by Mary Monroe
The Masons had a nice house, a two-story beige stucco with a lemon tree in the front yard. But it was nothing compared to the large white house Valerie lived in. That had a lot to do with the fact that I chose to spend so much time there.
“You call your daddy by his name?” I asked, excited because I’d been anxious to make some new friends. “I wish I had a daddy,” I whined. “If I did, I wouldn’t call him by his name like you do.”
“That man is not my real daddy! Zeke adopted us a long time ago and changed our last name from Burriss to Proctor,” Valerie said quickly, and with a severe scowl on her face. “My real daddy got hit by a train coming home from work one night. His name was Alex, and that’s the name I’m going to give my first child, whether it’s a boy or a girl.” It was so hot that day that I remember watching beads of sweat slide down the sides of Valerie’s angry face like little pebbles. “Where your real mama and daddy at?” she asked, wiping her face. Her long honey brown legs looked good in her crisp white shorts. I felt pretty dowdy standing next to her in my baggy blue jeans with the legs rolled up to halfway my knobby, ashy knees.
I shrugged and turned away so that she could not see the tears in my eyes. I had very little memory of what had happened in my life before the Masons rescued me. But I’d heard enough to know that I was lucky it was all behind me now.
My missing-in-action biological mother was raised in a house where everybody from her grandparents to her and her siblings drank alcohol like it was water. She took off when she was fifteen and lived on the streets before turning herself in to the authorities. While she was in one of many foster homes, she got pregnant with me. I was born in the backseat of a car that she and her boyfriend had carjacked earlier that night. I spent my first four months living in that car with my mother and her man. I knew all of this because before she disappeared from my life, she told me certain things that she thought I should know. Most of the information she shared with me did me more harm then good. I probably would have enjoyed life more had I not known some of the details of my early life.
Anyway, Mama told me that from the stolen car, we moved into somebody’s garage where we lived until somebody burned it to the ground. From there we moved into an abandoned school bus that sat behind an old warehouse in East L.A. I can remember guzzling beer from a baby bottle, and then pissing so much that my Pampers had holes in the crotch by the time somebody changed me.
One morning, still slightly drunk, I woke up in a bed in a room with so much white—the walls, the bedding, the white people standing over me dressed in white—I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was in a hospital room. And from there, a foster home.
I never saw my mother again until several years and a couple of foster homes later. It happened one Saturday afternoon when I was out shopping in a mall with Viola for some feminine products that I needed. I’d just gotten my period for the first time and was looking forward to a new phase in my life. I felt good about everything and myself that warm sunny day, until I spotted my mother. I couldn’t even remember her name, but she had a face that I could never forget. Because I saw that same face every time I looked in a mirror—the large, sad brown eyes and shy smile, a smile that only made cameo appearances at the time.
The years had not been good to Mama. She was still a young woman in her early thirties, but with her glassy eyes, stringy hair, wrinkled face, and scattered brown teeth she looked like an old crone from a mummy’s tomb. Somehow she had developed a noticeable hump on her back. She had gained at least sixty or seventy pounds. Compared to the last time I saw her, the extra weight made her look well fed if nothing else. Being so plump seemed like an odd thing for a homeless person, especially with the way they ate things they fished out Dumpsters or off the ground.
Dressed in rags and holding a tin can with a hand that looked like a claw, my mother wobbled up from a bench at a bus stop and staggered over to the shiny new Buick Viola and I had just climbed out of. I hid behind Viola as she dropped a few coins into the can. I never shopped in that mall again, and I never saw my mother again after that painful day. But I saw her in my dreams, and every time I looked in a mirror.
CHAPTER 6
Despite my traumatic early years, I had an outgoing personality, so it was fairly easy for me to make friends. In addition to Valerie Proctor and a few other kids in the neighborhood, I had a lot of friends who were also in foster care. That was important to me because I liked knowing kids who had endured experiences similar to mine. I bonded faster with them than I did with kids who lived with their biological families. Valerie was an exception. It didn’t take long for me to feel as if I’d known her all my life.
The Masons were elderly people who had never been able to have children of their own. I was the only foster child in their home. But before me, they had opened their arms and hearts to half a dozen other neglected and abused kids. And they associated with a lot of other couples who took in foster kids. I preferred the company of other girls, but there was one boy I’d met at church who stayed on my mind for days after I’d met him. His name was Floyd Watson, and he was also in a foster home.
Floyd was an average-looking boy with bronze skin and curly, reddish brown hair. But when he smiled he looked quite handsome with his round brown eyes and full lips. The problem was, he rarely smiled. Like me. Knowing that we had something in common made me smile. Unfortunately, from what I’d heard, he didn’t have much to smile about. I knew from Valerie, the church gossips, and my foster parents that Floyd had been horribly abused throughout his fifteen years. The first time I saw him, he had a cast on one arm and bandages practically all over his face from injuries that he’d sustained during a stay in a previous foster home.
“His mother was a prostitute and his daddy was one of her tricks. She lived with a drug dealer for a while, and they used to make Floyd do drug runs, wearing a bulletproof vest,” Valerie whispered to me in church one boring Sunday afternoon. Floyd sat on the end of the pew across the aisle, looking like he didn’t have a friend in the world. “And that frump sitting next to him is his latest foster mother, Glodine Banks. She’s a bitch on wheels,” Valerie hissed.
“Damn,” I mouthed. “Well, at least Miss Glodine seems like a nice-enough woman. Bringing him to church and all,” I added. Nice was one word that was rarely used to describe Glodine. Not only was she a nosy busybody, she talked about everybody she knew like a dog. Unlike Valerie, who ran a close second to Glodine as the biggest gossip in our neighborhood, Glodine was a straight-up troublemaker. She had been known to call up the welfare people and report the cheats. And even I knew that the only reason she took in foster kids was to get paid. But according to Viola, there was a reason for Glodine’s bitterness. She had lost all three of her children a few years ago. While she was enjoying a cookout at a neighbor’s house, her kids had hidden themselves in an abandoned refrigerator while playing hide-and-seek with the neighbor’s kids. When the kids never came out from their hiding place, everybody started looking for them. Three hours later, they found them in the refrigerator, dead from asphyxiation. Glodine had had a hysterectomy, so she couldn’t have any more children. Viola insisted that Glodine’s nasty ways were how she hid her grief and shame. I felt sorry for the woman, but Valerie still thought she was a witch.
“That witch? Nice my ass. She is a sexpot!” Valerie cupped her hand to whisper in my ear. “I heard she used to sell pussy when she was young. I guess now that she looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, she has to get her nookie anywhere she can. That thang she married must be sleeping on his job.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
Valerie rolled her eyes, rotated her neck, and gave me an exasperated look. At the same time, she seemed to be enjoying her position. “Everybody knows that Glodine gets jiggy with her foster sons. Just the big, cute ones, though. She must be in hog heaven with a hunk like Floyd living under her roof. And from what I can see when he wears them tight
jeans, he’s got a big dick that any grown woman would like to get her skanky hands on. That nasty-ass bitch.” Valerie snickered, covering her mouth with both hands and flashing me a smug look.
I gave Valerie a sharp look and shook my head. “Miss Glodine molests her foster sons? Floyd is kind of cute, though, so I can understand her not being able to keep her hands off him.”
“Uh-huh.” Valerie nodded. “I heard that from three or four different people, so it must be true. That many people wouldn’t go around telling the same lie.”
“Can’t she go to jail for that?” I wailed. Two middle-aged sisters in front of us turned around and gave us dirty looks so we lowered our voices.
“Girl, please,” Valerie quipped, snapping her fingers. “Black kids don’t have a chance in this world. I live in the same house with a cop, and he is just as bad as any of these other motherfuckers, if not worse.”
“Dang. It’s bad enough when a girl gets molested, but it must be hella bad for a boy,” I said with a muffled groan.
“And that husband of Glodine’s has his way with all the foster girls. Everybody on the block knows about it. The last three girls that was there, all three of them got pregnant with his babies and Glodine fixed them up. I heard that heifer used a coat hanger.”
“I didn’t know any of that shit,” I admitted. “Can’t somebody do something to make her stop? Like calling the police?”
“Well, I know it hasn’t been going on for too long. At least not with Floyd. That brother is hardly some everyday punk. That boy is from Crenshaw, and he’s still in touch with some of his boys. Sooner or later, they will take care of that old bitch. You know the Crips don’t play. And if I was you, I wouldn’t get involved with somebody that’s got so much going against him.”
I didn’t hear the rest of Reverend Carter’s sermon that day, and I had stopped listening to Valerie. But as soon as church let out, I went up to Floyd and invited him to my house, which was a few doors down the block and across the street. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised or annoyed because he looked at me with such contempt I flinched.
“Boy, where your manners at? Be nice!” Miss Glodine barked, giving Floyd a nudge with her elbow. He looked down, so I looked down. Seeing his cheap pants with the legs several inches too short and his shabby shoes, I truly felt sorry for him.
“Any dudes over there I can kick it with?” he muttered, chewing on a toothpick. Behind Miss Glodine stood her two cute but sad-faced teenage foster daughters and her lanky, mule-faced husband. In his vomit-colored suit and greasy hair, he looked like a snake-oil salesman. From the smug look on his face and the way he seemed to be guarding the two girls, I had no trouble believing that he was a pervert.
“Not yet. But I got a lot of games and stuff,” I said proudly. “You like Pac-Man? I got that.”
Before responding, Floyd looked at Miss Glodine and she answered for him. “This boy got enough of a mess on his hands without you getting him caught up in some of your mess,” she said. “I know how you little heifers pick out a handsome boy like Floyd so you can get yourself pregnant and on the welfare. Floyd, don’t you be no fool. Do you hear me, boy?” I couldn’t believe that this was the same woman who had just told Floyd to “be nice” to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” Floyd muttered.
I gasped. The two teenage girls gave me pitiful looks, and Glodine’s husband snickered and moved even closer to the older of the two girls.
“Come on, Lo. It stinks up in here,” Valerie said, pulling me toward the door. “Let’s go to my house where we can have some fun.”
I followed Valerie to her house, dragging my feet like they weighed ten pounds apiece. But I didn’t stay long. Mr. Zeke was on a rampage. As soon as we entered the living room, we saw him dragging Miss Naomi across the floor by her hair like a caveman.
“You son of a bitch! Turn my mama aloose!” Valerie screamed. Then she shot across the floor like a bullet and started beating Mr. Zeke on his back and head with her fists.
“Girl, have you lost what was left of your mind or what?” he roared. With one hand still holding Valerie’s mother by the hair, he raised his other hand and hit Valerie hard across the face. She stumbled and crashed into the wall with so much force that every picture on the wall, and a huge wall clock, crashed to the floor.
CHAPTER 7
An ambulance took Valerie’s mother to the hospital that same evening, and I didn’t see Valerie again for several days. Neither she nor her two younger siblings came to school, or even out of the house. When I finally did see her in church the following Sunday, I was stunned and upset by what she told me, and by what I saw.
“Zeke made Mama say she fell down the steps,” Valerie sobbed through clenched teeth. Her left eye was swollen and bloodshot. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell me, but I knew that she’d also taken a few more hits from Mr. Zeke for trying to help her mother.
Valerie and I usually occupied the same pew every Sunday, but this time Floyd and his foster family had beaten us to it. We sat behind them, whispering as Reverend Carter preached so hard that the veins in his neck and forehead looked like coils. I enjoyed going to church every Sunday, but not for the same reasons as most of the congregation. The choir had so many people singing off-key, it was a real treat to hear them. It reminded me of The Gong Show reruns. When our frenzied preacher’s preaching got real intense, he flapped his arms as if he was about to take off flying. So that was another treat. And attending church gave me a chance to gaze at Floyd Watson.
“What about you? I know you didn’t tell them that you fell down the stairs,” I said to Valerie, looking at the back of Floyd’s head out of the corner of my eye. He was chewing gum so his ears were wiggling, until Glodine gave him a mean look.
My foster parents occupied the same pew with Floyd and his family. I had to talk in a real low voice because the one thing Viola and Luther didn’t tolerate was me being disrespectful in the Lord’s house.
“I didn’t tell anybody anything. It only makes things worse. Last week Zeke slapped my little brother so hard he vomited. All because he didn’t take out the trash when he was supposed to. I told my gym teacher. A social worker came to the house and took Zeke and Mama into the kitchen and talked to them. I don’t know what all they talked about, but they came back into the living room laughing and slapping each other on the back. ‘You know how clumsy kids is . . . and how they like to tell lies to get attention,’ Zeke was saying to the social worker. My little brother is just nine years old and just learning about things. There is nothing a child that young can do to get beaten like that.”
“But what about your mama? Can’t she say something to get people to believe her?”
“He’s a cop, Lo. He’s got guns, and handcuffs, and pepper spray and shit. He can do whatever he wants to do to me, my mama, and anybody else. Last night during dinner when my little sister Liz took a pork chop without asking, he handcuffed her to her chair. She was still there when we got up this morning.”
“Shit! She slept handcuffed to a chair all night?”
Valerie nodded. “She couldn’t get to the bathroom during the night, so she wet herself. She got a whupping this morning for doing that!” Valerie paused and stared off into space. From the look on her face, there was no telling what kinds of thoughts were running through her head.
Still staring off into space, she started talking again, speaking real slow. “Nobody can speak against him and get away with it. He brags about all the heads he’s cracked when him and the rest of those rogue cops go after somebody. One time I heard him talking out on our back porch with some of his cop buddies. He was bragging about how he makes the hookers that work on his beat suck his dick and break him off a few hundred dollars a week. A lot of the cops in this town do that same shit. They plant drugs and stolen property on gangbangers, and they even shoot the ones they really want to get rid of.”
I gave Valerie a thoughtful look. “Has he ever . . . you know?”
“I know
what?”
“Has he ever done anything nasty to you or your little sister?” From the look on Valerie’s face I had a feeling that my question offended her.
“No. Hell, no,” she said quickly. “What makes you think he’s ever done that?”
I gave my shoulders a hearty shrug. “He’s done everything else. I figured if he’s so mean and nasty that he makes prostitutes suck his dick, what’s to stop him from doing the same thing, or something worse, to you and your baby sister.”
“Well, all I can say is that he hasn’t. At least not yet.” Valerie reached for a hymnal in the pocket on the back of the pew in front of us and started fanning her face. She glanced at Floyd and nudged me with her elbow. “Guess what? Your boy busted Rosie Graham’s cherry at Bobby Baker’s birthday party last night.”
I stared at Valerie with wide-eyed interest. “It should have been me.” I swooned.
Valerie jabbed me in my side with her elbow. “Don’t worry. Your day is coming. Anyway, Floyd did the deed like a pro. They were all over that couch in Bobby’s rec room.”
“Who told you that he did that?” I asked with a hopeful sigh. Three old ladies gave me dirty looks and motioned for me to shut up. “Who told you that?” I whispered, leaning so close to Valerie I could smell her sweat. That, combined with her cheap perfume, reminded me of a fragrance my mother used to wear called Bitches Brew. I remember her spraying my soiled ass with that shit when I was a toddler when she didn’t feel like washing me properly. All of a sudden my nose started itching and I let out a few sneezes that were so aggressive, it felt like somebody had punched me in my nose.
“I was there and seen the whole thing. Me and Iris Cunningham followed them when they left the party room. I guess after he’s had to wallow up on top of Glodine’s nasty lumpy body, getting some pussy his own age must be a real treat to him. You don’t watch your step, he’ll be busting you, too.”
