Bronx Noir

Her pimp was Pacheco. He was very nice and didn’t beat her. He was like family because he used to be her mother’s pimp. He sometimes watched out for her on the street but usually just went up to be with her mother, something Iris resented because he was supposed to protect her. There was this guy running around right now, gutting hookers like fish. Three already on the slab and the cops didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. The papers hardly cared. On South Bronx streets life is worth maybe a subway token. Cops don’t take subways. If the hookers were white maybe it would be more of a story, more tragic TV reports. But South Bronx killing zone is an everyday thing, and so one more hooker body appearing near Hunts Point market is not really a crime, just seen like waste disposal. Like a man dumping his trash.

Her mother had the same brown eyes planted deep in a wider face, hair longer but crunchier and usually up out of the way. Body sagging some now, which was why she didn’t do tricks anymore. “My time came and went,” she said, always laughing, lying in bed where she always could be found, mumbling vague words about finding some kind of real work. (She would have to get out of the apartment for that, though.) Iris, junior high dropout, did everything in that steamy three-room. She cooked, she cleaned, payed the bills, did the shopping. Her mother went out sometimes, disappearing up Westchester Avenue to come back late, empty bottle in her hand. Eyes swimming like she was trying to knock the feeling out of them. Iris would put her to bed.

“I feel bad,” her mother would say a lot, especially on Sundays when the big church on Wales Avenue would toll its bell. “I’m nada, you hear? A waste. I shitted up my life. Shitted up your life. Gaw, I wanna die.”

“Shh.” Iris would massage her head softly until her eyes closed.

“Iris. Do you love me?”

Her mother seemed to be talking through a dream.

“Yeah. I love you, Ma.”

“Don’t call me Ma. Call me Angie. We partners, okay?”

Iris called her Angie all the time. The two of them would dress up in spandex, high heels, and big shirts. Pacheco would drive them around. Angie would always remember the days when she was a hooker, and men would stare breathlessly.

“Ahh, don’t cry, baby,” Pacheco would say, his wide sturdy face creased up as he drove. “Iris. Stop her from cryin’.”

Iris would pull her close.

“You don’t understand, Pacheco. You don’t, ’cause she’s not your daughter. I just wasn’t a good sample for her.”

Pacheco lost his cool pretty fast, times like that.

“Look, you took care of her. Everything you did in life was for her. She know that. We talked about it, right, muñeca? All she wants now is to pay you back an’ help you. Right?”

“Right.” Iris nodding to reassure. “Don’t worry about it, Angie. I’ll be fine. You an’ Pacheco take good care of me.”

And she would kiss and hug her like she was at an airport, then go off to meet her date for the night, Angie slithering up into the front seat as Iris went into the hotel. Iris was used to Angie coming all apart when she drank. It was a good thing she didn’t drink anymore. Now all she did was crack. She smoked in the morning and in the afternoon and at night. Pacheco would bring the stuff and Iris would help her prepare the pipe. Angie would light up and then her eyes would glass up.

“You really love me, muñequita?” Always asking in the whirl of crack steam.

“Yeah, I really love you,” Iris always replied with an involuntary flinch.

Iris had seen her mother fucking for money for as long as she could remember. Used to operate from a tiny apartment on Avenue St. John. Would bring the men in there while Iris sat on the living room watching Pooh videos and playing with blocks or Holly Hobbies. “It’s the way I make my money, honey,” Angie would singsong with so much color and life and maybe a little too much lipstick. To Iris it was just normal life. If she opened the bedroom door and caught her mother in action it didn’t mean anything because there was food on the table, money for clothes and toys, plus enough time to go shopping and jump all over the sofa and love seat chasing each other. There was time between assignments for Angie to do Iris’s nails and Iris’s hair, to buy her skirts and pantyhose and to play with her face in front of the bedroom mirror where there was always a liquor smell like medicine. “My baby is beautiful,” Angie would say after applying all the makeup to miniature carbon-copy Angie. Iris remembered being in the stroller, crowded Third Avenue, outside Alexander’s in the rush of Christmas shoppers, and Angie blocking traffic there by the entrance so she could stoop down on one knee and reapply the mascara to Iris’s little face. Iris soaked it up. It was attention, it was love. They were girlfriends. They fought over lipstick and pantyhose, and once when Iris swiped her red minidress to wear to school Angie beat the fuck out of her.