Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [58]
In the long waits between customers, Bea and Clara talked about money, their old men, other whorehouses and their old men and travel to nearby towns and their old men. They both called their men “Daddy,” and when speaking of them even when relating the beatings they had received from “Daddy,” their voices tightened into lurid imitations of baby talk. Their faces softened and their lips pouted (Clara could wrinkle her nose and wiggle it like a bunny).
I wondered if prostitutes, as one, suffered from an Electra complex and were motivated by a need to have a daddy, please a daddy and finally make love to a daddy.
“My daddy said he's going to take me to Hot Springs ‘for the season.’” Bea sat in her chair by the door and shook her delight.
“Daddy and I went to the Kentucky Derby last year. We had a ball.” Clara began to shake her nose. “Everybody was there. I met sports from New York City and Detroit and Chicago.”
“My daddy says those Eastern pimps are colder than a whore's heart in Nome. I believe him too. Look at their faces. They chilly. If they don't kill their whores, they make them wish they were dead.”
“Well, my daddy didn't never hit me except when I needed it. Oh, he whip my ass then. Better believe it. But no scars. He ain't never left a scar on me.”
Bea grinned as if she had outwitted the men. “They ain't crazy. They wouldn't hurt their little money-makers.”
Their conversations were tightly choreographed measures, and since I didn't know the steps, I sat on the sidelines and watched. They would hardly be interested in my dance career, or my son, or the books I'd read. And I flatly, on principle, refused to call L.D. “Daddy.” I mean, I protested to myself, my father, Bailey Johnson, Sr., was in San Diego, posturing and er'rering his pretentious butt off. Daddy Clidell was my one-time stepfather, but he and Mother had signed divorce papers. Mother's men, whom I had called Daddy Jack, Uncle Bob or Hanover Daddy, came and went with such regularity that whatever name I tacked on after the paternal title escaped me after a few months. I decided I wouldn't discuss L.D. at all. They were too cynical to understand that we were in love and that after I had helped him out of trouble, after he had a divorce, we were going to be married and live in a dream house with my son and lots of flowers. I would not share my plan with hardhearted whores.
Despite my youth and high school clothes and stilted Spanish, I wasn't popular at Clara's. The men preferred Bea. She had a swing to her hips and a knowing smile that I couldn't imitate. Then, Mexican farm workers obviously had no erotic fantasies starring black teenage girls; they came to a whorehouse for a whore, and Bea answered their needs.
• • •
“Have a good time, you all.” Clara waved to L.D. and me from the steps. He didn't acknowledge her but I turned and waved.
In the car he wore the same sour face he'd had when he returned from talking with Clara in her bedroom. Fear that he didn't love me any more iced my bare arms. When I first moved to Clara's he had assured me, “Don't worry about going to bed with other men. It'll just make me love you more. You're doing it to help Daddy.” He hugged me too. Now I remembered and supposed he had thought so at the time. But when face to face with the reality, he found me disgusting. For the first time since I went to Clara's, I began to feel unclean. I was Lady Macbeth. All the waters in the world wouldn't wash away the fingerprints of the men who had mauled me. I had been stupid to let him talk me into doing something that would turn him from me. He needed love. He needed a good woman to love him, especially now while he was in trouble with the big boys. But instead of using the brain I was inordinately proud of, I had let him down. His life was so unstable (the big diamond ring and expensive car were symbols of insecurity),