We Wear The Mask (PASH)-Chap. 9
by Chrissyn
 

We Wear The Mask--part 9
 
 

The Russell house was pitch-black. The whir of the refrigerator, or the floor creaking periodically fractured the eerie stillness.
Eve lay in bed, wide-awake, sleep refusing to claim her. She wasn't distressed about a patient. Or her daughters, or TC.
Everyone was home, safe in their beds. TC lay next to her, snoring gently, in fact. The familiar sound made Eve smile sadly in the dark.
She loved TC with all her heart; she was grateful TC was in her life. Everyday, she thanked God for her wonderful family.
Quietly, she got out of bed, and tiptoed down the few steps leading to the living room.
She sat on the sofa, and sighed. Earlier that evening, she thought about her mother...Her mother's boyfriend, and how he attacked her.
And how her mother...her very own mother sided with her boyfriend. Eve was Clarice's daughter, dammit. Shouldn't Eve's feelings and words have come before Clarice's boyfriend?
Eve remembered her past when she was on the streets. Sometimes it was as though her ugly past never existed, but then somebody would make a casual comment, or she'd see a scene in a movie, or one little word would make the past revisit her.
And when those thoughts visited...she could do nothing to banish them. She tried reading, watching television, working.
Once she had gotten up at one thirty in the morning, and cleaned the oven. "Eve, what are you doing?" TC wanted to know.
She blamed her insomnia on anxiety about a patient in ICU.
Her mind traveled to when she was on the streets. She remembered her friends.
She lifted an eyebrow.
Friends!
But they were like her--discarded, homeless kids.
One was gay, and enjoyed wearing makeup and women's clothes.
Another had been molested.
Yeah, they had been friends. They shared their food, gave her tips on keeping safe on the streets, comforted her when she felt hopeless.
What a miserable existence!
Some of the kids ate out of trashcans. Eve scrunched her face when she recalled how some of the runaways, foraged through trashcans like animals looking for food. And she had seen them eat the last bites of somebody's discarded hamburgers.
Eve never stooped that low. And her stomach often growled, but she just couldn't eat food that someone had thrown in a trash can. Thinking about it now made her gag.
But she stole.
She'd go in various supermarkets, and cram candy bars, tuna fish, vienna sausages into her purse, down her pants, anywhere she could secrete them. She remembered tearing open mini packs of doughnuts, and devouring them.
Or opening a package of hot dog rolls, and removing two, and eating them right there on the bread aisles. She'd go to the deli, and request ham, or a few pieces of fried chicken, and meandered down the detergent aisle and dine.
She remembered resenting people who could afford to buy food, or who had shelter, or drove cars.
And there were the tricks. All the different men. So many. She had lost count.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she felt the need to howl.
She placed a hand over her mouth to muffle the scream, as tears spilled down her cheeks. "God," she muttered when she composed herself. She looked up at the ceiling.
"What did I do to deserve that?" Her voice sounded piteous. "Why did you choose me to test this way?" She covered her face with her hands and bawled.
Some of the johns looked so ordinary, like the manager of a supermarket, a bespectacled History teacher.
But they wanted her to blow them. They rammed their fingers into her. She had intercourse with them, in dark alleys, in the back seat of the family sedan.
Dear God. Why was she recalling this?
And there were the bullies. Men who came to the whore stroll just to whip hookers.
They slapped her around. Yanked her hair. Took her money. Called her vile, yet truthful names while they violated her.
Violated.
What a euphemism.
She had been raped...once...anally...He asked her if she took it up the ass. "No, I don't do that," she said. Well, he did it anyway.
She began to hyperventilate.
She couldn't breath.
She dashed to the kitchen, grabbed a glass from the counter, and filled it with tap water. Quickly, drank it, and caught her breath.
One scorching night, she went in a nearby coffee shop to cool off.
Chardonnay aka Nay, owner of the place, usually shooed off the whores. "Bad for business," she said.
But Nay never objected to Eve using the shop as a refuge from the bitter cold, or sweltering heat.
Eve wondered if Nay was a guy in drag. Of course, she wouldn't ask her. "Something about you is different from the others," Nay had said in her throaty voice. "You don't belong out there. I can tell. So why you doin' it?" Nay inquired.
Eve imparted the story about her mother.
Nay shook her head while wiping the counter. "Some of these bitches should have never been allowed to have children."
Later that night, a white woman, brunette, in her early thirties, well-groomed, smelling of good perfume, came into the shop. The woman took a seat at the counter, and requested a glass of iced tea, which Nay poured and placed in front of her.
As she sipped her tea, she openly stared at Eve, with admiration in her eyes, making Eve feel tremendously uncomfortable.
Eve wondered if she was freaky deaky and searching for some lesbian sex, or maybe someone to have a threesome with her and the man in her life.
Couples visited the whole stroll searching for excitement.
Well, Eve refused to do a threesome, and she definitely wasn't having sex with another female.
The woman got off the stool and went in the direction of the bathrooms.
"Nay, who was that woman?" Eve asked when the woman was out of sight.
"Rita," Nay answered. "Runs an escort service. The cops don't fu'k with her because they can't prove what she's doing...Rita's gotten a few girls off the streets, and they better off for it."
Rita returned to the counter. This time, she took a stool next to Eve's. "Hi," she said.
Eve nodded.
"Are you just a customer here?" Rita asked. "Or do you have a booth outside, so to speak? Your clothes look normal, so I can't tell."
Eve couldn't be certain if this woman was an undercover cop. Occasionally, the police cleaned up the red light district, arresting prostitutes and their johns.
But Eve trusted that Nay didn't give her misinformation about Rita's identity. "I have a booth," Eve replied.
Rita introduced herself, extended her hand, which Eve shook. She engaged Eve in a conversation. "You're very articulate," Rita commented. "You read, don't you?"
"Yes," Eve answered. White people drove her crazy when they praised her speech pattern. They wouldn't tell another white person they were well spoken.
"So you can hold a conversation," Rita said, adding that she ran an escort service. "And I want to add some color to my stable of girls...Some guys ask for black chicks." Rita paused. "Would you be interested in working for me?"
Eve nodded. She wanted off the streets.
From the steering wheel of her fancy car, which was clean and smelled of Rita's perfume, Rita said, "Eve, I'm not going to lie to you. The girls who work for my service have sex with their dates."
Well, that wasn't a shocker to Eve. On PHIL DONAHUE, Eve heard escorts talk about how they only went to dinner with the guys, and the guys just talked, because their wives weren't interested in anything they had to say.
They claimed they didn't have sex with the men.
The comment always engendered incredulous murmurs from the onlookers. And Eve didn't believe it either. No man is going to fork out a few hundred dollars just to talk to somebody.
"The guys are looking for women with class," Rita said. "Something they can't find on the streets."
On the streets...in a brothel, or working for an escort--a whore is a whore, Eve thought.
"Working for me, you'll be in a safer environment," Rita said.
Eve smiled at the words--safer environment. She wouldn't fear being beat up or robbed. Spending the night outside, but she'd still be selling her body.
But Rita's way of prostitution was preferable to the streets.
Eve entered Rita's four bedrooms, beautifully decorated home.
Eve shared a room with Jocelyn, a cute, zoftig red head, who got tired of being molested by her grandfather and ran off.
The room was nice. Much better than what she had at home. There were two full size beds, a TV, a bookcase.
The next morning over juice, Rita explained--"An escort charges three hundred bucks a date. If you get your own place, you pay me half. If you stay here, you give me two hundred. If the guy tips you, its yours to keep. Sometimes the guy will throw in an extra fifty, or a hundred if he had a particularly good time."
Rita introduced Eve to Gary, who was tall, muscular, carried a gun and did a stint in Vietnam. While the girls were on dates, Gary was outside, sitting in his Oldsmobile, listening to his tape deck. First sign of trouble, and Gary intervened.
Eve agreed to the rules, and agreed to stay at Rita's.
She didn't want the responsibility of maintaining an apartment. And she liked the idea that Gary watched out for the girls.
Her fifth date was at the Ritz-Carlton. Her client was Julian Crane.