by Carl Weber
“Little brother, we all know how much you love cars,” Lou started, proud of what was coming next. Ever the “amen corner,” NeeNee chimed in.
“You spend so much time in this place. I’m glad Lou bought it and gave us all jobs, ’cause it’s the only way we get to see you,” she said.
“What?” LC blushed, trying to play it off like he was normal when it came to cars. “It’s no secret that I like cars. Lots of people like cars.”
“Like?” I gave him an amused look. “Boy, if you could marry a car, you would.” As soon as I said the word marry I could tell it dropped LC into another place. Nobody told him to ask that girl to marry him. He was too young, and they hadn’t even been together that long. Still, I hated to see him like this.
“You all right?” I went over and took hold of NeeNee’s shoulder.
“That boy got female trouble for sure.” NeeNee, stated the obvious. “Wouldn’t be no competition if it was up to me.”
“We know how you feel,” I said, hoping she’d stop. LC needed to make up his own mind.
“Well, the only way to get over one woman is to get under another—or in some cases, into a new car, which will get you under another one.” Lou laughed at his own joke. “And since that’s the reason we’re all gathered out here.” He pointed to a car sitting underneath a cover.
LC glanced from Lou to the car, not sure what it meant.
“’Bout time you had your own set of wheels that doesn’t have a tow attached to it.” I couldn’t help but laugh.
Levi and I lifted the cover off of the cherry red and white 1957 Corvette convertible roadster. The look on LC’s face was love at first sight. Hell, that car was so pretty I would marry it.
“You’re fucking joking, right? Isn’t that the car I was working on last week? Quincy’s car?”
“It sure is,” I replied. “Once you got it running right, we sent it over to Ralph’s to paint it.”
LC ran his hand over the hood and down the side of the car. “Oh my God, she’s gorgeous. That’s got to be the best paint job I’ve ever seen.”
“It should be, for what it cost,” Lou boasted, handing him the keys.
“Happy birthday, little bro!” I shouted.
“Thank you! You guys are the best brothers a man could ever have,” LC said, finally smiling. “Now, I guess I’ll take my new car for a drive and go see if I still have a girlfriend.”
Chippy
37
I stood in front of that place for God knows how long before I finally got up the nerve to step onto the porch. Taking a deep breath, I walked over to the door and opened it. While everything had changed for me, I quickly realized that life in Big Sam’s place continued to function the same way, no matter if I left or stayed put. The owner and proprietor himself, Big Sam, in all his glory, sat at the head of a large table filled with his loud, obnoxious gambling buddies. They all aspired to be him, which he loved. And then there was that new bitch was standing over his shoulder like she owned the place. I wondered if the other girls had felt about me the way I felt about her now. She was young, stupid, and naïve if she thought she would be Sam’s girl for more than a minute.
All the girls were gussied up in their skin-tight dresses, hot pants, and negligees, their feet stuffed into high heels. They were traipsing around so they could flirt with the customers in the bar, trying to get them to buy something other than the watered down drinks. There was a reason Big Sam made a killing on the bar alone.
As much as I wanted to ignore him, I couldn’t help but glance in Sam’s direction, mainly because I felt his eyes on me from the moment I entered. When we connected, he nodded to me like everything was everything, and all the bad that had gone down had been overdramatized in my imagination. So I moved my head. I guess you could call it a nod in his direction, and then I continued through the room and up the stairs, the adrenaline shooting through me even as I pretended to play it cool.
There were feet following behind me, which I soon discovered belonged to Tasty, because the moment I stepped into my room, there she was with her two cents. At least that was what I thought she was going to do.
“Don’t pay attention to them. You all right?” she asked. I wasn’t sure if she cared or if she was just looking for gossip to share with the girls so they could make fun of me behind my back.
“Yeah,” I answered, not really in the mood to talk to anyone.
“So you back?” She wanted to know, even though I had placed my bag on top of the bed and had begun to unpack the few things I’d obtained, putting them inside the chest of drawers.
“I guess.” Since there was no use in lying, I told her, “Truth is, I didn’t have nowhere else to go.” You best believe I was ready to hear something out of her mouth to make me feel worse, but it didn’t come.
“Yeah, neither did I,” she admitted.
I found myself starting to feel some sort of camaraderie with her. When I looked up, Fancy, Jasmine, Little Momma, Sandra, and Tasty were all crowded into my room.
“Chippy, you all right?” Sandra asked with a crazy expression on her face, her fist clenched at her face like she was about to do the rope-a-dope. “Don’t let that man hurt you.”
“She ain’t even that pretty!” Little Momma sucked her teeth, trying to make me feel better.
Then Fancy had to have her say, and for someone who didn’t always know how to string two words together, she wound up making the most sense of anybody. “Sam can’t help being Sam. Just like we can’t help being hoes.”
That’s when Big Shirley entered the room and shooed the bunch of ’em out of my room. “Let me talk to Chippy alone for a second. We’ll see you all downstairs.” Then she came over to me.
“You okay, baby?” she asked, wrapping her arms around me the way I imagined a mother—certainly not mine, but one who knew how to be a mother—would have responded in this situation. God, it felt good to have somebody holding me. Try as I might to keep up my tough act, I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing, my body wracked with sobs as I let go of everything and just wept.
She patted me on the back. “There, there, baby. It’s gonna be all right” I looked up at her scarred face and broke down again.
“I’m sorry, Shirley. I know you must hate me, but I’m sorry,” I apologized profusely as I fought to regain my composure. All my life I’d kept my promise not to become one of those women like my mother, who let a man take away her common sense and dignity, and here I had become damn near worse than her.
“Don’t.” Shirley admonished me. “Each and every one of us in this house been standing in the same place you in right now, girl. He done it to each and every one of us.” Her voice held a bitterness I hadn’t heard in her before. I’d seen her get mad, but not at him, not that way.
“That’s cause we all stupid to fall for his lies,” I told her, the hurt stinging my throat.
Shirley took me by the shoulders and held me at arms’ length so she could look straight into my eyes. “Ain’t nothing stupid about falling in love and wanting to believe the man you care about is who he says he is, and not a lying, no-good pimp. That’s a hard thing to see, and Big Sam, to his credit, is good at making you feel like you the most important thing in the world—till you’re not.” She had a sadness about her at that moment. I nodded, but still it didn’t make sense.
“If you knew he was doing that to me or to the others, how come you didn’t try to talk some sense into us? You been here the longest.” I challenged her.
“I did, and this is what I got for it, remember?” She pointed at her face. Big Shirley looked at me, her eyes full of kindness. “Baby girl, nobody ever wants to believe it. I didn’t.”
Her words still didn’t comfort me. “But I’m not them!” I yelled, trying to get her to see that I was different.
When her eyes met mine, they were filled with the most love I’d ever seen from anybody who wasn’t trying to shove his dick into one of my holes. “We all loved him at one time or
another. Hell, some of us still do.” I knew that she didn’t say this to hurt me, but to inform me so that I would see we weren’t that different. Here I was, a newer, younger model, and not as young as the newest one that had just walked in the door.
“But I’m so sad,” I cried, not knowing how I was going to be able to survive this kind of hurt.
“And soon you won’t be. This is business, but now instead of handing over all your money, you need to get smart and sock some of it away. One day you’ll be able to go off and see the world and do some of those big things you got in your head to do. Don’t you let that man kill your dreams, Chippy. Don’t become me. Don’t you waste your years away. You’re something better than the rest of us. We can all see it. That’s why some of us hate you so much,” Shirley said.
I knew that she meant it, and well, that made me feel hopeful in some way.
“Okay,” I whispered, going over to take the last of my things out of the suitcase.
She came behind me. “You a ho now, ’cept you a ho with a plan. Get yourself pretty and let’s get you back to work.”
“Shirley?” I stopped her before she left. “You deserve better than this too. I hope you have a plan.”
Even though she didn’t answer, I could see her smiling as she left, and I knew she did have one.
After she was gone, I freshened up and got myself together. This time, instead of worrying about making Sam happy, I was thinking about myself and what would make me happy. That’s when I heard a knock on the door.
“So you’re back?” Sam walked in the room without waiting for me to invite him in.
I shrugged. “Well, that all depends.”
He raised an eyebrow, speaking more definitively. “Depends on what?”
“Depends on how this conversation ends,” I said matter-of-factly. “Have a seat.”
Sam sat down on the chair next to my bed.
“How’s the new girl?”
“She’s working out just fine.” He sat back in the chair, looking a little annoyed. I knew I had to make my point quickly, before he lost his patience and left.
“But she’s not me, is she? She’s not bringing in Chippy type of money, is she?”
He folded his arms. “What’s the point?”
I leaned forward. “The point is, you never had a ho work these sorry asses like I do.” He didn’t deny my statement, so I continued. “I’ll come back to work for you, but I want thirty percent of what I bring in, and in six months I’m out of here to take what’s mine, no strings attached.” I leaned back and folded my arms defiantly.
It took him a moment to comprehend what I had said. Then he sat up and laughed at me. “Bitch, are you crazy? Why the hell would I give you thirty percent?”
I was not backing down. I stared boldly in his eyes. “Because I make twice what these other girls make, and if I’m motivated, I can probably make three times what they make. More importantly, seventy percent of what I make is a hell of a lot more than any of these other hoes make.”
Sam sat back in his chair. “Chippy, Chippy, Chippy, you was always smarter than the rest. Figure you’ll get you a little nest egg then hightail cross country, huh? See the world, fulfill your dreams.”
“Something like that. You know what they say: make lemons into lemonade.”
“What if I say no?” Sam asked, biting one of his nails.
“Then I’ll go see Bobcat over at the lighthouse. I’m sure he’d love for my regulars to start coming there. But for the record, I’d rather not, ’cause I don’t want to work in that dump. I want to work here.”
“So you got this all planned out, don’t you?”
“A friend of mine told me I should be a ho with a plan, and we both know you love money too much to say no,” I said.
Sam nodded his head. “Okay, but twenty percent, not thirty, and if you tell any one of these bitches about our agreement, I’ll cut your fucking throat. I don’t care how much money you make. Oh, and fifty bucks comes off the top each week for your room and board.”
“Deal.” I stuck out my hand and he shook it.
“One last thing,” he said. “Tomorrow I need your ass to take a ride with me. Don’t ask me why, but your ass has been requested.”
I nodded in agreement, and he left.
When I went downstairs, I walked slowly and methodically, with a big smile on my face. I walked to Sam, nudging past that new bitch to kiss his cheek. A middle-aged guy had just come inside the house and caught my eye.
“Hey there, handsome, you looking to have yourself some fun?” I asked him. I was ready to put my new financial plan into motion, but all I could think about was LC Duncan.
LC
38
I’d driven down to Jekyll Island to see if I could find Donna. The crazy thing about it was that the entire ride, all I could think about was Chippy and the fact that she’d told me she was in love with me. I had to admit to myself there was something there. The question was whether it was love or just some crazy infatuation. My hope was that going to see Donna would make my thoughts of Chippy vanish.
Once I got down to the Washingtons’ summer place, Donna was nowhere to be found; however, I did run into her father, who couldn’t help but talk shit about me working in a garage, belittling me in front of his tennis buddies. The man was pushing me to the point of whipping his ass, so I got in my car and headed north. There was someone I had to see, someone I could always talk to no matter what, who could put this whole Donna/Chippy thing into the proper perspective.
Five hours later, I called Lou and told him I’d checked into a small hotel in West Virginia and that I wouldn’t be back for at least a day.
He surprised me when he said, “I wish you would have told me. I would have loved to take that trip myself.”
“I understand,” I replied. “It was a last-minute decision, otherwise I would have told you. Next time I’ll be sure to let you know.”
The next morning, I was standing in front of the prison gates, handing a guard my driver’s license so I could get in. A few minutes later, I was in a group of twenty people who were frisked then ushered down several corridors, until we arrived at the visiting room.
I sat there for a good five minutes before a stocky, dark brown–skinned woman in an orange jump suit walked around the corner. She stopped and glared at me. It was clear from her features that she had been very pretty when she was young, but prison life and Father Time had caught up with her. She sat in the chair in front of me.
“Hey, Ma. It’s been a long time,” I said, swallowing hard and waiting for a response. My mother made it clear that she didn’t want us seeing her in this place, but once she understood my reason for coming, I knew she’d lighten up. There were some problems that could only be fixed with a mother’s help.
“LC, what are you doing here?” she scolded, but I could tell that she was happy to see me.
“I don’t know. I wanted to see you. I missed you, Ma.”
She took a breath then looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes were starting to fill up with tears, which caused mine to sting as well, as I fought to hold back tears of my own.
“I missed you too,” she said, placing a hand on the glass. I placed mine on the opposite side to match it. I looked at her for a few seconds, just taking in the woman who had birthed me. My mother was in prison because she’d done the unthinkable in the state of Georgia. She’d killed a white man, the same white man who had gunned down my father five minutes before for loaning a poor black sharecropper enough money to pay his bill so that very same white man couldn’t take his land.
“Look at you, all handsome and fine. I bet them women can’t keep their hands off you.” She laughed for a moment but then became serious. “My God, you have become such a man. You taking care of your brothers?”
I nodded and smiled. In all my years on earth, my mother had never asked me about taking care of Lou or Larry or even Levi, for that matter. She’d always told them to take care of me. I guess th
e tide had changed.
“Okay, boy, enough of the bullshit. Why are you here? Are your brothers all right?”
“Yeah, Ma, everybody’s fine. I just needed to talk to you.”
“LC, what’s wrong?”
I hesitated, not sure what to say or do. I’d come there for a reason, and now it seemed ridiculous. Here she was locked up behind bars, and I had come to bother her over some bullshit woman troubles.
“Well, spit it out, boy. What’s wrong?” she asked sternly.
“I think I’m in love with two women.” I was suddenly feeling sick now that I’d admitted it out loud.
“Oh, that’s all? I thought you were going to tell me something really bad. In love with two women, huh? That’s an interesting turn of events. How’d this happen?” she prodded me to continue. I could tell she was holding back laughter. Had I been Lou, or even Larry, she would have been teasing me about the mess I was in, but she knew I was the serious one and wouldn’t take kindly to being made fun of. I had never treated women the way my brothers did, so this was a serious situation to me.
“I wrote you about Donna,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, Doctor Washington’s daughter, the one who goes to school with you.”
“Yes, that’s right. Well, the other woman I met at Big Sam’s,” I told her and inwardly groaned, waiting for all hell to break loose. When my mother nodded as if she understood, I was surprised by her reaction. Her face was neutral; she didn’t look surprised or amused or anything.
“Chippy—that’s her nickname, but her real name is Charlotte. She’s from North Carolina, and she’s different. She’s strong and a real reader, but she left a bad home situation and wound up working for Sam. But she doesn’t belong there.” My voice rose with emotion at the thought of her in that house again.
“Keep your voice down, son,” she said, looking around to see if I had drawn the guard’s attention. Then she continued, suggesting, “Maybe it’s just the sex. You wouldn’t be the first man whose head got turned around by it.”
