by Miasha
“What’s that? Can I have some?”
I smiled to myself at the sight of my younger siblings. I was happy when they were happy. I took my coat off and decided to stay longer than my initial plans of a few minutes. I figured my mom and Marvin were in their room and not up in my face so I could bear being there for a while. Plus, I wanted to spend some more time with Naja and Kindle.
I washed a plate for Kindle and fixed his food. I washed the dishes while he and Naja ate.
“Um, um, urn,” Naja moaned as she chewed her food. “Angel, you a life saver.”
“You cooked this food?” Kindle asked.
“No. I bought it. It’s good?”
Kindle nodded. I believed him, too, because he was tearing that food up.
“You not goin’ eat?” Naja asked.
“Yeah. Later.”
“When? When you get back to your new house?” she asked with an attitude.
“It’s not my new house. I told you I was coming back. Just not now,” I explained myself.
I knew Naja felt some type of way that I was leaving and not telling her where I was going. I knew she really just wanted to go with me. I felt bad that she couldn’ t. Antione’s house was so much nicer than here, and he had heat and food and no drama, shit, he was barely there. It was clean all the time and just peaceful. I wanted that kind of household for Naja and Kindle so bad. That was why I started working at Shake’s in the first place. I felt obligated to take my brother Curt’s place. Curtis made sure we lived well and I admired him for that, and since he wasn’t there and I was the next oldest I had to step up to the plate. But who knew it would be this difficult? Who knew the roadblocks would come so frequently? I was almost there. I almost had enough for at least a security deposit somewhere. And my mom fucked it all up. I would never forgive her for that. She really messed my head up doin’ that. It was no way I could stay in that house with her after that, even if I wanted to. I just had to go back to Shake’s the next day and work like it was my first day all over again. I had to put in some overtime and try to get my stash back up quickly. I gave myself a month. There in the kitchen over the sink, I told myself that I had thirty days to save money, find a place, and move in it with Naja and Kindle.
“By Christmas, we all goin’ be out of here,” I told Naja.
“What’s happenin’ between now and then?” she asked.
“I’m getting us a place.” I meant what I said with all my heart. I wanted that very thing badly, and I was willing to do whatever it took to get it.
It had only been a week, but when I walked inside of Shake’s I felt like a stranger. I felt weird and my nerves were uneasy. I took it as me being emotional about all the stuff that had happened over the course of a few days and ignored the bad vibes. I went into the dressing room and changed and then went over to the bar. I ordered a solution drink from Fiesta.
While waiting for the drink, I scanned the club. It wasn’t as packed as it usually was on a Friday. I guessed the men were at home with their families being it was the day after the holiday. Fiesta handed me my drink and I took it with me as I walked the club. I made casual conversation with some of the other dancers, catching up on any gossip I may have missed and spoke to a few of the customers. When I finished my drink and began to feel the effects of the Ecstasy, I got up on stage and started working. Men immediately flocked to me, tipping me instantly. I closed my eyes and got into it, clearing my mind and letting myself go. I let the music control my every move, and the men loved it. I even noticed Shake eying me rather hard. When I returned the stare, I saw Butter get up from the seat next to him and storm away. I didn’t care. I was feeling that shit. The attention was just what I needed. Plus, I had a mission, and Butter’s attitude was not going to get in the way of it. My mind and my body were completely free.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a group of policemen burst in the doors with their guns drawn.
“Freeze! Nobody move!” an officer yelled.
Every corner of Shake’s filled with policemen. The few people that tried to run or hide was placed in handcuffs. One cop dressed in plainclothes flashed a piece of paper in front of Shake, who was one of the few in handcuffs. He said something about a warrant. The other cops were reading the detainees their rights. Some of the girls that I worked with were caught in the act of having sex, and they were immediately arrested. I was glad I hadn’t started any of that yet. Pretty much the whole club was under arrest, with the exception of some customers and Butter. I looked around and didn’t see her anywhere. And before long, I, too, had handcuffs on my wrists. The fact that I was high and told a cop that I was old enough when he asked my age, is what did it. I didn’t learn that until I was at the police station and they told me I had been arrested for underage drinking.
In all my fifteen years of living I never thought I’d go to jail. But there I was. I was in a cell with some of the other girls I worked with, and they were all talking.
“I do not believe this shit!” one of them said.
“You? I’m supposed to work my second job in the morning,” another one mentioned.
“What, at the Gap? You can miss a day at the Gap. It ain’t like it’s a real job,” a third one gave her opinion.
“I called out today to work Shake’s and they was pissed because it’s Black Friday,” the second one explained.
“You worried about the Gap. Girl please, I got three kids at home. How I’m s’ posed to explain to them and the babysitter that I ain’t comin’ home tonight,” the first one said.
I just sat there watching them go back and forth. I didn’t have anything to complain about. I didn’t have kids or another job to get to. My only concern was getting out. I never been locked up before. I didn’t know the procedure or what to expect. For all I knew I would get some time. But then again, I did hear of people being let go when they were minors, so…
“Angel Washington,” a policewoman called out as she opened the cell. I picked my head up and the officer nodded for me to follow her.
“Where she goin?” somebody mumbled.
I followed the woman to a room, or rather a hallway.
“You need to call your mother or legal guardian. Because you are under eighteen, she can come down here and sign you out. You will just have to appear in court in about thirty days. There go the phone over there,” she told me.
You would think I would have been relieved. But any bad situation that required my mom was one I could count on getting worse. My mom wasn’t reliable, period. I picked up the phone anyway. I dialed my mom in hopes I was wrong this one time.
“Mom!” I damn near shouted when I heard her say hello.
“Angel?” my mom asked, sounding sleepy.
“Mom, I need you come down to the police station and get me.” I didn’t hesitate.
“Police station? You ain’t been home in days and you call me asking me to come get you from a police station? What you done did anyway?”
I lowered my voice and tried to have patience with my mom, even though I was fed up with her. “Underage drinking. But I only had one drink at this club.”
“See that. Welcome to the real world. I’m glad you got a dose of reality. You don’t have nothing goin’ for you. So get used to this kind of shit. You just like me, like how I was when I was your age. Some people are just chosen, and people like us just ain’ t,” she told me.
I huffed and rolled my eyes. I wasn’t tryna hear that shit. I didn’t believe one word of it. I was nothing like my mom, and I was determined to keep it that way. I just went along with her because I needed her. Otherwise I would have hung up on her.
“Can you come down here? I don’t have all day on the phone.”
“How I’ ma get there? I don’t get no money to the first.”
“Just get money from somebody, and I’ll give it back.”
“Who goin’ give me some money?”
“You only need carfare. Like five dollars. You can get five dollars from Marvin.�
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“Marvin ain’t got no money. He just gave me his last twenty to go to the Laundromat earlier.”
I was getting frustrated. My mom was actin’ like it was impossible for her to gather five dollars to come get me out of jail, but let her need a hit, she would find a way to get that money.
“All right. Well if I have somebody pick you up and bring you, you goin’ come?” I thought about Antione. I knew he would do it.
“I would, but I need a couple dollars to last me about a week,” my mom said.
That was it. I had it with that lady. She was officially not my mom anymore. She wanted me to pay her to get me out of jail. That was the shit I was talking about.
“All right! Whatever! Just stay by the phone!” I screamed at my mom, no longer able to keep my peace.
“My mom can come. She just needs a ride. Can I call someone to pick her up?” I asked the policewoman.
“Go ’head,” she said, popping her gum and flipping through a magazine.
“Thank you,” I said, dialing Antione.
Pick up the phone, Ant Man, please, I thought to myself.
“It’s Ant. Leave a message.” Beep.
“Got damn it,” I mumbled.
Before I could ask for one more call, the policewoman told me to go ‘head.
I called my very last resort.
“Butter,” I said in relief.
“Who this?” Butter asked.
“Angel. I need a huge favor.”
“They locked you up?”
“Yeah. I’m down here at the police station. They goin’ let me out, but I need my mom to come down here. Can you please go to her house and get her and bring her down here? I’ll pay you.”
There was a brief silence. Then Butter said, “Where ya mom stay at?”
“Brooklyn. Right by Louis Armstrong.”
“Damn, that’s a hike. You goin’ definitely pay me for this. And what station they got you at?”
“In Harlem, by the river.”
“Oh, yes, you owe me.”
“Thank you so much, Butter. You don’t know how much you are helping me right now.”
I gave Butter my mom’s phone number and address and then I had to return to the cell. I counted the minutes until Butter and my mom got to the station. My mom had to show her I.D., and she signed the paperwork. As soon as we stepped foot out the precinct, my mom held her hand out. I didn’t have but forty dollars on me, and I wasn’t about to give her my last, especially after she stole over six hundred dollars from me. She had to be crazy if she thought I would give her a dime.
“You don’t gotta take me home. I got people on this side I’ma stay with tonight. Just give me that couple dollars,” my mom said.
“I don’t have it right now. I just got out of jail. I need time to make my money back.”
My mom gave me an evil eye. “Don’t play games with me, Angel! You got some money! Even if it’s just a hundred dollars.”
She had some nerve, You expect me to give you a hundred dollars after you just stole damn near ten times that from me a few days ago?” I shouted.
“I will go in there and tell them cops to keep ya grown ass down here! I told you I needed some money…”
“Not no hundred dollars!”
“Well then, fifty! I don’t care! I came all the way down here with no way back and…”
“You said you was stayin’ with ya people!”
“I still need to get back tomorrow!”
Butter finally butted in, “Y’all drawin’ arguin’ like this in front of the police station. Angel, give ya mom some money and let’s go, shit, I ain’t goin’ be sittin’ out here all night while y’all go at each other’s throats.”
I took a twenty out my pocket and threw it at my mom. If it wasn’t for Butter, she wouldn’t have got that. But it wasn’t right to have Butter standin’ out there in the cold because me and my mom couldn’t get it together. So I just gave her the money to shut her up. She picked the twenty up and walked off. She didn’t say thank you, bye, where you goin’ be stayin’, or nothin’.
I followed Butter to her car up the street.
“Where am I takin’ you?” Butter asked immediately after I sat in her car.
“To Antione’s house in Brooklyn. Around the corner from where you picked my mom up.”
“That ain’t goin’ work,” Butter said, turning the key in the ignition.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Antione got locked up. They raided his house, too.”
“What? When?”
“Do it matter? He’s locked up. So where am I takin’ you?”
I was dumbfounded. I didn’t have an answer. I could have went back home, but it was no way in hell. I thought about Stacey and Cat. They would have probably let me stay with them for a little while, but they were still in Jamaica. And Jamal been avoiding me since that nut shit between us happened. I didn’t have nowhere to go. Aunt Jackie’s maybe, but I was not tryin’ to go from one dope house to another.
“So?” Butter asked.
“Butter, I don’t know,” I whined. “I’m tryna think.”
“Well, look,” Butter said. “I have a extra room at my house. You can stay there if you need to, until you get on your feet.”
It was goin’ snow. First, Butter came through with getting my mom and bringing her to the station. Then she was offering to let me stay with her. That was surprising. I always thought she didn’t like me. But I guess she was just naturally moody.
“I can?”
Butter nodded her head.
“Oh, my God. Thank you so much, Butter. That’s good lookin’ for real.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
Butter had a brownstone in Spanish Harlem. When we pulled up, there was some guy sitting on her stoop.
“¿Qué pasa?” the guy said to Butter.
“What’s up,” Butter replied as she walked past him.
“Ju got some powder?”
“No. But I got a whole lot of pussy upstairs. What you tryna spend?”
I didn’t understand what the guy wanted from Butter, but I frowned up my face at what Butter said to him. I figured she was just messing with his head, though. I walked past the guy, following Butter to her door, and he grinted on me. I rolled my eyes at his perverted-looking self.
“I got fifty bucks,” he said, “for this chica right here.”
“Knock on my door when you can triple that, pàpí,” Butter said, walking in her house.
Butter’s house was nice and clean. It was decorated richly, with long thick curtains and tie-backs, fancy antique looking furniture, and oriental rugs. I was amazed. Butter’s personality matched nothing with her home decor. It looked like the queen of England lived in that house—not a stripper named Butter.
“Butter, your house is nice,” I told her.
“And it’ll stay that way, too,” she said.
Just then an older brown-skinned woman with big hair and too much makeup on walked down the steps. She was wearing some type of showgirl costume.
“Babe, I’m going out,” the woman told Butter.
Butter told me to sit down in the living room while she walked the woman to the door.
I heard Butter ask her where she was going, and she told Butter she wrote everything down on the board. Whatever that meant. Then I could have sworn I heard them kiss before the door opened and closed. I didn’t know what to make of that. But it seemed like shit was getting stranger and stranger by the minute.
“All right. Now, this is the deal,” Butter said, sitting next to me.
“I don’t expect you to pay rent or buy food. But you will have to work for me if you’re planning on staying here.”
“Okay,” I said. “What will I have to do?” Now I knew there had to be a catch somewhere. I just didn’t know what. I thought maybe Butter would have wanted me to clean her house or cook her food or run her errands or something.
“I got four girls stayin’ here. Most of them worked at Sh
ake’s with me when I first started there. But they got tired of workin’ so damn hard for one-dollar bills. Plus a lot of them had habits and couldn’t keep their rent paid, so me and Shake came up with this idea. Since he knew a lot of guys who had money and liked trickin’ and I had girls at the club in line, we figured we would start a escort service.”
I wanted to jump in, but I didn’t. I waited for Butter to finish before I blew things out of proportion.
“Now, you’ll have your own room, and like I said you won’t be responsible for paying nothing. You just gotta make sure you clean up after yourself. I don’t tolerate a nasty bitch. And if you got a habit, it stays in ya room. Not in my bathroom, hallway, kitchen, basement, or nowhere. It don’t leave ya room or it don’t come in this house, period. You’ll have access to the phone, TV, and washer and dryer and pretty much make yourself at home.”
All that was fine and dandy, but I was waiting to hear about the escorting part. Did she expect me to be a prostitute for her. Was she that crazy?
“As far as working for me, you’ll basically make yourself available whenever I get a call for you. A guy will come pick you up and take you to the hotel around the corner. Y’all do whatever he paid for and he’ll bring you back. I take my percentage off the top and you do whatever you want with yours. You don’t go talkin’ about what you do in the streets. You don’t bring nobody here. I don’t care if it’s ya grand-mom. Nobody is to know where I live or what goes down in here. Last, if you get in a situation with a guy do not, under no circumstances, call 5-0. You understand?” Butter concluded.
“Butter, I don’t mean to be difficult or nothing, but is there anything else I can do besides that? I mean, just until I get on my feet. I’m thinkin’ I’ll be stayin’ here for no longer than two weeks.”
“Listen. You can leave right now. I didn’t tell you all that so you can debate it. That’s how it is and that’s how it’s gonna be. I could give a fuck if you were staying for one day.”
“But, Butter,” I whined.
Butter cut me off, “Leave. Leave!”
“I told you in the car that I didn’t have nowhere to go.”
“You can go home to your mom and let her steal the draws of ya ass, or you can go sit on Antione’s step until he get finish doing a dime in the feds, or you could go back down to the precinct and tell them to hold you there until your court date. You got plenty of places you can go. Now go!”
