Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do (9 page)

13

T
HIS IS A GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD
for walking. It's one of the few neighborhoods in Atlanta that actually has sidewalks. The absence of street predators and loitering groups of hopeless, hard-eyed men took away the feeling of running a gauntlet every time you step out the front door. Around here, even the liquor store had a clean parking lot and nobody outside looking crazy and trying to beg a beer.

The men I see walking through this neighborhood are invariably engaged in doing something constructive or walking like they got someplace to go and a certain time to get there. There're a lot ofsuits and ties and dark overcoats, too. There're a lot of homburgs and fedoras and highly polished shoes. When these guys pass you on the street, they touch their brims and say “Good morning.” They don't actually say “ma'am,” but it's clearly implied.

It took me a minute to get acclimated. I have a lot of protective armor to keep strange men at a distance, as any urban woman with any sense does, but none of it seemed to be necessary around here. After a while, when one of them would nod and say “Good morning,” I'd nod and say “Good morning” back.

This afternoon, I went to the post office to return some papers to the weasel. He had included a note congratulating me for making my last payment early, which I thought was a nice touch. When human beings drop their insane, territorial bullshit, they can work out almost anything.

The line was moving slowly at the post office, and thereweresixpeopleaheadofme, butIneverfussabout long lines. Waiting gives me an opportunity for some uninterrupted people-watching. As folks pulled up to drop off their mail in the slot outside, I saw Aretha walk into the parking lot and head for the door. I was happy to see her and hoping she was still coming to Flora's brunch tomorrow.

“Hey!” she said, looking as pleased to see me as I was to see her. “I was just thinking I need to come up and see you!”

“You conjured me up.”

“How's everything going? I haven't been playing the music too loud, have I?”

“I haven't even heard it,” I said. “Everything's fine. What did you want to see me about?”

She was wearing a little cap pulled down low over her eyes and six individual earrings without a matching pair among them. “I told you I'm doing a lot of photographs now?”

I nodded. The smiling faces of the children on the walls of my apartment brighten the place up as much as the sunshine.

“Well, I'm working on a project now with some women who are working as strippers.”

I liked the way she said that: “women who are working as strippers.” Not “strippers.” She made stripping what they did for a living, not who they were.

“A photography project?”

“I'm taking two shots of each one. First, they pose in what they wear to work. Hair, nails, makeup.
Everything.
Then they pose in something that reflects who they are offstage. It's really amazing to see what they pick for their real-self shots. They bring everything from church outfits, complete with hats, to jeans and a T-shirt with their kid's face on it.”

I wondered how many of the women had children and if the men who wanted lap dances ever thought about the fact that they were grinding up on somebody's mama.

“That sounds interesting,” I said. “How's it going?”

“Great. A lot of the women are referring their friends because they really like the pictures, but they don't always get the apartment number right. So if any of them come up to your place, just send them on downstairs. It doesn't matter how late. Sometimes they like to pose when they first get off work.”

“No problem,” I said. “I don't think I've ever met a strip … a woman making her living as a stripper.”

“You probably have. You just didn't know it. When I was at Spelman, there were always a couple of girls earning their tuition at the strip clubs.”

A quick mental scan of my classmates at Howard didn't turn up any likely candidates for secret strippers, but there's ten years between Aretha and me. In that one little decade, thanks to music videos, the character of the fantasy stripper, and her fantasy sister, the sexually rapacious, unapologetically materialistic ghetto goddess, with all the latest clothes and cars and no visible means of support, have emerged and become the dominant symbols of black women in the popular culture.

I don't think this is necessarily a positive development in the ongoing struggle for women's liberation, but it clearly impacts everything from clothing styles to the sexual expectations of adolescent boys who think there is actually a place where women are always perfectly coiffed, scantily clad, and ready for sex. Sometimes they even sing.

The line moved a few steps forward, and so did we.

“A woman came in the other day,” Aretha said. “She was six months pregnant and getting ready to stop until her baby was born, so she wanted me to get a picture.”

The idea of a pregnant stripper was new for me. “Isn't six months kind of late to be stripping?”

Aretha shook her head as we moved another few inches forward. An old woman at the middle window was slowly counting out the money she had been holding in her handkerchief for seven first-class stamps. The postal employee behind the counter was smiling indulgently like she had all the time in the world. Nobody in line seemed to mind, probably hoping she would grant us the same sweet smile when we finally got to the counter and greeted her face-to-face.

Postal workers have such a terrible reputation for being volatile and slow, but I never find them to be anything but calm, efficient, and patient to the point of sainthood, especially when we lose our minds and start demanding that our poorly wrapped packages reach our granny's house in time for Christmas morning, even if it is December 24 and we'd like to send it as cheaply as possible.

“Six months ain't nothing,” Aretha said. “She told me there are private clubs where all the guys want to see are pregnant women, the bigger the better.”

A friend of mine once told me that I would never really understand men because I had no clue about how lowdown they are. Of course, I defended the brothers, by saying they can't be more low-down than I've seen them be, but then I hear this kind of stuff and I think maybe my friend is right. Pregnant strippers and prostituting children are both beyond the scope of my imagination.

“Is that where she was working?”

“No. That's why she's quitting. Six months is the most they'll go at the regular places before you have to take maternity leave.”

“What did she wear for the reality pose?”

Aretha smiled. “She wore a pair of low-slung jeans and a little tiny T-shirt that said ‘baby on board.’”

I was next in line. “Do you think she'll start again after the baby comes?”

Aretha shrugged. “Probably. She makes good money, and she doesn't know how to do anything else.”

The postal worker who had accepted the handkerchief's worth ofcoins beckoned me over as the next in line.

“Your turn,” Aretha said, but that was too abrupt an end to our conversation. “Want to walk back together?”

“Sure.”

We each completed our business and headed back outside.

“I'm actually meeting Lu over at the school,” Aretha said, “but we can walk that far together.”

Brown Junior High School was right on the way, and Aretha and I fell in step easily together, me matching my shorter stride to her longer, loping one.

“I'm looking forward to brunch tomorrow,” I said.

“Me, too. Flora is a serious cook. I think she's going to fry some catfish, and Lu promised to make me some biscuits. She's almost as good a cook as Flora.
Almost!
”

I tried to keep my voice casual as we strolled along. “Are you going to the party next Saturday night?”

“I wouldn't miss it,” she said. “This will be my eighth year in a row.”

“Eight years? That's a lot of parties!”

She nodded as we turned off Oglethorpe and headed down Peeples Street. “Ever since my freshman year at Spelman.”

“You've been living here that long?”

“Since 1994. I grew up in a really tiny town in Michigan, and when I got accepted at Spelman, my aunt Ava was worried about me coming to the big city all alone, so she called Mr. Hamilton and asked him to look out for me. He gave me this apartment in exchange for picking up his mail when he's out of town and the occasional paint job.” She grinned at me, recalling how we'd met. “I've been here ever since.”

So I wasn't the first tenant to be given a break on the rent. My guess was that Flora and Lu weren't paying much either. I guess when Blue said he wasn't in it for the money, he wasn't kidding.

“He's kind of like my godfather,” she said as we waited for the light at Abernathy. “That's why I'm not riding with you and Flora to the party.”

“Why?”

She grinned at me again, two deep dimples reminding me of my mother's explanation when I asked her what dimples were.

“Angel's kisses,” she had said, unwittingly plunging me into despair because I didn't have any. When I told her this years later, she laughed so hard she cried. I laughed, too, but I still harbored a grudge at the angels for not considering me worthy of their kisses.

“Mr. Hamilton scares the shit out of most of the guys around here already,” she said. “If I arrive at the party in his car, I'll never get any play.”

Before I could ask her what exactly they were afraid of, a stereo blasted into life down the street just ahead of us. Even from half a block away, we could hear the thumping bass pouring out of the car's open windows. It was a brand-new Lexus with so much gold detailing that it looked ridiculous. A tall young man who looked to be about twenty, in fashionably baggy clothes and a baseball cap, was leaning casually against the passenger door talking to two young girls, one of whom I recognized as Lu. Aretha saw her, too.

“What's he doing out here?” Aretha said, picking up her pace a little, like every second Lu spent in the presence of this guy was one second too many.

Lu and her friend were too busy giggling at something the man had said to see us coming, but he noticed our approach like the gold-toothed predator he appeared to be. His eyes swept over Aretha after dismissing me as somebody's mama, and he grinned a little wider to fully expose his mouth's full set of hardware.

“Well, now,” he said. “We've got company.”

Lu turned just as we reached them. “Hey, Aretha!”

“Hey, sweetie!” Aretha draped one long arm around Lu's shoulder, but her eyes locked on the man like she was memorizing his face for a police lineup. “Who're your friends?”

“You know ShaRonda,” Lu said. “She's in my algebra class.”

Aretha focused on the girl for the first time. Shorter than Lu by about six inches and skinny as a reed, this child's hormones hadn't moved her from girl to woman yet. Seemingly anxious to speed up the process, she was wearing a lot of makeup and an elaborate hair construction that seemed more suited to a nightclub than an algebra class.

“ShaRonda?”

The girl grinned sheepishly. “It's me.”

Aretha laughed and reached out to hug her. “Girl, I didn't recognize you in all that makeup!”

“She look good, don't she?” said the gruff voice of the man leaning on the Lexus. The bass was still thumping, but I didn't recognize the female singer who was directing her lover on what to kiss and for how long.

Aretha turned to him with a look that would cut glass, and ShaRonda spoke up quickly. “This is my uncle DooDoo. He just came to pick me up.”

Uncle DooDoo grinned at Aretha. “The pleasure is all mine.”

Aretha looked at him for a second the way you do a cockroach before you squash it. “Don't you work with King James Johnson?”

DooDoo looked surprised, then cunning. “Who's askin'?”

“I work for Blue Hamilton,” she said quietly. “You're not supposed to be over here.”

His increasing surprise and obvious confusion morphed into defiance. “I came to pick up my lil' niece.” He reached out a muscular arm, and ShaRonda moved into the circle of it, her hair and makeup giving her show of familial support a strangely erotic flavor that I am sure was not lost on Aretha. “There's no law against that, is there?”

Aretha looked at him coldly, and then down at ShaRonda, who obviously wanted this moment to end before it got any worse. Aretha took a deep breath. “Nope. No law against that.” She turned to Lu. “You ready?”

Lu nodded, turning to wave to her friend. “Bye, ShaRonda. See you tomorrow!”

“Okay,” the girl said, hopping into the front seat beside her uncle, who cranked up the car and roared away before we even reached the crosswalk. There might not be a
law
against his presence around here, but he obviously got Aretha's point and wasn't prepared to push her.

Aretha turned a warm smile on Lu. “So how was your day, lil' bit?”

“Good,” Lu said. “Are we still going to Greenbriar?”

“Yep.”

They were catching the bus to the neighborhood's
other
mall. Medu Bookstore was having a reading, and Lu was interviewing the author, a historian, for her school project.

She turned to me. “You going with us?”

I shook my head. “Not this time.”

This was a big sis/lil' sis outing. I knew better than to intrude. Lu rewarded my intuition with a smile of relief.

We crossed the street, and, as we fell into step together, Lu waved at several of her friends mugging in the windows of the bus.

“How long has ShaRonda's uncle been picking her up?” Aretha asked, her tone clearly communicating that he was not the guy you want to see making the junior high school a part of his regular rounds.

“Couple of weeks,” Lu said. “Her mama had to go to rehab.”

“I thought she just came out of rehab.”

“She just came out, now she's back,” Lu said patiently. “She's got a new boyfriend and he wants her to have a baby, but she doesn't want to do it while she's smoking crack. Why you asking about DooDoo?”

“He's not a good guy,” Aretha said simply.

Lu shrugged. “He's okay. He buys a lot of stuff for ShaRonda.”

“What kind of stuff?”