Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [19]
“Well, I've been wanting to go into business. So I'd been saving my money. I had been thinking in terms of a hamburger stand, but this place is so perfect.” And so were they. “If all three of us save, do you realize we could open a restaurant in a year? Beatrice as the chef. You and I as managers.”
I was getting to them. “I had a little operation up the coast. A three-girl deal, but I had to close down.” Admiration and a little fear showed in their faces. They hadn't bargained for what they were getting.
Johnnie Mae, not wanting to believe what she already believed, asked, “Why were you working as a waitress?”
Should I tell them in order to eat and pay for my son's keep, so they'd throw me down on that uncomfortable sofa and rape me? “I needed a front. Cops after me.”
“Cops!” Both of them screamed. Like many weak people they wanted to milk the cow, at the same time denying the smell of bullshit. I saw immediately that I had gone too far.
“Not after me myself. One of my girls, but I wanted to lay a cover for myself.”
Beatrice said, “You're awfully young to be in the rackets.”
“I've been around, baby.” I rolled my eyes to indicate distant and mysterious places. “Well, how does it sound? Say we say Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then you're free for church on Sunday and—”
“We'd better talk about it.”
“I'm off tomorrow and I can get all the business taken care of. No time like the present.”
“We only have the two bedrooms. Where will you work?”
I almost shouted at the tall woman. Me, turn tricks? What did she think I was? “I'm going to stay on at the restaurant. Shouldn't call attention to myself, you understand. But you won't be alone. I'll have somebody here to watch out for you. Just leave it to me.”
I became pompously professional, which was never hard for me, being my father's daughter. “If you'll let me have a tablet and a pen, I'll take the landlord's address.”
“Beatrice. Get some paper.”
I moved over to the table, shifting the dinner dishes and crumbs out of my way as Johnnie Mae dictated.
“What's this address again?”
She gave it to me and I wrote it over and over on slips of paper.
“What you doing now?” Johnnie Mae wasn't bright, but she'd always be too clever to just go for the okey-doke. I put it in my mind that I'd better keep that in mind.
“When I leave here, I'm going to start drumming up business,” I said. “In a few weeks we'll be thousandaires.”
“What?”
“That's just a step from millionaires. Let's have a drink on it.” Beatrice poured. The first mouthful nearly sent me reeling. It made contact with the grifa in my brain. For a lightning second I was sober with a clear recollection of what I had done, then blissfully I was high again. An authority in charge of affairs.
I said good-bye, alluded again to the wonderful food and the wonderful future we had in store, and walked out of the house.
I was certain that my heartlessness regarding the women stemmed from a natural need for revenge. After all my soggy sentimentality for the misunderstood, no one could have convinced me that I was merely acting out society's hate for the “other ones.”
However, an irony struck me before I reached the little one-foot wire fence that guarded the pavement from the yard. In a successful attempt to thwart a seduction I had ended up with two whores and a whorehouse. And I was just eighteen.
CHAPTER 14
“Good evening, driver.”
“Yeah.”
“Are there enough houses of ill repute to service the naval personnel?”
“Whaat?”
“I know you're generally paid four dollars on a twenty-dollar customer (I guessed, I didn't know), but if, after Thursday night ten-o'clock, you bring clients to this ad dress, you'll be remunerated to the tune of five dollars per head.”
You had to be very careful in speaking to whites, and especially white men. My mother said that when a white man sees your teeth he thinks he sees your underclothes.
I had managed in a few tense years to become a snob on all levels, racial, cultural and intellectual. I was a madam and thought myself morally superior