Page 59 of Power
“Please.” I wave my hand to stop him. He sits back down and takes in a sharp, long breath. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I considered having an abortion. I was tempted. I thought that I’d be selfish if I kept this baby and then I thought I’d fucking hate looking at her knowing how she was conceived. I thought of killing myself because without me this fetus growing inside me couldn’t survive. I really had no one. What was I supposed to do? Here I was, fifteen, a whore, and pregnant.”
“The decisions you made were forced on you, you did what you had to do to survive.”
I look at him with tears clinging to my cheeks. “Obviously, I made the decision not to abort, or kill myself or put her up for adoption. But I also made the decision that I was going to give her the best life I could. As the pregnancy developed, I made friends with another woman who was a hooker named Peggy. She was a little older than me, maybe late twenties, I don’t really know.” I shrug as I lift my t-shirt and wipe the tears from my face and eyes. “She was kind, so kind. She pretended to be my mom when I went to the hospital, and when they asked questions, she put on a brave face and lied through her teeth for me. But once I had Emily, I basically took her and left.” I smile at the remembered, though painful, memories. “She helped me with Emily. She’d look after her so I could work.”
“You had a lot of pressure on you at such a young age.”
I nod as I swallow back the tension stuck in my throat. “Tash knows a little of this, but not everything.” I look up toward the ceiling, attempting to avoid Bennett’s concerned eyes. “Peggy helped when she could, and for a little while it was working. I made sure Emily had everything she needed. She never went without. Then one day Peggy saw an ad somewhere for teenage actresses, in D.C., actually.”
“I sense this isn’t going to go well.”
“Well, I called and a woman said they had a role for someone who was in the eighteen to twenty bracket. I lied and said I was eighteen, and she asked me for a head shot and a body one too. I was skeptical but she said she wanted a photo of me in clothes. That eased my mind and I thought, why not? If I could get some roles where I play a teenager, then what do I have to lose?” I let out a humorless chuckle. “If only it was that easy.”
“What happened?”
“I packed all of my and Emily’s worldly possessions into one suitcase, which I found on the side of the road. We jumped on a bus and made the eight-hour trip here.”
“Okay. That’s not a bad thing.”
“I had about a thousand dollars to my name, a baby who was under a year old, and I hedged all my bets on becoming an actress.” The lump of shame grows in the pit of my stomach. “The actress job ended up being porn. The woman took one look at me, saw I had an infant in my arms and said, ‘You’ll be perfect because you look like a girl who likes to party. Do you do threesomes and anal?’”
Bennett runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t even know what to say at this stage.”
“It was at that moment that I made a decision. Did I really want Emily growing up knowing what I do?” I shake my head. “I decided I was going to protect her from my life.”
“Which is why she thinks you work at a high-class restaurant.”
“Yep,” I say.
“I have to admit, your story makes me feel sick to the core,” Bennett admits.
“That’s not the end of it.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Of course, it’s not.” Bennett lifts his chin to look at me. “Please, continue.”
“Like I said, I had about a thousand dollars to my name. I didn’t know anyone here, and I had nowhere to go. Do I return to the hellhole I came from, or do I make a fresh start here? I knew that a thousand dollars would buy me a month, two at most, in a cheap motel somewhere, or I could buy a car and use it to live in. Which is what I did. I found a car for four hundred dollars, and I bought it. I was lucky because I bought it from a mechanic, and I think he felt sorry for me so he even knocked twenty dollars off the price so I could buy gas. He said he did that for all his customers.” I chuckle at the thought. “Clearly, I know better. Anyway, I was driving down one of the streets and my eye caught on a help wanted sign in a window of a coffee shop. It was either that or go back to soliciting. Luckily, Emily was asleep, so I parked the car outside the coffee shop, and went in to ask for a job. They asked me how old I was, and I told them seventeen and I didn’t go to school anymore so I could work as much as they wanted me to. I’m so grateful to them, because they gave me a job.”
“What did you do with Emily while you were working?”
“She’d stay in the car that I parked outside the shop so I could keep an eye on her.”
Bennett tenses, his jaw making the veins strain in the side of his neck. “You left her in a car?”
“I had no choice, Bennett. None. I knew no one, I had nothing. What was I supposed to do? Do you have any idea the lack of services and resources for girls like me?” I feel myself firing up as I defend my actions.
“I’m truly sorry, Reece. I’m overwhelmed and frustrated because all of this could’ve been avoided if you were able to turn to someone for help.” A slow, strained smile stretches my lips. “Please, continue.”
“I was working for about a week or so, and I had met a few regulars, one of whom was Tash. She was the nicest customer, always so polite and always tipped me. Her coffee was three dollars, and she’d leave me a five-dollar bill. And the worst thing was I really had no idea how to make a coffee because I was still learning everything. Anyway, they had asked me to work until closing, and I could see Emily was going stir-crazy in the car, but I had no options to do anything about it. I needed the money to be able to rent a room for us. Oh man.” I clutch at my chest. “That one night, Tash returned. Thing is, just before Tash walked in, I was outside checking on Emily to make sure she was okay.”
“Did Tash see this?”
I nod as I click my tongue. “She did, but I didn’t know that until later. She came in and ordered her coffee, then we got to talking, and she said she was new in town and didn’t have any friends and asked if I wanted to come to her apartment for dinner.”
“That was sweet of her.”
“Yeah, it is. I knew in my gut she was a good person, but I dreaded telling her I also had a child so I wouldn’t be able to. Funny though, when I told Tash, she just shrugged, nodded, and asked me what my child’s name was. She wrote down her address on a napkin and told me to come after work.”
“I take it you went to her apartment.”
