The money, drugs, and temptation - my life on the bad side

Breakin' out

Our voices are whispers in fear that Mama will hear us, but we do not stop planning and thinking through every motion of our next day until we know that it is solidly in our minds. When we finally split to our seperate beds, my mind is rushing with excitement, though it takes only seconds before I am fast asleep. 

And it is an even shorter time before Sarra is shaking me awake, muttering something about rotten chicken as I sit up and rub my eyes, watching her back retreat into the bathroom. She really is loopy, as Trina has warned me many times. I am sure at one time she was normal, however so long in such confinement is hazardous for your health. They stole everything from her when she was sold by her brother to Mama, all but a small silver band which she wears on her pinkie finger as if she has grown too large for it to fit on any of the others. 

Trina and I share many sercretive glances while heavily applying our eyeliner, only stopping when Cocoa comes in, smacks us both and with a quick pointed gesture tells us to be calm else we want someone to find out. She then takes the eyeliner brush from me and holds my head as she strokes it on with more experienced hands. 

Once she is done with that I carefully avoid looking in the mirror at the transformation from girl to sex-object is completed. I want to have to see myself like that as little as possible.

Mornings are always the slowest time of day, and all the girls in the house know this, crowding around the sitting room for Price is Right while we eat in the kitchen in shifts of one or two rooms at a time. 

Though we rarely all share the same space, it is remarkable how many innocent - or not so innocent - girls you see are living here once we are all together. Almost fifty in total, ranging from ages nine through about twenty-two, and three children beloning to the prostitutes who are always either working with Mama or in the sitting room. One of them is nearly eight, and I have heard some talking about how soon she will be 'just like her Mommy'. Every time it is said I get shivers over my skin.

Right now Cocoa, Sarra, Trina and I are sitting in the kitchen and eating eggs which Trina prepared, and some leftover turkey sausage links. Though there are no rules specifying anything, customs and etiquette amongst us provide guidelines for living, such as leaving a little of your meal for the next round of eaters, respecting the ladder of importance - one which I have settled near the bottom rungs - and not changing the channel when Three's Company is on. These and hundreds more little rules - which if disregarded results in serious, but inconspicuous punishment - frame our every day lives. I have learned so many, though I hope not to be around long enough to have any more throw upon me. 

"John!" comes the warning signal from the hall. Though usually it is one of the children who is reporter for Mama, today it is her larger son who's deep voice rings through the house.

I hear girls get up behind me, though as my back is to them I can only guess who it is who wins the staring contest which almost always is passed for at least a second until the top two slink through the wide arch into the hallway and down to the front. Though it is humiliating and damaging to one's reputation and level of importance if you are rejected as a 'greeter' and the client must come into the sitting room to pick his own girl, the honour which comes of winning the john is usually too much for most girls to pass up. 

A few minutes pass and the losing girl comes back, expecting her place on the couch to be reserved only to find it filled with the girl from the rung below her. Sulking, she slides to the floor by her feet. 

Though I can see none of this happening this time, I have seen it too many times to not know the rituals of it. It is common for girls of the same room to sit together if their level of staus is not too different - as Cocoa Trina and I do - but this was a high up girl who was better than her bunk mates, and has now been bitterly rejected the seat she most likely worked years for.