the movies,” Desiree pleaded. “You can bring Burl if you want to. He can help us clean my daddy’s office. Daddy has to go out to the hospital to deliver a baby by C-section on Saturday.” Desiree continued. “Poor Daddy. I feel so sorry for him. It’s not easy for him to be prodding around with his fingers inside women’s stinky pussies five days a week. No wonder he drinks.”
I cringed. “We don’t have to clean up nothing real nasty, do we?”
“Oh, no! I just go by to like straighten up magazines, check on the plants, stuff like that. Nurse Bertha and the cleaning lady take care of the real nasty stuff. We can make Burl rearrange the furniture in the waiting room. Daddy would be so pleased,” Desiree said breathlessly.
“Uh…I’ll have to ask Burl. You know how boys are,” I replied. As soon as I got Desiree off the phone, I called Burl. “You wanna go to the movies Saturday afternoon?” I had no desire to help clean up Dr. Lucienne’s office and field his nosy head nurse’s questions, and even without asking I knew that Burl didn’t want to either.
“With who?” Burl gasped.
“With me,” I said.
“I ain’t got no money.” He laughed. I could hear Miss Mozelle’s muffled, plaintive growls in the background. “I gotta get off the phone. Mama needs for me to scrape the dead skin off her feet,” Burl said excitedly.
Burl was such a fool for his mama. It was bad enough that Burl’s mean uncle in Detroit had such a toehold on him, but the things he did to keep his mama happy crossed the line. I felt sorry for the girl who ended up marrying Burl.
“Okay, I’ll pay your way,” I snapped. “But you can’t tell nobody.” Paying a boy to spend time with me was a level of disgrace so low, I had a hard time believing my own words. As soon as Burl agreed to go to the movies with me, I forgot all about calling Desiree back.
That Saturday, I took my walk of shame to Burl’s house right after lunch, reminding myself that Burl was really a nice boy to have for a friend. Besides, he could pass for seventeen, so I needed him to get me into the R-rated movie I wanted to see.
If things didn’t work out between Chester and me, I’d still have Burl to fall back on.
CHAPTER 11
Belle Helene had only one movie theater and it was downtown across from the police station. But it had ten screens, so there was always something for everybody. It was always fun to go even though there were several scowling security guards roaming around trying to catch people sneaking into more than one movie without paying. Instead of taking a cab, Burl and I walked the seven blocks to get to the movies. We could have taken the bus, but it was a haven for the bullies Burl wanted to avoid.
As hard as it was for me to believe, Burl was the best-looking boy standing in line waiting to get into the movies. A few brazen girls flirted with him right in front of me. The Turner twins—the two boys who had been playing ball with Chester that day I hit him—rolled their eyes at Burl. They tried to push ahead of us in line, knowing Burl was not the kind of boy to fight. But once they realized he was with me, they backed off. Even kids I didn’t know had heard about the time I hit Chester Sheffield, and over the months the story had spun out of control. It had become a legend that even I didn’t recognize anymore. Somebody had told a version that included me attacking Chester with a switchblade!
Burl was so busy running back and forth to the snack bar—spending more of my money—he missed the first part of the movie. I couldn’t believe that with all the bloodcurdling screams throughout the theater, Burl slept through a deep movie like Halloween II. But once I got close enough to him to smell his breath I knew why. Miss Mozelle brought a lot of wine home from the country club where she worked. More than once, I had sat in Burl’s living room with him while he lapped up wine by the jarful.
I glared at him leaning sideways in the seat next to me with his meaty head on my shoulder. After the movie ended, I was tempted to leave him sitting there in the dark. But a meddlesome usher turned a flashlight on us and threatened to call the manager. It took me two minutes of shaking Burl to wake him up. He was so groggy, we had to take a cab back across town, which took another three dollars out of my pocket.
Since I had lied to Mama that I was going to visit Desiree and eat dinner with her and Dr. Lucienne, I couldn’t go home right away after Burl and I left the movies. I figured the cool air would help sober Burl up. And because I didn’t want to waste any more of my money, I dragged him out of the cab after a few blocks and we walked down Jersey Street.
Other than the movies and the mall, there were a lot of recreational activities available to us. I spent a lot of time swimming at the Y with Regina. And Crazy Mimi’s parents owned a video store in the mini-mall two doors down from the store Chester’s folks owned. When Crazy Mimi was in the store, she sneaked X-rated videos to her friends. Burl and I could have chosen any one of those places to go to that afternoon. If we had, it would have made all the difference in the world in both of our lives.
“Where you wanna go now?” Burl sounded bored, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, knowing he had been sipping wine earlier at the movies. “You got some more money? Wanna go swimmin’ at the Y? Wanna go get some dirty movies from Crazy Mimi?”
I shook my head. “Let’s go to the train yard over by the freeway,” I suggested, clutching my almost empty coin purse.
We had all been repeatedly warned to stay away from the train yard after Georgie Fisher’s arm got cut off when he tried to crawl under a train three years ago. There were DANGER signs all over the train yard in English and Spanish, but none of us paid any attention to that. Because it was just two blocks from Second Baptist Church, sometimes when we got bored during Reverend Poe’s sermons, we sneaked to the train yard. We’d hide in boxcars that often sat in the same spot for weeks at a time without moving. I knew from Kitty that Chester hung out there with his friends smoking weed. The train station was several yards from where the boxcars sat littered with dingy blankets and used condoms somebody had left behind inside. But when the trains were in use, they traveled back and forth to Mississippi and other parts of Alabama.
A strange assortment of men, Black and white, worked at the train yard. When they were not busy chasing us and a few interstate-traveling hoboes away, they patrolled the grounds with sticks and walkie-talkies. Every now and then, a couple of the middle-aged men tried to lure young girls to secluded spots between the boxcars by waving dollar bills at us. More than once, Captain Hook, a scraggly white man with cold blue eyes and a hand with a missing thumb, tried to pay us a few dollars to feel on us. The only girl I knew who ever took him up on it was Crazy Mimi. In fact, when Crazy Mimi’s last baby was born, with the same cold blue eyes and a missing thumb and light skin, we all knew that Captain Hook had gotten more than a feel from Crazy Mimi. Like with her other pregnancies, she told her parents she didn’t know who made her pregnant. None of us ever told about the blue-eyed, one-thumb man at the train yard, because we didn’t want to stop going there.
I didn’t know if it was because Burl was clumsy or still drunk, but I had to help him climb up into the boxcar. It was the one at the end of a row of four rust-orange-colored boxcars. The same one that Desiree and I had hopped into the week before to smoke cigarettes. It had been an awful experience for me. The smoke and the taste of tobacco made me sneeze, itch, and vomit. That was the first and last time I ever put a cigarette between my lips.
As soon as Burl and I got situated on the dusty floor of the boxcar, Burl whipped out a Pepsi bottle from his inside jacket pocket, bit off the top with his thick teeth, and took a huge sip. Then he handed the bottle to me. As soon as I realized it was wine, I handed it back to him. He promptly finished it in one gulp and let out a belch that was so tremendous, his eyes rolled back in his head.
I don’t know what made me mad the most: Burl acting like he was bored with my company, or him falling asleep on me again. But whatever it was, it was enough for me to tie his shoestrings together and leave him lying there on the boxcar floor, folded up in a knotty ball, clicking his teeth in his sleep. I leaped to the ground and with a lot of effort, I shut the heavy door to the boxcar. I stumbled