Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin (21 page)

I saw my rap sheet, it’s yellow with fifty- four entries. Typed up not so neat. You see your life with carbon copies. Kept in a file. Hunts Point, Lex and Forty- ninth, West Side Highway, all the way back to Cleveland.
Loitering. Prostitution offense. Class A misdemeanor. Criminal possesion controlled substance 7th degree. Criminel trespass 2nd degree. Criminal posession narcotic drug, Class E felony. Prostitution solicitation, Class A, Misdemeaner Degree 0.

The day they arrested us, Bob Marley was on the radio, singing,
Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
A funny- ass cop turned the volume higher and grinned over his shoulder. Jazzlyn shouted: “Who’s gonna look after the babies?”

Hooking was born in me. That’s no exaggeration. I never wanted no square job. I lived right across from the stroll on Prospect Avenue and East Thirty- first. From my bedroom window I could see the girls work. I was eight. They wore red high heels and hair combed high.

The daddies went by on their way to the Turkish hotel. They caught dates for their girls. They wore hats big enough to dance in.
Every pimp movie you’ve ever seen has them pulling up in a Cadillac. It’s true. Daddies drive Kitties. They like whitewall tires. The fuzzy dice don’t happen so often, though.
I put on my first lipstick when I was nine. Shiny in the mirror. My mother’s blue boots were too big for me at eleven. I could’ve hid down inside them and popped my head out.
When I was thirteen I already had my hands on the hip of a man in a raspberry suit. He had a waist like a lady’s, but he hit me hard. His name was Fine. He loved me so much, he didn’t put me on the stroll, he said he was grooming me.

My mother had religious readings. We were in the Church of the Spiritual Israel. You had to throw your head back and speak in tongues. She’d been on the stroll too. That was years ago. She left it when her teeth fell out. She said, “Don’t you do what I done, Tillie.”
So I done exactly that. My teeth haven’t fallen out yet but.

I never tricked until I was fifteen. I walked into the lobby of the Turkish hotel. Someone gave a low whistle. Everyone’s head turned, ’specially mine. Then I realized they were whistling at me. Right there I began walkin’ with a bounce. I was turning out. My first daddy said: “Soon as you finish breakin’ luck, honey, come on home to me.”

Hose, hot pants, high heels. I hit the stroll with a vengeance. One of the things you learn early on is you don’t let your hair fall down in the open window. You do that, the crazy ones grab you by the locks and pull you in and then they beat you silly.

Your first daddy, you don’t forget. You love him until he beats you with a tire iron. Two days later, you’re changing wheels with him. He buys you a blouse that makes your body go out and around in all the right places.

I left baby Jazzlyn with my mother. She kicked her legs and looked up at me. She had the whitest skin when she was born. I thought first she wasn’t mine. I never knew who her Daddy was. He coulda been any on a list long as Sunday. People said that he mighta been a Mexican, but I don’t recall no Pablo sweating on me. I took her up in my arms and that’s when I said to myself,
I’m gonna treat her good all her life.

The first thing you do when you have a baby is you say, She’s never gonna work the stroll. You swear it. Not my baby. She’s never gonna be out there. So you work the stroll to keep her off the stroll.

I stayed that way nearly three years, on the stroll, running home to her, taking her in my arms, and then knew what I had to do. I said: “Look after her, Momma. I’ll be right back.”

The first time I saw New York, I lay down on the ground outside Port Authority just so I could see the whole sky. Some guy stepped right over me without even looking down.

I started hooking my very first day. I went to the fleabag hotels over on Ninth. You can make a sky out of a ceiling, that’s no problem. There were a lot of sailors in New York.

I used to like dancing with their hats on.
—

In New York you work for your man. Your man’s your daddy, even if he’s just a chili pimp. It’s easy to find a daddy. I got lucky early on and I found TuKwik. He took me on and I worked the best stroll, Forty- ninth and Lexington. That’s where Marilyn’s skirt blew high. Up by the subway vent. The next best stroll was way over on the West Side, but TuKwik didn’t like it, so I didn’t go over there much. There wasn’t as much scratch to be made on the West Side. And the cops were always throwing their badges, strictly on a prop’rty basis. They’d see how long it was since you was in jail by asking the date on your sheet. If you hadn’t been inside in a while they’d curl their fingers and say,
Come with me.

I liked the East Side, even if the cops were hard- asses.
They didn’t get many colored girls on Forty- ninth and Lex. The girls were whiteys with good teeth. Nice clothes. Hair done fancy. They never wore no big rings because big rings get in the way. But they had beautiful manicures and their toenails sparkling. They looked at me and shouted: “What the fuck you doing here?” And I said, “I’m just doin’ here, girls, that’s all.” After a while, we didn’t fight no more. No more nails scraping flesh. No more trying to break each other’s fingers.

I was the first nigger absolute regular on that stroll. They called me Rosa Parks. They used to say I was a chewing- gum spot. Black. And on the pavement.

That’s how it is in the life, word. You joke a lot.
—

I said to myself, I said, I’m gonna make enough money to go home to Jazzlyn and buy her a big house with a fireplace and a deck out the back with lots of nice furniture. That’s what I wanted.

I’m such a fuck- up. No one’s a bigger fuck- up than me. No one’s gonna know that, though. That’s my secret. I walk through the world like I own it. Watch this spot. Watch it curve.

I got a cell mate here, she keeps a mouse in a shoe box. The mouse is the best friend she has. She talks to it and pets it. She even kisses it. Once she got bit on the lip. I laughed my ass off.

She’s in for eight months on a stabbing. She won’t talk to me. She’ll be upstate soon. She says I ain’t got no brains. Me, I’m not going upstate, no way, I made my deal with the devil—he was a little bald man with a black cape on.

When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot- potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing in the wrong place. I had legs a hundred miles long and a booty to die for. Adam woulda said to Eve,
Eve, I’m leaving you, honey,
and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying,
Adam, you’re one lucky motherfucker.

There was a pizza place on Lexington. A picture on the wall of all these guys in tight shorts and good skin and a ball at their feet—they were fine
.
But the guys inside were fat and hairy and always making jokes about pepperonis. You had to dab their pizza with a napkin just to get the oil off. The syndicates used to come around too. You didn’t want to mess with the syndicates. They had a crease in the trousers of their suits, and they smelled of brilliantine. They might bring you for a nice Guinea meal and then you end up taking a dirt nap.

TuKwik was flash. He had me on his arm like a piece of jewelry. He had five wives, but I was Wife Número Uno, top of the Christmas tree, freshest meat on the stack. You do what you can for your daddy, you light up fireworks for him, you love him to sunset, and then you go strolling. I made the most money of all, and he treated me nice. He had me ride in the front seat while the other wives watched from the street, steaming.

The only thing is, if he loves you more, he beats you more too. That’s just the way it is.
One of the doctors in the emergency ward had a crush on me. He stitched together my eye after TuKwik beat me with a silver coffeepot. Then the doctor leaned down and kissed it. It tickled right on the part where the thread was coming through.

On a slow day, in the rain, we’d fight a lot, me and the other wives. I ran down the street carrying Susie’s wig with a bit of flesh still lodged inside it. But most of the time we were a big family, word. No one believes it, but it’s true.

On Lexington, they got hotels with wallpaper and room service and real gold paint on the rim of plates. They got rooms where they put chocolates on the pillows. They got businessmen come in for a day. Whiteys. In tighteys. They lift up their shirts, you can smell the husband panic off them, like their wife is gonna come out of the TV set.

The chambermaids put mints on pillows. I had a handbag full of green wrappers. I left the room with green wrappers and men already sweating out their marriage license.

I was strictly a lie- down girl, a flatbacker. Plain screwing was all I knew, but I made them feel like no one else.
Oh, baby, let me feel you. You make me so hot. Don’t take that bone to another dog.

On the way out of the Waldorf- Astoria I tipped the hotel detectives, the bellman, and the elevator boy. They knew all the girls on the stroll. The elevator boy had a thing for me. One night I blew him in the walk- in fridge. On the way out he stole a steak. Slipped it in under his shirt. Walked out, saying he always liked it medium- rare.

He was a cutie. Winked at me, even if the elevator was full. —

I was a bug on keeping clean. I liked to shower before every time. When I got the trick to shower, I’d soap him all over and watch the dough rise. You’d say to him, “Honey, I want some’a that bread.” Then I brought him to the oven, where he just about popped.

You try to get him finished after fifteen minutes, most. But you try to keep him going at least two minutes or so. Guys don’t like it if they pop early. They don’t get value. They feel dirty and cheap. I never had a guy who didn’t come, never once. Well, not never, but if he wasn’t coming I’d scratch his back and speak real nice to him, never dirty, and sometimes he’d cry and say, “I just wanna talk to you honey, that’s all I wanna do, I just wanna talk.” But then sometimes he’d turn over and get all vicious and scream, “Fuck you, I knew I could never get it on with you, you black bitch.”

And I’d keep all pouty like he broke my heart, then I’d lean real close and whisper to him that my daddy was in the Panthers with lots of nigger dogs, and he wouldn’t like to hear that sort of talk, dig? And then they’d pull up their trousers quick and get outta there lick lick lickety- split.

TuKwik got himself into fights. He carried a knuckle- duster in his sock. He had to be knocked down before he could get it. But he was smart. He oiled the cops and he oiled the syndicate and he kept all the rest for himself.

I became a modern woman. I took the Pill. I didn’t want no new Jazz lyn. I sent her postcards from the office on Forty- third. The guy behind the counter didn’t recognize me at first. Everyone was hollering at me for skipping the line, but I just went right on up to him, swinging my ass. He blushed and slipped me some free stamps.

I always recognize my tricks.
—

I found a new daddy who was a famous player. His name was Jigsaw. He had a flash suit. He called it his vine. He kept a handkerchief in his pocket. His secret was that inside the handkerchief he had taped a row of razor blades. He could take it out and make a puzzle of your face. He had a little crimp in his walk. Everything perfect’s got a flaw. The cops hated him. They arrested me more when they knew Jigsaw was mine.

They hated the idea of a nigger making money, especially if it’s off a whitey, and it was nearly all whiteys on Forty- ninth Street. That was Chalktown.

Jigsaw had more scratch than God. He bought me a foxtail chain and a string of jade beads. He paid up, cash bonds. He even had a one- up on a Cadillac. He had a Rolls- Royce. Silver. That’s no lie. It was old but it rolled. It had a wooden steering wheel. Sometimes we rode up and down Park Avenue. That’s when being in the life was good. We rolled down the windows outside the Colony Club. We said, “Hi, ladies, anyone want a date?” They were terrified. We drove off, hollering, “Come on, let’s go get ourselves some cucumber sandwiches.”

I got the most beautiful things from Jigsaw. He had an apartment on First and Fifty- eighth. Everything was boosted, even the carpets. Vases all over the place. And mirrors with golden edges. The tricks, they liked coming there. They walked right in and said,
Wow.
It was like they thought I was a businesswoman.

All the time they was looking for the bed. The thing is, the bed came down out of the wall. It was on electronic control.
That place was flash.
—

The guys who paid a hundred dollars, we called them Champagnes. Susie would say: “Here comes my Champagne,” when a fancy car pulled up on the street.

One night I had one of them football guys from the New York Giants, a linebacker with a neck so big they called him Sequoia. He had a wallet too, like none I ever seen, fat with C- notes. I thought, Here comes ten Champagnes all at once. Here it comes, bubbly, the mighty G.