She was so radiant I couldn’t find the words to tell her no, that I wasn’t like her, that I didn’t mean to do it, because what if I was her type of woman? Polka Dot’s bills still stuffed into my pocket, my body still unsure how to make sense of that rooftop, that man.
Camila took my hand, her acrylics careful not to puncture my skin. She called a car for us, said she’d give me a ride on the way to her john’s house. In the car, she told me about what I had to do to be like her, where to go, when, how to dress, and I thought maybe this is where girls go when they are tired. Maybe this is where I go to find my hum, make my body rumble big like Mama.
* * *
I couldn’t stop thinking about Polka Dot and Camila the next day, how easy it seemed for her. How many bills Polka Dot handed over to me for only a few minutes. I called three different escort agencies and phone sex companies, but they all told me my age was a liability, that I could give them a call when I was legal. They said I could try online, but we stopped paying for Wi-Fi last year and I don’t have a smartphone or a computer. Camila said if I had to walk the streets, I should have somebody to make sure I was safe, that it wouldn’t be quite so bad. Maybe I could do it a few more times while I tried to persuade Marcus to get a job. I’ve had sex now and I can do it again, nothing more than a body, I tell myself. Skin. I don’t gotta make it more than that. Just till I get us out of our rent debt.
It didn’t take much to convince Tony. I showed up at his door last night and he lit up like I was the surprise lotto ticket his mama bought him for Christmas. When I sat next to him on the couch, Tony tried to slip his arm around me smoothly, like his body mass could do anything that slick. I sat forward so his body couldn’t collide with mine and turned to him, remembering what Camila said.
Tony could tell something was wrong and his skin wrinkled up on the bridge of his nose.
“Need you to do something for me,” I said, twirling a loose thread from Polka Dot’s scarf around my finger and pulling until my skin bulged.
“I talked to Marcus already,” Tony said, unwinding the thread from my finger.
“Thought you weren’t gonna do that unless I showed up.”
He shrugged. “Changed my mind. Don’t really matter though, he ain’t listening to nothing I say.”
I pulled the thread harder and more unraveled from the scarf. This time I wrapped it around my thumb, up and down, until it encased the whole thing in thread. “I got a different plan.” I looked away from him because looking at Tony’s kind of like looking into the barrel of a gun: too close.
“Yeah?”
“You probably ain’t gonna like it, but it’s what I’m doing so if you don’t help I’m gonna do it anyway.”
He chuckled. “You always do.”
When I told him, he didn’t respond for a while. Just sat there, one arm still around the back of the couch and his eyes planted on my thumb.
“Fuck that.”
For somebody who don’t say much, whenever Tony does talk, it is quick and gets right to the point. It’s one of the things I like about Tony. That and how small I feel when I stand by him, like he could fold me into his arms and I wouldn’t never have to find my way back out.
“You could come and make sure I don’t end up down in a ditch. Or don’t and I’ll go by myself. Your choice.” The best way to get a man to do what you want is by telling him he got a choice, got control, got the end of the thread.
“Your brother gonna kick my ass.”
“Not while he living in my house.” And then Tony grabbed the thread and unwound it from my thumb, ripping it apart at the base, leaving only the scarf and a frayed piece of something that could be thread, if you looked close enough.
* * *
This afternoon I meet Trevor at the bus stop after school. He takes hold of my hand, like usual, moves his head with every word as he tells me about how Ms. Cortez really don’t seem to like him that much and today she even took away his basketball cards, the ones with each of the Warriors’ faces on them, and wouldn’t give them back until the end of the day. Everything feels so normal, even the way he looks at me, like he’s soaking up my face to remember it in his sweetest dreams as we walk down High Street. I expected he would’ve been able to see it on me, see how everything has changed, but Trevor either doesn’t seem to notice or maybe he just doesn’t care. When I leave him at his apartment door, he wraps his arms around my neck in a hug and then pulls at my hair, stepping away from me and laughing, like he really got me. I laugh too, shoving him and his backpack through the door. The moment is so normal, I almost believe it’s real, that there was no red, no piss, no man. I almost believe it will last.
Now it’s evening and I’m out on the street, about five minutes away from that point where cold turns into numb. My skirt betrays me, lets it all inside, brushing against my skin like 7-Eleven slushies in the winter. I tried to dress like the mannequins lining Fruitvale Village shops, mesh and skirts so short the wind could meet every inch of skin. Out here, there’s a kind of stillness that comes with having nowhere to go and the streets are still alive, so I survey the whole block, commit every person to memory.
Tony’s across the street, looking at me. I try not to stare back, try to pretend I don’t feel scared and nervous and that my bones are denser than they are, more resistant to breaking. As I move swiftly up and down International Boulevard, past the cosmetology school and the identical stores with overinflated ball gowns in the windows, Tony follows on the other side. I contain my smile, this big man attempting to hide in shadows of a street, pacing. If we were anywhere else, somebody would have called the cops on him, but nobody would dare invite the sirens onto International, where they’d say we’re all some kind of criminal.
It’s still light out, but already plenty of men are here, feasting on me. It is so much worse than Polka Dot, all of them together, knowing I am a girl who will offer herself up when I’m still not sure I want to. I wonder if Camila was right, if I should find some man online who just wants to lick in between my toes or if maybe I should’ve joined her and her pimp. Except I worry then I’d be too deep in to get out.
The men whistle.
“Ay, beautiful, come here.”
“?Mamí! ?Ven aquí!”
“Why you out here like that? I’ll get you nice and warm, baby.”
They are relentless and grimy and Tony looks like he’s about to shoot across the street and maul them every time there’s a shout or a whistle. He’s trying to protect me from the very thing I’m walking into.
“Kia!” The voice comes from behind me, slithers up. Camila’s heels are a dangerous high, silver and sparkling, her arms out, and she’s strutting toward me with her mouth open, like she is either going to sing or kiss me. Instead, she grabs my hands and begins to dance, shimmy really. “Why you here, hija?”
I lean into Camila, forgetting Tony, though I know he’s watching.
“You know,” I say.
“What I tell you ’bout the streets? You got yourself a daddy?” Camila twirls me, towering over me with the extra inches her Cinderella shoes buy her.
I come back around from the spin. “Something like that.”
Camila’s tongue clicks in her mouth, her eyelashes big and heavy. “I got a john waiting on me.”