Chloe Doe

by Suzanne Phillips

  I don’t like the point system, that someone else decides the worth of every action and reaction. In a game like this, it’s easy for the other side to always be ahead. I told the nurses that. I said, “There’s no winning when you’re the underdog.” They said, “You know the rules,” but gave me enough toothpaste to see me through the day, to try and tempt my participation with a taste of the rewards. But I’m not that easy.

  “What do you want to talk about today?”

  Like he doesn’t already have it planned.

  “Don’t you know?” I ask him.

  “I only know what I want to talk about, and we’ll get to that,” he says.

  What’s going on inside my head?

  “I need more than a hairbrush.” Because it’s really bothering me, that I don’t have even the smallest requirements for living. “I need shampoo, and a razor . . .” And I don’t want to use it under the supervision of one of the nurses. “And lotion. With cocoa butter, so I smell like I’m at the beach.”

  “The things you had on the outside?” he asks.

  “No.” I’m only asking for the minimum. On the outside I had a Lady Swan razor and shower gel that smelled like jasmine.

  “What else?” What else does a girl in my kind of work buy for herself?

  Not much. There’s never enough left over for the dream things.

  “I have a pair of gold hoop earrings with dolphins dangling in the center. Fourteen carat.” My prize possession.

  Last year a girl I knew went to jail and she gave me her leather boots. Real leather and hardly worn. “They were a half size too big, but I wore them almost every day.” Made me feel like a rich girl.

  “What do you have that you can’t live without?” I ask him. What wouldn’t he want to give up?

  “We’re talking things?” he says. “Not people?”

  Sure. I already know what it’s like living without the one person who made life worth it.

  He doesn’t have to think about it. He comes up with two things. He loves old bicycles and restores them. They hang in his garage, where not even the cars are allowed to park. One dates back to the 1800s.

  “So your garage is a museum?”

  His wife thinks so, but she puts up with him because he’s the real thing.

  “We make adjustments when it’s worth it,” he says.

  We give a little when we know the payback will be big.

  “So at the end of my road there’s a pot of gold?”

  If I make the right decisions. If I think enough of myself to make some changes.

  “You think another job is the answer?”

  “No,” he says. It’s part of the equation but, “It’s not the beginning.”

  My beginning is here. Now.

  He’s looking right at me.

  My savior.

  But he’s shaking his head. He tells me, “The only person who can save you is you.”

  “Then I’m in big trouble.”

  “It’s life or death,” he says. I’ll always get the truth from him.

  And I’m too smart to take anything he offers wrapped up like candy.

  “Choose life,” he says.

  My life is waiting for me. What do I want to do with it?

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s work,” he says. “Twenty-four/seven.”

  It’s a battle I’ll wage in my mind. Do I have a fighting spirit?

  It could be months before I have anything to show for it.

  It’s not for the weak.

  He can promise me food and shelter. And support from people like him.

  All at a price. But I won’t have to take my clothes off for it. I’ll pay with my heart.

  “Then we already have a problem,” I say. I cashed in my heart years ago.

  He wants to create a picture. He’ll speak the words and I’ll draw it in my mind.

  “You live behind closed doors,” he says. “Right now, they’re locked from the inside.”

  What do I see?

  He’ll keep knocking on the door, but he’s not going to break it down. I have to open it. I have to want it if it’s ever going to work.

  “Really,” he says, “you have nothing to lose.”

  I see myself in my tiny apartment, with just a sink, a toilet, and a mattress thrown on the floor; with the refrigerator half the size of me and a hot plate for boiling water; I’m standing in front of the door. Knock. Knock. Knock. I reach for the handle. I try to, but my arm doesn’t move. I tell myself, Open it. But nothing. I’m as still as a statue.

  “I can’t open it,” I tell him. I want to. My mind is practically screaming at my body to move.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asks.

  I’m afraid to move and afraid not to. And I don’t like that he brought me to this place. Life is a lot easier when you just let it happen.

  “Put it into words.” What I’m feeling. Then we’ll have something we can deal with. We can face it, wrestle it to the ground, drive a dagger through its heart.

  But the fear is pressing against my throat and I can’t talk.

  He says it has to do with trust.

  “You’re afraid to trust me, but more afraid to trust yourself.”

  “What are you going to do about that?” I ask him.

  He laughs. But he’s right about me. I am afraid to trust him; I’m more afraid that it’s too late. That there are too many pieces of me missing.

  He says I’ll be doing all the work and I may as well cut myself a break.

  “You’ll open that door,” he says. He has faith in me.

  And that’s the other thing he wouldn’t want to live without. Faith. It makes anything possible.

  Pleasure Seekers

  They don’t always screen guests. Sometimes they’re desperate to entertain us, to occupy our time until lights out, that they’ll let anyone come who expresses an interest. Today it’s a Gautama Buddha priest. In his orange robes he looks like a toasted marshmallow. The artificial lights glare off his shaved head.

  “Have no accumulation,” he says. “Be tranquil . . . free from pride. You are the envy of even the gods.

  “An unpolluted lake . . . the thought is calm, the speech and action are calm. You are liberated and gone to serenity.

  “Banish your compulsions and attachments and you’ll be hard to track, like birds in the sky.”

  You mean, if I give up food and sex, I can fly away? No one will find me? You mean, if I forget all I’ve learned, if I close my eyes and imagine an empty world, with no johns, no Manny Marquez, or someone like him, no family life that might have been unbearable, no memory, I’ll be free?

  Nirvana.

  He says we can attain it if we strike out for a life without cumbersome baggage. We must forget that our fathers raped us, that our babies lie breathless at the bottom of trash cans. Our lives, filled with too much indulgence, must be snuffed out. Purge ourselves of permissiveness.

  Who you are, is no more. This is a new beginning. Your life is a clean slate. You may begin inscribing at any moment.

  “Put your hands together,” he says. “Raise them to the level of your heart. Listen to the beat. You are the lungs and the air that fills them. And nothing else . . . you are nothing else . . . nothing . . .”

  Which is all well and good, if we could carry our nothingness to better accommodations. As it is, when we open our eyes, we are still Dolores, we are still Chloe Doe, and Mary Christine. Our addresses are zip codes. We’re the Mary Magdalenes of the world.

  “Forests are pleasant where people do not frolic; those who are free of passion will enjoy them, because they are not pleasure seekers.”

  According to the Great Gautama, turning tricks makes us pleasure seekers. Taking a john, saying I’ll do it for fifty dollars, isn’t work. It isn’t paying the bills, like I’ve been thinking. It isn’t keeping a roof over my head. Instead, it’s my great passion. I’m wanting each and every john I pick up. I’m wanting them in the carnal sens
e. I’m a nympho. And this behavior is keeping me in shackles. I’m a prisoner of the flesh, and that never leads to any good.

  He’s crazy, this chungo man with no hair and shit for brains.

  He passes out leaflets called “Thousands”:

  1. Better than a thousand sayings composed of meaningless statements is a single meaningful statement.

  2. You may perform ritual sacrifices a thousand times every month for a hundred years and it’s not so good as honoring an Enlightened One for a single moment of your lifetime.

  3. It is better to live one day ethically and reflectively than to live a hundred years immoral and unrestrained.

  They’re like something you pull out of a fortune cookie. Only there’s little hope, and no promise of making it rich anytime soon. No promise that a big change in your life is right around the corner. That you’ll meet someone. That you’re trusted, admired, loved. That you’ll be successful in business. That someone, a relative or friend, is about to make you happy. They’re not offering us a future, something to look forward to.

  He doesn’t touch us. He walks by and to each one of us he bows his head. He looks at us with black eyes and doesn’t smile. This is a serious business. He’s looking for our arhat, our alma, our soul. But we don’t have it. We’re not at peace.

  Before he leaves, when he’s standing at the door and makes a final bow meant for all of us, doctors included, he says, “It takes years of practice to make even the Lesser Journey.”

  Something good has come from the Buddha’s visit. In group we decide to make our own fortunes. The doctors like this idea. They think it’s healthy for us to look ahead, to visualize our lives as we’d like them to be, being realistic, of course, about what we can actually achieve. The nurses help us. When one of us decides she wants to marry Leonardo DiCaprio, she’s told, No, that won’t do. You must be realistic. Find one thing you think you’d like about being married. You can write that on your fortune.

  After hours of searching and contemplation she writes, Your hard work will pay off in the bedroom.

  She’s told to start again.

  Another chooses to be el presidente. They let her down easy.

  What will you do as president, they ask.

  She’ll open all the homes of the rich to the poor. She’ll make sure all the population knows a hungry day. She’ll plant trees and do away with factories.

  No good. You must be realistic. Pick something else.

  The little Niña decides she wants to lead millions of people to the Holy Land. She’s the only one of us who listened to our guest. Who believes that her saving, and ours, is nothing more than a decision we make. They want us to believe in something, preferably ourselves.

  The staff applauds her efforts. They tell her only she can stand in her way.

  At our next group we present our futures.

  When it’s my turn I tell them I’ve put a great deal of thought into my future and have come up empty-handed. I tell them, though the world is full of opportunity, I don’t think there’ll be a knock at my door.

  The doctors say, Chloe, of course there’s going to be good in your life. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it, and all that pump-up-your-life bit they’re taught in school.

  I know they won’t let up until I satisfy them, so I pull out my fortunes. I tell them I’ve made the list in preparation for life on the outside. I have three expectations:

  1. You are admired for your special talents.

  2. You have skills others envy.

  3. Great fortune awaits you.

  The doctors aren’t happy with our efforts. We haven’t applied ourselves. We didn’t take the project seriously. We didn’t think about the future; we’re stuck in the past.

  We were supposed to expand our horizons, without going overboard. Broaden our scope past the familiar: What would we like to be?

  We need to have a purpose, do we see that? A goal.

  Would any of us like to go to college? There’s a class offered by the state that will help us get our GED. And then there’s a grant that will pay for our attendance at the community college. We can all become lab technicians or typists. We can go to work in a hospital or business. We can answer phones, greet people when they come into the office. We’d be the first line of defense. Have we thought about any of this? Would we like to learn a trade that will employ us, get us a paycheck, guaranteed, and keep us off the street?

  We’re all thinking, How much will it pay? Is it more than I can make in a month of Saturday nights?

  That, and benefits, too. And a feeling like we’re doing something worthwhile. They say, You can walk among society with your head up. You can become a member.

  The Gautama left behind a legacy. The fortunes are cut out in thin strips and tacked to walls and doors. Some of them are printed on pink paper, curled like authentic Chinese cookie fortunes.

  We’ve become realistic about our efforts. We know they’re unsuccessful, that they point us in no clear direction without the belief to back them, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. They’re nice to read, and to hold on to for a moment, but they’re not to be believed.

  Vons Grocery

  Dr. Dearborn wonders if any of us have worked a real job.

  I tell him, I tried it your way.

  “I worked at Vons, unpacking boxes in the middle of the night.” I stocked toilet paper, tampons, and Colgate toothpaste. They gave me the hygiene aisle.

  “The checks were enough for rent, period.”

  I gave up my livelihood to starve to death? No way. When it came time to feed my stomach, I stole from the shelves. I’m not ashamed of it. There’s more shame in begging on the street, or in giving up.

  “I was fired for it.” Not the first time. The first time they caught me they were nice. They cared about me wasting away in my apartment. They asked me, “Chloe, is there no way you can pay for these things?” And I explained my life to them. How the money they paid me goes only so far. So they told me they’d feed me while I was on the job.

  But what about my days off? Do I pay my electric bill or do I eat? Enough time goes by with me sitting in the dark, eating soup straight from the can, that I start feeling less than human.

  So I started doing some of the guys in the back, behind the boxes, on delivery nights.

  “It wasn’t a bad arrangement,” I say, but the memory sticks in my throat, makes my words thin, unbelievable. I try to push through it. “I didn’t have to go look for it.”

  “But it bothered you,” he says.

  The truth is I hated every minute of it. Especially the way they looked at me after, sometimes like I wasn’t even there, sometimes like they wanted to wipe me off their shoes. I stopped being Chloe who stocked the girlie items and was just someone they wanted to forget.

  That hurt.

  “Vons paid for the extras,” I tell him. “You know, the tesoros. The pretty things. What I have to have. Like these earrings. They cost me twelve dollars, but they’re real silver.”

  He doesn’t look at them. He’s waiting, but that’s all I have. Vons was it and there’s no happy ending there.

  “So that was my one great attempt at the good life,” I say. “That’s why I know it doesn’t work. Not for me.”

  “Are you saying you’ll go back to the street?”

  I’ll go back because it’s all I know.

  Because I’m good at it.

  Because it pays the bills.

  “It’s a vicious cycle,” I tell him. “I need to eat. I need to know I won’t come home to an eviction notice. The only thing that gives me that is my job. You see, Doc? Like my sister always said, it’s a matter of survival.

  “Soon after, the policía will pick me up. I’m underage. They’ll say, ‘Why not Madeline Parker? Give this girl a chance to change.’ Then I’ll be back here, looking at your smiling face.”

  Isn’t that nice?

  “You want to come back?” he asks. “Once isn’t enough?”<
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  He doesn’t understand King of the Mountain. He doesn’t know how I can feel like I have the world in the palm of my hand when I’m selling myself at the going rate.

  He says as much. My doctor. He wants me to make sense of it for him.

  I tell him there’s no way he’ll ever understand.

  “Guys don’t get it,” I say. “Especially when they had a mom baking them pies and checking their homework. Did you have a mom like that, Doc?”

  He says she was something like that. He got paid for good grades.

  “Then maybe you do understand, just a little.”

  We were both paid for a good performance.

  Let’s try it, he says. Give him a chance.

  “It’s like I’m not even there,” I tell him. It’s a mindless occupation. I can go over my grocery list while I’m working.

  This is how I try to explain:

  It’s better than doing it to a husband you’ve come to hate. Strangers are always a better trick.

  “I bet you’ve had women complain they can’t stand their husbands. Couldn’t give them love one more time if their lives depended on it.

  “Maybe even your wife, huh, Doc? Does she refuse you? Is she cold, like the North Pole?”

  “Let’s stay focused,” he says. We’re talking about Chloe Doe.

  Right. Right. Chloe Doe.

  We come from different circumstances. I survive, and that’s what it’s all about.

  I tell him, “There was never any multiple choice.”

  “So your life was already decided? So you have no control over what you do tomorrow?” he asks.

  “So you made the best of your circumstances, and turned your hovel into a palace?”

  A palace? No. I wouldn’t go so far as to say my hole in the wall is the Beverly Wilshire. But it’s my nido, my home. And maybe that makes it a palace. Sure, and I’m Princess Diana come back to life.

  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Right?

  “So, you’re happy with the arrangement?”

  “It has its moments,” I tell him.

  “I’m happy I’ve got something I do good. I’m happy I’ve got something that pays as well as it does.

  “In fact, Doc,” I say, “I bet I can beat your money in a day’s work. What do you say? Let me out of here for a Saturday night? I’ll go out and do a little doctoring of my own. We can see who makes more in an honest day’s work. What do you say?”