by Lexie Ray
“Sure thing, Mama,” Cocoa said, taking me by the elbow. “Come on.”
We turned to go and I heard Mama hoot loudly. Cocoa and I both turned in question to see Mama cackling.
“You got an ass like a pumpkin, sweetheart!” Mama hollered, slapping her knees. “You’re going to be just fine here, Pumpkin!”
Cocoa laughed and led me away, threading through the tables of some of the most finely dressed people I’d ever seen. I blushed the entire time, trying to puzzle out Mama’s words.
When we reached a stairwell and started climbing it, I cleared my throat.
“What did she—Mama—mean?” I asked. “When she told me I’d fit in?”
“She meant that you have a great ass, Pumpkin,” Cocoa said. “You do better here the sexier you are, so you’re going to have an illustrious career ahead of you.”
It was then that I realized my name was Pumpkin. Just as I’d been sorpresita with my family, I was going to trade in my real name for Pumpkin. No one here had even asked me for my name, which I probably would’ve given as sorpresita. My real name didn’t even seem like it belonged to me because nobody had ever called me by it. Sara was some secret, faraway person who had never existed in the first place.
I was Pumpkin now.
Cocoa led me down a hallway. It was clean and smelled good—much more than I could say for our apartment building in East Harlem. Every door we passed had a couple of names on it—Cream, Shimmy, Blue—funny no-names like Pumpkin. We stopped when we reached the door named Cocoa.
“This is my room,” she said, opening it and flicking on a light. “I’m sorry, Pumpkin. I wish I could show and tell you more, but I’m going to have to leave you on your own. We’re having a crazy night, and I need to get back down there. Please make yourself at home. I hope you don’t think we’re rude here.”
“Not at all,” I said quickly. “I know you’re just busy. I came at a bad time.”
“You came when you needed to,” Cocoa corrected. “The TV’s there in the corner, and the bathroom’s right across the hall. I’ll bring you up something to eat if I get a free moment.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Don’t bother yourself. I’m not hungry.”
I turned my head to look in the room and heard Cocoa hiss. Surprised, I turned back to her and realized that she’d seen the bruises on my neck.
“You running from someone?” Cocoa asked.
“I guess I am,” I said. Thinking about what had happened to me was difficult mostly because it was hard to imagine that it had happened at all. The bruises on my neck were proof that my boyfriend wasn’t the man I thought he was or wanted him to be.
“We’re all running from something, Pumpkin,” Cocoa said, her eyes kind. “What’s important is that you’ve run to a safe place. I’ll be back later.”
I watched Cocoa jog down the hall and felt guilty for taking up her time before turning back to her room. It was neat and clean—sparse, almost. If Cocoa had many personal items, she didn’t have any of them on display. The top of her dresser had beauty products organized into little baskets—lipsticks and nail polishes and eye shadows—and a cup full of brushes of all shapes and sizes.
I walked in to the room and shut the door. The full-length mirror on the back of the door made me jump, and I realized how tightly wound I was. The incident with Jimmy had really shaken me up. I set my tote bag on the carpeted floor and studied my reflection.
Cocoa had said I was sexy. Was I? I never really felt sexy unless my family dressed me up for a night out at the club. My hair was long, dark, and glossy. I took care of myself, but I didn’t paint or perm myself up, like my sisters and las primas did. I didn’t have a scrap of makeup on, but my lashes were thick and long enough to look like they had a layer of mascara on. My eyes were big and round—the consequence, I thought, of a life spent in observation. And their color wasn’t anything special, either—a dark chocolate brown that I shared with most Puerto Ricans, I figured.
I’d gotten blessed in the tits and ass department, though, I figured. My chest was nothing to sneer at, but my real asset was, well, my ass. Mama had said so herself. I turned in the mirror to look at it. It was both wide and deep, what many of my classmates called a bubble butt. I supposed if you put a pumpkin in a pair of jeans, it might have looked like what I had going on.
I swept my hair back behind my ears and inhaled sharply. That’s what Cocoa had been staring at—the long lines of bruises on either side of my neck, wrapping around the skin there to meet at my throat. It was disconcerting to see the marks that Jimmy had left on me, physical proof that he’d harmed me. He’d said I was sexy, too, whispered it to me as he thrust into me again and again.
Those days—and nights—were over.
It was easy to see, now that I was away from the situation, just how bad it had gotten. The drug-addled gangbanger who’d tried to strangle me was a sad shadow of the boy I’d known in school. I didn’t even know myself.
Why had I done all those things—took him inside my body in the middle of a club on a Friday night? Being away from the family and East Harlem was like a slap of perspective. The female contingency was a terrible influence growing up. I shouldn’t have been involved in Jimmy in the first place. And I certainly should’ve left him a long time ago—maybe even before my oldest sister told me I should, when he’d hit her.
It was so easy to grow complacent in a terrible situation. Bit by bit, I’d gotten used to things that bothered me about Jimmy—his need for his crew, then his ambition to be in the gang. Having drugs around so he could sell them, then him doing the very drugs he was supposed to be pushing for the gang. I’d hated it all but had simply become accustomed to it, forgetting what was right for me in the process.
It took being uprooted from the place that had been my home for nearly twenty-one years for me to see just how wrong everything had been.
The blur of tears came quicker than I expected, and I broke down right then and there, thankful there was no one around to see me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. There was never a spare moment—or private space—to break down back at home. I’d simply kept coping until now, when I’d run away from everything.
Without anything to cope with, I didn’t know who I was anymore. What meaning did life have? Where was my identity? Who was I?
I don’t know how long I cried, standing there in front of the mirror. I’d lost my past, and the present was all I had left. My future extended no further than the next breath I took. I had no idea what was going to happen to me.
Through my burning eyes, I tried to look around Cocoa’s room for clues. She had some nice clothes hanging in her closet—which was organized, but little more than an alcove with a tension rod—and all of her beauty products were well organized. There were a couple of outdated beauty magazines covering her chest of drawers, but I’d read them all before.
Did Cocoa do anything but work? Besides the out-of-date magazines, there weren’t any personal items—no family photos or pictures of Cocoa with possible boyfriends, no phone lying around, no books or movies or CDs.
Were all the rooms like this?
I sat down on the bottom bunk and crossed my legs. Then I uncrossed them. Then I crossed them again. It was too quiet. Too still.
I always imagined how amazing it would be to live somewhere away from my sisters and las primas and the babies and Jimmy and all of the crew and gang. I imagined that I’d sleep until noon or later, lounge around in a silky teddy without anyone to ogle me, take baths for as long as I wanted, and just generally enjoy myself.
Now I realized that I had become so used to the crowd, clutter, and racket that I couldn’t simply enjoy being by myself. I was fidgety and nervous, wondering how long I’d be in the room.
I pushed myself up off the bunk bed and turned on the television to have a little bit of background noise. When the screen lit up and the cacophony of a sitcom about a riotous family filled the room, I felt a little better. It
reminded me of home—the babies squalling, Jimmy hollering about something having to do about the gang, the female contingency squawking at each other and shrieking with laughter.
I missed them. Plain and simple.
Even Jimmy, despite what he’d done. I’d gotten so used to him that it was scary to be in this new situation.
I forced myself back down on the bunk bed and watched the people on the TV flit around from one-liner to one-liner. The writing was pretty snappy and the jokes were crisp, if a little acerbic. I wondered what it would be like to have a laugh track behind everything that had happened back in East Harlem.
SORPRESITA: What’s this needle doing here, Jimmy?
Jimmy looks up, addled and confused.
LAUGH TRACK.
SOPRESITA: You can’t leave this lying around, Jimmy! What would happen if one of the babies got their hands on this?
JIMMY: They’d cry, or something.
LAUGH TRACK.
I shuddered and tried to think of something different, rolling over to face the wall. I closed my eyes for just a minute, and opened them, feeling groggy, when I heard the door creak open.
“Hey,” Cocoa said softly, closing the door behind her. I could hear movement and activity—voices, lots of them—out in the hallway.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Cocoa continued, slipping off her black shoes and sighing as she wiggled her bare toes—each nail painted in a bright red—on the carpet.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I said, sitting up. The sitcom about the big family had finished God only knew how long ago, and the TV was showing infomercials now.
“Your body probably needed it,” Cocoa said, reaching back behind herself and letting out a breath of air. She slipped her strapless bra out of the bottom of her shirt.
“Is your shift over?” I asked as she rolled her neck around, popping it.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cocoa said. “Lord, what a crazy night. We get them like that, sometimes. No explanation for it. Just all of the high rollers come all at the same time, and we’ve gotta run around, doing everything. People in, people out. It’s all we can do to keep up.”
“We?” I repeated.
“Mama’s girls,” Cocoa said, beaming. “Meaning you, Pumpkin, if you’d like to stay here.”
It wasn’t a question of what I’d like to do. I’d like nothing more than to go back to East Harlem, slip into bed with Jimmy, and pretend none of today ever happened. But I couldn’t do that anymore. Not if I wanted to stay alive. I didn’t have a place to go. It was become one of Mama’s girls—whatever that entailed—or live on the streets.
The way Cocoa smiled at me—sympathetic and knowing—made me realize that she knew exactly how limited my choices were.
“We’re like a sisterhood here,” she said. “We have roommates and everything. You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to get a new start. Lots of girls—myself included—came here looking for exactly the same thing.”
And did they find it? I didn’t dare to ask, staring instead down at Cocoa’s red toenails. I didn’t want to know whether I’d find a new start, afraid that the answer would be “no.”
“Now that we’re all closed up, Mama wanted me to show you around,” Cocoa said. “Let me take a shower real quick and get on something more comfortable. God, this uniform smells like onions.”
She shucked it off right then and there, making me blush and turn abruptly toward the bunk bed. My sisters and las primas had done it to me often enough, but Cocoa was practically a stranger.
“Oh, you’re shy,” she cooed, giggling. “I’m sorry, Pumpkin. I’ll try to give you more warning next time.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Why don’t you unpack your bag and put it in that spare dresser over there in the other closet?” Cocoa said. “If you have anything to hang up, grab as many of my spare hangers as you need.”
The door opened and shut and the room was quiet again except for the murmur of the television. I turned back around slowly and stooped to pick up my bag.
There wasn’t much in there—a few pairs of jeans, a spare pair of sneakers, and perhaps half a dozen shirts besides a handful of underwear and another bra. There was nothing to put on hangers and barely enough to fill a single drawer in the dresser. It was depressing to see my life reduced to a single drawer. Even with all of their faults, I’d never lacked for much when I was living with the female contingency. Of course things went wrong, but my existence there hadn’t been summed up by a sad stack of clothes in a single drawer.
A tear slipped down my cheek and I hurriedly wiped it away as the door opened again.
Cocoa had, thankfully, changed into her fresh clothes in the bathroom, sparing me another nude show. The skin of her dark cheeks was flushed pinkish, belying the high temperature of the water she’d used to scrub herself.
“Ready?” she asked cheerfully, trading her flip-flops for a pair of worn slippers. She glanced down at the contents of my sole dresser drawer before I could push it shut.
“Don’t worry,” Cocoa said. “We’ll get you everything you need tomorrow. Mama will want to take you shopping, too. You’ll need a uniform and everything.”
I followed Cocoa out into the hallway, which was abuzz with beautiful girls in various states of undress. One girl with pale blonde hair sauntered completely naked down the hallway toward the bathroom.
“Look at this piece of ass!” Cocoa hollered, laughing before she slapped the girl directly on her butt.
She cried out, her eyes twinkling. “Baby, you know just how to give it to me,” the girl said.
“Blue, I’d like you to meet Mama’s newest girl, Pumpkin,” Cocoa said, extending her arm to me. “Pumpkin, please excuse Blue’s nakedness. She just doesn’t know how to act around people sometimes.”
“I was raised in a barn,” Blue said solemnly before breaking into a wide grin. “Wrong. It was a trailer. Happy you’re here.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to look anywhere except her boobs or pussy, which was next to impossible.
“Aw, she’s shy,” Blue said, wrinkling her nose. “We’ll wear it out of you, baby.”
Walking down the hall, Cocoa continued to introduce me to a number of girls whose names I struggled to remember—Shimmy, Daisy, Cream, Sparkle, Pipes. They all had kind words for me, welcoming me into the fold. Being around so many bodies was making me feel better and better—head and shoulders above how lost I’d been alone in Cocoa’s room. This kind of din was something I was used to.
“So this is the boarding house area of the nightclub,” Cocoa said, stopping at the end of the hall and turning back to look at all the girls hooting and hollering and joking around with one another. “Right now, we have thirty-tree girls. You make thirty-four. That’s good. I like even numbers. Makes roommates easier to pair up.”
“Do you have a roommate?” I asked, flicking my eyes up to meet hers briefly.
“I do now,” Cocoa said, sweet as sugar. “Mama likes to keep me in a room of my own so I can be available anytime a new girl comes on. I’ve been here the longest, so I can make sure the new girls know the ropes.”
Cocoa pushed open the door behind us to reveal the staircase I’d climbed when I first got there.
“This is the way down to the nightclub’s floor level,” Cocoa said as we descended. “We all live up there, but work down here. Working down here is how we afford to live up there. We don’t pay a cent of money in room or board, but we’re expected to work at least five days a week. Most girls—myself included—work every chance they get. The more you work, the more you get paid.”
The nightclub, which had been buzzing with activity when I first arrived, was dark and quiet. It had an almost eerie quality about it, like something should be happening even though it was silent. I longed to hear some strain of music, just a couple beats of a song, but there was nothing.
“You hungry?” Cocoa asked over her shoulder as we walked across the shadowed dance floor
.
“I’m okay.”
“Well, come see the kitchen, anyways,” Cocoa said, pushing open a swinging door. I could still faintly smell food, which made my stomach grumble, but every surface was clean and gleaming, an expanse of stainless steel.
“The nightclub also serves food,” Cocoa explained, touching one of many skillets hanging from the wall. “We have a different chef’s special every night as well as a bunch of tapas. You know what tapas are?”
“Little foods,” I said, nodding. “Like snacks.”
“Exactly,” Cocoa said. “Little foods that we hope keep customers drinking but at the same time soak up the alcohol so they don’t get too wasted. Tapas.”
Cocoa opened one of two fridges. “This is our fridge,” she said. “Mama keeps it supplied with everything you could possibly want to cook or eat. You can also use your tip money on snacks and stuff. Whatever you want. Just put your name on it.”
“So, I keep my tip money?” I asked. Maybe I send some back to my sisters and las primas, to help take care of the babies. Or maybe the gang would just take it, like they took so much already from my family. Or college—I could save for college. The idea of having my own cash flow excited me.
“Anything the customer gives you extra is yours,” Cocoa said. “You’ll turn around and give it to Mama for safe keeping, in her office. She works as a bank there, and you can withdraw money whenever you like.”
“Okay.”
“You ever waitressed before, Pumpkin?”
I shook my head. I’d never actually had a job before. My sisters always told me that Mami and Papi had been adamant about getting my education, so I wasn’t even allowed to think about getting a job until I finished high school.
I’d really dropped the ball on that one.
“There’s nothing to it,” Cocoa said. “The only thing you have to be is pretty and outgoing, and the tips will start pouring in.” She looked at me briefly. “You’ve already got pretty going for you. All we have to do is work on outgoing.”
“I’m kind of quiet,” I said, shrugging. It was my nature, not something I simply chose to be.
