I smiled. She’d used that line before, I could tell. “I’m sorry.”
“Left me in a dumpster,” she said. “That was San Antonio. They tested me at the hospital and told me I was a miracle for surviving, but I was gonna die anyway on account of the AIDS.”
I pictured how people would treat a fifteen-year-old prostitute with HIV in San Antonio. “So, I came back here. My mom is here.”
“I live in Hot Springs,” I said.
“Oh, I’ve danced there,” she said. “I was at the Black Orchid the night of the flood. The water was going through, and the fire truck came through with the . . . what’s that called?”
“Hook and ladder.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Us and the firemen were all drinking champagne. It was great.”
There was an innocence to her that made you want to help her.
“So now what?” I said, looking at her belly.
“The doctor said the AZT might help him.”
“It’s a boy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s funny because my mom just had a girl a few months ago. That makes her his cousin. No, his aunt.”
“Can you stay with her?”
“No.”
“Do you have someone you can stay with?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Besides Tank.”
“Then, no.”
I held back a sigh. I knew what I had to do. “Okay, well, how about you come and stay with me?”
She shrugged. “Okay.” This was a girl who went where the wind blew her.
“Just for a little while,” I said. “I can get you in the system with housing assistance and that will get you and the baby a place. But listen, I have an eight-year-old girl. No men, no drugs, no none of that stuff.”
She nodded, and I walked out of there planning for a new roommate.
Dolly came to live with us right before Halloween, and FooFoo eyed her suspiciously. She took Allison’s room, because Allison would always end up in my room anyway. Allison had a trundle bed, and it held a second mattress that we called the “guest mattress.” I would switch them out for the people who came to stay with me in emergencies, as they sometimes would have issues with holding their bowels or urine.
When Dolly got to the house, Allison and I were trying to get a Halloween costume together.
“Oh, I have costumes!” Dolly said. She ran to her suitcase and started pulling out these spangly, barely there strips of clothes. She held up a pair of devil horns and beamed when Allison took them. “Or wait!” She pulled out a black bustier with white ruffle. “You could be a pirate!”
“Okay, Dolly,” I said, before Allison could even consider it. “We’re going to have to think on this one.”
I told KARK-TV about Dolly, and Doug Krile agreed to do a story on her about teen pregnancy and access to information about safer sex. I wanted people to make that connection. I also hadn’t had many women, and I knew there were more out there than what I was seeing. I wanted them to feel less alone. Also, the women I’d seen with HIV in the media pushed a victim agenda that somehow made gay men seem like they had it coming. I liked that Dolly didn’t talk like that, even if it was more about Dolly not reflecting on anything long enough to really form an opinion.
I had to get her some clothes to wear for the TV interview, because her wardrobe consisted of feathers and sequins. I went to see Rebecca Hanke, this lovely woman who went to my hairdresser’s. She’d recently had a baby, so I knew she would have nice maternity clothes. I took Dolly with me to pick up the clothes, and she eyed the baby with a mix of terror and uncertainty. I remembered how lonely I’d felt when I first had Allison. How unprepared I was. I recognized that look of fear.
For the TV interview, Dolly chose a white linen blouse with a sailor neck and sleeves. Rebecca had told her she’d bought it in Dallas, and it had matching pants. When Dolly put it on, she kept touching the fabric, running her hands over the material.
“I love it,” she said, surprise in her voice. “I never really had something this nice.”
Allison and Dolly got along because Dolly was so childlike, and it really was like having another kid in the house. She wanted to be waited on hand and foot, and she was always hungry. I found these little pieces of meat I could get for a dollar a pound. They had a little bone in them, but you could take that out, put some flour on them, and fry them. Throw in some potatoes and onions and make a gravy—Dolly loved that dish. The one time she tried to help clean up after a meal, she took the iron skillet, missed the sink, and broke one of the tiles by the counter.
When Mitch met her, he put two and two together and realized that one of the guys he had helping him build a dock, Mike, was always talking about this stripper, Dolly, who he was obsessed with. Mike was a real shy guy but a good worker, so we arranged for Dolly to surprise him and say hi.
I drove her out to the dock they were working on, and she came out of the car pregnant, in stripper heels.
“Hi, Mike,” she said. And he about fainted. I might’ve too. I saw why he loved her, right there. There was a sweetness to her, even with the scars on her mind and heart. She thanked him for being a fan, and if she didn’t remember him, she did a damned good job of pretending. She held his hand as they caught up and hugged him when she said goodbye.
A lot of people wrote off people like Dolly, the same way they discarded the men at Our House. I knew what I had to do next: I had to start with the strippers in town.
There were so many different strip clubs in Hot Springs. Well, “titty bar” was the official term. You put any kind of a name in front of it—Tom’s, Dick’s, or Harry’s—we had ’em. I knew all the owners from living around town, but there was one guy, Claude, who owned a bunch of them. Claude and the other owners were all pretty accepted, because it was really a boys’ club in Hot Springs. Most of them weren’t married, so they didn’t get invited to the social parties, but they didn’t really want to go.
The clubs were all out on 70 East, one-floor numbers with no windows. The clientele was mostly men visiting from out of town, because the locals went out to Little Rock, where they wouldn’t be seen. The only one Hot Springs men went to was Centerfold, because it was so far out that no wives would drive by looking for a car in the parking lot.
I saw Claude out while I was walking with Tim and Jim in the park. I’d met them near their apartment with Allison, and we brought four mugs and packets of hot cocoa mix. We did this every now and again in late fall and wintertime, getting hot, hot water from a fountain and sipping as we walked, until we ended up on the wraparound porch of the Arlington. It was November, and the temperature never really got below forty-five, but it still felt cozy to have a warm mug of tea or cocoa as you watched the world go by.
When I saw Claude, I knew it was my chance. Anything to do with smut, Claude was your guy, but there was something charming about him. “Just the man I was looking for,” I said.
“My lucky day,” he said. “It’s nice when a blond is looking for you.”
“Role reversal, I guess.”
“How can I he’p you?”
“Well, Claude, I’ve been doing a lot of work with HIV, and I gotta say it’s something the heterosexual community needs to know about.”
He smiled politely. Tim and Jim were walking a little bit ahead now, and Allison was showing them cartwheels. I lowered my voice to a slight whisper. “I know you want to make sure your girls are safe,” I said. “I’m not saying anything about the clubs, but we all know people have after-work jobs and side gigs.”
He nodded quickly, enough to acknowledge that we both knew what that might be. “Okay, so what are you talking about doing exactly?”
“I could come in, talk to the girls, offer free testing. All voluntary. Nobody knows, and in a couple weeks we all have a nice Thanksgiving knowing we did a good thing.”<
br />
“Where would you do this?”
“Well, you gotta fish where they’re biting, so the club, right?” I’d been thinking about this. I wanted to go when the most girls were there, and I figured if I declared I had drop-in hours at my place, nobody would come for fear of gossip. Just like at Our House.
When Claude didn’t say anything, I leaned in. “Come on,” I whispered. “It’s a real thing we need to worry about.”
He nodded. I said, “Great,” before he could change his mind.
That week I asked Bonnie if she could babysit Allison on Thursday. “I need to hit the strip club.”
“It’s come to that, huh?” she joked.
“Yep,” I said. “It’s come to that.”
Chapter Twenty
“No unaccompanied women,” the bouncer said. “You need to come back with a guy.”
He was big and doing his best to look bigger. Behind him, I could see a red-haired woman dancing on a bar to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” There was a purple spotlight on her, and the bouncer shifted his weight to block the view.
“Well, my guy is Claude,” I said, switching a heavy tote of test kits and boxes of condoms from one hand to another. “I mean, Claude told me I could come by.”
“Oh,” he said, stepping aside to let me in. “Sorry.”
“Thank you. Is Claude here now?” When he nodded, I took a few steps into the club, and turned back to ask him, “Why is it ‘No girls allowed,’ anyway?”
“Some come in looking for, uh, clients, ma’am.”
“Got it,” I said, turning to casually take in the whole place without looking like I was gawking. I’d dressed in nice blue jeans, a simple top, and my highest black heels to avoid the church lady look. Just something I thought the women might wear. The club had a big rectangle of a bar, and the redhead, dancing expertly, stepped over glasses and beer bottles. Men stared at her as she moved in her red bra and panties, some transfixed, some standoffish, clearly saving their dollars for someone else.
Claude spotted me first and brought me to the dressing room. I walked in holding the tote behind my back. It was like a long-hair salon back there, full of women getting ready in various states of undress. There was a bulletin board right at the door, next to rows of lockers. The board had pictures of kids and pets, smiling shots of the strippers at birthday parties at the club, the flash harsh on them, all made up in the dark of the bar. Touches of home.
The women looked me over. I picked out the alpha immediately, a leggy blond with a skeptical look on her face. She had her arms crossed across her white nightie.
“I’m guessing Claude told you why I asked to come here,” I said. “I’ve been helping a woman, a dancer. She has HIV, she’s going to be a mom, like some of you probably are, and she has a chance at staying healthy longer because she knows her status.”
I paused. “It’s all voluntary and anonymous,” I said. “If you want, I take your blood now, real quick, and either you give me your number or I give you mine so I can give you the results. It’s nobody’s business but yours.” The alpha shifted her weight from one hip to the next but kept her arms crossed.
“Claude,” I said, “can you give us a minute?” He turned, reluctantly, and left.
“I’m not going to tell Claude anything, not even yes or no if he asks if anyone tests positive. But you need to know. You can keep working, but you’d know you have to start taking care of yourself, make sure you have safe sex every time.”
I paused, seeing Alpha soften. She looked over at a woman, maybe in her early forties, a motherly type in a black bustier.
“I’m a friend,” I said.
“Okay,” said Alpha, and she and the motherly one came toward me as I reached my hand out to shake theirs.
“I’m Ruth,” I said, then pointed to a little card table. “Okay, can we set up over there?” I turned to Alpha. “I love that shade of lipstick. What is it?”
“Covergirl. Cherries in the Snow.”
“It suits you,” I said. “Hey, do you think you could tell the girls out on the floor that I’m okay? Tell them to come on in when they have a minute. That’s all it takes.” I turned to the motherly one. “Would you like to start?”
She did. If somebody wanted to get tested they did, and if they didn’t they didn’t. No one was looking over their shoulder or anything. It reminded me of those GI movies from the 1940s, with the recruits lining up for exams. I gave each one the same speech. “I’ll take the test home tonight, but if something happens between now and when I get the test results back, it could say you’re negative but you’re not. I can come back and test you again in six weeks, then six months, then a year. You’re good as long as you use protection. If you meet someone, and they don’t want to use protection, you have to decide if that’s something you want to risk your life on. It’s nobody’s fault, but there are things you can do to protect yourself. It’s your body, and you have to live in it.”
Alpha came back with more girls, and I thanked her. A lot of them made nervous chitchat while I prepped their arms with alcohol, asking what type of work I did. Some suggested that I could make a lot of money dancing, and I thanked each one profusely. “I’ll have to think on that,” I lied each time. “I get shy.”
No one believed that, but many would invite me to watch their show. I felt bad saying no, so I moved the samples to a cooler in my car, then came back in and watched. A lot of them had real pride in their acts, usually two songs. A fast song where they danced quickly and got the lay of the land in the audience, and then a slower one, with fewer clothes, when they could focus on the men who seemed enraptured.
Some would put on a good show up there, but the truth is, I’d been spoiled by drag queens. Now, that was a performance. A lot of these girls, you could hear them thinking, “Okay, to the left. Now, to the right.” A glob of goo up on that bar. If they only had Miss Cherry Fontaine and Mother Superior to mentor them. “Girl, get out there and work it, and you can get more tips.” I was imagining a stripper-training seminar at Our House, when Claude came over.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Oh sure,” I said. “The girls are lovely.” I explained my testing schedule. How I would like to come back in periodically. He nodded, but I could tell he had thought this was a one-shot deal and I’d give him everybody’s report card.
“One thing,” I said. “I have all these condoms I brought with me, and I would love to give them a home here. Do you think the dressing room is good? By the front door?”
“Uh, dressing room, I guess,” he said.
“I just want people to have access to information and protection. I don’t need to know what people do.”
After that night, I was in. I could go to the owners of other clubs and say that Claude would vouch for me. Then it was, “I was just at Tom’s.” I saw men from my church there, so it was no wonder I was starting to get more and more looks on Sunday mornings, but we were all so practiced at keeping secrets. They gave me a look that said, “I’ll keep yours if you keep mine.”
So many of the strippers tested positive. Some were already looking sick when I tested them, that wearing away of the body. I kept my promise to tell the women privately, away from the club. A lot of them were angry, and it was different than telling men. They felt they had been unfairly put at risk, and I would gently tell them that it was unfair to anyone who got it, gay or straight. I would teach them the intricacies of safer sex, based on what we knew, and get them into medical care. I talked about IV drug use, which was always a flash point.
“I don’t do ’em,” they’d say.
“Well, I know you don’t, but others do. And sharing needles is a very efficient way to transmit HIV, so tell anyone you know not to do that.”
There was a secondary wave of testing, after the strippers, that I did not anticipate but maybe should have. I wa
s in my car outside of town looking at a map to figure out the best way to get to Jasper, up north, where I had a new patient. There was a knock on the glass.
“Hello, Officer,” I said.
“Good morning,” he said. “You’re Ruth Burks.”
“Yes,” I said, tentative and a little concerned.
His girlfriend was a stripper, and he wanted me to test him. He also asked if he should get his wife tested. “I think everybody should get tested,” I said. “That’s my motto.” I tested him over at Hollywood Cemetery, and he was negative. Then it turned out there were a lot of police officers in Arkansas dating strippers, so I spent more than a few afternoons sitting in the front seats of squad cars taking blood.
I told all this to Mitch, not naming names. He listened, impassive, and I sometimes wondered what it would take for him to be a real partner in my life. I had helped Dolly move into her own apartment, and I watched her pregnancy progress with a little bit of envy. I pictured having a child with Mitch, and the four of us—me, Mitch, Allison, and our baby—being a family. I had a fantasy world, where my guys would hold the baby while I sorted their meds or helped them fill out forms. And another world, where there was a cure, and we could all go back to our normally scheduled programming.
Mitch took me to see Dances with Wolves one Saturday in December. The Union Army’s First Lieutenant John Dunbar requests to be stationed at the furthermost outpost on the western frontier so he can see it before it’s gone. When he gets there, he finds the fort abandoned but dutifully restocks and fortifies the outpost. He’s convinced the cavalry is going to come. They’ll be there any day, and he keeps looking for them through his binoculars. And they never come. He is completely alone but convinced he has to keep at it.
There was one tear, then another, finally a flood. Mitch kept looking at me, and I slunk down in my seat. I wanted to hold someone and be held, but I was alone amongst all these people in the theater. And with Mitch, my boyfriend, who was still Mr. Saturday Night.
All the Young Men Page 21
