by Mary Monroe
My face got hot, and I blushed. “I only wish I had J.Lo’s money and her butt.” Finally, I felt really glad to be alive. My heart started beating like crazy. I couldn’t remember the last time seeing an old friend had made me feel so happy. Especially one who I thought was either dead or on death row.
“Where you been, girl?” Manny lifted my chin with a shaky hand and looked at me real close with his mouth hanging open. “I thought you was dead!”
I laughed and slapped his hand. “No, not yet. Maybe closer than I wanna be, though.” After my little pilgrimage, it was hard for me not to have such a grim thought.
“What you doin’ here? Everything is okay?” Manny leaned back on his long legs and looked me over, rubbing my sweaty hand. “You look hungry. You want somethin’ to eat? I can cook somethin’ for you. I got a place over the way on Penn Street.”
“I don’t need no food. I-I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Today is my birthday.”
“Well, in that case, let me help you celebrate. You old enough now to have one of my margaritas.” Manny wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kept it there all the way to his apartment four blocks away.
Manny’s apartment didn’t look no different or better than any of the other places I’d been inside in the Mission. It was kind of dark in his teeny-weeney living room, like the inside of a bar, even with the lights on. And like every other Latino home I’d ever been in, one wall had dollar-store pictures of this saint, that saint, the baby Jesus, and the Virgin Mother. I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture of St. Jude, the saint who the most hopeless people prayed to. I never left home without a picture of St. Jude in my wallet, and I prayed to him every day of my crazy life. I believed that my prayers had kept me from getting into too much trouble. And I think it had a lot to do with me wanting to do something better with myself someday, besides selling my body.
“You got a wife now, Manny?” I asked that question because Manny’s place looked too neat for a man. Even though the carpet had holes and was faded in some spots, it was clean. His lumpy couch had a nice plastic cover on it, and everything else was in place. His plants even looked nice.
“Not no more. Remember that girl from Tijuana that I used to go around with?”
“The one with the mustache?” I asked, sitting on the couch. The plastic squeaked and made a crackling noise.
“And the bow legs. Well, she married me.”
“Oh.” I started standing back up. The last thing I wanted to do on my birthday was fight off a jealous wife. “Lucia’s a big-ass woman,” I said, making a face.
“Sit back down.” Manny laughed. “She left me last year. I think she’s back in Mexico now.” He rolled his eyes, with a sad look about them, to the side, like he couldn’t face me when he said what he said next. “Back to the mama I took her from when she was fifteen.” Manny looked at me now with his chest pushed out. That sad look was still in his eyes.
“Oh.” I sat back down. “I guess she got tired of the gangster life, huh?”
“Oh yeah.” He sighed and let out a low whistle. “And so did I. Ain’t no old gangsters, just dead ones.”
It was only then that I noticed the long ugly scar on the side of Manny’s face, but I didn’t mention it.
“What do you do with yourself these days, girl? You married?” he asked with anxious eyes. No matter how much he smiled or how he tried to express his face, his eyes never changed. It was too late and even though he was not really an old man, the eyes were. And I had a feeling they had been that way for a long time. Lately, I’d been seeing that same tortured look in my own eyes. I was lucky because I could hide mine with makeup.
“Not yet,” I told him, tapping my foot on his puckered, faded carpet.
“Don’t worry. A pretty girl like you, when you get ready to marry, you can choose any man you want.” Manny snapped his fingers and winked at me.
All of a sudden, I didn’t feel like I belonged in the same place with Manny. I stood again.
“Listen, I have to go now,” I said real quick.
Manny seemed disappointed, but he didn’t try to stop me. “Now that you know where I live, maybe you will come visit me sometime and let me cook you some dinner and make you a margarita.”
“I don’t know about that, Manny.” I was moving to the door.
“You work around here? Live around here?” he asked, following me.
I shook my head.
“Well, don’t hide yourself for another umpteen years, girl. Come and visit with me sometime. I got a job cookin’ at El Sol restaurant, so I know how to fix anything you want.”
“So, you don’t do your hustle no more?”
Manny looked at his saints and made the sign of the cross.
“Like I said, ain’t no old gangsters,” he told me. “But I didn’t turn into Holy Moses now,” he admitted with a grin. “I still smoke a little weed with my homies, I still buy shit that fell off a truck, but nothin’ like before.”
I was glad that I had run into my old friend, and I was glad that now when I felt bad, I had somewhere else to go.
Manny didn’t need to know my business, but I knew if I told him, it would not have surprised him. Some of the girls I used to kick it with back in the day was the same ones I seen selling themselves on the Mission District streets. Like I said before, some of these people got as far as they was going to go. There was no life for them beyond the streets.
I felt like a new woman when I left Manny’s apartment. Just before I’d run into Manny, my feet had felt as heavy as bricks as I’d dragged myself down the street. Now I was prancing like a colt.
Chapter 23
MEGAN O’ROURKE
I returned to San Francisco from Oakland in less than an hour. But I drove right past my house on Steiner.
I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a woman I didn’t want to know anymore: the woman I had been trying to hide from for almost thirty years. Because of my unexpected encounter with Clyde and our daughter, fear had attacked me like a cancer, and it was spreading fast.
I couldn’t remember driving back down Oakland’s International Boulevard after leaving Clyde. I couldn’t even remember getting back onto the Bay Bridge. One minute I was talking to Clyde and the next thing I knew I was back across the bay, meandering down one street after another. I remembered the sounds of the road rage I’d caused, though. Horns had blared at me, gruff voices had cursed me, and some irate motorist had hurled a beer can, clanking it against the side of my passenger door.
How long I drove around, I couldn’t say. My body was in one place, my mind was in another. But even my confused state of mind didn’t prevent me from finding my way to a bar, with a name I couldn’t remember, off the freeway.
I had hit something—a dog, a cat? If I’d hit a human I’d find out soon enough. I vaguely remembered something thumping against the front of my car as I wandered off the Bay Bridge at the first exit, my Lexus creeping along like a snail. I glimpsed blood on the left side of my front fender when I parked my car in the lot at the tacky bar next to a dusty truck with the “T” missing from Toyota. I staggered into the bar, ignoring the unholy stench of burned grease and the gum on the floor that stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Like a falling tree, I fell sideways onto the hard plastic seat in the first empty booth I found.
Big, hairy, beefy-faced, foul-smelling truck drivers and bikers sat and stood on either side of me. During my delirium I must have ordered a drink because I blinked and a double shot of rum appeared on the table in front of me. I snatched it and drank with the eagerness and desperation of a junkie getting an overdue fix. With my sudden potent buzz, I placed my head on the table like it was a guillotine.
I had not been confronted by any drug addicts, muggers, or car-jackers in Oakland, but I was lucky I made it back to San Francisco alive. After seeing Clyde Brooks and the daughter that he and I had produced, my life was about to flash before me anyway. The same way I heard it did when a person was dying.
Clyde had entered my life at a very early age. It was the summer of 1968 when we were both eight years old.
According to Mom, ’68 was the year that “evil spirits” courted every young person in America, especially the San Francisco Bay Area, which included such hotbeds as Oakland and Berkeley. Mom blamed some of America’s uproar on Vietnam, the Democrats, Jimi Hendrix, all males with long hair, all females who associated with males with long hair, and drugs. Even though we lived in a huge stucco house on a palm tree-lined street in Oakland Hills, the turmoil of the sixties was as much a part of our home as it was the streets of Berkeley.
Trying to prove that our family was liberal, my parents didn’t protest when Clyde’s grandmother, Effie Brooks, our maid for the past twenty years, brought Clyde to work with her the morning that altered my future. So far, other than our Black maid and our Panamanian handyman, my association with people of color had been very limited.
My curiosity overwhelmed me. I tried to find out as much as I could about the mysterious dark people making such a fuss over everything. Unlike the other kids my age on my street, who still enjoyed Bugs Bunny and Fred Flintstone cartoons, I preferred news programs that featured stories about the protestors in the southern states, updates on Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the angry newsmakers right in my backyard: the Black Panthers.
Clyde Brooks had been my first best friend. Well, at least my first Black friend. And my first “boy” friend. In my fantasies, he was a Black Panther waiting to happen. The first time I saw him, he was standing on our front porch with his grandmother. There was a scowl on his face so extreme, he looked like he was ready to blow up the world. I was vividly impressed.
Clyde was standing in front of his grandmother, with his thin arms folded across his narrow chest. His smooth dark skin and neat, well-oiled Afro glistened in the early morning sunlight. I peeked from behind my mother when she opened the door.
“Mornin’, Miss Carmody. Uh, this my grandson, Clyde, what I brought back from Mississippi on the train last night.” Effie paused and sniffed, her gnarled hand rubbing Clyde’s shoulder. “My cousin Bobby Lee, he changed his mind about takin’ the boy in. I couldn’t leave this boy back there in Mississippi by hisself.” Effie paused again and looked from Mom’s face to mine, then back to Mom’s, her hand still rubbing Clyde’s shoulder. Effie grunted and let out a deep breath that had become familiar. That was the way she expressed her impatience. Like a lot of the Black and Hispanic women who worked as domestics in our neighborhood, Effie had a lot of power. She practically ran our house, making up rules for us to follow. And as long as Effie’s demands were not too outrageous, we usually did as we were told. Effie took off work when she wanted to, with pay. She had even talked Daddy into paying for her medical coverage. When it came time for our carpets to be cleaned, Effie had Mom call in a carpet cleaning service. And, as if it were a running joke, which in our case it wasn’t, Effie didn’t do windows. Before Mom could respond to Effie’s comments about her grandson, I already knew Mom’s response. But, Effie asked anyway. “Can Clyde play with Miss Meg while I do my business? This is the only child of my only child, may she rest in peace,” Effie rattled on. She had just returned from burying her daughter, a woman she herself described as, “A wart on Satan’s butt.”
“Where’s the boy’s daddy?” Mom asked, her voice sounding more like a kitten’s meow. My mother and Effie had little in common, but each had recently buried a child. Effie’s daughter, Bonnie Jean, had been killed in a barroom brawl in Pearl, Mississippi. My older, and only brother, Paul, had lost his life in Vietnam three months ago.
Effie shrugged. “That’s somethin’ I ain’t never knowed. He took off before this boy was even born. Come to think of it, I never even knowed who that scallywag was in the first place. Bonnie Jean had a army of ’em paradin’ in and out of her house. That gal of mine, fast as she was, ain’t slowed down long enough to tell me who planted this boy in her. With all her drinkin’ and God knows what else, it’s a wonder the boy turned out as good as he did. He got teef that would snap a nail in two.” Clyde grinned for the first time, revealing the whitest, strongest-looking teeth I’d ever seen. “And look at his hand. Look like a shovel, don’t it?” With a broad smile, Effie lifted Clyde’s right hand and handed it to Mom who blinked, turned the small ashy hand over, inspecting it like she would a piece of fruit at the farmer’s market.
I covered my mouth to keep from laughing. The way Effie was talking, she made Clyde sound like something you’d find in a cabbage patch.
A slight noise in the background made Mom and me turn around. Dad was standing in the doorway leading to the kitchen. My brother had been Dad’s favorite and he was still overwhelmed with grief. He spent most of his time in his study or roaming through the house like a ghost. Dad blinked at the commotion at the front door, and then fixed his eyes on the floor. Without a word, he returned to the private gloom of his study.
Clyde’s eyes were like none I’d ever seen before. His gaze was cold, flat, and hard. It was the first time I had ever seen a tiny image of myself reflected in another person’s eyes. But when he blinked, my reflection disappeared, even though I was still standing in the same spot.
“Has he had all of his shots?” Mom asked. This time it was Clyde who covered his mouth with his hand to keep from laughing.
“Oh, y’all ain’t got to worry about catchin’ nothin’ from this boy. He clean as a whistle. That’s the one thing his mama done right. She kept the boy clean. Shame she didn’t get him circumcised.” Effie lowered her voice and leaned closer to Mom. “A midwife delivered the boy at home,” Effie whispered. I didn’t know what circumcised meant at the time, so I didn’t react with an embarrassed giggle the way Clyde did.
“Granny, hush!” Clyde ordered, jabbing his grandmother’s side with his elbow.
“Well, I guess it’s all right. For now, at least,” Mom said, her voice weak and hollow.
“It’ll just be until I can work somethin’ out with Sister Price next door to my house. As soon as she heal from her hip surgery, she’ll be keepin’ a eye on the boy. But that won’t be for a spell. In the meantime, him and Miss Meg can keep each other occupied,” Effie declared.
Occupied was a mild word for my relationship with Clyde. The first time I got him alone, I felt his hair and his skin.
“What’s wrong with you, girl?” he asked, slapping my hand away. “You don’t know me. Don’t be puttin’ your hands on my hair.” Clyde moved a few steps away and patted his Afro, looking at me with contempt. “It took me all mornin’ to get my ’fro lookin’ this good. Shoot.”
We were alone in the bedroom I’d once shared with my older sister, Fiona. Fiona was “living” somewhere in the southern part of the state. According to Mom, Fiona shared a “snake pit,” and her drugs, with a bunch of other barefoot hippies. We hadn’t seen or heard from her in weeks. She had come home for our Memorial Day barbecue with a long-haired, scruffy, wild-eyed man she’d introduced as Charlie. The world would later know that murderous creep as Charles Manson.
“I just wanted to see what your hair felt like. I like it,” I replied with admiration and pleasure.
“You can tell that just by lookin’. Yall White folks ain’t got enough to do, you gotta always be messin’ with Black folks. Well, don’t nobody mess with me!” Clyde exclaimed.
“I am just tryin’ to be friends.” I pouted, adding a sniff.
“Well, I don’t need no White girl for no friend,” Clyde insisted, clicking on the portable television set on the dresser facing my bed. “Yall got any pop?”
I nodded. “Uh-huh. But I—”
“Go get me one,” Clyde ordered. He had the same authority in his voice as his grandmother. I sprinted from my room and returned within minutes with a can of Pepsi and a glass of ice on a tray. I handed it to Clyde with a grin. “Go shut that door,” he told me.
I did that, too.
By the end of summer, Clyde had me and most of my friends at his
beck and call. We eagerly lent him everything from money to expensive clothes. We marched behind him like he was leading us to the Promised Land. He was usually the only Black boy in the parks where I played with my friends, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He was in control, and that intrigued me.
I was sorry when September rolled around that year. Clyde would have no excuse to be in our neighborhood. Living in the guts of East Oakland, Effie enrolled Clyde in one of the roughest elementary schools in Oakland. The year before, a twelve-year-old boy raped a teacher and beat her up so badly she was in a coma for a month. And girls as young as eleven were dropping out of school to have babies.
As the years crawled by, Effie’s health declined and she had to reduce her hours at our house. I only got to see her two days a week. I missed her companionship and guidance, but the part of her that I missed the most was Clyde. It was almost eight years from the summer we became friends before I saw Clyde again.
To help out at home, and hopefully keep him out of trouble, Effie made Clyde work after school and between his visits to the juvenile detention center. He had become the kind of boy my mother had warned me about.
That was reason enough for me to keep a safe distance between myself and Clyde Brooks. But I didn’t realize that until it was too late.
Chapter 24
LULA HAWKINS
I knew Clyde well enough to know that something was bothering him big time. He hadn’t been to the apartment in a week for a quick romp in the bed with either me, Ester, or both of us at the same time. And that was something he rarely failed to do at least twice a week. Especially since we had him thinking he was so good in bed, which still was not the case. But it made our lives easier for him to think he was.
Clyde not coming by to flop around in bed with us was one thing, but him not coming around to collect his trick money was another. When he was out of town, it was my responsibility to collect from the girls. And even then, he would call several times a day to make sure I was on my job.
