The Punany Experience Read online

  “Girl, you got a body that could make a blind man blush,” a voice said to her from a Lincoln Continental, driving five miles an hour beside her as she walked home from school one day. Dream Crow was budding into a promising young artist with vocal, dance, and acting skills. She was focused on her education, but desperate for a break from the poverty and responsibility she had faced by the time she was only fourteen years old. So when Seth came along, she was all ears.

  Seth was thirty-two, and had been a player all of his life. He had a good car and some decent hustles that included an uncanny ability to find things for people. But he needed a place to stay. When he found some antidepressants for her mother, Dream Crow named a price and cleared a space for him that he could call a room.

  One Saturday morning, the children and Seth were sitting down for breakfast when Seth looked up and saw the children’s mother standing in the doorway. “Who are you?” she asked him. “Who said you could bring my children pancakes?”

  Seth looked to Dream Crow for an answer. “Momma, this is Seth. He’s been waiting to meet you…”

  Seth married her mother, but everyone in the house realized that he was there for Dream Crow. He was a supportive and present adult in Dream Crow’s life, and had won her heart easily with attention. He attended her recitals and showed up for parent-teacher conferences when her mother was too medicated and numb to be a parent at all. Dream Crow might have stayed there with him, seen her brother and sister off to college, and taken care of her mother, but Seth got caught up and started using. When she was seventeen, he traded Dream Crow to Keith for a brick of cocaine.

  Hartford hated his stepfather for what he had made his sister become. He wanted to save her. He wanted her to realize that she needed to save herself and that she had the talent to do it. Now that he had both feet in the door, and a hit song waiting to be recorded, he was inviting Dream Crow and their sister, Blue, to come inside.

  Dream Crow noticed the roots of her hair sweating back and her curls going limp. She checked the clock. Ten more minutes and I need to be walking out of the door, she thought, firing up her curling iron again.

  “I can’t believe it, man. I think I love her.” Keith had not meant to say the words out loud, especially not in front of the only girl on his team, but they had been said and he couldn’t take them back.

  “You think you love her? What kind of shit is that for a pimp to say?” Dream Crow hissed at him. She grabbed her curling iron and playfully lunged at his image behind her in the glass.

  “Aw, baby, that’s what pimps do. We love everybody.” Keith kissed at her annoyed reflection in the mirror. “But, for real, the bitch ain’t budging. Here she is, going to be able to leave home soon, and she’s talking some bullshit about business school. And she had the nerve to be talking about ‘ain’t no basketball scholarships for this school,’ like I’m supposed to pay for the shit. She’s got me twisted.”

  “It sounded to me like she was mad about something else.”

  “Huh? Don’t get beside yourself. Not now. I really don’t feel like beating your ass tonight.”

  Yeah, I’ve heard, an outbreak can make you tired, Dream Crow thought as she avoided his eyes charging at her in the mirror. In the early 80’s, Castlemont, the high school in her East Oakland neighborhood, had been nicknamed “Herpes High” when the Oakland Tribune newspaper reported that a lot of the students had been infected. The high school clinic made a point of preparing all incoming high school students with information on the incurable virus, so Dream Crow knew exactly what to look for. The second she saw the scars on Keith, she laid down the law about sex with him. If he wanted her to work for him, she would, but there would be no fucking between them.

  Sex was more than a pastime or a good time for Dream Crow. She was not an innocent girl when she met Keith. Sex was neither a sin nor a misdemeanor punishable by God, or by law, in her book. Sex was a business, like any other business, and it was not to be compromised or jeopardized by incompetence, ignorance, and especially not sexually transmitted diseases. She could spot a man who was not clean over the phone. When she met Keith, she had examined him thoroughly and knew the scars were the mark of the beast. So theirs was not a relationship based on sex. She was loyal to him like one was to a job or a boss, but she was beginning to see his weaknesses. She was beginning to see that he wasn’t qualified to pimp her or anyone else.

  “I can hear you thinking,” he said. His words were code for, “Get the fuck out and make us some money before I get my belt.”

  He was threatening her a lot lately, but he had only used his belt on her once. But once was enough for her to know that she should never disrespect him. The whipping she had endured had been vicious and painful. The very thought of it had been enough to keep Dream Crow in line ever since.

  She had been with him for a year; it was her eighteenth birthday and he had taken her out for dinner. They had a nice time, but back then she didn’t know how to control her alcohol. So when one drink led to another, her mouth had started running. Over dinner she had let him pick her brain. She confessed that she had fucked an associate of his. She had laughed into her brandy glass when she told him that she didn’t charge a dime. She wanted to fuck the guy, so she did, she told him.

  “You can’t imagine how liberating it was to fuck for pleasure,” she blurted out in the car when he strapped her in her seat belt. Then, she passed out. When she woke up, naked in the bed, Keith was pouring water on her sheet. He had a belt in his hand.

  “Are you sober now?” he asked. “I want you to be sober so you can feel this shit.” Whap! His belt came down on her. “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you…” He sang the birthday song while he dropped his belt across her ass, thighs, and back over and over again.

  Dream Crow screamed and tried to get off the bed as he burst into the second chorus: “How old are you?” But Keith had tied the sheet down so Dream Crow was stuck between it and the mattress. After a minute or so, she was getting numb. “I might not be fucking you, but you will respect me.”

  Dream Crow wasn’t surprised that he had beaten her. She lay in the aftermath with the feeling in her skin returning and burning. She was thinking, “Maybe I wanted him to beat me.” She thought, “It wasn’t that bad.” And she thought, “It could have been worse.” She never thought of leaving.

  “At least I know you ain’t a punk,” she had said when he untied the sheet.

  She deserved to get her ass whipped that time, she told herself, but it would not happen again. So she did what she was supposed to: brought in the money, kept her personal business to herself, and never got drunk again. Now, with money getting funny, she was afraid that it would not be long before his ego brought his pimp hand out again. She would not be able to live like that girl next door, getting beaten every night.

  Ugh, Ugh, no way, she thought.

  There was a moment of understanding silence between Dream Crow and Keith. Then he continued to talk about “Korea Smith, a high school basketball player, beautiful enough to model, smart enough to run a corporation someday…she loves her mother… she wants to move her mother out of the projects…she lives in the 69th Avenue Village Projects…”

  “Bla, bla, bla…” Dream Crow said inside her mind as she curled her hair. She checked the clock every thirty seconds, and let him talk until her hair was finished.

  “Keith, can I ask you something, and you promise not to get mad?”

  “If I might get mad, maybe it’s something you shouldn’t ask.”

  “Why do you want to turn a girl like that out? This life isn’t any kind of life for the girl you’re describing. This life is for women who don’t have so many choices; women who aren’t so talented.”

  Keith ignored Dream Crow as if she hadn’t spoken at all. She exhaled in defeat and started straightening up her dressing table.

  “She needs to come to an understanding about this here,” he said. “Maybe you can help me, baby. I think she may have a thing f
or girls. It’s not that she plays hoop; she naturally has a lot of dude in her. I think she might even shave her chin.”

  Distracted from her own thoughts, Dream Crow looked at Keith and repeated what she thought she had heard. “Did you say she has a beard? Damn, at sixteen? Gross! Now you know I’m strictly dickly. If I wasn’t, I’d be licking my way to riches all over Nob Hill, getting paid for real. I’ve heard lesbians and lonely widows can be real generous.”

  “So you’ll consider it then?”

  “Me, fuck a bearded kid, to pull her for you? No, absolutely not. Some things are simply out of the question. I wouldn’t do that, not even for you, Daddy. Sorry.”

  “That’s cold, Dream Crow. That’s real cold. But for real, she’s really pretty though. She’s brown-skinned with a real tight body, big titties, a fat ass, the whole nine, you know? I thought…I mean, this is San Francisco, and with things being kind of rough around here, it wouldn’t hurt you none to open your mind up a little bit. Who’s going to know you’re munching on fur burger?”

  “Gross.”

  Keith laughed. “Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t be down with that shit. I was fucking with you.”

  “Look, Daddy,” Dream Crow said, “I don’t have to keep staying around for this crazy talk. You sound kind of desperate, like you’re losing your confidence. The Keith I know wouldn’t be chasing after some kid and spending money like you’ve been doing. Besides, we don’t need a child to do a woman’s work. I heard there were some outlaws over in the Tenderloin. I could take off tomorrow night and go recruit there.”

  “I like top-notch bitches. You know how much I dropped on Seth for you? It took you a long-ass time to work off that debt. Shit, I’m just now seeing any real profit, since you’ve been taking calls instead of making corners. When I saw you, I realized we could do some real business. You think my stable cut out on me, don’t you?” He looked at Dream Crow with seriousness in his eyes. “Don’t you?”

  “Didn’t they?”

  “Hell no; I traded them hoes.”

  “Traded them?”

  “Yes, I did; Mickey, Trina, and Sasha. I traded them twenty-dollar bitches to Rico. He ain’t pulled shit from me. I didn’t need them anymore. I didn’t need them once I had you. I didn’t want to tell you; I didn’t want you to get all beside yourself, thinking too high. I didn’t know you like that. I didn’t realize how loyal you are. When I was dealing with street hoes, I didn’t know anything about business. I got you off the streets as soon as I could line up the kind of clientele you should have. In no time, you were pulling in what all three of them put together were making working those corners.”

  It was a rude awakening for Dream Crow. She hadn’t realized how valuable she had been to Keith until that very moment.

  “Now that we’ve learned that street money ain’t money at all, you want to go pick up some trash in the Tenderloin and bring it here? Here? I don’t think so,” Keith said. “This ain’t the Open Door Mission. I’m only dealing with the best, baby, so we can make that top money. If we start scraping the bottom of the pond, we’ll have a stable full of bitches in and out of county jail and rehab. Instead of paying for Gucci bags, we’ll be stacking up medical bills. Remember how Trina was always getting her ass beat because of her mouth?”

  Dream Crow had to laugh at that. Trina could fuck up a dude’s wet dream with her foul mouth. She had no business trying to sell fantasies.

  “Korea is going to work, just like you did. She’s fine, she respects money, and she’s got a little class on her ass. Korea’s young and I’m the only one who’s had her so far. She’s the one. She ain’t got a daddy and I don’t think her momma is about to be checking for her.”

  “Is that a fact? How can you be sure?” Dream Crow asked him, turning around on her stool to look at him.

  He ignored the disbelief on her face. “I’ll make sure.”

  “Oh, like you did with that blue-haired white lady from the trailer park in Vallejo? She basically gave you her daughter. Remember Pepper? You went all out for that little ingrate…buying shit. She still left us. We still haven’t recovered from that yet. That little trailer park trash. She better hope I never run into her ass again. I mean, just as quick as I cleaned her up in designer knocks and shoes, she turned my best trick into her husband.” Dream Crow could feel herself getting upset. She wanted to stop talking but she had to get her say in. “She got a fucking husband, baby!” She stood up and looked at him with pleading eyes. She wanted to say, “Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me leave you, too,” but instead, she painted a simple and vivid picture of his misfortune and their mutual sacrifice. “Keith, we invested thousands on her gear and her car, and now she’s married to a banker in a gated community in Blackhawk. I don’t want to sponsor another green bitch.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that white girl,” Keith said, cutting his eyes at her.

  Dream Crow’s voice softened and soothed his mood with the tenderness of a love ballad. “Darling, baby, baby…” she said, walking toward him. Pressing her breasts against his chest, she cooed, “I won’t keep talking about Pepper. But I thought you said, after she left us, that it was going to be you and me. I thought you said we were going to slow our roll and pace ourselves, maybe invest and do some real business together. You know, we could have a Laundromat or a car wash by now. It’s like this shit is never going to end. It’s supposed to end. I’m getting ready to be twenty-five. I’m not trying to do this shit forever. Do you think these rich tricks are going to pay a forty-year-old a thousand dollars to meet them in their penthouse suites? I don’t think so.” She paused for effect. “This right here…” She opened her hands and spread them to present the beautiful and extravagant California Street condominium to him. “Look around, baby. I can take care of this right here. It’s all this extra stuff that’s making everything all bad.”

  “Well, damn. I thought you could handle this whole situation, now that I got you those thousand-dollar clients, but…” He sucked his teeth. “I guess I was wrong.” His drag may have worked on Dream Crow years ago, but tonight she could see through him like a silk screen.

  “I would have it handled and I would keep it handled, but you’re spending faster than I can return a phone call,” Dream Crow said, backing away from him. “We’re just gambling. I could be working on my singing career if I’m going to be gambling. I’m still young and sexy, you know?”

  “Yeah, and you could learn to parse Greek.”

  “I could learn to do what?”

  “Exactly. That’s why your job is on your back.”

  “That was hurtful, Keith. You don’t have to be mean to me because you’re mad at that kid.” She pouted, quickly trying to divert him from any thoughts of violence.

  Dream Crow’s heart-shaped pout could have stopped the conflict in the Persian Gulf. If Keith could figure out how to profit off of it, he’d have contracted her pussy out to the United States government. Her beauty was undeniable in the soft light of the dressing room. Her caramel-colored skin was a smooth, milky promise. Keith had not really looked at her for a long time. She was perfect in every way. Her skin never had a blemish and all of her womanly parts were perfect and well-pronounced. She always smelled delicious and inviting, like hot apples and cinnamon.

  “Is that what I’m doing?” he asked softly, giving in to her perfections. “I’m sorry, baby, you’re right. I apologize.” He kissed her cheek and inhaled her baked goods. “I love the fact that you’re a dreamer. There’s nothing wrong with having your head in the clouds as long as you have your feet on the ground.”

  “You mean on the track, don’t you?”

  “Excuse me? What track? I’ve brought you clients and opportunities that make it so you haven’t had to walk the block in years. Shit, I even got you judges so you don’t ever have to see a jail cell. I got you into hotels and high-rises. I’m not pimping you; we’re pimping them. I’m your manager and your friend. You wouldn’t have been able to buy your ca
r without me; Seth had your credit all fucked up before you were even old enough to have a credit card. I cleaned your credit up. I even let you send money home to your brother and sister and I helped you put Blue through nursing school. Would a pimp do that?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  Keith had been unlike any pimp she had ever met. He had really been a friend to her.

  “So you think that it’s just you out there, woman? That ain’t you out there; that’s us. That’s us out there. I can think of a million other things I could be doing. My daddy wasn’t a pimp; he was a preacher. I could do that, and a whole lot more, but this thing we got is what it is, you know what I’m saying? This is going to get us where we need to be. You, making the sacrifices you make, so we can get ahead, means a lot to me. I hope my commitment to you means a lot to you, too. I mean,” he said, rubbing his mustache. “How many times have I had to get with one of your clients about breaking you off after you already put it down? You appreciate me having your back out there, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well then, act like it. You keep talking about being a singer because your jive-ass brother says you have a voice and he could manage you. He’s selling you and your sister wolf tickets. She needs to keep herself at General and you need to get your head out of the clouds. Do you know how many singers never get discovered and die broke? Baby, we’re pulling in close to twelve G’s a month, sometimes fifteen. And you only work part-time. The rest of the time you’re shopping. You’re complaining about that little money I spent on them bitches to get us ahead, while you’re keeping Dolce & Gabbana and Chanel in business all by yourself.”