Streetlight

Eta sat on the dirty sidewalk with both feet in the gutter and her chin on her chest. She had just finished with her third client of the night and was resting before she got back to work. There was time for one or two more before the sun came up and she could limp home.  She put her hands on the sidewalk a few inches behind her and leaned back hard so she could feel the pressure between her shoulder blades. She shrugged her shoulders and dropped her chin to stretch the fatigue out of her neck.   

“Eta, how you doing, kid? You’re not busy, are you? Let’s me and you have some fun.” He held up his wallet with two fingers and waved it at her playfully.

Eta looked up tiredly. Standing just behind her and a little to her left was a man she recognized. His name was George. He lived somewhere out across the lake in the suburbs. He was fat and his thick neck spilled out over the collar of his white shirt. His tie was frayed at the bottom and open a little bit at the collar. His suit coat was too tight in the shoulders and the sleeves were too short.

“No. I ain’t busy. We can go back here in the alley.” Eta stood up slowly and George followed her toward the alley. He was having trouble with his zipper because he could not see below his bulging belly. By the time they reached the narrow opening, though, Eta already had her dirty white blouse unbuttoned.

When Eta and George emerged from the alley, a misting rain had begun to fall. The small rain softened the edges of the circle of light cast by the only unbroken streetlight on the block. The light formed a warm yellow halo that seeped into the street and across the sidewalk where it climbed up the front of the vacant building that formed one side of the alley. Eta stood quietly in the shadows, glad to have the deep darkness just before dawn to obscure her transaction with George. George quickly counted out several 20-dollar bills. He was more than three times Eta’s age. His shirttail was now tucked in on only one side. His necktie had been removed and was jammed into the right-hand pocket of his sports coat so that only the frayed wide bottom end showed.  A car came slowly down the street and Eta grabbed the man by the sleeve of his coat and pulled him back toward the ally into the even darker shadows.

            What?” he asked, looking around fearfully. “What is it?”

            “It probably ain’t a cop,” Eta said. “But you never know, and I don’t need to get busted tonight.”

            “This was a big mistake,” the man said. “Here take your money. I’m going to get out of here. How far is my car?”

            “What’s the matter, honey? Didn’t you have fun this time? If you got any more cash in that big ol’ fat wallet of yours, I bet I could make you want to come back.”

            “Ah, no. I . . . I need to get out of here. Maybe I’ll see you around again some time.”

            “I’ll be here, Honey. Right here on this block. You know where to find me. I ain’t going nowhere.”

            George turned quickly and waddled away up the street in a hurry. He kept turning his head from side to side, but he did not look back at the girl. Eta watched him until he reached the corner. He stopped and looked both directions. He smoothed down the collar of his sports coat and tucked in his shirt as he headed across the street. He disappeared into the darkness and Eta turned away. She counted the money George had given her and noticed that one of the bills was torn nearly in two. She folded the bills in half and stuffed them with the rest of her night’s receipts into beaded child’s purse hanging from a thin strap on her shoulder. She had not removed the purse, even while she was with George in the alley.

Eta looked down and noticed that she had forgotten to button her blouse. She hadn’t noticed the rain before, but now she realized the soft mist felt good on her bare skin. She ran her fingers through her damp, stringy hair and then wiped the water off her hands on the sides of her still unbuttoned blouse. Her hands met at her abdomen, and she stood motionless with her eyes closed for a moment, pressing her hands gently in on her soft stomach. Every night, after her last client, her body began to shake slightly, and she felt a great wave of deep nausea. Eta never threw up because she never felt as if there was anything there… down deep. She looked up the street in the direction George had gone. The street was empty, but Eta remembered that far off and in a different direction she once had a place to go.

            She turned up the street and realized someone was standing beneath the unbroken streetlight. She walked in the direction of the light, and when she got close enough, she saw that a very thin man was leaning against the lamppost in the center of the yellow halo. The man did not move. Eta smirked when she got close enough to see him clearly.

            “Where did you come from,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone dressed like you before.” The man’s faded jeans were too short, so his bony ankles showed above craggy, sockless feet and new-looking leather sandals with old tire tread for soles. The man was so thin his jeans barely clung on his narrow hips. His oversized tie-dyed tee-shirt covered a deeply sunken chest that seemed almost detached below perfectly level shoulders. He was clean shaven, or he may have never needed to shave, and he had unkempt blonde hair pulled tightly back and secured with a large red rubber band, forming a crude ponytail. He had three deep, jagged scars on his forehead, and he continually rubbed his right side, as if he’d been hurt.

            “I see you’ve been entertaining George,” the man said when Eta came to edge of the halo, which seemed to brighten as she approached. She deliberately stopped just outside the circle of light. “He needs to stop doing that. We’ve warned him, but he’s not getting the message.

            “You a cop?” Eta said. “You don’t look like a cop, but I can’t hardly tell anymore. If you’re a cop, let’s just get this over with, so I can get back to my apartment and get some sleep.”

            “No, Eta. I’m not an officer of the that law. I generally take a pretty liberal view of most things, but there’s some things we just don’t tolerate. I just want a little of your time, that’s all.”

            “Well, unless you’re a cop or unless you got more money in them jeans than it looks like you do, we ain’t going to be spending any time together.” She started to turn away, but sohefeet would not move.

            The thin man said nothing. He leaned his head back against the lamppost and looked up at the moths and circling in the yellow light. Eta shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“I think I can make the next few minutes or so worth your while,” the thin man said.

            “I’ve got an apartment nearby or we can use the alley, but you got to show me some money, Slim, or we’re not doing anything.”

            “Fair enough. It’d be foolish for me to say that ‘money’s not everything’ to a girl in your, ah, line of work. But I do have something valuable. Something you lost a long time ago.”

            Eta had stared hard at the thin man. He hadn’t moved from his place beneath the streetlight, and she was still in the shadow.

            “I mean, just look at how you’re dressed. What would your mom and dad think?”

            “I haven’t been back home for a long time. I don’t guess they don’t think much about me at all. What do you know about my mom and dad? I ain’t seen them for four years. I figure they’ve forgot all about me by now.”

            “That’s not true, Eta.”

            Eta glared at the thin man and began tapping her foot on the sidewalk. Her lower lip began to tremble, either from anger that this stranger would mention her parents, or from a grief that she’d kept hidden for a long time. She felt the first rumblings of nausea again. Maybe, she thought, this guy knows something. She stopped tapping her foot and stuck out her chin to stop the trembling.

            “Did they send you, then?” Eta’s words sound like an accusation but sat just on the edge of hope. “Did my mom and dad send you to find me?”

            “No. They did not.”

            “Oh,” her voice fell away. “I thought maybe . . .” Eta stood still for a long time in the shadows while the thin man continued to rub his side. She had thought of her family every gray day and every black night, every time a fat man in a wrinkled suit paid her off with a handful of soiled bills.

            “But,” the thin man said. “I think they might like it if you came home.”

            Eta took a hesitant step toward the bright circle. The thin man did not move. At the verge of the light, she stopped. 

            “How do you know what they might want?” she asked.

“I know a good deal more than you’d think I’d know. Some of what I know is not too difficult. I mean it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where you’re headed. But, girl, there is another narrow way, another hard road that might get you to a safe place.”

            “It’s all hard,” she said. “What’s the difference?”

            “The difference is you where end up at the end . . . of the road, I mean.”

Eta remained in the shadow. She looked up and down the street, and for the first time, she noticed how deep and impenetrable the dark beyond the glow of the streetlight had become and an icy fear raced suddenly up her spine. She started to step into the circle of light, but hesitated and stood her ground.

            “I can’t go back now,” she said. “There’s nothing for me back there. Maybe there was, but not no more.”

             “You’ve got it all wrong… again,” the man said. “The road I’m talking about, the way out of here, only goes one direction and it’s not backwards. There has always been something for you down that road. But you’ve been crippled, blinded by some really nasty visions planted in your brain by people with no love for you. Your parents love . . .”

            “You don’t know what it was like,” Eta suddenly blurted through a deep sob. She felt conflicting waves of anger and grief surge up and out of her from the same place deep inside from which the nausea had come as tears steamedown her face.

“How could you know,” she sobbed. “I had to leave. I had to. You don’t know.”

            The thin man stopped rubbing his side as tears ran down his cheeks and dripped off his chin.

“Child,” he said, almost whispering. “Believe me. I know.”

Eta’s mouth fell open, but she said nothing, and the girl was startled when the thin man’s kind brown eyes suddenly darkened as if in memory of some distant hurt. Then, when he reached up with both hands and gently massaged the scars on his forehead, Eta felt the pain and the grief, and the anger unleashed by her tears suddenly cooled, and the nausea subsided. The thin man stopped rubbing his forehead and turned to meet Eta’s eyes. Eta saw that the pain on his face had been replaced by a profound sadness, but the tears had stopped.

“How could I not know?”  he asked.

He stretched his hands out just above his shoulders. Eta saw the thin remains of a jagged hole in each palm. The wounds had healed, but the paper-thin scars remained. The girl felt small when she realized how the man might have gotten such horrible scars.

“We can’t undo the blindness from before, but you can find your own way out of here. I can help.”

“What can you do,” Eta said. “I left home four years ago, thought I was pregnant. I wasn’t. My mom called me a whore. My dad hit me. I thought they would hate me forever. I thought . . .”

The memory brought the tremble back to Eta’s lip and the first tear she had shed since coming to the city trickled down her cheek. The thin man had begun to rub his side again, but he still leaned against the lamppost.

“I moved here and hooked up with a guy who said he could help me make some money,” she said. “And I started to trick. I wanted to go home after that, but I was so ashamed, so scared. I thought . . .”

“I know all that,” he said. “But, don’t you see, thinking is your problem. You’re thinking too much. You probably ‘think’ it’s too late for you, but it’s not too late, not yet.”

On the other side of the yellow circle, a second man appeared. Eta recognized him immediately. He was very tall, dressed in a bright red shirt open to the navel and a deep blue coat that extended to the ground with sleeves much to long. On his head was an oversized black cowboy hat. He gripped a heavy leather strap in his right hand, which he tapped against his leg. Eta froze, then stumbled two steps backwards, but then she collected herself and held her.

The man in the black hat stayed outside the circle of light and stared past the lamppost to where Eta stood. The girl was frightened now, but she did not move. She continued to tap her foot nervously just outside the circle and directly opposite the man in the hat. The thin man continued to lean motionless against the lamppost in the exact center of the bright halo. The man in the black hat could not see Eta’s face because it was obscured by the deep dark that seemed to ooze from the alley and pool up at the edge of the circle. He knew the girl was Eta because he recognized the very short skirt she wore. The skirt had been cut from an old pair of jeans she had brought with her when she left home.

  “What are you doing with this bum?” the man demanded. “Either do him or get rid of him. Time’s wasting. I’m warning you, girl. You get to work!”

The thin man did not move from his place against the lamppost. He did look at  thman in the black hat. “Leave,” he said firmly. “Go now! You don’t want any more trouble than you’ve already got.”

The tall man stepped toward the lamppost with the strap raised over his head. “We’ll just see who’s got trouble, fool,” he said.

The thin man stepped away from the post and turned toward the man with the strap. As he did so, Eta gasped when the thin man seemed suddenly to tower over the man in the black hat. The man lowered the strap and took a step backwards. He squinted as if the light hurt his eyes.

 The thin man took one step toward the man with the strap. He did not raise his voice. “I said, go now. Do not come back. Do not trouble this girl further.” The man in the red shirt dropped his strap as he retreated into the shadows. He turned quickly and disappeared up the street and away from the streetlight. The thin man returned to his place against the lamppost.

Eta looked away from the lamppost in the direction the man in the red shirt had gone.

“Hell, now I’m going to have to take a beating,” she said. “That was Eric. He’s my pimp. I work for him.”

“I don’t think so. Not anymore, I think you’ve been downsized,” the thin man said. “He’s in more trouble than I can help him with right now. He’ll be a project. It may be past time for him.”

“Who are you?” Eta asked. “Eric’s a very bad man. If he comes back, he’ll bring a gun. You need to get out of here.”

No,” the thin man said. “I’m not leaving, ever. But you do need to leave this place, and now.”

            The man pushed himself away from the lamppost and took a step toward Eta. The glow from the streetlight expanded, and the girl was no longer standing in the shadows.         Eta realized she was breathing hard, her legs began to tremble, and she was afraid she might pass out. She slowly lowered herself to her knees and fell forward onto her hands. Her head hung low between her shoulders, and she began to sob again. Tears, first of deep sadness then of blessed relief, welled up in her eyes and flooded down her warm cheeks. When the dizziness and the sobbing passed, she sat back on her heels. The thin man was standing over her. Eta bowed her head and her long black hair fell from her shoulders, the jagged ends brushing softly against the thin man’s craggy feet, which had been dampened by Eta’s tears. With both hands, she reached out and gently wiped the tears away with her hair.

            “Get up,” he said.

            “What?”

            “Get up. I appreciate the gesture but save it for later. I need you to stand on your own two feet for a while. These fainting spells, or whatever they are, just won’t do. We’ve chosen you because we thought you were stronger than the others.”

            “Chosen me? Who? For what?”

            “To go home. Come with me.”

                        The mist was gone, and the first gold of the rising sun was slowly erasing the urban darkness at the far eastern end of the street. Eta took the thin man’s hand, and he helped her to her feet.

            “Are you taking me home?” she asked. “Do my mom and dad know I’m coming?”

            “They’ve been asking about you,” he said. “They’ve never forgotten.”

            “Me either.” Eta took the small purse that was still hanging from her shoulder swung it once by the long strap and tossed it to the sidewalk near the opening of the alley.

            The thin man gently turned Eta away from the darkness hiding in the alley. As he guided the girl up the street, the thin man looked back over his shoulder to see, peaking out of the alley with nothing visible but his fiery black eyes, the man in the black hat reaching for Eta’s purse. Their eyes met and the man melted back into the darkness. The thin man put his hand on Eta’s shoulder. The girl stopped and turned back toward him. The thin man looked over the top of Eta’s head and nodded with his chin in the direction of the sunrise.

            “You go on now, child,” he said. “You know the way. I’ve got something to do.”

            Eta said nothing. The thin man nudged the girl gently up the street, turned back, and headed in the direction of the alley. He stopped only once, to reach down and pick up the strap the man in the black hat had dropped on the sidewalk. He stood erect and strode deliberately and without deliberation to the opening of the alley tapping the strap against his leg. Eta did not turn back, but if she had, the girl would have seen the thin man enter the alley without hesitating just as the streetlight blinked off in the full light of day.