by Mary Monroe
“Your folks know you got all this money on you?” Miss Rocky shook me but I pulled away from her, shaking my head. “You sure you didn’t steal this money? Tell me the truth now.”
“I didn’t steal it, Miss Rocky. Honest to God. I got it from doing stuff.”
“Stuff like what?” Miss Rocky’s mouth stayed opened, and I could see red stuff on her teeth. I hoped it was lipstick, not blood.
“Miss Rocky, remember that time you told me to mind my own business when I asked you about that pile of money I seen in your refrigerator locked up tight in that Tupperware bowl?” Miss Rocky’s eyes got real narrow, like a snake’s. She half turned her head and looked at me. I didn’t even give her a chance to say nothing else about my money. “Well, I’m telling you the same thing you told me. ‘My money is my business.’”
“All right now. I just don’t want you to be getting yourself into any kind of trouble.” Miss Rocky turned around and walked like a penguin out of the living room where we’d been standing and talking, next to the sixty-inch screen television she had bought for her kids. That big boxy thing was one of last month’s unexpected expenses. The back of Miss Rocky’s tight black blouse was still half unzipped. She looked like a great big sausage to me.
Miss Rocky was always trying to lose weight, but it never worked. She had Slim-Fast in her refrigerator, diet books on her bookshelf, a thing she was supposed to run in place on, and even some tapes that she was suppose to dance to. Every time she tried to exercise when I was around, she ended up falling out on the floor and I’d have to help her up.
“Miss Rocky, you are just like Oprah. She’s still a great big fat woman, and she’s been trying to lose weight ever since she got on television. Maybe you and her were meant to be great big fat women. That’s what my daddy says about you and her both.”
“If you insult me again, I’m sending your smart ass home, girl,” Miss Rocky told me, tossing some chips into her mouth. “I’d be fine if I could lose some of this meat off my bottom.”
“But you got just as much meat at the top,” I reminded.
I didn’t get sent home, but I got a dirty look from Miss Rocky that day.
Most of Miss Rocky’s clothes were too small for her, but that didn’t stop her from squeezing into them and then prancing out of her house to go take care of that sick old man. His name was Mr. Roy and he lived in Oakland, but that’s all Miss Rocky ever told anybody about him. Oh, she said that he paid her real good money.
And another thing, I never could figure out why Miss Rocky always dressed up real nice just to go take care of a sick old man. I didn’t have enough nerve to ask her, but I figured my mama would know.
“Mama, why do Miss Rocky dress up to go nurse an old man?” Miss Rocky had been going to nurse this mysterious old man since right after her husband took off. I couldn’t figure out how she did that, and run around with that Clyde and those other three women, too.
“If he’s straight, it doesn’t matter how old and sick he is, he’ll appreciate looking at a well-groomed woman. Even one as stout as Rockelle. Men are like dogs. Their eyes never stop roving,” Mama told me, looking me up and down as she talked, brushing my hair back off my face. She wiped a smudge off my jaw. I never knew what my mama thought about me being the way I was. All I had to go on was what I could eavesdrop. I did know from hearing bits and pieces of conversations she had with folks over the telephone, that she still worried about me getting in trouble with men again. “Well, at least there won’t be any more babies for Helen for us to worry about no matter how many more men take advantage of her. But a baby would be a picnic compared to her catching something that could kill her,” Mama said into the telephone. I didn’t like the fact that I was such a popular subject with my mama and her friends, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I wasn’t sure what it was I could catch from a man that could kill me. I had a feeling it had something to do with Mama taking me to doctors all the time for them to draw blood out of my arm. Sometimes it seemed like my biggest worry was my mama. Daddy was too busy watching ball games and sleeping, so he wasn’t too much of a problem to me. I don’t know what would have become of me if it wasn’t for Miss Rocky and her kids living next door.
Miss Rocky’s phone that the nasty men called up on was always ringing off the hook. Every time she left me alone with the kids, I’d put the kids in the living room, and I’d go to Miss Rocky’s bedroom where the fun phone was. I’d sit on the side of her bed and wait for the answering machine to click when those men called. They would leave messages left and right.
One night last week a woman called! And let me tell you, she was hella mad. As soon as I heard her going on and on about finding the telephone number in her husband’s pocket, I snapped off the answering machine and picked up the telephone. “Uh, hello,” I said in a real soft voice.
“Who am I speaking with?” It must have been a White woman because she had the same voice that the mother on The Brady Bunch reruns had.
“Me,” I told her.
I couldn’t picture the Brady mother’s husband calling for a date with a Black woman. I couldn’t even remember ever seeing a Black person on their show.
“Me who?”
“Just me, lady.”
“Shit! Don’t fucking play games with me! I just want to know one thing! Are you a working girl, bitch?” the woman asked, sounding real, real mean.
It was a real letdown to find out that a woman who sounded like Mrs. Brady knew cuss words and used them.
“Huh?”
“Is my husband paying you for your services?”
“Not if he’s the one who lost his wallet? See, I—”
“You little tramp! I don’t have time for games. I want to know if Joel McKlanski is one of your clients!”
“Hmmm,” I said, scratching the top of my head like a monkey. “I don’t know nobody named Joel. What he look like?”
“Look, you trash, I told you not to play games with me!” the woman screamed. “I’ll find you, and I’ll kick your fucking ass!”
I gasped and held the telephone away from my face and stared at it. I knew right then and there that I would never look at The Brady Bunch the same way again.
“Uh, lady, I have to go now.” I hung up before the madwoman could get any madder and throw a real hissy fit.
At least I didn’t lie to her. None of the men I’d talked to, or been with was named Joel. He was probably one of the ones I’d missed because Miss Rocky had got to him first.
Like I said, Miss Rocky’s date phone rang left and right. She had more than enough men to keep her busy. I didn’t feel bad about stealing a few. The strange thing was, some of the ones that I’d let into Miss Rocky’s house changed their minds once they got inside. One man flat out asked me if I was “mentally challenged.”
“Hell no!” I told him, reminding myself that if the Brady Bunch-sounding woman could cuss, so could I. “I’m just retarded,” I told that sucker. He all but ran out the door, and I didn’t really care. He had shown me right off the bat that he wasn’t a nice man. To the nice men, me being retarded was no big deal. Some even said it was cute. Besides, as one told me, I had the same parts a normal woman had, and I knew how to work them just as good.
The good news was, I didn’t have to worry about none of the men I got with telling Miss Rocky anything about me. Once I told them how fat she was, and about the gray hair shooting up out of her skull, they were glad it was me who picked up the telephone and not Miss Rocky.
The best man I ever stole from Miss Rocky was that White man named Arthur. I guess he was special because he was the first one I took a call from and made a date with. Poor Mr. Arthur. Sometimes he had to pay me on credit, too. Like that time he got robbed by some Black dudes on his way over to Miss Rocky’s house. I couldn’t figure out why some Black folks couldn’t behave themselves! Instead of robbing folks and breaking into houses to steal other folks’ stuff, them creeps should have been doing something nice
to get money. Like I did.
Mr. Arthur said he really liked me because I’d sneak him into Miss Rocky’s house all the time, and I liked having dates with him in the house. I felt like a wife. Since I would never be one, I decided to pretend that I was a wife as many times as I could. Mr. Arthur didn’t know that I didn’t live there, too. He honest to God believed that me and Miss Rocky were roommates. He was the one who gave me most of the money I had stuffed inside my brassiere. Besides him, there were only five other men I fooled around with in Miss Rocky’s house. I didn’t like them, though. The men who didn’t want to come to the house had me take cabs to wherever it was they happened to be. Hotels mostly. One man had me take a cab to his house in Daly City, way out there toward the airport. Only bad thing about me having to go to the men was I couldn’t sneak out until Miss Rocky’s kids were asleep. Once I put them to bed, they always slept all the way through the night. So it didn’t matter that I would be gone for a few hours. One night I went to visit a man at his hotel right when America’s Most Wanted was coming on. The same show was still on when I got back, so sometimes I didn’t even have to be gone for a whole hour.
It made my head hurt when I thought about some of the mean things some of the men said to me. Like this snaggletoothed, bug-eyed, flat-headed, shiny Black ballplayer from Miami. “Girl, you know you ain’t mentally fit to be doin’ this kind of shit. You get your tail up out of this hotel.” That was just like a Black man. Talking about me like I was a dog. My own brother behaved the same way that ball playing nigger did, so it didn’t surprise me. I expected this kind of foolishness from him.
Mama was always telling me that boys and men were nothing but naked apes. She started telling me that right after that little accident I had when I was younger—getting pregnant, I mean. She’d been telling me that ever since, hoping it would help keep me out of trouble with men. Every time I went out on a date now, I wondered what my mama and my daddy would say if they knew. I didn’t spend much time wondering about that, though. Trying to keep my dates straight and thinking about a hiding place—other than my brassiere—for the money they gave me, was enough for me to worry about.
The Black ballplayer had been one of the fussy ones I couldn’t get to come to Miss Rocky’s house. He’d called from some hotel room. I could tell there was something strange about him by the way he talked. He had come to town to go to somebody’s wedding, or so he said. And that tale he told me about owning a nightclub, I bet that was a lie. Who would have time to play ball and run a nightclub? He didn’t look much older than me and if you ask me, he wasn’t much smarter than me. But, even after he told me to get out of his hotel room, before I left, he did stretch out on the bed with me and we fooled around a little bit.
Why men liked to get their things licked was beyond me, but they all seemed to like it. I figured they didn’t get weaned when they were babies or something. The two hundred dollars that the ballplayer was supposed to pay me, well like I said, he wasn’t much smarter than me. He had lost his wallet. I had to pay for a cab back home, with my own money. But that still didn’t make me feel bad enough to get mad at Miss Rocky for not paying me to babysit while she went to that funeral. Me not getting paid wasn’t no big deal. I had plenty of money, and I knew how to get plenty more when I needed it.
Anyway, Miss Rocky had finally left to go to that funeral with those other women she ran around with. Looking after Miss Rocky’s kids at night was better than looking after them in the daytime. At night, they watched television then I put them to bed. I couldn’t have no fun until I got them out of my way. But it was a whole different story during the day. Them kids were worse than mice. They ran all over the place, squealing, and acting wild.
The two little boys were not that bad, but that girl Juliet could be a real pit bull. She didn’t want to do this, she didn’t want to do that. She was going to tell her mama I was mean to her, she told me.
“I don’t have to listen to no retarded girl like you,” she’d tell me when she didn’t want to go to bed.
She knew how to get at me real good and that was by calling me retarded. I didn’t ask to turn out the way I did, but I tried to live like a normal girl. One thing I didn’t need was people reminding me what I was. That was the one thing that made me cry the quickest. Especially coming from a child almost half my age. One of the good things about being slow like me was I could bounce back from being sad to being glad real fast.
One thing I learned from Miss Rocky was you had to treat Juliet the way she wanted to be treated if you wanted her to behave herself. Which meant, letting the girl do whatever she wanted to do. Since that little sister thought she was grown, I let her act grown. It was my idea for her to keep an eye on the two little boys while I went to visit this man who called right after Miss Rocky left the house to go that funeral. It sounded like the same punk-ass man who said he was a ballplayer! And a nightclub owner. I guess he changed his mind about me. I had started to tell Mr. Ball-Playing Nightclub Owner that I was not available to come to his hotel room no more. But then I got to thinking: why not prove to him he that was wrong about me that other time that he had me come to his hotel?
“Now, Juliet, you know how to use the telephone. So if anything happens before I get back, you call nine…uh nine…uh…nine…one…one.” I was only really good with numbers when it had to do with money. “And you can always run next door to get my mama or daddy if the house catches on fire or if some maniac breaks in,” I told the girl, coating my lips with some of Miss Rocky’s lipstick in her bedroom mirror. The house had a smoke detector, and maniacs didn’t know where we lived, so I wasn’t worried about nothing bad happening while I was gone.
Juliet stood next to me, looking me up and down. Her eyes, which were already too big for her face, were bulging out of the top of her head like a frog’s. With her pretzel-thin arms folded across her flat chest, she started talking, fast and loud.
“Where you going?” Juliet’s voice sounded more like a woman’s than mine.
Now, the girl was pretty, but I guess she had trouble believing it. She was always in the mirror, worried about her baby fat and sucking in her stomach and jaws trying to make herself look real trim like me and Janet Jackson. She was scared to death she was going to grow up and be a great big fat woman like her mama. Her turning into Miss Rocky scared poor Juliet more than the threat of a whupping. I felt the girl. That was why I spent so much of my free time at Miss Rocky’s house trying to help out. But I still had my own self to help out first.
I didn’t know much, but I knew enough about my situation to know I’d never have me a husband and some kids. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me once my mama and my daddy died. And the way they were looking and acting lately, one of them might be the next funeral. Knowing that busybody big brother of mine and his pissy-poo wife, they’d make me come live with them. And guess what, I just found out last week that the pissy-poo wife had a baby on the way. Which meant, they’d use me as a built-in babysitter when I had to go live with them. I wouldn’t have no choice. So I had to have as much fun as I could while I could. Once I had to go live with my brother and his wife, my fun would be over. Because when they came around, they watched me a like a mama hawk.
“Uh, I’m just going out for a little while to see somebody. Now, now, uh, be a big girl and keep the boys out of trouble.” I didn’t even have to tell Juliet that. Keeping the boys out of trouble was the easiest part of babysitting for Miss Rocky. Them little dudes were the easiest kids I’d ever seen. They didn’t clown in public like other spoiled brats I seen kicking and screaming in stores. And them little dudes of Miss Rocky’s did everything I told them to do. But that Juliet was another story. The girl had everything she wanted and then some. The only thing she didn’t have, but needed more than anything, was a whupping! I swear to God, Miss Rocky had to be scared to death of that little bitch. I don’t like to use cuss words, so I only did it when I had to. But most of the time, that Juliet was nothing but a bold-fa
ced bitch! If I didn’t know no better, and if I was bat-blind and could hear Juliet and Miss Rocky conversing, I’d swear that Juliet was the mama instead of Miss Rocky. Because, like I said, the girl sounded like a grown woman when she talked.
“Helen, how come you talk to me like that? I’m not no baby,” Juliet said, her face screwed up like she was sucking lemons.
That’s what I meant. That was the kind of smart-mouth crap I was talking about.
“Juliet, I know you are a big little girl. I didn’t mean it like it sounded. Now, you go on in the living room with the boys. I have to finish my makeover,” I said, waving her away.
Juliet just looked upside my head.
“Did you hear what I just said, Miss Girl?” I hollered, shaking my finger at her.
“Why you fixing yourself up like that? You look like those nasty girls in those rap videos. And, I can see them Raisenettes you got for nipples,” Juliet said in a real low voice. “Men are going to jump all over you if you go outside wearing all that makeup and that tight, low-cut blouse.” Juliet laughed, cackling like a witch.
I couldn’t hold back the smile that slid across my face.
“You think so?”
Juliet nodded. “When Mama takes me to the mall with her face made up and her clothes real tight, men stare at her and some of them even whistle.”
“Mmmm huh.” A real warm feeling covered my face, hot tears filled up my eyes. It took a lot of hard work for me to get attention and keep it long enough for it to matter, but it was worth it.