“Girl, that’s what them cops called it. I don’t know. All I know is that man followed me down the street. When I asked him what he wanted, he told me he wanted sex. So I did it, and he gave me money. I didn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do.”
You could get paid for what my father and brother had stolen from me? While I hated the sound of it and cringed at the idea of more men pawing at me, I listened intently to everything Doris had to say.
“Did you do this all the time?” I asked tentatively.
Doris laughed. “Yup,” she said. “If these men were gonna take it anyway, I might as well earn the big bucks. Sometimes they’d give me several hundred dollars, girl.”
My eyes widened at this whole new world that Doris was revealing to me.
“Yeah, I gave this old guy a blow job one time,” she continued. “He was old enough to be my grampa!” She laughed to herself.
I wasn’t sure why she found this so funny. Plus, I didn’t know for sure what a blow job was. When I asked her, she explained it in great detail.
My face must have looked completely horrified, because she laughed even harder.
“Girl, you got a lot to learn. A lot,” she said.
Except for the time I spent with Doris, I was constantly afraid while I was at Bon Air. The girls who were locked up with me were for the most part young women who had come from tough lives and even tougher circumstances. Despite my time on the streets, I had spent most of my life in a middle-class neighborhood in Fairfax, Virginia, with other girls who looked and acted like me. At Bon Air, my pale skin seemed to glow like a neon sign.
Whenever I took a shower or sat down to eat, I was surrounded by wisecracking, street-smart inner-city girls, and I didn’t know how to deal with them. The streets I had frequented were nice compared to where these girls had lived. I felt their hatred for me very clearly. To them, I was just some stupid, spoiled white girl who had run away from a nice home for no reason at all. They had no idea what I had been through, and I was afraid to tell them.
***
Eventually the reform school decided to send me to a shrink in Richmond. I think that the state was doing its best to figure out why a girl from the suburbs would want to keep running away from home. All they had to do was ask the right questions, but no one ever did. Convinced that I had to take care of myself, I decided that this was the perfect chance to escape from the hell of Bon Air.
The morning of my appointment, I took special care with my appearance. There was one problem, though: the uniform. All the girls at Bon Air wore the same drab tan cotton dress. The dress fell just below the knee, and the white knee socks and black-and-white saddle shoes we had to wear were an added insult. The outfit was hideous, but even that did not hide my blond hair and the womanly figure that made me look older than my thirteen years. I couldn’t afford to attract attention.
The guard let me out of the car, saying, “Go inside and tell them you’re here. After you’re done with your appointment, wait inside for me to come and get you. Don’t leave or go outside, ’cause I’ll be watching you.”
Even though she said that, no one stopped me when I left the building after my appointment and kept on going. I walked as fast as I could to the gas station at the corner. I didn’t have much of a plan; I had no idea where the highway was, and the stupid uniform I had on made me feel so out of place that I was sure everyone could tell I had just escaped from Bon Air. Still, I hoped I could find someone to take me back to DC.
An older man in a gray car pulled up to the station. He glanced at me briefly. I stood over by the wall next to the bathroom as he walked inside to pay for his gas. When he came out again, I took a deep breath and spoke up. “Can you give me a ride?”
The man had white hair, wore glasses, and was about the same height as me. He seemed to be my father’s age. With his sweater vest and tan pants, he reminded me of a schoolteacher. He looked me up and down for a moment.
“Where are you going? Are you by yourself?” he asked.
“I just need a ride to DC, please. I’m lost. My aunt was supposed to meet me, but I think I’m at the wrong place. I don’t have any money, and I just want to go home. I live in DC.” The lies rolled off my tongue.
He stared at my clothes for a moment and told me to get in the car.
CHAPTER FIVE
After the man dropped me off in Washington, DC, I wandered over to Dupont Circle. I had not been in the area for a while, but I hoped some of the people I knew would still be hanging around.
A young woman approached me as I sat on one of the cement benches that surrounded the fountain in the middle of the park. “How are you doing?” she asked, giving me the brightest smile I had seen in a long time.
“Okay.” I nodded and smiled shyly back at her. I wondered why she was talking to me; other women and girls didn’t usually pay me much attention. She didn’t look like the women who hung out in the area either, though she did have long blond hair. There was just something different about her.
“I’ve seen you around here before,” she said. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Barbara.”
“Mine’s Nancy.”
As she continued to talk to me, I started to feel a little more comfortable with her. I had nowhere to go, and she seemed nice enough, and so pretty, too. She had on a minidress and expensive-looking leather boots. Most of the women in Dupont Circle wore blue jeans or long skirts, and never expensive clothing like hers. She saw me looking at the boots.
“Do you like them? If they fit you, you can have them.” She gave me another sweet smile, and then looked concerned. “Are you hungry?”
I nodded. This all seemed too good to be true. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had a real meal; just thinking about it made my stomach growl in anticipation.
“Great!” Nancy said. “Let’s go back to my apartment. We’ll get you something to eat there.”
I had thought it would just be us two girls, but when we got to her apartment, there was a man there waiting for her. I should have paid attention to the little hairs that stood up on the back of my neck when I first walked through the door.
James was a dark-skinned man with long, processed hair and really big eyes. Later I discovered that when he was excited they got even bigger, and if he was mad his eyes looked like they would pop out of his head. That day he was wearing a robe over his jeans, but no shirt. He seemed happy to see Nancy and me when we came in.
After she had introduced us, Nancy changed into a robe herself and then went straight to the refrigerator. She brought out some bologna, bread, and mustard and started making a sandwich for me.
“James, you want a sandwich, hon?” she called.
“Naw,” he said, flipping to a different channel on the television.
I sat at a table in the kitchen and watched as Nancy opened a bag of chips and put a handful on the plate. It wasn’t the food I had been used to at home, and not what I had been imagining. But right then that sandwich looked better than anything I had ever eaten before.
She slid the plate over to me.
“You look like you could use some money for food and stuff,” Nancy said, looking at me with shrewd eyes as I wolfed down the sandwich. “You want some water or something to drink with that?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if she was taking that as a yes to both statements.
She filled a glass with water and gave it to me. “You have really pretty hair and great eyes that guys would die for,” she continued. “A girl like you can make easy money.”
I stared at her. I wasn’t sure I understood, but I figured that if I could be like Nancy, who was one of the prettiest and nicest women I had ever met, whatever she was suggesting must be a good thing.
“All you’d have to do is look pretty and smile a lot,” she said, eyes bright. “Tomorrow, I’ll take you to some nearby restaurants where we can meet my friends and show you how I do it. They’ll love you!”
After I had fi
nished eating, Nancy took a syringe from a little box in the bedroom. “Do you know what this is for?” she asked me.
I shook my head, although I did. It scared me to see her holding it in her hand right in front of me. I wondered what she was going to do and what kind of drugs she planned on injecting. All I could remember was how I had shot up sugar water until it made me sick with hepatitis.
“It’s for bams. It makes everything just so much better! It’s a kind of speed.”
I watched her nervously as she started to fix up the speed. First she put some water into a bottle filled with small yellow pills. She shook the bottle a few times, and then filled the syringe with the water from the bottle.
Still standing, she propped her foot against the couch where James was sitting. His eyes glowed as the robe she was wearing fell open to the point where I could see her underwear. Her exposed thigh was heavily scarred; it looked like it wasn’t the first time she had done this.
James got up from the couch, nuzzled her neck, and took the needle from her. He found the right spot and smoothly injected the cocktail into her thigh.
As soon as the drug entered her bloodstream, she started to talk really quickly, leaping up and dancing around the room. Then James grabbed her. She jumped into his arms, her legs wrapped around his waist. He started kissing her everywhere, and her hands were stroking him back. They moved into the bedroom and shut the door.
I sat stiffly on the couch in the living room, where I could hear their moans and the rhythmic creaking of the bed. Why were they doing this when I could so easily hear them? I felt suddenly hot. Nancy and James were total strangers, and I didn’t belong here with them. I almost left, but I had nowhere else to go.
I curled up as tight as a ball, counting rhythmically in my head just like I had done at home to make the sounds of my parents’ arguing go away. The sounds faded as I concentrated hard, chanting in my head and rocking back and forth.
One, two, three, four, five…
Soon after, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
The next evening, Nancy carefully helped me get dressed. Because all I had was my uniform from Bon Air, she had me put on some of her clothes, a black miniskirt and a pair of white go-go boots. She was skinnier than I was, and the clothes were too tight, but Nancy told me not to worry about it. She pulled my blond hair up into a high ponytail. I watched in the mirror as she painted my face with heavy makeup, eye shadow, and blush.
Then she handed me a small white pill.
“What is this?” I asked as I popped the pill into my mouth. I wasn’t going to say no to anything she gave me; I was so desperate for her to like me that I probably would have robbed a bank if she’d asked me to. Still, I was curious.
“It’s a strong vitamin,” she said with a smile. “It’ll make you feel good.”
And she was right. I felt much calmer, like I could take on the world. I knew I could trust her. She was taking good care of me.
As we walked down P Street to Connecticut Avenue, I noticed that people were turning and looking at me and Nancy.
Nancy looked me up and down herself. “Wow, girl! That skirt is going to do the job, that’s for sure. You look good.”
I looked down at my thighs, which were barely covered by the tiny skirt. I’d never worn anything like that in public. Even at the neighborhood pool I would wear a long T-shirt over my bathing suit, because all the boys staring at me made me feel weird. But if Nancy said the clothes looked good, I believed her.
“There’s a restaurant down here where I know everyone,” Nancy said, her pace growing faster as we made our way down the street.
When we arrived, the restaurant had a Closed sign in the window. I was puzzled, but Nancy shook her head. “Don’t worry,” she said as she knocked on the door.
A large man with a pendulous belly and a leering smile opened the door. I disliked him immediately. I hoped we weren’t going to stay long, or that we were going to eat instead.
Nancy said, “Barbara, just wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” She took the man’s arm, and they walked back to the kitchen area. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I saw the man take a wallet from his back pocket and hand some money to Nancy.
When they came back out, the man smiled at me and took my hand. I remembered Doris at the reform school and what she had told me. I had a sinking feeling about what was going to come next.
He led me through the greasy kitchen to the back of the restaurant, where he had a small office with a couch. The couch looked old and creaky and had an ugly plaid cover on it with some odd stains. Nancy had remained in the front of the restaurant, where she sat at a table and stared out the window, waiting for us to be done.
The man sat down heavily and motioned for me to come over to him.
I was trembling. I forced myself to move toward the couch.
He must have sensed what I was feeling, because he tried to smile and said, “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. How old are you?”
Nancy had told me before we got to the restaurant that he might ask me questions, and she had warned me not to tell him my real age or even my real name. She said that if he found out who I was, he might call the cops. Then we would be in big trouble.
“I’m eighteen.” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at him. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
I didn’t believe him either when he told me he wouldn’t hurt me.
I sat on the couch next to him, and he started trying to kiss me and rub me with his large, hairy hands. In the midst of a caress, he murmured, “Kick me hard with those sexy boots.”
After a moment’s hesitation, I gave him a small kick, hoping I hadn’t hurt him.
He moaned and grabbed me to him. “Harder,” he said.
The floating feeling I used to get with my father came back and saved me just in time before I started screaming. I felt like the real me was up by the ceiling, watching this happen to someone else. I wasn’t a part of the act; I was only a spectator watching a thirteen-year-old girl in go-go boots kicking a fat man harder and harder as he groaned in pleasure.
After he seemed to be finished groaning, I looked up at the door to the office. Nancy had peeked in and was watching us.
The man straightened his clothes, and she walked through the door. She didn’t even look at me. “Come on, kid,” she said. “Time to go.”
***
This routine continued for several weeks. Nancy would take me out every night to different places near the apartment. She collected money each time, but I never saw any of it. James stayed in the apartment with us, and although I heard him giving Nancy instructions from time to time, he never really spoke with me at all.
One afternoon, Nancy took me to a New York Avenue beauty parlor, where they teased my blond hair into an elaborate bouffant hairdo. After the months of ugly gray detention centers and dark reform schools, I couldn’t help enjoying being spoiled a little. I had never even been to a real beauty parlor before.
I was so pleased with how I looked, but James was not. He grabbed an ugly brown wig from a bag and started yelling, shaking the wig in Nancy’s face.
“I spent money and all my damn time taking her to get her hair done,” Nancy said furiously. “She’s not wearing it.”
“I don’t give a shit!” he shouted, shaking her. “Put this wig on her. It’s better this way, believe me.”
It was as if I wasn’t there.
Nancy rolled her eyes and came over to me. “Barbara, I know we spent a long time getting your hair done, but James is right. This wig will look great on you.”
I pulled the tight wig over my new hairdo and felt kind of sad. Not only was it uncomfortable, but I thought it looked so stupid on me. I had liked going to the beauty parlor and getting my hair done. Now it was all ruined, but I didn’t dare voice my sadness. I wanted them both to keep liking me.
That night, both Nancy and James walked me down the street to the corner of Fourteenth and I St
reet NW, which was where area prostitutes walked to find customers every night. Nancy seemed to know some of them; she waved and said hello as they stood on the corner.
I noticed a light-cocoa-skinned man with greenish-brown eyes and long, permed black hair standing there, watching the girls walk back and forth. He had on a light-pink suit with platform shoes and a matching hat. He seemed to be waiting for us, because when he saw us coming up the street, he smiled and called out to James and Nancy. I wondered who he was.
James and the man stepped off a little to the side and talked with each other. I saw money change hands, and a bottle of pills. Then James cleared his throat and spoke to me, something he never did: “This here is Moses. You’re going to go with him now.”
“Moses?” I raised my eyebrows.
The man’s green eyes glowed. I was entranced.
“Hey there, girl,” he said. “How would you like to go with me up to New York? It’s real nice up there, and we are gonna have a good time. I’ll take you up there with me and show you the city, okay? I’m gonna take you to the promised land.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
We drove to New York that very night. Moses drove me himself in his big burgundy Cadillac Eldorado. I stretched out against the luxurious front passenger seat and looked around at the landau top and the eight-track tape player inside. I had never seen a car like it in Fairfax, and although I knew nothing about cars, I could tell that it was expensive.
From the way Moses seemed to handle the huge car, I could sense his pride in it, too. He was slouched in his seat, his hat tilted forward. One slender hand, sporting a sparkly diamond ring, rested lightly on the steering wheel. The other stroked his goatee as he stared out the window at the road. I wished he would pay more attention to me and not the highway.
“When are we going to see James and Nancy again?” I asked, reaching forward to play with the radio. I couldn’t believe there were so many buttons everywhere.
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