Sex, Secrets and South Beach (10 page)

"How can you blame me?
Ernesto was the pervert. He raped me!" Desiree cried.

"You were always walking
around in skimpy little clothes taunting him. You wanted it. You
didn't want me to have any happiness. It's bad enough you killed
your father, now you've killed Ernesto!" She spat again, trying to
hit Desiree. The homicide detective's ears tweaked at the
accusations.

"What do you mean I killed
Papi? Mami, a drunk driver killed Papi! Remember? He got hit by a
car," Desiree raged. "How the hell can you stand there and blame
me? I loved my father more than anything. Papi's death was an
accident."

"No! He was out getting
ice cream for your little spoiled ass. You just had to have
chocolate ice cream. Don't you remember? He couldn't tell your ass
no, and both of you acted like the sun rose and set on your ass. If
you would have eaten what we had in the freezer, he wouldn't have
been hit by that car. He would have stayed home. He would be
alive!" Desiree's mami screamed. The police, paramedics, and
coroner's assistant stood mutely, staring in disbelief.

Desiree felt like all the
blood was draining from her body. "No! I was just a little girl,
and it was an accident. It's not my fault," she cried.

"That's enough, ma'am.
Your daughter has been through a great deal tonight." The detective
who'd separated them tried to neutralize the situation.

"It was an accident. I
didn't do anything wrong!" Desiree cried, defending
herself.

"Oh, and this isn't your
fault either, is it?" Mami stated bitterly, pointing at Ernesto's
body.

"Calm down, ma'am," the
detective told her.

"I don't have to do shit!"
she screamed on him. "Fuck you! This is my house!" she continued,
rolling her neck.

"You're crazy! He raped
me! He was always trying to touch me, and I told you. And you never
did anything! All you ever gave a fuck about was him, and I know
why. You might think I don't know, but I do. It's cuz he keeps you
fucked-up off that shit. I don't know how you kept your job,
because you're high all the time. You think I didn't hear y'all in
there sniffing? You never did anything to help me, you worthless
bitch. What kind of mother are you?" Desiree couldn't hold her
feelings in anymore.

"I hate you, you little
murderous bitch! You've fucked up everything, you dumb little
cunt!"

At that moment Desiree
stopped loving her mother. It was obvious to her that her mother
had stopped loving her long before then, but she'd held on to a
tiny shred of hope that if they could just escape the poverty, if
they could just get away from the grime of New York and go
somewhere nice and clean where they didn't have to worry about
bills, everything would be okay. But her mother had crossed a line.
Desiree lunged at her. It was useless; there were too many cops
there, but her mother got the point. She was out of her daughter's
life forever.

"I'm not your mother
anymore! I don't want you anymore! Get out! You killed my husbands!
It's all your fault!"

Desiree awakened with a
start. She’d sweated so
much that her hair
was wet and her sheets felt clammy. What the hell was going on
inside of her head? The Ecstasy must have brought things to the
surface that she had been determined to forget. As far as she was
concerned, it was all just some drug-induced nightmare and not a
repressed memory. The whole scenario with her mother and Ernesto
was a hallucination. But lying to herself didn't make her feel any
better. Her head was throbbing, and her mouth felt so dry that she
just held her mouth under the cold water in the bathroom sink until
her belly felt filled to capacity.

"The dead has arisen!" Ginger joked
when Desiree appeared in the kitchen, her hair skewed all over her
head. Desiree only grunted.

"Oh, wait! Let me 'smite my tongue' as
you told me so many times last night, Reverend Goodbody! You might
think I was blaspheming the resurrection," Ginger
hooted.

Desiree winced from the noise. It felt
like someone was playing a tom-tom in her head. "I'm never doing X
again," she moaned as Ginger brewed some Cuban coffee. Desiree felt
the pungent aroma alert her senses as it wafted through the room.
"That shit fucks with your head!"

"I'm never
letting
you do X again.
You cannot handle your roll!" Ginger admonished her.

"What did I do?" Desiree
tried to recollect the events of the previous night but drew a
blank.
This must be what a black-out
is,
she thought.

"It wasn't what you
did
, it was what
you
said
!" Ginger
told her. "You were like a preacher, girl. You were quoting
scripture and everything. It was wild. It kind of freaked me out,
though. You said that God was talking to you, and you talked about
angels and stuff. It was deep, like a movie or something. I can't
explain it, and don't ask me to repeat it, because I was high
myself. But I do remember you saying that you were a direct
descendant of Mary Magdalene. And, oh yeah, you talked a lot about
the saints,
a whole lot
. You said you were some saint named Christina the
Astonishing who floated so she couldn't smell the sin emanating
from people. Is that real, or did you make that up? Oh yeah, and
you talked about how the saints were, like, willing to die before
defiling their bodies with sexual sin and how many of the female
saints were victims of rape and attempted rape. It was like, the
catechism class that wouldn't end!" Ginger shook her head and
handed Desiree a tiny demitasse cup filled with dark, thick
coffee.

"You're kidding, right?" Desiree
gulped the cup's contents like a shot and placed it in front of her
for a refill.

"No, girl. You were bugging me the
fuck out. You completely ruined my high." Ginger gave her another
cup of coffee, which she sipped. "Is your family real religious or
something? I don't even think preachers know all the stuff you were
spouting."

"I don't have any family, remember?"
Desiree's eyes were icy.

"Well, you had one at one time. Did
you go to church a lot or something, or Catholic school? Because
you really knew what you were talking about. You grabbed my Bible,
and you were whipping through pages and everything. Everything you
said you backed up with a Bible verse," Ginger
recounted.

Desiree shifted in her seat nervously.
"I've been to church. I used to be religious, I guess. But then
shit happened in my life. I can't say I have much faith anymore,"
she explained.

"Shit like what?" Ginger
inquired.

"Just shit," Desiree
snapped. She wanted to open up but couldn't. Ginger had been like a
sister to her, but she didn't want to talk about some things
with
anyone
.

"Okay. I get the hint." Ginger dropped
the subject. "But you know if you ever want to talk, I'm
here."

March 1999

D
o
you think I should get some titties?”
Desiree asked Ginger while they were lying poolside tanning
topless.

"Shit yeah, girl, go for it!" Ginger
encouraged her.

"How much were yours, five g's,
right?" Desiree queried.

"Yeah. But you've got it, and if you
don't want to spend it all at once, you can finance them," Ginger
explained.

"Yo, get the fuck outta here! I can
pay for titties in installments?"

"No doubt. You can go to my doctor.
She's the best."

"I wouldn't have it any other
way."

So Desiree made an appointment for a
consultation with Ginger's doctor, a Hispanic woman who assured
Desiree that she would look fabulous once the procedure was over.
She used a computer program to show Desiree what she looked like
now in comparison to what she would look like after. Desiree gawked
at the computer-generated image in disbelief. The after picture
looked like a woman, a beautiful one at that. It was the body she
had always dreamed about.

The night before her surgery, she and
Ginger went to fill her prescriptions for antibiotics and
painkillers for after the surgery, and also went shopping for a
bunch of sports bras, since that would be all she could wear for a
few weeks while she was healing. Her

stomach rumbled relentlessly; Desiree
was not to drink, eat, or smoke for twelve hours before the
surgery, but she was too nervous to really think about
food.

"You scared?" Ginger asked
her.

"Yeah. What if I die?" Desiree
panicked.

"Your holy-rolling ass will go
straight to heaven," Ginger quipped.

"Don't call me that. It was one
incident." Desiree looked fearful. "But for real, what if I
die?"

Ginger chuckled. "Chill, you ain't
gonna die."

"Okay. Well, what if my titties end up
crooked? You know, one nipple pointing one way, the other in the
other direction. You've seen those chicks with cockeyed tits!"
Desiree giggled.

"Relax, nena. Those heifers had
crooked tits to begin with. Besides, mine look great, don't they?"
she asked Desiree, who nodded in agreement. "You're gonna be fine.
Trust me," Ginger reassured her.

The next day Ginger drove Desiree to
the plastic surgeon's office and dropped her off.

"Aren't you gonna wait with me?"
Desiree pleaded.

"Nah. You won't have to wait. Plus,
even if you did, you'd drive me crazy I'm tired of hearing you yap
on about them damn tits. Get the water bags put in already," Ginger
teased her before pulling off, her hair blowing in the wind. She
would pick Desiree up when the center called to tell her that
Desiree was in recovery.

Ginger was right: Desiree did not have
to wait. She was ushered into a pre-op room immediately, where she
was ordered to undress and put on a robe. Shortly thereafter, the
doctor came in and gave her two sample implants to stick in her
sports bra to double-check that the size she had selected during
her consultation was okay. After they were all cleared, the doctor
left her to receive her anesthesia.

"Make sure you juice me up good. I
don't want to feel a thing. You might want to give me extra, you
know. I have a strong system. Oh yeah, my veins are super-tiny. You
might want to use a butterfly to run my IV," Desiree told the
anesthesiologist.

"Hon, I've been doing this for fifteen
years. You'll be fine. But I'm gonna knock you out real quick so
you can shut up, okay?" He grinned.

Desiree laughed as the anesthesia
began to take effect. She was placed in a wheelchair and wheeled
into the operating room.

"Have you got them?" Desiree asked a
buxom nurse who assisted her onto the operating table.

"We all do. We get a discount. I'm
getting my nose done in two weeks,'" she answered.

''I'm getting lipo next Tuesday,"
another nurse piped in. And then everything faded to
black.

When Desiree awoke, she felt as if an
elephant were standing on her chest. She knew her new boobs
probably only weighed a couple of pounds, but they felt like
two-ton boulders.

"How are you feeling?" The doctor was
holding her hand, gently rousing her from her groggy sleep. Desiree
looked down at her chest and willed her eyes to focus. She
immediately saw the two round mounds stretching her skin beneath
the fabric of the bra.

"I love you," Desiree told the doctor,
her voice scratchy.

"It's the drugs, honey," the doctor
said.

"No, I love you!" Desiree
insisted.

"I hate that doctor!"
Desiree wailed as Ginger's
Bimmer hit a
pothole on the long drive home.

"Don't worry. That Percocet is gonna
kick in real soon. You're gonna be in seventh heaven in no time,"
Ginger said.

"Well, in the meantime, take it easy
on the bumps, Ginny," Desiree criticized.

"Cranky, cranky!" Ginger
admonished.

Eventually, they made it home and got
Desiree in the bed. The painkillers took effect, and she mostly
slept for the next three days. On the fourth day much of her pain
had subsided. She was able to do normal things, aside from lifting;
she just needed special help rising, sitting, and lying
down.

"How are you feeling, baby girl?"
Ginger asked Desiree gently, before heading into the kitchen to
start dinner.

"I'm okay, just a little sore."
Desiree shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

"Well, that's to be expected. How are
the drugs working?"

"I feel good as hell when I'm up. But
mostly, they just make me sleepy."

"Yeah. But you can't do much of
anything, so you may as well sleep. Ayo! By the way, who the fuck
is Mr. Lopez?" Ginger called out from the kitchen.

Desiree's eyes became wide as saucers.
She winced in pain from nearly jumping off the couch at the mention
of that name.

"Why would you ask me that?" Desiree
inquired. Was Ginger practicing some kind of voodoo? Desiree had
never mentioned him, and she hadn't written anything about him in a
notebook or journal.

"You kept calling out to him," Ginger
answered.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I guess you were having
a bad dream or something. You kept asking him to help you. I almost
woke you up because you were tossing and turning, and I didn't want
you to hurt yourself. But I figured the drugs probably had you
comatose and seeing shit. We all know how you act on pills, now,
don't we?" Ginger teased.

Desiree laughed along, but couldn't
help but wonder what else she had been saying in her sleep. Why did
she keep dreaming about the past? Desiree made up her mind that as
soon as she could manage her pain with Tylenol, she was going off
the Percocet. Ginger was right in one aspect: Desiree did not react
well to pills. They seemed to counteract her ability to live in
denial.

She clicked on the huge
television in the living room and flipped to BET to distract
herself. Since the surgery, she had a chance to catch up on all the
videos she'd been missing due to working or partying. She'd spend
hours watching BET and MTV, studying everything about every video
she saw. From the time she was really young, she'd catch
Video Soul
and
Rap City
, eyeing not
only the entertainers but the gorgeous models in the background.
She used to imagine that they lived such glamorous lives. How could
they not? They knew all the rappers and singers, they got to wear
the fly clothes, go to all the parties.

Desiree had noticed that
more and more videos were being shot in Miami. That day, she had
seen Trick Daddy and Trina's video for "Naan" and recognized half
of the girls in it from the nightclubs and hanging on the beach.
She even recognized a few strippers.
I'm
just as pretty as any of them. Way prettier. I bet I could be in a
video,
Desiree thought, full of
ambition.
Shit! I can flow better than
these girls too. That new chick Trina is from right here. She used
to dance at the Lex too. If she can make it, I can make
it.

"Ginny!" Desiree yelled to Ginger, who
was making her famous spaghetti sauce. Desiree was getting hungry
from the smell of the meat sauteing with onion, garlic, and green
pepper. Ginger came running out holding a spoon dripping with
tomato sauce.

"What, girl?" Ginger frowned at
Desiree. "You know I'm trying to hook up this sauce!"

"I wanna be in videos." Desiree stated
her wish simple and plain, as if Ginger could snap her fingers and
make it happen. That was how Ginger operated on so many levels, so
it didn't seem out of the ordinary.

"Okay." Ginger rolled her
eyes.

"I'm serious!" Desiree peeled herself
from her position on the couch with a little help from Ginger and
followed her into the kitchen. "Everyone is always asking me if I'm
a model anyway."

"Oh, I'm sure you'd have no problem
doing it, especially now." Ginger motioned toward Desiree's
enhanced cleavage. "But are you sure you want to?"

"Sure." Desiree shrugged. "You deal
with models for your Web site all the time. Maybe I could work for
you." Desiree was eager.

"I don't think so. If you want to
model, get an agent. If you want to do porn, fuck with me, because
that's the kind of modeling on the Web that my girls deal with."
Ginger stirred the bubbling pot of sauce on the stove.

"Well, I'm just trying to get paid!"
Desiree didn't care what kind of modeling she did; she just knew
that it would be cool for men to open a magazine or turn on the TV
and see her looking sexy and tempting.

"Nah, kid. I ain't even gonna put you
onto that. You can do better," Ginger said.

"I don't see why not. I dance. I date.
You don't have a problem with that. But whenever I ask you to put
me down with your business, you say no."

"No,
you
don't have a problem with
that.
I
don't
think it's what you should be doing, but who am I to knock your
hustle? You gotta earn like everyone else. But you're like a little
sister to me, and would I want my little sister doing this, any of
this? No. I wouldn't want my little sister modeling, because that
world can be just as bad as dancing, and in some ways worse. I
think you should be making some kind of plans for your future, your
education. You're a smart girl, I can tell. You catch on to shit
real quickly. So catch this..." Ginger's expression became dead
serious as she met Desiree's hazel eyes with her green contacts.
"This shit doesn't last forever, and even if it did, you'd get
tired of it." Ginger stood with her hands on her hips
authoritatively. Desiree eyed her and digested what she had been
told.

"But hey, you're a grown woman, little
sister or not." Ginger returned to her sauce and dismissed the
topic.

"Well, I see your point. But if I
could model, then I wouldn't have to date or dance or any of that
stuff. I could even be a rapper," Desiree added meekly. She'd never
shared her poetry and lyrics with anyone. But why should every
other girl out there be getting a piece of the pie when she could
be out doing the same thing?

"You wanna rap?" Ginger
smirked.

"It's not funny. I write shit all the
time. I know it's just as good as everyone else's stuff," Desiree
defended herself.

"Okay. I'm just surprised, that's all.
You write rhymes? Is that what you're doing when I see you
scribbling in your notebook?"

"Well, yeah," Desiree said sheepishly.
"Most of the time I just write little stuff, a line or two. But
I've got a few songs now. And I think they're pretty
good."

"I thought it was your diary or
something. I guess I don't really know you, baby girl. Well, if
you've got a dream, then go for it. I'm sure you can rap as well as
any of these other girls. You're prettier than all of them, that's
for sure." Ginger always found a way to encourage Desiree even if
she didn't agree with her plans.

"Well, that's why I'm talking to you!
What should I do first?" Desiree asked her. "Wait a minute!"
Desiree walked out of the kitchen and returned with her notebook
and pen.

"You serious, huh?" Ginger giggled.
"Okay. Well, what do you want to know? Do you want to model, or do
you want to rap?"

"I want to know it all and do it all.
I want to be a star."

"Well, first you need to get some
really nice pictures. I can hook you up with a couple of
photographers who do good work for a good price."

Get pictures
taken
. Desiree took her time scribbling
into her notebook, dotting the "i" in "pictures" with a smiley
face.

"Okay, then what?" Desiree looked up
as eager as a school-child who just realized she could
read.

"God, you are silly. Anyway...then you
need to find an agent. There are some to definitely stay away from!
But there's this new girl out, a black girl, she has an agency that
is supposed to be pretty good. She has the hookup when it comes to
videos. There's also this guy who I think wants to be an actor too,
but he seems to be hooking chicks up on that tip. But you should
also send your pictures to the 'white' agencies. They handle real
work like for catalogs and stuff. Not just videos and urban work."
Ginger made quotation marks in the air with her fingers as she
mentioned urban work.