The Royal Family

| 105 |

This is the heart of it, the scared woman who does not want to go alone to the man any longer, because when she does, when she takes off her baggy dress, displaying to him rancid breasts each almost as big as his head, or no breasts, or mammectomized scar tissue taped over with old tennis balls to give her the right curves; when, vending her flesh, she stands or squats waiting, congealing the air firstly with her greasy cheesey stench of unwashed feet confined in week-old socks, secondly with her perfume of leotards and panties also a week old, crusted with semen and urine, brown-greased with the filth of alleys; thirdly with the odor of her dress also worn for a week, emblazoned with beer-spills and cigarette-ash and salted with the smelly sweat of sex, dread, fever, addiction — when she goes to the man, and is accepted by him, when all these stinking skins of hers have come off (either quickly, to get it over with, or slowly like a big truck pulling into a weigh station because she is tired), when she nakedly presents her soul’s ageing soul, exhaling from every pore physical and ectoplasmic her fourth and supreme smell which makes eyes water more than any queen of red onions — rotten waxy smell from between her breasts, I said, bloody pissy shitty smell from between her legs, sweat-smell and underarm-smell, all blended into her halo, generalized sweetish smell of unwashed flesh; when she hunkers painfully down with her customer on a bed or a floor or in an alley, then she expects her own death. Her smell is enough to keep him from knowing the heart of her, and the heart of her is not the heart of it. The heart of it is that she is scared. She is scared like the Ellis Street Korean woman in the white halter-top who charged twenty for a blow job or sixty for an hour of converse with her incredibly tight and dry vagina, moaning with pain as her clients fucked her (unless, of course, she could take the sixty and run); she’d been raped by a white guy two weeks before and then dropped off half naked in the street; she said it didn’t hurt in her cunt as much as it had hurt in her heart; for a year she had been carrying pepper spray which another white guy, a nice one, had bought for her, but she didn’t dare to use it when some big tall black gangster in the Tenderloin mugged her, which happened almost every week; gimme your dough, bitch! the tall man would command, and she’d obey. (His name was Justin. He’d not yet joined the Queen.) And every one of those other semi-clean or rotten-crotched women is scared. Each one walks in fear, waits alone — please, she does not want to go alone! Read from her list of if-onlys (which of course includes more important wishes connected with money, drugs and sleep): She needs a friend to go with her. She needs someone to watch her. Maybe she has a sweet young black boyfriend with rasta dreadlocks who if he could look up from the video games at the liquor store might find out where the man is taking her. Maybe she has a business type boyfriend, older, wiser, crueler or not, who talks with her there on the sidewalk in a low and angry voice. Their guardianship is not enough. The sweet young boyfriend, whom she doesn’t make wear a rubber, couldn’t accompany her even if he felt willing, because that would scare off the trick, and even were the trick one of those happy sloppy middle-aged exhibitionists who’d let her boyfriend in while he did her, she still wouldn’t want the boyfriend to see her naked with another man; she’d have to yell at him: Hey! Stop watching or I’m gonna beat you up again tonight! — The older business boyfriend would definitely scare off the trick. She’s alone. She waits for money or death. The heart of it is the fear, because she knows that sooner or later she will get raped, gaffled, and sodomized again and the last time a man did that to her it really hurt; she had to go to the hospital to shit blood for weeks and it permanently messed up her insides. Sooner or later she’ll get AIDS or she’ll get put away by the cops again or she’ll end up inside separate plastic bags in widely spaced dumpsters. In short, she needs the Queen.

| 106 |

A trick went up the stairs of the Odin Hotel with Lily; and the manager, after having buzzed them into the dark green moldy stinking lobby, slammed the grating behind them and then advanced on Lily, snarling: Bitch, you gotta pay your fuckin’ rent, bitch!

Don’t you call me a bitch!

You don’t interrupt me in front of my Mom, bitch! he cried, and then the trick saw the tiny creature which cowered in the corner — evidently the manager’s mother, although the trick would not have imagined that the manager could have had a mother.

Lily took the trick’s hand and started to lead him to her room when the manager forcibly broke their grip, shook Lily’s shoulder and shouted: Get behind me and shut up, bitch! Don’t you ever walk in front of me!

He scared her. He tried to hurt her. She fled, and joined the Queen…

| 107 |

The question of the Queen’s origin, and related questions such as: Was she the only one, or do the unsubdued powers of old Canaan continually form new Queens for the benefit of this world’s outcasts? and then all the unrelated but predictable questions of divinity students, such as: Did blood or celestial ichor flow in her veins? all lack depth and force. We need only know that she was beseeched, and she came. There were no omens of her coming, although retrospective omens are easily invented by those who wish to make life less mysterious than it is, which is why many of the beseechers, Strawberry in particular, would later tell the most extravagant tales. (Extravagance, by the way, is really a form of simplicity. Consider, for example, the magic four-digit Department of Motor Vehicles access number which allows a private eye to read his target’s address and personal description — how wonderful it all is! But the DMV, staffed in part by corrupt incompetents, presents to the world an unedifyingly error-ridden database. If you ask Henry Tyler how he found the Queen, he might say: Well, Dan Smooth helped me, but I matched her social with the DMV database. — And yet we know that she had no social security number. She didn’t exist. Extravagance, simplicity!) Strawberry insisted to the end that a full year before ever being crowned, the Queen appeared down on Second and Mission in front of the old Van Heusen furniture store and at that moment Strawberry felt a strange and thrilling feeling. Could the real truth have been that, wearied almost to death with the dark stale silence of her life, which never thrilled her anymore even when the needle went in, she needed to imagine some transcendent joy at sufficient remove from her that it could not be destroyed by examination? Or maybe the Queen had actually descended into reality before Strawberry’s eyes. Trying to harvest literalness from Strawberry’s myth-fields, I fear, is as exhausting as trying to compare the hard, brilliant comebacks of the Tenderloin girls with the dumb stench of their Capp Street sisters such as Sunflower whose soul had long since closed down for routine business like a fire department on a Sunday afternoon and who arguably never remembered or even perceived her Queen at all. That other beseecher, Sweetpea, who offered the world a whole museum of teardrop tattoos on her forehead, and later insisted that she’d been ready from the very first to do anything on the Queen’s behalf, actually claimed at the time in question that “the girls” could never get together because they were all on drugs and their minds were clouded, that if any Queen asked them to unite with her for mutual protection they’d just laugh. For that matter, Sweetpea herself laughed, and her laugh was more bitter than a flash of winter lightning. Oh, but to hear her tell it! — Soon’s I saw that dear little bitch, I knew, she told Dan Smooth. I knew she was my bitch an’ I was her bitch, forever and ever and ever. — Later, during the reign of Domino, she altered that story considerably.

No, there couldn’t never be a Queen here in the Mission! Chocolate insisted. Maybe in the Tenderloin, because those girls are more high class than us. But not here. Well, actually, since we’re so bad off, maybe we need a Queen more here.

When she said these words to Strawberry, she was not postulating, only playing, and her eyes resembled the grinningly cruel white-set windows of Alcatraz.

But Strawberry, faithful to postulates and to material possibilities, quietly replied: You saying you want to be the Queen?

No, I don’t have means to support the other girls, Chocolate said, condescending to acknowledge that faith because patience and politeness were her profession. — You think if I had means I’d be out here doing this? I worked in a shipyard out in San Diego before this, and then I was a house painter in Portland, Oregon. This is the only I guess you’d call female job I’ve ever had.

You ever get lonely out there? Strawberry asked.

Hell, yeah. Don’t we all?

You want somebody to take care of you?

Sure. But I don’t know any sugar daddies. Who the fuck’s gonna take care of me?

Chocolate, don’t you have family?

Oh, family. Gimme a break!

Well?

I got brothers. They’re the biggest bunch of crooks, theieves, and headaches this side of the earth. And becase of what I do, they don’t know me. Well, I can see that, but ’cause I do what I do, I’ve supported their drug habits; I’ve given them a place to stay when their women kicked them out.

Chocolate, do you want family?

Then in sentences of purest oxygen, which surpassed those of any fat lawyer whispering sweetly into a shackled felon’s ear, Strawberry told her about the Queen, about how if you came in after a long night on the street and hadn’t been able to score any dates, the Queen would front you your drugs until you made good; she’d give you a place to stay, too…

Sounds like a pimp, said Chocolate irritably.

No, a pimp keeps all your money. The Queen’s not like that. She just takes ten percent, like insurance, to share with the girls that need it. She does it out of love.

Bullshit.

I’m telling you true, baby.

Then the other pimps are gonna run her out, unless she maybe stays in some warehouse south of Market…

Chocolate, what would you do if a lady said she was the Queen and offered to take care of you?

Tell her to kiss my ass and fuck herself.

At the same time, honey?

Oh, go to hell, said the black woman, her eyes lidding just like the automatic plastic window slowly sliding back down over the keypad of a bank machine after a transaction.

So much for Chocolate, who soon would love her Queen with an almost bestial tenderness. Who knows where the bright light truly comes from, and who can foresee the whirlwind? Not even the crazy whore. And Tyler, wandering near home on a dismal Sunday morning, or eating breakfast in some sad diner, with Ocean Beach seen through saltblasted windows, likewise understood less than we might imagine; his lust for logic seduced him into retrospective explanations as sterile as those detail description sheets of his profession, which can hardly begin to categorize the world bright, blue, green, and blurred, the world with its many suns of sparkling cars flashing like Phaëthon’s chariot down the track — hardly that, let alone the old, old Queen in her otherwordly glory.

| 108 |

Domino’s induction into the ranks of the Queen’s women was, as may well be imagined, pregnant with difficulties for all concerned. The blonde began as one of those solitary runaways unabsorbed by the crowd at Golden Gate Park; she did not want to be absorbed. Around her swirled the street people with their feuds, hugs, dogs and bicycles. She remained aloof. Tattooed backpacker boys pestered her, and the eyebrow-pierced girls who sat on their duffel bags on the sidewalk tried to befriend her, but Domino remained too honestly and incorruptibly angry to join any crowd (even though inside the runaway still dwelt the little girl who had read a lot of romances and loved talking about conspiracy). When her new profession became known, one of her many enemies wrote on the wall DOMINO SUCKS — LUV SPREADS GERMS but Domino, her eyes stinging with hot tears, merely stood in front of this monument to herself when she waved at cars. A week or two later someone else’s enemy wrote MIKEY IS A TAR BABY on the same spot, and then the antagonism of the world, like its sympathy, quickly faded, leaving Domino alone, which is to say bitterly emancipated, like the tall man with his obscene war-cries against all citizens as he called them, all greengrocers, steadyjobbers, bourgeois taxpayers. “Dating” the longbearded old white men and the blacks in their wool caps of all seasons, and every now and then getting paid to do what she loved with two scowling lesbians in the hardware store, she strode proudly up and down the street in her new jean jacket, panhandling couples in gold-tinted mirror sunglasses and later screaming at them if they ever dared to say: I helped you, she kept her righteousness, and yet life grew worse and worse until after a stint of lap dancing and some cell time in San Bruno, she became just another kid in a dirty hooded jacket sitting on the sidewalk with her backpack on, panhandling and giving blow jobs; then she got another exotic dancing job, from which she was quickly fired; then for a while she became the greenhaired girl whose sign lied:

1. PREGNANT

2. HUNGRY

3. HOMELESS

and then gravity slowly dragged her backward by her ankles and she skidded down past all the girls whose hair was dyed red or blue, past stores selling slinky leopardskin polyester and skull beads, far past all those sunny Saturdays on Haight Street where couples with sweaters tied around their waists used to promenade and give Domino money; she sped down past the other panhandlers, who gazed severely at their boots, and before she knew it was a Tenderloin streetwalker, then one more time a dancer who got fired; she tried office work but the boss didn’t like her attitude, so there she was down in the hotels on Eddy Street where the rock was yellow these nights because they cut it with cornstarch instead of baking soda; there she was wiggling her buttocks and expapillating among the late afternoon leaners and swaggerers just across the street from the Mother Lode’s lavender-fringed windows (inside, on the screen of the ATTACK FROM MARS video game, SAY NO TO DRUGS advised the neon). A cloudless sky, almost as dark as the lavender hemispheres on the Empire Massage sign, helped her pretend that she was still young. Then her first pimp took her. He was as tall as a fire escape. She ran away, but he found her and gave her her first cigarette burn. She tried to run away again — oh, what’s the use? Street life pays its wages; it pays them regularly.

At least we have a place here where we have some refuge, Strawberry said to her. We ended up friends, and it’s neat in a way, it is.

But soon enough Strawberry, tormented and gaffled by the blonde, would be screaming at her: I’ll cut your head off!

Come on, said Domino. Let’s go. Let’s just go down the road right now, just you and me. Come on, come on.

After that, Strawberry was scared of her. When Domino got on the streetcar, Strawberry saw her and got on a different car. But the Queen forced the two of them to make up…

Right now Strawberry still meant to be concerned and motherly in just the same way that Bernadette, now homeless, scolded her ten-year-old daughter (who lived under the foster care of her aunt) for taking the bus to Marin County alone because the girl was starting to “develop” as Bernadette delicately expressed it; Bernadette stashed her breakfast in the trash can and then walked her daughter to the bus station. Strawberry longed to show similar love for her new blonde sister, so she coaxingly said: I mean it, Domino. It’s really neat. What do you think?

I don’t want to talk about it.

Leave Domino alone, said the Queen, caressing the blonde’s neck, but the blonde shrugged her off. The Queen regarded her sadly.

The Queen had known what the matter was even without seeing in the newspaper that photograph of Domino’s sister, who, skinny and old, with a diamond-faced, sunken-cheeked face on a long snakey neck, had just been arrested for helping her boyfriend catch a thirteen-year-old girl whom Domino’s sister herself had dragged into the charcoal-grey van, then bludgeoned, bound, and gagged while her middle-aged boyfriend drove to a Tahoe motel. They left their victim in the van until it was dark. Then they wrapped her in a long bag and carried her into the motel room on their shoulders. They never took the gag out, so they weren’t able to make her suck them off, but the boyfriend, who in police file photographs appeared to be as bored and hangdog as an old security guard at some museum gallery, raped her with his penis while Domino’s sister raped her anally with a dildo and afterward licked the tears off her face. It was almost four in the morning by then, so they didn’t even bother to wrap her up or dress her when they carried her back to the van. The boyfriend had brought his face close to the girl’s terrified face and breathed on her, then promised to let her go, just to watch her face change expression while Domino’s sister masturbated. Then they started driving slowly toward the mountain pass. Domino’s sister got the clothesline. — They threw her corpse into a snowdrift. The police found it two days later. Domino’s sister’s boyfriend was smart enough to blow his brains out, but Domino’s sister thought she could beat the rap by blaming everything on him.

Many months later, on a sickeningly hot summer day on South Van Ness when the Queen and Domino were alone, the blonde said: I knew about it before it went down.

Mm hm, said the Queen.

You gonna drop a dime on me?

You make me so sad when you say that.

Well, Maj, are you planning on dropping a dime on me or not?

Lordy lordy day, the Queen muttered. You gotta trust…

But that was months ahead.

They got you brainwashed, dearie, the Queen had said to Domino on that first occasion. You’re a pretty, pretty girl. You just fell in with the wrong crowd. They just usin’ you for your body. You don’t have to suck nobody’s dick just to get your dope.

Who are you to tell me what I don’t have to do?

I’m a prostitute, the Queen told her. Same as you are. Well, a semi-retired prostitute. I’m busy now lookin’ after my girls. And I tell all my girls this: If you want to suck dick, go ahead. But they gotta pay you good money. If you want to get your dope, all rightie. But you have the right to buy the dope of your choice with your own money an’ not get gaffled, see what I’m sayin’?

Domino tried to stare her down, rubbing a new burn on the back of her arm. — You’re just a control freak, aren’t you? I bet you want to tie me up and fuck me and then turn me out.

Lordy lordy, sighed the Queen. Justin, find her pimp and bring him to me.

The tall man came an hour later. — He said he’s not goin’ anywhere. He said he gonna ex* his runaway blonde bitch. Domino, your pimp gonna kill you!

Oh, fuck off, the blonde said, trembling.

Domino, you want to stay with me? said the Queen. I can talk with him. I can persuade him to set you free. An’ if you don’t like it here, you can leave anytime. How about it, child?

Strawberry, still trying to soothe and befriend the blonde, laughed and said: Maj wanted me to move here a hundred years ago, but I was like, I wanna be independent. Now it’s just, I wanna be home.

Well, that works for you maybe, Domino said. Me, I just want to be evil.

These girls, man! marveled Chocolate. These girls like Domino! I look at ’em and say you stupid bitch.

You just want me to to be your slave, Domino said.

You know what? said the Queen, drawing Coptic crosses on the wall. I’ve treated you so good this past five minutes, Dom. I mean, you’ve got to be one of the best treated and best dressed slaves in my whole kingdom. You don’t even have your chains on today.

Domino, sensing that the Queen was making fun of her, clenched her fists and said: Well, bitch, why do you do it, then?

Why do I do what? Make people into my slaves? How about Strawberry here? Look her in the eye, Dom. You think Strawberry’s got slavey eyes?

Domino, feeling suddenly so ashamed and sad as to be almost breathless, grunted something, her head hanging down as she gazed dully at Beatrice’s feet.

Maj is waiting! shouted Chocolate, and this injunction revived the blonde’s raging suspicion and longing to be gone even though she had nowhere to go, so she shouted: You want my soul. Well, you can’t have it, ’cause it’s mine mine mine. And it’ll never come out.

You know, you’re a rude little thing, laughed the Queen, long-legged, barefooted; the silver necklace on her throat. — You don’t care about what I’m saying, right? You think Beatrice here’s my slave? You think I’m a she-devil? Is that what you think?

What do you want? the blonde wept. What do you want from me?

I want you to lemme love you an’ protect you. Go now, honey. You don’t know what you want and I got things to attend to. That pimp he try to hurt you, I’ll take care of it.

Domino’s arms were crossed. She kept saying: You’re lying. You’re lying. Are you lying to me?

The Queen turned away. Domino looked her coldly up and down and went out. A quarter of an hour later, she ran back screaming with the pimp behind her.

| 109 |

Look at her, said Strawberry. See her big black boyfriend standing right behind her? Not that I’m prejudiced. My main man is Justin. I suck black cock every night, so you don’t need to look at me like that. But when a big black man like that stands behind a hooker, well, sometimes the hooker’s in trouble. You know what they do? The boyfriend hides under the bed. Then while the girl’s taking care of the guy, the boyfriend’s goin’ through his pants, checkin’ out the wallet. That’s how a lot of girls end up dead. It’s like, damn, it’s like, get a grip, girl.

The Queen said: Domino, it don’t matter if you have a hundred pimps behind you. Keep your morals. Keep your scruples.

Let go of me, the pimp said very quietly. His eyes were as yellow as the sign for the Broadway Manor Motel.

You think this is funny, don’t you? said the Queen.

I’m gonna get you, the pimp said.

Raising her head high on her slender neck, the Queen gazed wide-eyed into his face with a small smile and said: Why? Haven’t I treated you right? Fuck this. Get up on your feet, pig.

You want me to ex him? said the tall man. This nigger’s an asshole. I’d love to ex this nigger out.

Knock out one of his teeth first, the Queen said. Just one.

What the fuck! screamed the pimp. In spite of Strawberry’s characterization, he was actually a slender little man, vicious and alert like a snake.

You really want me to smack him in his teeth, huh?

You wanna lose teeth or you wanna be a good little boy? said the Queen. Justin, don’t take his tooth out just yet. Looks like he’s fixin’ to say something.

I know you, bitch! the pimp yelled. I’m gonna do for you!

All rightie, said the Queen.

This is bullshit!

It is that. I know that, said Domino ecstatically, mincing in with a cigarette, shaking the match with her wrist back and forth so graceful, always kneeling.

Sweetie, be cool now, okay? said the Queen. Lemme speak with this gentleman.

Domino sank slowly down, whispering to herself.

Sapphire, go an’ hug her, said the Queen. Go an’ give Domino a big kiss. Don’t be afraid. Go now.

This is between you an’ me now, bitch, the pimp said.

Excuse me, said the Queen. You talkin’ to me?

I’m gonna be on your black ass. I’m gonna hunt you down. I’m gonna get you.

He’s a nasty one, said Strawberry. Justin, you oughta just ex him.

I don’ wanna be too talky now, the Queen mused aloud. We put him out on a crucifix, okay, in the middle of Ellis. Really just take him to the prom. This is out of our area.

That’s rich, laughed the tall man, twisting the cord another turn tighter. The pimp began to cough.

Yes, said the Queen, looking down, smoking, shaking, moving. Feels like your eyes gonna pop out, don’t it, mister? Feels like that blood’s just gonna explode right inside your ugly old head, now, don’t it? Well, you know what? It could happen.

Burn his eyes out! screamed Domino. He raped me! He addicted me!

I dunno — ssssh! said the Queen.

The pimp had begun to strangle now, and that was what Domino saw in her mind later whenever she thought about her sister’s crime. He was snarling, purring, and choking all it once. It was horrible.

There’s a lot of things I can do to him, the Queen said. But really what I wanna do is scare him. What you think, Justin? Should we put out one of his eyes? Or the tooth? Where should we start? How can we get him to listen?

Shit, why you askin’ me? Just make up your goddamned mind. I’m sick of this motherfucker.

Get out, said the Queen. Get out and never come back.

The tall man let go. The pimp got out.

Now, dearie, said the Queen. You wanna stay or you wanna go? Whatever you want, that’s cool here with us. You wanna talk with Strawberry or…?

Are you that out of whack? Domino screamed. Are you that ignorant? Haven’t you figured out that the more you help these bitches the more you’ll just be encouraging them to make some dumb illusion and crawl inside it until it’s too late while you go about your own cruel life refusing to do the one thing that they long to have you do?

And what would that be? said the Queen, faintly smiling.

The blonde burst into tears.

Okay, honeypie, said the Queen. All rightie. Never mind. You can stay…

There wasn’t a month before I come in here I wasn’t beatin’ up somebody, said Chocolate soothingly. Don’t even know what the heck I was doin’ it for. You wanna stay? Why don’t you stay?

Sobbing, Domino nodded

But later, when they were alone, the tall man said to the Queen: I don’t like her. Lemme check her out.

| 110 |

Papa, comprehending, sentient, and somehow tame, was still handsome. His bushy eyebrows were what had helped him accumulate the woman-memories which now protected his back. He owned the Liberty Bar on Eddy Street. There was something about him which struck the tall man as gently naked, some secret part of him whose inability to hide itself provoked tenderness, as when a woman’s T-shirt rides up her back when she bends over her pool cue. — Well, I’m a new man! a drunk was telling him. A new man, I said! He took my wife, my money, and my girlfriend.

Papa nodded sadly.

Can’t you just talk to her? the drunk pleaded.

I don’t want to get involved, said Papa.

Can’t you all at least check to see if she…

No, no, I gotta take her side, Papa said. I’ve known her longer than I’ve known you. I can’t get involved.

Papa, I swear to God, if you don’t talk to her I’m going to kill myself tonight.

All right, son, I’ll talk to her. Come back tomorrow.

Weary blue, those eyes of Papa’s, innocent in a way that could never be made knowing; sentient, I said, but no freer for that, no freedom like that of a bad moral actor…

What can I do for you? he said to the tall man.

You know a blonde bitch named Domino?

Oh, don’t tell me.

You know her? said the tall man, his words greasy, cool and inimical, like the white-painted rivets on the tunnel wall by the Greyhound station. Of course he knew already that Papa knew her. He knew quite a bit about other souls’ attachments and alliances. And what he knew about Papa, that very tenderness-provoking part of him, why, that was what excited the tall man’s contempt.

Sure I know her. She used to go by Judith. Then she was Sylvia. She doesn’t come around here much anymore.

Another shot, please, said the tall man.

Still no ice?

No.

Two and a quarter.

Here’s two.

Two and a quarter.

The tall man slid his sunglasses up his smooth brown skull and said: You tryin’ to rip me off?

I don’t care how big and black you are, Papa said. Anyway, aren’t you asking me for a favor? You want information or not? You owe me a quarter.

Matter of fact, Queen pays two dollars in here.

You want to hear about Domino or not?

Go ahead.

Thank you. Now you don’t owe me a quarter anymore.

Yeah, buy yourself a Cadillac.

All right. Well, Judith was a good friend of the owner. On SSI*, you know, like all those girls. And every month she’d run up a tab with me, you know: Papa, gimme a beer; I’ll pay you when my check comes; this is all I have right now. — She’s a girl, you know, so what can you do?

Break her jaw’s what I would do.

And every month she did it like this. Every goddamned month. And one month when she owed me four hundred dollars she didn’t come back.

Bitch really screwed it to you, huh? Papa, you’re too much. You got a fuckin’ bleedin’ heart.

Sometimes I see her on the street but she just sticks out her tongue at me. Well, that’s life. We never know what’s going to happen, much less why. Even your best friend can lie. Even your best friend can cheat. — Look, Papa went on, showing the tall man a Styrofoam cup which had been kissed by lipstick, but the tall man rose without finishing his drink and went back to the Queen to report that Domino was a cheat, a thief and a liar.

That don’t make no difference, said the Queen. Justin, you gotta try an’ care for her, too…

| 111 |

Even those who hated Domino admitted to respecting and even to feeling awed by her crazy violence, which in the street world meant bravery, honor, worthiness. Those who lived with her were haunted by her; her soul oppressed theirs with its weight and bitter-reeking shadows, and yet they also took pride in her. In her time she’d smashed furniture and heads. It was best to avoid her wherever possible; second best to give her whatever she wanted. Domino herself sensed the limitlessness of her own acts. Deep inside her skull, she hunched and squatted, dull-eyed, scared runaway whose only hope lay in setting her presence alight to give this planet of enemies pause; they said that Domino had a “rep,” that she had “heart.” By this they really meant that Domino was dangerous. The whore from Albuquerque who’d tried to gaffle her out of a dime bag of weed, where was she now? Domino had broken a lamp over her head. And Akoub the Muslim pimp, who’d raped her, wasn’t it Domino who’d set on fire not his hotel room, which proved too difficult to reach, but the entire hotel itself? No matter that what had actually happened was that Domino had raged into the lobby with a can of gasoline which she’d begun pouring on the lobby carpet while everybody screamed and ran and then the blonde pulled a book of safety matches out of her bra, struck one and it didn’t light, struck a second which also failed her, swore, glared fiery-eyed in all directions, and fled. And the night that a man in a fancy car insulted her, hadn’t it been Domino who’d thrown one of her high heels right through his windshield? No matter that the high heel had really been a hunk of brick; indeed, wasn’t brick more ferocious still, if less expressive, less stylish? Everything she did got magnified. She had no pity and showed no fear. She was magnificent. She was as much a part of the other night people as their own tears. Cursing and scrutinizing her, they stood aside to let her follow her own path. They said: Domino went that way. They said: Watch out for Domino. They said: That Domino is one coldhearted bitch.

| 112 |

And Dan Smooth, what magic did the Queen work, to tame him on their first meeting?

I want eyes as blue as ocean water, he’d whispered. I want to drink the sea and be young again, like a… like a dancing little ocean flower…

Are you my little boy? said the Queen, instantly apprehending what he needed. Oh me oh my, Danny, you’re my little honeychild.

After that, Smooth always loved her.

| 113 |

And the tall man, where he came from nobody knew. It was rumored that he’d once been the Queen’s lover, but another tale went that he’d been her pimp until she got her power and converted him into pilgrim, worshiper, and server. What had he been? Even he himself hardly recollected now. His memories of himself scarcely resembled anything which he could recognize, and he didn’t want to remember things anyhow. (Perhaps he’d been one of ever so many black men who sat on the sidewalk glaring into space.) Sentry sleeper before the tent of a prophetess, he wandered a desert partly of his own making, sometimes gaming and smiling, sometimes repelling jackal conspiracies. He leaned and meditated. He confirmed himself with his own courage. He almost never lied. He spoke or he didn’t speak. He deflected, threatened, raved, or again confirmed. To the Queen he was her wall, her flashlight, her pistol, her binoculars. He hunted the Tenderloin streets to cop the cheapest weed, the best uncut china white, the raciest speed, the highest grade ice, the purest white girl so delicious in the crack pipe, the most vicious angel dust. He waited and lived on, a fabulous, enigmatic figure who kept his own counsel and the Queen’s, cipher by choice, half-man, superman, faithful searcher, merciless gleaner. Above them all he was as an iron roof.

| 114 |

The tale of Beatrice, of sweetnatured Beatrice who very rapidly chewed gum with her black black teeth as she swayed herself down the curbside of life, illustrates above all else that wherever Queen Destiny marches in her lethally imperial purple, free will must fall down naked and trembling in every grovelling ritual of hopelessly humiliating abasement suffered not merely by the bitter-comprehending brain alone, not only by the heart which would be proud, but even by the entrails, for free will, stripped bare, must squat down exposing its haunches, to be kissed, whipped, or raped as sparkling Queen Destiny may please. But an uncomprehending child such as Sapphire, or a religious prostitute such as Beatrice herself, may both submit to the purple one without harm, the former because where there exists only sensation without interpretation or memory there can be no permanent emotional wound, the latter because acceptance of rape may truly for sacred natures become willed sacrifice.

Beatrice was a fullbooded Mixteca from Oaxaca, in a village where beyond a fence made of scrap wood, the canyon continued down toward unknown places where they said that puppets well-made enough came to life and ran away from their makers, hiding amidst the lizards, vagabonds, and beautiful turquoise skeletons. Sometimes at night Beatrice heard a strange humming from that direction, and was afraid. In her house the ladders made A-shaped shadows on concrete. A toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste were wedged into the top of the doorframe. Beatrice’s family shared that toothbrush, because they were all one blood. Her Papa’s revolver lay on the concrete. He needed it to protect them. But most of the time he was gone, and the children were forbidden to touch it, so if any animated puppets had come to haunt them what could they have done? After Beatrice had gotten fat and given birth to her own child, she would have liked to inquire of her Papa regarding this point, but by then, as with most wisdom, the motive arrived too late for application. Besides, the puppets never came, so her Papa must have known what he was doing. Beatrice remembered when he used to play with her; now he worked so hard and came home worried and tired. As for her Mama, she’d died of jealousy two years ago, so nobody baked a cake for Beatrice’s name day anymore. But her Papa continued to love her; he always gave her a present on the Day of the Three Kings.

I think I get crazy staying here, doing practically nothing, she said to her friend Juanita.

Can you read and write? asked Juanita with a loving glance.

Can you?

I asked you first.

Somebody was teaching me, but I forgot. See, I don’t have such a good memory, Beatrice smilingly said.

Spades, picks, shovels, and empty bottles inhabited the dirt.

Well, then, you must try for special work, Juanita said, and Beatrice did not know what she meant.

Beatrice was not grey then and never imagined that she could be. Nor was her smile anything but white. Her black shiny hair parted itself on either side of her shiny face, which was made more vivid still by her ever-smiling teeth and the whites of her flashing eyes. She would have liked to wear black miniskirts with the slenderest shoulderstraps because she so often felt hot, but then her Papa, who’d beaten her only twice, would have knocked her teeth out. Fortunately he never suspected that she had any such desires because as her figure continued to ripen (she was fourteen), the girl took to attending church more and more, praying to the Virgin for happiness. Every time she got a few centavos, she’d go light a votive candle, and nobody ever asked what she prayed for. In the cornfield she was a hard and cheerful worker. Her skin became the color of caramelized sugar, and she dyed her hair two or three shades blonder than that.

Juanita was thinking. Beatrice waited. But because she could never wait very long, and because she wanted to make sure that Juanita thought the right things, she winked at her friend and said: You know what? I was gonna do the craziest thing in my life about a week ago. I was gonna go away from here.

Me too, said Juanita. I feel that way too sometimes. But my Papa would never let me.

My dad, he’s mean, too. Because my dad, always when he’s mean, he gets mad at me.

The chickens laughed hysterically.

Juanita leaned forward and whispered something into Beatrice’s ear, and Beatrice’s eyes widened and she laughed.

Well?

I would be very happy, said Beatrice, even though she was afraid.

Well then.

But, you know, I have a novio now, too, Juanita. And my father-in-law and mother-in-law, they order me. I like to do a lot of things, but they don’t let me. If I ask them, they say, you’re crazy. I don’t think they will let me go.

Even once a week? said Juanita.

If it’s once a week I think I could.

I saw you that time, when my sister-in-law got married. You were dancing! You embarrassed?

Red chickens and black chickens ran by in the sun, shaded under the planks of the roof.

I would be very happy, Beatrice said again.

Green trees and blue sky clothed her village. Her laundry bag hung beside her, red and purple and black. A brown spider crawled slowly up the wall. The village smelled like pigs and chickens.

Juanita was dead now, from a shameful disease.

Beatrice wanted to remain a good girl loved by the Virgin, so, continuing innocent of the urine-and-sweat smell of veneral disease clinics, she put the other girl’s proposals out of mind for a whole year, until the Virgin rewarded her in the person of her stepbrother Roberto (son of her Papa’s old novia), who sent her a registered letter all the way from Yucatan, informing her that if she were to ride the bus across Mexico to the grand hotel where he worked, she could earn big money cooking for the foreign tourists. Nobody at Beatrice’s house knew how to read, but the priest, who possessed power over all the churchbells, explained the letter to them and said: Girl, you must go. Roberto wants to do the good thing for you. — Her Papa wept, which made her surprised, ashamed, and pleased all at once. Then he said: Go with God. — And he gave her ten silver pesos. Her sister gave her an herb against witchcraft. And all her little brothers and sisters, who always used to pull her braids and break her toys, became very sad. Beatrice had never known that she was so important. As for her novio, Manuel, he grew very pale and wretched. He didn’t even dare to visit her Papa’s house to wish her farewell. He promised to wait for her for three years. Beatrice smiled at the deliciousness of another soul’s making promises to her. The two little Marias next door kissed her and said that they would pray for her. As for Juanita, she had been locked away by her Papa for going around with boys, so Beatrice, no matter how much she would have liked to learn more secrets and answers, was unable to tell her goodbye. Beatrice tried to be reasonable about this disappointment. Then her Papa made the sign of the cross over her and she went to Yucatan, but on the way she somehow lost the letter from Roberto with the name of the grand hotel where he was working, and consequently she never met him.

She was afraid, but the truth was that she had been even more fearful of living in Roberto’s house. What if new sister-in-law had disliked her? People say that sisters-in-law never agree except when somebody dies. So it was really for the best. She knew she could work in the fields somewhere, or maybe in an ice cream factory where she could eat all she wanted. Or she could become a dressmaker — why not? She knew what a pretty dress was! She wanted to make black sleeveless miniskirts and formal gowns of red velvet. Her greatest fear was that some bandits might fall upon her and rape her until she died, but she prayed to the Virgin until she heard the same humming which used to haunt her childhood back home in the canyon, and then she knew that the Virgin would protect her. The next day she got a job in a shop. The owner said that she was very honest. Then he put his hand on her ass. Beatrice smiled at him just as she had smiled at her novio: such things meant nothing. Men whistled when she walked down the street, and that was likewise without consequence; in fact, it made her feel good.

One hot day maybe six weeks after Easter, Beatrice was in Merida beneath the canopy in the Plaza de la Independencia, when a birdlike old man who sat sipping mango ice among the people in the army-green folding chairs beckoned. It was a Sunday (she remembered that because everybody was dressed for church); they were about to reenact the Mestizo Wedding. Beatrice, who was wearing new tight bluejeans and lipstick of the brightest red she could find, came and sat between the old gentleman and a woman whose arm-skin was blotched like buckwheat pancakes. Her acquaintance wore white from head to toe. His white cowboy hat cooled and shaded her. He failed in handsomeness but he achieved elegance. He asked her whether she lived unmarried, and she said yes. He asked where her Papa was and she said far away. She wanted to believe that this old man was her protector. She longed to feel proud. There she was, sitting like a real lady, recruited into those two facing armies of green chairs, one under the awning, the other against the pillared portico of the Municipal Palace! She was so happy that she couldn’t stop smiling. It was very close and crowded. Her knees engaged the buttocks of two children in the row ahead. Fat women in white blouses lifted up their babies to watch the trumpeter tune his brass proboscis. Bespectacled old widows stirred sweet slush-heaps with their straws. Ladies fanned one another with sandalwood fans from China. Out of kindness or by mistake a woman fanned Beatrice, who squealed: Thank you, señora, thank you! — A sweating vendor dressed in white lowered an immense basket of tan-colored snacks from his shoulder especially for Beatrice, while her new friend, the birdlike gentleman, bought her exactly what she wanted: a bag of salt-crisped corn! No one had ever treated her so kindly. Manuel, her novio back home, had been a very shy and dirty boy who couldn’t buy her anything. Beatrice felt prouder every second. She almost believed that wings would burst from her shoulders so that she’d rise up into the air on a surge of everyone’s applause. In the sunny street it was raining yellow butterflies.

Now, with trumpets and stridulating rattles, while the death-pale master of ceremonies stood under an arch of the Municipal Palace, expressionlessly smoking cigarettes, the children of Merida filed out and began to dance. After each dance the master of ceremonies strode into the light and shouted: Bravo! Bravissimo! Domingo, in Merida! Merida, Yucatan! Merida! until the band began to blare the next dance tune, and he bowed himself back into the shadows. Beatrice had never seen anything so grand. There came the dance when each boy balanced a bottle of beer on his head. Everybody applauded and Beatrice shrieked: Ay! She had fallen in love with all those dancing pairs of children in white, the boys wearing little white sombreros, as if they were the sons of her birdlike gentleman who now held her hand, the girls with yellow flowers in their hair and three stripes of floral embroidery down their long bleached dresses. Each pair wore red neckerchiefs, which on that day appeared to her most eminently remarkable.

Beatrice thought that she understood the way that Merida girls danced with their hands behind their backs. She wanted to dance that way, too. They all danced in the Mayan way, in mincing little steps, scarcely moving their upper bodies. The Mixteca way, Beatrice’s way, was different, but on that Sunday afternoon a sensation of almost belligerent rapture overpowered her; she believed that she could do anything. Her only fear was that Roberto might find her. And now, in tones simultaneously awed and gleeful, the master of ceremonies cried: Our Queen of the Yucatan — sweet as a pastry, hot as a candle, bright as the sun! Beatrice longed to see this personage, but never did.

In the room where the old birdlike man took her, a room in a hotel once a colonial mansion which pretended to be Spanish, Beatrice lay naked in the four-poster bed with her legs spread while the old man mounted her, and, staring over his scrawny shoulders at the canopy which heaved on its posts in harmony with his thrusts, she decided that she wanted to be a dancer in a perfect white dress with three stripes of embroidered flowers. She was very happy. She wanted the skull-faced announcer to proclaim her as bright as the sun. On the radio she heard this song: I am the King, but I have no Queen.

Rather sweetly, the old man kissed her all over. Beatrice giggled. She remembered her youngest brother’s mouth ambling miscellaneously along the pale end of an ear of boiled corn.

The old man said: I wish to thank you. You have made me more happy than I have been since before my wife died, may she rest in peace.

He gave her fifty pesos. He said that she was sweeter than a Durango melon. He said he wanted to marry her because all his children had gone away. Beatrice blushed, feeling very rich and happy and appreciated. Her private parts were a little sore, but she didn’t mind. She never wanted to work in the fields again.

She went that evening to the ancient cathedral to pray to the Virgin for forgiveness in case she had sinned with the old man, and also to pray for assistance in becoming a dancer who would be admired by the entire world. She lit a candle and whispered: Maria, darling, I want to tell you that my Mama and my Papa, they know Mixteca dances from the different parts, and they teach their children. They teach me. The Mayan people here, I think maybe they went to school, but my people, the Mixteca people, they didn’t go to school. They can’t even write in Spanish. They do a lot of things, like the Virgin of the Snows… But please let me try, because I know I can dance as well as they. Please, Maria, darling. You’re my best friend. — This was how she prayed to the Virgin. And high above the altar, the Virgin contemplated her Son’s crown of thorns.

While the priest was speaking words which Beatrice could not understand, the Virgin wept white chains of rain down on all the red-tiled balconies of the city, making surf-convulsed seas upon them. Cold rain smashed away the stuffy heat. Thunder came closer, as sharp and loud as gunshots, and there was a sulphur smell. The drumming of roof-gutters filled the congregation’s ears. Not even those who understood could hear the priest any longer. They gazed out in pleasure and wonder. Rain vomited itself off terraces and drainpipes, frothing onto lower roofs.

Beatrice never slipped over her head the white dress with the three stripes of Mayan embroidery, but she became famous in a kindred fashion behind the sweaty fence-bars of the dancehall with all its men standing across the street from it looking; and the muffled bass of Henry Star and of Los Big Boys weighed down the rainy sweaty light. That was how the Virgin helped her. And every morning at eleven o’clock when she woke up, Beatrice would pray with a candle and a glass of water. She believed so much in her future that she never asked any questions. The men grinned because Beatrice was already dancing.

Very late at night, after the girl in the speckled cape had finished her act, shucking herself like an ear of corn as she stroked her long hair under red light, then Beatrice majestically strode onto the stage, the disco ball brightly burning, and began to dance faster and faster, suddenly raising her hands behind her head as she unhooked her bra, which she then raised above herself in a kind of offering, and the wings of her bra glowed green like a lunar moth, and it was mystic and beautiful and so religious.

Beatrice became the girl that everyone knew, the girl in the black tank top and black miniskirt and shiny black high heels, swinging arms with men as she went down the wet sidewalk. So she had her fame, but she was already getting plump. The Virgin told her that she had to make new efforts. Her dancing changed. First it was graceful, then it was erotic, then lewd, and finally desperate — comically desperate, I should say, for they laughed at Beatrice now when she danced.

Later she got her son and her crown of thorns. Beatrice knew that every soul is put on earth to suffer pain, so she was prepared, and of course the Virgin comforted her, because up until the very day she met the Queen she continued to pray, either in the old cathedral or in her rented room with the candle and the water. The Virgin said in her humming voice that if Beatrice suffered greatly enough, then all the angels in heaven would be proud of her and would help her. In this life, God knows, we must all be patient.

The first thing that happened was when, drunk and high on cocaine, she went home with a man in a stolen car, an anxious and flashy man with dark eyes and a dark hat who promised to give her good money and even said he loved her, which very few men said to Beatrice anymore, but when he saw the police he began to drive faster and faster until he crashed into a bus. The Dark Saint took him then. As for Beatrice, her face was scarred forever. She had to get a day job in a skirt factory. Suddenly she longed for a husband. She remembered her novio back in Oaxaca, but she knew that it was too late and she was ashamed to go home. When she lost her job, she went back to the dancehall. After that, everybody started calling her “the old whore” even though her glistening peachy shoulders proved how young she still was. She continued to resist her destiny, imploring the sad-eyed Virgin in that ancient cathedral of white-weathered and rain-greened whitestone on cool humid evenings under the softly dripping trees where they knelt singing hymns, with wet palmtrees and mosses and large-lobed tropical leaves like seashells growing around them through the open archway. Kneeling people, rising life, rising breaths and prayers, falling rain, descending ironic grace, thus everything went round and round. Beatrice’s prayers rose clacking like long beads on a necklace, then came down like hailstones on her head. After a while she believed that that was how it was supposed to be. For money she masturbated men by the thousands, in just the same way that the old ladies sitting on the concrete floors of city markets slowly knead dough into immense balls, which they then lay upon masses of the same stuff, like God creating humanity from earth, like a woman growing a baby inside her from blood, fruit, and meat. Beatrice did this well. She fed upon the diseased sperm of thousands of men, drinking it down without complaint, transubstantiating it into sacred suffering. Whenever she could, she returned to the Plaza de la Independencia on Sundays to watch the dancers’ white suits and white dresses under white light, the Mayan couples facing one another on those harsh hot afternoons and in the brilliantly lit concrete nights, the ladies tapping their heels back and forth to the steps of La Chinita, their faces expressionlessly smiling, the gentlemen keeping or sometimes not keeping one white-sleeved arm behind themselves. At the dancehall, Beatrice now worked with the same expressionless smile.

One night two drunks whom she’d blown for twenty pesos apiece beat her and slashed her. Then, joined by two other men whom they’d met in their cantina, they raped her in a parking lot. Beatrice thought that she was going to die. That night she went out of her mind and she was glad that she did. In her whole life she never wanted to give any other human being such pain as those four men gave her. When she regained her senses, her first desire was to return home to Oaxaca, but she didn’t have any money. When she made money again, she was already ashamed again. She began to feel hot and tired all the time. Her breasts ached. How could she dance, feeling like that? What was there for her to do in this world? An old bruja who knew how to burn certain flowers to make wishes come true offered to help Beatrice, but she refused the woman because witchcraft is not righteous. She gave birth to a sickly-pale child whose tripas* hung out of his stomach. As soon as she saw him, she remembered the master of ceremonies who’d cried out: Our Queen of the Yucatan on that long ago Sunday, because his face likewise resembled a death’s head. She named him Manuel after her novio. He cried day and night and could not digest her milk. She took him to the doctor to sew up his insides but the doctor said that Beatrice didn’t have enough money. In the afternoons she brought Manuel to the dancehall. She had to keep him indoors so that he wouldn’t get his intestines dirty from the dust. — You make a hole, she whispered to herself, and you put rocks and water in the top, just like Mama and Papa showed you, and you get the branches of those special trees, it’s like a shower, and it’s like if you have a baby, two or three days, you need to have one, to get the good milk from your breasts, not the bad one. It’s like a medicine, to get the women well. To get energy… — She prayed to the Virgin. Then she put her feet up and drank beer on credit with the other whores, who raised their hands caressingly over the child.

Bad men and evil happenings now swarmed about her like colorless rainbows of water vomiting out of wide-throated roof-pipes. They swarmed about her like all the fishes in the sea, fishes finned or beaked, so finally she ran away from Merida with her child, whom for pity then she left with some nuns because his insides were too delicate for her life. All summer she travelled half an hour by bus every night to be with him, but by the Day of the Dead she felt too exhausted. She prayed to the Virgin unceasingly. She prayed when she was selling cakes in the street, when she was renting her pussy, when she was patching her shoes, when she was painfully dancing, trying to favor her abscessed leg, when she was defecating, when she was closing her handbag leaning up at the postal window nervously counting out centavos.

She dreamed of the master of ceremonies. She dreamed that he was waiting for her, sitting with a wrapped boxed cake in the sunny street. In her dreams she heard his cry: Our Queen of the Yucatan — sweet as a pastry, hot as a candle, bright as the sun!

She went to Mexicali because a truck driver gave her a ride there. One day she became very ill with a shameful disease even though she had douched with vinegar. In the hospital they were all rude except for one old whore who told her that if she could run away across the border and hide from the American police, then money would come to her like rushing water turning the desert green. The old whore said that in American California she’d make eight or nine dollars an hour, out of which she’d have to pay the foreman only a dollar an hour to keep quiet. Beatrice lit a candle and prayed. She was afraid to go anywhere now, not excited the way she had once been when she was an ignorant young girl who had hardly even been kissed. She dreamed that she’d gone to America and seen a devil with a face of brass. She woke up screaming. But she’d also heard from other women that three months of illegal sweatshop work in Los Angeles (her legs were becoming too swollen for her to pick peaches or tomatoes, and, besides, the Americans preferred men for that) would support her for an entire year, and she was getting tired of Mexicali because some liar said she’d picked his pocket and so they wouldn’t let her inside the bar anymore, compelling poor Beatrice to stand out in the street at night thrusting out her bosom at unaccompanied men. She felt so lonely that she cried. At least nobody envied her. She had nothing anybody wanted. One hot night a man came to rape her and she said to him: Why use force? I’m indifferent. If you want it, take it. Kill me; I don’t care. — And then the man went down on his knees before her in the street, just like that, and apologized. He was drunk; he was a regular in the pulqueria.

Beatrice gathered together four hundred pesos, a blanket, a dagger, and a box of powdered sugar. Everybody laughed at her and told her to leave the sugar behind but she wouldn’t. A man named Don Chucho took her across the border by night, in exchange for certain services. And then she was in America.

The first opportunity which the Virgin sent Beatrice was to work sewing baby clothes for an angry Korean lady who paid her four dollars an hour, with no breaks for lunch or even coffee. The Korean lady was always yelling at her. There were forty-five women in that place, and none of them had green cards. One morning the police came and she lost everything. But that very night, with the Virgin’s help, she escaped from a window of the bus which was bringing her back to Mexico. Then she felt very free and very afraid. When she was hungry, she stole oranges from the trees. Striving to find her way without doing wickedness or suffering too much pain, she rented herself to the outcast men who lived in cardboard boxes, and they guarded her and sometimes gave her wine. Her desire to stay in America spread through her bloodstream. Someday she would certainly return to Mexico, but only because she had been born there. She could not dance anymore. Perhaps she wished to remain in America simply because the police wished to take her away, and in her experience the police never did people any good. She whispered to the Virgin, not yet knowing that it was for almost the last time.

How did Beatrice come to San Francisco? I don’t know, but I am sure that the Virgin brought her. When she met the Queen at last, she closed her eyes but her heart felt as hot as Mexican light through varnished wooden Mexican blinds blinds drawn up as tight as they go for a Sunday afternoon lovemaking siesta which insistently admits wands of blinding brightness. Why? Because she had recognized that her Queen was the very same as that sad-eyed Virgin over the altar in that church in Merida.

Sometimes in one of the stinking dawns, the Queen saw tears oozing from Beatrice’s dreaming eyes. When the other whores asked her to give Beatrice some remedy, some comfort, she shook her head, saying: What’s gonna take away all her sorrows? Do you know? Let her sleep. Let her suffer in her dreams. Go make yourselves be happy! — When Beatrice woke up, she never remembered that she’d been sad in her sleep, and came running, longing to be close to the Queen’s old, old face.

The other whores said Maj. Beatrice said Mama.

Of all her whores, the Queen loved Beatrice best excepting Sapphire alone. She often said to the others: Beatrice ain’t like us. She’s Christian. She don’t bear that Mark of Cain. Beatrice, now, she’s our special angel.

We worship, we revere with what we have. Isn’t everything divine anyway? Just as in some Italian fishing town statues of the Blessed Virgin in their shrine-niches are framed by cockleshells, so in the Tenderloin I’ve seen crude drawings of the Queen framed by shards of broken glass.

| 115 |

The half-black girl with her blonde-dyed dreadlocks stood listlessly, pressing against the cool hotel window, her left cheek swollen and blistered and branded.

Got a cigarette, Maj? she said dully.

Martha, Martha, what happened to you?

I was talkin’ to a friend while we was layin’ on the floor and I rolled over against a hot iron.

Oh, shit, wept the Queen.

Why you always cryin’, Maj? And now I’m waiting for my uncle to come pick me up and take me to the hospital but I guess he has some things to do…

Uncle who?

Uh—

Hey, Domino! shouted the Queen. You been training this one? She be waitin’ on her old Uncle Crack!

Martha turned her weary back and said with effort: Hey, Strawberry, you got any smokes?

Just enough for my period, said Strawberry. Then she added gloatingly: And it’s nice greenbud, too.

Martha went out onto Turk Street and stood against the wall that said:

J RIDAH BITCH

Hit me when your ready on the track

HIT ME BITCH

Two hours later she was still standing there, grinning frantically at men and cars. Meanwhile Strawberry, Chocolate, and Domino were all telling the Queen their woes. — My son’s only twenty-six years old and he just got twenty-five years, Chocolate wept, and when she wept drool dribbled out between her missing teeth. He went to the public defender but that guy was just the public pretender. And they said my son was a killer. He didn’t hit the other guy but once, and that guy went down and hit his head and died. Now he’s at High Desert. And I can’t see him. I got a letter from my parole officer and took it at the visitation hours but they said their regulations wouldn’t let me see my son, ’cause I have a record. And they took away my six-year-old grandson and put him in foster care. I know he keeps asking for me, but they won’t let me see him. — The Queen cried and kissed her… And Strawberry got drunk and read the Bible and told the others: Everything is everything.

| 116 |

Well, the Queen had said at the very beginning, some of you will follow me and some won’t. The ones that won’t, I won’t give you no trouble if you don’t give me no trouble. — Most followed her, proving the lie of the pimps who looked at streetgirls and laughed: They don’t know nothing about unity, man. — Each one of them attempted to respect the Queen’s silence. She lay there with her hair up in a massive bun intermixed with black yarn, her head sunken on her breast, long reddish beads around her arms, and around her neck a string of beads which the whores had given her, beads of colored glass from broken bottles. Every night they went out under their Queen’s protective spell, every dawn returning to the Queen’s lair in hopes of salvation and rest and even pleasure. Soon it seemed that they had always lived that way, for why shouldn’t it be the case for them as well as others that God had made an oasis?