Bronx Requiem(7)

Derrick Watkins walked into the bedroom and yelled, “Princess, what the f*ck are you doing?”

She answered “Nuthin’.”

That was all it took. Derrick Watkins grabbed the back of her neck and dragged her out of the bedroom. He pushed and kicked her down the hall into his bedroom, screaming at her, “Nothing? Fucking nothing? How the hell you think nuthin’ does me any good, you goddam useless bitch?”

Amelia was a tall, strong, athletic girl, but no match for the strength of a grown man. Derrick slammed the bedroom door. The unprovoked attack had been shockingly violent from the first moment, and it just got worse. Hard stinging slaps to her head, kicks, punches, clothes torn off, throat choked, violent, brutal rape and sodomy. All done under the guise of outrage. All justified by Amelia Johnson’s supposed ingratitude.

Amelia had known Derrick Watkins was a pimp. A low-echelon criminal, like many of the young men in her neighborhood around the Bronx River Houses who dealt in drugs, theft, and prostitution. She knew the game. And she knew how to use her austere beauty and flawless body to make men and boys do what she wanted, so she figured should could play Derrick like she had played so many men in her past. When she let Watkins take her in, give her food, clothes, and a place to stay, Amelia knew she had entered into a dangerous game. But knowing the game didn’t make her able to win at it.

Derrick Watkins had played his role perfectly. Start by acting concerned. Make her feel special. And even though Amelia knew it was a con, she couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling, because at a deep, unspoken level, Amelia Johnson did feel special.

She thought she could deal with the bargain being made. She’d slept with Derrick, going along with the pretense that he was her boyfriend. And eventually she’d agreed to sleep with a few of Derrick’s friends. In the last few weeks, of course, there were more and more of the friends. Amelia knew where she was heading with Derrick Watkins, but she fooled herself into thinking she could control the situation. Get out before things got too bad.

Any notion of that evaporated as the rape and beating continued. And when Amelia screamed and cried, Watkins became even more infuriated. Thrusting harder. Hitting harder.

It ended when Derrick demanded to know why Amelia was so ungrateful. Why had she treated him so bad? Made him do this to her.

By then he had reduced Amelia to a sixteen-year-old girl who could muster nothing but a hysterical, hopeless answer: “I don’t know.”

An answer that gave Derrick Watkins a reason to drag her naked to the hall closet and lock her in the small space, telling her, “Bitch, you stay in there until you come up with a better f*cking answer than ‘I don’t know.’”

The closet was only three feet deep and five feet wide, so Amelia had to sit with her back against the end wall, her knees bent, the side walls inches away from her shoulders.

It took an hour for her to stop trembling and crying as she sat with her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands, trying to come to terms with what Derrick had done. She’d had sex forced on her before. The first time at the age of twelve. But never with such violence and raw entitlement.

Her first partner was her mother’s boyfriend, who kept telling her just this once so they would be close, be a family. She’d finally given in to get some peace, but it had simply given him license to want more. After months of the abuse she’d run away, sleeping over with school friends until her mother found her. Amelia didn’t say why she’d run off, she just said she wasn’t going back. Her mother didn’t argue with her. She couldn’t afford to lose the meager supply of money and drugs her boyfriend supplied, so she turned Amelia over to the Child Protective Services office in the Bronx.

It was supposed to be temporary. But then her mother went into a rehab program. And then her mother left the program. And then her mother died of an overdose.

Amelia drifted through a series of foster homes. By the time she reached fifteen, she had developed into a tall young girl with a model’s shoulders and a lovely figure, which meant sexual predators were a given, but she made sure to get something for giving it.

There was the tough boy who lived in her foster home who’d protected her from the neighborhood kids in return for it. The foster parent who’d fondled her in exchange for a room of her own. There was the older brother of a schoolmate who’d given her the release of cheap vodka mixed with orange soda in return for it. And, inevitably, the neighborhood handyman who had simply given her money. The slow, inescapable slide into prostitution had happened. Amelia had given away something priceless and irreplaceable for a pathetically small return.

The quid pro quo of sex became an accepted reality. A concession to the necessities required in order to survive. But not quite a full concession. Some part of Amelia never gave in completely. Which is why she had ended up in a dispositional hearing in family court for throwing a rock at a car driven by a man who had been stalking her. The judge ordered that she be placed in a supervised group home, telling her this was her last break. Next time, it would be a secure facility run by the State of New York.

And then, Amelia had been caught shoplifting clothes she’d needed for school. Macy’s security showed zero mercy. They called the cops. A bored patrolman issued her a desk appearance ticket, and when she failed to appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court, a warrant had been issued for her arrest. Her days in family court were over. She was officially a fugitive.