Bronx Requiem(8)

Amelia had been living with her grandmother, Lorena Leon, an unstable, angry woman who nagged and criticized her, constantly telling Amelia she was becoming like her worthless mother.

With a warrant hanging over her, and her grandmother becoming intolerable, Derrick Watkins had swooped in like a vulture smelling death. Older, confident, the pimp appeared at just the right moment armed with the right lies and promises. Derrick told Amelia he’d take care of the warrant. He told her it was time to stop living with the old lady. He’d find her a place to stay. Even help her get a job.

So she’d moved in with Derrick in his apartment at Bronx River Houses. For the first couple of weeks, Derrick allowed her to stand by and watch him run his group of whores. He had taken to calling her Princess. And treating her as if she were different from the others, instinctively playing to Amelia’s weakness—thinking she really was different from the others.

Until she wasn’t.

Now, she had to face a reality that she had refused to admit because, despite all the warnings, Amelia Johnson never believed Derrick Watkins would actually do this to her.

By the time she opened her eyes in the dark closet, the crushing claustrophobia panicked her so much she immediately closed them again.

Then came the pain from sitting for hours on her tailbone. To relieve the agony, she slid down onto her back. But in order to do that, she had to raise her feet high up and rest them against the far wall, which placed her head down on the closet’s filthy carpet and forced her to breathe in the dusty, moldy smell, which made her more claustrophobic.

Of course, the blood quickly drained out of her feet so she had to pull her legs down, bending her knees, clutching them close to her chest, making it harder to breathe. She almost lost herself to panic, but she turned onto her side, which helped.

She managed to fall into an exhausted, fitful sleep, but in the middle of the night, without clothes, she began shivering. A filthy old overcoat hung at the far end of the closet. She pulled it off the hanger and tried to maneuver in the tight space to get it under and around her, which caused an excruciating muscle cramp that gripped her right hamstring and brought tears. She scrambled into a bent-over standing position, banging her head into the shelf above her.

She turned sideways and tried to stretch out the cramp. Finally, the pain subsided. She felt like crying again, but just kept shaking her head, telling herself over and over, “No, no, no, no,” afraid that if she began to cry she might become hysterical, and Derrick Watkins would hear her, and she didn’t think she could survive another beating.

She finally managed to lay on the floor in a fetal position, on top of the overcoat, her face toward the door, trying to breathe the air seeping in between the door and the saddle.

She lay there trying to keep calm so she wouldn’t get another horrible muscle cramp. She began inventorying all the places she hurt. The places she didn’t worry about, like her hip where Derrick had kicked her and the back of her head where he’d punched her; and the places that frightened her like the back of her throat and between her legs.

She fell asleep again, but a full bladder pulled her awake. She had to urinate, badly, and she knew she would never be able to hold it in until they let her out of the closet. After the horrible degradation she’d endured, this last indignity finally crushed her spirit to the point of hopelessness that had caused so many women in her position to consider ending it all. But she quickly recoiled from the feeling, knowing if she allowed any of those thoughts she would not make it.

She cursed silently, letting the misery and pain fuel her anger. Letting it build, and turn dark and mean, and burn away any thought of killing herself, replacing it with visions of killing Derrick Watkins.

*

Just before noon the next morning, the closet door lock finally turned. Queenie, a retired prostitute who had worked for Derrick’s older brother Jerome, pulled open the door. Too old and too heavy to earn her way as a prostitute, Queenie had been passed on to Derrick to help run his prostitution business, and act as a poor excuse for a madam to the young women Derrick exploited.

Queenie’s first words were, “Oh, Lord.”

She fanned her hand under her nose, as if that would help.

Amelia lay on her side with her back facing Queenie.

“Come on out of there, girl.” Amelia felt stuck, frozen in position. “Come on, now, he’s lettin’ you out. Let’s go.”

Amelia rolled onto her back, blocking the sudden light with her forearm.

“Let’s go girl, you got to stand up now. I can’t lift you with my bad back. C’mon, or I’m gonna shut this damn door and leave you in there.”

Amelia rolled out of the closet, gradually getting up on her hands and knees. She used the doorknob on the closet door to slowly pull herself upright, but a sudden spasm in the small of her back stopped her. She had to remain bent over.

Queenie told her, “You’ll be all right. Just go slow.”

Amelia didn’t answer. She looked up at Queenie with eyes that made the old whore step back. Defiance. Queenie knew that look from decades of experience. A look that always ended in more pain, and often death.

Queenie took another step back.

“I’ll run a tub for you. You clean yourself and then you clean this closet. Derrick said you gotta dress up for dinner. Says you gotta work tonight.” And with that Queenie moved down the hallway, getting as far away from Amelia Johnson, as fast as she could.