Nobody's Girl

by Barbara Amaya

  Moses firmly pushed my hand away. “No touching, girl.”

  “Sorry.” I was upset that I had already done something wrong, but Moses shook his head and turned his green eyes back on the road.

  “Never mind,” he said. “You gonna learn the game, girl.”

  I was relieved that he didn’t sound angry.

  After a few more minutes of driving, he answered my question. “You ain’t seein’ them no mo’. That fool and his ho movin’ down to Texas. You with me now.”

  His ho? His whore? I supposed Nancy had belonged to James, though I had never thought of it that way before. Nor had I heard James call her anything like that, at least not in front of me.

  As the miles rolled by, though, I began to relax. Moses was slick and good-looking in his own flashy way, and his voice was as smooth as silk. There was something that made me trust him; he asked me questions and really seemed to care about what I had to say. I felt embarrassed telling him what Nancy had made me do with all the men, but at the same time it was a relief just telling someone what I’d been going through.

  “How’d you end up with them two fools, girl? You a thoroughbred! You weren’t making half of what you could in New York.”

  I looked out the window at the passing lights. I never had “made” anything, and I sure never saw any cash, so it didn’t make any difference to me whether I was in DC or New York. Money was not important to me. I was only thirteen years old; mainly I was excited about traveling to such a big city.

  After a few minutes of silence, Moses glanced over at me, the glowing buttons on the big dashboard lighting up his face. “Why’d you run away from home, girl? Something bad happen to you there?”

  I felt my heart sink. I was sure that if I told him, he wouldn’t like me anymore. “No…no. I don’t know. I just wanted to get out of there.” I shifted uncomfortably on the soft seat and looked out the window again.

  “Ah now, girl, ain’t no thing. I bet I know what went down with you.”

  I blinked and stared at him.

  “You belong to me now, baby, and you can tell me everything.”

  His voice was comforting, and deep inside I felt a warm glow building in my heart. It felt so good to finally belong to someone! Then the words just started to come out. I told him how scared I’d been at home, and how my mother hadn’t believed me when I tried to tell her what had happened. With each sentence I shared, Moses nodded his head and encouraged me to tell him more.

  After I finished, we were both silent for a while, and then he shifted in his seat and took my small hand in his. “Look, girl, you my lady now. I won’t let no one ever mess with you, okay? I’ll kill any fool stupid enough to bother you.” He let go my hand and pulled open his suit jacket just enough to show me the gun he had stuck in his belt.

  My eyes widened when I saw the shiny gun, yet instead of fear I felt safe. He was going to protect me. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt me again.

  I moved closer to him and smiled. At thirteen I wasn’t sure what love was, but I thought maybe I was falling for Moses.

  ***

  When we arrived in New York, I was amazed by the hustle and bustle of the people rushing by. DC was busy, but there was something so fast and shiny about this city. The buildings seemed to go right up into the sky; they blocked out the sun. There were billboards everywhere, bright yellow taxis were zipping back and forth, and people walked quickly, staring at the ground as they tugged their jackets tighter around their bodies. I’d never seen so many people crammed all together in one place.

  Moses said that since I was his new lady, I was special. I liked being held in the crook of his arm. I was pleased, too, when I noticed a few girls giving me jealous looks when we went out to dinner. I’d never been with someone so sought after. He made me feel important—and, for the first time in my life, safe.

  And I wanted to please him. The first night, I tried to order an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert because I was so hungry. Moses gave me a stern look and shook his head. Somehow realizing he wanted me to watch my weight, I quickly changed my order to a salad and some breadsticks. He nodded once and patted my leg, and I felt a warmth in my stomach. So what if I was still hungry? At least Moses was happy with me.

  After dinner Moses drove straight to a nearby hotel, where he sprawled out on the bed and watched television. I couldn’t keep still. The carpeted floor was dark green and felt so soft under my feet that I threw off my shoes and ran around the room, letting my toes sink into the deep carpet.

  When Moses saw what I was doing, he yelled, “Stop acting like a little kid! Put your damn shoes back on!”

  I quickly did, but kept exploring.

  The bathroom was my favorite part of the room. It was huge, with a big mirror that filled one entire wall, fluffy white towels, and even a long bathrobe hanging from a silver hook on the back of the bathroom door. There was a big bathtub that was wide enough for several people to soak in, and there were tiny bottles of bath bubbles that you could use as well. It felt so different from the ugly communal bathrooms at Bon Air. I decided I loved New York and wanted to stay there forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Not long after we arrived in New York, a group of Moses’s friends stopped by the room. I pretended to watch television, but I was listening to what they were saying about how their girls were doing “out on the track.” They seemed to be talking in another language that I was only just starting to understand.

  “What’s a track?” I asked.

  Moses turned and stared at me. I hoped he wasn’t mad at me for talking, but he just laughed. One of the men told Moses he was spoiling me and that he better teach me what was up. “Ho, don’t you worry. You gonna know where the track is soon enough,” he said with a smirk, and his friends hooted and laughed along with him.

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it.

  After the men left, I noticed a Coke sitting on the floor next to the bed. It was my favorite kind of soda, so I lifted it and took a sip.

  I was shocked when I felt little legs squirming around in my mouth. Coughing, I ran into the bathroom and spit the soda out. I rinsed out my mouth and had Moses bring me some bug spray, which I sprayed all over the room. But that just made it worse because it forced all of the cockroaches out of hiding, and I had to jump up on the bed so they wouldn’t crawl over my feet. Clearly the pretty room wasn’t really what it seemed to be at all.

  ***

  The next day, Moses told me he was taking me to get the right clothes to make it in New York. He wanted his lady to look good, he said. I felt so happy even though a small nagging voice kept reminding me what he had said about the track, and me being a ho.

  We walked through the crowded city streets and went from store to store. Moses selected what he wanted me to try on, and impatiently tapped his expensive shoes while I shimmied into tiny miniskirts and tight shirts that showed off my cleavage. Each time I walked out of the dressing room, he’d have me turn in a slow circle while he debated whether the clothes looked good enough to spend money on. When he told me how pretty I looked in his favorite outfits, I blushed. I couldn’t remember anyone being proud of me before.

  There were so many beautiful clothes in the stores, and I was hoping I could pick out some more comfortable things, like the jeans I had loved wearing. But when Moses saw me fingering through some of the embroidered blue jeans on the racks, he slapped my hand, making me jump. I gripped a metal rack to prevent myself from falling. “You only wear what I like,” he said, stepping closer to me, his eyes boring into mine.

  I nodded quickly and looked down at my shoes. The last thing I wanted was for Moses to be angry with me. I was his special lady, after all.

  ***

  Soon after, Moses began giving me instructions. He told me how I should fix my hair, how to walk, and how to talk to the men who would want to be with me. He said I should just ask, “Going out?” The men, he told me, would know what that meant. Moses also sa
id I should never say my real age unless one of the men asked first.

  “If them tricks ask you how old you are,” he said, “tell them the truth.”

  I stared at him. “Really? Won’t they be freaked out that I’m so young?”

  There was a gleam in his eye that I had never seen before, and it frightened me. “No,” he said quietly. “Trust me.”

  But in case I was arrested, he said, which I would be at some point, I was to memorize a false birth date and name beforehand so they would be ready to roll off my tongue.

  “If another man try to talk to you, don’t you look him in the face,” Moses warned me. “’Cause if you do, you gonna be charged, cash money. And I don’t like no other man talkin’ to my hos, and I damn sure don’t like no one foolin’ with my money.” He grabbed me to him, and I gazed deep into his mesmerizing eyes, trying to figure out if he was angry.

  I didn’t like it when he called me a ho, but I did like it when he said I was his lady. It was so confusing to me the way Moses could make me feel special one moment, and the next make me tremble in my shoes.

  It was around this time that I began to realize that Moses was a pimp, though I only had a shady understanding of the word from what Doris had taught me at Bon Air. The way Moses described it, he was a man who had a bunch of ladies whom he took care of. In return, they worked for him.

  It was hard to keep all the rules straight and not mix them up, and yet it was exciting to be part of this secret world I now belonged to. I liked the thought of someone taking care of me. For the first time in a long while, I felt like part of a family. Moses told me our secret world had a name: the life. Everyone else was part of the square world.

  The term “square” made sense to me. My family was part of that world, but I had never really felt like I belonged inside the walls of my home. I loved that now I was part of something bigger than me. It was me and Moses against everyone else—the square world. I was so happy, and I knew I owed him so very much.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After we had spent about two weeks at the hotel, Moses told me, “You’ll be going out tonight with Cindy.”

  I vaguely remembered hearing her name once or twice when Moses was talking to her on the phone. I knew she had come to New York with Moses from Ohio, and that she had been with Moses for a long time. I didn’t know much else about her; Moses kept each and every girl under his control as separate as possible. I think Moses used Cindy to show his new girls the ropes because she had been with him the longest.

  I was not at all happy about having to meet Cindy, and I definitely didn’t want to share Moses with anyone else. But I was afraid to tell him. I was also kind of scared of Cindy. What if she hated me too and wanted to beat me up?

  Later that night, Cindy came into the room. She was a short, stocky girl with a snub nose, dark-brown hair, and a sullen face. I towered over her, even without heels. I could tell right away that we wouldn’t get along.

  When she saw me sitting on the bed, she huffed, rolled her eyes, and folded her arms over her short fake-fur jacket.

  Moses turned and looked at her, frowning. “Ho, what I tell you about them damn boots? You look like damn Santa Claus, ho.” Moses smirked at his own joke and laughed under his breath. “Don’t wear them again.”

  Cindy stared down at the tall black leather boots that covered her chubby knees. As she ran her hands over the boots, she glanced quickly at me to see if I had noticed the argument. I looked away. I just wanted them to stop fighting.

  “You all go on down to Fifty-Seventh Street. Teach my new lady the game,” Moses told her.

  “Why do I always have to teach these dumb bitches?” she whined. “I can bring in more cash by myself than with this bitch over here.”

  Moses’s green eyes flashed. His voice was a growl. “Look here, bitch. You can stop your shit before I kick your ass.”

  They both stared at each other until the fight went out of Cindy. She looked deflated. She stalked over to a chair by the window, sat down, and didn’t say another word.

  Moses smiled at me and said, “Girl, go with this here bitch, and she’s gonna show you what’s up. She crazy, but she knows how to make money, that’s for sure.”

  Then he laughed and pulled Cindy up out of the chair and into his arms, swaying back and forth as if they were dancing. I could tell Cindy didn’t want to smile, but the ends of her lips were curving as he hummed a song into her ear.

  ***

  Cindy didn’t look at me once as Moses drove both of us down to the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Avenue of the Americas. As we got out of the car, Moses peeled ten dollars for each of us from the large wad of cash he kept in his gold money clip.

  “You listen to this here bitch,” he warned me. “You need to bring home at least two hundred dollars a night.”

  He had already told me about his quota and made it very clear to me what would happen if I disobeyed him. But although he scared me sometimes, I also had a deep desire to please him. I wanted Moses to like me, and I wanted him to be proud. I wanted to do well on the track. Moses was the first man who had ever made me feel smart and pretty, and I loved when he showered attention on me. I knew in my heart that he loved and protected me.

  Our first customer was staying at a hotel nearby on Avenue of the Americas. He was nondescript—short with brown hair and brown eyes, and skinny. I listened as Cindy negotiated with him.

  “You going out? What you looking for?” she said, smiling at him. She was nicer to him in the few minutes they were talking than she had been to me during the whole car ride.

  “Straight sex,” he told her nervously.

  “You’re in luck,” Cindy said, flicking her head in my direction. “She’s coming with us to the room ’cause I’m showing her the ropes. Fifty dollars for me, and if you want her too, it’s another fifty.”

  He shook his head. “Just you.”

  Cindy shot me a smug smile.

  I was glad that he didn’t want to spend more, because I sure didn’t want to have sex with him anyway. But the problem was that I wasn’t any closer to my two-hundred-dollar quota. Calculating quickly in my head, I realized I needed to go out with at least four men to make the quota, unless one man wanted to spend more money. That would make my job easier, so I told myself I’d better get as much as I could from each one.

  After Cindy was done with the first man, we returned to Fifty-Seventh Street and I began my real work on the track. It was a long night. Most of our customers were wealthy men who were staying in nearby hotels like the Plaza. We found them walking down the street in that neighborhood. I stayed close to Cindy so that she wouldn’t leave me and disappear; because of her obvious dislike for me, I didn’t put it past her to do that.

  “This here’s Barbara. She’s my new wife-in-law. Moses got me out here showing her what’s up.” Cindy scowled as she introduced me to the other girls on the corner. She seemed to have a permanent frown on her face.

  Moses wasn’t stupid; he didn’t talk with his ladies out on the track, but he did check on us. He drove by from time to time and acted like we were complete strangers. Every few hours I called him from a nearby pay phone as he had instructed me to do.

  Cindy only watched me for the first couple of days. After that, it wasn’t long before I was talking to customers by myself and going with them to their hotel rooms. There was also a small hourly hotel up the street from where we all stood on Fifty-Seventh. Sometimes I would take customers there instead.

  ***

  Weeks went by, and my life took on a sort of rhythm. I knew where I was going to be and when I was going to be there. I knew how much money I had to make to keep Moses happy. And the most important part of all: I belonged. I belonged to my man, to our family of girls and my crazy wife-in-law, and to the life. I didn’t have to wonder if I’d ever find a place where others might love me and take care of me. Whatever I had been looking for, I had found it right there in the streets of New York, along with all the other
young women just like me.

  The downside to being part of the life was all the men. At first I didn’t know how to handle it; I felt my mind and my heart growing numb. Eventually, while my body was being used by my customers, I would float to the top of the room, just like I had when my father and older brother had touched me. It was an odd, unpleasant feeling, but I didn’t mind it as much as I had before. I think some small part of me realized that it was my way of separating myself from the horrors of my life, so I could survive.

  Having friends and being popular—typical teenagers’ problems—quickly became twisted by the dark criminal world I lived in. I was still just a kid inside, a young girl who liked the same things all girls liked. I loved wearing pretty clothes and getting my nails and hair done in the latest styles, and I would chat with the other girls on the track about the shoes and miniskirts that were in fashion that year.

  One night as I sat eating my dinner in the busy corner restaurant on the track, another young girl hurried in and sat down next to me.

  “Who did your eye makeup?” she asked as she fiddled with a straw from the table. “I like the way you blended the brown and tan colors.” In the next breath she said, “Hey, did you hear about Johnny?”

  I frowned. I knew her man was called Johnny, but one of the many rules of the life was that you must never talk about your man with others on the track.

  “Rita killed him.”

  I blinked. Just like that, he was gone—killed? Was that murder? I didn’t know what to say.

  She crunched up the straw into a little ball of trash as she went on with her news. “Rita was so mad at him, but I don’t think she did it on purpose. She says she didn’t really mean to shoot him. She is acting kind of nuts, though, and she hasn’t taken off his robe since the cops came and took his body away. I’m just glad they didn’t take her with him.”

  She didn’t really look at me as she told me the news; she just swung her feet back and forth and played with the trash on the table. Then we started talking about eye shadow again. It was hard not to be confused, but that’s how it was in the life; girls in sexy clothes doing adult things, while deep inside they were still kids who wanted to play with makeup.