The security guard was practically useless. He got scratched, punched, knocked down, and kicked by all three of us. The crowd roared with laughter. Some instigating teenagers chanted, “fight, fight, fight.” Then, while Mrs. Holmes and her ferocious friend stood there entertaining the crowd, cussing and calling me out of my name, a beefy-faced policeman showed up to sort out the mess.
To add insult to injury, Larry’s vicious wife attempted to have me arrested for assault! But the nosy sister from the church I used to attend was the first of several people to speak up in my defense. They told the sweaty cop who had really started the fight.
“Ma’am, do you want to press charges?” the cop asked me, wiping sweat off his face with his cap. The battered and bruised security guard was peeping from behind the cop.
For a moment I considered this option. I would have been getting back at Larry’s wife and Larry, but after thinking about it for a minute, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I was better off just getting Larry out of my system for good. This was the last straw.
I shook my head, limped back to my car, and drove like a bat out of hell. As soon as I got home, I started pacing my living room floor like a tiger, waiting to get my hands on Larry. I called his job; he was “unavailable.” I called his cell phone, he didn’t answer. And he didn’t call me or come to see me that day, or any other day.
The next time I saw Larry was at the hospital when I gave birth to his son. When he came to see his wife in the room across the hall from mine, he glanced in my room with a blank stare, like I was a stranger. It was hard for me to accept the fact that he was the same man who had told me over and over that he loved me.
Words could not describe the pain I was in. Physically, I felt fine. But my mind felt like it was on fire. I had never been so betrayed and used before in my life. The rage I felt was so severe, every man in that hospital looked like Larry to me. I glared at the husbands of all the other women sharing the room with me. Even old gray-haired Dr. White’s presence upset me. I almost bit his head off when he came to see how I was doing.
“Lula, you seem awfully tense,” the kind old man said, backing away from my bed.
“And I’ll be this way from now on,” I hissed.
Chapter 2
ROCKELLE HARPER
I’d been on five job interviews in the last week. So far, not a single person had called me back. I could type, but I hadn’t passed any of the typing tests, and I didn’t know shit about all the new office software. Until I improved my skills, getting a job in an office didn’t seem like a possibility.
The restaurants wanted waitresses with experience. And the pocket change that the department stores offered was not enough for me to support a cat, let alone me and three kids.
Interview was a fancy word for what I was about to do. Thanks to Joe running out on me and the kids, I was about to involve myself with a man who made his money setting up dates for horny men with desperate women like me. At least three hundred dollars a date, I’d been promised. I told myself that nobody I knew would ever know. And I swore that I would only do it until I got on my feet, or until Joe came back.
San Francisco is one of the most exciting and glamorous cities in the world. It is a haven for everyone from the rich and famous to the lost souls who wouldn’t fit in anywhere else. When you grow up the way I did, on welfare in a Section Eight apartment located in a neighborhood that the press calls a war zone, you miss out on a lot of things that this city has to offer.
I was born and raised in San Francisco, but I’d never been to Fisherman’s Wharf until today.
I’d been in a few fancy restaurants with Joe, so I knew how to behave. I had on my most expensive-looking outfit. I’d spent an hour putting on my makeup and fixing my hair. And the way the waiters and male patrons in the restaurant were smiling and blinking at me, I knew I was looking good. What man wouldn’t want to pay me a few hundred dollars for a date?
“You must be Rockelle.” The voice didn’t fit the man. I turned around, expecting to see some slick-haired brother with a mouth full of gold teeth, a neck draped with gold chains, and a ring hanging off the side of his nose. He was older than I’d expected. On the telephone he’d sounded like a man in his late twenties. With the deep lines crisscrossing his high forehead and the crinkles around his small black eyes, he had to be at least forty. He was tall and trim. His thick short hair was coal-black, but I knew a dye job when I saw one. Even though he was smiling, there was a sad, tortured look about him. He was good-looking, but not what I would call handsome. I would not have noticed him in a crowd. In his expensive-looking black suit and maroon tie, with a smile dividing his caramel colored face, he could have passed for a banker or a funeral director, depending on how you wanted to interpret the situation.
“And you must be Clyde Brooks.” I smiled as he helped me remove my cashmere sweater in the lobby of Alfredo’s. I held on to my sweater, draping it across my arm so it wouldn’t get wrinkled or soiled. The price tag was still pinned inside, and I planned to return it to Macy’s, like I did with all of the new clothes I bought lately. That scam, one I’d learned when I lived in the projects, made it possible for me to look like I belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine.
“I got us a booth so we could have some privacy,” he said in a strong voice with a hint of a southern accent. He led me past a few dozen hungry patrons sipping fine wine and munching on fancy Italian food.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, so nervous my voice cracked.
From a huge window I could see the yachts hauling the people who could afford them across the bay as great white birds flapped across the sky. I loved Italian food, but I’d never been inside a restaurant as elegant as Alfredo’s, even though my mother had spent many of her years scrubbing and waxing its floors. A sad feeling came over me, and I suddenly wished I was anywhere but where I was. But I knew before I even left my house, that if I made it this far, it would be too late to turn back. Clyde cleared his throat and rubbed his smooth hands together.
“Well now. Let’s talk business.” He paused as we slid into a booth in a corner. “My girl Carlene tells me you want to make some money,” he said in a low voice, sitting down across from me.
I hated booths and had always avoided them. The fifty extra pounds, most of it stacked up on my hips and ass, which I had to haul around like a sack of flour, made it hard for me to sit comfortably in a booth. There wasn’t even enough room for me to cross my nervous legs.
“Uh-huh. But just until I get myself straightened out. That’s all,” I insisted, quick and low.
Clyde nodded, but his smile was gone. “I feel you, sister. And I’m fin to help you do just that, if you do like I tell you.” He paused to drink from a large glass of red wine, diffusing a belch with a monogrammed handkerchief. “Now, how old are you?” he asked, neatly folding his handkerchief and dropping it on the table. He had nice black eyes with long black lashes to die for; a waste on a man.
Shuffling in my seat and blinking hard, with my cheap mascara stinging my eyes, I tried my best to sound like a young girl. “Twenty-three.” My voice came out sounding squeaky and weak. Minnie Mouse trying to sound like Tina Turner. Clyde turned his head to the side and gazed at me out of the corner of his eye, tapping the top of the table with a long neatly manicured finger. “Twenty-five,” I said firmly, coughing. He wasn’t going for that either, so I told the truth. “Twenty-eight.”
His smile was back on his face. “What’s your background?”
“Huh?”
“Where you from? You look kinda exotic.”
“Um, I got a little Irish blood, Italian, Indian on my mama’s side. My daddy’s great-grandfather was French. I got a lot of mixed blood.”
He nodded. “You and every other Black person in America. Shit!” he grumbled, speaking like somebody from the ghetto. He gave me a hard look and tapped my hand. “Let’s get one thing straight