floor and stood in front of me with her arms folded, eyeing me suspiciously. Her cheap stockings had started to roll down her legs, revealing knobby knees covered with hair.
“I couldn’t wait to get you by yourself to ask you, you get into any monkey business over there in that Pennsylvania? Bein’ that close to New York, I bet the money is real good over there, ain’t it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked wearily.
“You know what I mean, girl.” Scary Mary cocked her head to one side and glared at me out of the corner of her bloodshot eye.
“I do?”
“Don’t play games with me, Annette.”
I finally sighed and gave Scary Mary a look that let her know she’d won. “Well…” I began, not quite sure what I was going to tell her
“Speak up, girl.” Scary Mary narrowed her eyes and gave me an even harder meaner look. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Trickin’.” I could feel and smell her foul breath on my face.
“Tricking?”
“I heard about what you done with some of my customers before you left town. Every last one of ’em told me. Heh heh heh. Girl, I didn’t know you had it in you.” Scary Mary started patting her chest, all the while grinning in my face.
I looked at her with my lips pressed close together for a few moments, knowing and liking the fact that my behavior was aggravating her. “You didn’t think I could get a bunch of men to pay me to fuck, did you?” I said boldly. I was still pissed off because she had turned me down for a job when I had approached her, and instead made me clean her house and baby-sit her idiot daughter, Mott.
“Oh, child. Looks ain’t got nothin’ to do with trickin’. Most men would pester a baboon if they could. To them, tail is tail.”
“You didn’t say that when I tried to work for you,” I reminded. “You laughed at me.”
“I didn’t want you takin’ away all my regular girls’ business, then runnin’ off to God knows where. You bein’ all young and all then, my girls would have died. I can’t afford no uproars like that in my house. I’m a businesswoman. When I heard you done it anyway, the only thing that pissed me off was you got to keep all the money and cheated me out of a cut. After all, them was my men friends.” She paused and let out a short sharp chuckle.
I looked toward the door, then back to Scary Mary, who was still standing over me with a scowl on her face. I could hear Muh’Dear and the others talking downstairs.
“Are you still…in the same business?” I asked.
“Of course I’m still in the same business. What else would I be doin’ at my age after all these years, girl?” she gasped. “Business is better than ever. Shit.”
“Does my mama know…about me and some of you customers?” I asked gently.
“Naw.” Scary Mary shrugged. “I ain’t got no reason to tell her. What she don’t know won’t hurt her. Even if she did know, she ain’t got no room to talk. Every woman I ever met done turned a trick or two. Your mama wasn’t no different. Especially in the old days back in Florida. I ain’t gwine to tell her on you. I ain’t never told nobody on her yet. One thing about me, I can carry a secret with me to the grave. I ain’t goin’ to tell nobody what you done.”
“You’re right. What Muh’Dear doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” I was thinking to myself how my mother would never have to endure the pain and shame of knowing what Mr. Boatwright had done to me. I’d endured enough for us both.
“I’m glad to hear that. Muh’Dear doesn’t need to know any of that. Besides, it’s all behind me. I want to get on with my life. Rhoda’s coming up here so we can make plans to go to Disneyworld before I start looking for a job.”
Scary Mary closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. She sat down on the bed and draped her arm around my shoulder and leaned over so close to my face I got scared.
“Yep. I am so glad the good Lord sent you and Florence on back here so y’all can help me keep my house clean.”
“Florence is back in Richland?” I gasped. She had stopped sending me cards and letters three years earlier.
“Oh, she moved back here years