Free Red Light Wives by Mary Monroe Page B

like a dead man.
    That’s why when the trick at the hotel passed out, I tippy-toed out. I had to get back on the job. I figured I’d hop a cab over to Capp Street in the Mission, pick up one more trick before I had to meet up with my man and bring the trick to the motel that me and some of the street girls used. And that meant more money for me that I didn’t have to share with my man. I believed that the most important person to “get paid” for my hard work was me.
    I felt kind of bad for not telling them cops what I seen. I seen everything through the window in the front of that mini-mart store. The trick did, too, but he wasn’t talking. He ran out to his car like somebody was shooting at him . I’m lucky he paid me first. The dead man was probably real nice. Him and his lady was checking into the room next door to me and my trick when we checked in. Their ride had Mississippi license plates.
    Since the room was paid up for the whole night, I decided to stay and get some sleep. It had been a long day for me. That was my problem with being popular. A lot of tricks wanted to give me their money. And I’d been hella popular lately. But I needed to stay put until the cops left. I needed some rest. I needed to think.
    The motel clerk was cool. He was a Mexican with no papers and he had crooked cops and drug dealers looking for him back in Tijuana. To make sure he stayed cool with me, I slapped a fifty in his hand every time I seen him, and he looked out for me. Besides, we spoke the same language. I never had to remind him that we Latinos had to stick together.
    Clyde didn’t expect to see me until eight in the morning, in front of my apartment. By then, I’d have forgotten about seeing that man get shot. Death was one thing I didn’t want to deal with until I had to. I’d been hiding from it since the day I was born.
    â€œEster, you my best girl. I’ll take care of you.” My man, Clyde, told me that all the time, and it made me feel good. Even though I knew he was a liar. Him being a man, he couldn’t help that. He told all of his women the same thing he told me. I knew that because me and them other women talked about the things Clyde said to us. Clyde was also a stupid man. He had to be if he didn’t know that his women got together to rat him out to one another. But I was his first wife, so when he told me I was his best girl, it meant something to me.
    In a way, Clyde and his wives was my only family. He ain’t married to none of us, he just called us his wives. He said it had more class than some of the things other people called women who slept with men for money.
    I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for Clyde. I never thought that I would grow up to sell pussy. I never thought that I would grow up at all.
    The woman who gave birth to me had better things to do with her time than to raise a baby. A few hours after I was born, my mother left me in a Dumpster in an alley behind a bar in the Mission District. Me, a little baby, was left there with the trash and hungry rats.
    It was Clyde who found me. It was Clyde who saved my life and even though I lie to him, I would do anything for him. Well, not anything, but a lot.
    I just wanted to forget all about seeing that man get shot to death. Besides, I needed to come up with a good lie in case I had to tell one to Clyde about tonight.

Chapter 7
LULA HAWKINS
    D addy begged me to come back to Mississippi after I called to tell him about Bo getting killed.
    â€œI’ll pay your way home and you can move back into your old room ’til we find you another apartment. Why in the world you went runnin’ off to a hellhole like California in the first place is beyond me. Girl, what was you thinkin’?” Daddy’s voice sounded like it was a million miles away.
    Etta’s voice was the next one I heard. It was a boom that sounded like it was coming at me from all different