Candy Licker (5 page)

“Give her your goddamn wallet,” Mama said. “Pull it out
with one hand only. As soon as your other hand moves, your old ass burns.”

He did like she said, passing me a wallet that looked swollen with money.

“How much in there, Candy?” Mama asked.

I opened the wallet. That shit was stuffed and bulging. “A lot,” I said, and just as I turned to pass it back to her that motherfucker nutted up.

“Whore!” he screamed, and grabbed Mama's wrist. I swore I heard her bone snap as he twisted her arm and tried to pull her over the front seat.

“Ahhhh!” Mama shrieked, but she didn't lose control. She bit down on his fingers until he yelped and let go. Mama was all over that ass. She kicked off her shoe and started wailing him with it and flicking that Bic at his stringy hair. Little silver sparks were exploding all around his head.

The trick tried to go over the backseat and get her. Mama beat him all in the face with the heel of her shoe. “Get him, Candy!” she screamed for help. “Fuck his ass up!”

I rolled onto my knees and jumped in, but then he locked his hands around Mama's throat. She kept right on swinging home runs with her shoe.

I punched his old ass all in the back of his head and threw a few quick roundhouses at his face. I scratched the shit out of him too. Clawing my nails down his skin and raking them all over his wrinkled red-ass neck as deep as I could.

But he was trying to kill Mama.

She was gurgling now and barely swinging her shoe at all. I knew I had to do something quick, but nothing seemed to be affecting him because old boy was in another zone.

So I climbed on his back. I grabbed a handful of his face and felt for his eyeballs and proceeded to dig those shits out.

He bucked and screamed and tried to shake me off, but I dug my pointer fingers so deep into his sockets that I probably poked him in his brain. I guess it worked because the next thing I knew he let go of Mama and swung around to knock the shit out of me.

I felt my head crack against the dashboard and then he was on me. Choking me the same way he had just choked Mama.

I fought that fucker with a strength I didn't even know I had, 'cause all I could think about was my throat. My voice. My vocal cords. My future singing career.

I had landed in an awkward position with my head jammed between the dashboard and the front windshield. Dude was laying on top of me, his full weight pressing me down. We were close enough to tongue-kiss and I went for his eyeballs again.

He was smarter this time and pushed himself backward to avoid my clawing hands. He choked me with a fury, and I felt myself blacking out and got real scared. If Mama was already dead in the backseat and I didn't make it out either, who was gonna take care of Caramel?

I fought even harder. I tried to throw him off me and suck in a tiny bit of air, but my eyes felt like they was bulging and he was squeezing my breath away. There was nothing I could do and my struggling got weaker and weaker.

Then somebody snatched open the car door and there was a whole lot of noise. Cursing voices. A tall white man was punching the shit out of him, hitting him so hard the old trick let me go and fell halfway out the car.

“Thank you,” I croaked as I grabbed my throat and sucked
in sweet, cool air. My savior had dragged the trick all the way out of the car, and I struggled to sit up and look over the backseat. Mama was still laid out, but at least she was moving. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whispered in gratitude, holding my throat with both hands. Tears ran from my eyes and my neck felt like it was crushed and on fire. But if I could talk, I could sing.
God, please let me be able to sing.

“Thank me?” the tall man said, breathing hard as he propped the trick up against the side of the car. “Getthefuckouttahere.” And that's when I heard the sirens coming down the block. “You two whores picked the wrong street to work tonight. Don't thank me because both of you bitches are going to jail.”

A
s it turned out, my savior's name was Nicky Gabriano, and it wasn't until the cops had me and Mama up against their squad car that he realized how young I really was. He'd looked at Mama with disgust and called her a couple of dirty bitches for trying to prostitute her own daughter out in the streets, but he stared at me with pity.

I knew what it looked like. Nicky had no way of knowing it was all just a con, but there was no way I was gonna open my mouth and say some shit that might get me and Mama hit with even more charges. Still, Nicky felt sorry for me, and later on I would find out that he was really from L.A. and the only reason he had been in that neighborhood was because he was in New York on business and screwing some married woman who lived on that street.

Mama's shit was done. She'd been arrested for prostitution so many times that there was no way she was walking after a
charge of endangering a minor, but Nicky did his best to talk the cops out of locking me up along with her. They wasn't having it. They hemmed my arms up behind my back and slapped a pair of flexicuffs on my wrists, and the next thing I knew I had been taken to central booking where I was fingerprinted, photographed, and on my way to jail. They hustled me out of Manhattan and over the bridge to Rikers Island.

I rode that prison bus with a bunch of other handcuffed criminals and cried inside the whole way. I'd heard all kinds of stories about Rikers. I just knew they were gonna throw me in a cell with Big Bertha, some Brooklyn dyke who liked redheads and was just itching to shove a broken mop handle up my coochie and make me wash her dirty thong.

Instead, they put me in the reception wing of an adolescent center where they housed young females, and I stayed there for two days. There were all kinds of girls in there, but mostly Puerto Ricans and Blacks. A lot of them tried to walk around looking hard, and I could tell some of them really were. I was from Harlem, and I'd seen cutthroat chicks like this all my life.

I kept my eyes wide open that first night. They had us in one big open bay and I sat up with my back against the wall, fighting my sleepiness and trying not to nod off. I'd already run into some man-looking female on the dinner line who called me Red and kept trying to tangle her fingers in my hair. You know I hurried up and put a thick braid in my shit quick fast and tucked the end under as far as I could get it. She didn't care. She ran her fingers up and down my braid and asked if she could measure how long it was. I told her to get the fuck out my face. I didn't want no trouble outta ol’ girl, but I was running on so much fear I was ready to air her straight out if I had to.

The next morning I had a physical exam where the nurse's assistant told me to take out my contact lenses. “I don't have none,” I told her. “These are my real eyes.” She sucked her teeth like I was on crack.

An hour later I was sitting in an office with a social worker who asked me all kinds of questions about life with Mama. She told me Caramel was in the custody of Child Protective Services, and since I was only fifteen, I'd probably end up in their custody as well. She wanted to know how long I had been prostituting on the streets with my mother. I kept quiet and didn't tell that bitch shit. Mama had trained me better than that.

I couldn't keep my eyes open the second night, and I must have jumped up out of my sleep at least twenty times. They didn't keep inmates in reception forever, and I was steady waiting for Big Bertha to come get me and worrying if Mama and Caramel were okay.

As it turned out, Big Bertha would have to find somebody else to wash her prison thongs. I was waiting for my turn on the breakfast line the next morning when a CO yelled out my name. “Montana, Candy Raye. Go get your shit. CPS is ready for you, and your ass is outta here.”

Years later I ran into Nicky Gabriano again by accident. Me and my girls were singing in a group and calling ourselves Scandalous! We were trying to finance our first demo, so I had taken a part-time restaurant job as a coat-check girl. Nicky was in New York on business and recognized me immediately.

He asked if Mama was dead yet. I said no, but told him how low the state had me living and he tore me off some nice cash along with my tip. The next day was my day off, and he surprised me when he showed up at my foster home and offered
me a job that I figured would pay me enough to get out of foster hell and cut a recording demo too. I thought on his offer for about three hot seconds before I agreed.

“Smart decision, Candy,” Nicky praised me as he looked around my fifth foster house with disgust. “ 'Cause otherwise you'd be stuck in this pigpen eating dirt off the floor. You've got another good year or so until you turn eighteen and can leave here legally, but you're perfect for this job. Believe me, the state won't come looking for you, and if they do, they won't look long. Stick with me and you can live a whole lot better than the way you're living right now.”

Hell, I didn't need no whole lotta convincing. I woulda followed Nicky into the pits of hell if it meant I'd have the money to finally make a demo. I didn't pack so much as a pair of drawers when I left neither. The next morning I snuck out of my foster family's house and jetted with Nicky to L.A., taking nothing but my singing voice and the clothes on my back, which was pretty much how I'd been traveling anyway.

When we got to L.A., Nicky fronted me some ends for a small apartment and some decent clothes, and a week later I was on my feet and on my new job. I was only seventeen, but I had the body of a temptress and soul of a woman. And thanks to Mama, I'd seen enough ugliness in the world to keep the innocence off my face.

S
ix months after I ditched the foster system and followed Nicky Gabriano out to L.A., Mama got her act together and Caramel was released from state custody. I was taking some computer classes at night, and the minute Mama's parental rights were restored and Caramel was back in her hands, I sent for both of them to come out West and stay in my small apartment.

Money mules made okay cash, but not no high yardage. I only carried drugs when I absolutely had to, so that meant I had to work extra hard to support the three of us. To keep some fun in my life, every now and then I would take a gig singing in small clubs, at weddings, or at a local talent show, and that helped.

But the more money I spent taking care of me, Mama, and Caramel, the less I was able to stash away to help my girls gear up for the Scandalous! demo. Vonnie and Dom were struggling too, so they understood. All three of us were consumed with getting a contract and cutting an album, and I asked them to
be patient a little while longer and promised that when we did make it we were gonna be
large.

It took Mama almost four months, but she finally got herself together and found a small place for her and Caramel that was only ten minutes away from my apartment. Mama had recently completed a drug rehab program that came with a job referral, and she managed to land a job at a twenty-four-hour convenience store that didn't pay a whole lot but kept a little change in her pockets. She was always complaining about being broke and whined about needing a cell phone, which she wanted me to pay for. She also bugged the shit out of me to let her make a few of my cash runs, but that was out of the question. The most I could do was give her a few extra dollars, help her out with her rent, and make sure Caramel asked me for the little bit of stuff she wanted instead of going to Mama.

Caramel was doing good too. She seemed to really come alive in L.A. She had started taking piano lessons while living with her white foster family, who claimed she was some kinda child prodigy in music. Mama swore to God they was right. After all, Mama had an excellent voice and Daddy used to be in a band, so music was in our blood. Caramel kept begging me and Mama to buy her a baby grand piano and hire a professional pianist to teach her full-time, but we didn't have it like that yet. I satisfied her by making a few extra cash runs to buy her a slamming electric keyboard, then gave her enough money for six months’ worth of private lessons at a music store at the mall.

All in all, things were rolling for us in a way they never had before. I was satisfied mainly because we were together, but also because I was doing the things I loved most. Studying computers
and working on getting a career. I had a computer manual in my hand by day and a mic in my hand by night. In between I jetted from city to city carrying Mob money then came home and hung out with Mama and Caramel. Who could want more than that?

But then Dominica called and said Hurricane Jackson had offered us a chance to sing in his ear on Friday night. Not even the Gabrianos coulda kept me from going. Nicky only had me down for one cash run in the next week, a trip to D.C. on Wednesday morning. I decided it was the last transport they were gonna get out of me.

“Forget that transport. You should go back to New York right now,” Mama encouraged me. “Opportunity is knockin’, doll baby, and ya'll ain't been on a stage together in months. Get your ass back to New York and rehearse with your group, Candy Raye! This could be your big break.”