10

Kaki

Thursday, December 1

“You look awful,” Riley said to Kaki as they settled into their seats in history class.

“Thanks.” Leaning across her desk, Kaki rested her head on her arms. She could go to sleep right there and then. She was so tired. “I feel awful,” she mumbled to the surface of the desk.

“You’re never here anymore,” Riley said. “How come you’re always absent?”

Can’t she see I don’t want to talk? “I’ve been sick a lot.” Kaki looked around the bustling class where kids were settling their book bags, playing games on their phones, or yelling across the room to each other, and dropped her head again.

“Did you get your flu shot?” Riley asked.

“No.”

“You should get it. It’s supposed to be a bad strain this year. My mom says that some people have died from it already.”

“Hmm.” Kaki wondered what it would be like to die. Would that just mean she got to sleep forever? That sounded really good to her right now.

“Do you think you have the flu?”

“No, I don’t have the flu,” Kaki growled. “I’m just really tired.”

“What do you think is wrong with you? You’re never around anymore. I feel like we never get to talk. Are you going to join track for the spring?”

“Would you stop talking?” Kaki snapped. “Your voice is like, really grating on my ears right now. I just want to sleep.”

Riley’s face crumbled, her eyes flew wide open. “Sorry. I was just trying to talk to you. We used to be friends.”

A surge of guilt flooded Kaki’s chest. “I’m sorry, Riley. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not sleeping much, and…things are just really weird.”

Riley looked unconvinced. “OK. Whatever.”

The bell rang, and the students began making their way to their desks. The teacher was talking—which teacher was it? Miss Moss? No, that was math. Sydney was in that class with her. This was…oh yeah, history. Her head flopped back onto her arms. She just couldn’t do it today.

The “one night” Damien had insisted Kaki would have to dance turned into one week, and three weeks later…it hadn’t stopped yet. She was arriving home later and later. After her second week of working at the club, Kaki started skipping classes. It was too difficult to stay awake. When she skipped an entire day of school, an automated phone call went home to her mom that Kaki had an unverified absence for that day. Kaki heard it on the voice mail when she got home and quickly deleted it. As long as she could get home before her mom did, she could make sure her mom never got those messages. She was just glad they weren’t sending any to her dad’s house. Not yet anyway.

Kaki still tried to attend school as much as she could, but she missed at least two days every week and started falling so far behind in her classes that she couldn’t catch up. There were a few mornings when she barely made it back inside her mom’s or her dad’s house before they woke up. Some days she went to school after having had no sleep at all.

This was one of those mornings.

There was a tap on her shoulder. “Kaki? Kaki, wake up.” It was Ms. Shephard. “Come on. Sit up. You need to know this stuff for the test.”

She tried to sit up, but her eyes kept closing. Finally, in the middle of the lesson on the War of 1812, Kaki held up her hand. “Can I get a pass to the clinic?”

~*~

“You got any more of those blue pills?” Kaki asked Miranda, one of the other dancers.

“Take this. It works quicker.” Miranda poured some liquid into Kaki’s drink.

Kaki didn’t even ask what she was taking anymore. It didn’t matter. Anything that kept her from feeling the fear of walking out in front of a crowd of cheering, slobbery men—their eyes like night-time weasels glowing from within a forest. More like a jungle. A jungle of hungry, drooling jackals ready to pounce on her.

Miranda danced at Damien’s club the same nights Kaki did, and she always had a supply of all kinds of pills to take or powders to snort or smoke. She was just about the tallest woman Kaki had ever seen. Miranda said she was only six feet, but when she wore her six-inch heels and the rabbit ears, it was like looking into the face of a giant, angry Easter Bunny.

“These are my signature, see?” She adjusted her pink ears in the mirror. Her curly, light-brown hair spilling over her shoulders matched the color of her skin. “They know Miranda’s in the house when they see these. Plus, they make me feel like I’m a little more upmarket, you know? Like I’m a Playboy Bunny in Hugh Hef’s mansion, you know what I’m saying?”

Unlike Miranda, Kaki didn’t want to feel like anything. She just wanted to disappear. She sipped at her drink and waited for that to happen. Taking something was the only way she could do this. “How long have you been doing this, Miranda?”

Miranda rested her backside against the dressing table and rolled her dark eyes to the ceiling. “Oh, let’s see. I guess I been dancin’ a coupla years now.” She waved her hand in the air, her pink-painted nails with their intricate designs were shaped like claws. “You know. Time all runs together after a while. But I done a little bit of everything. I’m just doing this right now until I save a little. Then I’m movin’ down to Atlanta. Openin’ up my own little place. Then I be runnin’ the show.”

Even with the stuff Miranda had poured into it, the drink wasn’t hitting Kaki fast enough. Her stomach was all fluttery and rolling with that sick feeling she always got before she went out on the floor. She gulped several more swallows and watched the clock on the wall. Fifteen more minutes before she had to be out there.

In the three weeks she’d been dancing at Damien’s club, she’d only tried to refuse once. That time, Damien whipped her with his belt. It was the most humiliating experience of her life. She fought him until he had her on the ground.

One of the other girls stood by and watched. “Just stop fighting him, honey,” the girl had called out to Kaki. “If you just take it, it won’t be so bad. It’ll only be worse if you fight him.”

The beating left some welts on her backside, but Damien still made her go out on the floor. “No one’ll care once you’re out there swinging around a pole.”

Kaki learned not to cry. If she cried, she was sure to have her head shoved into the toilet while it was flushed. Finally, she’d learned never to be a minute late onto the dance floor. The punishment for that was to repay the customers for the time they’d lost, which meant private dances. And there was nothing more degrading and horrible than having to do that. One night, Kaki had to do twenty private dances while disgusting, drunk men breathed beer breath into her face.

According to Damien, the biggest problem they faced was with her dancing itself. “You ‘bout the worst dancer I’ve ever seen. You act like you don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t,” Kaki protested. “I’m not a dancer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing up there.”

Damien had grabbed her where her chin and neck met and pushed her against the wall. “You do the same kind of moves you do when you’re with me. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

She had done everything he’d wanted, so she didn’t know why he was suddenly so rough with her. Before he’d talked so sweetly, told her she was beautiful and wonderful and how much he loved her. She just wanted to hear that stuff from him again. He still bought her gifts—clothes, jewelry, gift cards—but she never saw any money from the stripping.

After her first week of dancing at the club, she’d asked him about it. “Are you going to pay me for doing this? I know the other girls get paid.”

He’d snort-laughed. “Yeah, we’ll see about that when you get better at dancing. Right now, you stink.”

She hated standing out there on the stage holding onto the pole—her only anchor of security—while the lights swirled around and the music pounded in her ears.

“Start moving!” The men sometimes called out.

Between sets, she usually took another pill or drank another rum and Coke—anything to drown out the voices.

“Hey girl, don’t fall asleep on me now,” Miranda’s voice was like a sharp knife cutting through her drift. Whatever she’d put in the drink had finally taken effect. Instead of feeling euphoric, Kaki wanted to curl up in a corner and sleep.

Miranda’s hand slapped at Kaki’s cheeks gently. “Come on now. You’d better get up and get moving. You got like three minutes before Damien be gettin’ all over you.” Miranda helped Kaki to her feet. She staggered to the door, steadying herself against the wall.

“Maybe I gave you a little too much,” Miranda said. But her voice sounded as if she was speaking from the other end of a tunnel. “You smaller than me.”

Using the wall as a brace, Kaki stumbled along the hallway leading to the stage.

Damien stood by the stage door, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re almost late. Thirty more seconds and you’d owe some private dances.”

She didn’t look at him. It was best to keep her head down. That way he couldn’t accuse her of giving him attitude.

He smacked her on the backside as she staggered through the stage door, and she almost fell. Her legs felt as if they were buried in sand. Calls and hoots from the men erupted all around her—their voices warped as though special effects had been added. Kaki grasped the metal of the pole, slippery under her fingers from other dancers’ baby oil and lotions. Was she moving? She couldn’t be sure. She saw different sides of the room, so she must have been swinging on the pole. Men’s voices hooted.

Kaki didn’t remember taking off any clothes, but she walked off the stage naked. She didn’t even bother to redress before returning to the dressing room and collapsing in a chair. It was some time later when she woke up. Miranda had covered her with a blanket.

Miranda’s eyeliner-exaggerated eyes came into focus. “You really can’t dance, can you?” she said, shaking her head. “Baby, I don’t think this is the right work for you. You got moves like a chicken, and Damien never gonna pay you for doing this.”

The door to the dressing room opened, and Damien walked in.

Miranda got up. “I gotta get out there,” she whispered.

Damien pulled a stool up in front of Kaki. Holding her hands, he smoothed the hair back from her face, a slight smile on his lips. Kaki’s mood lifted a little, seeing him look at her the way he used to. As if he really loved her.

“You wanna quit dancing? Huh?”

His tone was gentle, but Kaki was still afraid to answer. What if she said yes, and it was the wrong thing?

She shrugged.

“I got an idea. I got something better for you to do, baby. Something where you can make us a lot more money.”