“When can she start?” he asks, looking at Duwahi.
“Can I get dressed now?” I ask.
“In a few days,” Duwahi tells the man.
And all I want right then is to go back to Bader’s apartment and wait for him to come home. This time I’ll wait as long as it takes.
On our way out of the club, Karen hops up onstage, turns her back to us, and pulls her pants down. She bobs her ass up and down a few times, then jumps off. Buttoning her fly, she tells no one in particular, “When I was young, my body was even better than hers.” Then to Duwahi, “I’ve still got it, don’t I, baby?” He nods, and I vow to myself that once I get back to Bader’s, I will never go anywhere with Duwahi again.
Duwahi and Karen take me to an apartment in D.C., where Karen lives with a muscular man named A.J. and a woman he calls his bitch, a pretty, dark-skinned woman who shares his bedroom. The apartment has so little furniture that the entire place could be cleared out in minutes. In the center of the living room is an unmade sofa bed. The walls are bare.
“So there’s this guy—he’s so fucking rich his mattress is probably stuffed with money—and he’s a regular at this bar—sits on the same stool each night, knockin’ back Black Label and looking for some pussy. That’s where you come in.” Karen tucks a wad of hair behind her right ear. “What you’re gonna do is flirt with him—get him to pick you up. And then, after you’ve fucked him and he’s passed out—and trust me, he’ll pass out—take everything you can. And check all his pockets because sometimes guys stash money in different pockets. Oh, and that Rolex he wears. Definitely wanna get my hands on that.” Her brown eyes widen.
“Listen,” I say, trying to make sense of where I am and why this woman is saying these things to me and why I didn’t just jump out of Duwahi’s car when I had the chance, “I thought we were coming here to get some pot. That’s what Duwahi told me, and that’s the only reason I’m here. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea, but now I need to go home.”
Karen bolts up. “Home? You ain’t got no home! And life ain’t no free ride, girl. What we’re giving you is a chance to make some money.”
“Bader said I could stay with him, and that’s nobody else’s business.” I turn to Duwahi. “I’ll go find a cab.”
He speaks in measured strokes, “You heard Karen. And you’ll do what she says.”
I pick up my purse. “I don’t have to do anything.” But before I can turn to leave, Duwahi fires his backhand into my cheek, sends me falling backwards onto the bed.
“Shut up! Do you hear me, you fucking bitch? Just shut up!”
Now I’m scared. The side of my face burns, but I say nothing. Duwahi stands over me for several seconds, his hand cocked. Nobody moves. And then slowly, as if at any moment he might change his mind, he withdraws his hand.
“Now let’s get you fixed up,” Karen says with a rabbity smile.
She piles my hair up on top of my head and gives me a black silk dress that bows down beneath my cleavage, with a small black beaded purse to match. “You can leave that big red thing here,” she says, pointing to my purse. “It’ll be safe.” She pencils Cleopatra-black eyeliner onto my eyelids and lines my lips with burgundy liner. Then she stuffs a spiky pair of too-big patent pumps with cotton balls so that they don’t fall off when I walk. But by the time we arrive at the bar, Mr. Rolex is already sitting with a redhead.
“Great, we fucking blew it. Why’d you have to make trouble?” Karen hisses.
We sit down at the bar anyway, and I smoke cigarettes and drink amaretto while Karen prods me and points around the room. “What about that guy? I bet he’s got money.” By the time a man with sloping shoulders and a drooping shirt approaches me, I’m drunk. I ask him his name and he says Timmy, and I laugh and say he doesn’t look like a Timmy, and then Karen and I are following him to his apartment.
“I’ll just wait out here,” she calls from the car.
His apartment is squalid—crusted plates and empty pizza boxes strewn on every surface, the steady stink of mildew thick in the air.
He leads me to the bedroom, and I do as Karen instructed. “No offense or anything, but I kind of need to get the money up front.”
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
“No.”
“Well how much do you charge?”
“A hundred.”
“How about I give you half now and half after?”
“Okay.”
I put the money in the small purse Karen gave me, and he asks me to take my dress off. “And whatever you have on underneath. But do it nice and slow, okay?”
I struggle to pull the tight dress over my head, then stumble into a wall as I pull my underwear off. “Oops,” I say, “sorry.”
“Can I give you a massage?”
“Um, okay.”
I lay facedown on his musty bed while he puts a movie into his VCR. He straddles me and starts to rub my back, and the movie begins: a woman stands naked as a man pushes her breasts through a metal vise. With pliers, he begins to twist her nipples. She screams, and blood runs out in jagged lines. I turn my head away.
“You know what?” I say, trying to shimmy out from beneath him. “I really don’t feel well—you know, I’m really drunk, and I think I’m going to throw up.”
He slides off me. “Well go in the bathroom—don’t puke here!”
I quickly pull my dress back on, not bothering with my underwear. And then I’m running through his apartment the way you run in dreams from whoever’s about to do you in. All I want is to make it through the door and never think about bleeding nipples again. I fling it open and barrel down the stairs to the car.
When I get in, I’m out of breath. “Let’s go!”
“Where’s the money?” demands Karen.
I lift up the purse. “It’s in here.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why are you shaking like that?”
“Because the guy was a freak, that’s why.”
“Honey, they’re all freaks in one way or another. Get over it.” She smirks knowingly, then puts the car in drive.
Duwahi is waiting for us back at the apartment, in bed with a single lamp on. “How’d it go?”
“Miss Roxanne here was only able to pull in fifty.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Spazzed out.”
“She’s new,” Duwahi says. “Now come to bed.”
“Glad to see you’re sticking up for her all of a sudden,” Karen huffs, throwing her purse on the floor.
“Don’t start. Come to bed.” Then he looks at me. “Both of you.”
I am too exhausted to protest.
When I wake up, they are still asleep. I dress quickly and quietly. I grab my purse and start for the door, but Duwahi pops his head up. “Where are you going?”
“Um, I’m going to wash up in the bathroom.”
“Wrong direction,” he says, pointing toward the bathroom.
I turn around, and he puts his head back on the pillow.
In the bathroom, I start plotting. I have to make a run for it. If I can just get to a pay phone, I can call Gina. I unzip the front pocket of my purse, and a chill runs through me. My money and phone numbers are gone. I quickly open the main zipper to find everything but my makeup is gone. My pocketknife, scraps of paper, unsent letters, old letters from my mother—all of it, gone. I look at myself in the mirror. Last night’s eyeliner is smudged around my eyes, and my skin is pale. Think, think. I have to think. I splash handfuls of cold water over my face, and then I make a plan.
I come out of the bathroom and tell Duwahi and Karen about a guy I know who would definitely be good for a hundred bucks—Sergio, the French guy from Bader’s apartment complex—but I don’t tell them his name. And I don’t need to; the lure of a quick hundred hooks them. Duwahi asks how I know he’ll be home. (We all know I have no phone numbers left to
call.) I tell him the guy works nights and will definitely be there. They agree to take me, and Karen writes a phone number on a piece of paper and hands it to me. “It’s the bar where we’ll be waiting, so call us when you’re finished. And don’t fuck around after—don’t keep us hanging.”
When we arrive, they watch me from the car as I enter the building next to Sergio’s. I wait for a long time before coming out, and when I do, I inch out slowly, peeking carefully around the door for any signs of them. When I see they’re gone, I sprint to Sergio’s building and knock frantically on his door.
“Hey, Roxanne, what a surprise! Come in!” His enthusiasm instantly warms me. “I was just leaving,” he says. “Going to Florida for a little business.” His accent twirls like his mustache.
For a few seconds, I don’t know what to say. I can’t go back to Bader’s because they’ll find me there, and I don’t know where I was last night except that it was someplace far, farther than I’ve ever been, and for the first time I don’t see a way forward, but more than anything, I don’t want to go back. I don’t know how to say any of this to Sergio, so instead I run my hand through my hair. “I was kind of hoping I could hang out here for a little while, with you, but now you’re leaving, so—”
Sergio puts his hand on my shoulder. “Say no more. You’ll stay here while I’m gone, yes?”
It’s as if he knows. I feel like Willy Wonka must have felt in that strange room of halves, when Charlie gives back his everlasting gobstopper. So shines a good deed in a weary world, says Willy Wonka, smiling down at the candy. I hug Sergio, and then he and his suitcase are gone.
I take the longest shower of my life. I can’t get clean enough. Then I raid Sergio’s kitchen, all the while wondering if Duwahi and Karen have figured out that I’ve ditched them. On the coffee table, a half-smoked joint rests against the rim of a green glass ashtray. I light it, and as I get stoned, the people on the television become hilarious. I laugh until my stomach hurts and wonder when everybody got to be so funny. But the more stoned I get, the less funny things become. I start noticing things I didn’t notice before—creaks in the walls, loud footsteps just over my head in the apartment above, darkness licking the windows and closing me in. Suddenly it’s as if I can feel all the evil in the world surrounding me, and I have the distinct sense that something terrible is about to happen. I can’t bear the thought of being alone any longer, but without my list of phone numbers, the only person I can think to call is my friend Cindy. Though I haven’t spoken to her in ages, when she answers the phone it’s as if no time has passed at all. I want to thank her a million times, just for being there on the other end. And when she agrees to catch a cab and come over, I know that everything is going to be okay.
When she knocks on the door, I leap up in a rush to open it. But after years of watching my mother check the peephole every time someone knocked, I don’t think to do it. And then it’s too late. I see everything at once: the glint of the knife blade, Karen’s face, Duwahi’s rage. He presses the cold metal to my throat, and Karen runs to the back to see if anyone is there. “It’s empty,” she calls, while Duwahi pushes the blade harder against my neck. “If you make a sound, you won’t be as lucky as Bader was,” he says, pressing his mouth against my head as he speaks. Karen grabs a bag from the kitchen and starts dumping things into it, and they are Sergio’s things, nice Sergio, and Duwahi will probably kill me and Sergio will live the rest of his life thinking that I stole from him.
How could I have been so stupid? How could I not have realized I’d written Sergio’s address on my phone list?
They push me into the car. Duwahi is yelling, “You fucking bitch! You left us waiting there all day!”
“You’re a fucking liar, too,” Karen seethes. “We were at Bader’s today, and you know who else was there? The police, that’s who. Your name’s not Roxanne, is it, Rita? You’re a fourteen-fucking-year-old runaway.”
“Please,” I say, wishing, for the first time, that the police had found me.
“Shut the fuck up,” Duwahi says.
The rest of the drive is silent. I pray for a car crash.
When we get to Karen’s apartment, she runs in and out, loading the trunk with stuff. Duwahi stays in the car with me and hits me in the face. “If you ever try to leave us again, I’ll kill you. I’ll slit your throat and throw you in the Dumpster.” His hands won’t stop hitting my face.
“I won’t, I promise, I won’t.”
“I’ll kill you,” he keeps saying.
“I’m sorry,” I keep answering.
After Karen loads the car, they drive me to a motel in Virginia Beach. I sleep across the backseat and wake up confused, thinking I’m in the backseat of my mother’s car. When I close my eyes again, I pretend that I am, that my sister is beside me, that we’re still looking for something.
In the motel room, they keep me stoned and stripped down to my bra and underwear. At night, I have to have sex with them. “Put your fingers inside her,” Duwahi orders me. “More. Harder.” I hate having to touch her.
They make me sleep between them so I won’t try to run in the night. I think of Dawn, my childhood best friend, and how one night we slept in a sleeping bag together on the floor. Will you be my best friend forever? I’d asked her. Her skin was warm, and she smelled like popcorn. “Of course,” she’d said. Of course, I whisper to myself. Of course. I feel Karen turn her head toward me in the dark. “Whatever the fuck you’re saying, shut up.” But she can’t stop me from remembering, which is what I do, and how I finally fall asleep.
THIRTY-NINE
The sound was like a car crash, a seizing metallic thud. Claret had just kicked a hole in the wall, the final sharp kick out from behind after several other kicks. Gerta was riding him, and each time she dug her spur into his right side, he launched his foot back. “You’re not getting your way with me,” Gerta warned, with a quick boot on the right. “You’ll fucking turn on the forehand.” She kicked, and he kicked, and I watched, stuck.
Though I had found a horse I loved, I soon learned that the ride with Claret, like most things in life, wasn’t going to be easy. Besides his erratic behavior on the trail, Claret had begun acting out indoors during his work with Gerta, who suddenly wouldn’t take no for an answer. And sometimes, that was Claret’s answer. I was surprised by this rigidness in Gerta because when I’d had lessons with her on the mare I rode before Claret, she’d been patient and forgiving. But now, as she became increasingly demanding of Claret, he became increasingly rebellious, which he expressed at first by refusal, then by swishing his tail and backing up, and ultimately by bucking and kicking holes in the walls. Sometimes I had the sense he wasn’t ready to do the exercises she was asking him to do, and when I suggested this, she dismissed me. “All I’m asking is for him to turn on the forehand. He can do that.”
Whether he could or couldn’t, he wouldn’t, and that was the problem. He’d say no, and she’d kick him or smack him with the whip, and he’d kick out in an even louder no, and she’d smack him harder, and the two of them would escalate, and eventually he’d give in. Then it would be my turn to ride him, and when I was on him, he rarely kicked or bucked, and Gerta would say, “That’s because you don’t ask anything of him. You have to get angry. You never get angry.” And I’d say, “But I’m not angry,” and she’d say that Claret didn’t respect me and would never respect me if I didn’t get angry. So I’d ride him passionately but not angrily, and after my ride, I’d stand with him in his stall and look up into his eyes and stroke his long neck. Sometimes he’d nuzzle my belly or my neck or the top of my head, and I’d swoon a little, and I’d think Okay, we’re going to be okay.
But I was worried. Why wasn’t Claret happy? Was it true that he was refusing to do something that was easy for him to do? And if so, wasn’t that his right? Should he be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do? Was it true that Claret didn’t respect me?
One day after a protracted episode in the paddock, Gerta was standing by the crossties as I brought him into the barn. “You’re late,” she admonished. I explained that it had taken me a while to get his halter on. “That’s because he doesn’t respect you,” she reminded me. Then I tacked him up, and the two of them fought again.
Through all of this, I was still learning. I was learning where Claret’s favorite places were to be scratched—his shoulders, alongside his withers, in the creases between his front legs and belly—and what his favorite cookies were—pressed molasses with a peppermint on top. I was learning how to keep him balanced when we turned a corner and how to keep him going in the canter. And I was learning basic things, like how to put his blanket on, how to best clean his bridle, how to apply liniment to his back after a ride. But no matter what I learned, Gerta’s words haunted me. Was I so inept at horsemanship that I couldn’t gain the basic respect of a horse I so dearly loved?
Again, all signs pointed to yes. There was the day Claret stepped on my foot, and stood there, on my toes, until I cried out and smacked him to get off. (A horse knows when a fly lands on his back, so he surely knows when he’s stepping on your foot.) There was the day he bit my arm, just a little bit of skin between his front teeth, hard enough to leave a bruise. There was the day I tried to ride him outside and he backed me into my own car. And then there was the day, after following him all around the paddock before I could catch him, that he spooked as I led him back to the barn, then yanked away from me and got loose. I yelled for Gerta to come help me, and she grabbed him and led him in easily.
Let the Tornado Come: A Memoir Page 19
