In the whorehouse, my sister Trinket and I slept on a bench in the kitchen under a scratchy gray blanket that was thin and inefficient. The noises from the waiting room woke me up now and then, but it was Trinket who woke me up most of the time. She was 2 years old then and I was 6, and she still nursed, which was common at that age. If she woke up, I had to go fetch my mom. I really wasn’t supposed to go into the waiting room. If our mom wasn’t there, we slid under the tables to wait for her; nobody even noticed us.
Sometimes Trinket fell sleep there and I held her and watched legs come and go.
The world was a mass of lower body parts, smells and sounds. Legs wrapped in slacks, jeans, sweats, khakis, mini-skirts, nylons, hairy legs, thin legs, fat legs, cellulite, smooth legs, crusty knees, and smells. Sweet smells, sour smells, alcohol smells, perfume smells, cooking smells, piss smells, blood smells. Cigarette butts dropped still smoldering and stinky. And then there were the sounds. Happy tones, sad tones, threatening tones, drunk tones, angry tones, promising tones. Glass on glass, “to your health!” Broken glass, “I’ll kill you!” Aluminum forks on dishes, “Bon appétit,” chewing sounds, spits, kisses, moans, shoes crushing peanut shells. Voices greeting, pleading, negotiating, denying, angry, hopeful, dejected, rejected, wanting. Voices always wanting something.
My mother’s voice was like a lullaby. Once while listening to her, I fell asleep. When I woke up, Trinket was gone.
I scanned under the tables and checked the kitchen. It was late and only a few regulars sat around, sipping beer and listening to music from the old gramophone: “Werd' ich bei der Laterne steh'n wie einst Lili Marleen...” When there were fewer customers, the madam put that song on a loop, every day, over and over again.
Christina, one of the women, was at the bar with the midget. I knew him well – we locked eyes when I hid under the table and though he never talked to me, I felt I knew him. I used to think of him as a child and thought it unfair that he could be there with the grownups while I had to hide.
I went to find my mother. She was alone in her room sitting at her vanity, a wad of cotton in her hands, cleaning her face. She didn’t see me at first. Her room was forbidden territory; she never liked us in there, even during the day when no clients were around.
She took a drag of her cigarette and returned it to a brown ashtray, where it stayed smoldering. She drank from a bottle of rum and instead of putting it back on the crowded vanity, she put it on the floor by her right leg.
If it were another day, I would have slipped away without being seen, satisfied to have stolen a glance of her, but aware that if I were to call her attention I might have to deal with her sour mood. This time I had to talk to her, but I stood there almost enjoying the quiet moment of watching her.
She put the wad of cotton in a jar of cream and rubbed it on her cheeks from the center of her face to the sides. Her motion was harsh as if she were trying to peel off a layer of skin. I was afraid then of what she might do when I told her Trinket had wandered off.
Then she took a book out of a drawer and started reading aloud.
“The wo..womin ... creed... the woman cried,” she read.
Finally, she turned and saw me.
“What are you doing here?” she said more preoccupied in hiding the book than the bottle at her feet. “Why aren’t you with your sister?”
I knew what the answer should be, but I said nothing. I scratched my elbow where the skin was dry from resting it on the kitchen table and trying to write the few words I could spell over and over again.
Seeing the gesture, she said, “I hope you were not up drawing letters again. You’ll go to school in a year, when you are seven. No need to hurry.”
“I was not,” I said.
“Where is your sister?” She said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I woke up and she was gone.”
“From the kitchen?”
“We were in the waiting room,” I said.
She sighed. Put the wad of cotton down, took a last drag of her cigarette and crushed it slowly. Oh, how I loved her.
“Everyone is looking for her,” I said.
“So, it’s serious,” she said and got up.
She came to the door and lowered herself to my height. “Don’t worry, she’ll come back to you. You are her mama.”
Soon, the whole house was involved in searching for Trinket. The madam was not happy to be disturbed, but she was pleased her song was playing in the waiting room.
“I used to sing that when I was young,” she told me nostalgic and teary, “I impersonated Marlene Dietrich at this very fancy nightclub.”
I had to stay with her and we shared an armchair that was too soft. We sank into the chair together. Her flesh smelled yeasty. She was fat because she didn’t have to share her food with anyone. Her camisole was short and her thighs seemed stuck together. She lit a cigarette. “Damned burning season!,” she said. “Everyone, even the children, gets this itch to wander and go crazy.”
The only other people in the room at the time were the midget and Christina. There would be no girl-hunting for Christina on his dime. After a little while, the Madam barked at them, “Can you two go to the room and get it over with? Then go help find the girl, Christina, before someone calls the cops.”
The midget shot her an angry look.
“Whatcha looking at, stumpy?” she said. She always had a belligerent tone, even with the customers.
“I paid for two hours,” he said. “You know I like to take my time.”
Christina pulled bills out of her bra, counted a few and thrust them against his chest. “Take your money back,” she said. “I’m going to look for the girl.”
“I still get a cut of that,” said the Madam.
“I know,” said Christina. She took the last sip of beer and her grumbling client got up and followed her outside.
“Midgets, like all little people, are a nuisance,” the Madam said. “You and your sister too. How many times did I tell your mother to find someone to take care of you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I worried that I was in trouble. “Can I go outside and help them?”
“No,” she said. “But you can look from the doorway if you want to.”
I couldn’t see much, except that some people had moved their cars around to shine the headlights on the wall of sugarcane stalks to the left of the house. My mother was under a mango tree crying and Christina was comforting her. Someone had called the highway patrol, because there was a cruiser parked there and the officers were gone. Soon, the police arrived with a K-9 unit.
I told the madam what was going on and she puffed. “I don’t need this kind of trouble.” She got off the chair with some difficulty and joined me by the door.
An officer pointed a searchlight onto the outhouse and checked the hole in the ground. My mother wailed. It was too much to imagine her baby down in the pit of shit. Even I started crying.
Christina came in to look for a piece of clothing from Trinket. The dog sniffed it and took off into the sugarcane field with an officer. It was not too long until they came back, the officer carrying a sleepy Trinket in his arms.
“Thank the Virgin,” said the Madam. “Aren’t you glad they found your sister? Now try not to lose her again, all right?”
“I was sleeping,” I said. “She walked away.”
“Your only responsibility around here is your sister,” she said. “You lost her. Don’t do it again or I’ll throw you two out of here.”
She didn’t have to. The next day a social worker showed up and took us away from my mother. Away from my mother, her smell of cigarettes, alcohol, her desire to learn to read, the procession of her clients.
Oh, how I missed her.
Contributor Notes
I lived in a whorehouse as a child, then in a string of foster homes before landing in an orphanage. My favorite people in the world are whores and nuns. From the whores I inherited the foul language and from the nuns a habit of telling the truth, which combined makes you think I have Tourette’s. I had trouble loving my mother for a long time, but I always missed her. I don’t see her as a dream-like creature anymore, just as a very sad woman who survived horrors. She might have been ill-equipped to care for me and my sibling, but she always loved us and that crazy love helped us move forward in life and never return to the whorehouse. This is a non- fiction excerpt from my otherwise fictionalized memoir/novel Burning Seasons.
Naná Howton is originally from Brazil and holds an MFA from Columbia University. She received an honorable mention from the 2009 Astraea Foundation and is the recipient of a scholarship from 2010 Skidmore Summer Writers Conference. Her fiction has appeared in Cipactli, The Rio Grande Review, Litro Magazine, and Fiction Fix, where she won a Reader’s Circle Award and nominations to the Pushcart Prize and American Best Short Stories. She has lived in Brazil, France, Russia and the U.S., and currently is based in Falls Church where she lives with Elizabeth, her partner of 22 years and their two kids ages 4 and 6, who have made writing a challenge, but provided her with volumes of joy. Nana is currently seeking representation: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/nhowton
