by Joy Copeland
Zoie snatched the phone from Jazz, surprising herself and leaving Jazz in shock. “Sorry—this is not for sharing,” Zoie said, clinging to her phone. This little episode meant that she would have to keep the phone locked away in her assigned locker.
“Hmm,” Jazz said. Her eyes narrowed. “Okay, be that way.” She backed away and glared back at Zoie. “Check you out. Pricey undies. Nice new phone. I want me a phone like that, except with rhinestones.” She settled back on her bunk, put a finger to her mouth, and gave Zoie a once-over. “You know…somethin’ ain’t right with this picture. Hmm. You ain’t no ordinary homeless person.”
Zoie choked. It had taken this true street person a matter of minutes to figure out that she wasn’t authentic. “What’s ordinary? Homelessness can happen to anybody.”
“Yeah, you right about that. Everybody had a mother at one time or another, even if that ain’t true now. Hmm. I’m guessing you’re ‘anybody’ is either a drug dealer or a hooker, like me. No track marks, no bruises.”
Zoie had to think fast. But this girl seemed to be doing all the thinking for her. She decided to play along. “You may be right.”
“Then I’m guessing it’s a hooker. Huh, I should know. Drug dealers don’t wind up in places like this. Neither do hookers…unless they’re running from something or somebody.”
“No, I’m just down on my luck. I didn’t put enough away for a rainy day. But I’ll get back on my feet. In the meantime I can’t lose my contacts.”
“So you’re one of the prissy-appointment kind. Independent, huh?” Leaning back on her elbows, Jazz was smiling a twisted smile, seemingly pleased that she’d guessed correctly about Zoie’s identity. She gave Zoie another once-over. “You’re like one of those escorts or a call girl. You sure ain’t been out on Fourteenth Street. Hey! If you were walking those streets or anywhere near there—shit—I’d have seen you.”
Zoie couldn’t believe she was letting this girl concoct Anna’s backstory. But so far it was working. She needed friends, not enemies, in this place. Being too coy about a made-up past could sabotage her plans, and she really didn’t want to tangle with Jazz. Undoubtedly, Jazz knew her way around the Shelter, which meant she knew how to get into the courtyard.
“You can give it whatever fancy name you like,” Zoie said. “My tricks paid pretty well.” Zoie surprised herself: “tricks” had rolled off her tongue as if it were part of her everyday vocabulary. She only knew the word in the context of a movie. She clung to the towel and held the robe closed as she continued to work the new theme. “For a while I was sick. I couldn’t work. When I couldn’t pay my bills, my butt was put out on the street.”
“You done let yourself go,” Jazz said, continuing to look her over. “You got to keep up your looks. Ain’t nobody gonna pay big bucks for that.
In light of Jazz’s critique of her appearance, Zoie looked down at herself. Well, at least the disguise is still working.
“Why didn’t you ask one of your customers for some cash? An advance payment.” Jazz asked. “Didn’t you have a special John, someone who always comes back and gives you something extra?”
“Yeah, but I was trying to be independent, to not be beholden to any man. If they give, they want something in return. They think they own you. I didn’t want anyone to own me.”
“I know that feeling. I want to be independent too. Bet you advertised on Craigslist. Rico paid my bills, kept a roof over my head, and kept the money I made. That mutha’ got all the nookie he wanted free of charge. Then he’d slap me around if I said I needed a bigger allowance. One day I opened my big mouth and said something about going independent. That muthafucka went crazy! But that didn’t even matter. I didn’t even have to say something like that to get him going, ’cause he’d rough me up just for the hell of it. That muthafucka is an ignorant fool! He didn’t even mind that after he beat me, I was too messed up to work. Laid me up with my face all swollen and my ribs hurting. Then I saw the ‘writing on the wall.’ Took a while, but I ‘smelled the coffee.’ The rest of his girls kept getting younger and younger—fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. Soon he’ll be running twelve-year-olds. Baby bitches. He said his ‘bidniz’ model was changing.” She sucked her teeth in disgust. “What the fuck was that about? I wasn’t pretty enough to work the hotel bars. I had to stay out on the street corner, freezing my ass off. He said I was a bad influence on the young ones ’cause I was always asking for stuff.” She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I ran away more than once. I’ve been here three times. Last time I ran away, he texted me.” She imitated Rico: “‘Baby, you know your Rico misses you. Come on home.’ After he banged me up this last time, I left. He ain’t sent me no texts to come back ’cause he turned off my phone service. It’s like he don’t want me back. It’s like he throwed me away.” She sniffed. “How you like that? Good thing ’cause I don’t want to be beholden to no man like that no more.”
Zoie was stunned. She couldn’t believe that this girl had just poured out her heart after their having just met each other. Jazz’s eyes were watery, but there were no tears. Zoie truly felt for the girl. The girl had been used up and disposed of like a broken-down racehorse. Zoie had never heard of pimps putting girls out to pasture at age twenty-two or any age, for that matter, but she guessed that it happened. What was the pimpdom business model? Up or out like the military or the corporate world? No benefits, no retirement. Perhaps Jazz hadn’t been cooperative enough to manage the other girls. As tough as life had been for Jazz, it was clear that it had to come to this for her to give it up. A whole other world was out there for her. She just didn’t know it.
“Jazz, I’m so sorry. You’ll be okay.”
Jazz bowed her head and held her stomach.
“Look, I’m headed to the shower. When I come back, we’ll talk some more.”
Dressed in the one-size-fits-all robe and ultrathin flip-flops, Zoie headed for the showers. Luckily the bathroom was close. On her way she stopped by her assigned locker, deposited her phone inside, and made a mental note: Remember to get the phone on the way out.
Alone in the long, narrow bathroom, which had five square sinks and three shower stalls, Zoie had a bit of privacy. She hung her robe and towel on a nearby hook and took the fastest shower she’d ever taken. The warm water felt good as it ran down her body. She was careful to not let the force of the water ruin her matted hairdo, a Lena special. A certain grunge was a necessary part of her disguise.
She couldn’t imagine that anyone would recognize her. She hadn’t had any interaction with the women’s side of the Shelter. Still…it was possible. Someone like Sister Te—the “Dragon Queen”—could be lurking. After all, earlier in the day, they’d locked eyes for several horrible seconds. But so far there had been no Sister Te sightings.
Zoie returned to the room. Jazz hadn’t budged from her bunk. Deep in thought the young woman didn’t acknowledge Zoie’s return. Zoie decided to not interrupt the young woman’s meditation. Zoie quickly dressed in her newly acquired hand-me-downs and replaced the paper-thin slides with Lena’s holey sneakers. Jazz emerged from her trance and looked up. Her expression was serious. “Hey, Anna. I’ve had this idea for a long time.”
“Oh, what’s that?” Zoie responded while folding her towel.
“There’s this guy I know.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not a pimp or anything.” An excitement had entered Jazz’s voice. “He said he’d set up a website for me. You know, one of those Internet sites where the Johns can use their credit cards and pay to watch me do nasty stuff.”
“The Internet?”
“Yeah, like my own private sex channel.” Jazz rested on her elbows with her legs dangling over the side of her bunk. “You’ve seen Internet sex stuff, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, what about it?” Actually Zoie did know about the online sex trade and not just from TV reports. At Fairday and Winston, she’d reviewed a number of cases for a client who caught its employees using the company’s
computers to access such sites. The company’s policy for such violations was pretty cut and dry—immediate dismissal. That company, as well as others, was well within its rights to restrict usage of its computing resources and misuse of company-paid time. Nevertheless, the company wanted a final legal review prior to its planned mass firing of forty-five of its employees.
“Well, what do you think? No touching. Just watching. No pimp. No stinking beer-belly hogs lying on you, crushing you. They be all sweaty and stinky. No worrying about catching God knows what or getting beat up. What do you think?”
How sad. Hooker’s paradise—the Internet. Her tech person will surely take his cut and end up controlling the whole thing. Just another sort of pimp. This young woman’s dream was to graduate from being a pimp-sponsored streetwalker to being a self-employed “Internet ho.” Jazz might have been on the streets for years. Internet sex was her way indoors.
“Well, what do you think?” Jazz asked for the third time.
What would Anna, now deemed an independent hooker, say? Zoie had to be careful with her response. No bursting Jazz’s bubble. She started her answer slowly. “Let me see. No stinky bodies, rough hands, beard burns, hands grabbing here and there, and catching those diseases.”
“So?”
“Sounds as if you got yourself a plan.”
Anna’s approval was what Jazz wanted to hear. “You got that right!” Jazz beamed, wincing as her bruised cheek morphed as part of a large smile. “Hey, maybe we could do this thing together. You know, be available for twelve hours of airtime. Get a nice apartment. Nice clothes. Nice undies.” She giggled.
Zoie found herself giggling along with Jazz for very different reasons. The thought of participating in an online sex show was such a stretch that she actually blushed. Never in her wildest dreams had the concept occurred to her. “Hooking without really hooking, huh?”
“Girl, you got it!” Jazz’s eyes shined at the prospect of the collaboration. “Hey, if you hurry up, I’ll show you around this place. Then we got lots of stuff to work out. Girl, you know I’m serious. We can be partners. In the meantime don’t say nothin’ to nobody about this. This got to be our secret. Just between you and me, right?”
“Right. And what I was doing prior to coming here has to be on the down-low. Right?”
“Hey, don’t have to worry about me. Tell you one thing, though: later we got to fix you up. That hair thing you got goin’ ain’t gonna do nothin’ for a camera.”
Chapter 41
Peach Cobbler
Hand in hand and with Jazz in the lead, the two women made their way down the narrow hall, as other women squeezed passed. Zoie could’ve pulled away from Jazz, but she decided to let the bonding thing happen. She needed the younger woman’s help as a guide to the ins and outs of the Shelter. Still, Zoie wondered how, when the time came, she’d detach from her new best bud—Jazz.
The aroma of food grabbed Zoie’s attention again, calling to her from farther down the hall. Her stomach’s primal consciousness responded with more growls.
“Listen, Jazz—before we go farther, show me where I can get something to eat.”
“Been without for a while, huh? I heard that tummy.” Jazz laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re headed to plenty of food. I don’t think this place really helps people find places to live, but they sure feed you.”
Like the men’s section, the women’s side of the building was a maze. But Jazz knew the place. After a series of turns, they arrived at what Jazz called the Great Room, where a group of women congregated. They were young and old, comprising different sizes and different hues.
The large open space was divided into activity areas. In one area three large sofas formed a U-shaped grouping, where the women focused on a large-screen TV. They were glued to a sitcom, complete with a 1970s laugh track. In another tighter space, three rectangular tables with computer monitors formed what Jazz described as the computer center. Two computers were in use, their users facing a wall filled with notices. The TV’s irritating synthetic laughter didn’t seem to bother the women, who were focused on the computer screens.
“You got to sign up to use the computers,” Jazz explained. There’s a thirty-minute limit. Most days there’s no problem if you run over, unless somebody’s waiting.”
Of immediate interest to Zoie was the room’s open kitchen, a space defined by a long gray counter on white laminate cabinetry. Two microwaves anchored one end of the counter, and a large coffee maker and an industrial-looking toaster oven filled the other end. A large refrigerator hid all but the wide rear end of a woman who was searching for something inside of it.
“That’s Cruz, our roommate. I hope she found a place to move with her kids,” Jazz said. Without being asked Jazz filled in the details of the plight of Cruz and her four children. No man in the picture, no job, and no available space at the family shelter. In family shelters they could have stayed together in a room or a small suite. Sometimes it meant staying in a motel room with a hot plate for a stove, paid for by DC Social Services. At least it beat the alternatives, like camping in the park or in the lobby of the Martin Luther King Library. This time the family options weren’t possible, so Cruz and her kids were split up. Her kids went to two different foster homes, and Cruz was now at Mahali. “Cruz had to do it that way,” Jazz explained. “She didn’t want those kids living on the street.”
“Mmm.”
“You can buy your own stuff and put it in the fridge, except the only cooking we can do is in the microwave or that toaster oven. We don’t have to cook anyway. Dinner’s brought in about five thirty every day. We get cereal, bagels, or yogurt and fruit for breakfast and sandwiches and salads most days for lunch. Not too bad, huh?”
Zoie responded with a half-hearted smile.
Dinner had been brought in a while ago. Several women still hovered over the food in the large aluminum pans that lined two tables.
Zoie’s stomach groaned again. “Where does the food come from?”
“The Shelter’s main kitchen,” Jazz answered. “You can go around to that dining room to eat. The entrance is on the side of the building. But down there you just gonna run into the creeps. The men gotta eat there. And most of them ain’t too clean. So who wants to eat sitting next to them? Eating here’s better.”
So Hank’s kitchen is cooking this food. For a moment Zoie considered going to the Shelter’s dining room. But then she might run into Maynard there, who might just freak if he saw her. He wouldn’t like that she had deviated from their planned rendezvous later that night. And if Hank was around, he might recognize her. But Hank wasn’t supposed to be there at all. At least that’s what she’d been told earlier in the day.
Then there was Jazz to consider. She wouldn’t go for eating with the “creepy men.” The trauma of Jazz’s life on the street had clearly turned the young woman off to any direct contact with men. Behind the doors of the women’s section and her being in front of an Internet camera while engaging in provocative activities were the only places where Jazz would feel safe.
“Plates and cups over there,” Jazz said, pointing to a stack of Styrofoam dishes and plastic utensils.
The food was picked over. Still, there was plenty left: baked chicken, green beans, macaroni and cheese, corn on the cob, a tossed salad, rolls, and a half pan of peach cobbler. “Check this out.” Jazz pointed to the cobbler with her fork. “Save room for that. We get the cobbler every few days. I think they’re trying to make us fat.”
Peach cobbler meant that Hank was around. During her tour of his kitchen, Zoie was told that only he knew the secret ingredients for his famous cobbler. Even if others did the prep work, only he added the special ingredients to his signature dish.
Damn!
Zoie took small portions of food from each pan. Jazz, on the other hand, piled her plate high. Zoie wondered how the tall slender woman could eat mass quantities and maintain her slim waist and toned tummy. At a picnic-style table, Jazz plopped down, across
from Zoie.
Zoie counted fifteen other women in the great room. Other than Jazz, though, none of the women approached her. No greetings or welcomings. No hellos, byes, or anything similar. Other than the background noise of the TV at the other end of the room and the occasional whine of the microwave, there was no hum of conversation. Each woman seemed to dwell in her own world, oblivious to those around her. Zoie didn’t want to explain her fictional life on the street, so other women’s distancing themselves was for the best. Still, she found it strange. She asked Jazz, “Is everyone keeping to themselves, or is it just me?”
“Yeah, people keep to themselves,” Jazz answered with her mouth full of food. “They want to keep their business private. Know what I mean? They’d rather be in their own places or wherever. It’s bad enough you got to share a room.”
“They’re depressed?”
“Guess you could call it that. They’re busy thinking about how they gonna find a place when their time here is up.” Jazz put down a chicken bone and licked her fingers. “You don’t stay here ’cause you love it.”
Zoie understood, at least as much she could, having lived a relatively privileged life. From the moment she entered the place, she’d been both fearful and creeped out. Communal bathrooms, communal sleeping, and communal dining—all privacy was lost. Living in a shelter wasn’t exactly a voluntary arrangement like being in a college dorm or at a summer camp. In those situations folks found new friends, romped, and frolicked. Jazz was right. No one wanted to be in a shelter.
“Of course you got your nosey folks. There’s one or two around here. They’ll talk to you until the sun comes up. Now them you gotta watch,” Jazz said, raising her pinkie for emphasis.
The large clock on the wall over the computer area read a few minutes after seven. One of the volunteer women began covering the food pans with heavy aluminum, preparing to put those pans away. Zoie could tell that it was going to be a long evening. Remembering her ultimate goal, she scanned the room for a possible exit to the rear courtyard. There had to be an exit or some sort of escape route for safety reasons. The windowless Great Room made it difficult for Zoie to get her bearings with respect to the courtyard. The room was like the hub of a wheel, with the spokes being the four corridors leading away from it. Zoie knew what was down one of those corridors, since it was the one by which she and Jazz had entered the room.