Missing In Lincoln Park

It wasn’t an average childhood. Strippers running around the dining room with their breasts hanging out while Ms. Berta worked on their rhinestone encrusted costumes. Me, spread out on the living room floor playing with matchbox cars and doing homework. Ma stopping by quick to discuss a case that she was representing for one of the ladies of the night. This was just an average occurrence around 2714 Lacamore Drive in Lincoln Park. Yes, THAT Lincoln Park.

Chicago, and the underbelly of her downtown, was all things beautifully dark and seedy that shaped my childhood. But that home, Ms. Berta’s home in Lincoln Park, just down the street, and one pretentious cul-de-sac away from our own, was my sanctuary and my schoolhouse. From the time I could walk, I had a host of many “mothers” who would hold me on their laps during costume fittings, reading to me from Dr. Seuss and teaching me how to count by pointing out sequined patterns on their costumes, my eyes following their perfectly manicured claws as they graced across strategically placed sequins that had been set there by hand by Ms. Berta herself.

On more than one occasion, when I would awake from my afternoon nap at Ms. Berta’s, it wouldn’t be my own mother who would retrieve me, but one of the many “mothers” who would coddle me, hold me to their bare chest and lavish their love on me before setting me down in a playpen nearby where I always was in view. These women, who smelled of intoxicating flowery perfume and stale cigarettes, took the place of my missing mother on those days when her job kept her away from our home. Although, to be honest, my mother’s job kept her away from us, my sister and myself, on most days.

When you are the head of your own family’s law firm in downtown Chicago, a defense attorney who defends the more often than not, indefensible, your own life tends to take a back seat. I can forgive her now, though, looking back from a million miles away. I have made my peace with her. She had no choice but to keep moving ahead when her dad died and left her the firm. No choice but to roll along when my Pop was killed, handing us off most days to Ms. Berta to raise as she saw fit. Ma may not have been around, but she sure as hell showed up when it counted.

For our part, my sister and I, we had a ball. Could anything be better than growing up near downtown Chicago, being bankrolled by family money and pretty much protected by the shield that was your family’s last name? Not to mention, from the time I could drive, I was chauffeuring gorgeous ladies back and forth from Ms. Berta’s high end “social club” as my high school gig? It was a legendary way to grow up, full of excess and excuses, toggling between extreme highs and feeling like we belonged nowhere and to no one. To have no home, so to speak, was as freeing as it was deadly.

We didn’t know any of that yet, though, the way it all would go. On that day, I was simply a seven-year-old kid, hanging out at my neighbor’s house, playing with my cars on the floor and waiting for my sister to get there to take me back home, feed me, and put me to bed, so we could get up and do the same thing the next day. Our lives had become a monotonous existence of school, Ms. Berta’s and home, only fleetingly punctuated with homework sessions spent sitting around Ms. Berta’s dining room with half-dressed ladies or dinner with any of the characters that rolled through the dining room. A bare breast, someone snorting a line of coke off the dining room table, or a security guard playing Slap Jack with me in front of the television as I watched cartoons. It made no difference. They were all we had. They were what we considered, “home”.

Even at twelve, my sister Alley was older than her years. She had to be, because there was no one else left to be the adult at home. Allison Catherine Stone had earned the nickname, “Alley Cat” because she could be resourceful and rough around the edges when she needed to be. She had stunning looks, everyone always told me, but she also had a wickedly sharp mind and a devious nature. I would follow my older sister right up to the gates of Hell, knock on the door and skip right on through, many times throughout my wild time on this earth. She was a fighter who liked to have a good time but didn’t put up with anyone’s bullshit. Wherever Alley was, that was what I considered to be my home. The walls didn’t matter. The setting didn’t matter. Only having Alley in my orbit mattered. Alley was my safe place to land.

I heard her voice as she came into the house that day, hollering at Ms. Berta to see if there was anything to eat. One of the ladies that was half naked in the kitchen, being sized for her newest stage bra, standing in just a pair of tiny Lycra shorts and nothing else, auburn hair falling in ringlets past her shoulders and face full of intricately placed heavy makeup, as she readied herself for an evening at the club for social hour festivities, answered back while digging through the fridge. “I can heat you up some of this leftover lasagna! We stopped at Tido’s on the way over for lunch!”

“You keep eating at Tido’s, child, and these bras ain’t ever going to fit!” Ms. Berta’s voice teased from the dining room, sewing machine running along with the low hum and “cachink-cachink” of the pressor foot as she moved her finely manicured, yet scarred slender fingers along her smooth fabric, creating masterpieces that were worthy of Broadway.

“Ms. Berta!” Patrice (THAT was the name of that Mama, how could I have forgotten?) clapped right back, “A girl has to eat to be able to keep up with the evening’s events. We have three private parties on the books tonight,” she went on, tossing the leftovers into the microwave, her naked breasts exposed to everyone, surgically placed high and tight on her chest wall, as if breasts that didn’t move was completely normal. As if any of my childhood had been completely normal.

“Anyone famous tonight?” my sister questioned, so accustomed to seeing the girls running around Ms. Berta’s barely dressed that at twelve, she didn’t even flinch when Patrice leaned in to give her a hug, one exposed breast brushing her shoulder.

“Not tonight. But guess who’s coming in tomorrow?” Patrice teased as she walked back over towards the dining room to try on her custom hot pink sequined bra that Ms. Berta had stopped sewing on.

“Who?” Alley asked, taking her lasagna out of the microwave and settling in at the dining room table, pushing a stack of sequined thongs and feathers out of her way, without giving any of the absurdity a second thought. As she sat surrounded by thongs, half sewed stage bras and sequins, my sister paid no attention and merely focused on shoveling the food in her mouth, because she knew that we had a timeline to meet. We were always on a God damned timeline. Our survival hinged on a timeline of our Ma’s creation.

“Meteo Brandencourd.” Patrice cooed, while Ms. Berta stuffed Patrice’s ample chest into the new show wear, surveying her handiwork and seeming apparently pleased.

“No way! Ma just defended him a couple of months ago in court!” Alley laughed, only diverting her attention away from her meal for a millisecond before shoveling in another forkful.

“What? What would a fine actor like that need to be defended for in court?” Patrice asked, genuinely shocked that her famous patron was capable of any wrongdoing. Ms. Berta spun her around and began fitting the seams of Patrice’s tiny shorts. With a slap on the behind, Patrice took it as a signal to wiggle out of her shorts for Ms. Berta, now leaving her standing bare-assed in the dining room with nothing but a tiny thong and brand-new sequined bra to cover her up, although she, nor anyone else in the house bothered to care. “’Trice, we don’t ask those kinds of things of the kids, you know that!” Ms. Berta warned.

“Yeah… we aren’t supposed to talk about Ma’s clients Patrice,” Alley simply stated, her mouth full of noodles and a wicked grin crawling across her face. Lowering her head and peering up towards where Patrice was standing in front of her now, she continued, “But if you really want to know….” my sister devilishly teased.

“Well, of course I do, girl! I need to know if he’s dangerous or has done anything that would put me in danger at the club, just being in his company.” Patrice excitedly questioned, while Ms. Berta never stopped working on ‘Trice’s shorts, but I did catch her rolling her eyes and letting the smallest flicker of a grin upturn her frowny lips before my sister spoke again.

“Well, since you DID share your lunch with me, I feel like I owe you something…” my sister smiled, knowing all along that she was going to spill the gossip. “Drugs. He got caught with drugs, but he swore they weren’t his. Ma said they were too his, but she said she got creative in how to handle the situation, and he was able to walk away from all the charges.”

“That Mama of yours, she’s got the magic touch, girl!” Ms. Berta blurted out, clenching the needle and thread between her teeth, still working on Patrice’s shorts.

“Well good! Drugs are no big thing around the club, anyway. At least he ain’t a murderer or rapist. A rape charge would have been a deal breaker!” Patrice lamented before Ms. Berta interrupted.

“THERE ARE EARS HERE PATRICE!” Ms. Berta scolded, nodding towards where I was sitting, still feigning interest in my race cars, but knowing damn well, even at the tender age of just seven, that the juicy gossip of a local famous person was much more intriguing. As an adult now, looking back, I find it funny that at seven, I was considered too young to hear the words, “rape” and “murder”, but my then twelve-year-old sister was viewed as a dang near equal to the women. Then again, nothing was normal when your Ma was a shady.-at-best high powered (and equally highly connected) defense attorney dripping with family money and your dad was an FBI agent with questionable morals who took Ms. Berta, a local Madam with a self-made empire under their wings years ago for reasons yet unknown to me.

Alley finished her late dinner and got up from her spot at the table, pausing only for a moment to survey Patrice’s new sequined bra. She grinned, then looked down at the front of her own shirt, flat in comparison. “Ms. Berta, when do you think I’m going to need a bra like that?” she asked while switching gears and running over to drop her plate in the sink.

“Oh, my sweet girl, don’t rush time! Stay as young as you can for as long as you can! Youth and innocence are worth so much! But, when it’s time, you know I’ll always be here for you!” Ms. Berta said, not even glancing up from her handiwork.

My sister just grinned and shrugged her shoulders before giving a smiling Patrice a wink and heading over towards where I had been sitting.

“Thanks for the food, Ms. Patrice!”

“Come on, kid, we gotta go,” Alley said, throwing my cars in a bucket and sliding them back under Ms. Berta’s hutch, which also held most of my childhood toys, an old chess set that I was trying to learn how to play, and things to keep me busy, as well as a few sewing notions and odds and ends of bras, thongs and a stash of cash tucked away neatly in the back, only to be used if one of the girls was in a bind. We always knew it was stacked back there; Ms. Berta never felt the need to hide anything from us, and we had never felt the urge to disobey or go behind her back. Not until we were much older, at least.

Ms. Berta shouted out from the dining room, the sound of her sewing machine still rumbling, “Night, kids! If you need anything, just call! See you both after school tomorrow!”

“OK, Ms. Berta! Thank you! Night!” we shouted back, closing the door behind us. As we walked down her long driveway, we passed Andy, one of the head guards that patrolled her property.

“Night, Andy! See you tomorrow!” we yelled and waved as we went by, as if it was the most mundane thing in the world to be on a first name basis with a very well connected and powerful drug runner. But we didn’t know that then. Back then, he was just, Andy. The big, tattooed guard who carried a very big gun and was always on either his walkie talkie or his cell phone and wore big dark glasses, who stood outside of Ms. Berta’s, to protect our girls. Or so we thought at the time. For a long time, I looked up to him, envied him, hell... I had wanted to be him. Powerful, mysterious, and feared. Someone that people like the ladies, my sister and Ms. Berta, would feel safe with.

“Careful walking home, kids. You sure you don’t need a ride?” Andy offered, and in his defense, I do believe that he must have worried about us. He saw the world that we were exposed to. In fact, he was a big part of it. I’d like to think that some part of him would have naturally felt at least a little sorry for us, knowing what the world would do to us in just a few years’ time.

“It’s OK, Andy, we will be OK. Thanks though!” Alley said, giving him a big smile. And off we went into the fading light, just the two of us, one fancy caul-de-sac away from home.

We passed another “guard” at the bottom of the driveway, who was busy yelling at a man who was spread out over the hood of a fancy car but stopped screaming briefly to nod in our direction and shout out, “Night, kids! Tell your Mama thanks again for what she did for me last week!”

“We will, night Chance!” my sister quickly said as we scurried past him. Chance wasn’t as nice, wasn’t as cunning or even as fearsome as Andy. Chance didn’t last long at Ms. Berta’s, and was quickly replaced by a new guard who was quickly replaced by another and another. Finding people to work for you was easy to do when you had money, but loyalty was hard to come by in Lincoln Park.

We walked home without saying much, and I am sure that my sister’s mind was probably just focused on all that she still had to get done that night before she could go to bed. Ma wouldn’t be home until way past midnight, and we would repeat the schedule again the next day. And the next day. We would probably next see her on Sunday, the one day that she didn’t go into the office, but always still seemed to be preoccupied anyway by paperwork and phone calls.

The minute we left Ms. Berta’s drive; we instinctively could feel the sleek black car slowly roll along behind us as we walked. We used to play games, trying to hide from them or outrun them, but after a while, Ma’s security detail just felt like second nature. It hadn’t occurred to us back then that this wasn’t normal. That not every family was living in fear daily, that other mothers didn’t have to worry that their children would be kidnapped or gunned down as payback for the killers and high-profile criminals that she had helped to keep out of behind bars. Other families had never been taught how to run, to hide, to move in the shadows when they needed to.

Walking up to our driveway, we paused to wave at the agents who were positioned in front of our house in their sleek black cars before stopping at the giant bronze-colored gates and entered the code to open the gates and gain access to our property. As the doors swung open, we were met by our own security guards, two behemoth Rottweilers, Scotch, and Sadie. Squealing like puppies, they rolled over on their backs for a good belly rub before we all went inside. If I remember right, those two actually made it for quite a few years before protecting us took them out, just like the dogs before them, and, sadly, the ones that would follow. I had had my heart broken too many times by falling in love with the dogs, which is why, as an adult, I never allowed myself to own one, for fear of feeling that attachment and getting my heart broken all over again.

Once inside, we first stopped in the mudroom to take off our shoes before routinely peeling off our shirts so we could slide off the Kevlar safety vests that we always wore back in those days to and from school, hanging them on the hall tree, no different from how other kids might hang up a coat. The next stop was the side panel of the main door, where my sister calmy entered an alarm code, alerting the security detail that we were safety inside, and the house alarm had been armed.