You ***ing Forced Me to Say Goodbye

She hated the sound of breathing when she was lying in a hotel room. Her daughter was at the apartment alone, and Jana had run out of money to feed her with. There were moments where she hated the child more than she thought possible. She caught herself more times than not, wishing that Stephanie was dead. But she hated herself for feeling that way. It was something she often had trouble with. She wanted to love her daughter and when the baby had been born she’d tried to love her. But Stephanie was in the way. She needed so much more than Jana had.

Jana was a party girl. She’s had her first drink at age 12 and she’s lost her virginity at age 13, for her birthday. After that first time she became known for being easy. In the year between her first time and when she’d gotten pregnant she’d lost count of partners. Weekends could be drunken marathons and she’d never even notice. Her mother knew she had fun, but she’d never known the true extent of the fun. Looking back Jana honestly didn’t know who the father of her daughter was. She had been conceived at a party, and Jana had been so drunk she could hardly stand up.

She knew that night she’d been with more than two men, but she wasn’t sure how many more there had been. Of the two she could remember she was sure neither was not Stephanie’s father. She hated not knowing, she wanted her daughter to know her father. She hated that her child would suffer the same pain she had for 16 years. For her entire life, as far back as she could remember, she’s only wanted to know her father. She’d loved her mother with all her heart, but more than anything she’d just wanted to know her father. To not be the weird kid with no dad.

Jana could remember being a little girl and her friends talking about their dads and the gifts their dads had given them. She could remember not being able to go to father daughter dances, and never being able to dream of her father walking her down the aisle at her wedding. She could remember lying in bed at night imagining a man that didn’t exist holding her first child when she was married and grown. She had imagined something so well that she could almost actually remember him teaching her to ride her bicycle and taking her to baseball games. But even with all her made up memories she knew in the back of her mind that none of it was real.

So when she was lying awake in a hotel room listening to her client breathe she hated the sound. She hated having time to lie there and think about how much she hated her life. About how much she had missed in her life. There were so many things she would change on a dime. She’d never have had that first drink, and she’d never had had that first time. She’d give up all her parties and her memories just to have had her father in her life. And she hated him for leaving her. She hated him for not wanting her or caring about her enough to stay around. But there was one thing, that no matter how much she wanted to she couldn’t change. No matter how much hate she thought she felt towards Stephanie, she could not imagine a life without her. She was completely unable to picture a life without her daughter in it.

For a short time right after she’d been thrown out of the group home she’d thought about adoption. She was young and really had no idea how to care for a baby. She knew adoption would be best for the little girl. But she’d missed out on having her father, and she’d hated him all her life for the feeling of not being wanted that she’d had, and she didn’t want her daughter to go through that. She hated to think that her baby would grow up wondering why her mother and father hadn’t wanted her. Even if she couldn’t provide a father to the baby she was hell-bent on providing a mother. So she’d kept her despite her better judgment, and she’d set out to find a way to raise her. She wasn’t a good worker, and she wasn’t skilled in much but getting drunk and sleeping around.

Her first night in the strip club she’d been everything but calm. Terrified the police would catch her, and nervous that the customers would notice her youth and report it. She had a fake ID that said she was 21, but there was a part of her that was worried. Her body was matured, and she loved to dance, and so she’d taken a breath and 3 shots to calm her fraying nerves and she strutted onto the catwalk with as much strength as she could muster. She refused to let it get to her. She decided that anytime from then on when she was on that stage she was Jana James and she was a fucking dancer.

It had really only been a little while before stripping and partying led to sex. It was just something that was engrained into her mind and her soul. She’d started out slow, sleeping with men that came into the club just for the excitement. All of them asked her age, and she always told them 21. But all of them knew she was lying, it was so obviously written in her skin. It never stopped them; they all wanted to try her out. And when she found how many of them wanted more, she found that it was an easy way at extra money.

An easy way to feed Stephanie. Sex was nothing anymore, it wasn’t even fun. It was work. And every time she slept with a man, be he and old client or new, she hated him more and more. Because they all knew, and they all liked the idea of sleeping with a girl that was 16. And when her hatred of men came up, so did her addictions.

Alcohol had always been somewhat of a problem. From the first drunken night. Because she could use it to take away her pain. To take away that feeling she had inside. It was like every chance her mother got it was a reminder of how much her father hadn’t wanted her. How he’d left her because she was too much for him. It broke her down and she turned to that feeling of being lost in alcohol. From then on she’d always loved that.

But with her new feeling of hate and her new feelings of worthlessness came an addiction stronger than alcohol. She’d turn to cocaine without hesitation. Cocaine was painful in its own way. With that she was so aware of everything around her. And it gave her the energy to keep going every night and every day. But cocaine was expensive. And it got in the way of feeding Stephanie. More than once she’d chosen between her daughter and her problem, and usually her problem won. When she was high she was high on a mountain. She wasn’t just a whore. She wasn’t just a thing that all these men used. She was a person, and she mattered, when she was high.

She’d spent so much of her life feeling like she wasn’t wanted. The only person that had ever seemed to want her was her mother, and even sometimes she wondered about that. Her mother loved her, and she knew it, but her mother wanted her to be something she wasn’t. And for years she’d felt like she was less than anybody wanted her to be.

So now she was lying in this hotel room hating the sound of the man next to her’s breath. She looked at him and she sighed before getting out of bed. The room was cheap and it was dingy. But so little of her could care anymore. She dressed swiftly in her shorts and turquoise green crop top. Thigh high boots that she only wore when she was desperate. She picked up his pants and dug out his wallet. She wasn’t going to wait for this one to wake up. She couldn’t stand the sound any more. She pulled out all the cash and she swiftly left the room. She stuffed the cash into her pocketbook as she walked away from the hotel with tears filling her eyes. This was just one more thing that let her know she wasn’t a person. She was just an object.

It had been over a week since she’d found her father, and she thought about him often. About letting him help her. But how could she give up the life she’d worked so hard for? To be independent wasn’t something she was afraid of. It wasn’t something she wanted to give up. She hated everything about men, and she hated that she was so dependent on them to feed Stephanie. But how could she let go of all she’d tried to accomplish.

She walked for a while, letting the cold air bring up her hairs and leave goose bumps on her skin. She tried not to cry, because crying seemed so useless. Nobody cared. So she walked, and she passed people on the street that she was honestly afraid of. There were men and women that all looked so crazy. The men she feared the most, because she was always afraid they’d see her in her skimpy clothes and rape her. She was so jaded about being a human, so sure that nobody saw her that way that she was sure that she’d be the one they raped and murdered and nobody would even care.

When she finally got back to her apartment in the morning, after walking around Los Angeles most of the night and catching a few more clients, she was exhausted and hurt. Every night was like another bruise to her ego. Another reason to hate the fact that she was breathing. She went into the bathroom of her little apartment and washed her face.

The apartment was dirt cheap, and in bad repair. The ceiling leaked and there was mold in the walls. There were cockroaches and rats that ran through the building at will. But it was the best a girl in her position could come up with. The landlord hadn’t even asked for ID or any paperwork as long as the rent was paid on time. Jana was able to get him the rent money, and on the rare occasion that she was completely unable to make rent she’d preformed “favors” for him to get her through the next month.

Favors. That was a word she’d learned to hate. It seemed she had favors for everybody when she needed them. The landlord was one, and her neighbor another if she was short for her electric bill. She couldn’t pay for gas so she had no hot water unless another neighbor paid it, and again that came with a favor. Food sometimes came with favors if she’d spent too much money on cocaine and the baby was getting sick.

She walked into her bedroom and saw Stephanie sleeping on the floor on the little pile of blankets she slept on every night, with her rag doll clutched tight against her little chest. Her pillow was old and ragged, and she slept on a small pile of ragged old blankets. Jana sighed as she looked down at her daughter. Stephanie had the only blanket worth using wrapped around her little body.

“I can’t keep doing this to her,” she said to herself as she watched the little girl breathe. She was thinking again about going back to Austin and asking him to help her, even if it was only to help her get a new apartment. Or a bed and some blankets for the baby. She took a deep breath and ran her fingers through her long dark brown hair before getting undressed and putting on her night shirt and lying in her bed. She had a small bed that was big enough for her and Stephanie when it was cold in the room. She couldn’t afford to run her heater, so she’d bring her daughter into the bed and hold her tightly against her body with the one good blanket they had wrapped around both of them.

She lay in bed and she thought for a long time, worried about what was going to happen to them if she couldn’t come up with something quick. She’d had enough work tonight to buy them food for a couple days. But without having enough to buy things to cook with it was whatever she could get at fast food places. As a stripper she made good money, tips were not something she couldn’t handle. But as a cocaine addict she couldn’t afford to feed her daughter and her drug habit. And she refused to give up the one thing that made her feel human. Finally after what seemed like days she got up and lifted Stephanie into the bed with her and held her close against her chest. She closed her eyes and she kissed the baby’s little head and soon enough the exhaustion took her over and she fell asleep.

Austin hadn’t been able to stop wondering about Jana. What was she doing and where could he find her. He was worried about her, and he was worried about her daughter. After Heather had confirmed Jana as being his daughter he’d wanted to try and work things out with her and help her. He had considered calling the police and having them search for Jana, but he was sure she wasn’t a force to be reckoned with. So he’d just waited, in hopes that she’d turn up again.

He hated Heather for having lied to Jana about the situation for so long. And he hated her for not having told him that he was a father from the beginning. It made everything so much more complicated. He knew Jana was uncomfortable with him, and as much as it irritated him, he couldn’t blame her. He thought about it constantly, and he came to the conclusion that had it been him he wouldn’t have known how to confront the man that supposedly abandoned him as a child. So how could he blame Jana for being skeptic on the situation?

But at the same time he was irritated by the fact that the girl hadn’t given him the chance to disprove the lies her mother told her. Just looking at her he could see she needed some kind of help, though he wasn’t sure what kind of help it was. She was thin and sickly looking, and her daughter seemed almost violently ill to look at her. So he waited and hoped that she’d come back so that maybe he could find out what she needed. And if he couldn’t ever help her he at least wanted to know her. She’d come into his life like a tornado and she tore through the normalcy of life. But she hadn’t stuck around long enough to do anything but damage on his mental health.

It made him crazy thinking he had a daughter, and not only that, but a daughter that was wondering the streets of Los Angeles, with a toddler. If anything he wanted to know where the baby was and get her out of that situation, because from the way he saw Jana treat her, and the physical condition that baby had been in, he could tell she needed something better than what she had. He thought about Jana and the baby all the time and he wondered how opposed to it Jana would be if he found them and did take her daughter. From the day she’d left he’d wondered why if she didn’t want Stephanie she’d taken her with her when she’d left his house.

Jana took Stephanie to McDonalds the next morning and bought her a sausage McMuffin and a drink. She only bought herself a small coffee that she sipped slowly as her daughter ate. She looked at Stephanie and she sighed. She knew she had to do something. Stephanie was sick looking and fragile, and Jana knew she was failing as a mother. She hated that she couldn’t do better by her child.

“Mama,” Stephanie said in her little voice.

“Just eat your breakfast, Stephanie. I don’t know when you’ll be able to get more,” Jana answered and sipped her coffee.

“Cold, mama,” Stephanie sniffled.

“Well too bad,” Jana said. She put her head down and she sighed. There was no way she was going to be able to afford winter clothes for the baby, and it was starting to get cold already. Stephanie had three outfits. She had two pairs of shorts, two t-shirts, and one dress. The dress was old and hardly fit her. Jana often times tried with all her strength to dress Stephanie in old clothes, but it was like every time she did Stephanie was bigger. She had no shoes that fit her anymore, and if Jana wanted to take her some place public she had to shove her little feet into shoes that were too small. This led to complaining from Stephanie that her feet hurt. Stephanie’s complaints usually led Jana to slapping her.

“Cold,” Stephanie sniffed again.

“I said too fucking bad!” Jana snapped, earning stares from other people inside the restaurant. She flipped off the people looking at her, who all turned quickly back to their food. She hated people so much at times she could scream out loud. Stephanie started to cry. “Oh please stop crying, Stephanie. I’ll have to take you and leave you with the boogey man.”

“No! No, mama!” Stephanie screamed.

“Stop that this second, Stephanie James,” Jana said with anger in her voice.

“No! No boogey man!” Stephanie cried. Jana stood up then and took hold of Stephanie’s little arm and pulled her out of the booth.

“Let’s go, I told you to stop it, I’m taking you to the boogey man right now,” she said bitterly. Stephanie screamed and fought against her mother’s grip. “Stop it, stop it now,” Jana snapped and knelt down to her daughter’s level. “If you don’t stop causing a scene I’m never going to feed you again,” she said through her teeth, low enough for only Stephanie to hear. Stephanie continued to cry, and Jana dragged her out of the building and once out of sight of the public she slapped her across the face. “I told you not to act that way in public you useless little shit.”

“No, mama,” Stephanie cried. “No boogey man.”

“Then behave yourself. Because I’m sure the boogey man would love to have a bad little girl like you so he could cook her in his soup.” Stephanie sniffed and wiped her nose with her little hand. “Come on, we are going home,” Jana snapped. She started to walk with her baby in tow when she suddenly decided she couldn’t get back to that apartment now. It would just drive her mad, and she was running late on rent. She was far from in the mood to go down that road. So she turned around and started walking in a different direction. Towards a place she was sure she’d regret, but she needed the time to think, and she needed the time not to have to worry about Stephanie.

When Austin opened his front door he was a little shocked to see Jana again. Though he’d hoped she’d show up, he had never expected her too. She stood there and looked at him for a long time, and he looked her over. There was bruising on her arms and her hips. Stephanie was shivering against her again and he sighed.

“I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Jana said and looked down. “But I don’t have money for rent.”

“I’m not paying your rent,” he said. She looked up at him then bitterly.

“I didn’t ask you too. I don’t need you to play God, motherfucker,” she snapped. He took a breath. This was going to be such a long journey. “If I need my rent taken care of, I just have to invite my landlord over for a few hours and it’s all okay.” He looked at her with wide eyes.

“Come in,” he said then and moved aside so she could come into the house with Stephanie. Stephanie looked up at him and sniffed. She was shivering and she was obviously sick. He put his hand on her head as she walked in with her mother. “She’s sick.”

“It’s a little cold, it will clear soon,” Jana said without emotion and she sat on the sofa he’d let her sleep on the last time she was at the house.

“Jana, I think maybe if you take off again you should leave the baby,” he said as he sat in his reclining chair. She looked at him.

“I can’t just leave her, she is my problem,” she said then. He looked at her.

“Where did the bruising come from?” he asked as he looked her over again. She looked down and then she sighed.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It does to me. You can’t keep showing up here like a natural fucking disaster,” he said. She rolled her eyes.

“I only came because I can’t pay my rent right now and my landlord will be there waiting.”

“Did he give you the bruises?”

“Not all of them,” she snapped. Austin sighed. Talking to her was like talking to a wall. Or more like running into one head first.

“Just tell me where they came from? Tell me why you are here.”

“Because I can’t pay rent and I had nowhere else to go. You know, it’s hard to pull clients when you bring your toddler along.”

“Clients? What are you, a hooker?” he asked with irritation.

“Yes,” she said and crossed her legs. He was silent then. She laughed to herself. “Is that so horrible?”

“It is,” he said and smiled a bitter smile. “You are too young to be so fucked up.”

“Well, maybe if you wouldn’t have abandoned me as a baby I wouldn’t be so fucked up,” Jana said. “The point is, I need to stay here a couple nights, until I have money for rent. Because if I don’t get money, I have to give favors, and I’m seriously all sexed out.”

“What kind of fucked up landlord do you have?” he asked with his eyebrows furrowed.

“I don’t have a landlord I have a slumlord. A greasy scumbag that gives out apartments for close to nothing.”

“And you sleep with him for the apartment?”

“I don’t really think that matters to you,” Jana said. Austin groaned.

“I talked to your mom, Jana. She wants you home. But I told her I wasn’t going to send you back there. I personally think you and I have some stuff to figure out. So stay here a while. We’ll get Stephanie well again, and some clothes, because she has to be freezing.”

“I’m not asking for you to all of a sudden be my dad. I know you never wanted to be, and that’s fine. I just need you to help me this one time.”

“I never had the chance to be your dad, Jana. I promise,” he said. She rolled her eyes.

“Whatever, can I stay here a while?”

“I think you can stay here as long as you need to not go back to this apartment you seem so intent on having. And I think you need to tell me about the bruising.”

“I’m a hooker, okay. And sometimes guys aren’t happy with the product, so they…try and make it…better.”

“Some crazy client did that?”

“Yes,” she said and ran her hand over her arm. He looked at her bruising and for the first time noticed that the marks were like finger prints. Shaped like hands that wrapped around her biceps and her hips. “I don’t want to stay here forever, Austin. I just need help this time.”

“I don’t care,” he said then. “You’re 16 years old, and you are not legally emancipated, you ran away. Therefore, somebody has some kind of control over you. Supposedly it’s your mother, but if I’m your father I think I’m going to step in now. You’re not leaving this house, not to go back to that. Not to put your daughter in that kind of danger again.”

“What the fuck!? How dare you tell me what I will and will not do!? You have no fucking right to start this…”

“Obviously you don’t care about yourself, or your child. But I am not going to be a part of this and not step in, especially when there is a baby involved. This kid is sick, Jana. If anything don’t put here through this mess you’ve created.”

“I can’t believe you! I should never have come here!” Jana shouted.

“Maybe you don’t think this is right, or this is good. But it’s what is going to happen. You obviously need an adult, because you are going to end up in a lot of trouble, Jana.”

“Trouble! I had a baby alone on the fucking street for two years! I slept with countless men just to keep with little brat alive, I took off my clothes in bars, I met crazy fucking crack heads in hotels. And for what? So she wouldn’t die.”

“She isn’t going to make it on the street, Jana. It isn’t going to happen. And at this point, you can’t take care of yourself or her, I am your father, you are a minor, and if you leave this house with the baby I’ll have the police on you so fast you won’t know what hit you. So take my offer, because if you don’t you’re going to end up in jail and your kid in foster care. It’s up to you,” Austin said. Jana was quiet for a long time and she finally looked down at Stephanie. Stephanie had fallen asleep on the ground with her rag doll clutched to her chest. And once again she couldn’t imagine a life without her daughter.

“Fine,” she said in defeat. “I won’t leave.