Long before she was a stripper, nicknamed Blaxican because of her mixed parentage, Gaia Esparza was a good student. As a schoolgirl, she’d learned that her street, Ladies Mile Road, had been a haven, a mile-long neutral zone in Providence Park. It was named for the white women who’d been tucked away there, safe to consider their fate and care for children while their men fought Union soldiers in Church Hill. That had been a long time ago. Now, it was probably difficult for most people to imagine that anyone had ever felt safe in Providence Park.
In a way, Gaia understood that feeling, but she didn’t share it. The neighborhood was mostly board houses, a few small clusters of project apartments, a boarded-up group home, and an ancient brick church, all just a few miles away from an industrial district. It wasn’t as dangerous as the evening news would have people believe, if you knew how to survive. And Gaia did. She’d had to learn the hard way, but she wasn’t a child anymore. Now, she knew the secret: money, knowing how to get your own, so no one could ever say you owed them anything. Money meant freedom, power, and protection. It meant that Gaia’s best friend, Charlene, could afford a real attorney. So, early on Saturday morning, when Felicia Doolittle came rattling her window screen, Gaia knew she would say yes before Doo even opened her mouth. Gaia squinted against the morning sun and leaned into the doorframe. As usual, Doo’s breasts were flattened, hidden underneath a crisp white shirt that looked oddly stark against her sepia-colored skin. The long shirt reached her knees and, in large black letters, it read, Stop snitching. A fitted camouflage cap, tilted to the side, covered her close haircut. Several layers of pants made her petite frame appear bulky. It was January and cold outside, and Doo wasn’t wearing a coat, but Gaia didn’t invite her in.
“You in?” Doo asked, her hand pressed against the screen, her dark, slanted eyes taking in Gaia’s long legs stretched out beneath a short, silky robe.
Gaia shifted uncomfortably.
Doo licked her lips, blackened from years of smoking. “What’s the problem? The guy is a sure thing. He has the perfect family. Two kids. Even a fucking dog that looks like Lassie.”
Gaia nodded. “I know. I’m in.”
Gaia had never met Mr. X, but Doo’s description of him was probably dead on. He probably even had a little blond PTA wife. Gaia had met many men like him before, had enjoyed taking their money. This time was different, though. Charlene wouldn’t be there and Gaia could feel her pulse pounding in her neck at the thought of being alone with just Mr. X and Doo.
Doo started to walk away, but turned around as Gaia was closing the door. “Hey, I could come by here earlier if you want to get fucked up before.”
“Let’s just keep this business, Doo.”
Doo grinned, shaking her head. “All right. Midnight then.”
Doo was unpredictable and working alone with her worried Gaia. The one person who could keep Doo in line, her lover and Gaia’s best friend, Charlene, had been locked up the week before for boosting GPS consoles and assaulting the arresting officer. Charlene needed a lawyer, a real one, and Gaia knew that working with Doo was the only way to get the kind of money necessary. A court-appointed lawyer was the surest way to lose her only friend to the prison system. Even if, lately, Gaia had been wondering about their friendship.
Charlene had been Gaia’s friend ever since Tenth House. Nine years ago, Gaia had been a shy ten-year-old who kept to herself when a fourteen-year-old girl with fuzzy braids, a bossy attitude, and a desperate need to mother something had hooked arms with her and declared that she would be Gaia’s play mom. To Gaia, that was unwelcome news. Gaia had a real mom, whose face she could draw by heart, a mom who would get sober soon and who would never again forget to take Gaia to school for forty-five days straight. Besides, Gaia didn’t want to be friends with Charlene Christmas of all people. The girl had these crazy, terrifying outbursts. One second she’d be calm, staring into space, and the next she’d be yelling at the top of her lungs. The counselors sometimes had to restrain her physically during these violent fits, when she would scream over and over again, “I want my baby!”
One day, when Charlene found Gaia balled up in a corner, weeping, she pried and prodded until, gingerly, Gaia handed her a small notebook. It was a diary and inside it was the truth about Mr. Gardener, the sixty-year-old man who oversaw the entire staff of Tenth House, and who had been molesting Gaia for a year. Three times a week, like clockwork, his bony fingers troubled her sleep. The jarring scent of his woodsy Outlaw cologne mixed with the smell of the old-people liniment he rubbed on his bad knees. He called those nighttime visits payment for putting a roof over her head when no one else would. Charlene shared the diary with another counselor and was punished for lying.
Still, it put a sudden stop to Mr. Gardener, at least up until Charlene left Tenth House for good two years later. To Gaia, Charlene was her savior, her protector, her god. She was only truly safe when Charlene was nearby. They kept in touch as Gaia went round and round the revolving doors of Tenth House, until she finally broke free from the confining walls of Mr. Gardener’s punishment room in the attic, where he sent her when she was uncooperative. She moved in with Charlene, into the housing projects not more than three blocks from their now-abandoned group home, near enough to it so that a mother coming back for her long-lost child would still easily find her. The two women fell into a comfortable routine and were inseparable. Charlene had even convinced Slick, the manager of Club Pink Kitten, to hire sixteen-year-old Gaia, so that they could work together.
Now there was Doo. Doo, who in the last year had turned out not to be a phase at all but instead a permanent fixture. Doo, who stared at Gaia when Charlene wasn’t looking, who bought new furniture, new tension, and new schemes. Charlene was so in love with Doo that she had threatened to evict Gaia if she told any more lies about Doo’s flirtatious behavior. She was completely blind to Doo’s faults. Slowly but surely, Gaia saw herself being pushed away to make room for another woman. Lately, she had done everything she could not to be alone with Doo, but tonight she didn’t have a choice. Charlene, her defender, the only one who could keep the bad things at bay, needed help.
Around 6 o’clock, while Gaia was giving herself a pedicure, Charlene called collect from the Richmond City Jail.
“I’m in,” Gaia said, after accepting the call.
“I know. Doo told me.”
The sound of Charlene’s voice came through clear, but she still seemed distant.
“Are you happy?” Gaia asked.
“Of course. I want the hell out of here.”
“I’m nervous.”
Charlene sighed. “Come on. You’re a pro at this.”
“Yeah. When you’re there. When I can look at you.”
“Just do it.
Gaia paused. Her lip trembled. She took a deep breath. “But what about Doo? You know how she gets when you’re not around. Can you talk to her and—”
“Are we back on this? Listen, and this is the very last time I’m going to say this: Doo loves me. She thinks you’re an immature little kid, Gaia. I had to beg her to do this with you because she doesn’t trust you to keep your head straight. Was she right?”
“No. No, I can do it. I’m just a little nervous.”
“Damnit, G. This is my life on the line. And you owe me. You better not back out. I swear to God, Gaia.”
“I won’t, Char! I swear.”
“Okay. Good. You my girl.”
Gaia tried to imagine what Charlene could be wearing. Probably an orange jumpsuit. She wondered if Charlene’s hot pink nail polish was chipping away. Wondered if the phone was pressed between her shoulder and her ear or if she was clutching the receiver with both hands, like Gaia was.
“I love you,” Gaia said.
“Aw, don’t get mushy. Just do like Doo says and everything will be fine.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t.”
A half hour before midnight, Gaia slipped into a curve-hugging black minidress and put on her favorite pair of red patent-leather stilettos. She painted her lips a fiery red and pulled her long braid free, letting her heavy brown curls fall around her shoulders and down her back. She found Charlene’s loaded Glock underneath the mattress and hid it in a black handbag for protection. With her short leather trench belted at the waist, she walked outside onto the dark patio to wait for Doo. She thought about Charlene in handcuffs a week before, violently kicking Officer O’Rourke’s cruiser.
Outside, the air was bitingly cold against Gaia’s bare legs, but she had been claustrophobic inside the small apartment, battling the deafening silence, the persistent emptiness, and a constant stream of thoughts that told her to double check the door to make sure she wasn’t locked in. She felt safer out in the open, where no matter how far up she stretched her hands she’d never touch a wall. On either side of her was yet another one-level apartment. These project apartments all looked alike on the inside: cold cement walls, two small bedrooms, few windows, and a clear view of the back door as soon as you walked in the front door. Outside, plastic chairs and card tables cluttered the tiny front patios, and one of Gaia’s neighbors was sitting out smoking a cigarette. Gaia settled into a cold plastic chair and watched the neighborhood pulsing around her.
The wind blew, rushing like floodwaters between the small gaps that separated buildings, blowing litter around on balding lawns and into deep potholes in the street. The street came alive at night, bustling with activity. It was rush hour for the corner boys. They hopped in and out of cars like musical chairs. Gaia took deep breaths and listened as the one-woman Neighborhood Watch Association, Ms. Nora, shooed a group of the boys from under the big shade tree in the front yard of her shabby clapboard house across the street from the projects.
“Go stand under that street lamp and let Jesus and the rest of the world see what you doing, niggas. Go on, you little hooligans!”
The boys moved their operation a few feet down the block, joking around in front of the fenced-in playground behind the recreation center, where Gaia had played as a child. Tonight, she thought she saw the dim glow of a lit cigarette briefly penetrate the darkness of the basketball court, its smoker cloaked in nightfall. Gaia knew that the blood of gunshot victims had touched the blacktop almost as often as basketballs had. She sometimes wondered if other people saw the ghosts of those victims roaming at night, haunting the neighborhood, hiding in shadowy corners. It made her wonder if she’d ever leave Providence Park, even after she died.
Restless, Gaia’s legs bounced up and down, the heels of her shoes rhythmically clicking the concrete. It was a unique feeling she got right before she, Charlene, and Doo set out on one of these kinds of nights. It had been three months since she’d felt it, the anticipation of being in complete control of a man’s fate, his life, his livelihood. It was intoxicating. But tonight, most of what she felt was anxiety about Charlene’s absence.
When Doo’s shiny Cadillac pulled up to the curb, Gaia pinched the cold flesh of her right leg between two acrylic fingernails and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt for the piece of Charlene she had hidden in her handbag, and told her legs not to shake as she walked briskly over to Doo’s car.
Doo jumped out from her side of the vehicle and ran around to open the passenger-side door before Gaia reached it. Charlene usually rode shotgun and Doo had never made this kind of gesture for her.
In the car with the windows up, Gaia could smell the booze coming through Doo’s pores and knew she was feeling no pain. That was no surprise. The most dangerous place in the world was between Doo and a bottle of Southern Comfort.
Doo took her hand off the steering wheel, turned toward Gaia, and rubbed her thumb back and forth against the rest of her fingers. She smiled, her eyebrows shooting up questioningly. “Feel me? Lot of money on the line with this one. You gotta be on point tonight. He’s expecting two.” She stopped talking and looked down at Gaia’s bare legs, illuminated by the streetlight they sat parked under, then chuckled lightly. “But I’m sure he’ll be more than happy when he sees you.”
“It’s Charlene that’s on the line. Remember?”
“What?” Doo’s head snapped up. “How the fuck could I forget that? She’s my number one priority, and I’m hers. You remember that.”
“Well, she’s the only reason I’m doing this.”
“Yeah, well, if you’re serious, you need to hike that skirt up a little bit more.” Doo grinned and pushed back Gaia’s stretchy black mini until the hem rested on the upper thigh. Her finger grazed and lingered over the bare skin of Gaia’s leg. Gaia used her foot to drag her handbag toward the seat. Her pulse quickened.
“Doo,” she warned, hoping a firm tone would be enough.
Doo threw her head back and laughed. “Easy,” she said, and pulled away from the curb.
Seeing both of Doo’s hands occupied with steering, Gaia leaned back against the headrest and tried to relax. Her neck felt tight, her muscles tense.
“Can I have the rest?” she asked Doo, pointing to the bottle of whiskey lying overturned on the floor mat.
Doo glanced at it quickly and nodded. Gaia put it to her lips and emptied in one gulp. It burned her throat, made her choke. Doo laughed.
They drove out of Providence Park and hit the interstate going west. They traveled past where the bus line ended; it was not more than twenty-five minutes away, but far beyond where many of Gaia’s neighbors without cars had ever ventured. Eventually they arrived at a hotel in the West End called The Studio.
After she got the key from the desk clerk, Doo pulled the car into a parking space directly in front of their room. The world was resting in this part of town. Stepping out of the car, Gaia heard the click of her high heels echo in the air. She could feel the whiskey mixing with her blood. She shuddered, feeling the wind wrapping around her legs, blowing against her face, whispering her name. She stepped up onto the sidewalk and waited as Doo opened the door to the suite that she’d reserved and paid for earlier that day.
Inside, Doo sat on a chair and put her feet up on the sofa. She lit a blunt right away. Gaia didn’t want to risk an incident with Doo, especially when Doo was high and tipsy. She went into the bedroom to get away from the smoke and sort her mind out.
Gaia hadn’t grown up wanting to be this way. At eight years old, survival wasn’t something that entered into daily decisions, like whether to play dress-up or hopscotch. And though, shortly after, she could no longer make sense of her upturned life, it had taken Charlene’s words to make her realize that it wasn’t beauty alone that determined her fate. There were plenty of beautiful girls in the home. She had been marked. It was an obvious fact and the only possible thing to do was embrace it—the same way she had embraced how her legs eventually grew like stems—and use it to her benefit.
Tonight, she would be as irresistible as ever and she would be paid because of it. She set her handbag on the nightstand and took out the Glock, which she slipped underneath a pillow. She sat down to lotion her penny-colored skin and thought about what Charlene had said a year ago, the first time she approached Gaia with Doo’s big scheme. Girl, look at you. You already know they gon’ come after you, whether you like it or not. So why not make them pay for it? Make him forget his own name, his wife’s name, shit, his kids’ names. He’ll think he’s winning, until he gets the bill. Don’t be scared, girl. I’ll be right there. She could almost hear Charlene’s voice, almost feel her in the room.
Doo knocked on the door.
Gaia took a deep breath before she opened it. Doo was standing there with Mr. X. His cropped brown hair was slick with hair gel. His pale blue eyes set a sharp contrast against his all-black business attire. Towering a foot over Doo, his belly was the only part of his body that had already crossed the threshold. He looked to be in his late forties.
“Where’s the other one?” Mr. X queried, scanning the room.
Doo had met Mr. X while she was bartending a party in one of those sprawling estates on Monument Avenue. She had been keeping him well-stocked in pills and cocaine ever since, and had been secretly following him, studying him for weeks.
Gaia reached for his hand. It was plump and sweaty. She slowly rubbed the back of it with her thumb. “Char’s not feeling well. It’s just me tonight. Is that okay?”
He hesitated, looking thoughtfully at Gaia. She didn’t doubt for a second that he would stay. She was a magnet, a stronger force than even she herself could control. She felt the tension go out of his hand.
“Are you just going to stand there and watch? Get the fuck out,” he told Doo, never taking his eyes off Gaia.
The corners of Gaia’s red lips turned up into a seductive smile. “Watch? I can make her go away like this.” She snapped her fingers.
Mr. X laughed as Gaia pulled him forward over the threshold and kicked the door closed with her foot.
She led him to the bed, purposely swaying her ass, knowing his eyes were fixed there. He sat down and started taking off his shoes. “No,” she said. He looked up at her His lustful stare felt like a tongue licking her face. “Let me do that.”
She undressed him, throwing his pants clear across the room toward the door, as he ran his hands up the inside of her leg, making low, guttural noises. He stood up and she was eye to eye with his coarse chest hair. He was impatient with her, almost tearing her dress.
“Slow,” she whispered.
She had done this dozens of times by now. Each man desperately wanted to invade the space between her legs, not knowing that it did not belong to her. She could never feel any sensation down there because it wasn’t a part of her real body, and any man who entered soon found he would have to pay a higher price than he had thought. That is why she welcomed them and laughed inside while they grunted and moaned. A soundproof wall separated her from them, kept her from hearing the compliments they choked out between heavy breaths. The only sound she would listen for tonight was Doo, tiptoeing back into the room to get their insurance.
Mr. X had Gaia pressed against a wall, between the bed and the nightstand. Her nose was crushed against his neck and she breathed in his woodsy cologne. The scent stung her nostrils and went sliding down her throat, into her mouth. It sat bitterly on the back of her tongue. She hadn’t smelled it in three years, but the scent was unmistakable. Suddenly, his lips felt familiar against her skin. His hands were bony and wrinkled. She thought her knees might buckle as she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, her head growing light. She was losing it. The control was slipping from her hands and into his. She tried to take it back.
“Stop,” she said.
He tore his lips away from her shoulders. “Why?” he asked breathlessly.
“Your cologne. Wash it off.”
“What? No.”
He pushed her against the wall again. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he yanked her head back and smothered her protests with his lips. She looked up into his eyes, but they were closed. What color had Gardener’s eyes been? Her breathing was so staccato that her chest started to ache. And the scent, his scent, was so thick she feared she might be suffocated. She gasped when he lifted her leg and forced himself inside of her. For the first time in years, she felt something. She tried to expand herself, to make herself wide enough for two ships to pass through.
She didn’t know how long it lasted, but when it was over, she heard him say, “That was amazing.” She heard his zipper going up, his expensive loafers sliding against the carpet, the door swinging closed. Lying naked on the bed, she wondered if it was her or the room that was spinning. She closed her eyes to try and regain her balance. When she opened them, she was not alone. Doo was leaning over her. Gaia tried to sit up, but she felt pinned to the bed. Her throat was dry and her tongue was like cotton.
Doo was smiling. “I got the pictures. You did good. See, we didn’t even need Charlene. We’re a great team.” She brushed a stray hair away from Gaia’s face.
Gaia watched Doo’s lips come closer and closer and shut her eyes when she tasted whiskey and stale cigarettes on Doo’s thick tongue.
Gaia shook her head, started to say no.
“Shh,” Doo’s mouth whispered. Her hands came up to grip one of Gaia’s exposed breasts.
Trembling, Gaia’s fingers searched for the cold steel underneath her pillow. Her arm felt like it weighed fifty pounds when she lifted the gun and swung it over and over against the back of Doo’s head. The hard steel connected with bone and made a cracking sound. Doo shrieked in pain and covered her head with both hands. They fell to the ground with a thud, the lamp, the alarm clock, and the nightstand all clattering down with them.
Doo went limp, stopped moving or making any sounds, the back of her head against the carpet. Gaia dropped the gun and crawled to the corner behind the door, sitting with her red knees pulled up to her chest. She watched as the pool of blood coming from Doo’s head turned the beige carpeting purple-red.
The muffled beeps of the fallen alarm clock sounded like they were coming from inside Doo’s baggy jeans. Laughter bubbled in Gaia’s stomach and rose up her throat like a gush of water. Her whole body shook with laughter as Doo beeped and beeped. Gaia crawled over to the body. She hovered above Doo and then lifted her shirt. Doo’s breasts were strapped down in layers of ace bandages. “Shh,” Gaia whispered, pulling the bandages down. She laughed as one soft breast tumbled out.
Gaia was about to touch it with the tip of her finger when a loud screeching of tires squealed just outside the window.
She shook her head and blinked rapidly. Her breathing hastened as a weight seemed to suddenly sit down on her chest. What had she done? Oh God, Doo! And Charlene. Charlene would hate Gaia, never speak to her again. Gaia’s body collapsed and she dropped her head to the carpet. She felt like dying. She felt like disappearing, like hiding. She felt … cold. She spied her dress lying at the foot of the bed and crawled to get it. She pulled it over her head and felt the fabric wiping away the tears that rushed down her cheeks.
Turning her head slowly back toward the spot on the floor where Doo lay, she started to say, I’m sorry, Charlene, but the words caught in her throat. She stared at Doo’s tar-stained lips until they were two brown blurs, and realized it wasn’t true. She wasn’t sorry. She stood up momentarily and then sat on the bed as she surveyed the room. Overturned tables, blood-soaked carpet. She was sitting on something hard. She got up, saw that it was Doo’s small, silver camera, and squeezed it between her hands. She was holding one of the only pieces of real evidence that she had ever been here tonight. She studied Doo’s small body. Doo couldn’t be more than a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds. Could she?
Gaia drove east toward Providence Park, by instinct, not choice. She knew exactly what was waiting for her back there. Zooming down the interstate, Gaia felt only relief when she thought about Doo’s lifeless body wrapped in a sheet on the floor of the Cadillac. She had protected herself and taken control of what belonged to her. Doo had been right. She didn’t need Charlene. Charlene didn’t love her. And she could take care of herself. She didn’t need a play mother. She didn’t need any mother at all. She understood now how to keep away the bad things, the ghosts, the past, and it was not by fear. It was by force.
At 3 a.m., she stood in front of the abandoned group home. She waved at Doo, who was lying at peace in Gardener’s attic. An empty fuel can dangled from Gaia’s fingers.
Wrongs did not correct themselves. Someone had to make the decision to fix things. People could not live their lives the whole time expecting things to happen; people had to make things happen. Cold gasoline had to be spilled deliberately, dousing the ground, the walls. A match, struck in the dark, had to be dropped in a shallow puddle of fuel. And the girl, the one in the wrinkled black dress, would not run away yet. She had to watch as the scorching flames licked and devoured the home. Ladies Mile Road had been a haven, a place where women felt safest. This building had mocked that history and tainted the whole neighborhood.