A Woman’s Work: Street Chronicles (20 page)

Rachida tried dialing Scoot’s number over and over, but each call went straight to voice mail, which seemed strange to her because these were normally Scoot’s working hours. Rachida shook her leg nervously, hoping what she was thinking wasn’t true. As much as Abie and Scoot had fought, they loved each other and had had plans to get married one day.

Rachida watched the coroner’s van pull up and be slowly ushered through the crowd by a cop. Two people exited the vehicle, pulled a gurney and body bag from the back, and headed up the stairs to collect Abie’s body. Just the thought of them hovering all over Abie, handling her like a piece of garbage by putting her in a plastic bag, set Rachida off. By the time the pudgy policeman saw Rachida, she was up the stairs and past the pair of grim reapers.

“No! Leave her alone! Don’t touch her! Stop it!” Rachida yelled. A female cop guarding the door tried to keep her from entering, but the strength of a grieving friend outweighed that of a woman trained at the police academy.

“Ma’am, you can’t go in there. Stop, please, ma’am!” The tussle between the two resembled something from the show
Cops
, and before Rachida knew it, a male officer had stepped in and lifted her hundred-and-twenty-pound frame.

“No! No! Please, don’t put her in the bag! Please!” Then the heel on one of her stilettos snapped. The other shoe was still lying
in the doorway, not far from where Abie’s body was being placed in the bag. Rachida’s squeal was deafening, almost like a siren. The officer managed to get her down the stairs, but by the time they reached the bottom step, Rachida had collapsed. Her lungs tightened and she felt dizzy. There were about three cops surrounding her, all trying to keep her under control. She couldn’t find the strength to stand; every inch of her body felt numb. She lay there on the sidewalk, not caring that her thong was exposed or that her dress was partially unzipped in the back.

“Come on, miss, let us help you.” Rachida shook her head. She was on the verge of passing out when she saw Uncle Brick’s two-hundred-fifty, six-foot-four-inch frame pushing through the massive mob that had now formed.

“Let me through! I’m family!” Uncle Brick yelled. His physique intimidated the officers, especially when he reached down and scooped Rachida into his arms like a rag doll.

“I’ll take her home,” Uncle Brick stated, letting the cops know that anything they needed to discuss with Rachida would have to take place another time.

“C
ouncilman Big Daddy, you want me to suck your dick?” Abie whispered coyly to her client as she rode him like a wild horse. Councilman Sullivan couldn’t speak because she was putting it on him so good. She sat straight up on him and placed his hands on her breasts before leaning over to suck on one of her own nipples. Sullivan moaned in ecstasy as he watched Abie’s show while she simultaneously massaged his balls.

“Shit! Shit! Wait, Abie! I’m not ready to come yet!”

“I got something to make you come. Give it to me in my ass, just the way I like it.” She stood up on the bed and turned her back on Sullivan. In stripper fashion, she bent her body forward, grabbed her ankles, and slid her chocolate tunnel down around his erection.

“
Ooooohhh
, Abie,
Ooohhhh
, shit!” he moaned in elation.

“You like fucking me in my ass, don’t you?” Abie asked, going up and down. She was a pro, taking every inch of him without flinching, and it was only a matter of minutes before he exploded. When his body stiffened, she knew her job was done. She slid off him, pulling the loaded condom off at the same time.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Councilman Big Daddy, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Wait, sit down with me for a minute.” Sullivan was fifty-something and represented the East End Sixth district in Richmond. Married to his college sweetheart for over thirty years, he’d been one of Abie’s regular clients since she began working for Madam Celecia’s Southern Girls’ Escort Service.

Abie sat naked on the bed beside Sullivan. She smoothed her hair out of her face and gave him her attention.

“I don’t want you to work with any more clients.”

Abie looked at him matter-of-factly.

“Councilman Big Daddy, this is my job. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.”

“I can take care of you.”

“Until when? Until your little wife gets wind of it? No, thank you. I told you before and I’ll tell you again, there’s nothing but work between us. That’s it for me. Put the money on the nightstand before you go.”

Abie stood up, her coal-black hair cascading down her back, ending right above her firm butt. The only thing she cared about was getting paid her $500 for the hour of sex she’d had with the
councilman and for him to leave so that she could take care of her next-highest-paying customer.

Sullivan grabbed her by the arm. The room was dark with the exception of the light coming from the bathroom. Even in the dark she could sense his sincerity although she could hardly see his face.

“I love you, Abie. I’ll give up everything to be with you.” She smirked at him in the darkness. Quite frankly, she didn’t have time to listen to the bull he was dishing. She really didn’t care. The man who had her heart was Scoot.

“Okay, listen. You’re a customer. This pussy, this is my product. Now, I’m trying to run a business, and right now I have another paying customer on his way. All those feelings and shit, they don’t mean a thing to me. I told you that before. If you keep this up, I’ll have to tell Madam C. to get you somebody else.”

“No, don’t do that, Abie, please.”

“Then cut out all this love shit. You know how this works. We fuck, you pay, and then you go. That’s it.” Abie’s tone was frank and crass. She walked into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, making sure she had her cell phone in hand. The linoleum tile was cold under her feet and she wished she’d thought to bring something to walk around the hotel suite in. She wrapped an oversized towel around her, compliments of the Candlewood Suites and Hotel, where she’d been servicing her clients since about six p.m. Her reflection in the wall-sized mirror indicated that she needed to freshen her makeup and comb her hair. The councilman was her second client of the evening, and she still had two more to go before finishing for the evening. Two thousand dollars for four hours of work wasn’t bad, and after she paid Madam Celecia her portion, she’d take home $1,000. She couldn’t make that type of money working a regular nine to five. And she definitely couldn’t do it working two days a week.

Abie had been the first to join Southern Girls’ Escort Service,
a brothel of about twenty girls who worked around Richmond and the surrounding area, and she brought in the most money. The majority of the clients requested her, and sometimes there was a waiting list. The business was a discreet one, since prostitution was illegal in Richmond. What made the business more distinct was the fact that the woman in charge kept her identity a secret from the women who worked for her. They talked to her on the phone and she handled their business affairs, but none of them had actually met her. They didn’t even know if Celecia was her real name. Uncle Brick was her assistant and the liaison between her and the girls. With that amount of secrecy, it was also much easier to protect the clients’ identities. All the women lived together in a fully renovated, three-level eight-bedroom Victorian farmhouse in Charles City, a small town right outside Richmond. The sprawling home featured a wraparound porch, double chimney, and oversized windows, and it sat on five acres amid sprawling farmland. In the town it was known as a halfway house and shelter for young female runaways. Charles City residents had no idea that the women they saw coming and going there were prostitutes. During the day, the women were attending classes, doing housework, or relaxing on the grounds. Their courses were training them to be independent. All the women were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, with the exception of Abie, who was twenty-five. Madam Celecia viewed Abie as her prize possession, the one who’d helped build an empire in which she grossed close to $30,000 a week. Her program trained the women in a trade, and they saved enough money so that when they left her business, they could live on their own. The situation was different from the normal brothels, where the women waited on lounge chairs in lingerie for their “gentlemen friends.” Madam Celecia had a different vision for her women—to use what they had temporarily until they were able to go out on their own. Most
of the women who’d been at the “shelter” for a while already had enough money saved to live on their own. However, since they were all mostly runaways, women who were hiding from someone or something, they found solace at the house, where they were surrounded by women they considered family.

None of the women serviced their customers at the house. They all took care of their clients at hotels in the city or one of the surrounding counties. That was one of the rules: Never bring a customer to the house. Never bring a male friend to the house. The house was strictly for the tenants and Uncle Brick, who stayed in an in-law suite that was detached from the house but only a stone’s throw from the front door.

Abie pulled back the shower curtain. She grabbed the white bath mat and placed it in front of the tub beneath her feet. Unzipping her cosmetics bag, she pulled out her shower gel and deodorant. She sat on the toilet, waiting for the steam to fill all the empty space in the bathroom. The knock at the door took her away from her thoughts, and she was a bit perturbed that the councilman was still there.

“Abie?”

“Councilman Big Daddy, what are you still doing here?” She watched as the locked chrome doorknob twisted back and forth.

“Abie, can I just see you for one minute, please?”

She sucked her teeth and leaned over to open the door. She didn’t bother getting up. Sullivan, now fully dressed in a black suit and crisp white dress shirt, stared at her naked body. The butterfly tattoo on her inner thigh was in full view since her legs were wide open.

“I thought about it and I’m going to talk to Madam Celecia. I’ll pay triple, just so she can save you for me. I don’t want you with any other men.” The wrinkles on his forehead and his graying hair told the story of a man who’d fought his way from community
activist to councilman over a twenty-year period. But tonight, he was willing to throw it all away over a piece of pussy. Abie stood up and pulled him into the steam-filled bathroom. She stood on her toes so she could kiss him on his cocoa-colored cheek.

“Go home, Councilman Big Daddy. Your wife is probably looking for you.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I’ll give it all up to be with you.”

“If you give it all up, how will you be able to afford me, huh? This is just business. That’s it. I’ve told you that over and over again. Go home.”

“Why won’t you let me be your man? I can take good care of you.”

“What if I told you I already had a man? Huh?”

Sullivan’s eyes transformed. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the same way you go home to your wife, I go home to my man. Do you still want me all to yourself?”

“You think this is a joke? A game? I’m standing here telling you that I’d give up my whole world just to have you in my life and all you can do is mock me?” Sullivan grabbed Abie’s upper arm and twisted it. She noticed a vein popping out of the side of his neck. She’d never seen him this angry before.

“No, I don’t think this is a joke, but you need to get your fucking hands off me. Then you need to stop taking this whole thing so personally. Look, I’ll have to call Uncle Brick if you don’t leave now.”

Sullivan pushed Abie with just enough force for her to hit the door—face first. She grabbed her cell phone from the bathroom counter and held it up in his face, taunting him. He was becoming more and more aggressive with her, and she needed to let Uncle Brick and the madam know.

Sullivan nodded in defeat and left the hotel room quietly.

T
he sound of Abie stirring in the darkness woke Rachida. From the side view of Abie’s silhouette, Rachida could see her shoulders going up and down quickly, indicating that she was crying.

“Abie?” Rachida asked.

She heard a loud sniffle and then Abie said, “Go back to sleep.”

Rachida squinted at the clock on the nightstand. It was after four a.m.

“Abie, are you crying?”

“No, ’Chida, now go back to sleep.”

Rachida reached in the darkness until she felt the antique lamp on her beechwood nightstand. She closed her eyes briefly so they could adjust to the light. Focusing on Abie, she noticed bruises on her arm, and the side of her face was red and swollen.

“Abie, what happened to you?” Rachida quickly pushed the down-filled comforter from her body and jumped to her feet. The hardwood floors creaked from the impact.

“ ’Chida, go back to sleep!” Abie said again. Rachida ignored her, turning Abie’s face toward her.

“Who did this to you? Huh? Who? Did the councilman hit you again?”

Abie, always the strong-willed, boisterous one, sat on the edge of her bed and sulked. She had defeat in her eyes.

“Abie, tell me what happened. Do you want me to go get Uncle Brick?”

Abie jumped to her feet so fast she startled Rachida.

“No! You can’t say anything to Uncle Brick or Madam. I’ll deal with this myself,” Abie snapped.

“But, Abie, if someone hurt you, you know you have to tell Madam.”

“What did I say?” Abie yelled. Rachida raised both hands in defense, looking like she was under arrest. Based on Abie’s tone, Rachida knew she had to leave the situation alone, even though she was concerned.

She went back to her side of the bedroom. Before turning off the lamp, she stared at Abie for a moment, hoping her friend would open up to her. But Abie quickly turned away, not letting Rachida’s eye contact affect her. Rachida turned off the light and though she could see very little in the darkness, from the sound of it, Abie was putting on her pajamas and getting in bed.