1

Cynda sat on the edge of the bed, swinging her leg, impatiently waiting for her last customer to get his pants on and leave her alone.

“Woohoo, I tell you what, girl, the half has not been told about the wonders of your pot of gold,” her customer said. His blood shot eyes greedily devoured her as he lay on his side, with a tattooed elbow propped under his thin body.

Great, a poet. Half smiling, Cynda threw his blue jeans at him and glanced at her watch.

“Oh, no you don’t. I paid for an hour and I’m getting my whole hour this time. I want to talk,” he insisted.

Rolling her eyes and rubbing her temple usually helped her customers understand that they had over stayed her endurance, but not the Poet. This knucklehead thought his words could sway her; make her change her mind.

The Poet walked around the bed, got on his knees in front of Cynda, and put his hand on her leg. “I want us to be together, baby.” Happy fingers traveled up her leg. “You don’t have to be out on these streets. Why don’t you let me get you a place?”

“You want your own personal whore, is that it?” she titled her head and smacked her lips.

His hand stopped. He stood and turned his back on her. “It wouldn’t be like that, Cynda. I want to take care of you.”

She got off the king-size bed, squeezed into her red-leather skirt, and bent down to put on her stilettos. “What would your wife say about you taking care of me?” she asked her persistent customer.

“I don told you about bringing my wife into this.”

Cynda stood and straightened her mini. “Look, I’ve got to go. Why don’t you go home and spend some of this quality time with your family?”

“Why you always gotta talk trash?” he said, sucking his teeth.

“Why you always gotta act like a fool?” Throwing on her tank top she grabbed her purse. “Let me ask you this, how much money have you put aside for your son’s college expenses while you’re making plans to put me up?”

The Poet put on his pants, grabbed his hat and keys, then opened the motel door and turned back to face Cynda. “You know something? Beautiful outside and ugly inside is a horrible combination.”

“Whatever, man. Don’t overstay your welcome and you won’t see the ugly side of me.”

He rolled his eyes and then slammed the door behind him as Cynda sat back on the bed and took the money out of her purse. Between her three customers she’d earned a hundred and fifty dollars. Three years ago a trick wouldn’t have been able to look her way with fifty bucks. Back then she was racking in three to five hundred per trick. Back then she did her tricking at four-and-five star hotels. Today she received her callers at the Motel 6.

Someone knocked on her door. Cynda quickly put her money back in her hand bag and prayed that she wasn’t about to get robbed. Not today. She had something important to do with that money. Something real important.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Girl, it’s me, Jasmine. Open up this door.”

Cynda smiled. Her girl Jasmine was cool people. They’d gotten into some deep stuff that made them call on the name of Jesus. Well, Jasmine called on Jesus, Cynda would rather ask for Satan’s help. As far as she was concerned, Jesus hadn’t done Jack diddly for her, so why should she waste her breath.

Jasmine was just kicks; big fun all the time. Cynda opened the door and Jasmine floated in with her boyfriend, Cooper, straggling behind.

The two couldn’t be a more awkward pair. Where Cooper was tall and lanky, Jasmine was short and well fed. Cooper’s cheeks were sunken in, and his face always bore a frown. But Jasmine, that girl put life into the dullest party.

“Girl, I thought your last customer would never leave. Coop and I just finished selling our stuff and I had a little left over.” Jasmine pulled a bag of weed out of one pocket and some rocks out of the other. “Let’s get this party started.”

Cooper rubbed his hands together. “Lay it out and let’s get to it.”

Cynda held up her hand. “I’ve got to go, Jasmine. I can’t get into this right now.”

“What you talking ‘bout. Girls like us are always ready to party.”

“I’ve gotta get to Spoony’s. Today is Iona’s birthday.”

Jasmine looked at the watch on her chubby wrist. “That girl don’t get out of school until three o’clock this afternoon. You’ve got at least an hour before you need to be over there.” She put the bags of temptation against Cynda’s nostrils and shook them. “What you gon’ do?”

Cynda hesitated. But with the bag still under her nose she couldn’t concentrate on what she had set her mind to accomplish that day. She inhaled and gave in to her desires. “Spread the stuff on the table,” Cynda ordered her friend, “I don’t have all day; I’ve got to get going.”

The frown on Cooper’s face reversed itself as he said, “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Jasmine shook her ample behind as she put the stuff out on the table. As Cynda watched her friend she remembered the time she asked Jasmine how come smoking crack didn’t cause her to lose weight like it did for most people. Jasmine had responded, “Them crack heads get so high that they forget to feed themselves, but I don’t care what I’m doing; a dinner bell always goes off inside my head.”

 

Cynda walked out of Motel 6 at five o’clock with ten dollars to her name. The money she had made earlier was supposed to go to Iona, her daughter, for a birthday present. Or better yet, a hundred would go to Spoony for benevolently housing her child, for which he charged her a thousand dollars a week to do it. She was going to spend the other fifty taking Iona out to eat and picking up a doll for her. But the money went up in smoke from her crack pipe.

Now she stood at Spoony’s door shaking like a man headed to the electric chair. Spoony would kill her for blowing that money. Spoony wasn’t just her babysitter, actually, he didn’t baby sit at all; his loser of a wife, Linda did that. Spoony was Cynda’s pimp. Cynda had lived with Spoony and his stupid, go-for-anything wife, until Spoony threw her out of his house a year ago and then refused to let her take her daughter with her. That way, even though he’d stopped housing and clothing Cynda, he was still able to pimp her because she had to bring him her money in order to see her child. She reminded herself for the thousandth time how unwise it had been to make a deal with the devil.

Cynda rang the door bell and waited. The devil’s big, angry feet stomped toward the door and swung it open.

“About time you got yourself here. This girl has been waiting on you since she got out of school,” Spoony growled at Cynda.

Cynda stepped past the crusty black/blue man who haunted the doorway and smiled at Iona. She was standing in the middle of the living room with one of them frilly white dresses that went out in the 80s. Linda tried her best, but the woman needed to get out more.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Cynda said as she bent down in front of her daughter and hugged her. She hugged her real tight.

“What did you bring me, Mommy?” Iona said anxiously.

Closing her eyes, Cynda wished for leeches to suck out her blood while a lion clawed her heart out. Horrible mothers deserved deaths like that, didn’t they? She opened her eyes and forced herself to look at her daughter’s innocent face. Iona’s excited eyes always reminded her of someone else; someone who didn’t want anything to do with her. Someone she’d rather forget. But her daughter looked more like him with every passing day. That smooth chocolate skin and those deep dimples were a signature from the man Cynda refused to think about.

“That’s what Mama needs to talk to you about.” Cynda nervously rubbed Iona’s arms. “See, Mama doesn’t have any money right now. I was hoping we could celebrate your birthday this weekend. I’ll be able to take you someplace real nice then. Okay?”

“You don’t have a present for me, Mama?” Iona asked in heartbroken disbelief.

Cynda’s heart ached as the excitement seeped out of her daughter’s eyes. Where were those leeches? Why didn’t her heart explode after she put her daughter’s birthday money in a crack pipe? A tear trickled down Cynda’s lovely face.

“Don’t cry, Mommy.” Iona wiped the tear from her mother’s face. “Auntie Linda gave me lots of presents. Do you want to see them?”

Auntie Linda was always showing her up. “Not right now, baby,” Cynda said. “Why don’t you get your hat and coat and let Mommy take you to get a slice of pizza?” It was only the eleventh of October but already windy in Chi-town.

Spoony grabbed Cynda by the back of her coat and pulled her up to face him. Snot drizzled from the hairs in his big black nose as he snarled at her. “Where’s my money?”

Cynda turned to Iona. “Baby, go in the other room with Auntie Linda.”

Iona didn’t move.

“Where’s my money?” Spoony asked again with his fist looming down on her. “I’m not going to ask you again, Cynda.”

“I didn’t make any money today,” Cynda replied. She braced herself for the blow she knew would knock her across the room.

The first lick caused blood to trickle from her lip and knocked her against the black cocktail table. “Iona get out of here!” she screamed before Spoony took a handful of her hair, twisted it around his hand and then yanked it as he punched her in the eye.

Iona ran out of the room whimpering for her aunt.

“You think I can’t tell that you smoked up my money?” Spoony spat. He threw Cynda on the ground and kicked her with the pointy part of his boot. “It’s in your eyes, liar. They’re glassy.”

Cynda grabbed her rib and forced herself not to cry. “I just want to take my daughter out for a slice of pizza, Spoony. Why do you have to do this on her birthday?”

“She’s not going no where with you.”

“Let me have my kid, Spoony, please. That’s all I want from you.”

He opened the front door and drug Cynda toward it, kicking her in the ribs as he threw her out.

Just before slamming the door he told her, “Maybe I should call her daddy and get all that back child support he owes me.”

Cynda wanted to spit on him as she lay on his porch, bruised and battered. He always threw that up in her face, reminding her of the secret they shared, which was the reason she allowed herself to be pimped by this animal. He slammed the door in her face and she was tempted to just leave, never look back; just forget that Spoony the devil existed. But her daughter was still in there, and it was her birthday.

Cynda began to pound on the door and plead with Spoony to let Iona come with her, but her attempts fell on deaf ears. With tears streaming down her face, she stood and straightened her clothes. As she walked down the steps, a searing pain shot through her. She sat down and lifted her shirt. Her chest was black and blue. Spoony messed up everything. Didn’t he know that birthday’s were important to little girls? She still remembered the last birthday she spent with her mother. She’d been left outside knocking then too.

 

“Mama, please let me in.” Knocking harder on the door, Cynda said, “Come on, you know it’s my birthday.” Footsteps thudded toward the door. “Do you hear me, Mama? I want to open my presents now.”

Flora wiped the sleep from her light brown eyes as she inched the door open. “Hey, baby,” she said to her now nine year old daughter. You know I’ve got company right now.”

“Are we going to have a party today?” Cynda asked, only concerned about her birthday and not the man her mother was entertaining inside.

Flora touched her daughter’s smooth young face. “No, baby. Mama has to work today.”

“But we always have a party on my birthday. You always get me lots of presents.”

Flora’s head bowed low as Romie walked into the hallway. His big Jackson-five afro swayed this way and that as he stalked toward them.

He asked Cynda, “Are you bothering your mother? She’s busy.”

Cynda backed away from him. His cold black eyes terrified her. Cynda’s mother made her call him uncle Romie, but Cynda’s Grammy told her that she’d never birthed no low-life animals, so he was not her uncle. “But it’s my birthday,” Cynda whined.

Romie grabbed her arm. “Come with me, baby girl. I’ve got a present for you.”

“No! No!” Cynda pulled away from him and barreled into her mother, pushing Flora backward into the bedroom. The smell of must wafted in the air. “Don’t let him take me, Mama, please.”

Flora’s eyes widened as she looked from her daughter to Romie. There was a man in Flora’s bed. He sat up and pulled the cover over his naked body.

“What’s going on, Flora?” the man asked.

“Nothing Ralph,” Flora answered him. “Just go back to sleep.”

Romie barked, “You don’t have time to be fooling around with this child. You need to be making some money.”

Flora reached into the pocket of her rob and pulled out several bills. She threw them in Romie’s high-yellow face. “Is that enough money? Now can I please spend a few minutes with my daughter on her birthday?”

Fire flashed in Romie’s eyes as he smacked Flora. He then grabbed a handful of her long black hair and pulled her close to him. “Don’t make me beat you this morning.”

Flora put her hands up. “Okay, b-baby, calm down.”

He grabbed Cynda’s hand. “I am calm. You get back over there and handle Ralph. I’ll take Cynda with me.”

Birthday’s stopped being special for Cynda when her mother stopped standing up for her. Today, she’d done the same for her daughter.