What I could not stop, however, was the curiosity and pull of Johanna…the hexagonal gallerie of delicious memories black…I was thinking about her, trying to find her relation to the silk skin of my fantasy…Ramona was ready for the runway…Johanna was rough and flawed in comparison, but only on the surface…she moved without any THING, whereas the Ecuadorian moved the ignorant…she literally moved them across the thorns of their desire…Johanna had her many admirers, but they saw her approach, but her appearances, her constancy, her equipoise and poise…
As it was, I gave in and called her up a few days later…Over dinner, she told me some of her life, and it was the stuff of nails and cement…“I have a little girl, she lives in Placencia on the mainland…with my parents…she’s happy there and my sisters are good to her…I have three sisters, all younger than me…I’m twenty-six…”
I asked her what happened to her husband…“He was really fucked up…(sigh), (big sigh) yeah, he was doin’ the crack, aw shit, he was baaaaad, man…he was so good when I met him, handsome, all the girls after ‘im…ah, fuck, he got so bad…Jason, he was after me from the start in Placencia, dogged me constantly…finally I said yes and we got hooked…he was selling ganja always…smoked it all the time too…but he made a lot of money selling…so we had some, a nice house…then I got pregnant with Jasmin…she was born and even Jason high out of his head couldn’t avoid how incredible this baby was…she just has this smile and this charm…from right out of my stomach….never cries, always looking out for her mama…sometimes she’s mom and I’m the little girl…she’s five now.”
“Jason got more and more involved with these bad guys, drug dealers, they were always coming over to the house at any time, so late, bringing girls and booze…they’d party all night and I was cool…I’d stay upstairs with Jasmin and put a pillow over my head to sleep…I was cool…whatever he did…as long as he brought in money…and then his brother and him bought this island…it was small, but it had a house on it, and it came with a boat…so we moved out there and it was better…but then he got into crack. One day he didn’t come home…wasn’t ‘till next day that he came back wired, had no sleep, brought some really bad guy and a couple girls…I just stayed upstairs and pretended like it wasn’t happening…I shut it out, you know? And he just got worse and worse…crack all the time…told him I don’t care what you do just don’t be around the baby…and you don’t touch her when your friends are here…and you can screw all the woman you want, just wear a condom…y’know? I didn’t care…I had Jasmin and I got to be really independent. I started taking out my little rowboat and catching lobsters, fishing, to bring in my own money…and I did and I got good at it. But finally Jason got so bad I just took Jasmin and left…went back to my parents…and then I moved here to makes some money, you know, not much to do in Placencia…plus it’s more fun here in San Pedro…need to find me a man, a real man, cause I’ll make a good wife…won’t complain, won’t hassle, I’ll cook and take care of a man as long as he’s honest…he can fuck all the girls he wants as long as he’s loyal to me and Jasmin…”
- Michael Price
