Page 137 of If Looks Could Kill
“All right, Salvation Baby,” she told me. “Take this and go put it on. In that room, there. Put it on and wait for me. We’re going to have us a little talk.”
I took the flimsy article and entered the room, still groaning in pain. Mother Rosie followed me in, lit a lamp with a match, then left, pulling the door shut behind her.
The room held nothing but a bed, a chair, and the rank smell of sweat and stale perfume.
Never had I felt so utterly alone.
Never had I felt so ready to die.
I knew well what would happen now.
“Tonight?” I heard Mabel say on the other side of the door. “Aw, Rosie, have a heart.”
“Have a heart, nothing,” said Rosie. “Little bitch thought she could make a fool of me.”
The door opened, and a girl stepped in. Around my age. She, too, was shockingly dressed, but she didn’t seem to care. She took a long look at me, then sat down on the chair.
“They call me Delilah,” she announced. “How about you?”
I sat opposite her on the edge of the bed. “Tabitha,” I said, seeing no reason not to.
“That’s no good,” she said. “Doesn’t have the snap.”
The snap.
“Maybe,” she said, “something like, the Tabby Cat.”
Not my father’s nickname for me. Not that. I pressed my fists into my eye sockets, but it didn’t stop my tears.
“Hey,” Delilah said. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m really sorry.”
I looked up at her. She watched me beneath heavily painted eyelids.
“I can see you’re a nice girl,” she said. “It’s harder for the nice ones. I know.”
Nice.
“I was raised for this,” Delilah explained. “But you weren’t.”
“I’m sorry too, then,” I told her.
She shrugged and began untying my hair from its style with a surprisingly gentle touch. “It’s easier,” she said, “if you don’t fight it. Less painful.”
I let her tend to my hair. “Do you mean, in body,” I asked her, “or in spirit?”
“Sure,” she said. “Both. But you’re better off not worrying about your spirit here.”
“What’s your name, really?” I asked her.
She stopped working my hair. “Sarah,” she said. “My name was Sarah. Till I was ten.”
Ten. Oh, God. In a world where this happens to children of ten, how do I ask you to save me? Yet save me, please; save me.
“I didn’t start here,” Sarah said. “I started at home. With my ma. Till she died and Rose bought me in.”
“Boughtyou in?”
“Paid off my ma’s pimp.”
