Black women comprise 40 percent of street prostitutes, though 55 percent of women arrested for prostitution are black, and 85 percent of women incarcerated for prostitution are black.
Two-thirds of those working as prostitutes disclosed having been sexually abused as children—and more than 90 percent said they never told anyone. Only 1 percent reported having received counseling.
It was around Main and 11th that I jumped from my mother’s car. Wandering south, it was on the corner of 41st where I met James. Leaning coolly against the side of a building, he was a slender 6′2″, his knees double-jointed so it looked like his legs were behind him. He had olive skin and long, straight hair. This man would consume the next five years of my life.
My adrenaline, my anxiety, blurred much of my memory of that day: I don’t remember what James first said to me, only that we talked some, and then I got in his car. I don’t remember the car, but I remember the one he’d later buy—a used 1965 white Cadillac convertible with a red interior—after I brought in the money. I don’t remember the place that, on that very night, became my new home, but I remember when we soon moved together to a rooming house off Western near the 10 freeway. James often wore a beard, and he had thick eyebrows. I don’t remember how long it took until I saw the mean spirits haunting his eyes. But I remember I did what he said, or his fists would fly.
He’d sing to me sometimes, Lou Rawls’s “Memory Lane.” He’d recite “Street Corner Hustler’s Blues, World of Troubles,” which, to me, was the story of James himself. He was a smooth-talking hustler. And I, his willing prey. Forget learning to type, I would use the tool I already possessed: my body. I’d been exploited my whole life, so now, why not make this body work for me? If there was one thing I knew for sure: my body could get me things.
James secured me an ID that said I was twenty-one years old. And he found the johns willing to pay up. I entered into what we in the underworld called “the life.”
We were making money. Dirty money. I was a live wire, sizzling, crackling, sparking. I didn’t dare think about what I was doing. I didn’t think about myself, and I didn’t think about anyone else. My sense of self was so warped that I believed my ability to divorce myself from my emotions was my greatest asset.
I set my sights three years ahead, when I would turn eighteen and could get Toni without fear of Mama dragging me off to juvenile hall. Until then, I’d linger on my corner, no shortage of men who wanted to get with me, and make what I convinced myself was an easy living. I bought myself fine clothes. I bought gifts for my daughter. I bought James a guitar and he played and sang for me. Once, when he got mad at something I said or did—who even knows, it didn’t take much to set him off—he swung the guitar at me. I instinctively put up my arm to shield my face, and the guitar splintered to pieces. So did my arm. I took a day away from work, and then was back out there on my corner, arm in a plaster cast.
Most of the time, I wanted to leave James. But where could I go? Purposefully, he kept me isolated. But I had isolated myself, too. I’d severed ties with everyone I’d known. My old life was a one-way ticket to someplace I didn’t want to go. But this life, where was this train headed? It was a question I didn’t bother—or, somewhere deep down, couldn’t bear—to ask.
The first time I got picked up by the police for prostitution, I was unnerved. From then on, it simply was part of the job. My bail would be set at $500, and I’d make a phone call to George, the bail bondsman James used. George Cameron was a tall, soft-spoken black man, his Arkansas roots lingering in his voice. He was from El Dorado, but he didn’t say it like the car, he said it with a long “a.” “You know how we do in the South,” he explained. “Down there in El Doraydo, we thought Colorado was Coloraydo.”
Each time George bailed me out, he’d say, “Sue, you’re smart and you’re sharp. And you know how to get things done. Why are you messing around with all this?” I never had an answer.
Having recently moved to Los Angeles after years in the navy, George dealt with small timers, mostly pimps and prostitutes. He operated on a personal level bailing people out and driving them home. This way, he got to know people, and he got to know families. But it was more than just trying to get his name out then build his business; he cared. Each car ride back to James’s place, George tried to guide me.
“Sue, you can remember that phone number I gave you without having to write it down?” he marveled. “You’re real good with numbers. You’d be good at a job with numbers.” Or, “Sue, you could get certified to become a notary. It’s a good job. You’d be good at it.”
But I couldn’t yet see anything legitimate for myself. I was barely sixteen and was on the run. I’d nod, and the next time I’d talk to George was when I needed him to bail me out again or when I had a court date.
On it would go. He’d pick me up, drop me off, and he’d say, “Sue, you’re a nice person. I’m not giving up on you.”
But what did it matter if he saw something in me, when I could not?
At first, I was sentenced to fines. Then, I was sentenced to thirty days in jail. I was prepared; it was merely part of the lifestyle. I was sent to the new women’s county jail, the Sybil Brand Institution, named for the philanthropist devoted to improving conditions for female inmates.
I was one of thirty women in a dorm, and we slept on orderly twin beds. We were given a nightgown and three sets of laundered prison clothes weekly, which we’d lay under the mattress to press. Visitors were allowed to bring us new underwear. A few unfortunates who didn’t have visitors had to wear used underwear provided by the prison that was thick and bulky and fit like a diaper. But under my prison clothes, I wore pretty lace panties and bras, which I washed in the sink and hung to dry.
To pass the time, I went to a crafts class and knit myself a couple of dresses. At Christmas, Ms. Sybil Brand herself came to visit. A tiny, silver-haired white lady, she walked room to room, giving each of us gifts of lipstick and eyebrow pencils.
No one had any idea how rapidly conditions would deteriorate, and how futile Ms. Brand’s mission would become when the War on Drugs hit its stride. Some fifteen years later, when I’d find myself back there, the dorms would be crammed with double the number of women sharing the same space, climbing up on triple bunks that we called coffins because of the mere inches between each. Whoever was unlucky enough to get that very top bunk had ceiling lights, which remained on at all hours, directly in her eyes. No longer was anyone pressing creases in their pants under the mattress—we were issued only one pair of pants and one top, for both the day and to sleep in. They got rid of forks and knives, too; we ate everything with a big metal spoon. The food, once decent, devolved to cheap prison-grade fare that might as well have been dog food. And everyone had to wear the used, diaper-like underwear.
Had I known when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old the horror story in which I’d later find myself; had I known that when the judge’s gavel came down, the sentences would no longer be in days but in years, and not to county jail but to prison; had I known all this then, would I have changed my life? Could I have? Could I have gotten my head and myself together? The honest answer: I don’t know. Life had stoked a belligerence in me. Combined with the invincibility of youth, I was both combustible and fiercely resilient. Had I been plunked into another environment, another community with role models and guides, perhaps I would have learned that I could make different decisions. But you had to have decent options in order to make good decisions, and from my vantage point, I saw few opportunities for my life.
My first sentence was reduced from thirty days to twenty for good behavior. James was waiting to pick me up, and I hopped in his Cadillac and went straight back to work.
At last, I turned of legal age. I reappeared at my mother’s door. I wasn’t sure how she would react, but relief filled her face—it hadn’t occurred to me that she’d worried about me. Before her eyes, I wasn’t just alive, I had blossomed into a woman. And I knew I looked good. My clothes were beautiful and expensive, my arms were full of gifts. Toni, a precocious three-year-old, ran over to see who was at the door. But she didn’t know me. She turned to my mother, and called her Mama.
All those years I wanted to have my daughter, but couldn’t. And now, how did I reconnect with this child who eyed me warily? Who, clinging to my mother, didn’t want to come to me? I packed a bag for Toni and brought her to the rooming house where James and I lived. I wanted to build a relationship with my daughter, to take care of her, to be her mother—and I wanted to prove to my own mother that I wasn’t useless. I wanted all this so badly it didn’t occur to me that I was subjecting my daughter to the instability and violence of my life.
I had acclimated to the violence. It’s difficult now to understand how that’s possible, but at the time, I didn’t think of myself as a battered woman. Getting roughed up was part of the world I came from. I’d heard my parents argue and saw the aftermath of busted lips and bruised eyes. Same with other families I knew; same with friends; same within the rooming house, the thin walls keeping all of us up on everyone’s business. Why would you think anything was so wrong when all around you, this is how it was? With no other examples, it was easy to believe this was normal.
James had grown up with his sister and mother in Mississippi before they moved to Los Angeles. His mother now lived in the San Fernando Valley, and I’d make the drive north with James, leaning against the car and watching as he doled out cash to her. Only, he couldn’t count well—for all I knew he was illiterate—and his mother would scam her own son before his witless eyes, saying she only needed a few hundred dollars, but counting off more for herself. When I pointed this out to James, he slapped me and said I was lying. I realized that, like his mother, I had better look out for myself. So I began skimming from him too.
James bought me a used Ford Falcon, a car that worked for local transportation and not much else, and I hid money under the dashboard and took it to my mother’s house. I figured Mama had an idea how that cash came to me, but she was always good at turning her cheek; she kept the money and never said a word. For once, I appreciated her all-knowing silence. Eventually, however, I noticed the money in her safekeeping was evaporating. When I was young, she’d taught us it was important to save, and she took us to the bank to open Christmas Club accounts. Every week we deposited fifty cents, then at Christmastime, we wrote withdrawal slips to use our savings to buy gifts. Now, I took the remainder of my stash from my mother’s house and opened a bank account. What far outweighed any concern over illegally gained money was watching my funds accrue, with interest.
There were flashes, things that made me say, This time, I really got to get out. James bought a puppy for Toni, a beautiful gray Doberman Pinscher. But when the puppy peed on the floor, James kicked him. One time James kicked the puppy so hard, its feces hit the wall. He literally kicked the shit out of that poor dog. If I intervened, I got beaten up too. Even little Toni tried to stop him, and she got welts on her legs before I pulled her back, shielding her with my own body. It was either the dog or the both of us. The dog ended up hanging himself on the leash in the yard. Maybe it was by accident, but I don’t think so.
I packed a bag and took Toni to my mother’s house. But in no time, James showed up there in a rage, grabbing me and dragging me to his car. My mother rushed out after us. She lunged toward James and bit him, taking a plug out of his arm. But he shook her off like a fly. He threw me into his car, holding on to my wrists so I couldn’t leap out. Tires screeched as he peeled out of the driveway on what was otherwise a quiet block across the street from St. Cecilia’s Church.
Some time passed before I again mustered up the courage to escape to my mother’s. This time, my younger brothers sat in the picture window with their BB guns poised. But they were only scrawny teenagers, no match for James’s fierceness, or his real gun. Other women—white women—might have gone to the police for a restraining order. But in my community, the police weren’t who we turned to for help. To willingly go to the police, you had to believe they were on your side.
One day, Toni, James, and I were in the rooming house. He was fussing at me, and I knew he was about to turn violent. I saw his gun on the table. James watched me notice it. I lunged. He followed. We tussled over the gun. And then, it went off, a piercing sound in the small of the room. I scrambled for Toni. She was okay, but I was not. I was the one who’d been shot.
At the emergency room, my daughter was left with James while I was taken in. The bullet was lodged in my ankle, but the doctor didn’t remove it, only bandaged me up, and I was too distraught and worried about Toni to question anything.
Out in the waiting room, James told Toni, “Chili Red, you better not say a thing about the gun, or any of it.” He’d given her this nickname on account of what he called her redbone looks. She despised being called this, but that never stopped him.
A very savvy four-year-old, Toni gave him a steely-eyed glare. “I won’t tell if you take me to my grandmother’s house.”
He looked at her, this girl whose birthday was one day apart from mine, who wouldn’t call me Mama, but who’d inherited my strong will.
James said, “Okay, Chili Red, we have a deal.” He took her back to my mother’s house and never bothered her again. But he continued to come after me.
What none of us knew was that James was caught in the grip of a heroin addiction. With U.S. troops in Vietnam, drug trafficking of heroin had pervaded the West Coast. On the street, it was called smack and sold in little balloons for $20. When people who knew James began warning me, I didn’t want to believe them. There weren’t any obvious signs, like needle tracks on his arms, or paraphernalia to discover—but that’s because James had been snorting it. But when he started going into the nods—falling asleep sitting up, mid-sentence—I knew it was true.
I had been the classic victim, exhibiting all the characteristics of an abused woman, including the denial. But learning James was a dope fiend snapped my eyes wide open. Heroin was dirty and dangerous—it was low. And fiend was an apt description because heroin possessed people, turning them vicious, demonic. My younger brother Marvin had a friend who’d perilously tried heroin—I learned about it when Toni, soaking up everything she overheard, parroted, “Hunky got bad smack and he died.” My brother swore to us up and down that he stayed clear of smack, wouldn’t touch it, didn’t know why his friend had. Back then, it wasn’t difficult to be objective about heroin—it was, simply, a line you didn’t cross. Seeing clearly now who James was, I knew with conviction: I was done.
I left for my mother’s house, and when James eventually showed up there, all my brothers showed up too. The five Burton brothers surrounded James, and they threatened him so bad he got back in his car, peeled out of there, and didn’t dare show his face again. He was, at last, gone from my life.