Red Light Wives

by Mary Monroe

  “You going to kiss me?” I asked with a smile on my face so wide my ears could feel it.

  Donnie’s face got even meaner. “Heeell no! Girl, you get your funky ass up off my bed and get the hell up out of here before my mama comes home!” he screamed, shaking his finger in my face. He put some spit on the palms of his hands and slicked back his hair, giving me hot looks all the while.

  I was so confused I couldn’t think straight. It seemed like the room was going round and round. I closed my eyes for a moment and sucked in some air. When I opened my eyes again, Donnie was standing there looking at me like he wanted to kill me.

  “Didn’t-I-tell-you-to-get-out-of-here?” he said. I don’t know how he was able to talk with his teeth clenched, but he did.

  “All right.” I stumbled off the bed and put my clothes back on. “What about that candy and pop you said you’d give me?”

  Donnie stomped up to me and poked me in my chest with his finger. “Look at my bed! You left your pussy jizm on it!” He pushed me aside and started to smooth over the spot on the bed where we had just been. He let out a loud breath and looked at me, shaking his head. “It’s a damn shame all the shit boys have to put up with just to get a piece of tail. I knew I should have just jacked off. Look at that bloody mess on my bed!” Donnie shook a mean finger at the wet spot on his bed. “Get on out of here before I fuck you again!”

  “All right,” I mumbled, mad with myself for bleeding on Donnie’s bedspread. Somewhere in my mind was some wild story Mama had told me about girls and women bleeding once a month. Something about a period. Well, I’d just finished one three days ago! Why I had bled with Donnie on the bed was a mystery to me. And it probably would stay that way because I wasn’t about to ask Mama or anybody else what was up with that. I had enough mess to try and unravel.

  As soon as I finished dressing, Donnie shooed me out of his room. He marched me through his mama’s living room, then out of that big green house. Before he slammed the door in my face, he told me that if I ever told anybody what we’d just done, he’d beat me up.

  As soon as I got back across the street to my front porch, I sat on the steps watching Donnie’s house. I didn’t leave my spot until he came out, whistling and bouncing a ball. He looked across the street at me and didn’t even wave or say another word. But the mean look was still on his face, so I knew he meant business about beating me up if I told anybody what we had done in his bed.

  I didn’t tell anybody what Donnie and I had done because I wanted to do it again. And I did do it again. And again and again. I don’t know how many more times I did it. Not just with Donnie, but with some of his friends. Every time Donnie’s family left him alone, he called me to come over to his house.

  On one of those days, I got back in Donnie’s bed with him and four of his friends, all in the same day. Not all at the same time, though. Donnie was first, and then he went to be on the lookout for his mama and daddy or any other nosy person, while I was with one boy after another in Donnie’s bed.

  After a little while with all of these boyfriends, sex didn’t hurt. It felt good. And, you know what, I liked it. Finally, somebody was treating me like I was a normal girl. I think…

  By the end of the summer, I had more boyfriends than I knew what to do with. Some of them only came around once, but there were a few who came for me two, three times a week. When we couldn’t go to Donnie’s bedroom, we laid on the ground behind my daddy’s garage. Sometimes we hid in the bushes.

  Then I started getting sick and real fat. Mama and Daddy being so old, they didn’t notice any of that. But my nosy brother, David, and his witch of a wife, Annabel, did. I didn’t call my sister-in-law a witch just because she had long bushy hair and a crooked nose like a real witch, but because she was real mean to me most of the time.

  It was Annabel who took me in the bathroom and pulled up my dress that day. Her high yellow face got all red and mean when she looked at my stomach. “Mother Daniels, get in here!” Annabel yelled, her mouth hanging open, her eyes stretched as wide as they could stretch.

  “What’s wrong now?” Mama asked in her tired voice as she barged into the bathroom, fanning her face with the tail of her apron.

  “This girl is pregnant!” Annabel told Mama, closing the bathroom door with her foot, her hand still holding up my dress.

  “Oh, my God. Helen, who did this to you?” Mama asked, her hands on the sides of her face.

  “Did what?” I wanted to know.

  “Who has been messing with you, girl?” Mama grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard, my stomach moved to one side.

  “Nobody’s been messing with me,” I hollered, sucking in my breath, trying to make my stomach flat again.

  “Tell me the boy’s name who did this to you! Was it Donnie?” I had never seen my mama so excited. Her hands were shaking; she was crying. “Tell me who did this to you, Helen!” Mama was talking so loud, my brother snatched open the bathroom door. As soon as he saw my stomach, he started in on me.

  “I knew this was going to happen sooner or later,” David yelled, his brown face turning black. He gave me a hot look. His eyes looked tired and old at first. Then all of a sudden, his eyes looked like balls of fire. His lips trembled, and I could see spit oozing out from both corners of his mouth. “Who is the bastard who did this?” I didn’t know why he was shaking his fist or who he was shaking it at.

  Annabel pulled my dress down and looked me in the face. She started talking to me real soft, with her hands clamped on my shoulders to hold me in place. Like I was a baby or a puppy or something. “Helen, somebody has taken advantage of you, and you need to tell us who it was. This boy, whoever he is, has done a terrible thing to you, and he has to be held responsible. His parents need to know,” Annabel told me, her eyes full of water. I didn’t know why she was all balled up ready to cry. It seemed like I was the only one in trouble. “Now you take your time and try to remember the boy’s name.” Annabel turned her head a little and looked at me sideways. All of a sudden, she turned to my brother, her eyes looking wild and angry. “You don’t suppose she’s been raped?”

  Mama let out a sharp gasp. Then she fell against the bathroom wall so hard, the medicine cabinet shook and the top button on her dress popped off. “Oh, God,” Mama said, one hand holding up her head. “Helen, who did this to you. When? Where? Did he force himself on you?” Mama started swaying like a willow tree, her head rocking from side to side.

  I looked at David, standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, his eyes scrunched up so hard it looked like he had just one eyebrow. Annabel stood next to him with her arms folded, a mean look on her face, which was as red as a rose. She didn’t like me, and I didn’t like her. Mama started swaying from side to side, still holding her head.

  I let out my breath and shrugged. “I…we…I…I had some boyfriends, but they don’t come around me no more,” I admitted.

  “Who?” David screamed, his hands on his hips. “I’ll beat the dog shit out of the bastards.”

  In a way, I still liked Donnie, and all the rest of the boys who had made me feel so good. I didn’t want my big mean brother to beat them up. “Um, it was this boy named Dennis.” Being retarded didn’t stop me from being a liar and making up a boy.

  “Dennis who?” Annabel asked, her voice getting loud again.

  A surprised look slid across Mama’s face. I knew she didn’t like that. Because, like I said, my mama hated surprises. Every time I remembered that I’d been Mama’s biggest surprise, it made me feel sad. Then all I wanted to do was find somebody, anybody, who would like being with me. Donnie and his friends had done just that. “The Cooper boy?” Mama asked, her eyes blinking hard.

  “Huh? No, not Reverend Cooper’s son.” There was a real boy named Dennis Cooper, but he had never been one of my boyfriends. “No, a new boy. He was just here for his vacation. He was from L.A., I think he said. His name is Dennis Cooper, too, but his friends call him Denny.”

  “Well,
who is this Denny’s people?” Mama asked, shaking a finger that she said was crooked from arthritis.

  “I don’t know. I met him at the park,” I insisted, almost believing my own lie! My brain felt like it was going to explode, ticktocking like a time bomb. I could even hear bells ringing. Then something real crazy happened. While I was standing there, something inside me popped and water ran down my legs. My stomach started hurting so bad, I had to lean against the bathroom sink. Then everything went black.

  I woke up in the hospital. My head had stopped ringing and my stomach had stopped hurting. And, my stomach was flat again. Mama, Daddy, David, and Annabel were all hovering over my bed like balloons with faces.

  “What happened?” I wanted to know, trying to sit up.

  “Baby, everything’s going to be all right now,” Daddy told me. Him and Mama, and even my brother and his wife, all looked so much older than I remembered. I wondered if I’d slept as long as Rip Van Winkle, twenty years, I think. I got real scared. Because that meant that I had got real old, too!

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I hollered. I didn’t even wait for anybody to answer. I must have scared them all when I jumped up out of that bed and ran to the bathroom just to look in the mirror. I looked real tired, but I didn’t look like an old woman. I padded back into the room and climbed back into the bed.

  “Dr. Mason took real good care of you,” Mama told me. Something that looked like a smile was on her face. Her lips were so dry they had cracks in them.

  They didn’t tell me much and what they did tell me, didn’t make much sense. I’d had a baby! I couldn’t take it home with me to play with, or even see it. I didn’t know if I’d had a baby boy or a baby girl. That made me cry. It would go to a nice home where somebody normal could raise it. And, Mama told me again, “Dr. Mason took real good care of you. You won’t ever get pregnant again.” That made me kind of sad. Because I always thought that someday I’d have a child of my own to raise. But, like everybody kept telling me, girls like me had too many limitations to live normal lives. I guess I did. Because half of the stuff that was said to me that day didn’t make no sense.

  It wasn’t long before things got back to normal again. If you could call it that. Mama and Daddy started acting like old people again, sitting around reading books, watching television, and running back and forth to the doctor.

  The only thing that was different was my brother, David, started coming to the house more often. He was some kind of businessman. I don’t know what he did, but he carried a briefcase. When he wore his glasses and a hat, he looked like a Black Clark Kent, who was really Superman up under his clothes. I’d seen my brother without his clothes; he wasn’t no Superman. He had an office downtown where he bossed people around.

  My brother’s wife started taking me shopping and to their house out by the beach. “I’ll keep an eye on Helen,” she told Mama.

  Well, after a while, Annabel got tired of keeping an eye on me. When I was allowed to go out by myself, I ran into a few of the boys who had been my boyfriends. But I never let another boy touch me again, unless he gave me money or something nice. And some of them did.

  Before I could get bored with those boys, my brother started inviting me to go places with him. Being the witch that she was, my sister-in-law didn’t like to let my brother out of her sight for too long. But she didn’t care where he went as long as he had me tagging along. It was always a movie and the mall. He treated me to pizza and stuff. Then, one day we went to visit some lady on Noriego Street. A real pretty Chinese lady. Mai Ling.

  David and his Chinese lady friend would leave me in her living room watching television or playing with her poodle while they went off to another part of her house. Each time on the way home, David stopped and bought me a pizza or something else good. Sometimes he gave me money, too.

  “Our little adventure is a secret between you and me.” David said that, or something like it, every time he took me with him to the Chinese lady’s house.

  I wasn’t as dumb as they all thought I was. I knew what David and that lady were up to. I peeped in the lady’s bedroom and saw them naked on the bed. But I never told nobody. I was just glad to have something to do. And, I was always glad to get them pizzas and that money.

  It was bad enough being limited, but I was unhappy, too. I went to parks, dances, and other places for kids like me, with other girls like me from the special school I’d attended. But they were just as retarded as I was, if not more. And there was nothing more boring to me than hanging out with a bunch of retarded kids. We’d go places and get picked on by normal kids. And a few times when I got lost and confused, the police had to bring me home. Then, Miss Rocky next door became my friend. Finally, I had something else to do with my time.

  Miss Rocky was my only normal friend, so I really liked her. I did everything I could to keep her happy. As soon as she had her kids, right off the bat she started asking me to come next door to babysit. The good news was Mama and Daddy didn’t have to worry about me coming home in a police car when I went places with Miss Rocky. So in a way, Miss Rocky was also babysitting me.

  It had been a long time since I’d had a boyfriend. I was glad when that man called Miss Rocky’s house and asked me for a date. I didn’t want to go to his house, like he had asked me to. And I didn’t want to meet him somewhere downtown. It was my idea for him to come to Miss Rocky’s house the other night.

  He was White, just like he sounded on the telephone. His first name was Arthur, but he wouldn’t tell me his last name. Or where he lived or worked, or anything else. He wasn’t as cute as I had hoped he would be. Me, I was more into Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise when it came to White men. Arthur was more like a Homer Simpson, and just as old, if you could imagine a real man looking like one from a cartoon. Well, even if you couldn’t, that’s what Arthur looked like. But the man really knew how to dress up in a way that made him look better. He had on a San Francisco Giants cap with a matching T-shirt, Nikes, and some blue jeans. I don’t know what kind of car he had because he’d parked it down the street and walked the rest of the way in the dark to Miss Rocky’s house. Except for his looks, he was the perfect man.

  “You have to be real quiet so you won’t wake up the kids,” I told him when I let him in the front door.

  “Kids? You have kids?” he asked, stopping in the middle of Miss Rocky’s living room floor, looking around. The way he started scratching his head and chin, and frowning, I thought he was going to change his mind. But then he stared at me real hard, bobbing his head as his eyes looked me up and down. He looked at my chest longer than any other part on me. When he finally looked in my face, he smiled and smoothed back hair that looked like yellow wires. The sparkling beads of sweat on his forehead reminded me of diamonds.

  “Oh no. I had me a baby a long time ago, but somebody else took it home to raise. You want some beer?” I led him across the floor, pulling him by his arm as he waved his hand like a lobster. But instead of sitting down, he just stood in the middle of the floor looking around at all the nice stuff Miss Rocky had. “Miss Rocky likes to shop,” I explained, shrugging. He seemed to like Miss Rocky’s nice furniture and thick carpets as much as I did, because that smile was still on his face. And so were the beads of sweat. I was glad when he reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe off that sweat. “Don’t you want to sit down?” I asked, waving him to a seat. I sat down on one end of the brocade couch Miss Rocky was so proud of, wondering if the White man was going to spend the rest of our date standing in the middle of the floor smiling. White people were so strange. I guess I would have been strange, too, if I’d been born White. As if I didn’t have enough problems just being retarded.

  Arthur glanced around real quick and started scratching the side of his neck. “Uh, you don’t look the way I expected,” he told me, finally sitting down next to me.

  “You don’t either,” I said, lying, because he looked a lot like other White men I had seen. He was older than he s
ounded on the telephone, and only had them few strands of blond hair on a head shaped like a peanut. He had on glasses, reminding me of Dr. Mason, the one who had fixed me so I wouldn’t have no more babies.

  “Uh, when we talked on the telephone, you said you’d make this date worth my while,” he grinned, showing gums as pink as bubblegum.

  I nodded. “Well, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do,” I told him. That must have been what he wanted to hear because he pulled out his wallet and fished out some bills and handed them to me. “Three hundred dollars?” I looked at him with my mouth froze open like a dipper. “You giving me three hundred dollars?” The words almost scorched the inside of my mouth. I would not have been surprised if smoke had floated across my lips.

  Arthur’s face got stiff, like his hair. “Hey, that’s what I’ve always paid you girls,” he said real quick, holding up a hand, shaking his head. “If you got something else in mind, maybe I should wait for the other girl.”

  “Don’t you like me? I thought you wanted a date with me,” I said, pouting.

  “Sure—”

  “This is a lot of money! More money than anybody ever gave me! Except that time my aunt Irene gave me five hundred dollars for Christmas!” I said, losing my breath from talking so fast. I unfolded the three one hundred dollar bills and looked at them real close and long, running my fingers back and forth.

  Arthur laughed and patted my arm. “Calm down, there’s plenty more where that came from. If you be a good girl, you’ll get a lot more.” He cleared his throat, sniffed, and smiled. “And don’t worry, it’s all real.” Arthur looked at me for a long time. “You know, you really are a beautiful girl,” he said, rubbing my thigh. He reached up behind me and put his arm around my neck. Then he pulled me close enough for him to kiss me on the jaw. He leaned back and started grinning. “I would never try to stiff one of you girls,” he told me, crossing his legs, which was hard for him to do because he had a big stomach. He rubbed along the side of my thigh, making moaning noises under his breath. The same way that Donnie Reese and his friends used to do when they were with me. Then he started to poke me between my legs with his finger.