13 Lessons From A Morally-Wounded Woman: Chapter 3

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Chapter 3
“If You Sell What They Want To Rob You Can Live Without Fear.”


Over the next few days, we spent almost all of our time managing the new cases that had come to us. Running a shelter is a lot like parenting in that you have to solve and deal with the issues once the creature you are assisting has already been presented to you, there is no time to prepare for what may come up and there is no definitive way of knowing what it might be. There isn’t even any correct answer to what you would do, there are only problems and you must solve them. There are people and you must be open to their individuality and circumstance. My Only Friend did an amazing job of converting the storage room. She had the cotton ripped out of the old quilts we had in there and The Seamstress, who had been with us for as long as we had been running, helped her sew new covers onto it. She was able to buy blankets and pillows in the very small budget I had allocated to her from our favourite market, the one we went to on Saturdays to buy vintage clothes and discount strawberries at rates only labour-exploitative mass-production can allow. She put two curtains at the entrance of the room and she even found an old-timey call-bell, from somewhere in the recesses of the junk that we had accumulated over the years, to put outside the rooms to replace the knocking that would have otherwise occurred at the door.

The Seamstress did a decent job of making the mattresses look like they had been newly made and not fashioned together by years of crap that we knew we were piling for some unknowable but good reason. She is a hateful woman who had had a terrible life and our only permanent resident. She acted as sort of an unappointed matron to the women who came and went through our doors and was often the cause of many little altercations that occurred within these halls but we all agreed that she was ultimately a good person even though she frequently let her extremely explicit feelings about us admitting drug-addicts and Commercial Sex Workers be known. She also frequently threatened to leave and had on three separate occasions even packed half a suitcase with a bunch of things that didn’t belong to her. I often told my friend that The Seamstress made me feel like we were holding her in bondage in our place of rescue, and my friend often told me that I kept her around only because I needed the continued presence of a disapproving older woman in my life and The Seamstress knew how to exploit that. Not all victims are good people, not all helpers are good people either, after all, and no matter how many times I learn that lesson I have to be taught again, and again.

My Only Friend cleaned out the room with every solvent she could find. She put one of the mattresses on the floor and the other one on top of the spacious concrete shelf that was directly above it, she used the broken ladder we had in there to create a makeshift bunk bed and that freed up the entire other side of the room for storage space, and the little curios I saw her working on before I left to go back to the office to trace and process the paperwork of the inmates that were soon to arrive. I told My Only Friend to make sure to call me once they arrive so I can be there to meet everyone and welcome them. She comes to get me shortly after while I am standing right outside the door to the office and smoking. Her face looks panicked and she’s walking a lot faster than is normal for her, she walks unnaturally fast even when nothing is wrong, and now she just looks like a blur coming at me.

“There’s a child!” She says to practically screaming out the words.

“Whose child?” I ask her.

“Someone brought a fucking child!” She says to me, “An eight-year-old boy child!”

I understand why she is so panicked. Every establishment has its limitations and children are ours, we don’t admit children because between permits and legal issues of having minors in our home and actually being equipped to handle children, we are too short-staffed, under-funded and full of shit. The last one being most problematic, it’s astounding how bad we are at our jobs. We cannot justify having whores and kids in the same place, we do try to find other places and homes for the women who come to us with children and in the rarest of cases when the women are willing to part with their children, we have them put in a partner home run by some people we know who do good work with children. I make the calculations to have the child admitted there as I walk back to the house with my friend.

“Who is it?” I ask her, “Who brought the child?”

“Number 3,” she says.

“That’s odd,” I say doing more math in my head, “She’s eighteen-years old she couldn’t possibly have an eight-year-old without being a medical miracle.”

“Everyone lies about everything,” she says to me, “You have to stop believing everything anyone tells you.”

“No darling, not everyone,” I tell her as I often do, “You lie all the time about everything.”

We walk into the house and I immediately see Number 3 standing beside a stuffed garbage bag. She is a beautiful girl. Her eyes are darker than anything I have ever seen and she has the healthy plumpness of vivacious youth. There is a white speck in her left eye, possibly due to partial albinism, but it makes her look sinister and fierce. She has drawn in three tiny dots with eyeliner on the sides of either eye and she’s wearing a really bright shade of blue and even though it does not suit her at all, it fails to mask her beauty. Across the room The Seamstress is giving the child biscuits while the rest of the women stand huddled together near the child. I walk to Number 3, extend my hand and introduce myself. She tells me her name and before I can ask her anything at all begins answering all the questions I would have asked.

“I know no one knew about the child,” she says in a loud but nervous tone, “I cannot leave him anywhere else, he has to be here with me, please don’t make us leave, please don’t take him from me.”

“We will not take your child from you,” My Only Friend tells her, “But we don’t think you and the child can stay here.”

The Seamstress gives me a warning look. I know what she will say, she thinks it’s barbaric that sacrificing children is the price of admission into this home. I often tell her she phrases it as if we kill children but I really want to ask her why she stands up so vehemently in defense of children when the abuse that she met at the hands of her sons after her husband passed was the reason she ended up here. I have never asked her that but I have always wanted to, it seems sometimes almost like she is goading and baiting me to ask the question.

“Watch the child,” I tell my friend before addressing Number 3, “Come with me.”

She walks beside me and into the garden, I close the door and walk further to the mulberry tree. I sit down on the grass and gesture to her to do the same.

“I will help you if you will be honest with me,” I tell her pulling out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, “Please just tell me the truth and I will help you any way I can.”

She nods her head while studying the matchbox with which I light up.

“That’s not really your child, is it?” I ask her.

She opens her mouth as if to speak in furious tirades again but closes it when she looks at my already disapproving face.

“He is not my child,” she says finally, “He is my brother.”

That seems more like the truth since a sororal concern can come off as maternal and be often as intense.

“I understand that you are worried about your brother but you are still young and I can have you taken to a place where you can stay with him, at least for the next couple of years,” I explain to her, “I just need to get the paperwork to prove your relation and it shouldn’t be that hard, I already have your file.”

This time she lets out a furious tirade in a language that I cannot even understand. I hold her hand and ask her to repeat that to me calmly.

“He’s an orphan,” she says shamefacedly, “He has been with me since I ran away from my home six years ago. I found him, abandoned and crying at a slum dwelling I housed outside for a while. I asked around for about him and they told me it was an orphan. They said I should just throw it away, madam! They said I should throw him away because he was an orphan!”

“Don’t call me madam,” I say looking up to find that she has broken into tears and the dots on the sides of her eyes are running in six little black streams down her face.

“Nobody wants to help an orphan,” she says still wailing, “Nobody cares about an orphan.”

Those words give me an instant headache, as they are repeated in the voice of Mr. Boiled Chicken in my head.


…….



After that one forced Sunday afternoon in my bedroom, he found in me a much more pliable and easily-controlled sexual partner, and his presence in my bedroom became a much more regular fixture. He started to time it such that he left our home a full hour or two after his lover. Sometimes he told my mother that he was leaving but snuck back in through the back-door, he had instructed me to never lock my door unless he was in the room with me, as if I hadn’t already been taught that lesson, so he could come and go as he pleased.

Over time his concern about being caught transferred completely to me, I started to arrange our meetings for him and I spent my time worrying about what I would do if someone found out while he enjoyed my body as if he owned it. I started to believe that all of it had been my idea and therefore it was my responsibility to keep it covered up. I lived in constant fear of getting pregnant or anyone seeing any of the marks he generously left all over my body. I looked over my shoulder wherever I went because I was always expecting him to walk in through any door and demand me. I waited for the night with a desperation that was rivalled only by the afternoons when I waited for his incalculable arrival. The night is forbidden to children and I knew I was safe under cover of it, there were no monsters coming for me at night. At night, I haunted myself with my own memories until they began to meld together with the naïve fantasies I once had about my Imaginary Abusive Boyfriend, the reality was so much worse and made me so much more wet than any fantasy I ever had.

“My sweet little orphan,” he would say to me while I had many helpless orgasms on his dick in my bed, “What would you do without me?”

I actually contemplated that question seriously even as I wished every single day that he would die or just disappear somehow. I contemplated it because somewhere along the line I started to believe that he loved me. It was on the evening of the middle school play that I first started to feel like I might actually matter to him as a person. We were doing Pygmalion and I wasn’t playing any special part, just a flower girl wandering around on stage in an unflattering, billowing pink skirt. My father hadn’t been home a single time that year and my mother had come to the first performance and told me that the play was good but she hadn’t noticed me on stage. He came on the second night. I didn’t really care about the play I had just enjoyed being in it because it was full of beautiful things and people pretending to have lives that weren’t really theirs. A part of my bit was to wander around with a basket of flowers and then sit down on the edge of the stage while the main action continues on it. I was chewing gum on stage which I have since learnt is fine to do at most times but when you’re sitting in a literal spotlight it is best to avoid it. I didn’t really care, though, I didn’t even notice. He did. After the play was over, he came backstage to see me, I don’t know why they let him I have always assumed he told them he was my father.

“Why were you chewing gum on stage?” He asked me leading me to a corner of the crowded area.

“What?” I said laughing, “I didn’t even notice!”

“You looked extremely stupid,” he said gritting his teeth through a smile, “I didn’t come here to see you chewing gum on stage.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him trying to get away without drawing any attention to us.

“It matters to me,” he said in a hushed but angry tone, “If you do that again, I will spank you.”

The moment he said that it gave my crotch a headache again. He left shortly after and I went home in the car my mother had sent with the driver wondering what any of that meant. I didn’t understand why my rapist was at my play, I didn’t understand why he cared what I did in it, I didn’t understand any of it but somehow it made me feel happy that he had come and offered to do me bodily harm for not being good enough. I wonder how many little girls grow up believing love is to be found in the approval of a generally-disapproving operator and I hope it isn’t that many. It’s a strange configuration within which to understand love about as strange a configuration as rape is to learn about sex. I understand both love and sex now, and I can see in her face that Number 3 understands, at least, love.


……..



“You can stay here,” I tell her even though she cannot and explaining my decision to My Only Friend will be quite a challenge, “He can stay here with you. We’ll work it out.”

She thanks me profusely and I try to extricate myself from the pornography of gratitude as quickly as possible because I hate this part of the job. There is only bane to social work. If you do well and actually make a difference but also good money, they turn around and call you a traitor. If you don’t do well and have no money, they tell you your contribution is worthless and idealistic. That isn’t the worst of it though. The worst of it Is the people you help who are expected to make a display of their need that is striking enough in its grit to deserve your help; the worst of it is cataloguing the wretchedness of your projects so those with money to patch their wounded souls feel enough desire to donate. I tell her to go inside when I see My Only Friend and The Seamstress standing at the door looking at me, as she walks towards the door, they walk towards me and I know already exactly how this conversation is going to go.

“We cannot do this,” my friend says the moment she has me within earshot.

“Put the kid in the storage room with her,” I address only my friend while The Seamstress tries to cram her face within my line of sight, “And put a bed together for Number 4 in the room with the other two, it will be a bit cramped but they’ll manage until we figure out a better way. In the meanwhile, we need to start working on permanent situations for a couple of people who have been here longer than three months now, and I need to fix up with the counsellor to be here on Thursday and do some individual sessions along with the group session. We also need to think about getting the kid to school which seems like….”

“You cannot let whores in the house if there’s a kid here,” The Seamstress cuts in with what is almost her refrain now, “It’s not good for the child.”

I’m tired and I don’t want to deal with either one of their exasperated faces anymore. I tell The Seamstress to let up about the whores and start to walk away, my friend follows me closely but she doesn’t say anything until we get to the door of the office.

“We’re supposed to discuss things and take decisions together,” she says standing in front of the door.

“I know,” I tell her, “I have no good explanation but will you please help me?”

I know she will and I know she will not say anything about any of this until I bring it up myself again. In all my years I have never met anyone as agreeable as her and I don’t understand why she does it.

“Just tell me why,” she asks, “Please, tell me why we’re doing this for a kid you haven’t even spoken a word to yet?”

“It’s not the kid,” I try to explain, “I cannot stand the thought of her living in constant fear for her adopted orphan.”

I cannot stand the thought of anyone having to live in constant fear because I know what it is like to be always looking over your shoulder just waiting to have your safety snatched away from you.


…….



I used to feel scared like that all the time when I lived in my parent’s house. I was always waiting for sexual assault to barge into my room and command me to be complicit in it. Even before Mr. Boiled Chicken I lived in constant fear of being victim to the will of a man, and after him I lived in fear of being told that all that I feared would be my fault. I often wondered if all women went through life wondering not if they would be raped but when, I wondered if each one of us looked over our shoulders as frequently as I did when I walked down a street or heard a wall creak in our rooms. I wondered if all of us were chained to our monsters the way I used to feel I was. I wondered until the night my mother, worried about how withdrawn and sullen I had become, decided to take me out on a drive one night. I knew I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t sullen, there was just suddenly so much going on with me that I was struggling to keep up just to understand it.

It’s very hard to be a normal teenager and watch movies with your friends when you’re simultaneously trying to figure out whether you are having an affair with a married man or being raped by one. My mother tried to wrangle information of out of me and threw her off course by telling her a long story about the pressures of competing academically in a school that bred only scientists and investment bankers. She reassured me that I would easily keep up with my grades because I had no choice in that matter. She drove us to the bus-stand where we sometimes used to go when I was a little girl to eat egg rolls and parathas in the middle of the night. She parked in our usual spot and I sat waiting in the car while she ventured outside to bring us some food, I watched the bustling energy of the night around me. There were families rushing in and out with large suitcases, young college students sitting on stools and eating butter-soaked pieces of bread with omelets as a myriad vendors wandered around offering spiced peanuts, water bottles and chips to whoever would listen. It felt odd to me that I saw no women around except the ones that accompanied men and children as they got on and off buses. The night is forbidden to women much like it is to children.

My mother returned carrying two plates of egg-rolls and a bottle of juice. She passed me a plate and I sat staring at the food hoping she wouldn’t later tell me I shouldn’t have eaten it because it would make me fatter. I started to eat quietly, not looking up at all, while my mother fiddled with the radio to settle on a song that she liked. The egg rolls were delicious and I was entirely focused on them when a loud exclamation from my mother made me jump up in my seat.

“Look!” She said pointing to someone in the darkness, “That’s a prostitute.”

I had an understanding of what a prostitute was but I don’t think I believed that they were real or had ever given the matter much thought before in terms of morality. I looked up immediately to see a woman in a short red skirt and a white tank top walking along the footpath beside all the college students. There was no other woman like her anywhere around. She didn’t look at her feet as she walked as quickly as possible, she looked up and walked slowly as if she had no doubts about her right to be there. She wasn’t worried, or at least she didn’t look worried, about being dressed like that and on the street in the middle of the night. I had never seen a woman exhibit such confidence before nor had I ever seen one who didn’t only seem to walk fearlessly in the night but seemed to encourage the eyes that followed her.

“How do you know she is a prostitute?” I asked my mother

“Only prostitutes wander around men at night wearing red lipstick,” she said with almost an admiration in her voice, underneath the contempt.

The contempt wasn’t about prostitution, my mother just has a thing about red lipstick. She hates it and does not believe any civilized creature, man or woman, should paint their mouth red.

“Isn’t she scared?” I asked my mother.

“Why should she be scared?” my mother said, “She’s out selling the exact thing they would otherwise take from other women by force.

My mother, as flawed a creature as she is, has her extremely profound moments. She’s also the reason I decided, at thirteen, that I would become a whore when I grew up. Well, her and the confident woman in red made me realise that if you just sold what they wanted to rob from you, you didn’t have to live in fear anymore. Until then my only experience of sex was one of powerlessness, but when I saw her, I understood the value of taking ownership of the commodity men want you to be. She sparkled in the night; I couldn’t stop looking at her as she stood talking to a group of men in baggy jeans and weird shoes. She was in control of that conversation, no one was going to take away her phone because she said something she wasn’t allowed to say. No one was going to take anything from her, instead they would pay for the right to lodge between her legs. I stared at her so long I believe I made her look at me and as soon as her gaze met mine, I couldn’t help myself from smiling, she winked at me and it was the only moment from that year that made me feel special. The whore saw me!

The next day I bought my first red lipstick. My mother was horrified and told me I wasn’t allowed to wear it. I did anyway, you can’t tell a whore what to do.

……..