for a minute.
I gave him a surprised look. “You drivin’ all the way to California?”
Bo nodded. “I don’t travel no other way no more. Not after them lunatics of Bin Laden’s started blowin’ up planes and buildin’s that September.”
I laid my fork down and looked in Bo’s wandering eyes. “If you take me with you, I can help you drive.”
Bo had never refused anything I asked for and this time was no different. I quit my job, sold my car to one of my half brothers, gave Odessa and Verna all the stuff we couldn’t squeezed into Bo’s Ford station wagon, and just like that Bo and I left Mississippi.
With both of us driving, it took three days to get to San Francisco. Our only major stop was Reno, Nevada. That’s where I married Bo, even though he admitted to me when he proposed that he knew I didn’t love him.
“It takes more than love to make a relationship work, Bo,” I told him. “You’re good for me and I appreciate that.” I don’t know where my mind was. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d marry a man I didn’t love. It had to be because I hadn’t got my mind back together yet. I wanted romance and excitement. I didn’t expect that from a man I pitied more than I loved. “I’ll be a good wife,” I promised.
One thing I could say about myself was I was loyal to the people who treated me well. I could never forgive myself if I ever hurt a person the way I’d been hurt by Larry. And anyway, Odessa assured me that she would crucify me if I mistreated her brother.
Bo and I had a little more than three thousand dollars between us, but he was determined to get a job blowing that horn of his with the first band that would take him. I planned to work, too, until I got pregnant again. That was something I hoped would happen right away. I thought that a child by Bo, even one with Bo’s cross eyes and plain features, would strengthen my feelings for him.
Bo had kept in touch with a few of his old friends in San Francisco. The man who had agreed to put us up until we found a place had suddenly been offered a job in Alaska. He was gone by the time we arrived so we had no choice but to check into a motel. To save money, we chose the cheapest one we could find. From the looks of the run-down neighborhood, I could see why the tacky motel we’d picked was so cheap. We were in the heart of the ghetto.
There was a lot of mess going on outside in the motel parking lot when we checked into The Do-Drop Inn. Aggressive homeless people wandered around demanding money. Angry-looking people screamed at other angry people, while young boys walked around hugging huge radios blasting music that sounded like nothing but a lot of noise. About an hour after we checked in, Bo offered to go get us something to eat and drink from an all-night convenience store at the corner.
“Wait for my hair to dry and I’ll go with you,” I said, walking out of the dank bathroom with a towel around my head.
“No, you stay right here and warm the bed until I get back,” he insisted. “I ain’t goin’ to set around waitin’,” Bo snapped, nodding toward the bed. “Now you just get in that bed and be ready for me when I get back.” That was the last thing he would ever say to me.
The eleven o’clock news had just gone off. I clicked off the shit-box of a television, because it kept going off by itself anyway. The noise from my blow-dryer kept me from hearing some of the noise outside, but it didn’t drown out the yip yip of a siren that seemed to be getting closer and closer.
I looked at my watch. Bo had only been gone a few minutes. I finally cracked open the door and looked out. I couldn’t see what was going on because a huge, rough-looking crowd had gathered in the parking lot. In addition to an ambulance, several police cars were present. Feeling that I would be safe with a bunch of cops running around, I went out to investigate. And that’s when I saw Bo on the ground, with blood trailing behind him. He was on his belly, crawling like a snake, trying to get back to me.
I froze in my tracks. As long as I live, I will never forget the look in Bo’s eyes when he saw me. He smiled and blinked, as a huge tear rolled down the side of his face like a marble. Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep. I was still standing in the same spot, unable to move when the paramedics covered Bo and slid him into the back of the ambulance. Bo’s impatience had saved my life. If he’d waited for me to go with him, both of us probably would have died.
The hardest telephone call I ever had to make in my life was to Odessa to tell her that her brother had walked in on a robbery in progress and had been shot dead.
Chapter 6
ESTER SANCHEZ
Cops was everywhere, but nobody was telling ’em shit. I wasn’t worried about them cops; they never scared me. And they never bothered me ’cause I never gave them no reason to. Me, I seen that dude shoot that man, but I couldn’t say I seen it. Oh well. Too many of them thugs out there knew where I lived.
My man wouldn’t have been too happy if he knew I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, so I had more than one reason to keep my mouth shut. I was still supposed to be at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, spending the night with a trick from L.A. A thousand dollars for a whole night was a lot of money to me. Five Benjamins for me, five for my man. That’s the way we planned it. Usually, he only took a third of what I got from every trick. Lately, he was having a lot of expenses. And, so was I. I had to be cool if I wanted to stay hot. And staying hot meant I couldn’t be wasting valuable time with a trick that’s gonna sleep like a dead man.
That’s why when the trick at the hotel passed out, I tippy-toed out. I had to get back on the job. I figured I’d hop a cab over to Capp Street in the Mission, pick up one more trick before I had to meet up with my man and bring the trick to the motel that me and some of the street girls used. And that meant more money for me that I didn’t have to share with my man. I believed that the most important person to “get paid” for my hard work was me.
I felt kind of bad for not telling them cops what I seen. I seen everything through the window in the front of that mini-mart store. The trick did, too, but he wasn’t talking. He ran out to his car like somebody was shooting at him. I’m lucky he paid me first. The dead man was probably real nice. Him and his lady was checking into the room next door to me and my trick when we checked in. Their ride had Mississippi license plates.
Since the room was paid up for the whole night, I decided to stay and get some sleep. It had been a long day for me. That was my problem with being popular. A lot of tricks wanted to give me their money. And I’d been hella popular lately. But I needed to stay put until the cops left. I needed some rest. I needed to think.
The motel clerk was cool. He was a Mexican with no papers and he had crooked cops and drug dealers looking for him back in Tijuana. To make sure he stayed cool with me, I slapped a fifty in his hand every time I seen him, and he looked out for me. Besides, we spoke the same language. I never had to remind him that we Latinos had to stick together.
Clyde didn’t expect to see me until eight in the morning, in front of my apartment. By then, I’d have forgotten about seeing that man get shot. Death was one thing I didn’t want to deal with until I had to. I’d been hiding from it since the day I was born.
“Ester, you my best girl. I’ll take care of you.” My man, Clyde, told me that all the time, and it made me feel good. Even though I knew he was a liar. Him being a man, he couldn’t help that. He told all of his women the same thing he told me. I knew that because me and them other women talked about the things Clyde said to us. Clyde was also a stupid man. He had to be if he didn’t know that his women got together to rat him out to one another. But I was his first wife, so when he told me I was his best girl, it meant something to me.
In a way, Clyde and his wives was my only family. He ain’t married to none of us, he just called us his wives. He said it had more class than some of the things other people called women who slept with men for money.
I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for Clyde. I never thought that I would grow up to sell pussy. I never thought that I would grow up at all.
The