Free God Still Don't Like Ugly by Mary Monroe Page B

move on, too.
    Rhoda called me up a lot, regaling me with details of her new life and how happy she was with her first child on the way. She ended each phone call by telling me, “Put all of that Buttwright mess out of your mind and get on with your life, girl.” Knowing that I was the only person who knew about her killing Mr. Boatwright, I now felt like I was in a different type of bondage and Rhoda was calling all the shots.
    Desperate to move out on my own so that Muh’Dear would never know just how miserable I was, I took advantage of my relationship with Scary Mary. For a few weeks I stole a few of her customers to raise the money I needed to leave home with. As much as I hated what I had become, a prostitute, my biggest fear was somebody finding out GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY
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    and telling my mother. I knew that my own mother had done “what she had to do” with a few of Scary Mary’s customers during some trying times to keep us off the streets. But I didn’t want her to know that I, too, had stooped that low. However, I didn’t think about all that until after I had turned my first trick.
    “Ooh, girl. You such a nice, juicy, young thing.” The trick paused long enough to lick his lips. “I wouldn’t mind seein’ you again,” he added with a wink. I cringed and couldn’t wait to get away from the man who had just paid for my body. He was one of the most disgusting men I submitted to. His vile body had slid on me, in me, and off of me, all within a matter of minutes. One date with the same man was all I would allow myself. Giving up my body in hellish places like cheap motels, up against brick walls in dim alleys next to garbage bins, and on the backseats of cars was bad enough. But one time I even went to one man’s job with him and allowed him to fuck me from behind while I leaned over his desk. He was a short, squat man with light skin and moles all over his chin. He worked as a night watchman at a downtown office building, but he claimed to have all kinds of money in the bank from selling some property somewhere.
    Afterward, while he was peeing in an empty Styrofoam coffee cup, he asked, “You would do anything for money, huh?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked, rearranging my clothes. He had ripped my panties to shreds trying to remove them so fast. It didn’t make any sense for me to put them back on. I slid the panties into my purse along with the fifty dollars he had just handed me.
    The trick slapped his hairy hands on his hips and gave me a critical look, screwing up his face like he didn’t like what he saw. “I can’t get none of them other gals to come to me, I have to go to them. And they particular about what motels I carry them to. I got a heap of money in the bank and a wife that won’t let me touch her with a stick.
    I thought I was gwine to have to beat my meat. I guess you’ll have to do for tonight. You just don’t care about nothin’,” he remarked.
    Waving his hand dramatically, he looked me up and down with a fierce scowl on his plain face. “No shame, no rules, no nothin’ long as you get paid. Like a Gypsy. I guess you ain’t got them highfalutin stan-dards, huh?”
    “I guess not,” I said sadly. I promised myself right then and there that he would be the last one. I couldn’t stand to degrade myself any longer for any amount of money. It was already difficult for me to 60
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    look at myself in the mirror; this had just made it that much harder.
    Especially after the verbal beating I had just received.
    With the money I had saved from a brief job working as a switchboard operator for the telephone company and the money from the men, I made plans to relocate to Erie, Pennsylvania. I had never been to Erie and I didn’t know anybody there, but Pee Wee was from Erie.
    He had me convinced that it was a small city filled with “good peoples.”
    It sounded like the perfect place to start a new life.
    CHAPTER 16
    Iwas apprehensive about leaving