Chapter Five
The warmth of the sewer felt like a legitimate home to Ronnie, and he didn't discuss the previous night with his Momma because she'd be seething with anger for him leaving the party. He tried his best to sleep, but had problems because he knew Benny and Vivian had to face the repeated rapes all night. When it came to making money, she didn't care about the consequences most of the time. She had a hard time differentiating between good, bad, or indifferent when it came to making money. She often told her son that making fast cash came with severe consequences that could result in prison or death.
"Money's money," she said as she looked up from her Bible. "You never see a surface dweller with money frowning about anything intangible. They deal with what's real."
The shanty town bustled with every family engaged in cooking, cleaning, and bathing in the nasty sewer water, and most of the kids had returned from the Libertine function. On some level, the majority of the people involved in the community engaged in some kind of illegal activity. It was expected. All the kids knew how to mix drugs like meth and crack. It was almost a mandatory practice for the sewer dwellers. His momma was a master pick pocketer, and taught him how to lift a wallet without anybody seeing him. If she wasn't panhandling underneath some bridge somewhere, she stole wallets or trinkets or anything to make a quick buck. He didn't know if his Momma believed in God, but she used the wonders of Jesus in order to trick people into giving her money. He stopped believing in Jesus around the age of five. In his mind, Jesus was Santa Clause; and if Santa Clause didn't exist, then Jesus didn't either.
Cora kept a small, snubbed nose thirty-eight pistol inside of her tent, and Ronnie knew exactly how to use it. She stole the pistol from a man that she used to run the streets with when Ronnie was a little kid. In the middle of the night, Cora taught Ronnie how to load and unload the weapon, fire it, and what it looked like concealed underneath a thick shirt. All day she taught him how to survive, pleased that he learned quickly—even though he didn't know much about living.
His Momma sat outside of the small tent on a folding chair reading the Bible, and he still had on his spiffy little tuxedo, black tie, and nice, shiny black shoes. Unfortunately, the snow, mud and rough trek back to the sewer had diminished the sharp look of his clothing, but he didn't care. At the moment, he enjoyed the warmth of the water cleansing machine, and nibbled on a piece of old bread. He knew his Momma was planning on using God to make some money as soon as the snow melted, but he didn't care. She had spent several months in jail for stealing in the past, but it was common practice. When she started her scamming, she usually took it a step too far, and ended up spending a night in the county jail. The majority of cops knew her by her first name, and pitied her because of her squalid living conditions.
"Cora, when are you going to learn?" The cops asked her the last time they caught her scamming an old woman. She didn't have an ounce of sorrow in her face, and simply kept quiet during the whole, one-sided conservation.
"Surface dwelling cops think they know every damn thing," she said as she placed her Bible on her knees. Ronnie took off his jacket, placed it on the ground, and watched Vivian in the dirty water. She scrubbed the makeup off her face with a white towel, and looked more like herself than she did at the party.
Judy Lo—Benny's momma—sat on the other side of the sewer river, and watched her daughter bathe in the nasty water. Judy looked sickly most of the time, and had sores consistent with the pictures of people suffering from AIDs. She coughed constantly, and it was a rough cough too. She had thinning grayish black hair, but she was only thirty-three, far too young to look so old. Unfortunately, the majority of women aged horribly in the underbelly of Gotham because of the harsh conditions, drugs, and a lack of medical care. Judy probably had plenty of opportunity to receive the medications needed to cause her disease to go into remission, but she didn't care. A government medical center stood on the corner adjacent to the manhole that had the medications to treat her disease, but she didn't care. She continued to prostitute throughout Gotham almost daily, and nobody cared that she had a spreadable social disease. More than a few men desired her emaciated look, and she enjoyed looking emaciated. It was her way of maximizing the amount of money with her body.
All the adults took illicit drugs all the time too. Several of the women ran a drug lab farther down the hallway in order to keep the community high, and make some money on the side. The bulk of the kids had a few meth rocks in their pockets in order to sell. By the time any of the women turned twenty-one, they already had a mouth full of rotten teeth. The only dental care that took place in the underbelly of Gotham was total tooth extraction. A free government dental clinic existed farther down on Fifth Street, but none of the underbelly used it.
Some of the women caught a gigantic catfish out of the sewer water, cleaned it, and seasoned it with salt and pepper. It was such a big fish that his Momma said, "It won't taste good, but it's nourishing." She placed the Bible on her lap, and watched him eat his meal of fish.
Ronnie had a few pieces of the overly cooked meat on a white, paper plate, and enjoyed it; but all of a sudden, Dennis and another Joker named Fletch charged into the room with grimaces on their faces. Ronnie's heart raced out of fear, because he knew he cost Dennis a lot of money. Dennis knew right where to find Ronnie too, and the kid didn't try to hide because he knew that he had welshed on a client.
"You!" Dennis pointed at the little kid with his right index finger. Ronnie threw his leftover food on the ground, and ran as fast as his short, little legs would take him. It didn't take long for Dennis to catch the boy, smack him a few times, and tell him exactly what he did wrong. "You cost me money, boy."
Ronnie tried to struggle, but Dennis was far too strong. Ronnie's Momma charged at the thug, but he turned, knocked her on the ground, and she fell face down on the concrete surface.
"What did he do?" Cora asked with a grimace of pain on her face.
"He darted on a customer," he replied.
"He did what?" She asked.
"He ran out on Mister Hamilton," he said.
"What's the first rule, Ronnie?" His momma asked.
Dennis had the heel of his left foot on the boy's chest. With tears in Ronnie's eyes, he said, "Money over comfort."
"That's right," Dennis quipped in a throaty voice.
Ronnie reached for his Momma, and grunted a little, but nobody wanted to defy the Jokers. He tried to get her to look at him, but she turned away from him, and stared adamantly at the ground. Dennis reached down, grabbed the boy by his shirt, and said, "Friday, you got Mister Leener," he snarled passionately, "God help you if you skate out on this one."
Dennis walked away from Ronnie, kicked down several of the tents in the shanty town, and sneered toward one of the young girls with a look of fear on her face.
The residents seemed relieved that Dennis and his friend, Fletch, left without doing any real damage to the community. The ladies worked for the next hour to fix the tents and straighten up the mess. Ronnie participated a bit, but he felt angered because he was powerless to stand up to the Jokers.
Living underneath the city of Gotham was tantamount to living in a gigantic septic tank, and Ronnie knew it. The children of the sewer grew up fast because they experienced every sin under the sun. The Jokers bargained them like packs of cigarettes in prison, and they learned to never say "no" to the advances of their abusers. When the lowly children of the wretched sewers had an injury, they brushed it off like it never happened. Nobody listened to the poor when they cried, when they begged, when they complained. So, they never did complain about the predators like the Jokers because nobody listened. The children met with their abusers without any contention, and learned to take the abuse with a smile.
Small bumps—itchy and pussy—covered Ronnie's forearms, but he didn't know what caused it. Was it the rodents or the monstrous catfish causing the nasty rash? It worried him, because he kept hearing rumors of some of the kids dying from sexually related diseases, but he tried his best to put it in the back of his mind. He had done things with Mister Leener that worried him every day; but if he didn't do it, the Jokers would kill his Momma. Vivian Lo—Benny's sister—walked over to him, and gave him a piece of cherry candy with a soft, chewy center. It was his favorite candy outside of the chocolate mints. Her hair went down to the center of her back, and she usually sat quietly across the way with a stoic look on her face. The majority of kids in the shanty town practice stoicism, because they didn't want to discuss the sordid world of Gotham's underbelly. Nobody did. Vivian didn't have the perfect teeth like the kids on the surface of the city. She looked like she had too many teeth in her mouth, and they were turned in every direction imaginable. She wasn't the only sewer dweller with a bad set of teeth. The majority of the kids battled with decaying teeth, drug abuse, and rape.
"You have to see your handler tomorrow?" She asked with a soft, high-pitched voice. She placed her right arm on Ronnie's shoulder in a loving manner.
"It'll be okay," he said with a soothing voice. He looked up at her, and smiled. The teeth in his mouth stood straight, almost perfect. "Mister Leener keeps it simple. By the book, if you know what I mean?"
She gave him a half smile. "Better than my handler. He's all about the tools."
"That sounds like my first handler. That's how I got these cuts on my wrist," he said as he pulled back the sleeve on his tuxedo. His arms had scars on them from rope burns that left indelible marks.
"Where's the Justice Corp?" She asked with a throaty, unpleasant voice.
"Don't ask," he retorted, "It'll only make you mad when you realize nobody cares about us."
Her eyes watered slightly as she looked at all the kids with the look of pain on their faces. Dirty, scrawny, underfed, ignorant—it all disgusted her. "You're right, Ronnie. If the Justice Corp cared, then that man wouldn't have nearly choked me to death last night."
He hugged her with a tight grip. "I wondered if he hurt you."
"Yeah. Mister Garrett handled it," she said, "Told him to never come near me again."
The night came rather quickly, and the majority of the shanty town went to bed by ten o'clock. The ground seemed a bit hard for Ronnie, and he struggled to find a comfortable position. The struggle between him and Dennis weighed heavy on his conscious, and he had a hard time dealing with it. Several of the kids worked as escorts overnight, and they had already left out of the busy room. Ronnie stood outside of his tent without any shoes, and let the concrete scratch the bottom of his feet. He rubbed his feet back and forth on the concrete in order to sooth whatever itch he had. He watched Vivian as she slept on the hard floor a few feet from him, peacefully and quietly. She sometimes slept with her momma and brother on the other side of the room, but she liked to hang out with Tumbler Baily. She was about the same age as Vivian, and had a way of forgetting about the pain of prostituting when she was in the shanty town.
Ronnie wore only the bottom half of his white tuxedo. The white suit had turned dingy and tattered, but he didn't care. He rolled the top half into a wad that he tried to use to rest his head. He didn't have an actual pillow, so he used whatever he could as a pillow. It unraveled every time he found the perfect position to doze off for the night, but then the white jacket would unravel, and force him to readjust it. Finally, after a few hours of fighting with the jacket, he stood up, walked around, and tried to push the previous day out of his mind. Nothing ever went smoothly in the underbelly of the city, but he desired to have one day without violence or prostitution or doing things just to survive.
A loud scream—something in the hallway—frightened him. Looking in the direction of the shrieking, he couldn't see anything from his location. Immediately, He ran down the dark tunnel, and saw an arm sticking out of the cocoon on the wall. It looked as if the cocoon was giving birth to a grown woman. First came one arm, then another arm, and then a girl's head surfaced from the watery bag of flesh. Clumps of goo fell off her face onto the ground, and Ronnie had to force himself not to throw up. An older woman came running down the hallway, and screamed, "Do you know who I am, Jessica?" The girl retched several times, and then heaved up a flood of vomit.
"Momma," she said with a crackling voice. "Where am I?"
Ronnie looked on with a bit of apprehension because he didn't understand what was happening. He felt like he would retch too, but was able to hold it back. The girl had to be at least six feet tall, black, completely naked, and toned from head to toe. He had never seen anybody as ripped as her. Nobody. She looked like royalty with her svelte appearance.
"You've been born again, child," the older woman said.
"Something's wrong," Jessica said with a soft voice. She looked back at Ronnie, grimaced, and then asked, "Are the kids in trouble, Momma?"
"It's not our concern," she said.
"If not ours, then whose?" Jessica asked with a serious look on her face. She waved at Ronnie, and then turned toward the manhole to leave the underground hell hole. "Why do I have this emptiness?"