by Mary Monroe
Clyde looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time in his life. He rubbed his nose and grunted, blinking eyes so red, it scared me. He looked sick.
“It’s me, Clyde. Rosalee,” I whispered.
“Oh.” He shook his head and waved me away. “Don’t you worry about me. You just go make that money, honey.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. That’s a done deal. It’s you I’m concerned about. All of us are worried about you, Clyde. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
Clyde lifted his glass and drank, then he waved me away again, muttering something about some “crazy White bitch…she don’t know all what I been through…”
I didn’t want to know what that was all about. And I didn’t want to stir up any mess so I didn’t mention the incident with Clyde in Alfredo’s to Lula, Ester, or Rockelle that night. We all had enough problems already. We didn’t need to start worrying about Clyde bringing a White woman into our lives, too.
Lula and Ester were already walking around looking like pallbearers. And Rockelle was one step from grabbing tricks by their dicks off the streets. And me, well, I was sick and tired of lying to my mama about how I was making my money. But I felt even worse about the way she was controlling me.
After each of my trips to the senior citizen’s complex to visit Mama, I got so depressed I had to get good and drunk just to make it to the next day. If Clyde had lined up a date for me for that same day, I had to get doubly drunk to go.
It seemed like we were all already in some kind of mysterious grieving period, all for different reasons. So when Sherrie Armstrong died, we were already in mourning.
Sherrie already had full-blown AIDS by the time I met her. From what I’d heard from Ester, Sherrie got infected with HIV when she was seventeen, twelve years ago. I was happy to know that she had not caught the virus from a trick. She’d caught it from the first guy with whom she had a sexual relationship. But the most ironic thing was, she’d caught it just from having oral sex with the guy.
Ester said that Sherrie had told her that during the time of her relationship with the guy who’d infected her, she’d had an open sore in her mouth—some kind of an ulcer that a mild gum disease had caused. Sherrie didn’t go to a doctor when weird things started to happen to her body after she’d sucked that guy’s pecker a few times: flulike symptoms, mysterious sores that took too long to heal, extreme night sweats, and the list went on. Since I wasn’t a doctor, I didn’t know that much about medical situations except my own. And so far, all I’d ever had to deal with were menstrual cramps and other mild ailments that most healthy people experience.
From what Ester had told me, Sherrie knew she was sick even before she started turning tricks. But that didn’t stop her. She made her tricks use two condoms at a time, and she refused to kiss any of them on the mouth. Not even with her teeth clenched and her lips pressed together.
However, as soon as Clyde found out, he “divorced” her, so to speak. I remembered some comments he’d made when I first started working for him. The subject was condoms and Sherrie, and why he’d let her go.
“I can’t have one of y’all killin’ off none of my regular tricks. If one of y’all fuck one of ’em to death, that’s one thing. Some of them older tricks ain’t nothin’ but heart attacks waitin’ to happen anyway. A good piece of pussy is all it’ll take to push some of ’em into the grave. But that AIDS shit—uh-uh. I can’t hang with that shit,” he said.
Anyway, Sherrie had lived on her own and still turned tricks for as long as she could. But when she got to where she couldn’t take care of herself, she went home to her family in Berkeley to die.
By the time I met Sherrie, which was about three months ago, she was experiencing some kind of dementia. On some days her mind was as clear and sharp as mine. On others, she would see big green elephants in her room, and long black snakes crawling up the walls.
I liked Sherrie. She was the first White woman with whom I’d ever really associated. But I could not bring myself to go to her funeral. After going to the funerals for my daddy and all four of my siblings, all in less than five years, I had developed a phobia.
I was surprised that I had not gone stark raving mad, or at least as nutty as my mama was. I had not told Mama or anybody else, but the only other funeral I planned to attend was my own. I didn’t even think I could go to Mama’s, if she went before me. With the business I was in, my chances of going before her were about fifty-fifty. I didn’t think that I’d catch AIDS from my relationships with my tricks, but other things concerned me.
Every now and then, we heard about tricks going off on other working girls. And not just the foul, buffoonish tricks you see picking up street girls, but the so-called upscale gentlemen in thousand dollar suits. The police had found one of the most expensive call girls in town, in one of the most expensive hotels in town, strangled to death. The out-of-town trick who had killed her, a Chicago-based computer company CEO, had confessed, but offered no explanation as to why he’d killed the woman. Tricks didn’t need any good reasons to do whatever they did to us. Other than getting paid, we had no other civil rights. Rockelle told me that she’d read in one of her books that back in the old days when they were still burning women at the stake for being witches—the equivalent of our ugly stepsisters—women like us were either stoned to death or run out of town. If a woman was unlucky enough to be considered a slut and a witch, her goose wasn’t even worth cooking. When it came to respect, as far as mainstream society was concerned, we were one step above child molesters.
One of the first dates that Clyde set up for me was with a fallen priest. A regular trick had called Clyde up and told him that his ex-wife’s brother had just left the church, and at forty-eight, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on a woman for the first time. And after spending several years, doing whatever missionaries do in some village in Africa, and having to face the healthy butts of the tribeswomen, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on a Black woman. And, he’d requested one of the blackest. As soon as I got my orders from Clyde, telling me “get your Black ass out there and act as Black as you can, girl,” I headed for the South San Francisco address I’d been given. A tall, dark-haired man with an Irish accent opened the door and invited me into a living room that was even more disorganized than mine. I felt right at home. There were so many old magazines, newspapers, fast food containers, wine bottles, and empty glasses on the couch, the only place for me to sit was on the frisky ex-priest’s lap in a corner on a flowered love seat.
It didn’t take much or long to please this man. He paid me three hundred dollars just to let him fondle me, massage my ass, and play with my titties. He said he didn’t think that he was ready for intercourse yet. Explaining that procedure was a little extreme for a forty-eight-year-old virgin. He wanted to take a few weeks to get more familiar with women’s bodies. That was his excuse, but I’d accidentally glimpsed a pecker that couldn’t have been too much bigger than my thumb.
While I was in the bathroom scrubbing off as much of his sweat as I could, that sucker went into my purse and stole back the money he had paid me! I didn’t know what he’d done until I got all the way back to my apartment. When I called his house to cuss him out, he had a surprise for me. “Hark! You’re nothing but a wench, a she-devil!” he roared. “A demon will erupt from your loins! You will burn in a lake of fire!” Before I could get a word in edgewise, he hung up on me. Clyde retaliated by not sending us on any more dates with the trick who had referred the backsliding priest.
Anyway, we never knew what to expect from a trick. Sherrie’s death was just a reminder of what could happen to us if we got too close to the wrong man. You would think that with my history and my devotion to my superstitious mama, I’d be working in a convent or a children’s hospital. I thought about what could happen to me all the time and each time, I told myself that I was one day closer to quitting the business.
With me having to pay Clyde’s “commission,” in addition t
o my expenses and Mama’s expenses, it was next to impossible for me to save much money. I had a few thousand dollars in a brown padded envelope that I kept behind my refrigerator, but that wouldn’t get me too far.
The bottom line was, I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where I was going to go. I didn’t know what I was going to do with Mama. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself.
All I did know was I had to get out of the business I was in before it was too late.
Chapter 27
HELEN DANIELS
I was so glad that Miss Rocky didn’t take her kids to that lady’s funeral that she had to go to. I was real sad about that lady dying, but in a way I was glad. With me having to babysit for Miss Rocky while she was at the funeral, I had a reason to get away from Mama and Daddy.
As soon as Miss Rocky called me up that morning and asked me to come over, I dropped the telephone while she was still talking. I took off running out the door, wearing mismatched shoes and a blouse with all of the buttons undone. But there was nothing strange about the way I was looking. I left my house looking like a slob to go to Miss Rocky’s all the time.
I was just that happy about having a reason to get out of the house. And I know Mama and Daddy was just as happy about me having to babysit as I was. Old people like them had a real hard time dealing with me. It was one thing for me to be “limited,” as they said I was. I’d never been anything but that. But Mama and Daddy both sometimes acted just as limited as me! They were so forgetful that they would go out somewhere and come home in a cab because they couldn’t remember where they’d parked our car. They’d hide money somewhere in the house and couldn’t remember where until weeks later. My daddy left our house one time without his false teeth. He didn’t realize that until he got all the way to his doctor’s office. When I watched television with Mama and Daddy, I was the only one who could keep up with who was who on the screen. Now who couldn’t tell Bernie Mac from Chris Rock?
Now, my parents’ limits were not always bad. At least not to me. Mama would give me my allowance in the morning and by noon, she would have forgotten. She’d give me another allowance. Sometimes more than she gave me the first time. Sometimes she misplaced clothes I never wanted to wear in the first place. Daddy was even worse. Two days after he gave me my new computer, he came home with another one for me. I loved my parents, and I felt sorry for them, but in a way, I was glad that they got to see what it had always been like for me. They were glad we had Miss Rocky right next door. I knew that because I heard them say so a lot.
Just the other day I overheard my daddy say to somebody he was talking to on the telephone, “Rockelle Harper moving next door was just what we needed to help us cope with Helen. Maybe Helen can learn more about life in general from Rockelle. And those children of Rockelle’s are a double blessing. The more Helen spends time at Rockelle’s house, the more contented she seems.” Boy did Daddy get it right for a change. This particular day, I was babysitting for Miss Rocky for free.
Things had become so bad for Miss Rocky that she had been paying me to babysit on credit anyway. And lots of times, she just plain forgot to pay me at all. So, I told her before she even asked that I’d look after the kids for her today for free. If a funeral wasn’t reason enough to do somebody a favor, I didn’t know what was.
Before I told Miss Rocky not to pay me the night before last when she had to go out, she was like, “Helen, I had some unexpected expenses this week. Can I pay you later on in the month?” I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t think Miss Rocky was trying to be funny. She didn’t crack a smile. When she was serious, her face got so straight and spooky it looked like she’d strapped on a mask. And it was something you wouldn’t want to see if you went walking all by yourself down a dark alley. But “unexpected expenses” was the same excuse she used every single time. The reason I wanted to laugh was because her latest unexpected expenses included a new DVD player and a three hundred dollar hair weave (on top of being fat, Miss Rocky’s real hair was so scandalous, you could almost see her skull). I had almost forgot about that time Miss Rocky told me she couldn’t pay me because she’d had a out-of-town emergency that she had to take care of right away. It must have been a doozy of an emergency because all three of her kids came over to my house to brag about how they were all getting ready to go to Disneyland that weekend.
Well, for one thing, my family was not poor. I didn’t even need money from Miss Rocky. I didn’t think she needed to know, but I never needed any of the money that I made from babysitting. My mama, my daddy, and even my pain-in-the-jaw big brother, David, and his pig-faced wife—they all gave me money, and all kinds of other good stuff.
I told Miss Rocky, “You really don’t have to pay me at all today.” That’s when I pulled this big ole handful of money out of the red brassiere I had bought. The one my men friends liked so much. If I didn’t do nothing else right, I always made sure I was looking good when I had to deal with men. Yeah, I sometimes left my house wearing mismatched shoes, and my blouse unbuttoned or buttoned up wrong, but that was only when I went to Miss Rocky’s or to the corner store. When Mama let me go shopping at the mall on the bus by myself, I never went there without my makeup looking perfect and my clothes looking like I’d just removed them off a rack.
I had a good reason not to give myself too good of a makeover when I went to Miss Rocky’s house. I didn’t want to make her feel bad standing next to a pretty girl like me. I figured that out after something Mama told me: “That Rockelle would be so much more attractive if she’d lose about forty pounds and get rid of that fake hair. I wonder what goes through her head when she’s with those other beautiful women she hangs out with. I bet Rockelle feels like Moms Mabley standing next to slim women like Ester, Lula, and Rosalee. And she wonders why her husband ran off. Hmmph!”
Miss Rocky had enough problems. I didn’t want her to feel bad about her weight or anything else on account of me. Sometimes I went to her house looking like a bag lady on purpose, just so she could say something like, “Helen, you would be a real pretty girl if you’d fix yourself up better. Comb your hair, put on a little lipstick. And don’t walk around wearing mismatched shoes.”
Miss Rocky’s words had hurt my feelings, but to make myself feel better, all I had to do was remind myself what Mama had said about Miss Rocky looking like Moms Mabley. That would always make me feel sorry for Miss Rocky. One thing my limitations didn’t screw with was my feelings. I could care as much about another person as a normal girl.
Miss Rocky’s eyes got real real big, and she gave me this look that made me tremble. Like I said, this woman could screw her face up like a mask. My face got real hot as Miss Rocky stared at me and all that money in my hand. I got nervous because I didn’t know what she was thinking. Not only did I have on makeup that day and a tight blouse covering up my red brassiere, but I had on a pair of brand-new pumps. I couldn’t have Miss Rocky thinking I couldn’t look like nothing but a frump all the time. This particular day I looked like I was going out on a date, and I was hoping I was. All I had to do was wait for Miss Rocky to leave the house so I could send her kids to their rooms to watch television.
“Helen, where did you get all that money?” Miss Rocky snatched it out of my hand and looked at it some more. I bet she was thinking it was fake. She flipped through it, counting it out loud, her eyes getting even bigger. “Girl, there’s more than two thousand dollars here!”
“And it’s all mine,” I said, real proud of myself. As I should have been. Sarah Freeman, a girl my age who lived two houses down from me, worked at Burger King. Every time I saw her, she complained about the measly paycheck she got. I didn’t have to complain about nothing. And that heifer was always making fun of me, calling me a retard. I wish her friends could have seen the look on her face the other day when I told her to kiss my rich retarded ass.
“But where did you get it?” Miss Rocky’s voice was lower. She started glancing around, like to make sure nobody was listening. �
�You didn’t do something you shouldn’t be doing to get all this money, did you?” Miss Rocky’s eyes looked me up and down, but she still didn’t say nothing about how good I was looking today.
“Like…what?”
Miss Rocky cocked her head to the side. She looked at me real hard some more out of the corner of her eye, which by the way, had too much mascara and eyeliner. “Like, stealing? You haven’t been in your mama’s…or anybody else’s purse, have you?” Right after Miss Rocky said that last part, she looked at her purse on the couch.
I shook my head so hard my ponytail slapped my face. “I would never steal from nobody.” I nodded toward her purse and added, “Especially you. I heard my mama say what a low-down, funky, dead-beat your husband was. I know it takes a lot of money for you to keep this house and pay for your three kids. And to go to that beauty parlor you go to on Ocean Street so they can sew up some hair on your head.” My eyes rolled up to look at Miss Rocky’s fresh new hairdo. She said all the time she didn’t like bangs, but she had them. She’d been wearing bangs ever since I told her they would hide the lines on her forehead. “I like them bangs, Miss Rocky,” I said, knowing a compliment would make her feel good and maybe forget about trying to get up in my business.
“Thanks, Helen,” Miss Rocky said, patting her hair, like she wanted to make sure all of it was still on her head. She let out a deep breath and rubbed the side of her face, closing her eyes so tight they almost disappeared into all the meat on her face. When she opened her eyes, she leaned closer to me and looked me in the eyes, like she was trying to see what I was thinking.
“What’s wrong, Miss Rocky?”
“Helen, where did you get all this money?”
My stomach started doing weird stuff, like moving and hurting like somebody had hit me in it. I rubbed my stomach and turned my back to Miss Rocky. But that didn’t do me no good. She grabbed me by my shoulders and spun me back around so we were eyeball to eyeball. “Uh, I made it doing stuff,” I managed, my chest getting so tight I couldn’t hardly breathe no more. I was hoping I wouldn’t pass out or die in front of Miss Rocky. That would have made me look real bad. She already had one funeral to go to.