A Street Girl Named Desire: A Novel (27 page)

“I knew you wasn't shit.”

He tossed the crack on the floor and watched Desire scurry to retrieve the rocks. When she picked them all up, she went into a corner of the room and put the stem to her mouth as fast as she could.

The difference between an addict and a junkie is that an addict goes though hell as they fight for their soul. But a junkie has gone
to hell without coming back. He or she no longer has a soul. Desire was now a junkie. She became a mere shell of her former self, a walking zombie, and her health declined. There is no way anyone would recognize her now as the once famous Desire Evans. She epitomized the image of an AIDS patient, weighing a shrunken and shriveled ninety-three pounds. Her neck was so skinny that people who stared at her wondered how it supported her head. The deep, dark circles under her eyes told tales of horror and suffering. Her ability to function as a human being was annihilated. She had no regard for herself, or for life as a whole. The situation became even more ghastly once the city marshals showed up to remove whatever belongings Desire had not sold from the apartment. She turned into an animal who lived in alleys, abandoned buildings, crack houses or rooftops, anywhere she could lay her head for a few hours. Nothing was beneath her, and she generally dined in fast-food Dumpsters. Usually, her daily snacks consisted of twenty-five-cent cakes, potato chips and cookies from the local bodegas.

The drama Desire caused on the ho stroll on East Harlem's Park Avenue made her an outcast. She drew heat from police and other hoes because she would rob and beat every trick she encountered, making it bad for everyone else. As soon as they saw Desire, the whores chased and beat her down. There seemed few options for this fallen angel. She had to either go crazy, go to jail or die.

Desire was walking down 127th between Lenox and Fifth when she heard the car honk at her. She knew better than to waste time. She ran to the car.

“What's up, honey, you looking for a date?” asked Desire. She tried to hide her rotted yellow teeth as she smiled only slightly

The Hispanic man was ugly, with sunken-in eyes and skeleton cheeks.

“How much?” he asked her, turning down the salsa music that blasted from the stereo of his red Nissan.

“Ten dollars,” said Desire.

“You got it, honey,” he replied, and Desire jumped into the passenger side of the vehicle.

He drove them to a secluded area on 128th Street between Madison and Park Avenues. As soon as he parked, Desire began to unbuckle the dirty jeans she wore, with no panties underneath. When she looked up, he just stared at her without saying a word.

“What's wrong, baby?” she asked. “I ain't got a lot of time.”

Again, he remained silent and just stared.

Desire grew frustrated. “Listen, if we ain't gonna do nothing, I'm leaving.”

He smiled and said, “You don't remember me, do you?”

“I ain't got time for your games.” She attempted to leave. He wrapped his huge hand over her arm and pulled her closer to him. He took off his hat. Desire did not recognize his face. She was too strung out to realize that about a year before, he had picked Desire up on Park Avenue. She had pickpocketed his money as she gave him a blowjob.

Desire knew she was in trouble just as the trick punched her in the head and jabbed her in the eye. Dazed, Desire's body began to shake as she pleaded for him not to hit her anymore. Her fear made his penis hard. He grabbed her by the leg and began to rip
her jeans off her body. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis and began rubbing it rapidly.

“Open your fucking legs …
wide
!”

Desire lost the air in her chest as she stared at the scarred, sore-ridden skin around his genitals.

“Mister, please, I … I got the virus, I got HIV!” Unmoved, the man continued to assault Desire and hold her down. Desire felt the head of his penis begin to enter her. He punched her once again as she struggled. She felt herself drifting back to the day Tony Evers had raped her virginity out of her. She was not going to remain frozen, as she had that day.

“Bitch, I do you one better than HIV.” His eyes lit up. “I got full-blown AIDS.”

In him she saw herself—an angry person who no longer cared about anyone else's life because there was no more hope for his. Desire struggled to no avail to free herself, but he was much too strong. The pain was excruciating as she felt the ripping and tearing of her insides. She cried and begged for mercy, but it was a fruitless plea. The wild man began choking the air out of her. She lifted her arm to her mouth and spit her ever-ready Oxford razor into her hand. It was a habit she had never broken. She then felt for his penis, and with one swift move she cut into it with all the remaining strength she had. She watched his eyes light up and then she heard a loud, howling scream. Air came into her lungs once again as he released his grip. He reached madly below his stomach, trying to wildly hypnotize himself to numb the agonizing pain. The stump of his severed penis spewed blood everywhere. When Desire looked down, the other half was still inside
of her bruised vagina. It expelled itself when she stood up and got out of the car.

Desire ran, almost nude, up 128th Street, screaming at the top of her lungs. It was as if her life had come full circle, a catalog of experiences that her soul could no longer bear. She had been born near here, was living virtually the same life her mother had, was dying the same way. She was being raped, robbing, stealing, thieving, lying, and dying. She was alone, beaten and in a state of health that had her on a tightrope separating life and death. Desire was literally running for her life. She didn't stop running until she ran right into a man's arm, the force of which nearly knocked her senseless. She was hysterical as she begged the man to save her.

“Please, please help me … a man just tried to kill me.”

“Desire?”

Desire looked up, miraculously, into her old friend Carvelas's face.

T
he beginning has come around again. This time, the girl might be older. The street may have changed. There might be more people in the story. But it's the same story still. Less than a quarter of a century later, there's again a terrible February night in Harlem. Only now it's no longer news. Now almost nobody will hear or talk about it. It's been the same story heard for so long, by so many people, that it can't even get anybody's attention anymore. There's nothing sensational about the details. Nobody cares anymore how the story got to this point. Another fucked-up drug addict is now off the street. That's all most people care about. For most people, that was the end of the story. But not for its victim. She wanted to start her story all over again.

W
hen Desire awoke, she was on a hospital gurney at Harlem Hospital's mental health unit. The attending medical staff from that night had admitted her for detoxification and a mental evaluation.

Once she regained her sense of reality, she screamed as loud as she could, as if she had suddenly awakened from a nightmare. She saw a familiar face nearby—Carvelas— talking to a doctor. When Carvelas saw her try to rise, he rushed to her side.

“Desire, it's okay, it's okay,” he repeated as he wrapped his arms around her frail body. “Everything is fine now…you're in the hospital.” Desire was mortified as she stared into his eyes, still unsure that she was safe. Carvelas didn't
even seem to notice that Desire now looked closer to a monster than the girl he would have fallen in love with.

“Don't let me go, Carvelas,” Desire begged. “Don't ever let me go…please hold me. I don't want you to let me go.”

“I won't, Desire, I won't,” said Carvelas as he continued to hug her nearly lifeless body and softly kiss her battered skin. Her running into his arms had been a moment when he'd hoped he was dreaming. He had hoped that the nightmare running down the street wasn't the person he had thought she was. He was heartbroken he had been wrong.

“You don't have to worry no more, I got you and I'm never going to let nothing happen to you again.”

“You promise?” Desire asked.

Carvelas pulled back to look in her eyes. He was someone she had seen before, yet he seemed totally new. She was correct, because he had been born again. He said softly, “Desire, on the beneficent and merciful God Allah, I promise that I will sacrifice my own life to protect you from another moment of pain.”

Desire was scheduled to stay in the detox unit of Harlem Hospital for the next ten days. Carvelas promised her that he would be there when she completed the program and that she need not worry about not having a place to stay. Desire thanked him repeatedly and promised him that she would work hard to beat her addiction.

Over the next ten days, Desire rested, listened to the staff and learned many things about her addiction. However, she wasn't so
open with her assigned therapist when it came to talking about her past. She was willing to confess to some of the people who had left her, the experiences that had changed her. She was willing to talk about the highs, but avoided the lows. The therapist told Desire that her drug addiction was merely an extension of bigger problems that she had yet to address. The first step to liberation is to trust someone and have the courage to talk about it. The therapist recommended that Desire be placed into a long-term drug program after she left detox. Desire opted instead to beat the addiction with her own willpower. The doctor informed Desire that it would not be that easy.

“It seems that you've had quite a life,” the therapist warned her. “Many of the things that you have talked about have been very traumatic, and psychologically debilitating. Those things need to be dealt with, or you may turn to drugs again.”

“Well,” began Desire, “I've been taking care of myself most of my life, and been through shit you could never imagine. Things that I'll never tell anybody about. And each time, no matter what the circumstances were, I survived. I just did what I had to do. I didn't cry about it like y'all white people, lay my problems on others, like those suckers in groups. If I say I ain't gonna do something no more, that's it! I'm disciplined. I got willpower.”