“Yeah, I really love you,” Iris always replied with an involuntary flinch.
Iris had seen her mother fucking for money for as long as she could remember. Used to operate from a tiny apartment on Avenue St. John. Would bring the men in there while Iris sat on the living room watching Pooh videos and playing with blocks or Holly Hobbies. “It’s the way I make my money, honey,” Angie would singsong with so much color and life and maybe a little too much lipstick. To Iris it was just normal life. If she opened the bedroom door and caught her mother in action it didn’t mean anything because there was food on the table, money for clothes and toys, plus enough time to go shopping and jump all over the sofa and love seat chasing each other. There was time between assignments for Angie to do Iris’s nails and Iris’s hair, to buy her skirts and pantyhose and to play with her face in front of the bedroom mirror where there was always a liquor smell like medicine. “My baby is beautiful,” Angie would say after applying all the makeup to miniature carbon-copy Angie. Iris remembered being in the stroller, crowded Third Avenue, outside Alexander’s in the rush of Christmas shoppers, and Angie blocking traffic there by the entrance so she could stoop down on one knee and reapply the mascara to Iris’s little face. Iris soaked it up. It was attention, it was love. They were girlfriends. They fought over lipstick and pantyhose, and once when Iris swiped her red minidress to wear to school Angie beat the fuck out of her.
It was in school that things turned sour. The kids there knew about her mother. They made jokes. Sometimes guys would come over and say,
One day she was made to stay after school by a teacher. His name was Mr. Berlin, so white he pink, spit when he talked and had curly blond hair. She sat at her desk and he sat at his.
“I’ve heard talk about your mother,” he said slowly. “Is it true, Iris? Is it true what the other students are saying?”
Iris nodded, her face bloodless burning.
Mr. Berlin got up from his desk and walked over to hers.
“And you. What they say about you. Is that true?”
Iris nodded again, her face a mask. She felt like she knew what was coming. She had seen that face on men who honked their horns at her mother as they walked home some nights from tricks. He took his wallet out and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Is that enough?” he asked. Iris shook her head. He peeled off another twenty. “How about now?” His face looked moist. When there were sixty dollars on there, then she nodded, though she had been a little curious as to how much she would be worth. That girl who sat in the third desk first row now stood up, lowering shades, pulling down drawstrings. Her voice was now gravel, her eyes like she had won. Mr. Berlin watched the professional take over.
“Okay,” she said like she was in charge now. “What do you want? Blowjob? Handjob? Sixty-nine? Doggie-style? Ride ’um cowgirl? Missionary?” A grin so twisted menace.
“I don’t know if I can,” Mr. Berlin said, looking a little pale like he had lost control.
“Take the pants down,” she said.
After she went down on Mr. Berlin she could have her way with him, could walk in and out during class, he wouldn’t even raise a mumble. She never abused it—she liked his regular sixty dollars, and Mr. Berlin was her first regular. He was a married-with-three-kids kind of guy. Pulling money off him was easy. It was so easy, it made her want to get into the business. There was a sense of power that went with it that left her feeling almost high.
One night she was sitting with Pacheco and Angie on the bed. A trick had just left and they had changed the sheets, then lay there with their legs intertwined, eating chicken from a bucket. Pacheco had just started with a tale from his army days when Iris came right out with the story about Mr. Berlin.
“Are you serious?” Angie jumped off the bed, giving Pacheco a punch. “Did’ju hear that shit? I’ll kill that bastid!” She paced, arms windmilling. “I’ll take the bastids to court, the whole fucken school! That dirty fuck!! Pacheco!! Why the fuck you just sittin’ there? She’s only fourteen!”
Pacheco and Iris exchanged glances. Iris went into her room and came back with a cigar box. She emptied it on the bed. Three hundred and ten dollars.
“I’ll sue the city!! Just look at that!! All that talk about morality!! Like I’m garbage, right? And lookit what they do!! All of them fulla shit, alla them!”
“You don’t have a case,” Pacheco said, riffling through the bills. “The daughter of a local hooker? Gimme a break. They’d laugh you outta court. All the nice decent hard-working white guy has to say is that she propositioned him. Who ain’t gonna believe him?”
Angie glared, eyes teeming wet. “But we gotta do something!”
Iris said, “Fuck school. I wanna go to work.”
Angie stood there staring at the two of them. Trembling a little, looking as if they had just presented her with the terms of surrender.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her lips quivered. She passed a hand through her hair, sat on the bed, reached for her crack pipe. She took it into the bathroom and shut the door.
“Did he sex you?” Pacheco asked while lighting a cigarette.
“Yeah.”
“You want I should set you up?”
Iris didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah,” she said.
She turned tricks every day, every night, even on weekends. She still managed to cook for her mother, who wasn’t doing much of anything, and paid for her crack habit. The career started like a party, and turned into chain gang.
She used to feel in control. She’d get into a car with some guy and feel like she was holding the cards. She had what she wanted, and when it was over she still had it, while the guy was fifty bucks poorer. (Or forty or thirty or
