Authors: Janet McDonald

Chill Wind (5 page)

BOOK: Chill Wind

9.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

“Wait!” she yelled in as mean a voice as she could, sliding open the peephole cover. She focused her eyes.

“Daddy?”

She hadn't seen her father for more than a year and felt excited even though she didn't want to. Maybe he'dâShe swung the door open.

“What
you
doin' here?”

Louis Ingram had kept a little bit of the hip musician about himâthe goatee and wide sideburns, the eyes yellowed by late hours in smoky clubs. But age was ushering him along, and he looked almost old. What hair was left on his head had grayed, his face looked jowly, his gut overhung the tool-laden belt he was wearing, and a slight stoop had replaced his strut.

“Look at Daddy's girl, big as a house! Give your old man a hug. You get my birthday card? They got me out here checking the valves on that new laundry room furnace Housing put in. Lil' Lou up?”

A few years back he started using Louise's old nickname, as if the teen beauty queen Lil' Lou was the only wife he wanted to remember. They had married on Lil' Lou's eighteenth birthday and moved into what was billed as a “spanking new public housing complex for Brooklyn's working families.” Unemployed musicians, which is what he was at the time, need not apply, so Louis took a temporary job at the local utilities company so the couple would qualify for an apartment. Once they settled in he would return, or so he planned, to music, which was his passion. He was twenty years old.

Three years later the Ingrams were the parents of rowdy twin boys and a brash baby girl. Lil' Lou's formerly firm, tight body was showing the heft and wear of motherhood, and Louis had sold his drums. The temporary had become permanent. They were still happily in love back then and hadn't yet begun to blame each other and the children for their lost dreams and vanishing youth.

Aisha shook her head. “
No,
she ain't upâit's six in the morning! She back there crawling around on the floor looking for her lost head.”

“Come on, Aisha, that's your mama, and she sick now soâ”

“So why she gotta stay mad at
me
, I'm not the one who leftâ” She caught herself. A shadow crossed Lou's face.

“Be a sweet girl and go tell your mama I'm here, Ai. I gotta get back to work.”

Still sleepy and yawning, Aisha checked out this man who
popped in and out of her life every few months. Or years. Whenever he was in the mood. He was her children's grandfather and her daddy, so why wasn't he being one? He brought them into this world, so he owed them
something
. And them few birthday cards with nothing in 'em but “happy” wasn't doing much to whittle down that debt.

“Daddy, it's funny you dropping by like this, âcause I was gonna give you a call about a â¦ situation. See, um, my welfare runnin' outâthese days they put people off after five years, and I been on almost that longâso me and the kids gonna need a place. Mama don't want nobody up under her if they can't help out. I see where she comin' from and all, three is a lotâand, well, since you got a good job and living by yourself now â¦”

Mr. Ingram looked at his watch. “It's always âDaddy, Daddy, Daddy' when you want something. Looka here, Aisha, I gave up my music and my best years taking care of you children and your mother, and I'm all gived out.”

“But you never took care of
me
! You split soon as I was born, Daddy!”

“Oh, don't âDaddy' me, girl. You just like ya mother back there, whining and wanting.”

Louis Ingram did an about-face and was gone. Aisha turned and made her way to her room.

The sounds stirred Louise awake again. “Who that was?”

“Nobody. I'm going back to sleep.” She crawled under the sheet and lay there wide awake.

Nine

A full-bodied brunette tossed her wavy hair over her shoulder, planted both hands on her wide hips, and turned smoothly on the ball of her foot, smiling beautifully. “
Are you big, beautiful, and ready to live your dream?
” asked the cheery announcer.
“Then call us today at 1-800-BIGMODELS.
” Aisha, munching a Hostess Sno Ball, propped herself on the Washingtons' oversize pillow.

“Keeba, could I get some milk?” The cupcakes always made her thirsty.

She sank her teeth into the pink coconut spongeball. Help hadn't come from nowhere, and the final countdown was now in weeks instead of months. Maybe her five-dollar Lotto ticket would win the $17 million or at least a few thousand for second place. She'd been too tired to jumble up birth dates, clothes sizes, and friends' apartment floor numbers and had let the machine pick the numbers. But
she knew better. People always said the machines make you lose on purpose so the Lotto office don't have to pay. Whatever. Until she lost her benefits, she was going to enjoy life.

“Keeba!”

“I
heard
you the first time. Our milk don't go with them foam rubber pink things you eating. It go with Oreos.” Keeba licked the white cream off the cookie she'd pried apart and took a drink from a plastic cup. She was home from school with stomach crampsâwelcome news to Aisha, who never got to hang with her friends on school days. The good ol' days of everybody getting promoted even if they had bad grades were over. Now teachers were holding kids back left and right, even the ones who were really too old to still be in high school, like Keeba and her sister. And Keeba was cool about Star and Ty being there. Keeba's menstrual cramps were the highlight of Aisha's month.

The girls were deep into the afternoon soaps. As soon as Keeba put it down, Aisha snatched up the cup she'd just drunk from and gulped a mouthful of milk.

“Git outta my milk, pig!”

“Hmmm, don't they say milk is a natural?”

“If you put them greasy lips near my cup again, I'ma be a naturalâa natural-born killer! Go get it out the 'frigerator, hog.”

“Thank you so much, Robin Hood. Now don't it feel good to share? Hey, watch me do my model strut like that white lady.” Aisha sashayed to the kitchen, hands on hips, head high. “I might just call them big modelsâI'm sure big
enough.” She returned to the bedroom with a milk container.

“Only problem, Ai, is big ain't enough. We
all
big. You gotta be cute too. Where your cup? No, you are not fixin' to drink out the carton! I swear, Ai, you put the
ghett
in
ghetto
!”

“Please, I ain't drinking out your booty milk carton. Your lips probably been on it. And don't worry about my looks. I take after my mama the beauty queen. Now
you,
that's another story. Ya mama so ugly, when she cry her tears go sideways.”

“Don't start with me, Ai, 'cause you know Miss Ingram so ugly when she looked in the mirror, it broke.”

The girls were suddenly nose to nose, wobbling their heads at each other.

“Right, Keeba. That's why
your
mama so ugly, the dogcatcher refused to pick her up.”

“Your
mama so ugly, she scared the
u
off the
gly
.”

“Now
that
was stupid, Keeba, just like you.” Next thing they were pulling and giggling and punching at each other. Having run out of “ya mama so ugly” jokes, Aisha focused once again on her future.

“Ah-ight, jokes aside, Iâma call. Why not? Done tried everything else, right? I ain't letting nobody force me in one of them no-pay workfare jobs. If I gotta work, then I'ma be out there like Tyra Banks, getting
paid
Puffy style, I mean mega benjamins. Iâma travel all over, be all up in magazines and music videos like my girl Brandy, open me a bank account, take care of me and mines, chill, get another
model job, count my cash, chill, and keep it goin' like that on and on and on.”

“Well you go, Puff Mama, make 'em show you the money, I ain't mad atcha! I bet a lot of stuff that happen to folks is like Lottoâyou can't win if you don't play. You probably
should
go for it. Maybe you right, something might break for you. But you
know
you gotta hook me up when you be clockin' dollars so I can get
mine. And
my sister. Or we gon' be all over you like a rash.”

Aisha promised that if she made it, she'd “do the right thing” by Keeba, Teesha, Toyaâall her homegirls. They settled back into TV and snacks and time passed like sleep.

Louis Sr.'s height genes had skipped a generation, making for a statuesque Ebony and a tall-for-her-age Starlett. What Aisha got were her mother's dense bones, which formed a squat frame for her fleshy body. Growing up alone with a distant mother, Aisha discovered that not only did food taste good, eating itself was soothing. Feeding herself became an act of love. The slow smear of thick brown peanut butter across a soft square of white bread, the swath of mayonnaise, the buttery cheese toast, hot and drippingâthese were rituals in a small world of pleasure controlled absolutely by her.

When she had money, there were red hots, jawbreakers, SweeTarts, Chuckles, and chocolate kisses. Salted treats made her mouth squirtâpotato chips and curled cheese puffs, vinegar-flavored potato sticks, and ridgy corn chips.
A little more money bought real food like hamburgers and hot dogs, fries and onion rings, pizza and hero sandwiches, all washed down in floods of sugary cherry, orange, grape, or cola-colored drinks. As Aisha's cooking skills grew, so did the stacks of pancakes, mounds of mashed potatoes, and piles of fried chicken parts.

Swathed in blankets and supported by pillows, Aisha would sink onto her bed with a tray full of food on her lap, absently engaged in one after another cartoon, soap opera, sitcom. As she developed outward but not upward, her breasts ballooned, her hips spread, and her thighs thickened. Constant eating became a way of life, something that happened almost automatically, like breathing.

In the projects, Aisha's size wasn't unusual, nor was it criticized, as most girls her age were large. With her dark eyes, strong cheekbones, and full, sensuous lips, Aisha was one of the prettiest girls around. So why
couldn't
she be a rich and famous big model?

Aisha could hear phones ringing nonstop in the background as the 1-800-BIGMODELS operator rattled off questions about Aisha's eye and hair color, height and weight, and gave her an address in lower Manhattan. “Take the elevator to the second floor, hang a right, go three doors down, then hang a left, and BIGMODELS is at the end of the corridor. Bring a headshot and your book, if you have one. If not, on-site makeup people and photographers will set up a shoot for you in the offices.” Aisha
wanted to do a dance. The operator added that there was an “absolutely nonrefundable fifty-dollar appointment and processing fee.” She asked Aisha three times if Aisha understood that the agency was “only a conduit” and that “go-sees” were each girl's responsibility. “BIGMODELS gets twenty-five percent of your catalog work and forty percent for runway work. Totally standard in the business.”

Aisha's brain got stuck on the fifty-dollar fee, and she hadn't paid much attention to the rest. Where was she gonna get the money? The lady in the Spanish store cashed food stamps but charged double what it cost to cash a real check. Whatever. If that's what it took to blow up and get paid â¦ Puffy probably had to put up cash in the beginning to make his CDs. And Tyra must've had to dish out the benjamins to
her
first model agency too. Aisha saw this as her one chance and wasn't nothing stopping her. She was a fox, built like a brick house, and could model, dance in videos, do movies, whatever the agency wanted.

Ten

The morning of her appointment, Aisha admired herself in the mirror. She'd greased down her bang and swooped it to the side. Sporting her special fake gold trunk earrings, she felt good about her appearance. She was about to find out what the outside world felt about it.

The receptionist looked from the “don't make me kick ya ass” expression on Aisha's face to the Polaroids in her hand and back at Aisha's face. The morning was
not
going to be good.

“You got an appointment?” the young woman asked Aisha, an “I doubt it” tone in her voice. Her eyes examined Aisha's swirled bang, traced down to her jumbo maroon jacket, lingered at the too-tight blouse, fixed on the black leggings, and stopped in horror at the wide, run-down pumps. Aisha gave her name and admired the pictures of
models on the walls while the receptionist turned pages in a thick calendar book.

“Ingram â¦ Ingram â¦ well, well, you're definitely in here. You got photos and the fee?”

She did. Her attention was directed to a pile of forms. “Fill out one of those. A rep will be with you shortly. I'll take the money now, thank you.” Aisha squeezed her hand into the small coin pocket of her leggings and wiggled out a ball of crumpled bills.

“Cash? You don't have a check or money order?”

Aisha raised her eyebrows. This snotty babe was beginning to bug her.

“Do it
look
like I got a check or money order? You see cash, don't you?”

The receptionist primped her lips like she was about to say something real stank. Instead, she swallowed and said in a flat voice, “Cash will do fine. And I'll take yourâerâsnapshots too.”

Aisha didn't like the way she flipped through the Polaroids Toya had taken, like they weren't good enough, and she
really
didn't like how she stuck them in a folder and wrote on it “Ingram, Asha.”

“'Scuse me, my name got a
i
in it.”

“What?”

“I said you ain't spelled my name right. It got a
i
.”

“The i's right there,” snapped the woman, pointing. “I-n-g-r-a-m. That
is
how you spell
Ingram
, I assume.”

“I ain't talkin' about my last name.” Dammit, Toya had
said a million times “Don't say
ain't,”
and this wench had already made her mess up. “I mean
Aisha
, A-i-s-h-a.”

The receptionist exhaled hard, snatched up a pen, and scrawled an
i
between the A and
s
. “Does
that
work for you?”

“Yes, it
do
.” Aisha sat down as a smiling, heavyset woman wearing a dark pantsuit and a flip of thick, bouncy hair appeared at the reception desk with a very pretty, shapely girl to whom she was saying, “I think we just might be able to make it happen, Holly.” She said to the receptionist, “Pammie, schedule Holly for a shoot early next week. I have her deposit.”

Debbie Silver, president and executive director of BIGMODELS, Incorporated, glanced at Aisha, then tried to catch Pammie's eye. But the receptionist and Holly were bent over the appointment calendar smiling and chatting. Miss Silver, a former professional model whose weight problems had forced her to stop modeling, asked Aisha, “Have you been helped?”

Aisha, nervous and excited, blurted out, “Oh, snap, you the one from the commercial! Phat!” When she stood, she didn't even reach Miss Silver's shoulder.

Miss Silver's feeling about this girl went from disapproval to dislike. Loud and unpolished. She cut a look at Pammie, who had finished with Holly and was watching the scene.

Pammie read her boss's face and reacted. “Debbie, this is AshaâA-
eye
-sha, excuse meâIngramâ”

“It's A-
eee
-sha,” corrected Aisha, “eee like
pee.”

The receptionist ignored Aisha and continued, “âwho saw our commercial and wants to model.” She averted her eyes and flipped pages of a magazine, barely smothering the giggle building in her throat. These girls were too much, she thought, thinking they could traipse in there and become big models just because they were fat, as if that were enough. This one had a pretty face, but the hair, the clothes, those beat-up shoesâplus she was a midget by model standards. And “
eee
like
pee
”? How rude! She flipped more pages.

Debbie Silver straightened her back, asked for “Miss Aisha Ingram's folder,” and told Aisha to follow her. Aisha took in the president's office while Miss Silver skimmed the application and waiver form and scrutinized the Polaroids.

The walls were plastered with black-and-white headshots and full-length color photos, some autographed, of glamorous women dressed in luxurious clothing. On the desk, turned so that both she and her clients had a full view, was a gold-framed photograph of a younger Debbie Silver, skeletal in a tight, fuchsia sequined gown. The shot had been taken at the height of her career and had run in all the major magazines.

Aisha heard Keeba's voice in her head: “
Go on in there and git yours! Don't lay back.”
She smoothed down her bang and went for hers. “So Miss Silver, people say I'm nice-looking, and you can see I'm big, so that's why I'm here, to be a big model and get some money to take care of my family. I
could model oversize jeans or do food commercials or be a thong girl in a music video â¦”

The BIGMODELS founder held in a smile. The kid was cluelessâcharming in a street sort of way, but definitely clueless. Not exactly representative of the audience their clients were trying to reach. A Brooklyn native herself, Debbie Silver had grown up in a neighborhood that changed during her teenage years from Jewish middle class to black and underclass. She recognized Aisha's look: project girl. She watched Aisha, saying nothing. Not much fashion potential. But the kid had gotten the fee together, God knew how, and had come in to try her luck. That showed heartâa trait she respected.

“Tell me about your background, Miss Ingramâschooling, work experience. You said you're supporting a family?”

Aisha's eyes brightened. “Yeah, I got two kids, Starlett Whitney who just turned fourâ”

“Don't tell me, she's named for Whitney Houston, correct?”

“Yeah, how'd you know?! What, you one of them 1-800 fortune-tellers too?”

“No, no, far from it. I'd have won Lotto by now. Just a feeling,” said Debbie. It seemed like every day she was getting a call or a letter from a Whitney this or Whitney that. “Please, go on.” She was beginning to like the kid.

“And the other one's Ty, who's two. All right, Miss 1-800, who he named after?”

Debbie laughed. “I have absolutely no idea, but to humor you, I'll hazard a wild guessâMike Tyson?”

“Ugh, no! Not
him.
Ty-
rese
. The singer. Now
he
love women, he don't beat on them, and he fine too. So I'm staying with my moms for the moment until I find â¦”

Aisha's voice trailed off as the worry over welfare filled her again. Miss Silver's eyes on her gave her a sad feeling, but she chased it away. “As for school, I probably be going back.”

“To college?”

“High school. To finish up. Gotta take a couple more classes.”

“Umm-hmm.” A high school dropout with little children and still living at home, thought Debbie. That's a tough one. The girl has guts, coming in with nothing going for her but hope. Still, she wasn't running a charity. Few of her clients would be interested in â¦ Better tell the kid up front, refund her money. It was only fair.

“I'll be honest with you, Missâ”

“Can I just say something, Miss Silver? You look a hundred times better now than on that picture!” interrupted Aisha, pointing to the picture frame. “When I first looked at it, I was like, âDamn, Miss Silver need a big plate of macaroni and cheese, barbecue ribs, and collard greens.' I'd buy a outfit I saw on
you
before I'd want anything swinging off
her
bones.”

Debbie Silver listened, this time not hiding her smile. Scores of aspiring and actual models had sat in that same
chair and enthused about her “gorgeous” photo. She played along, when in truth it was there to remind herâand themâof how unhealthy it all was, the not eating, the throwing up, the mad quest to look skinny. A young woman's body was not intended to look like a twelve-year-old's . A simple fact of nature.

She examined Aisha again, the slicked hair, chipped bangle earrings, and bursting blouse. Her style was hopeless, but she was a natural beauty. There might be
something.
It would be a very long shot, but hell, it might pay offâfor them both.

Aisha could've smacked herself. Everything was going good until she ragged on the picture. Why she always had to talk out her neck, say things that got on people's last nerve? She rubbed her nose and did a fake cough. “Umm â¦ I hope you not â¦ I wasn't trying to â¦”

Debbie shrugged. “No problem, Aisha, I appreciate honesty. I can call you by your first name?”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Aisha, “everybody do.
Debbie.
”

“
Debbie
can work. You're right. I was one of the walking dead at that shoot and for much of my short career, and you're one of the few to call it as she sees it. In return, I'm going to be honest with you. Your look is not what our institutional clients typically require in models of
any
size. Your hair, your clothes, your height, your weightâall wrong. But you're a beauty.”

Aisha said, “Whatever.” Debbie smiled.

“Oh yes, and the attitude. Wrong. But I said
typically.
We also work niche markets for smaller companies. They wouldn't use you to sell snacks to teens in Casper, Wyoming. They'd get a five-foot-eight blond, outdoorsy type. You'd be tapped by the client targeting a hipper, more urban audience. Madison Avenue knows that beauty depends on community. The toothpick look they've sold so well to white girls has less appeal among ethnic whites and no appeal to blacks, where attractive means âbaby got back:'”

“Ahhhâha, haâ” sputtered Aisha, gasping. “You too funny! I mean â¦ how somebody white know about
back
!”

“It's part of my job to know trends in clothes, hair, and even expressions. And when you live with a sixteen-year-old who blasts Sir Mix-A-Lot as soon as she gets into the house, you learn more than you ever wanted to know about the beauty of big butts.”

Aisha was fascinated. She was in a fancy office in Manhattan talking with a white lady about rap and big butts. What a trip! The conversation switched to business matters such as fine-tuning Aisha's look, what goes on at go-see interviews and photo shoots, and pay scales for television, catalog, and runway work. Aisha knew better than to let herself get all juiced, but all sorts of fantasies were spinning in her head.

The two of them walked out of the president's office like buddies.

“Pammie, Aisha's going to need a fresh bookâyou'll find a couple of extras in the cabinet behind youâand she
needs new photos.” She gave Aisha a playful nudge. “Polaroids might've been good enough for Warhol but not for
real
girls.”

Aisha had no idea who or what she was talking about, so she just said, “Word.”

“Squeeze her in with Sam for sometime after lunch, say about two.”

“But Miss Silver, she only paid forâ”

“It's fine. Oh yes, I have a two-thirty with Gap and a four o'clock with the Ann Taylor people, which'll probably go late, so I won't be back in today. And Pammie, refund Aisha's fee. This one's on me.”

“But Miss Silver, the policy saysâ”

“
I
made the policy, and in this instance
I'm
changing it.” Debbie Silver grabbed Aisha's hand. “It's been a pleasure. I'll be in touch if I can shake anything loose.”

“Thank you, Debbie.” Aisha grinned.

“Debbie?” mumbled the receptionist under her breath.

BOOK: Chill Wind

9.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads