Red Light Wives

by Mary Monroe

  “Well, if you a good mama to them kids, you ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ that’ll fuck you up with the cops. And, you’ll behave yourself so I won’t have to get ugly with you.” Clyde yawned and cocked his head to the side, staring at me out of the corner of his eye as he handed me one of the two menus on the table. “All I want you to do is make that money, honey.” He sniffed and gave me a mysterious wink.

  “Uh, what else do you do?” I asked, smiling the same anxious way I’d done during my other interviews. My confidence level was pretty low, so I had to fake my way to the very end. I was ready to lie, kiss ass, act like I was interested, and do whatever else I had to do. “You are nothing like what I expected.”

  “Say what?” he drawled, raising both eyebrows.

  “I mean, don’t men like you have jobs on the side, too? A front job to keep the IRS and the cops off your back? Or do you pay people off?”

  Clyde leaned sideways and glanced around the room before responding. “In the first place, you been watchin’ too many movies. In the second place, let’s get one thing straight right now: I ask all the questions,” he said firmly, giving me a cold, hard look.

  “Okay,” I croaked. I rubbed my nose and gave Clyde a curious look. “How many other girls work for you?”

  “That ain’t none of your business!” he snapped. “Didn’t I just tell you that I was the one to ask all the questions, woman? A nosy woman is a woman lookin’ for trouble.” He grinned, and that kept me from getting too upset over his outburst. As odd as it seemed, there was something charismatic about Clyde. I liked a man who was in control, even if it meant that I was one of the things he controlled. “I pay the cost to be the boss.” I had no idea what he meant by that and I didn’t have the nerve to ask him to explain. “Do you hear me?”

  I nodded and fixed my eyes on the top of the table.

  “Order whatever you want, Rockelle.” He took out a pair of dark glasses and held them up to his eyes and shook his head. “I can see you like to eat.”

  “I’ll just have a small salad. I’m tryin’ to lose a few pounds,” I said, sucking in my stomach.

  Clyde shook his head again and sniffed. “You ain’t got to be losin’ no weight. I got enough bean poles in my garden. You a fine, healthy-lookin’ sister. A lot of men like that. They want to ride a horse that they ain’t got to worry about buckin’.”

  I gasped so hard I hiccupped. “I thought you said I wouldn’t have to sleep with any of these men.”

  Clyde clapped his hands together and laughed, shaking his dark glasses in my face. “Girl, what you do on a date I set up is up to you and that man. I ain’t askin’ you to do nothin’ you don’t want to do.”

  I looked around again then I looked straight in Clyde’s eyes. “Are you telling me that these men pay your women three hundred dollars just to talk?”

  An amused look appeared on Clyde’s face. “I don’t know what my girls do behind closed doors. That’s the beauty of my game. I don’t tell ’em what to do. Like I said, what you and your dates do is up to y’all.” He pursed his lips and gave me a thoughtful look. “I want you to dress with some class. None of them cheap Lycra frocks and none of them tight, see-through blouses.”

  “I don’t own any clothes like that,” I said quickly. “All of my stuff is tame.”

  “I hope it ain’t too tame. I don’t want you goin’ to my clients lookin’ like no old maid librarian. That frock you got on now, that’ll work just fine. Men go for that college-girl look.”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” Clyde said, grunting. “Now that we on the same page, let’s get that waiter over here so we can get us some of that lasagna before them greedy tourists eat everything up.”

  Chapter 3

  LULA HAWKINS

  “I feel like a five-dollar streetwalker,” I mumbled, struggling to sit up in the hospital bed I’d been confined to for the past two days. My hair was long, but so tangled and matted, it looked and felt like a skullcap. My lips were dry and my eyes so red and puffy, putting on makeup had been a waste of my time. I frowned at the lipstick and compact on the stand next to my bed. I had never been in a hospital before in my life.

  The grim-faced doctors and stern nurses swishing in and out of the room dressed in white from head to shoes, looked like sheep. I had given birth to a huge baby, almost ten pounds. Delivering him had been rough, almost splitting my crack in two. I’d been stitched up so tight, I felt like a virgin. And a dumb one, at that.

  “And you look like one of them five-dollar wenches, too.” Agreeing with me was Odessa Hawkins, my best friend for the past six years and my stepsister Verna’s lover. “I told you to leave that lowlife motherfucker alone last year when he disappeared on you for two months. Not to mention all the money he borrowed from you.”

  A lot of people thought that Odessa and I were related, and the way my daddy got around, that was a strong possibility. She and I had the same dark brown skin with a few black freckles across the nose, thin lips, and large slanted brown eyes. Cute, maybe even pretty to some people, but not without a little help from our friends at the cosmetics counter. Every time I looked in Odessa’s face, it was like looking in a mirror.

  “Larry always paid me back—”

  “Girl, don’t you be defendin’ that cheesy-ass bastard to me, ’less you wanna spend another few days stretched out in this hospital bed. I won’t be as gentle with your black ass as Mrs. Larry was. Me and Verna both tried to tell you that that young-ass punk wasn’t good for nothin’ but a good fuck. And if that’s all he was, you didn’t need him. All the money you loaned him, you could have invested in a good vibrator until you found yourself a real man,” Odessa said, growling, hovering over me like a vulture.

  I sighed and glanced around the long, narrow room, looking from one bed to the other. There were ten beds, ten women—five beds, five women on each side of the room facing each other. It was hard to have a private conversation, but none of the other women seemed to be interested in anything Odessa and I had to say. They were too busy nursing their newborn babies and bragging on the telephone about how happy they were.

  As far as I knew, there was only one other Black woman in the maternity ward, and that was Larry’s wife. That bitch from hell. I found out a few hours after our scuffle in the department store parking lot, that her name was Belinda. Odessa knew her from her old neighborhood and had tangled with one of her older sisters over a man. But that was during Odessa’s teen years before she realized women lovers were more to her liking.

  Belinda Holmes was in a private room across the hall. I think that if we both hadn’t been so weak, we probably would have duked it out some more right in the hospital. I had a feeling that she wanted to kick my ass some more, the way she glared at me every time I ran into her in the hallway. But I was through with that weak drama. Larry was not worth it. He had not even checked to see how I was doing, ask about his son, or even acknowledge my presence when I encountered him in the waiting room. After all I’d gone through with that man, this was my reward.

  “A twenty-eight-year-old man ain’t out for nothin’ but a good time. A thirty-three-year-old woman ought to know that,” Odessa said with a smirk, giving me a stern look and adjusting a pillow under my head. She had on a man’s shirt, unbuttoned over a T-shirt and a pair of baggy flannel pants.

  “Since when do you know so much about men?” I teased my best friend about being a lesbian as often as she teased me about being a fool.

  Odessa rolled her eyes and tugged at the limp ponytail hanging off the side of her head. “I know more than you think, Lula. I’ve had more than a few dicks in my life to know they ain’t all they cracked up to be. And, you don’t grow up in a house with six brothers and not learn everything else you need to know about men. Shit.” We both laughed.

  “I should have known somethin’ wasn’t right when Larry tried so hard to make me get an abortion,” I said lamely, sipping cold water from a plastic cup. My throat was so dry, it hurt when
I swallowed. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days. The hospital food tasted like paper, but Odessa had smuggled me in some fried chicken. I couldn’t wait to gnaw on it. I was anxious for things to get back to normal, but I knew that was something I wouldn’t experience for a long time.

  “Well, was that all you was suspicious of? What about him not lettin’ you know where he lived?” Odessa snapped. With a grunt, she rolled up the sleeves of her plaid shirt and folded her arms.

  I sighed. “I didn’t need to know. I know where he works. I’ve called him there dozens of times. He likes havin’ his space as much as I like havin’ mine. I was the one with an apartment all to myself. He lives way across town somewhere, and he has four roommates—”

  Odessa gave me a stern look, shaking her finger in my face as she talked. “Four roommates that turned out to be a wife and three kids. Don’t you defend that punk because he ain’t worth it.” She had nosed around like Shaft, gathering more incriminating evidence than I needed to get Larry out of my system. “He played you like a piano, girl. Oh, that nigger had him a good thing goin’.”

  “I know, I know. You don’t have to rub it in. Anyway, I’m glad this is all over,” I said sadly, rubbing my stomach. “Givin’ birth sure ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. I feel like holy shit between my legs.”

  Odessa lowered her head and leaned closer toward me, looking at me through narrowed eyes. “Uh, you seen his other newborn? The nursery is right around the corner if you want to take a peek.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said, sniffing so hard the insides of my nostrils burned.

  “Well, I peeped in the nursery. You had the cuter baby. That other one looks like a Peking duck. And bein’ a girl, she goin’ to catch hell the rest of her life.”

  “But that other baby lived, mine didn’t.” A dark shadow slid across my face and my chest started aching. My son who had looked just like Larry had lived only two hours. A congenital heart defect had returned him to God.

  Odessa touched my forehead and said in a soothing voice, “I know, sugar. I know. But the sooner you get over that, the better. If he was goin’ to die anyway, it’s better that it happened now, before you got too attached to him. You still young enough. You got a few more years to have babies. But first, we got to find you a new man. A real man.”

  “Don’t you start up that mess about me hookin’ up with one of your recently divorced brothers.” Another man was the last thing on my mind. My life needed a complete makeover. A new location was what I needed. I just didn’t know where to go, and even if I did, I didn’t have the money to go too far.

  Odessa shook her head. “Bo, my brother that’s here from San Francisco, he ain’t never even married.”

  I had never met Odessa’s middle-aged brother, Bo. But she talked about him so often, I felt like I had. He was an independent musician who roamed around the world blowing a saxophone with whatever band would have him. He had performed with some of the most famous people in the business. I had seen pictures of Bo. Not only was he plain, but he was cross-eyed, too. It was no surprise to me that the man had never been married.

  I certainly had no interest in Odessa’s brother. He was a sorry specimen of a man compared to Larry. Then she said something that did peak my interest, and that same cross-eyed brother suddenly sounded like the man I’d been looking for all of my life.

  “Bo’s goin’ to be movin’ back to San Francisco in a few weeks to find work with another band. If I was still into men and Bo wasn’t my brother, I’d go after him myself,” Odessa said smugly, giving me a sideways glance.

  I perked up right away. It was like a lightbulb lit up inside my head.

  “Your brother is movin’ back to California?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh. Next month. Me and Verna goin’ to give him a little goin’ away party, and you better come.”

  “I will,” I said, so tired and confused I said the first thing I could think of.

  “If y’all do hit it off, maybe he’ll ask you to go back with him. I hear San Francisco is one happy town.”

  I looked at the wall behind Odessa, all kinds of thoughts going through my head. “And I just might go with him,” I said.

  Chapter 4

  ROCKELLE HARPER

  “Where you goin’ this time, Miss Rocky?”

  “Uh, just to visit a sick friend.”

  “The same one you went to visit last night?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s wrong with your sick friend?”

  “Look, Helen, I’m in a hurry, and I don’t have time to stand here talking a lot of nonsense. Where are the kids?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about them little dudes. I tucked ’em all in the bed, and they are sleeping like logs. Can I go watch music videos on BET now?”

  “Yeah, yeah, go on,” I ordered, snapping my fingers. “There’s soda and chips in the kitchen. And you stay away from my beer! Your mama would have a cow if she knew about you drinking over here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I closed my bathroom door as soon as Helen stumbled out, pouting like she usually did when I hollered at her. Helen Daniels was a good friend to have. She came in real handy. A lot of it had to do with the fact that she was mildly retarded. At nineteen, she was more like ten or twelve. But she was mature enough to run errands for me and babysit when I didn’t have to be away from my house for too long.

  It was convenient having Helen living right next door. Her elderly parents eagerly allowed Helen to help me with the kids. Even before Joe took off with that bitch of his, Helen spent a lot of time at our house. In addition to keeping an eye on my three little monsters, she loved doing the things around the house that I didn’t want to do.

  One of the few good things I could say about Joe was, he liked to live well. We had rented a nice big house in a safe, quiet neighborhood. He’d let me spend as much money as I wanted to decorate the house. I’d spent a fortune on black leather couches, smoked-glass coffee tables, an entertainment center, and carpets so thick and shaggy, it felt like walking on cotton. My house on Joost Street was a long way from the cheap, gummy walls and linoleum floors in the run-down Bayview neighborhood I’d escaped from. I was willing to do whatever I had to do to keep some distance between myself and that jungle.

  Now that I was “escorting” lonely men who Clyde Brooks had set me up with, I needed Helen more than ever.

  Just a few dates. Just until I get my bills caught up. I’d told myself that at least a dozen times since my meeting with Clyde at that Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant a week ago. But what I said and what I did were two different things.

  It would take more than a few dates to get me out of the hole that Joe had left me in. I’d been hiding my Honda two blocks and one street over from my house, because I was three payments behind. And a damn repo man had already come banging on my door, twice in one week. I didn’t know how long I could hold him off with the lie about my brother taking the car to L.A.

  Right after Joe’s disappearance, I’d applied for welfare, planning to stay on it only until I found a job. But anybody who knows anything about welfare knows that money is not enough to live on and live the way you should. It covered my rent, and we got food stamps, but I couldn’t handle other necessary expenses like utilities, clothing, gas, and maintenance for my three-year-old Honda. Without a decent job, or a generous man in my life, my only other option was to move back to that run-down ghetto that I’d married Joe to get away from! My welfare check could cover me and my three kids there, but living in the rough areas meant other necessary expenses. That included things like bullet-proofing and putting bars on your windows, replacing items in your house that some bold thief had helped himself to, and worst of all, unexpected funeral expenses. I hoped that life was behind me for good.

  Tonight’s date, Mr. Bob, lived in Marin County. It was my second date in two days. My first date, with a nervous little man from Philly, had only involved dinner and a little fondling on the bed in his hot
el room. After admitting that he was slightly impotent and had just wanted some female company, that trick had dismissed me after stuffing three hundred dollars into my bra.

  “Mr. Bob’s an older man, so you’ll be out of there in ten minutes if you treat him real good. I been hookin’ him up for years. He’s one of my best clients,” Clyde told me over the telephone. Clyde was a very “private” person or so he claimed. He only dealt with his “business associates” in person when he had to. The regular clients would call him up and put in an order for a woman, just like they would for a pizza. Like a secretary, Clyde called up a woman and rattled off a list of instructions. After each date, he’d meet the woman in a designated spot to collect his fee.

  Clyde went on with relish. “And my girls just love Mr. Bob. He’ll want a few drinks before anything else. And if you get him good and drunk, that’s all you’ll have to put up with. You behave yourself now. Don’t steal nothin’ from his house, flush your condoms down the toilet, and don’t leave no other mess—like rank panties or cum-soaked tissue. If you do, I’ll hear about it,” Clyde informed me, talking in a fast, eager voice. I felt like a teenager being groomed for my first date.

  It was the easiest money I ever made in my life. I had no trouble getting Mr. Bob to drink three shots of bourbon to my one. Within an hour of my arrival, he was so drunk he couldn’t even stand or sit up, let alone do much of anything physical with me. He passed out on top of me. When he came to, I told him how great he’d been and how much I’d enjoyed his lovemaking, and how sorry I was to have to charge him for my services. My lies backfired. Mr. Bob wanted me to stay a little longer so that he could make me feel even better.

  After it was over the second time, while sitting on Mr. Bob’s living room couch with his head on my shoulder, I did something I should not have done: I told him all about Joe running out on me and the kids, draining our bank accounts, and leaving me with a ton of bills. After a few more drinks, he felt so sorry for me, he gave me an extra three hundred dollars.