by Mary Monroe
His arrogant attitude did annoy me, but I didn’t want him to know that. “I thought maybe I’d see you.”
“You drove by my house thinkin’ you’d see me? What would I be doin’ roamin’ around outside the house this time of night? That’s what cats and puppy dogs do when they got to do their business.” He laughed.
“I just wanted to talk. I’ve known you for so many years, and I really don’t know you.”
“Well, what you want to know, Miss Meg?”
“Clyde, you don’t have to call me ‘Miss’ if you don’t want to. You’re just as good as I am. We’re equals.”
Clyde was silent for a long time before he responded to my patronizing comment.
“I can call your White ass anything I wanna call you. And fuck that ‘we equal’ bullshit. You ain’t nowhere near my equal.” He laughed. “I don’t believe your sorry White ass. Now what the fuck you want with me, bitch? I got more important things to do with my time than stand here on this phone listenin’ to your whinin’ ass.”
I was so horrified, I could barely speak. I surprised myself when I did. “Clyde, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just want you to think of me as just another one of your friends. Do you call the Black girls you know ‘Miss?’”
“Fuck no! Is that what you called me up to talk about?”
“No, I—”
“Then quit pussy-footin around the damn bush, and say what you got to say. Shoot.”
I took a deep breath and glanced around to make sure I was still alone. I gripped the telephone so hard, my palm ached. “You got any good pot?” I whispered.
“Everything I got is good. And I do mean everything. When you want it?” he asked eagerly, in a more pleasant tone.
“Uh, can you meet me somewhere?”
“Yeah, I can do that. Where you wanna meet at?”
“How about one of those motels off 880, just before the airport turnoff?”
“I ain’t got no car, so wherever we go, I got to take a bus to get there. Unless you wanna come out here and pick me up,” Clyde told me. The harshness had returned to his voice.
“Can’t you get to one of those motels off the freeway by bus?”
Clyde cursed under his breath. “Look, girl, I know you don’t know nothin’ about the way folks in the real world live. You been livin’ the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle all your life. Now if you want to hook up with me, that’s fine. But I ain’t about to drag myself around, transferrin’ to two different buses, and then havin’ to walk part of the way, just to get to one of them motels off the freeway. Not for you or anybody else. Goddammit. There is one bus I can walk to from here, one block, get on it, and it’ll bring me all the way downtown. There’s motels, hotels down there. I…wait a minute. What’s wrong with me? I ain’t got to go through all them damn changes. You want some good weed, you come to me. Plain and simple. Like everybody else. Shit.”
I swallowed hard. “All right. Be standing in front of your house. I will pick you up in fifteen minutes.”
“That’ll work.”
“Uh, what do you have?”
“What you want?”
“You said you had something, uh, real good.”
Clyde was taking too long to answer.
“Clyde?”
“I’m still here, baby.” He sighed. “And like I said, everything I got is good.” He laughed.
“Clyde, are you coming on to me?” I teased.
“You would think that. Let’s get one thing straight right now, not every brother want to get down with you just ’cause you White. Sure, if you was to let me, hell yeah, I’d hit it. But I’d do that even if you was purple. With my eyes closed, I can’t tell one pussy from another. I’m all for equal opportunity. Get it?”
I let out a noisy sigh. “Let’s just concentrate on getting high.”
“That’ll work for me. You the one brought up all that other shit. Shit.”
“I’m on my way, Clyde.”
“That’s cool. But if you ain’t here in fifteen minutes, I’m gone.”
I picked Clyde up ten minutes later. There was never any doubt in my mind that it would be up to me to cover the motel expenses, but I brought it up anyway.
With a sharp gasp, Clyde leaned against the side of the passenger door of Mom’s car and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Fuck no, I ain’t payin’ half, a third, or no other part of no motel bill.” He laughed and shook his head. “For you people to be so smart, y’all sure can come up with some dumb-ass shit. What do you be thinkin’, girl?”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means a lot of things, Megan. Like, why would a girl like you be out here by yourself with somebody like me?”
I shrugged. “Don’t you like being out here alone with a girl like me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Rich White girls come at me everywhere I go. You ain’t nothin’ special. Look at you,” Clyde said, tilting his head to look at me out of the corner of his eye. “You ain’t even cute.”
I decided to keep my thoughts and comments to myself until we reached the motel.
Less than an hour in that first motel, we fucked. When we needed money for more pot and motels, I was always the one responsible for that, which was usually no problem. But when it did get to be a problem, like my folks demanding to know what it was I suddenly needed so much money for, I got real creative.
I knew of several girls at my school who worked for escort services. And as hard as it was for me to believe, there were men out there willing to pay good money just to have a cute young girl like me do the same things with them that I did with Clyde for free. I signed up with two services, using a fake ID with a fake name.
“Look, Meg, you ain’t got to be layin’ up with none of them dudes if you don’t want to. We can always get money from somewhere else,” Clyde told me when I was forced to tell him what I was into, after I’d broken so many dates with him. “I got all kinds of ways to make money.”
“Knocking drunk old men in the back of the head, ripping off drug dealers, breaking into cars—is that any better than what I do?” I wanted to know. I didn’t enjoy working as an escort. But it was the only way I could get the money I needed to be with Clyde as often as I wanted.
“That ain’t the point. They got some maniacs out there doin’ all kinds of shit to girls when they get ’em alone. You ain’t scared of hoppin’ in a car with a stranger? You ain’t like them girls from my neighborhood and the barrios. Sisters and Latinas, they know how to get down when some motherfucker try to disrespect them and get ugly.”
I shrugged. “I can take care of myself, too,” I insisted, waving the ten crisp twenty dollar bills I had just made an hour earlier. Clyde’s anxious eyes lit up as he looked at the money. “The service checks the men out first. Old businessmen, regular customers. These men are not only real harmless, some of them are quite nice. That guy from United Airlines that I went out with tonight, all he wanted was a simple hand job. It only took ten minutes,” I said proudly.
An anxious look appeared on Clyde’s face. “And?” In a flash, he snatched the money from me and was looking at it like it was something rare and precious. To a boy like him, I assumed it was.
“And what?”
“And what else did you do for a trick?” With his tongue sliding across his bottom lip, Clyde counted the money with a flourish, tapping it with the tips of his fingers before folding it in half. Then, like it was money that he had earned, he stuffed it all into his pocket. “It was that easy, you say?”
I nodded. “It was that easy.”
Clyde gave me a brief blank look, and then a naughty smile eased onto his face. “Shit,” he mouthed, patting his pocket with the money in it.
“Most of the guys do want hand jobs, tittie fucks, blow jobs. I haven’t even had to fuck any of them yet,” I revealed, cringing at the thought of my next date with a stranger.
“Hmmm,” Clyde said. “Like I said, you ain’t got to be layin’
up with them dudes to make money. But, if you ain’t got no problem with it, I ain’t got no problem with it neither. You just keep bein’ cool, and I’ll do the same thing.”
“That’s cool,” I said, proud that I had become so street smart.
Clyde still came around to do maintenance work at our house, and, on me, on a regular basis. I had lost my virginity the year before to the visiting cousin of a casual friend. And I’d also slept with a few other boys before Clyde, but making love with Clyde was an experience within itself. I had never enjoyed sex as much as I did with him, and I never would, not even with the man I married. Especially with the man I married. With Clyde, I would get excited just by the sight of his dark brown skin being close enough to mine to make us both sweat. I had no trouble sneaking out to meet him in motels and drive-in movies, paying for it with money I’d collected from the many eager men, young and old, who had made my life more exciting and so much more fun.
During the seventies, having unprotected sex was not that big of a deal. Almost everybody I knew had had a curable sexually transmitted disease at least once. Abortions were legal in California, so getting rid of a baby before it could be born only meant a side trip to a clinic and a few hours to recuperate. It was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I had girlfriends who had already had more than one abortion, but the notion frightened me.
I don’t know where or when I got pregnant, and I don’t know why I was surprised when it happened. The first and only time we discussed condoms, Clyde laughed and said, “Usin’ a rubber is like takin’ a bath in a raincoat—what’s the point?” Him pulling out of me before ejaculating made him laugh just as hard. “That’s like chewin’ up a piece of fried chicken, then spittin’ it out instead of swallowin’ it. Shit. What’s the point?”
I was not prepared for Clyde’s reaction when I told him I was pregnant. We were sharing the well-used backseat of Mom’s new Buick in the last row at a drive-in movie theater. I don’t even remember what movie was playing that night. Clyde’s body stiffened, and he pushed me away as soon as I’d revealed my condition.
“You been mighty busy at that escort agency. How I know it’s my baby?”
“I have not had full sex with anybody but you in the last three months,” I told him, and, it was the truth. “And you are the only person I’ve ever fucked without a condom.”
“Well, whether it’s mine or not, what you plannin’ on doin’? What you goin’ to tell your mama and daddy? This kind of news could kill ’em.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Not after all they’ve been through, losing my brother and my sister and all.”
“Well, I ain’t got much to offer, jobwise, but I’ll marry you, if you want me to.” Clyde scratched the back of his head, which no longer sported a bushy Afro. He was one step from being bald. And on him, even that looked sexy.
Married?
I was the one laughing this time. “You have got to be kidding. I can’t marry you.” I could not believe my ears. My friends and family would never accept my marriage to Clyde. Not because he was Black, but, like he said, he didn’t have much to offer me.
I had heard too many horror stories about abortions, so that was out. But even before I told Clyde, or anyone else, that I was pregnant, I had made up my mind to have the baby and give it up for adoption.
“Well, if you think you too good to marry a brother, I got news for you, Miss Meg, I’d be too embarrassed to bring you around my family, too. With your flat ass, stringy hair, and your my-shit-don’t-stink-’cause-I’m-White attitude. But I’d be willin’ to put up with whatever shit I had to put up with to be there for my child. I plan to do what my daddy should have done for me. Put your clothes back on so we can get the hell up out of here.”
Clyde and I left the drive-in movie in silence. We were halfway to his house, where I would drop him off, before we spoke again.
“So, how far along are you?” he asked in a distant voice.
“A couple of months, I think.”
“Let me know when you wanna go to the place to get took care of. We ain’t got to tell ’em our real names or nothin’. The county’ll pay for it, too.”
“I’m not having an abortion, if that’s what you’re talking about!” I yelled. I didn’t tell him that two of my closest friends could no longer have kids because of botched abortions.
“Well, what else the hell do you plan to do? If you plannin’ on havin’ it, you and your precious family can expect to see me at your house every day anyway ’cause I’ll wanna see my kid.”
“You care enough about this baby you want to be a part of its life, but you’d be willing to let me abort it?” I hissed.
Clyde slammed his fist against the side of the car door so hard the windows rattled. “What’s your plan then?”
“Adoption,” I said calmly.
“Bullshit! Oh—heeeell no! Ain’t no child of mine goin’ to be out there in the world bein’ raised by some stranger as long as I’m alive. If you have this baby, you give it to me. I will see that he or she get taken care of real good.”
After losing my brother, Paul, to Vietnam, and my sister, Fiona, to the unknown, Mom and Dad had experienced enough pain where their children were concerned to last them a lifetime. My little “problem” didn’t raise as much of a ruckus as I’d expected. I was my parents’ only hope if they wanted to have grandchildren. However, my first child was considered more of an inconvenience.
“My cousin in Mississippi, Bobby Lee, he’ll keep the child with him and his wife down there in Mississippi. That way, y’all ain’t got to worry about nothin’ embarrassin’,” Effie insisted. “White folks is too frail-minded to be tryin’ to raise a half-Black child. Especially y’all.”
Effie, Clyde, my parents, and I had gathered in my parents’ living room, for the last time, I might add, to discuss the situation.
“We will take care of all financial obligations until the child is of legal age,” Dad said, clearing his throat. My poor father looked twice his age. In the last ten years, he’d lost all of his hair. And the handsome face that I’d bragged about all through elementary school looked ragged and beaten. Mom didn’t look too much better. There was sadness in her eyes that no amount of makeup could hide.
“We don’t want your money,” Clyde barked, holding his hand up defensively. “All I want from y’all is my child.” He leaped up from his seat and started pacing the floor like a caged tiger.
“Clyde, raisin’ a child is expensive. We gwine to need all the help we can get. These folks are the child’s grandparents, and they have some say-so,” Effie insisted, looking older by the minute. She was already in her late sixties, and sometimes needed as much care as a baby herself.
“I want to be with my child,” Clyde insisted. “I don’t want no countrified relatives in no hick town in Mississippi raisin’ a child of mine. They couldn’t even deal with me!”
I could not believe my eyes. Clyde was crying!
“Then you can take it to Mississippi when it comes and stay there to help raise it,” Effie snapped.
“I don’t want to go back to Mississippi,” Clyde whined, wiping his eyes with the back of his trembling hand.
“Then shet up!” Effie roared with such emotion, everyone in the room jumped.
“I’m goin’ down there to see my child every chance I get,” Clyde stated, a determined look on his face.
“Son, whenever you want to visit with the child, we will cover all your travel expenses,” Mom offered.
“That won’t be necessary, y’all,” Effie said, looking from Mom to Dad. “We want that baby; we’ll be responsible for that baby. Yall can go on about your business like nothin’ ever happened.” Effie rose with her hands on her hips. “Now if y’all will give me and this boy a ride home, we’ll be on our way.” Turning to me, she added, “Miss Meg, you take care of yourself. I don’t want you givin’ us no puny baby.”
Effie retired shortly after I gave birth to a child I chose not to see, not even once,
and I never saw or heard from Clyde Brooks again.
Until now.
Chapter 26
ROSALEE PITTMAN
Everything started to unravel right after Clyde and Ester got back from that cruise to Mexico. Clyde would leave messages on our answering machines with date instructions. But other than that, he was avoiding everybody. It was by accident that I ran into him at the bar in Alfredo’s, the Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant where Clyde spent a lot of his time drinking and socializing with friends like that creepy Lou Cummings from the used car lot. I happened to be there with my favorite out-of-town trick, a software specialist from New York. A lot of the out-of-towners liked to go out to dinner first, before hemming one of us in a hotel room.
I wouldn’t have noticed Clyde sitting at the bar, hunched over his drink, if I hadn’t gone to the ladies’ room before leaving.
My trick, Dylan was his name, had changed his mind at the last minute about which restaurant to go to for dinner. I would have ignored Clyde and he would have ignored me, like we’d been instructed. Clyde didn’t like to be around us when we were with a trick. He said that his presence at such a crucial time might make the trick nervous. But the place was crowded, and I had to do a lot of maneuvering to get to the rest room. For about a minute, I was within a few feet of Clyde.
Clyde was a heavy drinker, but he was pretty good at holding his liquor. I had never seen him staggering and slobbering around the way some people did when they had one too many. This time was different. He glanced at me with the strangest expression. Looking over my shoulder to make sure my trick wasn’t watching, I leaned toward Clyde. I didn’t know how many drinks he’d had, but he smelled like a distillery.
“Clyde, you want me to call you a cab? You look awful, and you smell even worse. You really need to start takin’ better care of yourself, brother,” I whispered, touching his arm. Despite how I felt about what I did for Clyde, I cared about him. I guess when you’ve lost as many loved ones as I had, it was hard not to transfer the leftover love in your heart to someone else.
