Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,95

that on my yellow sheet.

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The day they arrested us, Bob Marley was on the radio, singing, Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights. A funny-ass cop turned the volume higher and grinned over his shoulder. Jazzlyn shouted: “Who’s gonna look after the babies?”

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I left the spoon in the baby formula. Thirty-eight years old. There ain’t no prizes.

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Hooking was born in me. That’s no exaggeration. I never wanted no square job. I lived right across from the stroll on Prospect Avenue and East Thirty-first. From my bedroom window I could see the girls work. I was eight. They wore red high heels and hair combed high.

The daddies went by on their way to the Turkish hotel. They caught dates for their girls. They wore hats big enough to dance in.

Every pimp movie you’ve ever seen has them pulling up in a Cadillac. It’s true. Daddies drive Kitties. They like whitewall tires. The fuzzy dice don’t happen so often, though.

I put on my first lipstick when I was nine. Shiny in the mirror. My mother’s blue boots were too big for me at eleven. I could’ve hid down inside them and popped my head out.

When I was thirteen I already had my hands on the hip of a man in a raspberry suit. He had a waist like a lady’s, but he hit me hard. His name was Fine. He loved me so much, he didn’t put me on the stroll, he said he was grooming me.

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My mother had religious readings. We were in the Church of the Spiritual Israel. You had to throw your head back and speak in tongues. She’d been on the stroll too. That was years ago. She left it when her teeth fell out. She said, “Don’t you do what I done, Tillie.”

So I done exactly that. My teeth haven’t fallen out yet but.

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I never tricked until I was fifteen. I walked into the lobby of the Turkish hotel. Someone gave a low whistle. Everyone’s head turned, ‘specially mine. Then I realized they were whistling at me. Right there I began walkin’ with a bounce. I was turning out. My first daddy said: “Soon as you finish breakin’ luck, honey, come on home to me.”

Hose, hot pants, high heels. I hit the stroll with a vengeance.

One of the things you learn early on is you don’t let your hair fall down in the open window. You do that, the crazy ones grab you by the locks and pull you in and then they beat you silly.

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Your first daddy, you don’t forget. You love him until he beats you with a tire iron. Two days later, you’re changing wheels with him. He buys you a blouse that makes your body go out and around in all the right places.

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I left baby Jazzlyn with my mother. She kicked her legs and looked up at me. She had the whitest skin when she was born. I thought first she wasn’t mine. I never knew who her Daddy was. He coulda been any on a list long as Sunday. People said that he mighta been a Mexican, but I don’t recall no Pablo sweating on me. I took her up in my arms and that’s when I said to myself, I’m gonna treat her good all her life.

The first thing you do when you have a baby is you say, She’s never gonna work the stroll. You swear it. Not my baby. She’s never gonna be out there. So you work the stroll to keep her off the stroll.

I stayed that way nearly three years, on the stroll, running home to her, taking her in my arms, and then knew what I had to do. I said: “Look after her, Momma. I’ll be right back.”

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The skinniest dog I ever seen is the one on the side of the Greyhound buses.

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The first time I saw New York, I lay down on the ground outside Port Authority just so I could see the whole sky. Some guy stepped right over me without even looking down.

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I started hooking my very first day. I went to the fleabag hotels over on Ninth. You can make a sky out of a ceiling, that’s no problem. There were a lot of sailors in New York.

I used to like dancing with their hats on.

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In New York you work for your man. Your man’s your daddy, even if he’s just a chili pimp. It’s easy to find a daddy. I got lucky early on and I found