The Guest Room(32)

What the six of us had in common was that we were beautiful and our parents were dead or had disappeared. Inga cared for us, as did another mistress or housemother we were told to call Catherine. They were going to teach each of us how to be—Catherine’s words—twenty-first-century paramour. That meant learning, basically, to do whatever some guy wants and is willing to pay for. But it also meant learning about makeup and hair and clothes and what to eat (and what not to eat). We ate lots of healthy fruits and vegetables, and we smoked lots of cigarettes. They watched our weight, and soon enough cigarettes were our rewards for staying away from the bird’s milk cake or the sugary pastila. We tried on different kinds of sexy underwear and were taught that the panty goes underneath the garter belt, even if that means it’s more difficult to go to the bathroom. We played Xbox games. We played Xbox games on a TV set for hours.

The cottage had a minaret and two man-made ponds that we could see from the windows. We never swam in them; they were for show. They went with the gardens. The bathrooms had faucets and bidet handles made of pretend gold. We each had our own bedroom with windows and velvet drapes. This was so we would feel a little pampered when we were not entertaining and so we would have our own space to bring clients when it was time. We ate together in a dining room with a white marble floor and an Oriental carpet with Noah’s ark animals. (My favorite creatures were the rug’s two giraffes.) We used silver. We all spoke different dialects of Russian, and only Sonja and I spoke Armenian. Only I spoke English. But we figured out how to talk to each other. The girls picked up English pretty quick.

So, that was the carrot: a nice house with nice bedrooms and nice food. Glamorous, yes?

Here was the stick: we couldn’t leave the property, we couldn’t talk to anyone beyond the gates, and we had to f*ck whatever guys they brought to the house. And we were isolated. Totally isolated. We had no computers and no phones. There was not even an old-fashioned telephone in the house with one of those dials you spin that we saw all the time in old movies. It’s funny how fast you miss the Internet when it’s gone. We had no passports or credit cards or money. We depended on them for all our food and our clothes and our toothbrushes and our makeup and our medicines when we got sick.

And we were locked in our rooms at night—except when we were working. There were men with Makarov pistols in their belts or in shoulder holsters watching us. They had shifts, and they came and went; we were not allowed to become friends with them. Most of the time they spoke to us only when they were yelling at us to return to the terrace when we took our one hour of sunlight outside. Sometimes they’d threaten to lock us away if Inga or Catherine complained about us. Other times they’d make jokes about us to entertain themselves. They called us “little flaps” and “little twats.” But usually they just watched us in silence.

And most nights, it seems, we worked: that means we f*cked what one of the girls from Volgograd called the “black and whites.” (Her name was Crystal and later she would come to America with Sonja and me.) The black and whites were men who almost always wore black suits and white shirts. They never wore neckties. They always had stubble—so much stubble that sometimes Catherine or Inga would talk to them about not abrading our skin. They seemed to be rich, and sometimes they were old enough to be our grandfathers, which does not necessarily mean they were really that old; after all, we were all between thirteen and sixteen years old. The clients were Russian and Georgian and Ukrainian and—and you get the point. Very international, it seemed to us. Many worked in “spirits.” Brandy and cognac and vodka. Even, in some cases, beer and wine.

None of them had any interest in us as more than sex toys.

None of them ever paid us; they left the money with Inga or Catherine, or they had paid ahead of time.

And none of them ever complained. We f*cked like our lives depended on it—because, we realized, they did.

…

Approval is a funny thing. I needed it from Madame as an aspiring ballerina. I needed it from my schoolteachers as a student poet.

And, eventually, I needed it as a prostitute.

…

I did not view the other five girls as sisters, but we were more than friends. Sonja and I were very close, maybe because we both were Armenian. I looked up to her because she was older. Her family was originally from Gyumri, like mine, and only moved to Volgograd after the earthquake. Much to the annoyance of Inga and Catherine, the two of us were very protective of one another. Sonja also looked after Crystal, since Crystal was also from Volgograd and she was only thirteen.

Sonja was much crazier with the men than I was; she was probably crazier than all of us. I know she did things with them all the time that I only did when I had to. It wasn’t that she was getting any pleasure from the business. But she channeled her anger into her work. She was (and I really understood this use of the word f*cking the first time I heard it) “f*cking mad.” She was capable of scaring the men—even intimidating them—which meant that once in a while she would get in very serious trouble. The men would complain, though only sometimes would they suggest that she was more girl than they could handle. They would simply say she was difficult. Or disobedient.

That was the worst thing we could be: disobedient.

One time, to punish her for looking Daddy in the eyes—we were never to look Daddy or Mikhail in the eyes—they burned off the hair on one side of her head. I will never forget that smell. Her hair had been regular but beautiful blond.