Want Some, page 3
Trudy’s thick, big-boned body strutted along the sidewalk on Bronson. It was a mean strip of squat apartments where bottlecaps and domestic brawls were as regular as junk mail. Where crackheads hung out at liquor-store corners, where whole packs of pit bulls ran wild. Trudy was one hellified bitch herself. Had to be on that block. It didn’t pay to be soft. She walked bold and threw out a “don’t fuck with me” look so folks would leave her alone. Trudy wasn’t real attractive but she did well with what she had. And if big tits and hips were grocery mart items, then homegirl owned a whole store. She was a cinnamon woman with plenty of beef on her bones and a head full of slick, well-kept braids. By the time she was nine, she had a woman’s full body. At fifteen, she was splitting the seams of her skirts. At eighteen, she spilled easily from a 42D. And now at twenty, her wet melted Popsicle smile could bring most men down to their knees.
Trudy kept walking fast. She glanced across the street. The tall auburn-haired man was Lil Steve.
“Why you walking so fast, baby? Hold up a minute.” Rubbing his thighs, which were open as wide as unhinged pliers, he watched her like a hungry kid eyeing the stove. A neat stack of videotapes rested between his feet. He sold them for fifteen bucks each.
Trudy’s razor eyes stayed straight. She kept stepping fast. She ignored the turkey-carving look in their eyes and kept her own glued to Dee’s neon sign. When she passed the older man, he licked his wet chops and spat, “Girl, you a bitch and a half.”
Suddenly, a car came screeching wildly down the street. It leaped over the curb and blocked Trudy’s path. Its hood skidded inches away from her knees. Trudy lost her balance and fell hard against the wall. One of her fingernails ripped at the quick and bled.
“Hey, Trudy with the booty! I’ve been looking for you, girl!”
The Cutlass Supreme rattled as the man leaned from the car. “I want you to be in my movie!”
Obscenely, the man grabbed and held his own crotch. “I got something to put in your next scene.” The man laughed, slapping his hand across his knee. His wide-spaced teeth looked like a loose picket fence.
Trudy steeled her body. She circled around the car.
“Ah, girl! Don’t even try to be mad. You the one witcho ass all on Front Street.”
“Hey Lil Steve,” the man screamed. “Gimme another Trudy tape. I made the mistake of lending mine to Shawn and his ass left it out in the sun.”
All the men watched Trudy as she strolled down the block.
“Mercy!” the Cutlass Supreme man said. “You’re putting a hurting on us, girl.”
As Trudy got closer, a woman sneered and crossed to the other side, covering her son’s eyes with her hand.
Hiding her pain under sunglasses and casting an armored-car strut, Trudy wedged her way toward Dee’s Parlor door. And then suddenly she stopped and stared at Lil Steve hard. A smirk crept across her thick maroon lips. It was the kind of smile you gave your boss when he caught you sneaking off early or gave a sales clerk when you tried to return something you already wore.
Lil Steve wanted to follow her to the club but he was banned from Dee’s Parlor. His lids followed the roll of her hips toward the entrance.
See, three summers ago no one knew Trudy’s name. It was the second summer after the ’92 riots. People were starting to feel strong. Some of those burnt buildings were back. People were throwing huge bashes all over town with the last bit of riot liquor left.
Trudy couldn’t wait. She was going to a Crenshaw High party! She was nervous about going but someone special would be there. She usually went to the movies during her mother’s late dates. Trudy would sit in the dark watching the same show for hours, eating bon bons and Red Vines and warm popcorn in tubs. She sat, mimicking every single character’s line, until her mother finally picked her back up.
But that night she wanted to go to a party. Ray Ray was meeting her there and Trudy begged her mother to take her. She took a long bath, spraying her neck with vanilla and piled her hair high on her head.
Joan watched her get ready without saying a word and then flatly told Trudy no. “Besides,” her mother said, “I don’t like that bucket-of-blood area, so wash off your face and go to bed.”
Trudy was devastated. She’d been planning to go to that party for weeks. It was the last one before high school was over. “Please!” Trudy begged. But Joan shut her door and Trudy wept alone on her bed.
But by ten, almost all of Joan’s vodka was gone and she needed to go to the store. They drove in dark silence from Seventh to Degnan. When they hit Fiftieth, she made a left turn. Her mother studied Trudy’s lace dress and her piled-up hair. She looked beautiful but Joan only glared at her daughter, swearing at her for wearing all that “war paint.”
Trudy’s leg barely cleared the car as her mother took off. “Catch a ride back,” her mother yelled at her daughter. “I’m too tired to get you tonight.”
Trudy stayed by the DJ so she didn’t seem alone. Her friend Vernita was supposed to come but she wasn’t there yet. Suddenly she saw him, outside with a whole bunch of guys. Ray Ray was standing in a sea of white T-shirts and creased khakis. He held court; the other guys circled his broad frame. He had a deep voice and a beautiful naughty-boy smile. Ray Ray was the reason she’d come to the party. And he stopped talking as soon as he saw her.
“Hey, girl, when’d you get here?” He brilliantly smiled. He gently took her hand and led her to the balcony outside. Trudy couldn’t help staring at his black flawless skin and that grin he aimed only at her. And that’s when she saw him. This thin, janky-looking guy. He shot her mean, dirty looks the whole time but Ray Ray didn’t notice and Trudy ignored him. All she could think of was how close Ray Ray stood. He felt good. She could smell him. She inhaled his clean male skin. When he touched her it felt like her whole insides glowed like the cool bluish ray of black-lights. When he slowly brought her close, her mouth grazed his lips. She could feel the hot need steaming under his skin. And then suddenly it was over. The blacklight glow was gone. In a flash, everything took a harsh turn for the worse. Lil Steve came up and whispered something in his ear and Ray Ray ignored her the rest of the party. In fact, she couldn’t get a ride and had to take the bus home. When she got there her mother was sipping a pink drink. “Don’t worry, girl, men are just vehicles, honey. Just grab hold of one with a full tank of gas and ride that damn bitch ’til it kicks.”
See, Ray Ray ended up going to jail that night and Lil Steve kept sniffing, kept coming around her house. It took a long time and a lot of rides to where she worked at the mall. It took flowers and showing up every day at her door, but Lil Steve was determined. He always played to win, and after a while he broke Trudy down.
“Don’t wait for Ray Ray,” Lil Steve whispered in her ear. “With his record, that nigga’s gettin’ fifteen, at least.”
Trudy tried to avoid him but he was there all the time. He was always walking her home or asking her out, begging her just like a dope fiend. One day she agreed to go see a movie. “Please,” Lil Steve said. “I only want to see this with you. Look,” he said, showing Trudy the stubs, “I already bought both the tickets.”
But when it came time to go he made her wait in the alley. She watched Lil Steve mack the girl working the counter. The girl smiled big and let him come in for free. Lil Steve opened the back door and let Trudy creep in. They did that every single time they went to a show. But Trudy didn’t mind. It was fun sharing Cokes and watching all those flicks. Trudy, who used to sit alone in those red velvet chairs, now sat in the dark with a warm arm around her shoulders. She liked how he put the popcorn right in her mouth. No, Trudy didn’t mind it at all.
After the movies he took her on shoplifting sprees. Trudy would watch Lil Steve talk while his hands smuggled items. He got alarm clocks and watches and dozens of cameras, which he sold out the back of his car. He showed Trudy the fat rubber bands attached to his pajamas, which he wore underneath his loose pants. He had elaborate ways to steal all kinds of stuff, between your legs, down the back of your shirt, jewelry stuck deep in your hair. He would go in and instantly scope the whole room, ceiling cameras, stuff that didn’t have sensors on, all those dumb undercovers.
Trudy was fascinated with this life. She became a quick study. She realized her wide, shapely body was an asset. Her cleavage became a deep and reliable pocket. She started to take small things too.
But Lil Steve had his eyes on a different kind of prize. He licked Trudy’s neck sitting next to her in the dark. “I want you bad, girl. You know you’re my heart. When you gonna gimme a taste of them yams?”
Trudy laughed and threw popcorn at Lil Steve’s head. But he gently kissed her cheek and let his elbow graze her breast.
See, Lil Steve was a pro. He knew how to take it slow. When they got home he kissed her fingers and played with her hoop earrings. His palm barely touched her bare knee.
“I know people, baby. I could make you a star. You look a helluva lot better than them chicks on the screen.” He playfully stroked Trudy’s braids.
At the time, it didn’t seem like much. No one else had asked for it. So she gave it like somebody who gives a nice present. She lotioned it, dressed it up in beautiful fabric, dabbed a floral scent behind her neck and the back of her calves and then draped it across her clean bed. She thought it would be like all those girls in the movies as she waited for the wonderful thing to begin. But Lil Steve ripped through her body as if she were paper. He crumpled it, shoving the wrapping aside, and the sweet gift she’d saved was like knocking over a bottle that juzzled all over the floor.
The next thing she knew, it was done and wiped up. Tossed out like yesterday’s trash. It was over so fast without any emotion. Lil Steve didn’t say or do any of those things in the movies. But it was too late to play the scene over again. She was stuck with the ending, whether she liked it or not. So she kept giving him some, thinking this time would be different. Trudy even felt glad when he pulled out his camera. She was flattered. In her dream world she was becoming a star. She was pleased when he aimed the video recorder toward her skin. She thought Lil Steve felt exactly the same. That he wanted to remember these candy-bar moments. That he wanted to save her sprawled out on these sheets with the moon streaming straight through the wide Venetian blinds, branding her with animal stripes. She watched Lil Steve’s thumb gently press the Play button. She saw the camera’s red light bleeding against his front teeth. And as the slimy film rolled around the video camera’s mouth, Trudy’s own lips curled up and grinned.
But Lil Steve’s eyes were focused on something else now. He saw Trudy’s nude body as a window, a door, a new way for him to make money. He was a tall, fine, light-skinned, goateed, Iceberg Slim type who used women as easily as napkins.
“Everybody knows money and clothes make the man,” Lil Steve said, smiling at himself in the rearview mirror as he drove. “A real woman knows how to keep her man happy.” Lil Steve took a ’do rag from his glove compartment and patted his auburn perm down.
But Trudy found out that keeping a man happy meant buying him stuff and lending him money and letting him have sex when he asked. She wanted to drop him and asked her mother for advice. “What? Are you crazy? Fine men like him don’t come every day. You’re lucky he looked at you twice.”
She worked at Macy’s in the mall and saved nine hundred dollars. But in three months, Lil Steve borrowed five hundred of it. In six months, her money was gone.
“Just spot me fifty,” he said, kissing her cheek. “I swear I’ll pay it back to you by Friday.” Lil Steve always had some quick money-making scheme. “I’ll double your cash, baby, you watch.”
But Friday came and went and he still borrowed more. When Trudy stopped lending, Lil Steve got mad. He figured if she wouldn’t lend it he’d just have to pimp her. He convinced her to do it. “I want to remember you forever.” He told Trudy to lie down naked and made a movie of her in bed, and then he hawked the video shot all over town. That’s how she got the name “Trudy with the booty.” Everybody in the neighborhood called her that behind her back. Lil Steve said her ass had such a wide natural ledge, he could put a shotglass on it, a small bowl of pretzels, and still play a quick hand of Tonk.
It killed her to find out he was selling her nude film. Something died deep inside that she never got back. See, Trudy’s life changed once that video came out. It was little things at first. Women eyeing her sideways. Or gripping their men’s arms whenever she passed. She couldn’t leave the house without men whistling loud or yelling lewd comments or blocking her path whenever she walked down the street. People threw things at her. They laughed when she talked. Women tossed her change when she came to the store.
“I ain’t touching nothing from you,” a store clerk told her once. “You’re that filthy, lowdown slut from the movie.”
Trudy couldn’t believe Lil Steve had stabbed her in the back. Her body boiled into a pot of simmering hot greens when she confronted him outside Dee’s Parlor.
“Baby, you know you got back,” Lil Steve said, playing it off. “Ain’t a damn thing wrong with showing off yo’ stuff.” Lil Steve smiled in the car mirror, continuing to comb his thin mustache. “Didn’t I say you’d be famous?”
“How could you do me like that?” Trudy screamed. She was standing in the street, at the driver’s side of the car. “And when are you going to pay back my money?”
“Now wait, girl, stop tripping,” Lil Steve said, hanging from his car window. “Nobody never said nothing about no loan. You gave all that money to me.” Lil Steve never blinked when he looked in her eyes. His face was as cold as a shovel.
Just then, a girl came out of Dee’s Parlor. She was dressed in cool cream from her head to her toes. Her beige leather shoes matched her small, expensive purse. She smoothed down her dress and gently knocked on the passenger’s door.
“Baby,” she said in a high, whiny voice, “when are you coming back in?”
Lil Steve unlatched the passenger’s side and the cream woman slinked in. She moved her small frame next to Lil Steve’s thighs and his arm circled over her shoulders.
Trudy glared at Lil Steve and at the cream woman, who grinned while applying pink lipstick.
The money was one thing, the nude movie another, but seeing Lil Steve sitting with this cream-colored thing was an icepick rammed straight in her chest.
“How could you dog me like that, Lil Steve?” Trudy’s whole face was ruined. Her makeup was smeared. Tears drained from her mascaraed eyes.
“Dog you!” Lil Steve laughed in Trudy’s strained face. The cream girl looked back and laughed at her too. “Shoot, you the one hounding me. Following me around all the time. When’s the last time I called your big ass?”
Trudy thought back and realized it was true. She’d been calling him. Been tracking him down. He was always on his way. Always telling her, “I’m coming, I’m running a little late.” Trudy would wait by the giant picture window for hours. Waiting and watching the dented cars go by. Listening for his rumbling engine.
But those cold, hardcore facts just made Trudy mad. She watched Lil Steve and the smug cream-puff woman. To this day, Trudy still didn’t know why she did it. She didn’t want Lil Steve. He made her sick. But she had to do something to stop feeling so bad. So Trudy grabbed the latch and yanked the cream girl right out. She got in herself and slammed the passenger’s door hard. “I’m not moving,” she fumed. “You can’t make me go! I’m staying ’til we get this thing straight.”
Trudy sat in the passenger’s seat like a rock while hot tears leaked down to her lap.
Lil Steve couldn’t stand watching her sit there and weep. It made him feel sad. It made him get angry. The cream girl was screaming and wiping her foot. “Look what your ghettofied bitch did to my shoe!”
Lil Steve leaned across Trudy and swung open her door. “Get out,” he said flatly, with no emotion at all. He said it low like he worked in a morgue.
But Trudy was fuming. She wouldn’t budge one bit. She sat on the seat like a whole mountain range. She thought of all those nasty men hassling her lately. Leering and calling her lewd vulgar names. “Fuck you,” she said. “I’m not goin’ nowhere. Your skinny ass can’t make me leave!” She slammed her door shut and clenched her back teeth. She’d be damned if she moved one inch.
Folks were coming out of Dee’s doors and circling the car, eager to watch a big show.
Lil Steve remained calm. He rose from the car slowly. Smoothing his auburn hair down, he strolled over to her side and then yanked her door handle like he was uncapping a beer. Flinging his thin arms around Trudy’s thick heavy waist, Lil Steve tried to snatch Trudy out.
But Trudy was big-boned and wouldn’t come easy.
“Get out!” he said loudly. He was very angry now. “You’re embarrassing yourself. I don’t want you no more! Can’t you see I got someone else?” He pried each hand loose from the steering wheel she held and jerked her frame out from the seat.
Trudy could see the people from Dee’s Parlor lining the curb three folks deep. They watched holding shot glasses and small bags of chips. There was nothing more fun than seeing other folks squabble. Tony sucked his big bottom lip and stared. The other menfolk grinned, squeezing their tall sweaty bottles. The cream girl wickedly screamed with joy, twisting her hair in her fist. Shirley, the waitress, could hardly get enough. She pushed her vicious smile toward the front and wildly popped her gum. When a hand reached to help, Shirley held their arm back.
“Don’t go getting into other folks’ mess,” Shirley said.
It was awful to watch. Some folks turned their heads. Trudy struggled back fiercely but you could see she was lost. Suddenly there was a horrible clothes-ripping sound and the crowd tightened up at the curb.
“Stop!” Trudy shouted. She was kicking and screaming. Her red face was scratched. Her makeup was smeared. But Lil Steve had her. Had her thick juicy waist. He slammed her down hard. Tossed her there on the lawn. Laying her flat like a big sack of weeds. Trudy struggled against him. The short grass itched her back. Her dress was hiked up to her waist.
