Calling Maggie May

by AnonYMous

  I guess tomorrow I’ll start looking for HELP WANTED signs and pick up a few applications. And online postings too. Maybe there will be some stuff there—Beth said she’d let me borrow her laptop, and I picked up a cheap prepaid cell phone so people can contact me. I know the money won’t be what we’re used to, but normal people support themselves with normal jobs in this city, right? I can make this work.

  Thurs, April 16

  I picked up some applications today. I’m going to work on filling them out tomorrow. And while I was out, Ada found some stuff online that has a lot of potential. The details are vague, but it looks like you can make a lot of money, which would be good right now.

  Ada says she’s feeling better, but she still seems pretty listless to me, and she’s running a fever again. I’m going to try to make her eat some more soup, then get to work on these applications.

  Fri, April 17

  I’m stressed out about these job applications. Beth explained to me that I’ll be better off if I lie and say I’m over eighteen, because sixteen-year-olds are only allowed to work twenty hours a week in this state. The idea is that you’re not supposed to work too much while you’re in school, but I haven’t seen the inside of a school in ages. So how does this law help me?

  It’s so frustrating. I’m just trying to make an honest living. To support myself legally, without any help from my parents. The whole idea of this was to work at something legitimate, so I wouldn’t have to be looking over my shoulder all the time, worrying about cops. But how legitimate is my new life going to be if I have to lie to maintain it? I’m still going to be worried all the time about being found out.

  But there’s no way Ada and I will be able to survive on part-time pay.

  Maybe I’ll work on my applications for those online postings. Those don’t seem to ask so many questions.

  Mon, April 20

  I feel really productive today! I turned in a whole bunch of applications, both in person and online. Something has to come through.

  Wow. I had no idea how exhausting this whole process was. I feel like I should write more about what’s going on, but right now all I want to do is curl up in bed with Ada and watch bad TV. She’s been sleeping all day, so hopefully that means her fever is down. All this will be easier when she’s feeling better and we both have jobs. Then everything won’t feel so desperate. We just have to hold on until then.

  Fri, April 24

  Ada’s worrying me again. I ask her every day how she’s feeling, and every time she smiles brightly and says, “Better!” But not fine, or good, or all better. Honestly, I’m not sure I believe her. I don’t know if it’s wishful thinking on her part, or if she’s lying to protect me. All I know is that two weeks is a long time for anyone to be sick with a cold or the flu without any real improvement.

  I haven’t heard back about any of my applications yet, so I sent out a few more.

  Fri, April 24, later

  I got responses from one of the online applications! It says I can start right away. It sounds perfect. The money’s pretty good, the work looks easy, and I can do it from home, so I can keep an eye on Ada.

  The only problem is there are start-up costs. Basically, you have to wire them some money to pay for the materials you need before you can get started. Kind of like how I had to pay for my phone and stuff when I started with Miss Irma. It sucks because it’s basically going to eat up the last of what we had saved, but you know what they say: You have to spend money to make money.

  Wed, April 29

  I haven’t heard back from that online place since I wired them the cash. I’ve sent them a bunch of messages. Rent is due at the end of the week, and I don’t have it. I know what we’re going to do if they don’t come through soon. I might have to turn some tricks to make ends meet, even though I really didn’t want to fall back on that.

  Ada offered to, but with how she looks right now, I’m honestly not sure anyone would take her up on it. At least she still has contact info for some of her old clients. Miss Irma wouldn’t like us setting up dates behind her back, but it’s a possibility.

  Fri, May 1

  Today was not good. Ada fainted in the shower, and I finally convinced her to let me take her to the hospital. I’ve been trying all week, but she always said it was just a cold, she just needed some rest, and I wanted to believe she was right. But a part of me has known for a while now that she’s really not well, and we need to do something about it. I’m just so scared. I lost her once already.

  No point in thinking about that. They admitted her to the hospital and said it looks like pneumonia. They said it had gotten pretty bad, but they also said that it would probably get better now that she’s being treated.

  I stayed there with her for a couple of hours, but eventually the nurses sent me home and told me to let her rest. Then Beth started nagging me about rent, so I did what I had to do. Called up a couple of the numbers Ada had written out, made some appointments. I had one this evening. I’ll do another tomorrow, and that should see us through for a little while.

  Mon, May 4

  I got a job! A real, legal job.

  I got a call this morning from one of the fast-food places where I applied. I went in for an interview, and they hired me on the spot! I’m so excited. I feel like things are finally coming together. Maybe I can even help Ada get a job there too, in a little while.

  The job is basically working the cash register all day, plus mopping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms during the off-peak hours. Doesn’t sound great, but it’s better than nothing. I start tomorrow!

  Tues, May 5

  First day of work was okay. Too exhausted to write much more. Didn’t even get a chance to visit Ada today, but I will make it to the hospital tomorrow. Hopefully, they will release her soon and I won’t have to trek over there anymore.

  Wed, May 6

  I went to the hospital right after work today, hoping that this would be the day they released Ada and let her come home. When they let me in to see her, she really did look a lot better. Not so thin and gaunt anymore and with a lot more energy. But her expression was sad and serious, even when I tried to cheer her up with funny stories from work and stuff.

  After a while she stopped me and said she had to tell me something. Then she told me not to freak out, which is never a good start to a conversation. I told her to just come out with it.

  Ada has AIDS. Or HIV. I don’t know. It’s not totally clear right now. Ada was calm enough, but she didn’t seem to have absorbed all the details. I guess I can’t really blame her. It’s hard enough just to wrap your head around something like that.

  I had promised her I wouldn’t freak out, but I couldn’t help it. I started crying. Ada held my hand for a little while, but when I didn’t stop, she scooted over a bit and let me climb into the hospital bed with her. She held me and stroked my hair as if I were the one dying, not her.

  But I’m not supposed to say stuff like that. Once I had calmed down a bit, Ada whispered reassuring things to me about how it’s not a death sentence anymore, and now that they know why she was so sick, they can treat it and she’ll be healthy enough to come home soon. She’ll have to take a lot of pills and be extra careful about certain things, but it’s not like she’s going to die tomorrow.

  I know that, but still, it’s not like it’s going to be easy. This changes things. Realistically, we need to think about what this means for us, and our life.

  I can’t think about that stuff now, though. I just need to let it sink in. And I need to get to sleep. I have to be at work early tomorrow morning.

  Fri, May 8

  I asked Ada today how it happened. How she got sick. When I first found out, I was too shocked to even think about how she got infected, and after that I wondered, but I felt awkward about asking. But finally my need to know won out over my awkwardness.

  Ada just sort of shrugged it off, t
hough. She called it a “little souvenir” of her time in the Jungle. I don’t understand, because she knows better. She always made me swear to use condoms with clients every time, no matter how much they tried to pressure me, but she just said that once you’re living on the street, priorities change.

  That’s when I got angry with her, which I know isn’t fair, but I couldn’t help it. How could she let this happen to herself? How could she do it to me? That’s selfish of me, I know, but it hurts.

  After that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and I felt like a jerk. I get the feeling that stuff happened when she was living out there. Stuff she can’t talk about, even to me. Part of me wants to know everything, but another part of me thinks she’s right. I don’t know if I could handle hearing about it.

  Some friend I am.

  Fri, May 15

  I haven’t written in a while. To be honest, there hasn’t been a whole lot to say. My days are split between work and visiting Ada in the hospital, and when I come home at night, I’m so exhausted that I can barely manage to microwave a frozen burrito before falling into bed. At least Ada is looking better these days.

  But work is . . . I don’t know. I keep telling myself that this is better than hooking, that this is a better life. And it is. It’s safer. I’m not going to get beat up or infected with a disease or forced to take a dangerous drug. That’s important. But in other ways . . . It sounds crazy to say, but sometimes this life doesn’t feel so different.

  I thought it would be less dehumanizing at least, but in a way it’s even worse. All day long, for hours and hours, I’m doing the same actions, going through the same motions, until I feel like a machine. People say prostitution is “selling your body,” but what am I selling at this job? Definitely not my mind. They just need someone to stand there, to work the cash register, to push the mop around. Any warm body could do it. But instead of doing an hour of work a day, I’m stuck there for eight or more. And I get paid half as much.

  At least hooking was good training for this position. All that time I spent figuring out what clients wanted, smiling when I was miserable or in pain, making people believe I was enjoying myself, those are all pretty useful skills in the new job too. That whole idea of giving people their fantasy—I’m still doing it. Only instead of pretending to be a Japanese schoolgirl, I’m pretending to be a normal teenager who loves her job and is happy to serve them. Which is almost as much of a lie.

  Oh, and I got my first paycheck and got to see how much was taken out for taxes and stuff. Not sure how this is different from when Irma and Shawn took their cuts from everything I earned.

  Tues, May 26

  I got fired today. They moved my shift around so I had to visit Ada in the morning before work, and then I wound up coming in late too many times. I know it’s my fault. I’m such an idiot. But the time I spend with her is the only time I’m happy all day. It’s so hard to make myself leave to go to that dark hole-in-the-wall that reeks of rancid meat. Well, I guess now I don’t have to anymore.

  I don’t know what we’re going to do for money, though. Even when I was working, it really wasn’t enough to live on, so it’s not like I had anything saved up. And it’s going to take me a while to find something else.

  I might try panhandling for a while. I hear sometimes people make okay money doing that.

  Thurs, May 28

  Beth is kicking me out. I can’t say I blame her. I’m pretty useless as roommates go. Not only am I broke, but I’m also miserable all the time, so I’m not exactly good company.

  She found someone else who wants to move in right away. A new girl who just started working for Miss Irma. I met her tonight, which was awkward, but she seems nice enough. She’s a little like me, actually. She grew up in a nice suburb, unlike most of the people who work for Miss Irma. But she says her father started raping her when she turned thirteen, and that’s why she ran away. Jeez. Maybe she deserves this apartment more than I do.

  Beth was surprisingly not a complete jerk about it when she told me. She just sat me down and said I had better find another situation, because this girl would be moving in tomorrow. And when I started to cry, she said maybe I should go back to my parents . . . which only made me cry more.

  I don’t know. Maybe she’s right. It’s true I’m not like the rest of them. My parents are tough, but they aren’t abusive, and I know they love me and would take me back. But I also know that’s not all they would do. After this, after all I’ve put them through—running away, stealing money, being completely out of contact for so long, to say nothing of how I treated them before I left—there’s no question that the minute I came back they would book me on the next flight to Taiwan. And I understand it’s not punishment. I know that when they made that threat, it was out of concern, not cruelty. They think they need to get me away all from all the bad influences that got me to this place. And how can I blame them? I see how it must look from their perspective.

  But that’s not the whole story. They would never understand about me and Ada. They can’t possibly understand that none of this was her fault and she always did everything she could to protect me.

  And they’ll never understand that I promised I would stick with her and that I wouldn’t give up and go home, no matter how bad things got. And with the way she is now, there’s just no way I can abandon her, completely on her own, without a friend in the world. I know very well that going home means getting sent away, and that means leaving Ada. I can’t do it.

  So I’ll figure something out. I have to. Even if it means living on the streets for a while. If Ada did it, I can too. And if it means turning tricks again, at least until I can get back on my feet, I can handle that. I did it before, and it didn’t kill me. I’ll do whatever I have to.

  Wed, June 3

  Why is it always raining in this damn city? I really don’t want to sleep in a stinky old Dumpster, but I am so sick of being soaked all the time. At this point I’d be willing to blow someone just for a sandwich and a couple of hours in a bed. I bet Miss Irma would laugh at that, after the money I used to make with her, but it’s hard to attract much attention from johns when you look like a drowned rat. And I don’t even want to think about what I smell like.

  In a few hours I can go visit Ada in the hospital. At least it’s dry there, and I might be able to snag some food off her tray. Stealing food from AIDS patients! That’s definitely a new low in my life.

  Tues, June 9

  I got caught sleeping in Ada’s bed with her. It’s not the first time I’ve been caught, but the nurses and orderlies always looked the other way before. They even let me stay past visiting hours a couple times. I think they probably had figured out that I didn’t have anyplace else to go. Sometimes an hour or so snuggled up with Ada is the only real sleep I get all day.

  But this time a nurse woke me up and made me leave the room. He stood out in the hall with me and explained about how sick Ada is. Yes, she is looking much better now, but she still has a severely compromised immune system, and any random bug I have could easily get passed to her. He was being really nice and gentle about it, but I got the message. All you have to do is look at me these days to see that I am probably crudded up with all kinds of diseases. Starving and sleeping in the rain and fucking random people for pocket change (even if I do always use a condom) is not exactly a healthy lifestyle.

  I tried to just nod and show I understood, and I know he wasn’t trying to be hurtful, but I couldn’t help tearing up. I just felt so awful and guilty, thinking I could be the reason Ada gets sick again. I’m supposed to be visiting to make her feel better, but I’ve been so selfish lately, using my time in the hospital with her as a little vacation from my own wretched life.

  So after that conversation, I basically just wanted to find a Dumpster to crawl into and die and not be a bother to anyone anymore, but the nurse wouldn’t let me go. Instead, he took me to an office and had
me sit down, and he brought me some food. After a while a woman came to talk to me. She said she was a social worker, and immediately I panicked that she was going to turn me over to my parents or the cops or get me put into foster care or something. I’ve heard enough stories not to want that.

  But she calmed me down and said she wasn’t going to make me do anything. She just wanted to talk and maybe see if she could help me. And she said I could leave if I wanted to, but she hoped I would stay and talk awhile. I almost walked out right then, because I didn’t think anything good could come of this, but I could see out the window that it was still raining, and I just couldn’t face going back out into that yet. Another hour in a warm, dry place didn’t sound so bad.

  So she asked me about my parents, and I told her I couldn’t go back there. And I could see that she was thinking they beat me or raped me or whatever, like so many of the other kids I’ve run into, and I felt bad letting her think that, so I wound up explaining the whole situation. About how they would send me away and then I would never see Ada again, and there isn’t anyone else to take care of her (even if I’m not doing a very good job of taking care of her right now). She listened to my whole story and she didn’t say I was wrong or stupid or anything.

  After I was done, she sat and thought for a while, and then she asked me if she could call my parents. And I said absolutely not. The less they know about where I am or how I’m doing, the better. Then she said, “What if I can get them to agree not to send you away? What if I explain to them that you’ll go back home with them, but only on the condition that you get to stay in Seattle and you can visit Ada here in the hospital every day?”