you tomorrow, girl,” one of my coworkers said as we walked in opposite directions.
“Not if the movie producer calls me, you won’t,” I said, checking my text messages.
We weren’t allow to text or make personal calls while working. I smiled. I’d missed one voice mail from Grant, or G, as I’d started calling him, and he’d sent four texts: Velvet, thanks. I’d love to see you again. I’ll call you again later. I want to take you to dinner when I get to Atlanta. Grant was so nice, but I wasn’t confused. Grant wanted to hit this good pussy again, and I wanted him to.
I texted him back: G, can’t wait 2 c u…miss u already.
The sun was setting. I didn’t mind walking the three blocks to get home. I hated that there was no time for me to rest my tired feet. I wanted to take off my shoes. The balls of my feet stung; the heels of my feet ached. My mother thought it was a good idea for me to work at this hotel since it was close to home and my son’s school.
“Velvet, take that job, because you need to be close to home in case anything happens to Ronnie,” she’d said. “I’ll pick him up for you. I’m not going to sit at home worrying about how to get to him if something bad happens.”
The day I was born, I was naked, pure, and innocent; I wasn’t put on this earth for my mother to validate my existence. Control what was between my thighs. Constantly tell me how I should live my life. Give me advice, knowing at some point in her own life she’d been exactly like me: undereducated about her body, inexperienced with sex, and clueless about love. My mother was thirty years older than me.
While raising me, all she could say was, “Velvet, keep you legs shut. Stay a virgin as long as you can.” Why? Who was I saving myself for? She had made wrong choices for the wrong reasons, and she’d survived. Why couldn’t I do the same? If she’d wanted me to make smart choices, why hadn’t my mother taught me about sex? About my body? Probably because she still hadn’t figured it out for herself.
All the women I knew chose guys who didn’t love them. If they did love them, it didn’t last long. My mother had had her chance to screw up; now she wanted to preach what she hadn’t practiced. I wasn’t trying to impress my mother or be a role model for younger girls. I was going to continue taking risks and fucking up until I got tired, ’cause nobody I knew had gotten love or sex right.
I unlocked my mother’s door with my key.
“Hi, Mama,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Hey, baby. How was your day?” Mama asked, opening her mail while looking at me.
“I’m tired,” I answered, pouring a glass of cranberry juice.
“I have just the break you need,” Mama said, nodding.
Uh-oh. Here we go. Reluctantly, I said, “Tell me what you’ve come up with this time.”
“Baby, it’s sweeter than honey. Honey Thomas is helping women empower themselves, and I figured if you could start getting child support, you could stop stripping at night.”
“Mama, I don’t know this Honey Thomas woman you’re talking about, and neither do you. I like stripping. I don’t like standing on my feet for eight hours.”
Sitting at my mother’s glass-top dinner table for four, I removed my shoes, then rubbed my tired feet. “Ronnie, you’ve got fifteen minutes to play video games. Then we have to go home.”
Mama said, “Stripping doesn’t have health benefits for my grandson.”
Working in customer service, I’d learned that people were fucking selfish and rude, just like my mother. They didn’t give a damn. I could be puking up my guts, and in the middle of heaving, they’d ask, “Can you give us directions to Atlantic Station?” They wouldn’t even apologize for interrupting me. One day soon I wouldn’t have to answer to those your-mama-should’ve-raised-you-better tricks or my mother.
“Okay, Mommy,” my son yelled from the living room. In an hour he’d be right back at my mom’s, ’cause I had to be at my second job by nine.
“Baby, she’s new to Atlanta, and her commercials are on Michael Baisden’s show all the time. Honey is going to help women get out of abusive situations,” said Mama.
I didn’t know that woman and had no desire to. “Anybody can advertise on the radio, Mama.” Honey was probably a rip-off chick, out to make a quick hustle by preying on desperate women. The fact that my baby’s daddy had never seen our son or paid a penny of child support wasn’t abuse; that was neglect, and I didn’t want to see his trifling, rusty, married behind ever again.
“Ronnie,” I called out to my son, “let’s go!” Looking into my mother’s eyes, I said, “Ma, please. This one time listen to me. Don’t contact that woman.”
Picking up my shoes, I left my mom’s house and went next door to mine. If I didn’t need my mom to keep Ronnie so often, I’d encourage her to go back to work. She’d taken an early retirement buyout from her federal government job to help me out.
“Hey, Ronnie. Hey, Red. That sure is another nice suit you have on today. They have any more of them concierge openings at that new fancy hotel you been working at?” Mrs. Taylor asked as she sat on her porch. “I could use me some new clothes, too. Never mind, chile. I’m just dreaming out loud. They probably ain’t got no positions for a sixty-year-old woman. Besides, I can’t walk all them blocks back and forth like you do. You sho’ look good, Red. Them Hollywood producers call you yet?”
The heaviness weighing down my heart was invisible. No one, including Mrs. Taylor, could look beyond my sexy smile and big booty to see that my fucking feet were hella tired from standing all day, exotic dancing all night, and running to or from men that didn’t deserve me.
Some of those lazy Negroes wanted me to cook, talkin’ ’bout, “My mama cooked, cleaned, worked two jobs, and took care of us. That’s the problem with y’all black women. Y’all don’t know how to keep a man happy.”
Fuck that. I wasn’t doing that domestic bullshit. I told that nigga, “Yeah, your mama did all that for you, and look at where it’s gotten you and her. She still doing the same shit, and your ass ain’t shit. Get the fuck outta my face. And before you leave, if your mama is such a good woman, let her suck your dick! Trick!” I got mad just thinking about how stupid and lazy some black men really were. Bunch of underachieving sons of bitches! “I’m handling mine. Stay your black ass out of jail, and get a real job,” I added.
If it weren’t for my child, only God knew where I’d be. I smiled. Probably in Hollywood, starring opposite Denzel or Jamie or opening up for Steve Harvey or Mo’Nique. Everybody I talked to knew how badly I wanted to act. I was super-talented and eager to launch my career. My last audition, for the movie Something on the Side, was six weeks ago. I’d auditioned for the part of Coco Brown. But I hadn’t heard anything. Maybe they thought I didn’t weigh enough. I’d gladly gain weight if I had to.
I stopped smiling.
Single parenting was so hard. I hated it. If it weren’t for my unconditional love for my child, I would’ve killed myself immediately after giving birth to him. Alone, in a cold operating room with a doctor and strangers poking, probing, and pulling between my legs, I’d cried. Not for joy. I’d cried because I wondered where my baby’s father was. Probably out raping somebody else with his nasty fifty-plus-year-old dick.
When a woman was twenty (the age I was when I met him) and a man was forty-five, they didn’t seem so far apart in years. But now that I was twenty-five and he was fifty-one, his ass seemed hella ancient. He hadn’t showed up at the hospital, and I hadn’t seen Alphonso Allen since I told him I was pregnant.
Standing by my side, my son said, “Hello, Mrs. Taylor.”
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor’s porch was separated from mine by a waist-high white wooden fence. Mrs. Taylor still believed in knowing her neighbors and keeping watch over our block. The suits