Free Like a Woman by Debra Busman Page B

thing, it costs too much and I’ve got better things to do with my money. And for another thing I can’t hardly walk in that shit, much less run. Or fight. Some girls can, though. I seen one girl whip off those fuck-me pumps and bust some motherfucker trying to get something for nothing across the side of his head quicker than I could have cracked his nuts. Said she fucked up his eardrum ’cause she got the pointy part right inside his earhole and see, check out that blood, girl. I think she was just feeling good ’cause she got his wallet, messed him up and didn’t even break a heel.
    It was good for me, ’cause she made a buy with the joker’s money. That was before I was living on the streets. I just came down to deal, mostly pot but sometimes opium and acid. You had to carry if you wanted to run the serious shit and it wasn’t my style. They all laughed and called me Mahatma ’cause I was always reading Gandhi and Thoreau and shit about nonviolence and revolution and civil disobedience, but we was all tight anyway. We watched each other’s backs and they knew I could fight like a motherfuckin’ crazy person if I got pushed too far or somebody I hung out with was being messed up. There was no doubt but that I’d kill somebody if I had a gun, so it was better to just stick to dealing pot and reading my books. I had a lot of reading to do.
    So, yeah, now I’m working the trade. I didn’t particularly want to but there aren’t exactly a lot of career opportunities for fifteen year-old girls living on the streets of L.A. The truth is, I was getting fucked anyway so I figured I might as well get paid for it, right? You couldn’t sleep anywhere without waking up to find some guy’s dick poking around looking for some hole, didn’t matter which one. Seems like ever since I can remember I been waking up to find some big hairy thing climbing on or off of me. I got tired of it and thought, hell, I can’t get any sleep anyway, I’m going to make somebody pay for this shit. At least now I’m calling the shots and making some money. And I was right. Don’t need no fancy drag dress. There is plenty of trade. I do all right. Lots of hairy guys just dying to pay for bait. Tell me I remind them of their daughter and then tell me how they want me to fuck them. They got some messed-up shit, man, but the money’s good. Better than working at McDonalds, right?

The White Girl
    The white girl seems unaware of how the men are looking at her. That’s the first thing I notice about her. She does not engage the eyes of the men. Unless, of course, they are looking for drugs. A friend of Trina’s, the white girl comes down to the boulevard to deal. She feeds only the hunger for the drugs; ignores the other hungers, ignores the eyes that want her. The fact that she is not soliciting the men makes them want her even more.
    I see everything, even myself—a black girl watching the white girl ignoring the men who are watching her, wanting her. I spit and gently finger my knife. There is something slightly dangerous about this skinny white girl who strides the streets in her heavy boots and possible ignorance, half looking like she owns the territory, half looking like she’s just landed from another planet. “Jackson, baby, you just leave that white girl be,” my mama warns me. “White girl like that like to get you killed.”
    We know it’s just a matter of time before the white girl can no longer ignore the eyes of the men and soon she too is selling more than drugs. I watch the eyes of the men in the Pontiacs, Chryslers, and Fords cruise slowly by, watching the girls who pretend to not be watching them. Sometimes the car slows in front of the black girl and I take a long last drag off my cigarette, straighten my tube top and walk over to the open passenger window, clicking the heels of my boots hard against the pavement,