Skin Game

by Lawrence C. Ross

  “They don’t give a shit about us. Sean doesn’t give a shit about us. And nobody in the business gives a shit about us. We’re the ones who have to stick together. But we never do.”

  Debra finished her cigarette, pressed it into the bar, and then flicked it to the floor. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see my daughter,” she answered.

  “Is she new here?” Debra asked, getting up from her chair.

  “No, she’s been working here for over a year.”

  “A year?” she asked. “What’s her name?”

  “Keisha. Her name is Keisha.”

  Debra stared at Veronica. “Dammit, I thought she looked familiar, but I didn’t connect the dots.”

  Keisha’s first day at UCLA had been pretty uneventful. Each class had lasted about thirty minutes, with the professors giving an overview of what the class was about, and they went over the schedule. Keisha was taking four classes: English, Spanish, Intro. Calculus, and Intro. Women’s Studies. She had to get her shit together ASAP because UCLA was on the quarter schedule, and that meant tests came fast.

  “I know that some of you were the smartest kids in your high school, and you probably skated all the way through your senior year,” Mr. Sanchez said to his Spanish class. “But everyone at this school is smart. The defining factor will be who works the hardest. If you don’t work hard, you will find yourself falling behind and then eventually dismissed from school. If you work hard, you’ll pass your classes. If you’re conscientious, then you’re going to excel. It is up to you as to which person you’re going to be. I don’t take roll, and I don’t care if you come on time. It’s all up to you.”

  Keisha listened and took what he said to heart. This was day one of her new life, and she was going to take advantage of it.

  Fuck, she thought, looking at her watch. It was the end of the day, and she still needed to set up a bank account and pay her apartment deposit.

  She ran down Westwood Boulevard into the bank and sat down at New Accounts. The bank was nearly empty, so when Keisha picked up the clipboard to sign in, no one was ahead of her.

  “Keisha Montez,” yelled the bank officer.

  Keisha got up and sat down at the new accounts desk.

  “Hello, Keisha, I’m Janet Dixon. How may I help you?”

  “I’d like to deposit a check and open up a checking account,” Keisha said, reaching into her purse. The check had somehow gotten smashed in its envelope, and instead of taking it out, Keisha simply handed everything to her.

  “That’s fine,” Janet said. “Here, just fill out this application and we should be done in less than five minutes.” Janet handed Keisha a form and a pen, and as Keisha filled it out, Janet took out the check from the envelope.

  “Are you a student at UCLA?” she asked Keisha.

  “Yes, I am,” Keisha said proudly.

  “That’s great. What year are you?”

  “I’m a freshman.”

  “Excited?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Mostly trying to get things done.” Keisha signed the bottom of the form and handed it back to Janet. Janet picked up Keisha’s check and handed it back to her.

  “Now if you could endorse the back of the check, we can then get your account opened.”

  Keisha scribbled her signature on the back of the check and handed it to Janet.

  “Great,” Janet said, looking at the check. She opened her desk and put the check in the drawer, then began inputting numbers into the computer.

  “Now you know, your checking account is free as long as you keep a one hundred-dollar balance,” Janet said, continuing to fill out the computer form.

  Janet handed a statement to Keisha.

  “Here you go,” she said, as Keisha studied her statement.

  “Wait, I think there’s been a mistake,” Keisha said, continuing to look at the statement. “I should be depositing five thousand, and not twenty-five hundred.”

  “No, I think I got it right,” Janet said, opening the drawer again and pulling out the check. “Yes, this is correct.” She handed the check to Keisha.

  “Twenty-five hundred?” she said incredulously. “I was supposed to get five thousand!”

  “Did you have two checks?” Janet asked, trying to be helpful.

  Keisha went back to her purse and checked the envelope. It was empty. Keisha was angry now. There was no way she’d gone through what she’d done for only twenty-five hundred dollars. That just barely paid for her quarter at UCLA. It didn’t do a damn thing for her apartment.

  She stood up angrily. “Just go ahead and put in that deposit.”

  “You’ll get an ATM card in the mail,” Janet said. “Good luck at UCLA.”

  Keisha didn’t hear a word as she left the bank. All she saw was red.

  How was she going to tell Patra that she needed to stay at her house until she got things straightened out? And how was she going to confront Steven?

  Clear the brain, she thought. Clear the brain. I need to keep to the plan, just like I wrote it out.

  She called a cab. It was a twenty-dollar ride to the Chi Chi Room, but she wanted to get to the club early so she could study a bit before going onstage.

  “Do you need a ride back?” the cab driver asked as he drove into the Chi Chi Room parking lot.

  “No, I’m straight,” she said, handing him a twenty. “Keep the change.”

  The line was growing in front of the club, so Keisha decided to go in the back way. The back door opened directly to the parking lot.

  “Open up,” she yelled. “It’s me.”

  Debra opened the door and let Keisha in. Keisha put her bag on the counter and sat down.

  “There’s a whole bunch of niggas out there tonight,” she said. “How are they paying?”

  “Pretty damn good,” Debra said. “School’s back in, so we’re starting to get college boys in. I think they’ve got some financial aid money coming in. Speaking of school, didn’t you start today?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So how was it?”

  “It was great,” Keisha said, smiling. “I really think I’m about to go on a journey, and I just can’t wait.”

  Debra looked at Keisha longingly, as though she saw in Keisha her own youth, and yet she knew she had news she had to deliver.

  “Keisha, there’s someone here to see you,” Debra started.

  “Who?” Keisha asked as she started taking out her bikini.

  “It’s—”

  The door to the dressing room suddenly burst open.

  “I think I’ll wait—” Veronica stopped mid-sentence.

  “Veronica?” Keisha said. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  The two stared at each other, not knowing what to say.

  “I think I’ll leave you two alone,” Debra said, gathering her things. “Good to see you again, Veronica.”

  “Same here,” Veronica said, never taking her eyes off Keisha.

  Debra left the dressing room, and Keisha put down her bag.

  “ Again’? You two know each other?” Keisha asked.

  “Yes.”

  Keisha walked to the closet and took down a hanger with her clothes. “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How the fuck do you know Debra?”

  “We used to work together.”

  “Wait a second,” Keisha said, looking at her mother. “You used to give me shit about working here, and you used to dance?”

  Keisha slipped into her pants and started putting on her shoes.

  “What the fuck are you doing here in the first place?” Keisha asked, waving her hand dismissively. “If you’re coming here because you want money, then you’re shit out of fucking luck. I ain’t giving you a nickel. You stole my muthafuckin’ money, and I hope your boyfriend fucking got shot for it.”

  “If I wanted money,” Veronica said, beginning to shout, but getting her control back, “then I would c
ome in here and tell you I needed money. I messed up and I can’t take that back. It is what it is. But there’s an emergency.”

  “Then deal with the emergency,” Keisha said, putting on the rest of her bikini, “and leave me the fuck alone. I’m not in your life, remember?”

  “Do you think I would be here if I could handle this?”

  “Yes, you would,” Keisha said, walking toward Veronica. “You would bring your ass here because you’re selfish. You’d bring your ass here because you don’t have a bone in your body that isn’t trying to exploit me.” Keisha was right in her mother’s face now. “So this is what I want you to do. I want you to turn your ass right around and get out of my fucking dressing room. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Your dressing room?” Veronica said with an ironic laugh. “I built this dressing room.”

  “What do you mean you built this dressing room?” Keisha said slowly. Suddenly, it dawned on her. “So you used to dance at this—how did you used to put it—nasty-ass club?” Keisha was now incensed. “You had the nerve to judge me?”

  For the first time, Veronica was on her back heels. “I wasn’t judging you,” she said unconvincingly.

  “To hell you fucking didn’t,” Keisha yelled. “You fucking judged me from the day I got here, and the fucking trip is that you drove me to stripping. Who else was walking around the house yelling that I wasn’t shit? Who else was walking around the house saying that I would never amount to shit? Who else used her daughter in a way to make her feel small and fucking worthless?”

  Right then, Patra walked into the dressing room from the stage.

  “Hey, girl,” she said, not realizing the tension in the room. She turned to Veronica. “Who are you?”

  “She,” Keisha interrupted, “is no one. She’s about to leave.”

  Veronica sucked on her teeth and began making her way to the door.

  “Everyone has a chance at redemption, Keisha. Even me.”

  Keisha walked up to her and got nose to nose.

  “I hope you burn in hell,” she said with a sneer. “Now get out. I’ve got work to do.”

  Veronica turned and left.

  “Who was that?” Patra asked again.

  “That,” Keisha said, checking her makeup again, “was my mother.”

  Without another word, Keisha walked past Patra and toward the stage. The men started howling and Keisha knew it was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 22

  Ideals are like stars: You will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.

  —Carl Schurz

  “Where’s Steven?” Marty asked. Ray and Marty shared a second-floor office at Pimp, with Marty doing a lot of the go-fer work for both Steven and Ray.

  “I don’t know, muthafucka,” Ray responded. “What do I look like? Radar? Get off your ass and see.”

  “Fuck you, nigga,” Marty said. He got up and walked out of the office and looked down onto the first floor. The door to the warehouse was open, and Marty could see movement.

  “Steven!” Marty yelled. “Steven!”

  Steven walked out of the warehouse and looked up. “What?”

  “Keisha is on the phone. She wants to talk to you! Do you want me to tell her to call back, or do you want to talk to her?”

  “Yeah, I want to talk to her. Send her to my cell.”

  Steven walked back into the warehouse and Marty went back into the office. He picked up the phone and clicked the call over.

  “Hello, Keisha. How are you doing?” Steven asked pleasantly.

  “Not very fucking good,” Keisha said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not doing very fucking good because I didn’t get all of my fucking money. You said that I was going to get five thousand dollars and not fucking twenty-five hundred. Where’s the rest of my money?”

  “Hold on one second,” Steven said, putting his hand on the phone. He picked up boxes of Pimp’s first video, Inside Keisha! and checked it for defects. The warehouse was filled with thousands of boxes, and five workers were loading them onto trucks. “Make sure that these get into stores by the morning. I want reports by the end of the week.”

  He took his hand off the phone. “I’m sorry about that, Keisha. What were you saying?”

  Keisha was lying on her couch, tired from her first week of school, and weary of dealing with Steven again. Patra had been cool about letting her stay at her apartment, and the money from the Chi Chi Room meant that she probably could get an apartment by the end of the month. But she wanted her money.

  “You promised me five thousand for the shoot and the check was made out for twenty-five hundred. Where’s my money?”

  “I’m sorry to hear about that,” Steven said. “I don’t remember promising five thousand.”

  “You know what the fuck you promised, Steven, so don’t go fucking senile on me now.”

  “Look, Keisha, I want you to be happy and I want you to make a ton of money,” Steven said cheerfully. “Hey, if you make money, then I make money. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right. And I want you to be happy, because if I’m happy, then you’re happy. But the job required you to do four scenes, and you only did two. So that’s why you got a check for half.”

  “I want my money, Steven.”

  “Keisha, I’ve got an idea,” Steven said. “I know how you can earn your money back. If you do two more scenes next weekend, then I can add them to the Web site for subscribers. I’ll pay you twenty-five hundred dollars for the scenes, and we’ll be all square.”

  Keisha pulled the phone from her ear for a second. She put it back and thought for a second about what Donovan had told her.

  “It was a one-time shot, Steven,” Keisha said. “I’m not doing it anymore.”

  “Come on, Keisha, was the experience bad?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m just not doing it anymore.”

  “Look, maybe you didn’t understand, but in your release, you also said that Pimp Video has an option, and you are obligated to do a sequel to your first video. So you’re going to do another video with us, or you’re going to be in breach of contract. And don’t forget, Keisha, I’m a fucking lawyer. You’ll be working at the Chi Chi Room until you are Debra’s age.”

  “Sue me then, muthafucka,” Keisha said. “Because I’m not fucking again for you.”

  “Suit yourself,” Steven said, surprised at Keisha’s feistiness. “But understand that every decision has a consequence. Some people get fucked and others are the people who do the fucking. I do the fucking, and if you cross me, you’re going to understand that real well.”

  “I’m not scared of you, or anybody else. Shove that money up your ass.”

  Keisha hung up the phone and lay back down on the couch. She picked up Paula Giddings’s book and tried to finish it. She needed a dose of black women’s history.

  Steven hung up the phone and walked up to his office. “Marty, call Joseph Silva and tell him that I need him to come in today.”

  “He’s already scheduled to come in at one o’clock,” Marty said. “You have him coming in with the promotional campaign from Keisha’s video.”

  “Dammit, that’s right,” Steven said. “I’m fucking losing my mind.”

  Steven turned to leave and then stopped.

  “Ray, where did you say Keisha was going to school?”

  “I think she’s going to UCLA.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Nothing much,” Steven said, walking to the door. “But I think I may have found another way to sell out her DVDs.”

  “How are you finding UCLA?” Mary asked. Keisha had dutifully fulfilled her promise to meet with Mary and as usual, her office was a mess.

  “So far so good,” Keisha said, sipping on a Jamba Juice. “The classes have been pretty easy,
and the teachers pretty cool. I’m hoping that I’m not getting lulled into a false sense of confidence.”

  “No, I think you’re pretty organized and focused,” Mary said. “I think you’ll be fine. Did you read Giddings’s book?”

  “Actually, I did,” Keisha said, taking the book out of her backpack. “I’ve done my own reading of black women, but I’ve got to say that I never understood the depth of our history.”

  “Most women don’t,” Mary said, standing up and putting the book back on her shelf. “Gender roles tend to be put in the background when you talk about history. In some ways, it’s just like race. With race, we tend to look at white as being the norm, and anything else, such as black or brown, as being the extraordinary. Those groups get little months or weeks for their history but are looked at as mere blips on the whole of American history. The same thing happens with gender. Men in history are assumed as the norm, and only a few women, and even fewer black women, are noticed. So women like yourself grow up as girls without history.”

  “I think we have history, but it’s all bad history,” Keisha said. “I just found out that my mother stripped at the same club as I strip. I think if I’d known that, then I might have made different choices.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I don’t like how my mother turned out,” Keisha answered. “If I’d have known the path she took, then I would have said that that wasn’t where I wanted to go.”

  “I don’t think you can blame your mother for that,” Mary said. “You have a brain. You made the decision, so take responsibility for it. By the way, have you made a decision about whether or not you’re going to keep stripping?”

  “You’re a feminist, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Because I probably can figure out what you think about stripping. You said that I wasn’t the first girl to come in here as a stripper, but I bet you still have some views.”

  “Of course I have views. Do you want to hear them?”

  “Sure, hit me with them,” Keisha said, lounging back in her chair.

  “Okay, since you asked,” Mary said, leaning back herself, “I think that when you get on that stage and take off your clothes, you are becoming an object, and not particularly a human sexual object. You’re being exploited.”