by Sophia Rey
“Where are you living now?”
“We’re living with a lady named Mamma Laura.”
“That sounds nice,” I offered, not really knowing what to say.
She was silent for a good two minutes. Tears came to her eyes. “It’s not.”
“Carol, what’s wrong?”
“It’s not Mamma Laura that’s the problem. It’s what we need to do to live there.” She seemed to have a need to tell me what was going on with her. “After you saw me last time Mom decided that she wasn’t going to help us anymore. She said that The Toad didn’t like us depending on her so much. I heard him when I stopped by to ask for hotel money. ‘If they hate me so much, screw ‘em!’ he yelled. And then he got really mad. ‘And I don’t see why you need to pay for their effing hotel bill. I’m the man of this house and if they don’t like my rules then they don’t have to live here. But I’m not gonna pay for all your brats. The baby’s mine, but that’s it. Take it or leave it.’ I don’t know what’s wrong with Mom. She used to be so loving.”
Check her medicine cabinet, I thought. It seemed to me that someone must be on something to abandon their children.
“Mom didn’t help us for three weeks,” Carol continued. “That’s when the hotel manager kicked us out. I told Mom. She didn’t care. I know what would happen if we were found living on the streets: foster care. And I don’t want that for Maurine. I know kids who are in the system and they say it’s awful. They don’t always keep kids together, so Maurine and I could be separated and I couldn’t protect her. And the kids I know are always going AWOL because the staff in the group homes don’t have a clue. They won’t keep kids from fighting and stealing your stuff. They basically don’t want to hear anything you have to say. If someone tries to beat you up or take your stuff or get on you, that’s on you.”
“Get on you?”
“Sexually.”
Then she said the thing I was thinking. “I think Mom’s high or something. She goes around acting like she just can’t handle life. She smokes joints all night, then during the day she goes around in a daze. She gets up when she has to go to work, but usually she sleeps till noon.”
Carol stopped before changing the subject from her mother. “After we left the hotel we tried living on the streets. There’s a library downtown that’s open all night. We tried to stay there. But when you fall asleep they wake you up, so that didn’t work. And they kept asking where our parents were. We went to the bus station for a while, but that didn’t work either. It was disgusting.” She made a face. “Then we tried the train station. We just laid on the benches and tried to sleep. We even begged for some money. Maurine can look pretty pitiful if she wants to. I thought about going way out of town and getting a campsite, but it’s so cold at night and so far away that it wouldn’t work.”
She was right. It had been an especially cold winter this year, with each night in the low thirties.
“One night at the station a kid came up to me and asked me if I knew Mamma Laura. I think he knew we were homeless because we’d been hanging around the place for a few days. I said we didn’t know her, then he told me that Mamma Laura lets kids live at her house for free and he gave me an address and a phone number. ‘Tell her Jay sent you,’ he said.
“So I found the address on Google Maps and took the bus over there. It took three transfers and two hours to get there. Maurine complained all the way. She didn’t get how broke we were.
“When we got there, Mamma Laura seemed happy to see us. Jay must have told her we were coming. ‘Y’all come in here,’ she drawled, like she’s from New Orleans or something.
“She made us chocolate chip cookies and gave us big glasses of milk that we practically inhaled. We hadn’t eaten much since we left the hotel. The next day she took us shopping for shorts, shirts, and sandals.”
“That’s sounds nice,” I commented.
“Yeah, I thought so, too. But the day after that the sh–t hit the fan,” Carol went on. “Mamma Laura told us she’d spent a lot of money on us and that we had to pay her back for all our new clothes, as well as the room we ‘d slept in overnight. ‘You have to learn to pay your own way in this world,’ she said. I’ll always remember her words, because her face looked nice and sweet, but her eyes were cold and hard. ‘Now, what kind of mamma would I be to y’all if I just gave you everything? But don’t worry, darlin’; I’m sure we can come up with an easy solution to your cash flow problem. See here, you have a decent body. Use it to your advantage. There are probably seven places near here where you can make easy money. And all you have to do is dance.’
“I went to the places she talked about, but they were strip joints. I look too young and they wouldn’t take me. When I told Mamma Laura, she just said, ‘So it’s the streets then.’ She dressed me in real trashy clothes and had Jay walk me to a street near the strip joints to show me what they expected me to do. It was basically what I’ve been doing, just without the nice stuff…and it’s a lot scarier. Jay told me to walk real slow up and down the street. When guys approached me I was supposed to charge them $100.00 an hour or $60.00 for a half hour. All of my money went for my and Maurine’s expenses. Only, no matter how much I make it’s never enough. She always is telling me how much she’s spending on my clothes and how much Maurine costs.”
That made me wonder. “What does Maurine do while you’re out there?”
“Maurine loves it there. Mamma Laura treats her like a little doll. She has her do some cleaning jobs in the house and let’s her help with the cooking. Mamma Laura even taught her to make a few things.”
I couldn’t believe it. Things had actually gotten worse for Carol and Maurine. “There must be somewhere you can go,” I blurted out.
“I can’t be separated from Maurine and I definitely can’t leave her alone there,” Carol said. “I’ve worked it out so I’m allowed to take Maurine to a library or a fast food place while I do my work. I don’t want Maurine at the house with Mamma and the other girls if I can help it. At least we have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs.”
“Look,” I said. “I didn’t like the sugar baby idea and this is even worse. I know my mom would take you and Maurine in. I’m begging you to come home with me.”
Carol decided to change the subject. “How’s your dad doin’?”
“He’s still in a coma. We’re hoping he wakes up by Christmas.”
“I wish I were in a coma,” she mumbled.
If it had been anyone else I would have been shocked.
“A coma or dead,” she continued. “You know what bugs me the most? I feel like if anyone cared about me I wouldn’t be in this situation….” Her voice trailed off for a second. I just sat there, waiting for her to continue. “I’m not kidding. There are tons of kids in my situation. Tons of parents who don’t give a rip about their kids. And where do we end up? In some crappy group home in some cruddy neighborhood where the staff doesn’t care because they don’t get paid anything and they don’t have families who love them. Except for me. I have Maurine.”
I didn’t have anything to say. I couldn’t disagree because part of what she said was true. It was hard to live on the streets. There were uncaring people. Dad told me that some of the kids who ended up at Gardens were just there because of some bad situation. It wasn’t just Carol and Maurine who were in this boat. Sure, they might have had a substance abuse problem or a mental disorder, but I knew it was the combination of substance and mental disorders or other things that made life hard. Poverty and uncaring parents and a broken foster care system. Those were all part of the situation, too.
Carol broke into my thoughts. “And the worst of it is that I see people every day who could help me. Sometimes I see one of these creeps pay to have sex with me and I think about how they’re having sex with someone their daughter’s age or even their granddaughter’s age. And I think to myself, You greedy, creepy pervert. Maybe if you weren’t so greedy and creepy you could get somebody to have someone to have
sex with you and not have to pay someone $100.00.
“The other day some moron came in and actually told me about his family. A couple of special needs kids his wife stays home with. He talked about how stressed he was. Why the hell are you telling me this? I thought to myself. You’re practically raping me and you want me to listen to your problems? I DON’T CARE! I actually scratched the letters IDC on his back. He didn’t even notice.”
“Carol, you have to get out of this,” I said. “It’s not good for you or Maurine. As careful as you are, you know she’s going to get involved in this mess, too. Even you can see that Mamma Laura is manipulative…getting you all that food and clothing and then telling you have to pay for it.”
“The problem is Maurine,” she said.
“Whadayou mean? I asked.
“Mamma Laura’s doesn’t allow men inside her home. Maurine’s afraid to live anywhere a man lives. I know your Dad’s in the hospital but that’s only temporary. I can see now that was happened to her is worse than what I thought. She doesn’t trust people. I can’t get her to move. She doesn’t want to go.”
“Does she know what you’re doing?”
“Not completely.”
“Well, she’s going to find out,” I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “And by the time she does she’s going to be taken advantage of. Do you think that Big Mo, who’s actually a pimp, you know, is going to leave her alone? If she really knew what was happening I don’t think she’d want you to do it. My dad is one of the nicest people on Earth. If you lived with us I know he wouldn’t take advantage of you. He wouldn’t hurt Maurine or you or any girl. You have to get out of there.”
Carol looked at me like she wanted to but didn’t dare. I guess she was tired of trusting people and then having them let her down.
“I’ll talk to Maurine,” she said, and we went our separate ways.
************
After I left Carol I immediately thought of Dad. How sad he must have felt to write that letter.
But something about Dad’s letter bothered me. I knew that Dad was unhappy about his job, but the rest of his life was okay. He and Mom had a good marriage. They were always discussing stuff together. They didn’t just pass each other in the hall and grunt, the way I’d heard some couples did. He had friends he went golfing with and he did fun things with me and Kai. He liked kayaking, hiking, and even skiing when we could afford it.
When I’d told him how bad things were with Mason, back before the coma, he just held me. He said that anyone who treated me like that didn’t deserve to be my boyfriend and that I should try to find someone who treated me better.
Carol and Maurine had no one in their lives like that. In fact, they had the opposite. Mamma Laura had actually threatened Carol into selling herself. I remembered something chilling she’d said as we were leaving the park. She was afraid of Mamma Laura. “If I don’t make a certain amount every day she says she won’t feed Maurine. One day she said, ‘You need to put on a good show for the customers. They don’t pay you for nothing.’ I felt like telling her that they should be happy with what they get, but you have to keep quiet around Mamma. She won’t tolerate anyone saying something she doesn’t like.”
What an existence, I thought. I was determined to talk to Mom about the situation when I had a chance.
CHAPTER 18
THINKING ABOUT CAROL AND Maurine made me think of Junie. Carol had told me that lots of kids were in her position…without a home. Was Junie one of them? She’d disappeared right off the center of the Earth, as far as I was concerned. No one had heard from her. I texted other kids at Arcadia to see if they’d seen her and they hadn’t. I still considered her my best friend, but I wondered where she was.
That night, Mom came home later than usual. It was 10:30 by the time she got there, late considering she had to work the next day. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford for her to be away from her teaching job very long, so she had returned to work a week after Dad got hurt.
Even though it was late, I knew I had to talk to her about Carol and Maurine. I began explaining and explaining and explaining. “….and she has to earn a certain amount or she and Maurine can’t eat,” I heard myself finishing.
Mom looked concerned. “Did you get the address to Mamma Laura’s?” she asked. I told her I didn’t. “Well, of course we can help,” she went on. “But this woman and her group of sex traffickers probably have a bunch of girls working for them. I think we need to call the police.”
“We can’t,” I said.
“Of course we have to,” said Mom. “Why can’t we?”
“Carol said that if Mamma Laura found out that Carol called the police she’d make things really hard for her.”
“Make things hard for her?”
“Yeah, like going after Carol’s family and friends. Anyone they could get to.”
“I don’t need trouble,” Mom said. “But I don’t know if they’d bother us. I wish your dad was out of the hospital so he could give me his opinion about this. But I know he would want Carol and Maurine out of there. You tell Carol that she and Maurine are welcome to come here.”
“What about school and stuff? You don’t have legal custody of them. What would they do all day?”
Mom smiled. “Are you sure you have Aspergers?” she joked. “You’re sure thinking outside the box when it comes to these girls. Very, very caring. But I’ll handle this. I don’t care what their mother’s like. From what you’ve said, she’s a piece of work and she doesn’t deserve to have kids. But if she’s as lazy as she sounds she’ll jump at the chance to help out someone who’s willing to take them off the streets. I’ll get her to sign papers that will get them back into school…temporary guardianship or something. I don’t know all the correct terms or exactly how to go about it, but I know people who do.”
************
The next day, after a series of texts, Carol and Maurine came over. Carol said she had to pretend to go to her usual drop off point with Mo and then told him she was taking Maurine to a McDonald’s nearby.
“I was scared to death!” Carol exclaimed, telling us the story of her escape. “Mo is always watching us while we’re on the streets, and we only use certain hotels. But when he thinks I’m busy with a customer he sometimes backs off and spends his time watching the other girls. Making sure they’re doing their ‘job’ so he can get his money. I went into my usual routine…walking up and down the street. I approached an older guy…someone I thought might have kids. We went to the hotel. While he was in the shower I checked his wallet for pictures. He seemed to have a bunch of kids. When he came out of the bathroom I started crying. It wasn’t hard because I hated being there so much. I told him I was sick of doing what I was doing and that I had a little sister I was trying to protect. And could he please just let me have this hour that I was supposed to be with him to get away. I told him I only had an hour before Mo would start looking for me.”
“I couldn’t believe it when he said okay. Actually said my talking to him was a wake–up call and it was his first time with a pro. His wife was out of town and he’d had what he called” here she made air quotes, “a ‘lapse in judgment.’ He even gave me the $100 back and helped me to pick up Maurine. After we got on the bus to come here. I...well…I never felt such a great relief.”
CHAPTER 19
ONE GOOD THING THAT happened on account of Carol and Maurine coming to live with us is that Mom decided I could finally get my driver’s license. She’d been reluctant to let me get one because I’m not very good with directions. With the Asperger’s related memory issues I’d had trouble finding places in the past. But now, with everything going on she told me she decided to rethink the idea of my getting a license.
It really wasn’t that big of a deal; I had finished all the requirements, but until now Mom didn’t think I was ready to have my license. I felt free as a bird as I got into Mom’s car for the first time, by myself.
I had to admit that dealing with Carol and
Maurine’s problems did get my mind off of my own troubles. But once they got settled into our apartment and things calmed down a little, the sadness that I still had about Mason overwhelmed me. It wasn’t just that he dumped me that made me upset. It was the way he did it…just cutting off all communication with me. That kind of thing doesn’t follow any rules and doesn’t seem fair. I did everything I could to keep myself distracted from thinking about Mason. I planned to meet a girl named Jamie at the Helping Hands Food Bank one Saturday. She was someone from color guard. We weren’t real, REAL tight friends, but I needed to do something. I had the whole day planned in my head. We’d work our shift and then we take some food back to Jamie’s house. Her mom was a widow with six kids so they could really use the food. After we put the food away Jamie would ask me to stay for lunch because I’d been so helpful and we’d talk until I needed to be at the hospital at two. That was my plan.
But that’s not how the day went at all. Sure, we did our shifts at the food pantry and took food to Jamie’s house, but after the food was put away Jamie said, “Oh. I forgot to tell you. I gotta babysit. Mom has a bunch of errands to run. Hope you don’t mind.”
What could I say? Of course I couldn’t say, You were supposed spend time with me and keep me from thinking about Mason.
While I was saying goodbye my phone buzzed about eight times. My spirits rose. Mason was the only one I knew who texted that many times in a row. I didn’t even look at my phone until I was a long way from Jamie’s house. If I didn’t look, I would have a longer time to imagine it was him. I finally glanced down at a red light to look at the time to make sure I wasn’t late for the hospital. I saw the name Amy. It was just a group text with kids from my old school talking about Amy’s new job. I felt so crushed that I barely made it home without crying. When is this sadness going to end? I thought.
As I drove along Kai called, asking me to pick him up. “Where are you?” I asked him. Part of the reason Mom had let me get my license was so that I could help out with Kai. I knew he was visiting a friend somewhere is the neighborhood and would need a ride home eventually.