HE KEEP THE drapes closed, the room dark, me under the sheets without no clothes on. I don’t know how long I been here. It was Friday night when I came, I know that. I think I heard a preacher on the radio a little while ago.
Cuts and purple bruises—different shades of crayons in the box—showed up every place he punched me, bit me, forced me. I hurt inside and out.
He on break now, across the room at the computer, taking care of business. Now I’m his business too. Lying on my back, crying, I tell him I need a shower. That I need to go home. I ball up when I hear his feet, curl up tight as the knots in my hair, then put my head under the blankets trying to disappear. Did he tell me I could cover up, sit up, breathe? he asks. No. Did he say I could move? No. No. No. The answer to everything that got to do with me is no till he say it ain’t, he tells me.
“Okay, Daddy.” I think it’s okay to say that.
He pulls the blanket off. Crayons pour on my head like rain. Purple, silver, green, black, gray, and everything in between spill out over me, lay on the blankets and in between the folds of the sheets, fall off the mattress and roll across the floor like they want to get away from him too.
He hits me upside the head with the box, slips on a crayon, and stomps it. I don’t care. I’m too old for crayons now, anyhow.
I get to clean up the mess he just made. So, I run over to the wooden trash can by his desk and drop the crayons in. Then run back to bed. He wants a shower. I run to his bathroom and start the water. Then run back to bed. He showers twice a day, rain or shine. Wants jazz music playing while he in there. I run to his desk and turn the radio up loud. Sitting on the bed, I fold my hands.
It don’t take long for him to look brand-new. His suit and tie cost more than some people make in three months, Daddy tells me, sitting on the edge of the bed. I put on his cuff links. Off comes one of his rings, then three more. I lotion his hands, in between his fingers. He whistles while he smiling at what he see in the mirror beside the couch across the room. I sit in the same spot looking at all he’s got: a bedroom big as our living room, a chandelier and two couches, a bookcase with a whole row of dictionaries, plus a globe—black—that spins on his desk when he get to thinking. He work all day in A-hole motels and hotels, he told me last night, so when he come home, he wanna live the way people do on the internet and TV, and in them condominiums by the river downtown.
I walk like a mummy, shuffle, feel broken as my crayons. She don’t care. “Hurry up. You think you special? Every bitch here been through what you been through or worse.”
Two girls run past us, into one of the bedrooms, laughing. I gag and throw up.
“On my clean floor! Kianna.”
One of them laughing girls runs up to us. She look down, rolls her eyes at me, then gets downstairs and back ASAP with the bucket of warm water Carolina asked for.
“Clean it up.”
They got wooden floors, light brown, shiny, and pretty. It’s hard getting down on my knees, but I do it with a quickness. Once I’m done wiping, she make me go wash my face and hands. The bathroom at the end of the hall is for us girls only. The tub and sink so white they hurt your eyes. I take care of my business and get back to Carolina and her tour.
Anthony’s room is on the second floor, she say like I don’t know. “When he want you to come, you come. No matter what time of day or night, if you sick or not.” She says I’ll get used to it.
“When do I get to go home?” I close my eyes and wait for what I earned.
Pinching my chin, she whisper in my ear, “He had to break you, so you know he owns you, like he own this house and everything in it. One day you’ll thank him.”
My eyes open slow and stab her.
“I woulda killed you. Can’t trust a bitch who did what you done. And knows what you know. But college boys—think they’re smarter than everyone else. She shoulda left the business to me.”
She point to doors in the hallway. This closet is for linens, she say, opening it. Different color towels and washrags fill up the shelves, sweet-smelling body wash, soap too. The next closet got T-shirts in it, shorts, ironed and folded, plus blouses. Shoes in different sizes, some with plastic heels with fake fish floating in ’em, wait on a rack on the floor.
We don’t own nothing in here, not even ourselves, she telling me. “Anthony does.” We fight over any of this shit, she’ll whip us good, then take it out our pay.
I look up at her. “We get paid?”
“You work. You get paid.”
Carolina opens the double doors to the closet at the end of the hall. It got baskets of hair in it, packs of weave, Styrofoam heads with hair on ’em: short and brown, long, curly and black, platinum blond. “Everything you need. But ain’t nothing free.”
I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand. Walk behind her past windows painted black so we can’t see out and they can’t see in, she say. In the bathroom cabinet, she show me toothpaste and brushes, condoms, sanitary napkins, boxes of Tylenol 3’s. We pay for them too, plus security and food.
She take me down one floor, past Anthony’s room to one with a padlock on it. Us girls can’t go in this room, she say, but we’ll see her and him in there a lot. His business partners too. It smell like weed, but he don’t partake. She showing me the room so I don’t go snooping, she say. “And end up like your friend.” She laughs, then unlocks the door.
Laptops and desktops is on all three desks. Cell phones is piled on the bed. Money is tied together with thick rubber bands. He hides most of his money, she says. Buys gift cards a lot too. So cops can’t trace his profits. Vanilla gift cards is how he pay us mostly. So, if we steal, we steal from the family and ourselves. For the first time, she touches me. Hugs me a good long time. “You’re family too now, Charlie. Never forget that.” Her arms is soft and warm, like my mother’s, when she say what Anthony said—all of this was my fault. That some girls is harder to break than others. Then she asks if I learned my lesson.
I shake my head yes. “He won’t have to do that to me no more.”
She walk me over to a camera on a stand in the corner. “You don’t advertise in this business, you don’t make no money.” Then Carolina tell me how things are done here. They post our pictures wherever perverts be.
Clients contact Anthony online, by phone, or text, and place orders for the kind of girl they want like we pizza or fried chicken dinners. She gonna take pictures of me after the bruises heal. Till then, I still got to work, she say.
I start tonight.