The Guest Room(33)

When it grew back, Inga had her dye it so it was almost white, and then cut it into a bob. Her eyes were sky blue and would grow wide when she was angry inside. Like me, she could dance, and so sometimes the two of us would be ordered to get little parties started. (Mostly that meant stripping to some pop song and then grinding against the men’s pants until the men brought us to our rooms.) Sonja and I sometimes talked about what our lives had been like before: hers in Volgograd and mine in Yerevan. She would tell me the little she recalled of her parents, and I would tell her all about my mother and my grandmother.

And with all of us girls there was some competitiveness in our relationships. Even Sonja, crazy as she was, had to have her share of approval—from us and from Inga and Catherine. That’s just how it is. You lick the hand that feeds you.

And then, of course, there was Daddy.

Daddy appeared every few days. He was a former Soviet army colonel, probably sixty back then. He had the sort of good looks we saw in older male models in Western magazines. I think of Ralph Lauren ads when I think of him. He wanted us to call him Daddy, and he wanted the six of us to view ourselves as wives, like we were harem people, though there was no single man we were attached to. And he never f*cked us. I think he would have viewed that as shoplifting, maybe, or stealing from his own company. And if he really did view himself as a father figure, I think sleeping with us would have complicated whatever excuse he had made up in his head to explain why it was okay to kidnap and imprison us.

So instead he f*cked Inga and Catherine. He f*cked them whenever he came to the cottage.

He was, we were told, much more powerful than Mikhail or even Vasily. Dudes like Mikhail and Vasily were scared to death of the man we called Daddy.

…

One week I was not allowed to use the bathroom. They gave me a tin coffee pot I was supposed to use for everything. I was not allowed to leave my bedroom. I was not allowed my one hour outside each day, because they wanted to be sure I used only the tin coffee pot. Inga checked it to make sure I was filling it up.

What had I done? What was my crime? I was in trouble because a man had said I was not clean there. He was lying. He only said that because he was not clean there and I told him we should shower before we f*cked.

…

One day Crystal and I were smoking outside the cottage. We were standing in the middle of the big oval in the driveway where cars turned around and watching ducks in one of the ponds. She always looked like little girl who had stolen Mom’s cigarettes. She had crazy big eyes and no tits. She was so beautiful at thirteen and fourteen. Out of nowhere she asked me, “You think any of the guys would help us?”

I thought she was talking about the guards, and I motioned with my cigarette at the dude who was watching us from the front steps. “Him? You crazy?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. I hate him. I hate all of them. I meant the black and whites.” Her voice was even smaller than usual, because what we were talking about was so dangerous.

“And by help, you mean escape?”

“Yes.”

“No way. It’s too risky for them. Besides, why would any of them want to do that? Anyone who comes here wants us here. We’re nothing but * to them. We’re nothing but * to anyone.”

She took a long puff. “What if I made one fall in love with me?”

“You’re dreaming. These guys? Never happen.”

“But what if? He could take me with him. We could go and get help.”

“How would he take you with him? Put you in his briefcase?”

“Well, maybe I could ask him to tell someone about us. Tell someone we’re here.”

“Yeah, the police guys care lots about girls like us. I’m sure every week one of us is f*cking a police guy.”

She nodded because I was right and she knew it. “They’re just so evil,” she said after a moment, and we both went quiet because the truth was so sad. When she finally spoke again her voice was totally flat. Sometimes we all sounded totally flat. Like zombie people. “So there’s no one to help us,” she said.

I stepped on my cigarette and put my arm around her. “At least we have beds and food and cigarettes—and each other. We even have the Bachelor on TV!” I told her, trying to cheer her up with a silly joke. But now she was in one of the moods that we all got in once in a while, and the only way out was to flatline. It’s why some girls like us do drugs. Sometimes it’s the only way through.

…

How different were all of us? Another afternoon a girl named Elena and I were sitting on the terrace under a beautiful warm sky. The sun was always like drug after so many hours indoors.

“This is kind of a weird fairy tale,” she said. We were wearing the miniskirts they made us wear like uniform. They only let us wear underwear when we were working. Other times, such as during the day, they always made us wear short skirts and no panties. We were sitting on the stones, and they were warm on my bottom. It felt perfect. “We’re like those princesses in castles who are waiting to be rescued.”

“Don’t hold your breath for a prince,” I told her. I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the sun. “I don’t think a prince would come to a joint like this.”

“But I like Inga,” she said. “I really do. And I think I like Catherine. I mean, do we really want to be rescued?”