You ***ing Forced Me to Say Goodbye

Jana was going crazy being trapped in Austin’s house. He had agreed not to force her back into a public school. He decided that would be too traumatic for her all at once, to go from being a teenage hooker to a high school student. So he let her stay in his house without worrying about school. He’d bought Stephanie winter clothes and taken the toddler to a doctor, where she was prescribed antibiotics to clear the flu she’d gotten.

“Mama,” Stephanie said and she tugged on Jana’s sweater sleeve. Jana looked down with irritation.

“Go away,” she said. She hated being trapped in the house. She wanted to go out and have a good time, but Austin had put a curfew on her. They often had conflict about him being in charge of things. She continued to argue that she was grown up enough to not need a curfew and not need to follow his rules. But he disagreed, and if she threatened to leave the house he threatened to call the police.

But she still managed to keep up with her cocaine addiction, and she never let him know that she was still seeing clients when she went out. She didn’t leave the house more than a couple times a week, and she was sneaky about the things she did. Only once had he caught her with drugs in her system, and that had led to a fight so violent he’d had to restrain her.

“Sleepy,” Stephanie said.

“Go away!” Jana snapped.

“Sleepy!”

“Then go to bed! It’s not that fucking hard!” Jana shouted. Stephanie immediately burst into tears. She hated being yelled at. Of all the things her mother did she hated being yelled at the most, because it scared her. She wanted so much for her mother to talk to her gently. The way Austin did. She didn’t know who he was, but she knew he was nice to her. He fed her and bought her stuff, and he gave her a new bed that was all her own.

When he’d brought home the toddler bed, with Disney princesses on it, she had been very curious as to what it was. She sat on the ground and watched him put it together with excitement filling her little body. Jana was not home when he put the bed together, and so she hadn’t had to worry about being yelled at for sitting there watching.

“Do you like Cinderella, Stephanie?” he asked. She looked up at him with confused eyes. She didn’t even know what Cinderella was. “Or Snow White?” She shook her little head. She didn’t know what he was asking. He pointed then to the cartoon girls on the bedspread. She shook her head again. “You don’t know them?” he asked. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. She didn’t speak well, but she understood everything he asked her.

“Do you like your new bed?” he asked. She looked up at him then with more confusion.

“Mama, bed?” she asked.

“No, not for your mama. This is your bed, Stephanie,” he said. She looked at it with big eyes. She’d never in her life had her own bed. She always slept on a pile of old blankets on the ground next to her mother’s bed except when it was too cold and before she could remember.

“Stephny bed?” she asked then. He nodded his head and lifted her up and set her on the bed.

“Stephanie’s bed. Jana has a bed too,” he said. Stephanie pulled the blankets over her little body in a very exciting movement. It was her own bed, for the first time in her whole little life she had a bed and blankets.

She loved the princess bed, and she would sometimes sit in it and play with the toys he’d bought her. She still had her rag doll that she slept with, but Austin had bought her teddy bears and dolls to play with. She was always a little scared Jana would take away her bed and make her sleep on the ground again, so she’d sit on the bed as if she were guarding it. But somehow she always had a warm place to sleep every night.

“Mama,” she sniffed.

“I said get away! Why don’t you ever listen?!” Jana asked, annoyed. Stephanie sniffed and looked down at her feet. Finally she walked away from her mother and up the stairs, where she climbed into her white bed and put the covers over her body. She watched the door, hoping Jana would come into the room and give her a hug. But she never did.

“Why are you in your bed, Stephanie?” Austin asked as he put his head in the door. She looked at him and sniffed.

“Sleepy,” she answered. He walked into the room and sat on the edge of her little bed.

“Is your mama down stairs?” he asked. She nodded. “Good, I worry sometimes that girl is going to run off and get killed or something.” Stephanie just looked at him. He leaned down then and kissed her forehead, and she was suddenly filled with excitement. Jana only ever kissed her when she was asleep, so as far as she knew she’d never been kissed before in her life.

“Kiss!” she said with excitement. He laughed and kissed her again.

“Your mama doesn’t kiss you?” he asked. She shook her head no. “I don’t think your mama knows how to love you,” he said. Stephanie just looked up at him with big eyes. “But don’t worry about it, Stephanie. Why don’t you go on to sleep now,” he said and kissed her head one last time before leaving the room.

He ran down the stairs and into the living room. Jana was sitting on the sofa alone. He sat in his recliner and looked at her suspiciously. “What?” she snapped after a few minutes of him watching her. He sighed.

“I was wondering how you like it here. You’ve been here for over a month now,” he said. She flipped her hair back and took a deep breath.

“I don’t know, it’s warm and it doesn’t stink,” she said and shrugged. He frowned.

“Have you thought about going back to your mother?”

“No,” she said honestly. “That is the last thing I’ll ever do. I’d rather die,” she said. “If she knew about Stephanie and all the stuff I’ve done, she’d be ashamed to call me her daughter.”

“You’re mother got pregnant at seventeen,” he said. Jana shrugged.

“But she’s a good person, only made the one mistake. And she was married when I was born,” Jana said. He took a breath of irritation.

“I never married your mother, Jana. She just up and disappeared. She called me one day and said not to call her anymore. The next thing I heard from her she’d moved away.”

“Mom never left Oklahoma City,” Jana said. “So I can see straight through that lie.” Austin frowned.

“Jana, I promise…”

“You never knew, blah blah blah,” she said and rolled her eyes. “It’s whatever, Austin. I don’t care,” she said. He frowned again.

“I know you are angry, Jana. And I don’t blame you, but you have to trust me on this.”

“I can’t,” she said and looked at him. “How can I trust you when I never knew you? The things I know are things my mother told me my entire life, and you were never around to disprove them. I never even got a card for my birthday.”

“Jana, if I had known about you I’d have been there with you. I’d have married your mother if that was what it took, and I’d have been there for you. But I never had that chance, you need to talk to Heather, and then you’ll know,” he said. She looked at him.

“I can’t just talk to her,” she said.

“You can,” he said then. He pulled out his cell phone and tossed it to her. “Call her, Jana. Just let her know you are okay.” He got up then and left the room. Jana sat and looked down at the phone in her hands and she sighed. She knew he was right.

After a long time of sitting there looking at the phone she gently typed in the numbers of her mother’s phone number. There were three rings and then a man’s voice came over the line. “Hello,” he said. She took a breath through her nose, panicking slightly. Her mother hadn’t had a man in the house in years.

“Uhm is this still Heather James’ number?” she asked. There was a slight pause.

“Yes, this is where Heather lives, who is this?”

“Can I speak to her?” Jana asked without answering his question.

“May I ask who is calling?”

“It is a private matter,” she snapped. There was a pause then and all of a sudden her mother’s voice came through and she was taken back to being wrapped in a blanket on the sofa with Heather, watching movies and eating popcorn. It had been more than two years since she’d seen her mother or heard her voice.

“Hello?” Heather asked a second time.

“Mom…” Jana said then. Heather took in a gasp as the word hit her. She couldn’t believe she was talking on the phone with the girl that had run away so long before.

“Jana? Jana, is it really you?” she asked with tears filling up in her eyes.

“Mom…how are you?” Jana asked. She had tears in her eyes too and a pain in her chest that made it hard to breathe when she thought about her mother.

“Oh my god, Jana! You’re alive, my baby, after all this time you’re alive!” Heather sobbed into the phone. “Where are you, Jana?! Where are you, are you well?”

“I’m in California, mom. I’m with Austin,” Jana answered. Then there was another long silence.

“How could you do that to me?” Heather said then in a sudden violent change of mood. “You promised me you’d never find that son of a bitch! How could you do that to me!?”

“Mom! He’s my dad!” Jana said then.

“He has never done anything for you, Jana! He left you, he walked away from you. He doesn’t love you! Why are you with him? Come home, Jana! Come back where you belong, we’ll get everything fixed.”

“I like it here,” Jana said. “Austin has been good to me.”

“It’s just a guilty conscience; he doesn’t even care about you.”

“He does, he has been good to me. He’s given me a place to live.”

“I told him to send you home! To call the fucking police and send your disrespectful betraying self home! I want you to get yourself back here by the end of the week or I will find you myself!” Heather shouted then.

“Mom! Just let me be!”

“No! I won’t leave you with that man, and let him manipulate and lie to you! I won’t!” Heather said viciously. Jana wiped her nose with her hand. She wanted a drink, a hit, anything to take her away from speaking to her mother like this. She didn’t understand why this was a fight, and yet she knew it would be before she called.

“I don’t want to go home,” Jana said.

“Why? Did you get tired of running around Oklahoma like a little slut?! You have to go to California and get drunk?”

“You don’t know anything about me!” Jana screamed. She was violently angry at her mother. “You never have! You’ve always thought I was this little perfect school girl; you always wanted me to be a perfect fucking daughter! But I’m not, I never will be, and I won’t go back to a place where I am never going to be good enough!”

“Jana, I love you! You know that! I could have abandon you like you’re useless father did!”

“Who is the man, mom? The man that answered the phone? Who is he?”

“Who? Robert?” Heather asked then. “My fiancé.”

“You’re fiancé!? You’re getting married? Is he perfect, mother? Is he the man you’ve always wanted!? Maybe he can give u a daughter better than me!”

“The way you have behaved over the last several years any daughter would be a better one than you!” Heather screamed. “So bring yourself home before I go out and find you!”

“Fuck you! You will never find me!” Jana screamed and hung up the phone. She had tears in her eyes and she wished she wouldn’t have ever called Heather. Heather didn’t care about her; it was obvious that to her she was just a bad mistake.

She looked around the room and took a breath. She set the phone on the coffee table and wrote on a bit of paper. She couldn’t stay in the house now, she had to get out and get some air. She had to be away from this place, from the fight, and all the thoughts. So she quickly scribbled out a note.

Austin,
I had to get out of here for a little while. Don’t call the police, I’m leaving Stephanie. Don’t call my mother, don’t let her know you know where I am. I might be back, but I’m not sure. It just depends on what happens out there.
Sincerely,
Jana

She quickly slipped out of the house then and walked away from it. She looked over her shoulder once before taking off into a gentle run. Her running sped as tears filled her eyes and her heart started to race. She had to get away, she had to stop pretending she was anything other than the fuck up. Anything but the fuck up her mother thought she was, and the fuck up she’d proven herself to be.

She ran through the darkness until she made it into the city. Once she was in the middle of the city she tore off her sweater, revealing only a half tank top. She adjusted her jeans and fluffed her hair. She knew some girls that would hook her up with makeup. She was not going to lie to herself anymore.

It didn’t take her long to have her make up on or be positioned on the street corner watching cars drive by. Finally a man pulled up next to her and she leaned down, letting her cleavage show. “You cold out there, honey?” the man asked as he rolled the window down.

“You want to warm me up, buddy?” she asked seductively. There was a quiet nod and into the car she slipped. She was always aware of the dangers of being a street hooker, but how could she care? This was who she was, and all she understood. An hour later he dumped her back where he’d picked her up and sped away.

It always left her feeling a little dirty, and it always left her with another bruise on her already broken ego. But she just readjusted and waited for the next man. It was the same thing every time, he would pull up, they’d exchange a little small talk deal and in she’d get. Sometimes there were hotels if the client wanted it to last. If he was just looking for a blow or a quick fuck they’d never leave the car. They nearly all wore the gold promise around the third fingers of their left hands. A promise they didn’t hesitate to break.

By sunrise she was high on cocaine and bruised from a little bit of rough sex. She walked down the street drinking Jack Daniels from a Coca-Cola bottle and trying to rearrange her hair. She knew she was sloppy and she knew if she was spotted she’d be arrested, but why did it matter? She wasn’t a person anymore, she was just a walking blow up doll. One more car pulled up as she walked down the street. The man in the car looked at her with a grin.

“Is there something you need?” she asked as he slowed down and drove along side her walking.

“Aren’t you a classic?” he grinned. She stopped walking and he stopped his car. She looked in the window and at the inside of his car.

“Do you want something?”

“I want your pussy,” he said very bluntly. She rolled her eyes.

“$80 for a fuck,” she said.

“Fine,” he agreed. She took the last swig of her whiskey and slipped into the car again. There was a slightly uncomfortable silence as he drove, and after only a few seconds he slid his hand onto her thigh. “Unbutton your pants,” he demanded.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“Unbutton your pants,” he said again.

“No,” she said then. He looked at her and down at her jeans before violently unbuttoning them himself and he forced his hand down them. She squirmed at the feel of his fingers slipping between her legs and she bit her lip. “This isn’t part of the deal.”

“You’re in my car, slut,” he said then and he started to stroke her with his fingers. “How many cocks have you had in this pussy tonight?” he asked vulgarly.

“What does it mean to you?” she asked, feeling a little uncomfortable, but too drunk to fight him off.

“Answer me!” he said.

“Five,” she said quickly, with a strange sense of fear. She pressed her legs together and he quickly pinched down on the place his fingers were.

“Spread your legs, you little skank,” he said. She cried out at the pain and separated her knees. “Good girl.” He stopped the car in a dark parking garage. “Suck my cock,” he demanded then and pushed her head down into his lap.

“That will cost you,” she said.

“Do it,” he snarled. She took a breath and did what he told her. Suddenly after a few minutes he pulled her head up by the hair. “Get in the back seat.” She didn’t argue this time. There was something strange about this man. When he finished with her he pushed her out of the car, after stealing her panties, and sped away. She looked around the parking garage and she sank to the floor before letting herself cry. Another experience that left her feeling dirty, and a little scared this time. The hundred dollar bill he’d shoved into her pocket didn’t mean anything to her.

He wasn’t the first man to be rough with her, and she knew there were a certain amount of them that used hookers to live out a fantasy and never meant any harm. But it was hard to know which ones they were. She had known a girl that had a repeat client that claimed it was only a fantasy and would wear masks and act as if he planned to rape her but then would pay her well and leave her safe. Until one afternoon the girl’s picture was in the paper, and she’d been murdered. They later arrested the client.

She finally stumbled out of the structure and back into the city.