knew that her body was superb, as good as it had ever been. Why shouldn't it be? She worked out two or three hours a day now, so her arms and legs were hard and thin, her stomach was cut and flat. Her breasts weren't large, but they were fine. Everyone told her to make them bigger, to have the surgery, all the other girls did, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. She liked her breasts, her little chi chis, liked that they were really her. She lost some customers because they were too small but she didn't really care. She wasn't going to start slicing herself up, changing herself. She really and truly would not do that. At least not yet.
Men wanted her, that was clear. And because of that she could get them to give her almost anything she wanted. Presents. Expensive dinners. Or just good old-fashioned money. One man, old, in his forties, probably, maybe even his fifties, with a paunch and saggy chicken skin on his chin and neck, wanted to give her an apartment. He was Indian, she thought. Maybe Arab. She wasn't sure. She just knew he was dark, much darker than her, and had an accent and that saggy skin. She already had an apartment, though, a nice one, with a view of the East River. It was the one thing she paid for herself. She liked paying for it. Really and truly. It made her feel grown-up and as safe as she could ever feel. So she told the dark old man that she didn't want his apartment. It was the only thing of any importance that she'd ever turned down. She thought it would make her feel good, turning it down, paying her own way, but it didn't. It only made her feel sad.
It made her sad, too, that she could get men to beg and humiliate themselves just to touch her. But it also excited her, made her feel powerful, at least for a while. When it was over, she'd just feel empty again. It was like when she was little. When her dad would come into her room at night, when everyone else was asleep. She saw what she could do to him. She would tease him and his eyes would harden; they wouldn't stare at her, they'd stare into her. She would run her little hand across his neck and call him funny names and she could feel him tense, but more than that, she could feel him succumb to her. She could tell that he liked her, even though he rarely said it. She could tell that he loved her, really and truly loved her, even though he never said it. She could tell, even at that age, that he wanted her for some overwhelming and incomprehensible purpose. He never said anything about that, either, but he didn't have to. She saw it in his eyes when they burned into her. He said nothing but his eyes said por favor.
He never touched her, though. He never got the chance. Her mother also saw the look in his eyes and one day said something about it. Soon after that, her father was gone. She was allowed to see him, but only when another grownup was present. At first, he came once a week. Soon, every two or three weeks. Then, less often than that. Finally he just stopped coming. Her mother said she was lucky. They were all lucky. Particularly so when, less than a year after the divorce, a new man came into their lives and her mother remarried. A wonderful man. A pillar of the community. A man devoted to his new family, her mother said. So proper. And good. And moral.
And white. So very white, which is why her dear madre thought he was so perfect. So clean.
But she wasn't surprised when her stepfather came into her room that first time, that night when everything changed. He had been nothing but kind to her. Helped her with her homework. Smoothed things out when her mother got impatient with her. She liked him fine, decided she could probably grow to love him. But she'd seen that same look in his eyes.
For favor.
Only he said it in English. Said it the way a white man would say it.
She wasn't unhappy when he got down on his knees and whispered that he'd do anything for her. He pleaded and cajoled and stroked her hair, so soft, so gently, and yet she knew that she couldn't pull away, that he wouldn't let her pull away. He'd do anything for her, he said, over and over again, if she'd only do one little thing for him. One little tiny thing that would make him so happy. So she did, that night and many nights after that. It always made him happy, just as he'd said, and she never felt ashamed. It thrilled her and made her proud. Until he'd go away and ignore her. Or worse, yell at her. And sometimes hit her. That was always in the daytime. Then he'd be back in the middle of the night, sorrowful and repentant and begging her to be his little girl and let him love her. She tried telling her mother but her mother wouldn't hear a word of it. Didn't believe her. Refused to even listen because it was impossible for this man to be unclean. So she stopped talking about it and just accepted it as a fact of life. She liked the pleasure and could put up with the pain. It went on for a long time, the begging and the yelling and the hitting and the loving. Until eventually it was no longer thrilling. Eventually it just made her feel empty, like everything else.
Really and truly empty.
When she first started her job, she didn't let the men touch her. Just teased them. And flirted, of course. Then, somehow, that stopped, the barrier disappeared, and they were grabbing her, pawing her, breathing hard and rolling their eyes back like they were having a fit. At some point, she realized that the touching meant nothing to her. So she allowed it. And while she would still get sad and empty, it was all somehow funny to her, too. When she would see them, so hungry for her, so hungry for everything, she would laugh. Sometimes to herself, sometimes right in their face. It never seemed to bother them, the laughter. As long as they got what they wanted. That was the number-one lesson she'd learned over the past three years: nothing matters as long as you get what you want.
She didn't know how long this life could go on. She feared that it would come to an end, and sooner rather than later. Because she knew something. She had a secret. A secret that terrified her. Really and truly frightened her. Kept her awake at night. Sometimes made her break into a cold sweat when all she was doing was sitting on the white, fluffy couch in her living room, having a cup of tea with her feet tucked under her. She was certain that no one knew this secret other than her. She was sure that no one even suspected it. But there it was, and she lived with it every minute, until it got bigger and bigger and now it gnawed at her day and night and scared her and made her sweat.
Oh, yes, she was pretty.
But she wasn't pretty enough.
Her nose was too large and pushed off to the side, ever so slightly. Her teeth were excellent, white and even, but her gums were too prominent. When her lips curled back, they showed too much of her pink gums and she hated that. It's why she rarely smiled.
She wasn't crazy about her skin, either. It was dry, no matter how much expensive moisturizer she kept on it, and it wasn't smooth. There were imperfections, little bumps and hairs; when she stared at it under the bright lights of her makeup mirror it sometimes made her sick. Really and truly ill. She would stare at the magnified flaws in her skin for five minutes, ten minutes, sometimes as long as half an hour, and then her stomach would hurt and she'd have to lie down. And when she'd lie down, she'd think about her hips, how they were too wide, they really and truly were. Oh, no one could tell now, but she knew what was going to happen in another ten years. That might seem like an eternity, but it had already been three years since she'd come to New York and that had gone by in a flash. It seemed like yesterday. So she knew that any minute her hips would widen and her triceps would sag and she'd have her mother's body and once that happened, men wouldn't love her, they'd leave her, just like they left her mother…
No. She couldn't go there. Once that happened, everything would change. But for now, it was her secret. No one else knew what would happen as she got older. The same way no one knew what she was like before. All they knew was what she was now. Muy muy bonita with a perfect body and small chi chis that were still her own.
Then she found out that one other person knew. Just one. She had told him about her past, about her father and the way he crept into her room at night. About her parents' divorce and her stepfather and her mother's religious conversion, and her sister's suicide and her other sister's drinking. Yeah, she was the one who revealed to him what she'd been. But he'd figured out on his own what she was going to become. Somehow, he'd seen it for himself. Watched her as she stared at her own face in the mirror. And when she turned to him, realizing that he was there, in the bathroom doorway, he'd said, 'Scared.' Said it very plain and simple. Not really a question, much more definite than that. More of an answer.
'Why should I be scared?' she asked, and flipped her streaked blonde hair. Men melted when she flipped her hair. Especially since it had been streaked.
He didn't melt, though. Just stared at her for another few seconds. And then said, 'Because you're smart enough to know what's going to happen to you.'
She wanted to ask: What do you mean? What's going to happen to me? But she didn't, because he was right. She already knew.
Just as he knew that she wasn't pretty enough.
That was the first time it occurred to her that she was in love with Kid.
