Angel Among Us

It was the summer of 1986, Denver was as hot as Hades. We were living in an apartment just off Colfax. I was six that summer, waiting for fall to rush in and drag my lanky limbs to my seventh birthday. The hair on my head was remarkably blonde, made even more so by our frequent trips to the public swimming pool. I became addicted to cherry Chapstick that summer and began eating tubes of the stuff at a time. This made me sick and perplexed my chap lipped sisters, delicate skin dry and cracking from sun and chlorine with no relief to be found in the tiny purses I had raided.

It was upon returning from the pool that we first met an Angel. Where my mother met her I have no idea. How they became friends is even more confusing. She found her way into our lives nonetheless. An exotic flower unlike those common carnations that currently sprung up around us, she came with an air of glamour and refinement. Black jeans that seemed to be painted on were worn with high heels and very small blouses revealing, at the very least, a glimpse of her stomach and tattooed back. Hair jet black, stark in comparison to her startlingly pale complexion, it reached down past her butt with straight cut bangs teased and curled. Her nails matched her lipstick in a drowsy romantic red; they adorned ring-clad, delicate hands that were almost as small as my own.

It was beyond me to understand that Angel was a stripper and prostitute. The idea of such things does not exist to a child and so I thought she was actually sent from heaven because with a name like Angel, she must have been. She always had money with her in great wads of ones, fives and tens that she kept in her purse next to a small gun and shiny foil packets. Aside from the money she possessed a talking parrot, lots of empty promises, and a son named Joey.

Joey was three and almost my spitting image. Hair so blonde it would make a cotton bale shame at its color, round cherubic cheeks to match his demeanor, and our main difference was his deep brown eyes that contrasted the blue of my own. To see us together you would have thought us brothers and in fact we loved each other as such. Shortly after we were first introduced to Angel, Joey became a fixture in our home. It was a welcome change for me to have another boy to play with, particularly one who held me in the regard one normally has for an older brother at that age. We were inseparable for the most part, retreating often into our own little make believe world of dinosaurs and jungle adventures in the overgrown yard behind our building. I don’t really recall how long Joey was with us. As a child there are times when a day feels like a month and an hour feels like a minute. We are not good judges of time when we have not lived long enough to truly place value on it.

Summer surrendered to the chilly pitch of fall and brought along a host of issues for all of us. Namely what were we going to do with Joey? He was spending more and more time with us and his mother had stopped paying for his keep. We already lived welfare check to welfare check and another mouth to feed was growing difficult.

Heated words were heard emanating from the living room where my mother spat angrily into the phone. Joey and I were in my bedroom playing with my plastic dinosaur collection when I heard her slam the handset back into its cradle. When she stormed into my room, red-faced, she told me to take Joey home. Home for Joey was quite a distance away. Past the middle school, tennis courts, Lutheran church where the weekly flea market was held, and the nice yard with the thorniest rose bushes and prettiest blossoms.

I obeyed and we grabbed his backpack of belongings. What my mother was thinking sending a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old out alone is beyond me, but so it was. We arrived at the three story walk-up, in which Angel’s apartment was situated, approximately an hour after we left. I removed a key from Joey’s bag and we unlocked the door to the small cramped stairway that smelled of cooking food and mildew. We reached the top floor; I knocked on the only door. Joey held my hand as we waited. Annoyed whispers were followed by hushed footsteps. She flung the door open creating a small vacuum of air that swept my hair into my eyes. As I brushed it from my face she turned and took a few steps back into the apartment then faced us. Her look was pleasant enough but she forgot to get dressed. Barely covering her was a black see-through negligee with lacey borders and tiny red bows. Her normally smooth hair was tangled and not nearly as shiny. Even the lipstick normally applied in a manner of perfection was outside the lines making her appear clownish when she smiled. She was barefoot, propped against the door.

-Joey go to your room.

She said and he let go of my hand, ran quickly through the door and disappeared. Her small hand grabbed my arm, pulled me into the apartment and directed me to the sofa that sat in her nearly empty living room. The heat was stifling, I sat down, the scratchy upholstery rubbed against the back of my exposed thighs. Then a man’s voice came from another room asking how much longer, to which she replied,

-Don’t worry baby I will be right there, this will just take a minute.

Then she looked at me and I at her. My eyes were level with her crotch and I thought how peculiar it was that she had so much hair. It was coming out of the sides of her negligee. She laughed as she retrieved an envelope from the small coffee table and handed it to me, on the front was written a word I didn’t yet know the meaning of, Bitch it said.

-Now get outta here, I got stuff to do. And give that to your bitch mother.
-Can I say bye to Joey?
-Make it fast.

I had never been inside before and wasn’t sure where I was going so I just went through the only doorway. It led to the bedroom and her bed was the first thing I saw. Sprawled there was a man with an exposed torso. Under the sheet rose a protrusion that caused me to stare. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. He smirked at me causing the long ash to drop onto his chest. He matched my gaze while he wiped ash from his chest and the protrusion bounced. He chuckled, then retrieved a fedora from the floor beside the bed and placed it over his crotch. I turned around and saw a closet. Stuffed animals surrounded a small crib mattress and Joey sat on the floor. This was his room, a closet. I reached down and hugged him before pushing past Angel in the bedroom doorway and running out of the apartment.

I walked home confused and angry. My mother took the envelope upon my arrival and ranted for some time. She said Joey was never coming back. It crossed my mind to go back and get him. To rescue him from what he was being forced to see from the closet he lived in. But I was only six. Days of my asking if Joey could come back ended in a spanking more brutal than normal. There was a lot of anger behind each strike.
What ever became of that little boy? I don’t know. There are times in my life that I am grateful to have had the childhood I had despite the ever present bad memories. Leaving Joey there is an image I will never be able to be rid of and it serves as a reminder that it can always get worse. In a desperate world, full of desperate people, it can always get worse.