Bronx Noir

It was in school that things turned sour. The kids there knew about her mother. They made jokes. Sometimes guys would come over and say, Hey, yesterday night I had your mother. Made her get all butch—lots of fistfights. Cut her hair short, perfected the crotch-kick, three fights a week and lots of notes home until Angie put a stop to it. In junior high she was a girl again, long hair, but the talk went on. The South Bronx was still a small town, no matter how many tenements went how deep. The only kids she could hang out with were crackheads and other street creeps who couldn’t figure out why she even came to school. She started to cut classes and smoke reefer.

One day she was made to stay after school by a teacher. His name was Mr. Berlin, so white he pink, spit when he talked and had curly blond hair. She sat at her desk and he sat at his.

“I’ve heard talk about your mother,” he said slowly. “Is it true, Iris? Is it true what the other students are saying?”

Iris nodded, her face bloodless burning.

Mr. Berlin got up from his desk and walked over to hers.

“And you. What they say about you. Is that true?”

Iris nodded again, her face a mask. She felt like she knew what was coming. She had seen that face on men who honked their horns at her mother as they walked home some nights from tricks. He took his wallet out and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Is that enough?” he asked. Iris shook her head. He peeled off another twenty. “How about now?” His face looked moist. When there were sixty dollars on there, then she nodded, though she had been a little curious as to how much she would be worth. That girl who sat in the third desk first row now stood up, lowering shades, pulling down drawstrings. Her voice was now gravel, her eyes like she had won. Mr. Berlin watched the professional take over.

“Okay,” she said like she was in charge now. “What do you want? Blowjob? Handjob? Sixty-nine? Doggie-style? Ride ’um cowgirl? Missionary?” A grin so twisted menace.

“I don’t know if I can,” Mr. Berlin said, looking a little pale like he had lost control.

“Take the pants down,” she said.

After she went down on Mr. Berlin she could have her way with him, could walk in and out during class, he wouldn’t even raise a mumble. She never abused it—she liked his regular sixty dollars, and Mr. Berlin was her first regular. He was a married-with-three-kids kind of guy. Pulling money off him was easy. It was so easy, it made her want to get into the business. There was a sense of power that went with it that left her feeling almost high.

One night she was sitting with Pacheco and Angie on the bed. A trick had just left and they had changed the sheets, then lay there with their legs intertwined, eating chicken from a bucket. Pacheco had just started with a tale from his army days when Iris came right out with the story about Mr. Berlin.

“Are you serious?” Angie jumped off the bed, giving Pacheco a punch. “Did’ju hear that shit? I’ll kill that bastid!” She paced, arms windmilling. “I’ll take the bastids to court, the whole fucken school! That dirty fuck!! Pacheco!! Why the fuck you just sittin’ there? She’s only fourteen!”

Pacheco and Iris exchanged glances. Iris went into her room and came back with a cigar box. She emptied it on the bed. Three hundred and ten dollars.

“I’ll sue the city!! Just look at that!! All that talk about morality!! Like I’m garbage, right? And lookit what they do!! All of them fulla shit, alla them!”

“You don’t have a case,” Pacheco said, riffling through the bills. “The daughter of a local hooker? Gimme a break. They’d laugh you outta court. All the nice decent hard-working white guy has to say is that she propositioned him. Who ain’t gonna believe him?”

Angie glared, eyes teeming wet. “But we gotta do something!”

Iris said, “Fuck school. I wanna go to work.”

Angie stood there staring at the two of them. Trembling a little, looking as if they had just presented her with the terms of surrender.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her lips quivered. She passed a hand through her hair, sat on the bed, reached for her crack pipe. She took it into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Did he sex you?” Pacheco asked while lighting a cigarette.

“Yeah.”

“You want I should set you up?”

Iris didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah,” she said.

She turned tricks every day, every night, even on weekends. She still managed to cook for her mother, who wasn’t doing much of anything, and paid for her crack habit. The career started like a party, and turned into chain gang.