Read Online Somebody's Daughter by Phonse; Jessome - Free Book Online

bother looking for a way around preferring to charge ahead no matter the consequence.
    Annie Mae had no money of her own; she had been beaten by pimps and robbed by customers; and she had been arrested a number of times. Yet her zest for life was unmistakable, and The Game was to her liking. Annie Mae told Stacey she had nothing to fear as long as she kept her head up and knew how to have fun. Stacey figured that if Annie Mae could go through all that and cheerfully continue to identify herself as a “lifer,” then she, Stacey, had little to worry about. After all, she wasn’t going to be in The Game long enough for any of those bad things to happen to her. She was going to Toronto with Kenny and she had a wonderful new friend who was clearly delighted to take the younger girl under her wing. The rest could wait.
    For Kenny, on the other hand, the presence of Annie Mae had an entirely different significance. This was one of the best girls working out of Halifax when it came to training new talent—she knew more about the streets than most pimps—and Kenny hoped that with her help, he could turn Stacey into a real money-maker and also earn himself a lot more respect among the major players.
    Kenny, Terrance, Annie Mae and Stacey arrived in Toronto late in July, and on their first night in the city Kenny stopped “playing” Stacey and started working her. Stacey, typically, could not, or would not, see it coming. There were six of them staying in the small apartment—another pimp and prostitute from Halifax had joined them. While Annie Mae and the other girl, a heavy-set redhead named Stella Daniels, began to dress for work, Stacey sat down in the cramped bathroom to chat with them, as she had done so often in Halifax. Annie Mae was applying a heavy dab of make-up above her eye, and Stacey was digging around in the small cosmetics bag the girls shared, when Kenny walked in. “Get dressed,” he said curtly. “You’re going with them.”
    Stacey was shocked, and started to protest, her voice rising with anger. “Kenny I can’t do that. I don’t do that. It’s not the same. No, I’m not going with them.” When she saw the expression of the face of the young man she thought was her boyfriend, her anger turned to fear. Gone was even the polite indifference of the past few weeks. This was a stranger, his face a mask of fury, his voice a venomous hiss as he moved threateningly towards her: “What the fuck did you say to me? Are you disrespecting me, girl?” Annie Mae quickly intervened. “Relax, K, I’ll get her ready. Stacey, you just be quiet, girl. I’ll look after you down there—you got nothin’ to worry about.”
    Kenny left the room, and Annie Mae grabbed Stacey by the shoulders. Clearly, she would have to explain a few ground rules to this new comer. “Honey, you knew why we were coming here. I hope you didn’t think you’d be hangin’ at the mall while the rest of us worked. That just ain’t gonna happen, so get it out of your head now , okay? Listen to me when I say this, girl, or things are gonna get real hard on you real fast. You never, never talk to your man that way. They hate it. If T-bar had been in the room, Kenny would have been forced to beat you for back-talkin’ like that; so don’t let that mouth of yours get you in any more trouble.”
    â€œAnnie, this isn’t why I came here, and he knows it.”
    â€œHe doesn’t care what you thought your were doing, Stacey, so just get ready and we’ll go downtown. It’s a warm night and we’ll make some good money.”
    Stacey suddenly understood that her relationship with Kenny was nothing like what she had been hoping against hope it might still be. He hadn’t used the word love in weeks, though she had, and now she knew it had been completely one-sided. She couldn’t go home—Kenny had all the money