A Matter of Conviction

The transient customers, the ones who approach the girls in bars, generally satisfy their needs in Harlem. The girls will use an empty apartment which they will rent for the evening or for the hour from an old crone who derives her income alternately through supplying the apartments and through baby-sitting for mothers who work. Louisa maintains her own apartment, and she does not live with an “old man.” But she is afraid the Vice Squad will crack down on her one day. This is her constant fear. She has never had trouble with the police, but she knows that trouble will come one day. She talks freely about her profession to various cops she knows, and even to some she doesn’t know. But the Vice Squad cop is a shadowy figure to her, and she dreads picking up a man, taking him to her apartment, and then being arrested by him at the crucial, specified-by-law point when one “exposes her privates.”)

TERRY: He look jus’-like anyone you would meet. He wass wear a summer suit, an’ a straw hat. La mera verdad, era guapo.

LOUISA: Wha’ did he say to you?

TERRY: He said he wass lookin’ for a good time. He said I look like the kind of girl who could show him a good time.

LOUISA: So what did you tell him?

TERRY: I said it depends on what he consider a good time.

(Rafael Morrez sits on the bottom step of the stoop, half listening to Terry’s discourse. His eyes are black in his thin, sixteen-year-old face. He wears a sport shirt with a bright Hawaiian print. Despite the heat, he wears corduroy trousers, the color of which does not match the basic color of the shirt. He is not dressed sloppily, but he has about him the slightly askew look of a blind person which, on a person who can see, might indicate a hasty dresser. The sounds of the street are magnified to him. He knows, too, that it is going to rain soon. He can smell rain and feel it. He has been blind since birth, but every other part of his body is highly sensitive to everything happening around him. There are some who hold that Morrez can even smell danger. But there is danger coming within the next few minutes, and he does not seem to be aware of it. The skies are black and swollen now. It will rain soon. It will rain heavily.)

LOUISA: So what happened?

TERRY: Mama Teresa got me an apartment. I ask for the money first. He give it to me. La mera verdad, era un buen tipo. Until I took off my dress.

LOUISA: What did he do?

TERRY: He said he wass from the Vice Squad, and he is going take me to jail. Then he took back his money and put it in his wallet.

LOUISA: But di’n you ask for identification?

TERRY: He showed it, he showed it. No cabe duda, he wass a detective. I wass very scared. La mera verdad, I never been so scared in my life. Then he says to me maybe we can work it out.

LOUISA: What did he mean, “work it out”?

TERRY: What you think?

LOUISA (shocked): An’ did you?

TERRY: Seguro. You think I want to go to jail?

LOUISA: I would never have done thees. Never, never. Nunca, nunca, nunca.

TERRY: He had me caught! What you want me to do?