“Hi. Yes, I’m Debbie Dewey,” and turned to show herself in profile. “Or, eight nine five, three two nine.” Then, facing the room again, “That was my Department of Corrections number while I was down most of three years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. True story. I was visiting my mom in Florida and happened to run into my ex-husband . . . with a Buick Riviera.”
She paused, getting a pretty good response, and said, “It was a rental, but it did the job.”
More laughs this time, the audience warming up to her conversational delivery, Debbie holding back, not giving it too much.
“I was stopped for a light on Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, and there was Randy, Mr. Cool in his yachting cap and shades, he’s crossing the street right in front of me as the light turned green.”
A few laughs now in anticipation.
“I said to the arresting officer, ‘But I had the right of way.’ ” More laughter and she shook her head at the audience. “Randy’s another story. He seemed like such a sweet, fun guy, a real free spirit. How many people do you know have a pet bat flying around the house?” Debbie hunched her shoulders and ducked her head, waving her hand in the air. Now she stood with her eyes raised, a cautious expression, until she shook her head again.
“By the time the bat disappeared I’d come to suspect Randy was a snake. There were certain clues . . . like his old skin lying on the bathroom floor. So when I noticed the bat was no longer around, I thought, My God, he ate it.”
Some laughs, but not the response she’d hoped for.
“But his molting wasn’t the worst.” She waited for the few laughs that came from people who knew what molting meant. “Finding out he had another wife at the same time we were married didn’t sit too well. Or the fact he used up my credit cards and cleaned me out before he skipped. So when I happened to see him crossing the street . . . I thought, Where can I get a semi, quick? Like an eighteen-wheeler loaded with scrap metal. You know, do it right. Or do it again—I thought about this later—as soon as Randy’s out of his body cast. But by then I’d been brought to trial, convicted, and was one of six hundred ladies making up the population of a women’s correctional institution, double-fenced with razor wire.”
Debbie held the sack dress away from her legs as though she might curtsy.
“This is the latest in prison couture. Can you imagine six hundred women all wearing the same dress? You’re also given a blue-denim ensemble—shirt, jacket, and slacks with a white stripe down the sides. You can wear the jacket with the dress if you like to mix and match. You’re given underwear and two bras that come in one-size-fits-all. . . . Honest. You knot the straps trying to get the bra to fit, and you keep knotting till you get your release.”
Debbie had reached into the dress to fool with the straps and could feel the audience with her. Especially the women.
“I thought of stuffing the cups, but you’re only given four pairs of socks. The dress, by the way, comes in small, medium, large, and extra-large.” She held the skirt away from her legs again. “This is the small. I made a suggestion to the superintendent one time, a nice guy, I said, ‘Why don’t you offer more smaller sizes, even a petite, and send all the ladies who wear extra-large to a men’s facility?’ As you might imagine, large women have a way of making the prison experience more to their liking. The kind of thing that can happen . . .”
Debbie raised her face, eyes closed, and moved her hands over her arms and shoulders, her breasts.
“Imagine luxuriating in the shower, rubbing yourself all over with the industrial-strength soap they give you . . . the water soothing, rinsing the blood from your abrasions, and you hear a voice murmur, ‘Mmmmmm, you pretty all over.’ You think fast, knowing what you’ll see when you open your eyes.”
Debbie turned her head to one side and looked up, way up, as if gazing at someone at least seven feet tall.
“ ‘Hey, Rubella, how you doing, girl?’ You want to keep reminding Rubella she’s a girl. ‘Girl, you feel like a cocktail? I’ve got some hairspray if you have the Seven-Up.’ Or, ‘You want me to fix your hair? Get me a dozen pairs of shoelaces and I’ll make you some cool extensions.’ ”
Debbie had been looking up with a hopeful smile. Now she turned to the room with a solemn expression.
“And if you can’t think of a way to distract a three-hundred-pound sexual predator, you’re fucked. Literally. Whatever way Rubella wants to perform the act.”
It was working and she felt more sure of herself, the audience laughing on cue, waiting for the next line.
“Actually, though, being molested or raped by some tough broad isn’t as common as you might think. Girl prison movies like Hot Chicks in the Slammer, with inmates running around in these cute Victoria’s Secret prison outfits? It isn’t anything like that. No, in women’s facilities chicks form family groups. The older ones, usually in for murder, are mothers . . . Really. There may be a father played by a dyke senior citizen. There are sisters and what pass for brothers. And there are, of course, chicks with chicks. Hey, even in the joint love is in the air. What I did, whenever one of the chicks found me attractive, I’d go, ‘Oh, hon, I hate to tell you this but I’m HIV positive.’ And it worked until this one grins at me and goes, ‘I am, too, sweetie pie.’ No, my most serious problem inside . . . What do you think it was?”
A male voice called out, “The food.”
“The food’s another story,” Debbie said, “but not my number one complaint.”
Another male voice said, “Standing in line.”
And Debbie smiled, one hand shading her eyes as she looked out at the audience. “You’ve been there, haven’t you? You know about standing in line. And what happens to anyone who tries to cut in? You can buy your way in, give someone in the canteen line a couple of cigarettes and she comes out and you take her place—that’s okay. But if anyone tries to cut in . . . ? Listen, since I’m home I do all my grocery shopping at two a.m., so I won’t have to stand in line. If I happen to shop during the day, I never buy more items than the express checkout will take, like ten items or less. I watch the woman in front of me unloading her cart and I count the items. If she has more than ten? Even one more? I turn the bitch in. I do, I blow the whistle on her, demand they put her in a no-limit checkout line. I know my rights. Listen, even if the bitch picks up some Tic-Tacs or a pack of Juicy Fruit, and it puts her over ten items? She’s out of there—if I have to shove her out myself.”
Debbie had struck a defiant pose. She began to relax and then stiffened again.
“And if some guy in a hurry tries to step in front of me? . . . You know the kind. ‘Mind if I go ahead of you? I just have this one item.’ A case of Rolling Rock under his arm. Do I mind? All he has to do is make the move I’ve got a razor blade off the rack ready to cut him . . . and I’m back with the ladies on another aggravated assault conviction. Let me just say, you haven’t waited in line till you’ve waited in line in prison. But even that wasn’t the worst thing. To me, anyway.”
Debbie paused to look over the room and the audience waited.
“I should tell you, a number of my dorm mates were in for first- or second-degree murder. Brenda, LaDonna, Laquanda, Tanisha, Rubella you’ve met, Shanniqua, Tanniqua and Pam, two Kimberleys who went bad and a Bobbi Joe Lee, who played a couple of seasons with the Miami Dolphins till they found out she was a chick. There are ladies you don’t want to mess with unless you’re behind the wheel of a Buick Riviera, with the doors locked. So in the evening when it’s time to turn on the TV? Guess who decides what we watch. Me? Or bigger-than-life Rubella. Me? Or the suburban housewife who shot her husband seven times and told the cops she thought he was a home invader . . . coming in the back door with a sack of groceries, four in the afternoon?” Debbie paused. “To me, the worst thing about prison was a sitcom the dorm ladies watched every evening on local cable TV. Guess what it was.”
8
* * *
DEBBIE CAME OUT TO THE lobby bar wearing jeans
and a light raincoat, her prison dress and shoes in a canvas bag. She saw Fran waiting and was sure he’d say something about the set—nice going, anything. No, her first gig in more than three years and Fran goes, “Here, I want you to meet my brother.”
The one turning from the bar with a drink in his hand, Fr. Terry Dunn, black Irish in a black wool parka, the hood hanging about his shoulders. Now she saw him as a friar, the beard, the gaunt face, giving him kind of a Saint Francis of Assisi look. He came right out with what she wanted to hear:
“You were terrific”—with a nice smile—“really funny, and you made it look easy, the conversational style.”
“That either works,” Fran said, “or it doesn’t.” Fran serious about it. “You have to have the personality and be naturally funny. You know what I mean? Not just recite punch lines.” He said, “Debbie, this is my brother Terry.”
He held her gaze as they shook hands, still with the nice smile. She glanced at Fran and back to the priest.
“I don’t have to call you Father?”
He said, “I wouldn’t.”
Now she didn’t know what to say. How was Africa? But then wondered if they were there for the whole set. “I didn’t see you before I went on.”
“You’d just come out,” Fran said, “giving your DOC number as we sat down, in back.”
Terry was nodding. “You were about to run into your ex with the Buick.”
“The Buick Riviera,” Debbie said.
He smiled again. “I wondered if you tried other makes. A Dodge Daytona?”
“That’s not bad.”
“Cadillac El-do-ray-do?”
“Eldorado was on the list, but what’m I doing driving a Cadillac? So I went with the Riviera.”
“Yeah, that worked.”
Fran, antsy in his tweed sport coat, a sweater under it, said, “We’ll go someplace we can talk and get something to eat.” Debbie lit a cigarette, Terry holding her bag, while Fran told them he’d forget to eat with Mary Pat and the little girls in Florida. “This guy”—meaning Terry—“all he eats is peanut butter since he got home. Eats it with a spoon.” That was something she could ask: why there wasn’t any peanut butter in Africa. Fran led them out of the Comedy Castle, on Fourth in Royal Oak, and around the corner to Main, Fran telling his brother how he’d suggested she act nervous when she comes out, scared, so if the act doesn’t exactly rock, the audience would still sympathize with her, like her spunk.
The priest said, “Debbie doesn’t need spunk. She’s cool.” Surprising the hell out of her.
She hunched her shoulders saying, “Actually I’m freezing,” almost adding, “my ass off,” but didn’t. The priest, huddled in his parka, said he was too. So then Fran had to tell them it wasn’t cold, it was spring, forty-seven degrees out. Terry said, “Oh, then I guess I’m not cold,” and she felt in that moment closer to him and knew that if she’d said, “my ass off,” he still would’ve agreed, maybe given her the smile.
They got a table at Lepanto. Fran, still on, asked the waitress if they had banana beer, the only kind his brother here from Africa would drink—Debbie wishing he’d please get off the fucking stage. The waitress said with no expression, or showing any interest, “We don’t carry it,” and Debbie could’ve kissed her. Fran was out of it while she ordered an Absolut on the rocks, but then got back in when Terry said all he wanted was a Scotch, Johnnie Walker red if they had it. Fran told him he should eat something besides peanut butter. How about an appetizer and a salad? Terry said he wasn’t hungry. Fran was studying the menu now while Terry sat there in his parka.
Debbie thought he looked beat, maybe some African disease like malaria hanging on. She loved his eyes, his quiet expression. She said to him, “I’ve been trying to picture where Rwanda is exactly.”
“Right in the center of Africa,” Fran said, his nose still in the menu, “practically on the equator. You’re a missionary over there you come home every five years to cool off and get your health back.” He looked up now to say, “If you’re not gonna eat I’m not either.” But now the waitress was back with their drinks and he ordered a Caesar salad and some rolls.
Looking at Terry she said to Fran, “Did he always want to be a priest?”
Terry smiled as Fran said, “Even as a kid he felt he had a vocation. Like you might’ve thought of becoming a nun when you were at Marian.”
“The Academy of the Sacred Heart, please. I was a rich kid.” She was dying to ask Terry about smuggling cigarettes, but would lose her nerve when he looked at her. She asked what order he belonged to. He told her the Missionary Fathers of St. Martin de Porres.
“There’s a school in Detroit with that name,” Fran said, “all black kids, but there’s no connection.”
“Other than Martin de Porres was black,” Terry said, “on his mother’s side. His dad was a Spanish nobleman. They weren’t married and for a long time the father wouldn’t have anything to do with Martin, since he was a mulatto. Or you could say he was African—South American. This was in Lima, Peru, around sixteen hundred. He was canonized because of his devotion to the sick and the poor.” There were no comments, a silence, and Terry said, “Martin de Porres is the patron saint of hairdressers.”
Fran said, “Yeah, well that was a long time ago.”
Debbie passed. She might ask why some other time. So she asked if he’d run into any comedy over there. “Any African stand-up?”
Terry seemed to think about it as Fran said, “Deb, it’s hard to think of anything funny when hundreds of thousands of people are being killed. Terry was right there during the entire period of the genocide.”
Debbie said, “I can’t even imagine that.” She couldn’t remember hearing much about it, either, the genocide.
“On the altar saying his first Mass,” Fran said, “when they broke into the church. A scene that’ll stay with him the rest of his life.”
Terry’s expression didn’t change. She thought of it now as kind of a saintly look, the dark hair and beard part of the image, the hood of the parka hanging like a monk’s cowl. She hoped he might add something, so she’d know what Fran was talking about.
But now Terry was telling her again, “You were really funny. You must’ve felt good about it.”
“Most of it,” Debbie said.
“Where’d you get the pet bat?”
“Out of the air. I wanted to describe Randy as evil in a funny way, if you know what I mean, this good-looking but sinister guy with a bat flying around the house. It didn’t get much of a laugh.”
“It worked for me,” Terry said, “but then I’m used to bats. They’d come out every night and eat a few tons of bugs. I liked the skin on the bathroom floor, too, Randy the snake molting.”
“That’s right,” Fran said, “you were gonna see if you could make that work.”
“It either didn’t,” Debbie said, “or only a few people got it. Or if you’re gonna do weird humor you have to establish it right away, not slip it in somewhere.”
“The only thing I didn’t get,” Terry said, “was the worst thing in the joint being the TV show. But then I never saw it. What’s the name of the show? Urkel?”
“He’s the character,” Debbie said. “The show’s called Family Matters. Urkel’s a nerdy black kid with the most annoying voice I’ve ever heard, and the ladies in the dorm’d cry laughing at him. But you’re right, it doesn’t work. I’m getting rid of Urkel.”
“Maybe do more with Randy.”
“I could; but I get mad thinking about him and then it’s not funny. I didn’t hurt him enough.”
“You mean there is a Randy and you hit him with a car?”
“A Ford Escort. But you say you happened to run into your ex-husband, beat, with a Ford Escort, it doesn’t make it. And I didn’t just happen to run into him.”
“She ambushed him,” Fran said, eating his salad now, “laid in wait.”
“You have to understand,” Debbie said, “the guy wiped me out, totaled my B
eamer, got rid of my dog, stole cash I’d hidden away . . . He’s the only guy I know comes out of the bathroom he doesn’t have a magazine or the newspaper under his arm. He’d be in there forever. Finally it dawned on me, he’s snooping around, looking in the medicine cabinet, the drawers . . . I’d hide extra cash in there, ’cause if I had it in my bag I’d spend it. I’d put it in a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom closet, in that hollow center, or in a box of tampons. The sneak found twelve hundred bucks and then lied about it. ‘No, it wasn’t me.’ Or I’d forgot where I hid it. Another time I come home, my dog’s gone. ‘Where’s Camille?’ Randy goes, ‘Oh, she must’ve run away.’ This is a Lhasa Apso that had the dog world by the ass, had anything she wanted, toys, gourmet pet chow—and she ran away? I know what he did, he took Camille for a ride and threw her out of the fucking car, a helpless little dog.” Debbie took a sip of vodka and looked up to see Terry’s quiet gaze on her. She said, “I get upset, I don’t normally use that kind of language.”
“You don’t,” Fran said, “since when?”
She watched Terry grin, like he thought his brother was being funny, then surprised her with, “How much did he take you for altogether?”
“He hit her at the perfect time,” Fran said. “I’d just paid Deb her commission on a big case we settled.”
“The total,” Debbie said, “counting what he borrowed, comes to sixty-seven thousand. Plus the car and the cash, all in less than three months.”
“And Camille,” Terry said, “she’s worth something.”
Looking at her with his innocent eyes. Was he putting her on? Now he said, “The guy must’ve charmed you out of your socks,” not sounding much like a priest.