Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [22]
I didn't insist on any rules in my little whorehouse by the side of the road, except one: no all-night dates, no matter what the temptation. I wanted the money without name, the ease without strain. I never wanted any tricks to be in the house after I arrived, hence the signal with Hank.
One evening I sat in a taxi on the darkened street (I never took my automobile to the whorehouse) and waited for the light to go off on the porch. The driver, who also brought trade, and I walked into the house.
I stood in the center of the tiny living room, which smelled of Lysol and smoke and incense, hemmed in by the driver, the women and Hank, and by the furniture, which threatened to oust us all at any moment. Beatrice and Johnnie Mae erased any budding aspirations I had for owning things. Now that they had money, their acquisitive natures came into their own. The total filling up of the living room was so gradual that it was as if the existing furniture gave birth nightly to smaller and even larger images of itself.
Hank passed me the cigar box of money.
“Damn. Turn the damned radio off till we get business settled. You can't hear a shitting thing.” I had taken to cursing to round out my image. The two women no longer took any interest in me, except possibly to hate my arrogance and envy my authority. I couldn't care less.
I had not finished recovering their chits and was about to turn to the cab driver when a drunk, half-dressed white sailor stumbled through the bedroom door. He had nothing on below the blue middy. There was a moment's hush when the women and Hank looked at me. I was hypnotized at the man's nudity and couldn't take my eye's from his white, soft, dangling penis.
Beatrice ran to him. “Honey. I told you to stay—”
“What's going on? Who are all these folks?” His accent was lower Mississippi, and he looked as naked and white and ugly and drunk and nasty as anything I could think of.
Beatrice herded him back to the room.
In those seconds I became a child again. Unreasoning rage consumed me. The low-down sneaky bitches—I had told them to have the place cleared before I got there. They had probably had tricks there every night and I hadn't even questioned them. I could have gone to jail or worse. After all I'd done for them, their whorish hearts were so ungrateful that I had been subjugated to looking at the sickening aspect of a white man's penis.
I turned to Hank, and lumbering toward me, he said, “Rita, swear to God, I thought they was all gone.”
Johnnie Mae allowed a little of her jealousy to show. “I don't see nothing wrong myself. You come over here every night collecting money, acting like you somebody's pimp. But you too good to turn a trick. And you keep this big rough sonofabitch watching us all the time. Well, you can kiss my black ass.”
Her rudeness didn't surprise me. I would not have moved an eyebrow at anything any more. The driver stood mesmerized by the event.
I gave the cigar box to Hank. “Hank. Do you want a whorehouse, complete with whores? You've just been given one.” I turned to the women, gathering all my injured dignity. “And, ladies, you decided in the beginning that you were going to screw me one way or the other. Look at us now. Who did the screwing?”
Beatrice's voice keened, sharpened and moved through the room like a swinging razor. “If it hadn't been for you, we'd be living like we always did.”
“Yes, in the street, or back in some white woman's kitchen.”
Johnnie Mae swelled up as if she had taken in more air than it was possible to release. “Be goddam careful how you talk to her, you big-nose bitch.”
It was time to go. These lying heathens were not above attacking me. And after all I'd done for them.
“Hank, if you want this place, it's all yours.” And one parting shot to the traitors: “At least I'm leaving you better off than I found you. You've got enough secondhand furniture to start your own Goodwill store.” And to the cab-driver: “Will you please take me home.”
I stood straighter, separating myself from the stench of my present environment, and started