One night a Japanese man sat with her in a booth. He did not touch her. He said, "Put this on." It was a blouse, which she slipped over her sequined bra. The man raised a camera and blinded her for a second with his flash.
Some days later, preparing to dance, she saw Mama beckon to her. The same Japanese man was sitting with Mama in a booth. He had a suitcase. He said, "Open it."
"They are all yours," Mama said. The suitcase was full of folded clothes. "You are going on a trip with Mr. Nishiwara."
"Call me Tony," the Japanese man said. Another Tony. He gave her a passport, Republic of the Philippines. It was her face in the little picture, but beside it was the name Tina Cojugo, four years older than Pinky and with a different address.
That night she flew with Tony the Japanese man to Guam, and was driven in the rain to a small house crowded with Filipinas. Seeing Pinky crying, a woman hugged her and comforted her. This woman, Rosa, was a manager of the club, which was called Club Night Life, near the beach at Agana.
At Club Night Life the customers were mostly Japanese. Pinky danced. She sat with them in the booths. Now and then they bought her for the night by giving Rosa five hundred dollars. In their hotel rooms the Japanese men took pictures of her naked. They watched her on the toilet. Often they did not touch her, only took pictures. But one man tied her to a chair and blindfolded her and splashed on her. He returned another night, but Pinky refused to go with him.
To punish her, Rosa locked Pinky in a dark room in the house. Though she had no idea how long she had been in the room, when she was released into the light Pinky fell to her knees and hugged first Rosa's legs, then Tony's.
In the month before Christmas, Japanese Tony brought her to Honolulu to work in another club, the Rat Room, dancing on a stage that was a mirror and sitting with men, mostly Americans, some Japanese.
Tony still sometimes brought her to his room in Honolulu, where he pulled her hair and bit her until she cried. She reminded herself that she was in America, but it seemed no different from Guam. One night in the Rat Room, a man at the edge of the stage shouted "Watch this!" to his friends. He waved a fivedollar bill at Pinky, she spread her legs for him, and he stared intently between her legs like a man absorbed in contemplating a small shy animal. He tucked the money between the animal's pink lips. His friends cheered, "Tuna!"
It was Buddy. He never saw Pinky's face, nor did Pinky see his, but when he did that, she wanted to cry. Though the thought did not come to her in an arrangement of words, she felt humiliation and fear and hatred, like a sickness that would never leave her body. But she was smiling. When she went to another man, Buddy hurried away.
39 Truck Whore
In Pinky's short time in Honolulu, with her different name, many things happened very quickly. An American man in the Rat Room said he had bought her for the night. He took her to his hotel room and showed her his tattoos, but he hardly touched her. His name was Skip. He was angry when she told him how she got the bite marks on her. He helped her get away with her false passport. He said, "I want to marry you, Tina."
"Please call me Pinky," she said. She loved him, she said, but they could only get married when she was safe. She told Skip she was afraid of the Japanese man Tony.
"You've got real good people skills," Skip said.
Skip flew with her to California, where he had a motorcycle. He bought Pinky new clothes and said he wanted to introduce her to his mother, who was ninety-four and living in Pennsylvania. He began calling her Christy, the name of his dead wife. Going through Ohio, they stopped at a motel truck stop. It was raining. He said, "Stand over there," and left on his motorcycle to buy beer. At midnight he had not returned. She went to the clerk at the motel desk and said she was afraid.
"There's been an accident — a biker on the interstate. What was your friend's name?"
"Skip."
"Skip isn't a name," the clerk said. He showed her to a room and told her he would make inquiries. But the next morning, when the clerk knocked on her door, he had no news. And he said, "You can't check out until your bill is paid. Stay in there."
Pinky was crying and watching television an hour later when the clerk knocked again. She had locked the door, but he had a key. He saw her cowering against the wall. He demanded that she take her clothes off, and when she did, he went nearer. He said, "You know all about it," and slapped her head and pushed it down.
When he was finished, Pinky said, "Now can I go?"
"You owe me," the man said in a fierce voice. "You owe me."
The man took all her clothes and left her in the room naked.
Later that day he knocked again on Pinky's door. A man was with him. "This is my friend." He left the man with Pinky.
"I was in the service in the Philippines," the man said. "Where are you from?"
"Cebu City."
He knew the place.
"Help me," Pinky said.
"First you help me," the man said, and steered her to the bed, holding her arm tightly.
When he was done, he left without another word. Pinky wrapped herself in a towel and looked out the window and saw him get into a truck. The big truck swayed and bounced onto the road. Still looking at the truck, she saw the motel clerk walking toward her room with another man, and then she heard the knock, and "You know what to do."
After that man she saw three or four others, and more the next day. She was awakened in the dark with the knocking. She felt sick. One morning she went into her bathroom to vomit and saw, written on the wall with her lipstick, Truck Whore.
Each time the door opened she hoped it would be Skip and that he would take her away on his motorcycle. Sitting on the bike, holding him, deafened by the blatting of the engine noise, she had been happy. But it was never Skip. The clerk who had taken her clothes away brought her food. How much time had gone by at this motel? A week or more. Pinky was hopeful when she saw that the clerk had brought her a Filipina and an older man. Pinky wore a bath towel that was folded and tucked like a costume from Palawan. The Filipina said in Tagalog, "I am Joey and this is my husband. I am from Ilocos Norte. Where are you from?"
As though nothing had happened in the meantime, and in her mind she wanted to believe that nothing had, Pinky told her the name of her district outside Cebu City.
"My husband wants to take pictures of us."
"That's it, get acquainted," the old man said. He took his video camera out of a suitcase.
"Please help me," Pinky said. "I want to leave this place."
While they were touching, Joey whispered her own story: the old man had married her but refused to help her family, would not bring her mother to the States and would not send money. Joey was an older woman, not pretty, but she knew how to speak to the man.
"I will see you tomorrow," Joey said. "Bring your passport and papers and a warm sweater."
The next day, the motel clerk said, "You're going with him." He gave her clothes to wear, then said to the old man, "I want her back here at eight. That's my busiest time."
At the house, which was a lovely place a half hour from the motel, on a street with other, similar houses, Joey welcomed Pinky. She gave her a drink of juice and showed her the bedroom. It was beautiful. The old man had set up a camera near the bed. Pinky turned away to take her clothes off. Hearing a crash, she turned and saw that the man had fallen over and dragged his camera with him. He lay on the floor with his mouth wide open.
Taking all the money from the man's wallet, Joey said, "He is asleep.
I gave him something. Hurry, they will start looking for us when he wakes up."
Joey drove Pinky in the man's car and left it in a parking lot in a city. They walked to a bus station and bought tickets to Los Angeles. In the back of the bus, Pinky slept with her head resting against the warm woman, feeling grateful.