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.
As I finish up my last piece of sausage, I place my plate and fork into the dishwasher and step over onto the scale. Mama punishes us harshly if our weight rises over a 130 pounds, and though we do not know how she does it, if anyone weighs in after any meal with that weight she knows and forces the entire house to a weight check where we each step on the scale and shout out our number.
This is another time where humiliating glances can be cast, both for the unlucky girl who's weight Mama detected, or for other's who have slipped higher that the custom 110.
Today I weigh in at 103, which is where I have consistantly stood for the past four days after every meal. This is a good weight, though if I fell just four pounds down then I would be ridiculed by the girls as frail and had it pointed out that "no man would pay for a beanpole." Then I would be punished by Mama, sometimes force-fed until one cannot eat any more and forced to throw it all back up, beaten or, when she is in an especially bitter mood, given a good proding with a scalding hot rod where it hurts the most.
Cocoa told me after the former had happened once near the beginning of my time that she does not want us falling below the line of amaciated because we have to represent "beautiful women" in the eyes of our clients, and a girl with bones too promiment does not do that.
We are such bitches, I think to myself as I warily leave the other girls to finish and weigh in to go watch the game show currently on the telly. I slide into our customary spot - a large armchair which Trina and Cocoa earned for our room a half a year ago - and look over at Sarra. She sits in the highest spot possible, alone in the overstuffed chair directly in front of the television. No one has managed to take the spot from her for as long as Cocoa can remember, though there are some who have come close.
She is watching the show intensely, leaning forward in her seat though there isn't really anything happening at the moment. I wish I could tell her that plan, But Trina says that with her sickness she has developed, she is bound to run and tell Mama.
The thought of the Plan brings new excitement to my heart, making it race and flutter against my ribs. It seems so simple, but simple is good, and so long as we get out I do not care if it is as easy as walking out the door.
Suddenly a voice rips me from my thoughts, one which sends chills down my spine, and replaces the lightness of excited with a hard brick in my gut.
"Tiger will do me well, I think," says the menicing voice of Dan from the entryway.
I know it is an honour to be picked from the sittingroom, and it would add status to our room if we were staying past the evening, but I also know that Dan does this purposely because of the first time I attacked him and he knows that it causes me great displeasure, therefore making it nearly impossible to block it out as I do with all the other men. He has been here numerous times since I have come, and each time he seems to make his attack more brutal on my poor body.
Cocoa is suddenly standing behind me, squeezing my shoulders and urging me forward. I can feel in her hands she is angry, as we share no secrets in our small bedroom and it is very common to walk in when one is with a client, and she knows how this one treats me. But after one session with him she just reminded me to keep myself as she taught, and know that it will eventually be over.
So I slink from my chair with the greedy, jealous eyes of many girls following my every move, put my arms around Dan's waist and lead him up to my room. I hear as I walk out snickers of girls saying cruel things about me.
"She's not even that pretty. " "I hear she still cries." "After this long?" "Mhmm." "What a baby. She hardly is big enough to be called a woman anyway." "I think she's a bitch. She knocked into me on purpose yesterday."
And though their words are empty of anything but spite and cruelty, I cannot help be hurt by them as I lead Dan up the stairs slowly, smiling through my fear at the particularly nasty look in his eye.
"Are you afraid?" he asks me venomously, sitting on top of me and sneering down menicingly.
"Only if you want me to be," I huff breathlessly, forcing myself to remain in character for him. Even a hand across my face - light enough not to mark too badly, but heavy enough to sting - will not break me today, I think to myself as my mental clock begins stroking along the last five minutes of his session.
Once the real timer sitting on the wall by the door goes off I sit up abruptly, shocking him enough to roll him off me and fall down the side of my bed. The curtains rip down, and with a sigh I stand on the bed to fix them. How many times have they been pulled from the track? A hundred? A thousand?
I glare at Dan who is glowering at me, but without more than a slap on the ass and a brief feel up my inner thigh he leaves the room so that I might finish my task. I have has clients who have apologized for being so rough and offered to help me with the measly piece of fabric there to give the illution of privacy, but I know Dan is not one of them.
Once this is finished I quickly straighten my clothing and fix my mussed hair before decending the steps again, sidling down one wall to avoid getting between a girl and her fat John flirting as they went to her room.
It is nearly ten o'clock in the morning when I returned downstairs to the sitting room to where Trina and Cocoa still are. Sitting on the floor with my back against our chair, I feel Trina put her hand on my shoulder and her fingers tapping nervously. I cover her hand with my own and smile up at her, gesturing with my eyes towards the clock. The boy with the books will be here any minute, which is why her tension is growing.
There is a knock on the window to our right - we three all stay still, not needing to go meet the boy. That is a job for the girls of higher status, and as they get first pick over everything he has to offer we have no reason to try and rush ahead.
This is a vital part of the plan, the part where we bide our time, wait until just the right moment when there are very few girls left with the man before we knock him out and sneak out through the door which was unlocked by one of the devote girls Mama showed where the key to the back door was.
However, as the girls are coming back, and we are standing up, and Trina is grasping my hand until it turns numb, and Cocoa tapping her fingers against each other, when it happens --
I see again the dark pleading eyes of a five year old girl with curly blonde hair who is the daughter of a low ranking girl watching the three of us as if she knows of all our plans. Her mother catches my eye as I am watching her baby, and she sees the pain in my face. Cocoa is trying to pull me along with her, but I cannot make myself leave the girl behind to her fate.
Her mother looks down at her girl, crosses the distance between them and kisses her curly head before nodding to me. The girl makes not a sound as she comes over to me and I swing her up onto my hip.
"Tiger..."
"I have to," I whisper back to Cocoa, walking ahead of her. "We'll make it work."
Trina looks back at me, her eyes widening as she sees the child, then nods knowingly and contunes on as planned. Cocoa spends a few second more staring critically at me, then sighs and turns back towards the hall. We pass through the short corridor, all our minds spinning with trying to carefully redevise the plan to fit this new-comer.
The next fifty seconds go something like this:
Trina is leading. She walks up to the boy with the books and smiles at him. He smiles back, and she begins absently asking him about a novel in her hand, making sure his attention does not stray from her eyes. I come up on third side of the car, blocking his view of the main hallway, asking the girl on my hip if she would like some chocolate, as I can feel her heart fluttering against my shoulder and I am trying to keep her calm. She was fussing, not able to find a chocolate that she liked, digging through the pile until she finally settled on one.
Handing her a chocolate lollipop, the boy absently puts out a hand for the money I owe him. Instead, I grab his hand in my right, wrap my left all the way around Baby on my hip to get my forearm across his shoulder and chest. Cocoa holds his head tightly with her one hand and his second arm with her other, keeping his mouth closed with hers.
My actions are blocked by my body from the other girls, and Cocoa's seem perfectly normal to them - she is not the first woman here to take the book boy out to the courtyard to pay for her products in a different way.
I follow them out, keeping adequate tension on his arm to make him uncomfortable, however not in any danger. Trina follows us out, gayly pushing the book cart in front of her.
The courtyard is really not a yard at all - stuck behind the building, void of anything but concrete, weeds, and a potted tree, it is a place the girls could go to get some fresh air or to smoke. It was fully enclosed with thick chicken wire, forming a dome with the only exit being a double locked gate which only Mama had a key to - Mama and the book boy.
Once we were through the door and Trina had closed it after her, Cocoa releases his mouth and hands his other arm to me. I clasp it with his other.
"Whoa, girls," says the book boy, fighting to free his hands. I pull them tighter. "Shit, girl, let go of me! If you don't want to pay we can work something out, I swear!"
Cocoa laughes, pinching his bum. "Oh, I know we could, darling, but we don't want you. We want your key."
The boy's body shifts - he's more comfortable now, I think. I look at Trina. She noticed it too.
"You don't think this has happened before? You really think you can find it? Girls, you're not the first who have tried this. And it won't work for you, just like it didn't work for anyone else."
"Bull shit!" Cocoa says, nodding to me. I pull his arms up just a tad higher. He flinches, but says nothing more. Another inch, and I can feel the resistance in his muscles to go further.
"I have a little sister," I tell him, tears in my eyes thinking of her. "She's with a monster right now, and she has no one else besides me. You have to help us. Please."
The boy is unmoved, and the next time I move up his arms I draw his elbows together a little bit, making the suffering practically unbearable. He's starting to sweat from the pain,
Baby was starting to squirm in my hold. I try to hold her still, but she slides out from under my arm and lands on the courtyard ground.
"Let us out boy," says Trina. We are going to have to think of a new tactic soon - it has been nearly four minutes, and someone is bound to get curious soon.
Baby taps me on the leg. She seems not to be a talker as she points to the book cart. I glance at Trina. She comes over, takes Baby's hand, and asks her, "is the key on the cart?"
Baby looks at her soulfully, then lifts her arms and waits until Trina picks her up and carries her to the cart.
"No, no you stay out of there!" The boy hisses as Baby goes straight for the cashbox. I laugh as he struggles.
"So, where's that key, big guy? Must be pretty close by, knowing all the orders you have to fill." I say. "Cocoa, check his necklace." he fights a great amount, which means that I have to throw him to the ground, straddling his waist and kneeling on his hands in order for her to pull the chain out from under his shirt. The pendant is a large dragon, but when Cocoa flips it over, a small key is slipped through a loop on the back.
"Listen, girls, they'll kill me if they found out you got free. Seriously. I will be dead, you can't do this!" now he's crying, trying to get us to sympathize with him.
"Oooh, it looks like you made a few more stops before you got here, huh?" Trina asks, opening the cashbox. I hear her rummiging through it, and then a very satisfied laugh. I smile down at the boy, who is looking as if he has been strapped to a set of train tracks.
Trina drops the key into my hand, then goes back to the book card, where she doesn't linger long. Taking the largest book she can find, she smashes the boy over the head until he looses consciousness. Then she takes the cashbox, I scoop up Baby, hand the key card to Cocoa, and we run as fast as we can away from that building.
******
So sorry for the long time between updates, but I have been crazy busy. Hope you guys like this one, And I will be trying to get out the next chapter soon!
XOXO