Free Guarding Lacey: A Smokey Dalton Story by Kris Nelscott Page A

stuff is expensive, and I know her family don’t got that kinda money.
    The problem is she looks good in it too.
When Lace dresses up, she can pass for eighteen, maybe twenty. Most of her
friends look just dorky in the same clothes, but Lace looks slutty-gorgeous.
She got big tits last year and a waist and a fine ass, so she looks like a
grown-up girl, which is why Uncle Franklin is so worried, I think.
    Or maybe he knows what Lace really looks
like.
    When she dresses up like that, Lace looks
just like my mom.

 
    ***

 
    I ain’t seen my mom in almost exactly two
years. She skipped January 8, 1968. I remember because that’s one week before
my birthday. When I turned ten, my mom was gone and my older brother Joe was
out toking with his buddies. That was Memphis, not Chicago, and Smoke, who was
just this guy down the block who kept an eye on me, bought me lunch and told me
I needed to get to school.
    He didn’t know it was my birthday, just
like he didn’t know Mom ain’t paid the rent—again. We got
evicted—or really, I did—and that was the end for Smoke. He’d been
watching over me for a long time, making sure I studied, making sure I ate. But
the eviction, that’s when he took me in.
    Mom ain’t got no idea where I am now, not
that it matters. She stayed gone from January to April, and even Smoke, who’s a
private detective, couldn’t find her (not that I think he tried real hard). Mom
ran off with one of her johns again, or maybe she knew the rent was due. She
said she was gonna send money but she never did.
    Sometimes I think she’s dead. I seen a
lot of hookers before I moved to Chicago, and they get hurt lots. Knifed or
beat up or worse. Sometimes they get beat so bad they die. That last Christmas,
I was mopping up after Mom all over the apartment, she was bleeding so bad from
her female parts. I ain’t never told Smoke that. He’d give me that shocked look
like he does when I mention my mom, like he can’t believe anybody would ever do
the stuff she did.
    But Mom explained it to me and Joe. She
said you have the kinda life she had, you gots to do the best you can. And if
she had it to do over she wouldn’ta chased all them boys when she was twelve
and she wouldn’ta gone with the older guys, and she wouldn’ta never had kids.
    Mom, she was only a year older than Lace
when she had my brother Joe. She knew who his dad was, but she never said. Me,
my dad coulda been anyone. Sometimes my mom would take on four or five guys a
night—and that don’t count the quickies in the alley behind our
apartment.
    Sometimes her pimp, this guy named Thug,
used to get her to train the new girls. He’d say he could break them in but he
couldn’t teach them the ropes. Mom was in charge of the ropes. She’d talk to
them and by the end, they’d be crying and she’d be yelling at them: If you’re crying now, you ain’t gonna make
it. You’ll die before the year’s out. You gotta be tough.
    Lacey ain’t tough and she ain’t
hooking—at least not yet. But the guys she meets in the schoolyard during
lunch ain’t junior high boys. They ain’t even high school boys. They’s men, and
they’s way too interested.

 
    ***

 
    It’s so cold in Mrs. Dylan’s classroom
that I’m wearing my coat, and I’m glad Laura gave me real sturdy boots for
Christmas. Still, the tip of my nose is freezing and I can see my breath.
    Mrs. Dylan’s going on about fractions. I
had that a long time ago, so I keep doodling on my notepad while I look out the
window.
    Lace is standing underneath an archway.
The graffiti on it is mostly basic crap—Jud loves Susan, stuff like that,
but Lace’s standing under some spray-paint that says Blackstones Are Stone Cold . She’s wearing a miniskirt and open toed
high heel shoes and a top tied under her tits. She’s teased her hair into a afro—I
got no idea how she’s gonna get that out before we get to the afterschool
program at the church—and I can see her eye makeup from