Okay, he said.
Good, I see you understand English. So here it is: I am not going to sleep with you because you have no respect for women.
He was very surprised, maybe because no woman had ever talked to him that way.
In Morocco, you guys treat your women like dogs, Maggie said to him. Here, even a prostitute like me has to be respected.
Une putain de raciste, he called her.
Well, okay, I am a fucking racist and that is how it is, she said. Now you pick up your clothes and leave or I’ll let someone come and kick you out. We are charging you close to nothing out of the goodness of our hearts. If I was a racist, I wouldn’t come all the way here to make your miserable life a bit more bearable. We girls could be somewhere else, in fancy hotels with champagne, charging five times more for this. It is out of the goodness of our hearts that we come here every month. And all your friends know it and they are appreciative. Now pick up your clothes and get out.
Now this tall Arab stood up and looked at the ground, and tears started to run from his eyes. He tried to apologize. But Maggie grabbed his arm and said, That still won’t save you. Come next month with a better attitude and we’ll see. I tell you, the Arab left like a little baby who misses his mother.
We do it as an offering to the poor, Sally said. There is something grand about degrading one’s body for a higher purpose. I’ve grown to love these workers. They come, happy to see us. Their smiles are wide open. It is the highlight of their month. I have one Mexican, he kneels on the bed every time and prays before he takes off his clothes, and again after we are done. And then he kisses my hand and crosses himself and leaves. He doesn’t speak a word of English. But I understand what he does. He and I are the same. I do it out of humanity and he sleeps with me so he’s able to carry on with his life, so he can support his family back home. But when I do my escort shifts, things are different. The moment my phone rings, I become a different person. I am not me, I become, how can I put it. . temporary, oblivious, separate. . my body has no importance, it’s only a passageway, I say to myself. The car from the agency comes, I go to the meeting place and face those customers. I have more problems with those bureaucrats and rich men than I’ve ever had with the factory workers. But if I have any trouble, I press a single button on the phone and the giant driver from the agency is at the door, breaking it down in a second.
As time went by, I got to see what a lovable, intelligent, and ordinary person Sally was. I slowly started to get attached to her and she knew it. And then one night, while working as an escort, she met a handsome young lawyer. After they were done, he paid her and she went back to the limousine trembling and crying. She assured the giant driver that she was fine. She arrived home and she called me. She was scared. I don’t know what got into me, Fly. I did a stupid thing. Here is this intelligent, rich, young, beautiful lawyer. We talked and I slept with him without any protection. I don’t know what got into me, she said again. I’ve never been so reckless. I called the driver to tell him that I was extending the hours, I even covered them myself. I didn’t want to leave. I think I am in love with this man. He refused to give me his number. I guess he is married, like so many of them, or maybe just judgmental. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, Fly, she said.
The next Thursday, I waited for Sally outside the club but she didn’t show up. I asked the bouncers, who knew me by then, and they said that she’d quit. I called her phone and it was disconnected. I went by her place and asked around. The caretaker told me she was gone. She had paid her last month’s rent and left, he said.
I never saw Sally again. For months, I looked all over for her. I even went to the meat-packing town and found the motel at the end of the road. I bribed the receptionist. He was a big, unshaven Turk. I bribed him because I know the histories of empires and their subjects; the Ottoman Empire was notorious for a system based on bribery, I read all about it in a book written by a British traveller and I still have the book in my library: to be precise, on the second shelf from the bottom at the entrance to the bathroom, with the rest of the orientalists’ literature.
When I asked the Turk about the Magdalena girls, he said that the fiesta had ceased. The three girls didn’t book the rooms anymore, and the workers had stopped showing up. Except for a tall Arab, he said, who comes at the end of the month, rents a room for the night, and sits on the ledge of the window and smokes.
THE BEARDED LADY
WHEN MY MOTHER woke up, that day my father left, and didn’t see the camel and its saddles, she fell to the floor and pulled her hair and screamed. The dog, the chimp, and the horse circled around her and scooped up her tears, patted her arms, and licked her face into consciousness. The strongman carried her to bed, and I watched as the bearded lady caressed my mother’s face and covered her forehead with wet towels. My mother became so weak that I started to eat my meals, take my naps, and do my homework in the bearded lady’s tent. And when I asked about my mother at night, before my bedtime, La Dame, as the bearded lady called herself onstage, would say, Your mother is in a parallel world. Eat and let me tell you a story.
She began reading to me from French classics. We wept for Cosette in Les misérables, we laughed at Le malade imaginaire of Molière, we read Les fables de La Fontaine to the monkey.
Once I saw the bearded lady taking a shower and I asked her why she had a penis like mine and breasts like my mother’s. She came close to me and said, Because I am everything. Men want to be men and women want to be women, but there are those who are both and neither at the same time. One day when you grow up, the world will tell you that there is only this or that. When you leave and live among those people who applaud and cheer your mother and me on the stage, you will notice how different we are, and what a magical childhood you had. Here in these circuses and carnivals we all love each other with our oddities and queernesses. People leave us alone because we mesmerize them with tricks, tickle them with feathers, tie them up in wonder and hope. We never let them know that we read books, that we love everyone and accept everything, that our bodies are free, that we travel, resist, and fight and that we give refuge to convicts and revolutionaries, that we have saved gypsies and Jews. We never let them know that we untie ropes, that we train horses to dance without the weight of armour or swords, and we keep it a secret that the strongman loves the cannon man, that they cook dinner for one another, that they share the same bed, and that every time the cannon man is up in the air with smoke trailing from his feet, the strongman waits on the other side to catch him if he falls. And, my little child, do not tell a soul that we are knowers and non-believers. We know that after this grand act of life nothing is left but the dust beneath the elephants’ feet and the sound of the monkeys’ clapping. When they come to you with prophets and promises of heavens of honey and milk, remember that we are no more than flowers having our last glance at the world before we die, with grace and with gratitude for the wonders we witnessed, for the magic box we built, the animals we loved, the carpets we flew, the stars that we encountered after the spectacle ended and the spectators were left to lament and to wait for the coming of their phantom trains to take them to their imaginary heavens. .
Then, late one night, my mother wailed and shouted and ran between the tents. She tried to open the locks of the cage and throw herself to the lions, but the lion tamer came to her rescue and covered her naked body with a quilt. And again I stayed with the bearded lady, whom I loved and whose beard I kissed every morning before she offered me bread, butter, and milk.