Like a Woman (14 page)

“I'm gonna find me a fuckin' place to sleep, that's what,” Taylor answered, avoiding her eyes.

“No, girl, I'm serious. I mean, what you gonna do with your life?”

“My life?” Taylor laughed. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? My life. What am I going to do with my life? Shit. I thought I was already doing it.”

Taylor walked away, leaving Jackson to catch the next dog going south. She crossed Cahuenga and walked down past Hollywood Boulevard, barely stopping for the lights, glaring at anyone who honked, daring them to get out of their cars and just try and start something with her. She walked past the upholstery shops and taquerias, past the KFCs and burger stands, past the peep shows on Sunset, walked until she found Tyrone, standing on his corner, leaning back against the wall.

“Hey,” he nodded to her, smiling. “How's my favorite chipper? You looking kind of hungry tonight, girl. Want me to cook somethin' up for you? I got an extra kit right around the corner, just in case you aren't carrying yours in your Huck Finn wannabe pillowcase. No charge. It's on the house.”

Taylor felt her veins jump in anticipation, but just said, “Fuck you. Like I'm gonna use your skanky works. Nah,” she said. “Just give me a couple of nickel bags. You got something good enough to blow?”

She made the buy and continued walking, taking Santa Monica down to Wilshire, walking for miles as the cars turned into Porsches and Bentleys and the trash stayed mostly in the cans. She stopped in front of the Sheraton, stashing her gear in the bushes across the street and watching the valet stand until she saw what she was looking for. She crossed over and caught Randi coming back from parking a shiny new black Mercedes.

“Hey, man,” she called out. “You got any accommodations tonight?”

“Girl!” His hug lifted her off the ground. “It's good to see you! What you doing in this part of town?”

She pulled away, handed him one of her nickel bags. “Just need a place to crash for the night. Can you help me out?”

He took the packet and looked around. “No problem,” he said, handing her the keys to the Mercedes. “I've got just the thing. They're in for the night. Stay low, sleep tight, and come see me in the morning. I'll try and get you into the staff locker room and get you cleaned up a bit.”

Taylor went back to get her gear, checked out the surroundings, then climbed into the back of the Mercedes. She locked the doors and let out a sigh, grateful for the dark, tinted windows. Tomorrow, she knew, everything would be just as fucked up, but tonight, just for a while, she would rest. She breathed in the wonderful new car smell, mixed with a faint lingering scent of a woman's expensive perfume. She imagined Jackson with her, breathing deep, saying, “Girl, can't you just
smell
that money!” Taking out her remaining nickel bag, she cut the lines, rolled the bill, and took two quick, deep breaths. Her nostrils burned and she fought the first blast of nausea, then gave in, slumping back into the soft, still-warm, custom leather seats.

PART THREE

The Work

the daughter's job

It is the daughter's job to keep her mother alive. Each night from her small bed the girl guides her mother home safe from the outside world. She sees her mother leave the bar and get in the car. No men follow her, stumbling, drunk; no one puts their hands on her. No police bother her. The mother starts the engine and pulls slowly out into the street. Careful, she drives up the freeway onramp, staying between the lines, changing lanes safely, with her turn signal on so the police won't stop her, carefully taking the right exit to their house, making two left turns, one right, another left. Then she pulls up into the driveway and turns off the ignition.

Once she gets home, of course, the girl lives in terror of what her mother might do, for she is what they call a mean drunk. Still, each night, the girl carefully and intently brings her mother safely home. One night the girl falls asleep before the time when her mother usually leaves the bar and her grandma wakes her in the early morning to take her to a neighbor's house, telling her that her mother has been in a car crash and is in the hospital. The mother lives—a few cracked ribs, some ugly bruises. The girl never falls asleep again without first bringing her mother home.

The girl gives up her body to keep her mother alive. Yields, as children have done for centuries, to the inexorable parental pull which feeds on a child's spirit, body, emotional being. The child's desire to please. The child's desire to serve. No membranes to protect these desires from the parent's hunger. Nights when the mother is calm, drunk but not fighting mad, she lies on top of the daughter, mumbling the name of a man the daughter does not know. Following nature's law, the girl submits, as always, to the weight of the mother, lies still, catches breath when she can, leaves her body when she cannot. Silent, she endures the musky woman scent sometimes mixed with the vomit-stenched strands of hair crossing her face. The mother moans. The girl suckles. There is no milk. Everything female is hungry and there is no sustenance to be found.

Some winters when times are tough and there is too much anger and not enough food, the girl is sent to live with her aunt and uncle across the valley. Nights, the aunt tucks the girl child into bed, gently covering her with a soft worn quilt of muted colors and familiar patterns. Nights, the uncle removes the quilt and, as always, the girl child submits to the larger force, the pull of a desire she cannot understand but can only serve, as centuries of girls have done before her. She makes her mouth into the big O shape her uncle requests, hides her teeth beneath her lips as he has taught her, and takes his thick snake swollen into her throat. Sometimes the corners of her mouth tear. She fights to not throw up whatever food is in her belly. Sometimes she has to breathe through her spine for her mouth can find no air. Sometimes he makes her swallow his milky cum, saying yes, lap it up like a good girl, lap it all up now. It is the daughter's job to feed the uncle. Again, the girl goes to bed hungry.

When the girl begins to bleed, she leaves her mother and uncle's homes and goes to live on the streets of the city. She joins packs of other wild girls, fighting to the death, eating from the dumpsters, charging for the sex that is being taken from them anyway. Sometimes they keep the money. Always they share with the younger girls. Sometimes the older boys steal it from them. Sometimes the boys with guns try to capture the wild girls and pimp them out for all the money. Sometimes the police trap them and then all business has to stop while the girls service the police, one by one by one by one, in exchange for protection.

The girl ranges from pack to pack, hungry, refusing to be owned, refusing to die. It is the daughter's job to keep herself alive. She learns how to use a knife. She learns to steal and cut without a backward glance. She learns all the things a white man wants from a girl. For all her customers are white men from the owning class. Her uncle has taught her well. So the girl ranges hungry, selling the tricks of her body but refusing to be owned.

And one night she curls on the floorboard of a 1969 Cadillac Seville, servicing the beefy Texan, thinking of the food she will buy with the fifty dollars she's earned for blowing him without a rubber, great breasts of fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, lemon meringue or chocolate cream pie. And then the man makes a mistake and speaks. Grabbing the girl's head, he says, “Oh god girl, yes, suck me hard, suck me like my little baby girl sucks me.” And the girl's head pulls back as she spits out his cock. And she bares her teeth and snarls. And she feels her right hand reach down into her right black boot, pulling out the thin silver blade. Pressing it hard against the Texan's gut, the girl is hungry for the kill. She wants to cut this white hairball belly so bad she can almost taste it. But who really wants to taste such flesh?

Ultimately, the girl does not kill because she refuses to be owned, even by death. Hunger is the only master she allows and even he will not have her tonight. She draws a thin red line through the belly hairs just above the spongy, flaccid cock. A little blood runs onto the slick leather seats. The girl forces the Texan out of the car, taking his wallet, keeping his keys. She keeps his shoes, his pants and his sports jacket, leaves him standing barefoot and bleeding on the corner of La Cienega Blvd. She starts the car and slowly pulls out into the street. She drives up the freeway onramp, staying between the lines, changing lanes safely, with her turn signal on so the police won't stop her. She knows she will have to sell the credit cards soon while they are still fresh, before they spoil. She calculates the time, wondering if the street jackals will find the Texan before he finds a telephone that works. She knows that soon she will have to dump the car, sell it cheap or send it over the cliffs of Malibu into the silver sea. She knows that soon she will be back on the streets. But for now, she drives. It is the daughter's job to keep herself alive.

Pigs and donuts

“Hey, baby, bring us some more coffee, will ya?”

I spit in their coffee. And carry it to their table, talking to my body like it was somebody else: “Now, don't you mess me up here, we can't show no fear, okay. We just go in and out real smooth, no shaking, no tripping, no spilling. We just gonna set this shit down on the table real calm and professional like we're some college girl and then we gonna get back behind the counter.” When I get my feet all talked into not stumbling and my hands convinced they gonna set the coffee down
on the table
and not in the faces or crotches of these motherfucking pigs I got to wait on, then I move. But it's all gotta happen real fast, these jokers don't like to wait. I tried for a while to talk my mouth into smiling like a straight girl but it wasn't gonna happen so I let it slide. It wasn't ever my mouth they looked at anyway.

So, here I am working graveyard shift at Winchell's Donut House on Ventura Boulevard. Keeps me warm and dry at night, lets me hustle up easy daytime money. I didn't last too long on the night streets after Jackson left. It was okay; I mean, the money was easy and it felt good to be setting the price and terms for something that was gonna get taken from me anyway. And me and the other girls, we was tight. Got us formed all together like a pack of wild dogs (they called 'em “worker collectives” in the books I read, but I knew what they meant), and for a while nobody messed with us. Some john dick or harry try and pull something too kinky or not pay you or some shit and the other girls would be on his ass like white on rice. For some of 'em that was their favorite part of the trade. Yeah, we had some good times. Those girls never did stop trying to get me into a dress, but, like my smile at the donut store, it just wasn't gonna happen. And they still called me Mahatma and made fun of my books and I still called them queens and told 'em they'd never look as pretty as the boys round the corner in West Hollywood. We was tight. But it all got fucked up. For one thing, everywhere I looked I saw Jackson, leaning up against the side ally, looking all fly, pointing down with a grin at the boot where she kept her damn knife, breaking my heart into ten thousand pieces each and every fuckin' time.

For another, the shiny boys who dealt and carried wanted a piece of the action. They didn't think no females should be making that kind of money without givin' it to Poppa, so we had some problems. Also, we couldn't do nothing about the police. Seemed like no matter how many we sucked and fucked, they just kept coming back 'round. They fucking multiplied like bunnies. They must have had the whole damn police force working vice and narcotics so they could get laid and stoned and then make some money from the payoffs and the stash they stole on busts.

But, hey, check it out. Here I am again surrounded by the motherfuckers. Come to find out my boss has a deal with the police that if they come around his store a lot for “protection,” he (which means I) will give them free coffee and donuts. The truth is I would much rather be robbed than protected, in fact I was working the last two times this store went down and it was cool. These brothers came in with weapons and all and I didn't even have to tell my body nothin'. My feet stayed calm, my hands were steady, and damn if my mouth wasn't grinning wide and pretty as I asked them if they'd like some jelly donuts to go with the cash drawer I was emptying for them.

But that was just twice. The rest of the time, night after night I have to serve these pigs coffee and listen to them go off braggin' about the niggers beaners spics and faggots whose heads they've cracked and the hippies whores and dykes they've raped and messed up good. Like now they're talkin' right in front of me like I don't even exist except to bring them more donuts, which I guess is good since I belong to a few of the categories they like to fuck with and my friends belong to the rest. But it freaks me out to be so invisible, even though it saves my ass. It's like I'm in some sort of Nazi spy movie and it's only the whiteness of my skin and this thin white polyester donut uniform that keeps them from recognizing me as the enemy and killing me, too.

And I can't help but wonder if they're the same ones that took Jimmy away. The same motherfuckin' ones that shot J. Edgar. I keep thinking I ought to be doing something more than spitting in their coffee. My hands say, just give us a gun and we promise you we will not shake or tremble, and in my mind I see their bodies sprawled out all over the floors I have to scrub each night. But the truth is I just stay invisible and try and keep from showing my fear. It's all I can do to not throw up or piss on myself and I cannot stop the sweat from running down my back and sides as I sweep the floors, wipe the counters, load the glazes, and lay out the chocolate sprinkles in seven crooked rows.

Train ride

“Okay, girl. You gotta get to runnin'. Now! We'll take care of the bulls; you just make sure you get a good grip on that number three piggyback coming up here. Then you fly on up top of that thing and lie flat till you're out of town. And don't you go swinging your legs around either or you'll wind up like Eddie here, boppin' around on two stumps.”