Free Natalie's Revenge by Susan Fleet

Sleep When I’m Dead."
    And best of all: " Work for the Working Man."
    T he lyrics were perfect: I ain’t living, just to die .
    That’s for sure.

NATALIE
     
    October 1988
    My mother was a prostitute.
    The policewoman didn’t say so that day, the worst day of my life. She said Mom worked for an escort service. But I knew what that meant. Six nights a week I sat at home after Mom went to work. My favorite TV shows were Dallas and 48 Hours . One time I saw a prostitute in a miniskirt and a skimpy top and white knee-high boots. She had a hard-painted face and chewed gum. Mom never let me chew gum. She said it made me look cheap.
    Mom didn’t wear mini-skirts or skimpy tops and she didn't own any knee-high boots. How could she be a prostitute? I told the policewoman Mom was a hostess at Commander’s Palace, a fancy restaurant.
    She put her arm around me and said, “Honey, your mom didn’t work at Commander’s Palace.” Her face had a pained look and her eyes were sad. “We found her in a hotel room.”
    Mom. Found dead in a hotel room. The policewoman didn’t say how she died and I was afraid to ask. A big dark cloud twirled me up into a corner of the ceiling with the cobwebs. My heart was beating hard and fast. I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t cry.
    “Did your mom have any boyfriends?”
    And I thought: That’s what prostitutes do, right? Have boyfriends. It hurt me to think about it. The part of me that wasn’t up near the ceiling said, “No. She didn’t have a boyfriend.”
    The cop gave me a fake smile. “Who takes care of you while your mom is working?”
    “Nobody. I take care of myself.”
    That made her frown. “What about your relatives?”
    At first I thought it was a test. Talking about my relatives was complicated. I didn't know where my father and his parents were, and Mom doesn't get along with her parents so I don't know where they were, either.
    “Mom’s got a brother in Texas.” 
    That seemed to make the policewoman happy. “What’s his name?”
    “Brixton, same as me.” After the divorce, Mom got her maiden name back and changed my name too. She didn’t want people thinking we were foreigners. My father’s name is Thu Phan. Thu means autumn in Vietnamese. He was born in October. His father, Bao Phan, was born in Vietnam but his family moved to France back in the 1950s. Mom said Bao Phan met my grandmother, a Frenchwoman, in Paris. I don’t know what her name was. But I didn’t say this to the policewoman. She had too much on her mind already, frowning and clenching her jaw like she was angry about something.
    “What’s your uncle's first name?”
    “Jerome. He lives in Pecos. We got a Christmas card from him last year.”
    Thinking about Christmas almost made me cry, but I didn’t.
    Christmas wasn’t going to be very merry this year without Mom.
    _____
     
    Living with the Brixtons in Pecos was okay at first. As far back as I could remember it was just Mom and me. After never having a family, it was nice to live with one. Uncle Jerome said to call him Uncle Jerry. He's five years older than Mom. “I was her big brother,” he said. He smelled of pipe tobacco and had thick muscular arms, probably because he drove a UPS truck and had to lug heavy packages into people’s houses.
    Aunt Faye didn't talk to me much. I got the feeling she wasn't happy having another kid around. She already had two of her own. Faye's got bottle-blond hair that she poofs out with metal tines. She's almost as skinny as the tines. She never ate much, but she always said a prayer before dinner. That seemed weird. Mom wasn’t religious, but most everyone in Pecos was. All the kids went to Bible school in the summer. 
    My cousin Randy's twelve. He's got dark reddish hair and a temper to match. Ellen's eight. She's a bookworm, always reading, hardly ever speaking. At least not to me. Ellen and Randy had rooms on the second floor. Mine was on the third floor in the attic. It only had one window so