Kiki comes upstairs dressed in fake plastic black leather and chaps. The basement door is in front of the backdoor, mirroring it. The front door leads out to an enclosed porch where everyone enters and leaves. The basement walls are lined in red, orange and brown carpeting reminding me flames like the opening of hell. The door is made of cheap blond wood. I often sit in the darkness with the door closed and on the third step I pull away a piece of the carpet there in the wall that has no backing and peer into the cellar which apart from the living room area of the basement; I seek to see something move in the darkness. Sometimes a queer feeling overcomes me in my chest, like when I miss a step and fall downward. I touch my nipples and they are hard and I feel a pleasure in the sensation. I fear it is Satan. I do not want Satan to tempt me so I rock back and forth telling Satan to leave me alone, but I continue to sit in the dark of that step and seek for that feeling even if it means I might go to hell someday.
I am thinking of this when Kiki asks me, “Whatcha eatin’ child?” Kiki’s hair is long and permed and shares part of her body in a great mane. I smell her hairspray. She reaches for the plastic bag of apple slices. I hand over the baggie of my treasure and offer her a slice. She accepts it and begins to eat her first piece. Kiki licks her fingers, and my mother smokes a cigarette, the ashes forming a great burning cone on the end. “Ready for another round?” My mother asks. Kiki moans and nods yes. She hands me back the bag of apples and the two disappear into the basement. They will go into a room I am not allowed to see, one that my mother keeps locked from me.
My mother is a beautician. Many ladies come to our house and have their hair done at our kitchen table while I sit beneath and listen. My mother takes great pride in her ability to make them happy and offers them desserts and cigarettes and they tip her well. She hides the money under the doily above the television set in the living room, which is adjacent to our kitchen. She told me she has a secret bank account for tips, one that my father doesn’t know about, “Just in case,” she says. I love my mother. I love her dearly. No one in our neighborhood knows about the secret room. My mother tells me not to tell anyone, that it is our family’s secret. I want to tell the kids at school about Kiki because I am proud of her but I know that no one would believe me and it would get me into trouble. I pretend Kiki is my sister. She and I play Barbies together. Sometimes we spend all day dressing the dolls and preparing the room for the prom. I like to make the dolls ‘make-out’. Kiki just laughs and tells me I’m too young to know about ‘making out’. I love Kiki too. I hope she won’t go away like the last girl my mother brought to the basement.
Her name was Martha and she wore sequined dresses of red, pink, and silver. Martha didn’t like me. She told me I was a stinker and that I had a sour attitude. She would always make demands on me. ‘Bring me my nail polish and paint my toes’ she would say. I didn’t like her or her toes.
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