Circling Carousels (6 page)

She was young, beautiful, and very desirable, and it was obvious that the men from the party wanted very much to know her and be with her. She had given herself over to the inevitable. There were distinct rules in these rooms, and the clientele knew it. There were things that Bonnie’s girls would and wouldn’t do, and only the finest men were allowed to enter. Despite the title of cheap that Candice had bestowed upon herself, she was anything but, and right now among the girls, she was fetching the most money for her services.

After the first few times, when she wept uncontrollably the moment the client left, she became numb to the experience. Soon the men became faceless, and the motions she went through meant less than nothing to her. For all intents and purposes, when she was in these upstairs rooms, she was a robot, a body
with no mind, heart, or soul. She slipped into the third week having signed her contract and made her way through several bottles of tasteless, odourless spirits, each one hidden after she secretly purchased it from the bottle shop just down the street.

Chapter 10

D
ownstairs her life was completely different. Downstairs was like another world, and here she was able to smile and mean it, she was able to laugh and talk with honesty, and she was able to be with her beautiful daughters and enjoy their company. In a usual day, she spent only about five hours upstairs, on and off, and she had learned quickly to leave that part of her day upstairs and compartmentalize her thoughts. Downstairs she was Candice, mother of two, friend to all, and lover of fine art and beautiful things; upstairs she was Candy, mother of none, friendly, and a bought and paid for lover, for about half an hour,
to each of her clients.

Sienna and Crystal, of course, knew nothing of their mother’s employment or her visitors of the day or the night after they had gone to school or to sleep for the evening. She was still the same for them, although in her heart, she had changed so much, but for the time being, no one would ever have noticed the decay of her soul or the torturous thoughts in her mind.

Similarly, no one seemed to notice that she was slightly intoxicated a lot of the time, and even if they did, they said
nothing. She was safe to continue, which she did. The liquid kept her from feeling the full force of her shame. Whether she intended to or not, Candice was beginning to follow in her mother’s footsteps, which she vowed she would never ever do.

Time would see Candice becoming more inclined to self- medicate with a bottle of vodka. She was able to continue her work only with several drinks already in her system. She felt the need to stay topped up for the hours she was attending to clients on the top floor. The clients weren’t bad men; in fact, some of them who became regulars were downright kind and respectful towards her. They would engage her in conversation and share their dreams and sometimes even their deepest secrets. She was allowed to receive gifts from them, which was unusual amongst the industry, but Bonnie ran a different kind of business from most. One gentleman in particular took an interest in her, and as time went on, he was one of the first to be concerned about her welfare. His name was Marcus, and he seemed to be of Italian descent, with the dark hair and eyes and tan skin. He took notice of the little things about her, became worried when she seemed to lose weight rapidly, and saw the dark circles under her once bright eyes. She disliked his visits the least of her increasing clientele, and when she found his name on her schedule, she felt a little joy.

Sienna and Crystal had begun to notice their mother wasn’t well, and they were concerned enough to mention it to Tamara, the mother of the other children. There was a specific cone of silence that surrounded their lives outside the house, but inside, it was all right, encouraged even, that they should look after their own, take notice of their welfare, and love one another as a family. Outside and even at school, the girls weren’t to talk about where they lived, the other girls, their mother’s employment, or anything that would seem as though they were unsafe. Sienna and Crystal were blissfully ignorant of what their surroundings meant anyway, but just in case they started to question, the questions were to be asked at home and not in the outside world.

Candice was trying very hard not to allow her employment to affect her family life with the twins, but try as she might,
the wretched sadness and the drinking crept its way into every hour of the day. She found it dulled the pain just enough to help her cope with the glaring impropriety she now called her life. Nothing would ever have prepared her for the life she now led. For years she had watched television programs where girls in the sex trade were plied with alcohol and drugs, used and abused, and given very little for their efforts. She watched in wonder at how they got into this awful life and how much she would like to help them escape it if only she could. Now, she couldn’t even help herself, and although she was in much less danger and in a better environment than they had been in, she still felt the ever-present repulsion for the life she was leading. The alcohol helped. It helped her handle things when she was awake, it helped her sleep, it helped her party, and it helped her face her children when they looked at her with such a love, which she now felt she didn’t deserve.

Candice’s self-esteem had undergone a shocking blow, and her whole worldview had changed as a result. Playing with her children made her feel like an imposter and a liar. She saw herself lying in a bed upstairs with a constant parade of men who were not her own, nor she theirs, and she just felt unclean and unsuitable—like someone ugly wearing a pretty mask. Vodka helped with this, too.

Bonnie wasn’t unaware of her slide into depression and substance abuse, so she offered to take care of the girls more, be a better auntie, and have the other girls play with the twins and take them out regularly so Candice could rest. Candice, in her sadness and unworthy feelings, accepted the offer and began seeing less and less of her children as a result. She didn’t mean for it to happen, but her employment and her position in the house had put a wedge between her and the so innocent Sienna and Crystal. In time, the wedge created a ditch, which became a chasm, and then a whole valley and mountain range between them. She could no longer look them in the eyes, so she simply slipped into seeing less of them until she barely saw them at all. They were friends with all the aunties, and the young women loved them so much and they loved them in return. No one
could replace their mother, but they were enjoying so much the attention from everyone else that they hardly noticed the gulf between them and their mum. At night, Candice would come into their room, long after they were asleep, and tuck them in and give them a kiss. On many occasions, she would stay in the shadows watching them and crying because she knew she was losing them and felt powerless to change it.

A few of the girls on their day off one Saturday took the twins with them to the zoo. There they saw animals they had never seen before—mammals, marsupials, lizards, the big cats, and their most favourite of all, the giraffes. They came home that afternoon full of stories and excitement, jumping all over their mother’s bed with their news to tell her and trying to get her to respond. They shook her a little to wake her, and Candice awoke in a foul frame of mind, angry at having been woken so abruptly when she was in a deep state of prescription drug–induced sleep. They weren’t supposed to be there, she thought; they were supposed to be out for the day! So she sat bolt upright and gave them a mouthful of abusive, horrible words and angry looks they had never seen before.

They ran into their room, frightened and shocked. She furiously followed them, staggering across the floor. They were huddled together, afraid of the woman they loved so much and who they just wanted love from in return. Seeing them clinging to one another and afraid just made her angrier, as all her buttons from her own childhood were pushed, and in her rage, she became just like her own mother. She struck them just to stop them from responding the way they were at first, but then her emotions built and she couldn’t stop hitting them. She slapped, punched, and hit them until they were bunched up in the corner like tiny frightened animals curled up on the floor. Then she was down there with them, crying and begging for their forgiveness, and sorry for every bruise and welt she had created. Still she cried on and on until Sienna and Crystal were no longer all she was crying about. Everything was too much. It was all so very ugly. She was a complete mess. As it dawned on her that she had still lost everything, even though she had
tried to keep a hold on it all, she passed out on the floor and lay motionless. The twins felt two very distinct emotions at this point; they felt relief that she had stopped hurting them with her fists and her words, but they also felt abject fear that something was terribly wrong with their mother.

Getting themselves up off the floor, Sienna and Crystal dragged themselves, in pain, cut, bruised, scratched, and bloody to Bonnie’s office, where they fell into her arms and told her the whole story. They blamed themselves for waking her, but Bonnie, the wise woman that she was, told them that it wasn’t their fault at all, that their mummy was sick and she would take care of it. She asked the girls to stay for a minute, found Katrina and Tamara to take care of them, patch them up, and soothe them, and then also found Cindy who helped her with Candice. At this point, Bonnie was torn between taking her, and the children, too, to a hospital and possibly getting her into a lot of trouble and maybe alerting child services, or simply taking care of all of this herself. She chose the latter. She felt with the right care that this could be fixed. She and Cindy took turns sitting with Candice, whom they had promptly put back to bed. After she had woken up, unaware of what she had done to her twins, both emotionally and physically, they talked with her, helped her to see the truth, and then ran a warm oil-infused bath for her.

Candice just wanted another drink, frankly, and as soon as Bonnie and Cindy left the room, she grabbed a bottle from its hiding place and drank about a half of it. At this point, she didn’t care so much what she had done to the girls. Later she would, but right now all she cared about was being numb again. She just had to, she felt. Anything else wasn’t going to help—not a bath, not a soothing chat, not anything. So she drank and drank and went back to bed after dipping in and out of the bath for appearance’s sake, and she just lay there in an alcoholic stupor, sad, alone, and in total despair.

In the few hours afterward, a number of the girls who cared so much about her came in and out of the room with presents, chocolates, and flowers, but she was incoherent and barely noticed their presence or their gifts.

Sienna and Crystal were confused about why their mother would do this to them. At their tender age of nearly eight years old, this was so very disturbing. They had never been treated badly by her or by anyone for that matter, and they were hurt and shaken to their individual cores. There were many words spoken that day, but none as wise as those that came from Tamara’s lips. Having two children herself had given her some insight into the events of today. It was not completely impossible to understand how a mother under the circumstances Candice was in and coping so terribly could snap.

Candice had been showing signs almost from the first month when she began taking clients the propensity to have problems with this. She was a rare gem, not often found in their circles, a woman with lofty dreams and morals that caused her to struggle with every time a man walked into the bedroom to be with her. In her brain, without the emotion, Candice could push it down into the depths of her psyche and rationalise it away, but in her heart, she was disgusted in herself. This was what was destroying her. And Tamara expected this to be a fairly normal response if you hadn’t grown up already prepared for this kind of life as she was.

Tamara’s mother was terribly abused by her own dealings in prostitution, and Tamara herself was a product of an unexpected pregnancy and then a life of watching her mother and learning her craft well. When Bonnie found her, Tamara had been in dire straits, working the streets, avoiding the pitfalls of falling back into league with another underhanded and cruel pimp after she had only just escaped one, although not entirely unscathed. On her back were the scars from the six months of beatings she had incurred from him after she tried to leave the first time. It wasn’t until he was imprisoned that she was able to slip away and begin again. She had no other avenue for work, so she tried to self-manage. When Bonnie appeared in her life, she was dancing in a topless nightclub, twirling around a pole in front of a hundred leering, foul-mouthed patrons. Bonnie rescued her, and her gratefulness was very evident, but for Candice, having never been involved in this kind of thing, it was entirely
different. Tamara didn’t think Candice could continue like this, but she underestimated her intestinal fortitude and determined spirit, for after Candice got up out of bed, she went right back to another bed in the upper parts of the building.