Red Light Wives (8 page)

I
usually turned off my telephone ringer as soon as I was in for the night. Once I had finished doing whatever I had to do outside my apartment, I liked to leave all that madness right where it was. I hated selling my body to men who saw me as nothing more than a piece of warm meat. But that's exactly what I'd been reduced to. The long, hot baths that I took every night when I got home didn't wash away the shame I wore like a second layer of skin.

I was very stingy when it came to my downtime. I didn't want to see or talk to any human beings when I didn't have to. I didn't even leave my answering machine on once I turned off my telephone. Clyde knew that. And the other girls knew that, too. The only people who knew that I turned my telephone back on after midnight were Ester Sanchez and the people at the old folks' apartment complex where I'd dumped Mama when she got too nosy about my activities.

Mama had been asking way too many questions and making comments that made me uncomfortable when I visited her. “Rosalee, how come I ain't never seen none of your modelin' pictures in the magazines or newspapers or even on the television? You just as pretty as that Tyra Banks and all the rest of them Black models I see grinnin' and posin',” she'd said.

“It takes time, Mama,” I told my mother, searching my mind for other subjects to bring up. “Did you record Bernie Mac last night?”

Mama ignored my question. “Time? Well, honey, time ain't somethin' you got too much of to waste. Clara, the White lady from across the hall, said you was kind of long in the tooth to just be startin' out modelin'. Them girls always start out when they teenagers.”

“Not in San Francisco. And, I do not look my age. A lot of people think I'm still in my teens.”

“But you ain't! You a twenty-four-year-old woman—with a husband.”

Mama had a way of making me sigh and hold my breath to keep from saying the wrong things. “Mama, things are different in California.”

Mama rolled her eyes at me and screwed up her lips. “And another thing Clara said was, maybe you was posin' for them nasty man magazines. Butt naked. Girl, I sure enough hope you ain't caught up in none of that ponygraphic mess. Your daddy would explode in his grave.”

“I'm not.”

To keep Mama off my back, I went out the very next day and had a portfolio put together with shots of me wearing a different outfit in each one. Clyde had snapped the pictures himself. I gave the bogus model evidence to Mama, and she shared it with all of her friends right away. That shut her up for a while about that subject, but she still called me up every day to whine about other things. Everything from losing the generous monthly allowance I gave her at the black-jack tables in Vegas to her fear of getting raped by one of the elderly men in her building. No matter what it was, I could count on it upsetting me more than it did Mama.

I had just talked to the woman I paid to look in on Mama from time to time. Other than complaining about a few new ailments, Mama was doing fine, so I knew it had to be Ester calling me exactly one minute after midnight. I was convinced that she'd been sitting by the clock with her telephone in her hand, counting the seconds to the minute she could disturb me.

Ester was a fast-talking Latino who had eased her way into my life and now called herself my homegirl. But I didn't have any close friends, and hadn't for a long time. The women I dealt with were “business associates” and I wanted to keep it that way. It made what I did to get paid seem less shameful and painful.

I didn't have a naturally deep or strong enough voice to sound threatening, like some of the Black women I knew. I had to fake it. I swallowed hard, cleared my throat, and gave my best imitation of a growl. “Ester, this better be good. Shit.”

Ester let out an exasperated sigh then mumbled something in Spanish. Knowing her, she was cussing me out. But it didn't bother me because I was used to it. “Doggie shit, girlfriend,” Ester grumbled, loud and clear. “Listen up, I need your help. Come pick me up at the motel. You know which one.
Rapido
, fast!” Everything this girl wanted, she wanted fast. But I didn't do nothing
rapido
, for her or anybody else.

I fired up a joint first and took my time responding. “Aren't you supposed to be at that party in North Beach with them horny dudes from the airlines?” I was stretched out on my bed, still in the leather skirt and silk blouse I had worn to “work.” My head, throbbing from the six shots of tequila I'd swallowed earlier, was propped up on two pillows. Every light in my bedroom was on, but a cloud of thick, sweet smoke oozed out of my nose and mouth, blinding me for a few seconds.

“I done that already. I done everything for them guys but ride a white horse. And I got the sore pussy and achin' mouth to prove it. Come on, girl. You owe me some favors anyway.” Ester's voice was ringing in my ear. “I never ask you for that much nohow.”

I rubbed my nose and ground out my joint in the dirt of a droopy fern sitting on the corner of the nightstand next to my bed. “My night is over. I told you that when I talked to you a little while ago. You with Clyde?”

“Fuck no, I ain't with Clyde. I don't have to see him until in the mornin'. You know that.” Ester paused, sucked her teeth, and let out a long, deep breath before she continued. “I tried to call Rocky, but that retarded girl who babysits her kids told me Rocky was still with you.”

“Yeah, Rockelle is still here with me. We had that bachelor party tonight, remember?” I looked up at Rockelle, standing over me with her thick arms folded, fanning smoke I'd blown in her direction. Rockelle didn't smoke weed. She didn't even smoke cigarettes, claiming she cared too much about her health. But that didn't stop her from gobbling up every greasy, fatty thing in my refrigerator. She was gnawing on a pig foot now.

“Well, tell Rocky to come pick me up. If she don't wanna drive that rattrap of hers, give her the keys to my Jetta.
Rapido!
”

“Rockelle is restin', Ester. She's got to sober up, shower the funk and slime off her big ass, then get up out of here so I can get some sleep. A horny judge over in Oakland is sendin' a limo for me tomorrow mornin'.” I winked at Rockelle. She rotated her thick neck and gave me a dirty look. Rockelle was not my best friend, just my wife-in-law and a “business associate.” We tolerated each other because of our relationship with Clyde, a man who treated us like he'd bought us by the pound. “You know Rocky can't leave her kids for too long with that slow-witted girl.”

Why Rockelle trusted her precious babies with a retarded girl was beyond me. I'd left my old cat, Callic, with that same girl one night when I had to fly to Vegas for an all-night date and I haven't seen that cat since. I winked at Rockelle again.

Nodding and chewing hard, Rockelle rolled her eyes at me and waddled toward my kitchen.

Ester gritted her teeth, her impatience at its highest level. “Stop bitchin' me around, bitch. Don't punk out on me tonight. Rosalee, I don't ask you for much. I never say no when you ask me for a favor. I wouldn't be callin' you if I didn't really need you. Come on now. There's this girl, a Black girl, and she got some trouble. She need our help. Real bad.”

“Ain't she got a man to help her out?” I had my own problems. I didn't want to have to deal with somebody else's, too. Especially some strange woman I didn't even know.

“Not no more. Remember that man I told you got shot to death in that corner store by our motel last night? Dude was this girl's husband. She from out of town and ain't got nobody to help her out, see. Come on now. You always tellin' me that you Black girls look out for each other.”

I sat up straight on my bed and crossed my legs. I kicked off my stilettos and was massaging my feet when Rockelle wobbled back into my bedroom. There was a bucket of cold Kentucky Fried Chicken in her hand.

“Oh. That girl,” I mumbled, giving Rockelle a look of pity as she chomped on a chicken wing. Ester had told me the night before how she'd witnessed the brother walking into that store and getting shot, and I'd felt bad about it. Death had already claimed most of my family, so it was one subject that was always on my mind. “Where is she now?” I asked, waving Rockelle to the wing chair facing my bed. She ignored me and left the room again hugging that chicken container against her chest like it was a baby.

“She's right here with me. Believe me, you gonna like this girl. Uh,
everybody
gonna like her…”

“I'll be there in a little while,” I said, sighing.

 

My apartment was the only place I felt comfortable in anymore. There was nothing in it to indicate what my life had become. I had tried to decorate my bedroom so that it would look as much like my old room back in Georgia. So many years ago. Plain, cheap items from stores like Wal-Mart and Target were everywhere. Thin, stiff plastic drapes covered my bedroom windows. Large, gaudy plants, not as green as they were when they were new, leaned out of crooked planters. My bed was a mattress on the floor with a vomit-colored bedspread and pillows so flat I had to use two at a time. Pictures of Mama and all four of my dead siblings, and my dead daddy, sat on my bedroom dresser in frames that I'd picked up at a yard sale.

I didn't want to be like Rockelle. She went out of her way to hide what she really was: a Black American Princess wannabe. Everything for her and her kids had to come from the most expensive stores in town, and she tried her best to buy herself some class and intelligence. But she was too stupid to realize just how stupid she really was. Her bear-claw nails, a hair weave that looked like she'd been flying, blue contact lenses, makeup that looked like she'd slapped it on with a spatula, and a bookcase filled with cheap paperbacks in her house said it all.

Rockelle had returned to my bedroom balancing some barbecued ribs on a paper plate in one hand and a paperback copy of
Jaws II
in the other. Girlfriend wasn't as highbrow as she wanted folks to believe she was, so I never expected to see her reading
Roots
or
The Grapes of Wrath
. But,
Jaws II?
Hello? California had some strange birds and most of them didn't have any feathers.

I knew that Rockelle thought I was an odd egg, too, just because I didn't have a lot of fancy shit in my apartment like she did. She wouldn't even sit on any of my chairs without covering the seats with some newspaper first. And I didn't appreciate the fact that she wouldn't even sit on my toilet seat. She would hover to do her business at my place. And as big as she was, that was a sight to behold. I didn't care enough about her attitude to put her in her place. She was the one with the problem, not me. But I knew that I could always count on her when I needed her, and that was enough of a reason for her to be my girl.

I could afford to decorate my place like it belonged to a princess, a real one, if I wanted to. Even though I hated having sex with a bunch of strange men, it was hard to turn my back on three hundred dollars to suck dick for a few minutes, or to do whatever else I had to do to get paid. As an escort, I made more money in a week than I used to make in a month at that cashier's job I had in Detroit. I'd moved there after leaving Georgia. I got homesick all the time for both places, but I preferred to keep those thoughts to myself. I needed to focus my attention on my present situation.

I didn't rush to go pick up Ester. That hussy was a spoiled-ass bitch and expected too much from everybody. But she was the “baby” of my new “family” so to speak. She expected everybody to cater to her, and everybody usually did.

In some ways, I used to be just like her. But that was a long time ago and a long way from the mean streets of San Francisco.

I
couldn't figure out why I was feeling so light-headed and paranoid. The women I'd just met had all been very nice to me, so far. Ester's friends Rockelle and Rosalee seemed just as nice as Ester. Besides, I'd already lost my husband and almost been raped. What more could happen to me?

We left that damn motel with the suitcases containing everything I owned in the world, including Bo's clothes and the beloved saxophone he'd never play again, in the trunk of Rockelle's Honda. During the tense ride to Rosalee's apartment, the women listened as I poured out my whole story. And I left out nothing. They groaned when I told them about me coming home from school to a dead mama. They cussed when I told them how Larry had played me and agreed that he was a “hound from hell.” They didn't say anything, but they shook their heads and moaned when I told them about my son dying and me hooking up with Bo then losing him, too, so fast and in such an awful way.

“It seems like a black cloud's been followin' me around all my life,” I complained. I glanced out the backseat window, wondering how I could be feeling so miserable in a place as beautiful as San Francisco. We drove through the downtown area. The huge office buildings scraping the sky looked like big toys. But San Francisco was no toy box, and I was not Alice in Wonderland. However, I did believe that things had to get better for me. I was praying that my new “friends” would help make that happen. I just couldn't bring myself to return to Mississippi. “Things have got to be better for me out here.”

“Honey child, you got to make things get better,” Rosalee said, turning around to look at me from the front passenger seat. “If you can't do that in this city, you can't do it nowhere. That thing that happened to your husband, that could have happened to anybody anywhere. This is a nice city as long as you watch your step.”

“I sure hope so,” I muttered. “I sure hope so.”

The first thing I noticed when we entered Rosalee's living room on the third floor of the cold brick building she lived in, was how cheap everything looked. In the center of a hardwood floor was a faded plaid couch with a brick holding up one leg. There was a matching love seat facing the couch that was just as faded. A coffee table lined with cigarette burns and cluttered with old issues of
Cosmopolitan
magazine had two end tables that didn't match. A small television set was on top of a wooden orange crate. There was a hole big enough for a horse's head to fit through in the wall next to the door. It was hard to believe that a woman like Rosalee, who claimed she made hundreds of dollars per date, lived in such a shabby place.

“Sister, you been in the storm too long,” Rosalee told me. “You need somebody to fall back on…”

There was something conspiratorial about the way the women looked at one another and nodded in agreement.

“Well, I tried that and look how I ended up. I thought Larry Holmes was my soul mate. I don't want to go back home because if I see his face again too soon, I won't be responsible. A job and my own place is what I need now,” I said, sharing the couch with Ester and Rockelle.

“How much money you got?” Rosalee asked, handing me a bottle of ice-cold beer. She stood in front of me with her arms folded. She was tall and thin, but she had curves in all the right places. Her body looked better than all the other women's in the room, including mine. And, she was the prettiest. Her big brown eyes and full lips took the attention away from her long, narrow face.

I clutched my purse. “Uh, maybe enough to last me about a month. A little over a thousand. I sold my car before I left home and Bo had a little money,” I told her. I drank the beer, wishing it was something stronger.

Ester groaned. Rockelle and Rosalee looked at each other then back to me.

“A thousand dollars ain't gonna get you nowhere in San Francisco,” Ester hollered, waving her hand. “That wouldn't pay half of my rent.”

“Well, I don't need a fancy place. And I do plan to get a job,” I said defensively.

“What kind of work can you do?” Rockelle asked in a steely voice. She looked at her watch then gave Ester and Rosalee a mysterious shrug.

“Whatever I can find, I guess. I was workin' on the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles back home.” I shook my head and laughed. “It was the job from hell.” I looked from one woman to another and said, “I want a job now that pays big money, is easy, and involves dealin' with some fun people.”

Rosalee clicked her teeth and snorted. “Other than a hit man, a star, or a gangster, ain't too many jobs like that.”

“A pretty woman like you can make a lot of money,” Ester advised, tapping her fingers on the battered coffee table, giving me a strange look. Her eyes were wide and shiny, making her look like a Spanish doll. And she was as pretty as one with her apple cheeks, upturned nose, and long dark hair. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall, but she had a tight, round little body that jiggled when she walked. “I bet you—”

“Shhhh,” Rockelle cut Ester off. Rising and buttoning her jacket, she looked at her watch again. “Uh, you look tired, Lula,” she noticed. “Ester and I'll haul ass before you pass out.” Rockelle beckoned for Ester to follow, and they strutted out the door.

Rosalee gave me another beer, a blanket, and two flat pillows.

“Try to get some sleep. You'll feel better in the mornin',” she predicted, squeezing my shoulder. “You got somethin' to sleep in?”

“Yeah.” I nodded toward my suitcases sitting on the floor by the door. “I'll sleep in my clothes tonight, if you don't mind,” I said, sliding off my shoes. “I appreciate you lettin' me stay here. I won't give you no trouble,” I mumbled as I stretched out on the couch.

“Oh, I ain't worried about you givin' me no trouble,” Rosalee told me, heading out of the room. “I'll leave the light on. You can turn it off when you want to.”

I glanced at the suitcases Bo and I had brought with us. Tears rolled down the side of my face. I didn't sleep at all that night.