Yolanda
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 21:48:35 -0800
To:
addicts@gmail.com

Yolanda walks the back streets behind a wall of fear and doubt. Her no longer white shirt, too large for her emanciated five feet, black spandex pants hide scars on muscular legs. Old scuffed up tennis shoes, she claims to have found in a 'free box', keep her feet almost dry in the wee hours of the San Diego morning. Freinds call her 'Negra', at least the people she thinks of as friends. People who will let her come inside to fix her dope, ... if she shares. There is no one who really cares, not like laura did.


Negra's little sister Laura ... they shared everything ... hopes, dreams, even eachother since they left their childhood home of Rosarita, Mexico. Laura was sooo beautiful!! She never had to stand too long before the next 'date' picked her up.


Laura was'nt stuck up either. She never complained that Negra had a hard time accepting the advances of the men in the cars. She always met up with Negra, right when she said she would. Laura would collect whatever measly dollars Negra had made and put it with 'all' of hers. Then, she would get them a room and some dope, she called it 'laying low for a few days.'


Negra loved Laura with all her being. Laura was like a mother, sister and lover all wrapped into one. She would buy sweet smelling bath oils and a brand new brush for their hair... 'always a brand new brush!!' When they went into their room she would tell Negra to get some rest, ... but Negra always listened as laura filled the tub, she loved the ways the perfumed bath oils permeated the room.


Laura had had a way of knowing... just when Negra would drift off to sleep, safe, warm, she would gently pull off Negra's shoes and rub her tired feet. Always saying, 'Oh mi amour, we have to clean you up!' She knew that Negra fought with the men in the cars. She knew Negra took their money without doing the things they wanted her to do. She never gave lectures, instead she would 'tuck them safe away'.


Laura would gently coax the lifting of her hips to reemove her pants, the raising of her arms to remove Negra's blouse, saying in a whispery whine, 'oh, your a mess' and I'll bet your sore'. Then she would kiss away the bruises that came from battling the men in the cars. Laura was sooo gentle!


Last summer, they were standing across from the Jack in the Box, when Laura said something about the stars and the moon. Something like, 'You know what Negra ? You're a beautiful star and I'm gonna give you the moon!'


Just then, that red sports car swallowed Laura up and at midnight Laura still wasn't back. She always met Negra when she said she would! She wasn't back the next morning either when Negra awoke on the church steps, right where they had agreed to meet. Negra was dope sick, so she went to Alma's house to see if someone would give her a cotton.


That day turned into two, ... then four, ... then a week, ... a month, ... longer. Pretty soon, Negra found herself thinking Laura must hate her. If only she had been nice to the men in the cars. If only she made more money .....


Everyone was talking about Laura at Alma's house. Her body had been found lying naked in a shallow grave out on Paula Reservation. Someone had strangled the life rightout of her, choked her until her sexy smile disappeared. Maybe the man in the red sports car.


None of them are going to get in any red sports cars for a while.


Negra held her tears until she was sitting alone in the bushes by the edge of the freeway. She held the jacket Laura had given her, thinking, 'How will you ever forgive me? I thought you had deserted me. I thought you hated me, how will I ever make it up to you?


Negra wished it had been her, not Laura who had been found in a shallow grave. Negra stole a sharp little pair of scissors from Alma's house. When she was picked up by one of the men in the cars, first she would take their money, then she would show them the scissors. Most of them gladly let her out without a fight.
.

But soon ... one of them would take her to her beautiful sister Laura ... who is watching Yolanda walk the back street behind a wall of fear and doubt. © Copyright Parvifox

All Photographs + Text © 2005 Christopher Keeley

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