Sarasota, Florida. 1998.
I heard the gal call me ‘shirts-for-skirts’ one night while I was getting Mountain Dew. It was a little past closing and she was on the phone telling her old man or ride or whoever why she weren’t gonna be done on time – ‘cause of me, shirts-for-skirts, who was in the toilet too long cleaning myself. It did take longer’n normal but it weren’t my fault. My heel caught a crack in the sidewalk out front and I went flying and came up a mess. Them paper towels in the bathroom tore apart when they got too wet so I had to go back outside and take a shammy from the windshield wash bucket. That was one minute ‘til close when I came back in with it and like I said it took longer’n normal ‘cause my knees got all tore up. Then I had to get the soda. I had my own cup (so it’s harder to prove I’m stealin’) and when I was gettin’ it I could hear what she was sayin’ ‘cause the machine weren’t rattling-all, ‘cause I weren’t trying to water my soda down with no ice cubes.
I thought it was a good thing that gal gave me a nickname, and that whoever’s on the other end of that phone understood it was me. That I weren’t nobody. And to be fair, shirts-for-skirts was a good one and you’d think so too if you ever seen me. I’m way into fashion, real creative. I take those white tank tops the guys wear and when they get yellow under the arms I ask ‘em can I have ‘em and then I pull ‘em up my legs and tuck in the armholes and belt ‘em and there you have it – a skirt. Looks so cute. With it right now I got me a tie-dye looking shirt that changes colors when you sweat. I didn’t know it did that until I looked in the mirror. “Well god damn,” I said. All pink real dark under my pits and down my back and in the crease part of my boobs with the rest still yellow. Kinda neat, I liked it, just weren’t expecting.
My real name’s Ma’donna. Not shittin’ you. I got tired of people funnin’ me about it so when someone wants my name I tell ‘em I go by Maddy. That gal at the register counter, her name’s Mary. Ain’t that a hoot? Ma’donna n’ Mary. She might herself be a saint but I sure as hell couldn’t claim it. Well, Mary’s off the phone and kindly just waiting there with her mop bucket so I’d better git.
She didn’t say nothin’ to me but she let me walk out with the Mountain Dew without askin’ me to pay even though I knew she seen me take it from her dispenser. When I got outside the hot wet air hit me hard and I looked down. My whole shirt done gone pink.
* * *
The Harborside Mobil Stop-n-Go shines its beacon, its big old sign with all the gas prices, the ones that go back and forth a few cents every day for reasons I’ll never know, way up high for the boats to see. After closing, all the lights in and around the store go out except for the ones on that sign. I like to pretend the Stop-n-Go is something like a lighthouse and after midnight, I am the lighthouse keeper, bringing those sea-sad boys safely to shore. Watch out for those slimy jagged rocks, those top-chopped-off piers covered in switchblade barnacles. Remember those too-many-beers you were drinking all day in the sun and come on home to me. Come to me, with your fish gut coconut sunscreen smelling skin, your fingers pricked by hooks and lures. Pull in with your speedboat easy, check your hitch and all your tires. Clean your windshield and fill up.
* * *
I usually sit kindly at the edge of the end of the sidewalk in front of the store where the light from the sign hits me just a little, enough for someone to see me if they’re lookin’ for me. It’s good business near the harbor, what with all the boaters. You got your regulars and your spring breakers and everything in between. And even when the store’s closed they still come ‘cause you can get gas twenty-four seven if you got a credit card. One a.m. to four a.m. are my best hours ‘cause of that. ‘Cept for lately ‘cause it’s hurricane season again. After just that bitty one last week, boating’s real slow. Tourists done scared off from it, and I ‘spect for the locals, their wives are busyin’ ‘em, cleanin’ up all that blown down mess and gettin’ plywood down off the windows. Tonight I might get one or two lonely folks who don’t got boats or wives but then again I might not. I weren’t too worried about it though. I wouldn’t mind a night to myself. If no one wants me in the next fifteen or so I’ll head up to the bins out back Adventist Thrift n’ see about some new duds n’ things. I lit a cigarette, set it like an hourglass.
After fifteen passed with no business I got up with my backpack and started walking. Passed a decoy n’ saw the cop car down a side street with all the lights off. They always out here tryin’ to trap these men and ruin their lives. Seems to me it’s none of no one’s business. If you don’t want a hooker don’t get one. My friend said the cops just do it as a way to sorta break in the female recruits. Kindly a hazing almost. Well ain’t that some bullshit.
The decoy’s clothes looked cheap but clean. Hot pink tights all ripped up. There’s your first clue. Nobody wearin’ tights, they get in the way and lock in all them nasty smells. They did her up in a bunch of makeup and they even put blue and yellow all up around one eye to look like she got punched in it. Here’s the truth – cops only knew hookers from the ones they saw on TV or the ones that made it into the station. The TV ones made me laugh. Ain’t none of us are all that pretty. Don’t got leather skirts and nice makeup and done up hair. The station ones are all the way on the other end – kids, kicked out or run out or whatnot, or older gals lookin’ like golden raisins, who just got sloppy or tired and wanted an inside place to sleep. And they usually went in not just for hookin’ but ‘cause they got caught for drugs, or went stabbin’ when they got hit or stiffed, or was workin’ with their kid in the car, or stealin’ sodas from stores that don’t got nice gals like Mary behind the counter. The dumb ones. That’s all the cops saw, those two extremes, and it showed in how they painted up these decoys. I ‘spect it worked though cause they never changed their approach. Reckon the fellers they trapped were first-timers, so the decoys looked just fine to them. Or maybe they’re just desperate and a little dumb themselves.
I never got in trouble but once and it had nothing to do with any of that. I hit a little kid with my car. Name was Ronnie John Parks. He was in the hospital a few weeks and they said he’d come through but he didn’t make it. I told ‘em it was an accident but I didn’t get no points for that. In the end I did get an okay deal ‘cause they couldn’t prove my speed and a little kid like that shouldn’t been out there wanderin’, even if he was at the crosswalk. An okay deal but ten years when I was nineteen and a big ole fine that I ain’t never gonna pay off, well, I couldn’t call it fair. I felt sorry about it but it’s just one of those things, you know? I told the parole board that and I reckon that’s why I served my whole ten down to the day. I should have told ‘em what they wanted to hear but one of their fat boy guards kept sleazin’ on me and I didn’t have no heart left to give about any of it. Well, that sure learned me to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself.
I thought it’d be funny to say “how’s tricks” to the decoy as I passed her but I kept my mouth shut like I learned and kept walking, but a little ways off the sidewalk out the streetlights so whatever she lured didn’t try to come to me first.
* * *
Fresh-scented clothes bloomed from the tops of Target bags. A gauzy sleeve, bothered by a soft night wind, waved to me hello. I used my flashlight to check the labels. Whatever I liked also had to be a size small. The church stores always had nice things. Christians washed their donations and never gave bad stuff. Do unto others because Jesus was watching. I wonder who they hoped would receive their castoffs. A single mom working her way through community college. Old people who didn’t have money for clothes because medication costs ate up all their social security. A homeless lady trying to look nice for a job interview. They probably weren’t thinking about a forty-three year old hooker named Ma’donna, with sandy, wind-dried hair and burnt-red skin, looking for shirts-for-skirts at 3am with an Animaniacs keychain flashlight that she smuggled out from under some trick’s car seat. Well, tonight I, Ma’donna, a card-carrying member of the League of the Unworthy Poor, would get first pick. I’d get a white cotton tank top with sequins on the hems and an ironed-on picture of a starfish wearing sunglasses in the middle, the tag affixed telling me it was originally purchased at Beall’s for $8.99. I’d get a long green skirt, tiered like a cake, with a waistband that cinched to size with strings capped with little jingly bells. I’d get a Wonderbra that looked like it got shrunk in the wash and two pairs of socks. I’d get a sun visor that said BEACH TIME ME TIME in pink stitching. I’d pass on the Talbot’s suit set, the leather pumps, the button-down blouses, the balls of pantyhose. The good girls could have those.
* * *
On my way to Gillespie Park, where I slept most mornings (if you put down a beach towel at sunrise and put on sunglasses people think you’re just sunnin’ and don’t bother you none), I came up on a big felled oak. That babycane weren’t strong enough to fell no strong oak so this one must’ve been sickly. The city done chainsawed the parts that had stuck out into the road but the sidewalk was still impassable.
Littler branches that done snapped themselves off and silver wig-looking clumps of Spanish moss were thrown about. I picked up a piece of that moss and felt its strange velvet softness. Its curly tentacles lifted in the wind and wrapped themselves all around my hand, lookin’ like I was caught up in a bowl of moldy ramen noodle. That thought made me real hungry so I thought I’d better hurry on to the park before the city took the trash and see if there was somethin’ in the cans that I could et.
Folks with time and money to spend grillin’ threw out all sorts of things just ‘cause they didn’t want to carry them home. I thought if I had a real home I’d carry everything to it. All my shirt skirts and Mountain Dews and half-full bags of trash can buns, all the loose change and french fries I sneaked out from other people’s car seats. Say what you want but fast-food fries kept good forever and I didn’t mind them all hard and cold. I got a taste for ‘em after I found some in my old car – my momma kept onto it for me – after I got out of prison. Almost half a thing full of them still in the bag, and I swear they tasted almost as good as they did the day I ran down that kid.
They tasted like being free.
Kelli Dianne Rule is an author of dark fiction who claims roots in the backwoods of Florida. Recent writings may be found in Heavy Feather Review, Whale Road Review, Magazine1, JMWW, Luna Station Quarterly and The Avenue Journal, among others. Her work has been dramatized on Creepy Podcast. Her short story anthology, Florida, Deep and Dark, is currently in the works. www.kellirule.com.