She’s come a long way from rock bottom

She was the madam of skid row, a working girl whose brothel consisted of several Porta-Potties at the corner of Sixth and San Julian.

The johns came to the johns, and Madam TJ reeled them in with a fetching smile and slinky strut, all of it playing out a block from the LAPD’s Central Division. There was no more jaw-dropping snapshot of skid row as a rock-bottom depository, a place that existed on its own terms, outside the law and the collective consciousness.

When I met TJ in the fall of 2005, she had a shocker for me. She didn’t just work in a Porta-Potty.

She lived in one.

Look, she showed me one night -- here were her clothes, her fine hats, her personal effects. Home sweet home.

The column caused no small amount of shame and discomfort at City Hall, and the Porta-Potties, which also served as drug dens, were trucked away. Every time I saw or heard from LAPD Officer Deon Joseph, I asked if he ever bumped into TJ, which stood for “Thick and Juicy.” He said he’d seen her once or twice and tried getting her into some housing, but he’d lost track of her.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an excited e-mail from Joseph.

“Hey Steve. Guess who I ran into. TJ. Correction. Mrs. Carole Speaks. She looked fantastic, and has been clean for 1 1/2 years . . . I’m so proud of her.”

When I called, TJ said she’d be happy to meet, but wanted me to know that TJ no longer exists. She was Carole Lynn Speaks, a church-going believer, and she was engaged but not yet married.

Speaks was waiting for me in front of her house in Compton, and she was wearing a smile to light all of Carson and points south as she leaped to her feet to greet me. Inside her spotless, nicely furnished living room, she could barely contain herself as she showed off the sofa, entertainment center and other chic furnishings.

This is who she always was, she told me. Skid row was a wrong turn followed by a tumble down a dark hole.

“I’m not of that,” she said of what she now calls the skid row “dating” game. “I was a corporate executive assistant for years. I typed 101 words a minute.”

Then why did she end up dating?

To pay for the medication, she said. Crack cocaine to be specific, which she used to dull bad memories of being beaten as a child and later by a lover. Connecticut was home, but she moved to Ohio to start over and fell in love with a man and followed him to Los Angeles. This guy didn’t beat her, but he broke her, nonetheless, walking out without so much as a goodbye.

Speaks says she lined up a job as an accounting assistant, but the salary wouldn’t have paid enough for her painkillers.

“It was faster money,” she said of her life on skid row. She said she made as much as several hundred dollars a day, most of it going up in smoke.

“Most of those men, all they wanted was talk,” she said, claiming that a procession of lost and lonely souls paid their money as much for her gift of gab as for her other services. “Talk,” she urged her girls. Save your body and “use your brain.”

After the Porta-Potties were trucked away, Speaks moved down the block and then pushed farther east to Gladys Street, turning tricks in a tent she pitched on the sidewalk. Late in December 2006, an old friend named Vincent came by after a stretch in the joint on a drug conviction.

Something sparked when they talked, but Speaks was still a servant to the pipe. Early in 2007 she was caught copping some crack near Gladys Park and got a free ride to County Jail for three months. Vincent, who was with her at the time but claimed innocence, was sent away for another year.

Their jail mail to each other was filled with hearts and kisses. Speaks kept writing after being rescued from lockup by a mental health agency when a jailhouse evaluation determined that she had a previously undiagnosed condition -- bipolar disorder.

She was still in therapy at the mental health center, getting treatment for her addiction and staying in housing provided by them when Vincent was sprung and came for her last month. A house owned by his father was now vacant in Compton, and so the happy couple moved in together. She used to be a singer, she said, and maybe she’ll give that a try again once they settle into the house.

“Steve, I’ve never been in love like this before,” she told me. “I thought I was, but it was nothing like this.”

I was a little concerned that Speaks might be setting herself up for another fall if the relationship didn’t work out.

She shook that off. Impossible.

When her fiance came home, they sat together on the couch, holding hands. Skid row isn’t for either of them any more, said Vincent, who told me he ended up there to self-medicate after losing two siblings at an early age.

Speaks ran to the bedroom when Vincent went out to the frontyard, and she returned with a fat stack of love letters she had sent him in prison, with red lipstick kisses on the envelopes.

“Baby, you and your letters of love light up my day,” she said, reading one of them. “I love the things you say, and no one else has ever said such things to me.”

He’s her life now, she said. No more drugs and “dating.”

She’s glad she had a wake-up call.

“Steve, your article never left my mind,” she said. “It opened my eyes to how I was living as opposed to how I grew up. Between Vincent and that article, I said I just couldn’t do it anymore . . . The Porta-Potties, that was the bottom of the barrel for me. I was the best-dressed woman out there, but that was the bottom.”

Crack will make you do things you never would have imagined, she said. And there’s no rehab program that will clean you until you decide you’re ready.

But what if her circumstances change?

“Addiction is a sneaky mug,” she admitted. “Maybe when Vincent’s not here and there’s a bowl of money, I’ll be tempted. But I’m not giving this up. It’s something I’ve longed for. He treats me like a queen. . . . It wasn’t about the drugs. I needed somebody.”

It may be more complicated than that, and how she treats herself is probably more important than how someone else treats her. But I couldn’t help rooting for her.

She jumped off the sofa and asked me to follow.

“Let me show you this,” the former TJ said, leading me on a tour of the kitchen, the office, the bedroom and the backyard. “This is a huge yard. I want to put a bench all the way around that tree. Wouldn’t that be nice, Steve? I love it. I love this house.”

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steve.lopez@latimes.com