Ordinary Girl

by Pamela Gossiaux

  “It has only happened to Serena,” says Chloe. “Tommy took care of it.”

  “Took care of it?” I glance at Serena, who shrugs.

  “It’s no big deal.” She picks at her nails some more and starts chewing on her thumb.

  “You mean, abortion?” I say.

  They are quiet, and for a moment I wonder if they actually have morals. If they cared about the baby. I can’t imagine Reg caring for anyone but herself. Serena gets up and leaves, and Reg, true to form, dispels the myth of compassion.

  “It nearly killed her,” she says, her voice low. “Some abortion doc in the slums.”

  “I see. So they rape you, and then when you get pregnant, they nearly kill you to cover it up,” I say, the anger getting to me.

  “It’s not really rape,” Chloe says. “I mean, it’s not like they’re beating us.”

  I look at her so she can see my black eye. She’s serious. I can’t imagine in what world you have to grow up to think it’s okay to do what men are doing to us.

  “Are you kidding?” I say. Chloe shrugs. I look at Reg, who lights up another joint. The smoke is getting thick, and I feel a buzz from it. If I live long enough, I’ll probably get lung cancer from second-hand smoke.

  “You need to appreciate where you’re at,” Chloe says. “You could be out on the street, like I was. And Tommy gives us stuff.” She pulls out a cigarette as if to prove a point. Then she lights it. Chloe just had her nails painted yesterday.

  I think about Veronica back at my high school and wonder what happened to her. I hope she’s okay. Did she ever return to school? Was she too ashamed, even though it wasn’t her fault? Too embarrassed? And if she didn’t return to school, will she still be able to get into college?

  The more ways I play it in my head, the harder it is for me to figure out how Veronica could come back to finish up her senior year after that. I wonder what happened to the guys who did it to her. Are they in college?

  It’s almost like it’s more shameful to be raped, than to be a rapist.

  Maybe it was all too much for her. Maybe…maybe she killed herself.

  — — —

  I begin to wonder if suicide is my only way out. I could take an overdose of drugs. That would be easy enough. I think of the scars running down Reg’s arms. They say when you slice all the way up your arms instead of across the veins, you mean business.

  I could cut myself like that and then bleed to death. We have razors in the bathroom. I could do it at night, when nobody is looking. Maybe take some drugs to numb the pain in my arms. They wouldn’t find me until it was too late.

  But I don’t want to die. I just want to go home.

  I curl into a ball in my bed. Ha. When did I start thinking of this as my bed? I don’t even know how long I’ve been here. Time is a blur, and I’m always tired. Always scared. Tommy doesn’t keep a calendar around, and we aren’t allowed cell phones. Sometimes when the television is on, I catch a date if it’s a new show or something.

  I just want to go home.

  I bury myself deeper under my thin blanket, if that is even possible, and close my eyes tightly. I will myself to fall asleep, and because I am so exhausted, I do. Mercifully.

  — — —

  But all too soon Tommy is waking us up. I sit up groggily and get ready to face another day of horror. Reg isn’t in the living room when we get there. She’s taking her time in the shower. Chloe and I are alone.

  “Don’t talk to Reg this morning,” Chloe whispers. “She’s in a mood. She was arrested for drugs last night.”

  “What?” It never occurred to me that there are even police in this neighborhood. I haven’t seen any ever. I would love to be arrested! Then I could tell them my story and escape.

  “She was with a John, and they got pulled over. She was arrested for possession, but since it was the John’s car, he’s the one in trouble. I guess she quickly stashed it under the seat. Tommy bailed her out.”

  “Bailed her out?” I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around this. This is our chance! The police! “Did she tell them where we are?”

  “No!” Chloe hisses. We’re still whispering so the men don’t hear us. “Are you kidding? The police won’t help you! You’re just another whore selling yourself for drugs.”

  “Wait. What? No,” I say. “That’s not what’s happening at all.”

  “That’s what the police think. Don’t get arrested, Heather. It’ll be the end of you. If Tommy doesn’t come to bail you out, they’ll beat you. The police here— they’re mean. They are our enemy. You’re better off here.”

  It’s a mantra they all keep repeating. I don’t know how much of this is true, but now I’m really scared. If the local police can’t help me, then who can?

  Reg comes out of the bathroom dressed and made up. She looks exhausted, but she has her signature joint hanging out from between her lips.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  And Tommy comes in to drive us to Hell.

  When I was in kindergarten, the police came to visit our school. We got posters to color that said “The Police are Our Friends,” and all of us kids got plastic badges that looked just like the real thing. There were two officers, a woman officer who had red hair braided down her back, and a balding middle-aged man with kind eyes. I remember him the most. He’s the same officer who later came to the house to tell me and my mom about Daddy’s heart attack.

  They taught us about Stranger Danger and how we could always count on them to help us.

  “If you are lost, or scared, find a police officer and ask him or her for help,” said our kindergarten teacher later that day. Mrs. Kettle was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. Plump and grandmotherly, she made my start in school a good one. I loved going in each day to her class.

  The police are our friends. I held that belief all through school. And I’m having trouble letting go of it now. If I ever see a police officer, I’m taking my chances.

  When we get back to the house that evening, Chloe comes into my room, as usual, and sits on my bed. She brings me a glass of water and a pill of some sort.

  “It’ll help you sleep,” she says. I put it on my bed.

  “For later,” I say. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I also don’t want to take it. I have no idea what’s in it.

  “I got arrested once,” Chloe says. “So remember what I said this morning. Good night, Heather. Good night, Reg.” She gives me a little smile, and leaves Reg and me in the dark.

  Reg is lying in bed smoking a regular cigarette. I’ve gotten somewhat used to the smoke, and it doesn’t quite give me a headache anymore. One of these days some of the hot ashes of whatever she’s smoking are going to fall on the mattress, and we’re all going to go up in flames. I just know it. And with the bars on the windows…

  “Chloe has had it rough,” Reg says. There’s silence for a moment, then she continues. “I remember when she was arrested.”

  Reg doesn’t usually speak to me, so I’m surprised that she is talking tonight. I turn over to face her.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “It was last year. She was standing on the street corner doing her thing when she was picked up,” Reg says. “Underage prostitution, they called it. They took her in, but Tommy showed up before they booked her. I don’t know how he always knows where we are.”

  Reg takes another long drag of her cigarette. She’s lying on her back, and when she exhales, I see the smoke drift up towards the ceiling and hang there like a dark cloud above her.

  “So anyway, he got there and pretended to be angry at her.”

  “Pretended?”

  Reg ignored that. “Said she was a runaway and that he’d take her home. The police said he needed to keep her off of the streets. She wasn’t of age. And that was that.”

  I think about that. What officers would turn a fourteen-year-old girl back over to a guy like Tommy?

  “That was it? Didn’t they want to haul her of
f to foster care or something?”

  “Chloe don’t look her age,” Reg said.

  This is true. When she has her makeup and heels on, Chloe looks about 19. Maybe 20.

  “And the police don’t care,” Reg says. “They called her a coke whore and a slut.”

  “I think I would try to escape,” I said. But where would I go? No one was looking for me. They would have found me by now. And out there on the streets—if I try to escape on foot—the gangs will get me.

  “We had another girl taken from us six months ago. Same thing. Arrested for underage prostitution. She wound up in a foster home.”

  This gave me a glimmer of hope. “What happened to her?”

  “Tommy found her after school one day and brought her back. She’s off in one of his other houses now.”

  “How many houses does he have? Are there other women like us?”

  Reg shrugs and stabs her cigarette out. She rolls over so she is facing the wall, away from me.

  “Reg?” I say.

  But she doesn’t answer. I take it that our conversation is over. I lay there for a long time, wondering about the girl who willingly came back to Tommy, and about young Chloe with her freshly painted fingernails. The world as I knew it no longer exists.

  — — —

  There’s a photo in my dresser drawer at home of us as a family. It was taken on my ninth birthday, at the park where we had my birthday party. It was early June, and the weather was perfect that day. In the photo I’m wearing a pink shirt with kittens on it, and some polka dot shorts with a draw string. It was one of my favorite outfits. My hair is in braids and tied with pink bows. Mom has her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and is wearing a Tigers’ baseball cap. Daddy is wearing a light blue polo shirt that matches his eyes. It has green and yellow stripes through it, and even though he doesn’t golf, Mom always called it his golf shirt. He looks so handsome in that photo, and his smile lights up his face. I still remember that. When Daddy smiled, his whole face smiled. Mom always said that about him. She said it was like his happy bubbled up from deep inside.

  I have that picture memorized because I’ve looked at it so many times. It used to sit up on our fireplace mantel, but after Daddy died, Mom took it off because she said it made her too sad to look at. So I kept it. It’s in my dresser drawer, and I look at it every night before bed. Or at least I used to, when I was home.

  Mom made a baby photo book for me of my first year. We used to get it out every birthday and look through it together. She had photos of my first bath, me eating my first solids, and pictures for each month of that first year of my life. There’s also a little lock of hair in a protective sleeve, on a page titled first haircut. She said my bangs were so long she had to snip them. Near the end, she has photos of my very first birthday party. We were such a happy family.

  I wonder what my mom is doing now. Is she looking for me? It seems like she’s not. I think about how depressed she is, and how much she tried to get better both times for me.

  “You’re my inspiration,” she said to me. “You’re the reason I need to keep going.”

  But now that I’m gone, what is Mom’s inspiration? This scares me. I think of Mom, all alone, with no idea how to find me. She takes more of her “feel good” pills to cope. One day she takes too many, and it’s days before Brit’s mom thinks to call. When Mom doesn’t answer, Mrs. Hudson will go over and find her corpse, days old, rotting and alone.

  My mom could be dead now. She has to be. Otherwise she would have found me and saved me.

  — — —

  Tommy takes us back out to the street corner. I don’t have any drugs with me because I’ve run out. My hands are shaking, and I feel sick, but I am determined to break free of the haze they keep me in.

  It’s late evening, and we’re picking up the after-work traffic. We spent a few hours in the hotel rooms first, but then Tommy said there was a change of plans. There is never an end to the stream of men who show up. I have no idea where they come from. Chloe has told me from ads. But some don’t read the ads or go online. Instead, they cruise the streets of this bad part of town, looking for a way to satisfy their hunger. Which is why we’re here now.

  There’s four of us today: me, Chloe, Serena and Reg. We’re all here. I see two women standing a block down, and Chloe tells me that those are Tommy’s girls, too. I can’t tell much about them from here. I wonder if one is the girl who came back from foster care.

  A car of two pulls up to our corner and stops. The guys look young, in their twenties. We usually get older men. Middle-aged men looking for something outside of their marriage. Or a way to relieve stress from their day at work. Or a way to satisfy a craving they didn’t know they had.

  They are all the same. But these two are different.

  “Hey girls,” says the guy in the passenger side. His hair is cut short and he has a tattoo on the right side of his neck of an eagle in flight. The wings are spread and wrap around towards the back of his neck. “Which one of you wants to have some fun?”

  Reg saunters over to them and leans provocatively into his window. She blows some smoke into his face. “Do you think you can handle us?” she says.

  The guy blushes a bit and coughs, but he regains himself. “Oh baby, you know we got what it takes.” He reaches his hand down, and I can’t see, but he probably grabs his crotch.

  Reg gives him a smirk and stands back up. “What about you, handsome?” she says to the man driving the car.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” he says, grinning.

  “Which one of my sisters do you want to join us?”

  They look at us, their eyes scanning our bodies like we’re meat.

  “That one,” the driver says, and he’s pointing at Chloe.

  Reg nods and opens the back door of the car. Chloe gets in, and Reg is about to.

  “No,” says the passenger. “Just her.”

  Reg freezes. I see her shoulders go stiff. “We come in pairs,” she says. “Two guys means two girls, twice the fun.”

  “No,” says the passenger. He has grown some balls and gets out of the car. “Just her.” He pushes the back door shut and stands against it, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m sure you’re hot, but we’re not looking for your type this evening.”

  Reg’s eyes dart across the street, and I follow her gaze. One of Tommy’s thugs is standing there, arms folded, watching.

  Chloe has seen Thug One as well. “I’ll be fine,” she says.

  Reg steps back and gives her signature shrug. “Have it your way,” she says to the blond guy. He nods, giving her a smile. I can see the bulge in his pants from here. He gets back into the car and closes the door. They drive off.

  “Rookies,” says Reg.

  “You mean…virgins?” I ask.

  “Or at least they’ve never paid for it before,” she says. She takes a long drag of her joint. Her fingers are trembling. I don’t often see Reg upset. She tries to look like she doesn’t care, but she looks scared to me.

  “What will happen to Chloe?” I ask.

  Reg shrugs.

  “They’ll kill her,” Serena says. I jump at her voice. She’s quiet and hardly ever speaks, so I forget she’s there.

  “Shut up,” Reg says. “Chloe can take care of herself.”

  “But two guys…”

  “She’s had more.” Reg walks away from us, sauntering down the street. Another car slows down, and she leans in. Soon she is sliding in the passenger side and closing the door. They drive away.

  I can’t help but think of what Serena just said.

  “How do you know they’ll kill Chloe?” I said.

  “They have that look. They’re too eager. Some men are not just here for sex. They’re here to prove something. Sometimes the younger ones need to prove they’re men, and that usually makes them mean.”

  I look across the street at Thug One. “Should we tell him?”

  Serena shakes her head. “He doesn’t car
e.”

  “Tommy might.”

  But she doesn’t reply. I wonder again what Serena’s story is. She never talks about herself, and the other girls don’t seem to know, either. She’s pretty, she speaks well, and she seems educated. I wonder if she was like me. Foolish enough to be lured in.

  A pickup truck pulls up, and a man rolls down his window. I hear country music playing from his stereo. “You.” He points to me. He waves some cash. “Let’s go.”

  I glance across the street and see Thug One still standing there. Then I turn to Serena. “I’ll see you at home,” I say.

  She nods as I climb in the truck. The man puts his hand on my thigh and runs it up between my legs. I flinch at his touch. I can’t help myself. He holds his hand there as he begins to drive. He is wearing jeans and a cowboy hat. His leather boots say he has money.

  As we drive off it occurs to me that when I said goodbye to Serena, I told her I’d see her tonight at home.

  Home.

  Is that what I’m calling it now?

  When I get back to the house sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I hear Serena in her bedroom crying. Instead of heading to the kitchen for some food, I turn and go into her room.

  Reg is sitting on Chloe’s bed, smoking. She looks at me then nods towards Serena. “Chloe is at the hospital,” she says. “She was beaten pretty badly. Tommy went to get her.”

  “Oh no.” I think of Chloe’s sweet face. And of the two men who picked her up.

  “I knew they were trouble,” says Reg. “They had her for a while before Sal found her. She was in an alley, bleeding all over some garbage.”

  “Is she…will she be okay?” I suddenly feel light-headed and sit on the bed next to Serena.

  Reg shrugs. Sometimes when she does that I want to hit her.

  “What else do you know?”

  “That’s about it. That and Tommy went nuclear when he found out,” Reg said.