Forbidden Sister (32 page)

“Right. Well, that is the protocol. Where are you and Emmie residing?”

“We’re at the Hotel Beaux-Arts.”

“Hotel?”

“I have an apartment there.”

“I see.”

From the way she was scrutinizing Roxy, I wondered if she had picked up on the student gossip and knew exactly who and what Roxy was.

“There is no other relative to take on this responsibility?” she asked. “One with a real home, perhaps?”

Roxy bristled. “Why would we even think of another relative? I’m her sister, and I’m well over eighteen. We do have a real home. I said I had an apartment, not a hotel room in some fleabag joint, either.”

“That’s good,” Dr. Sevenson said, not even blinking at Roxy’s indignation. “We usually don’t have very much to do with social services, the child-protection agencies, and the like. Our students come from well-to-do families, but when something like this occurs, there could be a lot more scrutiny. I do appreciate the recent family tragedies Emmie has experienced, but—”

“We both experienced,” Roxy interrupted.

“Yes, well, as I was saying, I appreciate the pain and suffering, but we do hope your sister’s admirable behavior and good schoolwork will not change dramatically for the worse. That could lead to more scrutiny and, as I said, not simply by me or the guidance counselor.”

“Are you threatening us? She’s paid up here for the remainder of the year, isn’t she?” Roxy asked sharply.

“Yes, she’s fine, and I’m not threatening you. I’m just doing my job and informing you that we have high expectations for our students, both in their academic behavior and in their social behavior. I would tell this to any new parents or guardians when they brought in their child for enrollment.”

“I doubt you would say it the same way,” Roxy pursued.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but that is just the way it is.”

She turned to me.

“Please come see me if you have any difficulties, Emmie, any at all,” she added, looking pointedly at Roxy. “I don’t have the forms for you to fill out here.”

She pressed her intercom to tell her secretary to provide them for Roxy.

“Well,” Roxy said, rising, “since everything we need to do is out there, we won’t waste any more of your time or mine and keep Emmie out of her classes. Thank you.”

I stood up, too. It was clear to me that no one could intimidate my sister. She seemed to know instinctively how to speak and deal with people, no
matter who or how high up they were. Where did she get her poise and self-confidence after becoming a street kid? How did she develop into this beautiful and accomplished young woman? Did I want to be more or less like her? When would she tell me more about herself, especially the journey she took to arrive at this place in her life?

Roxy and I paused at the counter, and Dr. Sevenson’s secretary handed Roxy the forms to fill out.

“You can go to class,” Roxy told me. As I turned, she added, “And watch your ass. You can see how everyone else will be,” she added loudly enough for even Dr. Sevenson to hear behind her closed door. I smiled at her and left.

When I entered my class, Chastity’s eyes nearly exploded, as did those of some of my other classmates. I took my usual seat and opened my notebook, pretending that nothing at all was different. I could feel the curiosity practically boiling over and out of the minds of those around me. When the bell rang to end the class, Chastity nearly leaped over desks to get to me.

“You’re here!” she cried. Some of the others gathered around us.

“Yes, it does seem like I’m here,” I said, and started out.

“But . . . I thought you were going to live with your aunt and uncle in Washington, D.C.”

“That didn’t work out,” I tossed back. “They don’t have MTV.”

“What?”

I laughed to myself, wondering how long I could keep her dangling. She hurried to walk beside me.

“But where are you living? I mean, who are you living with?”

“Whom,” I said. “You’re never going to improve your grades in English.”

“I don’t care about my grades in English,” she whined. “Where are you living? Are you at home? Who’s with you?”

I paused. The other girls were still hovering around us.

“If Dr. Sevenson hears that sort of disrespect for our English class, you’ll be dangling on your participles,” I said, and kept walking.

I saw Richard ahead of me with two of his friends and quickly caught up. He was excited to see me but didn’t ask many questions. I used him to waste as much time between classes as I could and entered the next class just as the bell rang. I glanced at Chastity. She looked as if she might explode with frustration. The moment she had an opportunity to whisper, she leaned over. “You’re living with your sister, aren’t you?” she asked. It sounded more like an accusation.

I didn’t reply. I pretended not to hear her because I was too involved in my work, but her question hung in the air until the bell rang again.

“Well?” she asked immediately.

“Yes,” I said.

“In the hotel?”

“That’s correct,” I muttered, and kept walking.

“But how can you . . . I mean . . . with what goes on and everything?”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” I said, and went on to my next class.

For a while, I actually enjoyed the curiosity and excitement swirling around me. It was mostly stirred up by Chastity in the beginning but soon developed until I was the topic of conversation everywhere. I knew that once Chastity told others where I was living and with whom, the news would fly through the school. Everyone was after me to sit at her table in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Suddenly, I was fascinating to those girls who were previously intimidated by my grief and my family tragedy and wanted to do everything to avoid me.

Handfuls of questions were thrown in my direction. “You’re living in a hotel? What’s it like? Are you really on your own? What kind of people are you meeting there? Do you have anything to do with your sister’s work? Are you going to meet rich and famous people?”

I was deliberately vague with my answers, making all that they thought was exotic and exciting seem very matter-of-fact, if not outright boring.

“I have to walk farther to school and back,” I told them, as if that summarized it all.

Frustrated and annoyed, they stopped asking questions and peeled away like beggars who realized that the one they were following would give them nothing. Naturally, Chastity expected that I had reserved the
truth only for her ears. She smiled and was at my side as soon as she could be.

“Can I visit you at the hotel?” she asked. “I could come today.”

“No, I can’t have any visitors,” I said.

“Really? What, is it dangerous there?”

“No, of course not.”

“Does the school know where you’re living?”

“Yes. My sister brought me today, and we met with Dr. Sevenson.”

“Your sister came here with you?”

“I’m surprised no one told you. We attracted enough attention.”

“She met with Dr. Sevenson?” she asked, her face soaked in incredulity.

“She’s my legal guardian now, Chastity. What did you expect?” I left her with her mouth frozen in the shape of an
O
.

Although I teased and frustrated my classmates when they asked me questions during the next weeks, their curiosity about Roxy and me didn’t wane. The more I evaded their questions, the more they came to their own nasty conclusions. I should have anticipated it, but I was really feeling aloof, finding myself floating above them. I did my schoolwork as diligently as ever, but I avoided social contact almost as much as I had when Mama was suffering and my thoughts were always with her. Maybe I helped to bring about the things that began to happen. Maybe they were inevitable.

Roxy’s decision to “improve” my wardrobe certainly didn’t help defuse the situation. Now that spring was almost here, she decided to update my fashion and brought me to her boutiques, where I was fitted for a blue T-back drop-sleeve dress and a red double-bikini-string halter dress. She also bought me sexy heels and boots. Of course, when it was finally warm enough to wear my new outfits, other girls were fascinated with my new clothes and wanted to know where they could get them, too.

That was all short-lived, however, because Dr. Sevenson called me into her office to tell me that what I was wearing to school was inappropriate.

“We do have a dress code,” she said. “I’ve left a message for your sister. I mean to enforce our standards here,” she added firmly.

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothing,” I insisted.

“Maybe out there, but there is something wrong with it in here. If you wear anything like this again, I will be forced to send you home. That’s all.” She dismissed me with a flick of her wrist.

Roxy was upset about it, but she didn’t put up any argument. I was more unhappy now than ever and wanted to leave the school, but Roxy was taking her “motherly” role very seriously these days, checking on my homework and my grades, making sure that I came back to the hotel when school was over for the day, and demanding to know where I planned to go on weekends and whom I was with. I wasn’t doing much at all, but she was still hovering over me.

“I don’t have a social life at this school and never will,” I told her.

“Just finish up there, M, and we’ll get you into another school. Mama and Papa paid for it. You told me yourself that it was important to Papa.”

Reluctantly, I returned to wearing what I always wore, but the damage had been done. Although Evan was the only boy I had gone out with from the school, his earlier stories about me now were more believable. I had been guilty simply by being related to Roxy. Now I was condemned forever because of where I lived and whom I lived with. I could see it in the lustful looks boys gave me at school and hear it in the remarks they mumbled when they were near me.

How could I live in a hotel with a sister who was a professional escort?

The truth was that in the beginning, life at the hotel wasn’t unpleasant or uncomfortable at all. Twice a week, Roxy had a guest—or a client, as she called him—and I stayed in my room and read or did my homework, just as I was instructed to do. There were three occasions when I had to leave and stay in one of the other hotel rooms. They were nowhere as comfortable as mine, but I did what I was told. So far, after a few months of this life, I had not yet seen or spoken again with Mrs. Brittany, and I wasn’t sorry about it.

Roxy was successfully keeping me sheltered from the life she was leading and the things she was doing. I obeyed her wishes and asked no questions. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t curious and tempted to sneak a peek or listen to what her clients were saying, but I was too
frightened of being discovered and bringing some terrible problems to both of us. I was terrified that it would lead to my being sent to live with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Orman after all.

Then, finally, the situation simmering at school for me boiled over in ways I couldn’t anticipate.

And Roxy was not happy about it.

It was Mrs. Brittany who came personally with the complaint. Roxy and I were having the dinner we had ordered from the restaurant on the avenue. I had set the table, and we had just sat and begun. Almost the way Papa would do it, Roxy would cross-examine me about my day at school at dinner every night. In fact, her questions were so similar that I almost broke out into laughter at times. She also wanted to see my tests and comments made on my homework.

“Why are you so worried about my grades, Roxy? You weren’t any sort of student.”

“What I did and what I do is not your concern,” she said. “You’re not me. You have other opportunities out there.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

“You will. What about your social life? You haven’t been invited to any parties, asked out on any dates?”

I looked away. She had been tiptoeing around this ever since my return to school. My answers were always vague, with a show of indifference.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “None of that is important to you?”

“It’s important.”

“So?”

“The sort of invitations I’ve been getting are not what either of us would appreciate.”

“What do you mean? I’d like some answers, M,” she insisted when I didn’t respond.

“What do I mean?” I sat back. “Okay, here’s what I mean.” I rose, went into my bedroom, and returned with an envelope that I tossed onto the table.

She looked at me curiously, picked it up, and looked inside. Slowly, she took out the two ten-dollar bills and the note. She looked at me again. I sat back with my arms folded under my breasts and waited for her to read the note.

“What is this, a joke?”

“Yes, it’s a joke, or maybe it isn’t. Maybe that idiot thought I would respond.”

She read the note again and then read it aloud. “ ‘This is for the first ten minutes. There’s more if I can last longer’?”

I nodded.

“I don’t get it.”

It suddenly occurred to me that Roxy never knew what Chastity had done and what I had done with Chastity. I had backed myself into a corner and finally had to confess.

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine,” I said.