”
“Daddy told you?”
She shook her head. “I heard him and Eagle talking outside the hotel door when I was with a trick.” She eyed me. “How long you knew?”
“Since the day we picked up Lollipop.” I couldn’t look at her, so I got on my knees to clean up the wet spots.
“Why didn’t you say nothing?”
Because even though I trusted her the most, it wasn’t enough? Because I was afraid Daddy would find out I’d told her, and if he found out I disobeyed him, I might get beaten, or worse? I wiped up the mess as best as I could and finally looked at Brandy again.
She rolled her eyes, which must have been difficult, because one was swollen shut. “I probably wouldn’t have said nothing neither.” The cut over her eye started oozing again, so I dabbed at it with the wet paper towel. “He wasn’t taking me to no Disney World anyway,” Brandy said. “Daddy full of shit.” Then her one good eye filled up, spilling over.
“You want ice for your eye?” It was the same one the cop got that time. She nodded.
While I put it together, she said, “I still got that card.” At first I didn’t know what she was talking about. “It fit perfect underneath my powder. The powder dish part come right out.”
I could picture it. The circle of face powder lifting off its rectangular base. The card from when she got arrested, tucked away. The one with the lady from that place that say they get girls out of the life. Pamela Terrence. The North Star. I could borrow L.A.’s phone when she was in the shower. Or I could ask to use somebody’s phone. A john’s phone. I couldn’t text Pamela Terrence from someone else’s phone, but I could call. Only who was Pamela Terrence, anyway, and how did I know she wasn’t going to lock me up?
“You still want him like that?” Brandy asked.
I couldn’t believe I’d ever wanted him the way I’d wanted him. It made me feel like a true ho. The shame of it hurt worse than my scorched insides.
Brandy nodded as if I’d said something she agreed with, even though I hadn’t said anything. “I’m not using no card,” she said. “My place with Daddy.” She glanced at me with her one good eye and then glanced away. “He save my life.” I tried to think if that was true, but it was so hard to think sometimes. “He love me,” Brandy said. “Only one who ever did.” She touched her swollen eyelid. “I piss him off is all.”
I stayed quiet, wondering what was true and who got to decide. If I told Brandy that Daddy didn’t love her, would I be right? And if I was right, would she believe it? For her sake, I didn’t want to be right. I wanted him to love her, even though the idea of him loving her and not me made the burning spread upward from my belly into my heart, and it hurt.
“It under my powder. Stupid card. The little round part come right out. Don’t forget.”
I stayed silent.
“You got to watch out for L.A.,” Brandy warned. “She lost that tooth and look all ugly and now she getting crazier than ever.”
I thought she looked ugly. But I guessed a lot of dates liked her mouth freaky like that.
We heard vomiting sounds coming from Lollipop’s room. We were forbidden to open the door. We listened, and it stopped. But later, at lunch, she came out with a stinking bowl full of puke. She cleaned it out in the bathroom without a word.
* * *
Nobody was sure where she came from, Truth would write. Lollipop had some guesses, and once I got her talking a little, it was hard to shut her up. Maybe she was sold by her mother or by someone else without her mother’s permission, or kidnapped. Her beginning is muddy, but Uncle Ray is clear. He never let her go to school. She lived in apartments and motel rooms, not allowed out of them during school hours. In the summers she played outside in parks and playgrounds with Ray, and sometimes with his friends. Lollipop liked her life with Ray, enjoying the best food from the best chains, plenty of toys and clothes, and television.
At first she thought all girls at home in their rooms played naked with
their uncles in front of a computer camera. When Ray began to tell her this was not the way it was and that she was special, living a special life, she believed it. She felt special. When Lollipop told me that part, she didn’t even realize what she was saying. She just puffed up her little body and smirked, like she was some sort of celebrity. When Ray began asking her to do unpleasant and sometimes painful things and to smile and pretend she liked and wanted those things, she learned fast. She had to because he punished her by taking away meals and TV and sometimes punching her for refusing or crying or looking scared. He gave her prizes for doing a good job: pretty headbands and bracelets, pink ponies and princesses and fairies and glitter glue and unicorn puzzles and shiny beads and cute sweatpants with words written on the backside in black cursive letters she couldn’t read.
By the time Ray began to allow Lollipop’s “fans” to visit in person, she knew exactly how to do the things Ray had taught her. She had also found a way to keep her face still, but friendly, like a kind statue, so that nobody would punish her. Ray was extra nice after she did a good job with fans in person. He made her brownies and painted her fingernails pink, adding sparkles to her thumbs.
When Lollipop went to live with her new Daddy and his stable, she thought it was temporary, that Ray was coming back for her. She missed Ray like crazy and was afraid of Daddy and the two older girls. She had laughed when she said she wasn’t afraid of me because I was too sad to be scary. Which made me feel mad and weak, both at the same time. But she had learned to hide her afraid part, to show only the kind statue face. For such a silly little girl, she was strong. Then Truth would apologize. I’m sorry to upset you with all of this, Truth would say. But please. Please keep reading.
Chapter Twenty-Eight