If the devil came as a woman, it would be someone like her, I thought. Roxy wasn’t sensitive to it or perhaps was deliberately blind because of her situation, but I sensed a cruel coldness under her suave, sophisticated appearance. Despite my bravado, she chilled my blood and made my heart thump when she scrutinized me the way she must have scrutinized Roxy.
I hoped I wouldn’t see much of her.
Roxy returned nearly a half hour later. “We’re all right for now,” she said. “She was impressed with you, but she’s very careful about everything. This is a very big enterprise involving very important people, M. I’m just telling you all this so you won’t feel bad about the way she spoke to you.”
“I didn’t feel bad about the way she spoke to me, Roxy. I don’t know her, and she doesn’t know me. I felt bad about the way she spoke to you.”
“Forget it,” she snapped. “I can handle her. Don’t make trouble.”
I looked away.
“One thing I didn’t bring you here to do, M, is judge me, understand? Go on about your own life, and don’t try to interfere with mine.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
She stood there staring at me.
“I’ll do what you say,” I promised, and she relaxed.
“We’re going out to dinner tonight. There’s a little Italian restaurant I frequent uptown. I like it because the food’s good and it’s out of the way. You’ll have a good time, but I think we should go to your school tomorrow and get you started again. You can’t mope around here all day. Okay? Okay,” she repeated harshly when I didn’t respond.
“Yes.”
“Good. Take a bubble bath or something, and . . .” She paused. “Stop acting like Papa. Get off your high horse,” she told me, and left.
There I was, immersed in luxury and comfort, but it didn’t bring me happiness and security. The reality seemed clear to me despite the act Roxy performed. She had tried to make it all seem like nothing, but I knew in my heart that I had entered her world, and there were dangers there that I probably had never imagined.
21
“You’ll like these people, and the food is great,” Roxy told me when we got into the taxi to go to the Italian restaurant. “I’ve been going there for a few years. In case any questions come up, you should know that I told them my family was in Los Angeles,” she added. “It was just easier.”
I didn’t say anything, but I realized that Roxy had to invent a lot of things to get along with people she met, not that her so-called clients were really interested in her, I imagined. She had already clearly implied that it was a no-no to talk about herself and tell anyone what was true. Mrs. Brittany surely insisted that her girls remained mysterious. I understood that was the combination that made them so desirable: beauty and mystery.
The restaurant was cozy. It felt more like eating at someone’s home because of the soft-cushioned chairs, the personal pictures, and the family artifacts. The couple who ran it, Ed and Mary Diana, were both in their mid-sixties and obviously very fond of Roxy. From their conversation, I gathered that they hadn’t the faintest idea of what Roxy did or how she lived. Between the lines, I picked up that they assumed that she was involved with clothing since she always wore such beautiful and expensive-looking clothes. I realized that she let them believe that she was a buyer for a department store. However, I thought I saw some awareness in Mr. Diana when Roxy introduced him to me. Roxy was careful about what she told them about me, never really saying that I had moved in with her.
I imagined that inventing so much about herself when she spoke to people other than her clients and Mrs. Brittany made it difficult for Roxy ever to grow close with anyone. That was why she had no real friends and, as long as she was doing what she was doing, never would have any. I had to be careful about these thoughts and conclusions. Roxy was as proud and as defiant as ever. She wouldn’t tolerate anyone feeling sorry for her, especially me. She had made that clear today.
The following morning, she took me to school so she could meet Dr. Sevenson and establish herself as my guardian. She had the limousine available to her. When we arrived, we turned a lot of heads and, as Mama would say, set tongues clapping. Roxy tried to look like someone’s guardian, I know, but despite our age difference, she still looked as if she could be the one registering to attend high school. She was in her black fur-lined coat and hat, with her hair in an updo, and very tight slacks with thick high-heeled black shoes. She did restrain herself when it came to her makeup, but Roxy didn’t really need much makeup, anyway. Heads continued to turn our way when we entered the building and started for the principal’s office.
Our principal, Dr. Sevenson, always struck me as being quite aloof. Everything that had to be done on a day-to-day basis seemed to be delegated to someone else, such as Dr. Walter, Mrs. Morris, or one of the teachers. Most of Dr. Sevenson’s time was spent in public relations, getting funding and new students for the school. She was a stout woman, with teased dark brown hair that looked as if it had been styled and sprayed twenty years ago. The joke was that there were bedbugs living in it. She had a clipped way of speaking, especially if she was speaking to someone from whom she didn’t expect much in the way of funding or anything else. I don’t think I had spoken a half-dozen words to her or she to me since I had begun attending the school.
Her secretary opened the door of her office for us and stepped away, smiling as if she had accomplished some great feat. Roxy barely glanced at her.
Dr. Sevenson looked up from her papers and sat back. “Please,” she said, nodding at the chairs in front of her desk.
We sat.
“I was sorry to hear about your mother,” she told me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“It takes great strength to continue doing what would certainly have made your parents proud, but I’m sure you will continue to do so. At least, I hope so.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“What can I do for you?” she asked Roxy.
“I’m Roxanne Wilcox. I will be Emmie’s guardian. I was told I had to inform the school of our situation and leave contact information. I was also told that we had to see you personally, so I made this appointment.”
“Right. Well, that is the protocol. Where are you and Emmie residing?”
“We’re at the Hotel Beaux-Arts.”
“Hotel?”
“I have an apartment there.”
“I see.”
From the way she was scrutinizing Roxy, I wondered if she had picked up on the student gossip and knew exactly who and what Roxy was.
“There is no other relative to take on this responsibility?” she asked. “One with a real home, perhaps?”
Roxy bristled. “Why would we even think of another relative? I’m her sister, and I’m well over eighteen. We do have a real home. I said I had an apartment, not a hotel room in some fleabag joint, either.”
“That’s good,” Dr. Sevenson said, not even blinking at Roxy’s indignation. “We usually don’t have very much to do with social services, the child-protection agencies, and the like. Our students come from well-to-do families, but when something like this occurs, there could be a lot more scrutiny. I do appreciate the recent family tragedies Emmie has experienced, but—”
“We both experienced,” Roxy interrupted.
“Yes, well, as I was saying, I appreciate the pain and suffering, but we do hope your sister’s admirable behavior and good schoolwork will not change dramatically for the worse. That could lead to more scrutiny and, as I said, not simply by me or the guidance counselor.”
“Are you threatening us? She’s paid up here for the remainder of the year, isn’t she?” Roxy asked sharply.
“Yes, she’s fine, and I’m not threatening you. I’m just doing my job and informing you that we have high expectations for our students, both in their academic behavior and in their social behavior. I would tell this to any new parents or guardians when they brought in their child for enrollment.”
“I doubt you would say it the same way,” Roxy pursued.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but that is just the way it is.”
She turned to me.
“Please come see me if you have any difficulties, Emmie, any at all,” she added, looking pointedly at Roxy. “I don’t have the forms for you to fill out here.”
She pressed her intercom to tell her secretary to provide them for Roxy.
“Well,” Roxy said, rising, “since everything we need to do is out there, we won’t waste any more of your time or mine and keep Emmie out of her classes. Thank you.”
I stood up, too. It was clear to me that no one could intimidate my sister. She seemed to know instinctively how to speak and deal with people, no matter who or how high up they were. Where did she get her poise and self-confidence after becoming a street kid? How did she develop into this beautiful and accomplished young woman? Did I want to be more or less like her? When would she tell me more about herself, especially the journey she took to arrive at this place in her life?
Roxy and I paused at the counter, and Dr. Sevenson’s secretary handed Roxy the forms to fill out.
“You can go to class,” Roxy told me. As I turned, she added, “And watch your ass. You can see how everyone else will be,” she added loudly enough for even Dr. Sevenson to hear behind her closed door. I smiled at her and left.
When I entered my class, Chastity’s eyes nearly exploded, as did those of some of my other classmates. I took my usual seat and opened my notebook, pretending that nothing at all was different. I could feel the curiosity practically boiling over and out of the minds of those around me. When the bell rang to end the class, Chastity nearly leaped over desks to get to me.
“You’re here!” she cried. Some of the others gathered around us.
“Yes, it does seem like I’m here,” I said, and started out.
“But . . . I thought you were going to live with your aunt and uncle in Washington, D.C.”
“That didn’t work out,” I tossed back. “They don’t have MTV.”
“What?”
I laughed to myself, wondering how long I could keep her dangling. She hurried to walk beside me.
“But where are you living? I mean, who are you living with?”
“Whom,” I said. “You’re never going to improve your grades in English.”
“I don’t care about my grades in English,” she whined. “Where are you living? Are you at home? Who’s with you?”
I paused. The other girls were still hovering around us.
“If Dr. Sevenson hears that sort of disrespect for our English class, you’ll be dangling on your participles,” I said, and kept walking.
I saw Richard ahead of me with two of his friends and quickly caught up. He was excited to see me but didn’t ask many questions. I used him to waste as much time between classes as I could and entered the next class just as the bell rang. I glanced at Chastity. She looked as if she might explode with frustration. The moment she had an opportunity to whisper, she leaned over. “You’re living with your sister, aren’t you?” she asked. It sounded more like an accusation.
I didn’t reply. I pretended not to hear her because I was too involved in my work, but her question hung in the air until the bell rang again.
“Well?” she asked immediately.
“Yes,” I said.
“In the hotel?”
“That’s correct,” I muttered, and kept walking.
“But how can you . . . I mean . . . with what goes on and everything?”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” I said, and went on to my next class.
For a while, I actually enjoyed the curiosity and excitement swirling around me. It was mostly stirred up by Chastity in the beginning but soon developed until I was the topic of conversation everywhere. I knew that once Chastity told others where I was living and with whom, the news would fly through the school. Everyone was after me to sit at her table in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Suddenly, I was fascinating to those girls who were previously intimidated by my grief and my family tragedy and wanted to do everything to avoid me.
Handfuls of questions were thrown in my direction. “You’re living in a hotel? What’s it like? Are you really on your own? What kind of people are you meeting there? Do you have anything to do with your sister’s work? Are you going to meet rich and famous people?”
I was deliberately vague with my answers, making all that they thought was exotic and exciting seem very matter-of-fact, if not outright boring.
“I have to walk farther to school and back,” I told them, as if that summarized it all.
Frustrated and annoyed, they stopped asking questions and peeled away like beggars who realized that the one they were following would give them nothing. Naturally, Chastity expected that I had reserved the truth only for her ears. She smiled and was at my side as soon as she could be.
“Can I visit you at the hotel?” she asked. “I could come today.”
“No, I can’t have any visitors,” I said.
“Really? What, is it dangerous there?”
“No, of course not.”
“Does the school know where you’re living?”
“Yes. My sister brought me today, and we met with Dr. Sevenson.”
“Your sister came here with you?”
“I’m surprised no one told you. We attracted enough attention.”
“She met with Dr. Sevenson?” she asked, her face soaked in incredulity.
“She’s my legal guardian now, Chastity. What did you expect?” I left her with her mouth frozen in the shape of an O.
Although I teased and frustrated my classmates when they asked me questions during the next weeks, their curiosity about Roxy and me didn’t wane. The more I evaded their questions, the more they came to their own nasty conclusions. I should have anticipated it, but I was really feeling aloof, finding myself floating above them. I did my schoolwork as diligently as ever, but I avoided social contact almost as much as I had when Mama was suffering and my thoughts were always with her. Maybe I helped to bring about the things that began to happen. Maybe they were inevitable.
Roxy’s decision to “improve” my wardrobe certainly didn’t help defuse the situation. Now that spring was almost here, she decided to update my fashion and brought me to her boutiques, where I was fitted for a blue T-back drop-sleeve dress and a red double-bikini-string halter dress. She also bought me sexy heels and boots. Of course, when it was finally warm enough to wear my new outfits, other girls were fascinated with my new clothes and wanted to know where they could get them, too.
That was all short-lived, however, because Dr. Sevenson called me into her office to tell me that what I was wearing to school was inappropriate.
“We do have a dress code,” she said. “I’ve left a message for your sister. I mean to enforce our standards here,” she added firmly.
“There’s nothing wrong with my clothing,” I insisted.
“Maybe out there, but there is something wrong with it in here. If you wear anything like this again, I will be forced to send you home. That’s all.” She dismissed me with a flick of her wrist.
Roxy was upset about it, but she didn’t put up any argument. I was more unhappy now than ever and wanted to leave the school, but Roxy was taking her “motherly” role very seriously these days, checking on my homework and my grades, making sure that I came back to the hotel when school was over for the day, and demanding to know where I planned to go on weekends and whom I was with. I wasn’t doing much at all, but she was still hovering over me.
“I don’t have a social life at this school and never will,” I told her.
“Just finish up there, M, and we’ll get you into another school. Mama and Papa paid for it. You told me yourself that it was important to Papa.”
Reluctantly, I returned to wearing what I always wore, but the damage had been done. Although Evan was the only boy I had gone out with from the school, his earli
er stories about me now were more believable. I had been guilty simply by being related to Roxy. Now I was condemned forever because of where I lived and whom I lived with. I could see it in the lustful looks boys gave me at school and hear it in the remarks they mumbled when they were near me.
How could I live in a hotel with a sister who was a professional escort?
The truth was that in the beginning, life at the hotel wasn’t unpleasant or uncomfortable at all. Twice a week, Roxy had a guest—or a client, as she called him—and I stayed in my room and read or did my homework, just as I was instructed to do. There were three occasions when I had to leave and stay in one of the other hotel rooms. They were nowhere as comfortable as mine, but I did what I was told. So far, after a few months of this life, I had not yet seen or spoken again with Mrs. Brittany, and I wasn’t sorry about it.
Roxy was successfully keeping me sheltered from the life she was leading and the things she was doing. I obeyed her wishes and asked no questions. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t curious and tempted to sneak a peek or listen to what her clients were saying, but I was too frightened of being discovered and bringing some terrible problems to both of us. I was terrified that it would lead to my being sent to live with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Orman after all.
Then, finally, the situation simmering at school for me boiled over in ways I couldn’t anticipate.
And Roxy was not happy about it.
22
It was Mrs. Brittany who came personally with the complaint. Roxy and I were having the dinner we had ordered from the restaurant on the avenue. I had set the table, and we had just sat and begun. Almost the way Papa would do it, Roxy would cross-examine me about my day at school at dinner every night. In fact, her questions were so similar that I almost broke out into laughter at times. She also wanted to see my tests and comments made on my homework.
“Why are you so worried about my grades, Roxy? You weren’t any sort of student.”
“What I did and what I do is not your concern,” she said. “You’re not me. You have other opportunities out there.”