Your mother, my wife

Your mother, my wife by Sinalo Manakaza

“What is a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?” Johnny's 18-year old voice asked a pretty young lady with long curly black hair.

“I'm holding up this street lamp while I wait for this cigarette to finish itself,”

answered the cheeky but attractive young woman. Her name was Anne Jenkins but her friends called her Jenny just because the name Jenny sounded easier than Anne.

“I was wondering whether you could join me and my friends, we are having a

party at my place?”

“And where would that be?”

“My friends are in the car, it's parked at the liquor store down the street,” Johnny said pointing over his shoulder, in the direction he had come from.

“I don't know, how many of you are there?” Jenny asked pleasantly.

“It is just me and my two friends.” The young lady was wearing a short black miniskirt with red stiletto heels. On her neck she had no jewellery and the makeup on her face made her look sad and hungry but she was still pretty. The young lady smoking a cigarette turned her head away from her amorous suitor and she looked at her friends standing a few feet away from her. They looked as young as she was.

“Let me ask one of my friends to come along with me so we can have all the fun we want,” she said delicately, almost cheerfully. Jenny took a step towards her friends; Johnny grabbed her by her arm and he pulled her toward his chest; Jenny's friends saw Johnny grabbing their friend by the arm.

“Look, I just want you for me, my friends can get their own.” By the time he finished saying that Jenny's eyes were staring into Johnny's bright blue eyes. He stared back intimately but then his after-shave put Jenny into a dizzy spell; she passed out in his arms. Her friends stared glaringly at the blonde hero holding their friend in his arms amorously and they took a few steps back in wonder and disbelief. If her friends did not know any better they would say the couple was having a private moment underneath the streetlight.

The dark face of a tall black gentleman in his late thirties wearing a black leather jacket and two gold chains appeared from within a maroon 2006 Cadillac XLR with black tinted windows parked across the street from the girls. He had arrived at the street corner at the same time as Johnny and he was also interested in Jenny. He stepped out of his vehicle and he crossed the street heading straight towards the couple. He was dressed to look like a bully. The man wore a pair of black leather gloves, he reconditioned their fit in his hands and then he walked towards Johnny and Jenny like an evil premonition. Johnny only had eyes and ears for Jenny who was limp and faint with her eyes closed dreaming a man just like him had come to take her far away from the corner of Hope and Faith street, and he would take her all the way to the beach where they would smile at each other and eat tomato and cheese sandwiches that tasted just like the ones her mother used to make when she took Jenny and her sister to the park before she died of cancer and their landlord threw Jenny and her little sister out of the flat their mother died in.

“Let go of her you prick, she belongs to me, get your hands off!” Jenny's pimp

scolded as he marched towards Johnny and Jenny. He had refused all of his girl's food to eat the whole day, again. But they all had to work hard in order to make their daily individual cut - a minimum amount of money they had to make and then hand over to him before they could get a packet of potato chips and a soda and two hours sleep, maybe. All of Jenny's friends knew what would happen next; Jenny's pimp took out his gun from inside of his jacket and he pointed it at Johnny. Jenny had passed out because she had not eaten in more than twenty hours, she had hardly had a chance to drink any water and she had a fever.

“Can't you see that this girl is sick? I am taking her to the hospital, right now,”

said Johnny picking Jenny up off her feet and carrying her in his arms like she was his brand new bride.

“Put her down!” shouted the pimp.

“No,” answered Johnny sternly, perhaps he had not seen the pimp's gun aimed at his head.

“Put her down!” shouted the pimp once again - Johnny only had eyes for Jenny. The slave-driving pimp cocked his hand gun and he took one last step towards the couple. One of Jenny's friends screamed at Johnny, “put her down man, she is not worth it.” Johnny looked up from the prostitute's face and his eyes stared into the wrong end of a loaded gun. Jenny's pimp stared back at him with an argumentative self-applause and a wise smile, “yes, put her down on the side walk and you girls move back,” he remanded directing his prostitutes and Johnny to their correct places on either side of Jenny by waving his gun around.

Johnny finally obliged but he did so very slowly.

“Now get back!” The pimp walked to his employee's feet and then he stood over her. His concern looked staged and unusual. He looked at his incumbent laid out flat on the sidewalk right underneath the street corner lamp and he asked Johnny, “what the fuck have you done?” Johnny was still staring blankly at the barrel of the pimp's large revolver. Johnny slowly lifted his hands above his head and he took a step back. The pimp stood over the unconscious young woman. He bent over to give her a big smack on the side of her face but it did not wake her up.

“You girls had better not start falling asleep on the job too,” shouted the pimp

at his employees who were gawking at the action a few feet away from him in the street. The pimp gave Jenny a second smack on the other cheek. During those few fateful seconds Jenny's pimp was shouting at his scared assets Johnny got more than enough time to take out his own gun.

“Try that again and I will blow your brains out,” said Johnny holding a gun

to the pimp's face, he did not sound as if he was joking either.

“What is this? Have you fallen in love with one of my girls?” the green-eyed pimp

asked inquisitively. Johnny had his semi-automatic hand gun aimed at the pimp's brains, right above his eyebrows. The pimp suddenly stood upright and he took a step forward towards the barrel of Johnny's handgun, daring Johnny to shoot. Johnny pulled the trigger and the pimp fell backwards in the direction the bullet was traveling in. He fell right on top of Jenny. The pimp's fall to his death awoke Jenny from her reverie. She screamed and shoved and kicked the dead pimp's body mass away from on top of her. She could never have expected to open her eyes to see her oppressor lying dead on top of her. From a pea-sized hole in the middle of the pimp's forehead red blood began to come out. Jenny screamed once again, all of the girls screamed. Across the street, the pimp's partner suddenly came out of the Cadillac's passenger door and he opened fire from behind the car but he missed with two shots at Johnny. His semi-automatic gun jammed and then it backfired on his last attempt at killing Johnny, blowing half of his face behind him. He fell onto the sidewalk on the other side of the maroon Cadillac, the street corner fell quiet for an instant that seemed set to change everything. Johnny grabbed Jenny by the arm and he helped her to her feet. She was in shock. Johnny led her away up the street, away from her deceased pimp. Her friends ran away from the street corner down the street and they disappeared into the neighborhood.

Johnny really had parked his car in the parking lot of the liquor store. Johnny opened the passenger door of a Chevrolet Silverado to let Jenny into his car but before she got inside she paused to ask Johnny, “are we still going to your party or what?”

“Your pimp is dead, your friends ran away, what are you waiting for? Come on,

run away with me,” Johnny said as if he was a man of integrity.

“I don't have any money,” she answered.

“Then get in.” She lifted her leg up to get into the car and Johnny closed the door behind her and then he walked around the car to get into the driver's seat. Jenny found a moment to look at her own face in the rear view mirror. She had tiny red dots of blood on her right cheek. She looked around the car for something she could use to wipe the spots of blood off but she couldn't find one. Johnny got into his car and he started the red Chevrolet Silverado. Jenny asked for a face wipe. Johnny shrugged his shoulders and he reversed out of the parking bay.

“I have human blood on my cheek and the best thing you can do is shrug your

shoulders?” Johnny immediately stopped his car and then he reversed back into

the same parking bay he was parked in before then he leaned to the back seat and he unzipped a large black sports bag he had hidden behind the passenger's seat and he took out four one hundred dollar bills and he handed them over to Jenny.

“Should I go inside of the store and buy or will you?” asked Johnny.

“I will.”

“Get some beers and chips as well,” said Johnny. Jenny took a red baseball cap that was seating on top of the dashboard and she got out of the car and she walked into the liquor store. Johnny sat in the car waiting and staring at the liquor store front. It was not too long before Jenny came back with a shopping bag full of stuff. There were bags of potato chips, ice-cream, chocolate bars, raspberry cool drink and two bottles of vodka. Johnny opened the car door and she got inside of the car. They drove to the exit of the parking lot and Jenny asked, “where are you taking me?”

“Where would you like to go?” asked Johnny.

“To the beach.” Johnny and Jenny drove all the way to the cool blue sea.

Jenny had never really seen the ocean's amazing wild blueness and its never ending movement before - she fell in love with it. Johnny and Jenny fell in love and they got married under new identities. They found a house near the beach and they raised two happy beautiful children. After twenty one years of marriage Jenny aka Cindy Rowlings passed away from breast cancer and she died never having told her children how she met their father, Carl Rowlings. Ten years later, Johnny caught a flu he just could not shake off and he ended up in hospital. He called his children Johnny Rowlings and Jenny Rowlings to the side of his bed and he narrated to them the above story. He began, “your mother, my wife used to be a prostitute when she was about your age. She was the love of my life. I loved her the very first moment I saw her and she told me so everyday, even on the day she died.”

“Did your mother ever tell you how

she and I met?”

The end.