The Onion Girl

  I get so confused. I’ve been so many people; some I didn’t like at all. I wonder that anyone could. Victim, hooker, junkie, liar, thief. But without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’m no one special, but I like who I am, lost childhood and all.

  Did I have to be all those people to become the person I am today? Are they still living inside me, lurking in some dark corner of my mind, waiting for me to slip and stumble and fall and give them life again?

  I tell myself not to remember, but that’s wrong, too. Not remembering makes them stronger.

  2

  The morning sun came in through the window of Jilly’s loft, playing across the features of her guest. The girl was still asleep on the Murphy bed, sheets all tangled around her skinny limbs, pulled tight and smooth over the rounded swell of her abdomen. Sleep had gentled her features. Her hair clouded the pillow around her head. The soft morning sunlight gave her a Madonna quality, a nimbus of Botticelli purity that the harsher light of the later day would steal away once she woke.

  She was fifteen years old. And eight months pregnant.

  Jilly sat in the window seat, feet propped up on the sill, sketchpad on her lap. She caught the scene in charcoal, smudging the lines with the pad of her middle finger to soften them. On the fire escape outside, a stray cat climbed up the last few metal steps until it was level with where she was sitting and gave a plaintive meow.

  Jilly had been expecting the black and white tabby. She reached under her knees and picked up a small plastic margarine container filled with dried kibbles that she set down on the fire escape in front of the cat. As the tabby contentedly crunched its breakfast, Jilly returned to her portrait.

  “My name’s Annie,” her guest had told her last night when she stopped Jilly on Yoors Street just a few blocks south of the loft. “Could you spare some change? I really need to get some decent food. It’s not so much for me …”

  She put her hand on the swell of her stomach as she spoke. Jilly had looked at her, taking in the stringy hair, the ragged clothes, the unhealthy color of her complexion, the too-thin body that seemed barely capable of sustaining the girl herself, little say nourishing the child she carried.

  “Are you all on your own?” Jilly asked.

  The girl nodded.

  Jilly put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and steered her back to the loft. She let her take a shower while she cooked a meal, gave her a clean smock to wear, and tried not to be patronizing while she did it all.

  The girl had lost enough dignity as it was and Jilly knew that dignity was almost as hard to recover as innocence. She knew all too well.

  3

  Stolen Childhood, by Sophie Etoile. Copperplate engraving. Five Coyotes Singing Studio, Newford, 1988.

  A child in a ragged dress stands in front of a ramshackle farmhouse. In one hand she holds a doll—a stick with a ball stuck in one end and a skirt on the other. She wears a lost expression, holding the doll as though she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

  A shadowed figure stands behind the screen door, watching her.

  I guess I was around three years old when my oldest brother started molesting me. That’d make him eleven. He used to touch me down between my legs while my parents were out drinking or sobering up down in the kitchen. I tried to fight him off, but I didn’t really know that what he was doing was wrong—even when he started to put his cock inside me.

  I was eight when my mother walked in on one his rapes and you know what she did? She walked right out again until my brother was finished and we both had our clothes on again. She waited until he’d left the room, then she came back in and started screaming at me.

  “You little slut! Why are you doing this to your own brother?”

  Like it was my fault. Like I wanted him to rape me. Like the three-year-old I was when he started molesting me had any idea about what he was doing.

  I think my other brothers knew what was going on all along, but they never said anything about it—they didn’t want to break that macho code-of-honor bullshit. My little sister was just born, too young to know anything. When my dad found out about it, he beat the crap out of my brother, but in some ways it just got worse after that.

  My brother didn’t stop molesting me; when he wasn’t coming to my room, he just had this smirk for me, like he was daring me to do something about it. My mother and my other brothers, every time I’d come into a room, they’d all just stop talking and look at me like I was some kind of bug. The only time my mother talked to me was when there was something she wanted me to do and then she’d just give the order. If I didn’t jump to it, I’d get a licking.

  I think at first my dad wanted to do something to help me, but in the end he really wasn’t any better than my mother. I could see it in his eyes: he blamed me for it, too. He kept me at a distance, never came close to me anymore, never let me feel like I was normal.

  He’s the one who had me see a psychiatrist. I’d have to go and sit in his office all alone, just a little kid in this big leather chair. The psychiatrist would lean across his desk, all smiles and smarmy understanding, and try to get me to talk, but I never told him a thing. I didn’t trust him. I’d already learned that I couldn’t trust men. Couldn’t trust women either, thanks to my mother. Her idea of working things out was to send me to confession, like the same God who let my brother rape me was now going to make everything okay so long as I owned up to seducing him in the first place.

  What kind of a way is that for a kid to grow up?

  4

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I let my brother …”

  5

  Jilly laid her sketchpad aside when her guest began to stir. She swung her legs down so that they dangled from the windowsill, heels banging lightly against the wall, toes almost touching the ground. She pushed an unruly lock of hair from her brow, leaving behind a charcoal smudge on her temple.

  Small and slender, with pixie features and a mass of curly dark hair, she looked almost as young as the girl on her bed. Jeans and sneakers, a dark T-shirt and an oversized peach-colored smock, only added to her air of slightness and youth. But she was halfway through her thirties, her own teenage years long gone; she could have been Annie’s mother.

  “What were you doing?” Annie asked as she sat up, tugging the sheets up around herself.

  “Sketching you while you slept. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Can I see?”

  Jilly passed the sketchpad over and watched Annie study it. On the fire escape behind Jilly, two more cats had joined the black and white tabby at the margarine container. One was an old alley cat, its left ear ragged and torn, ribs showing like so many hills and valleys against the matted landscape of its fur. The other belonged to an upstairs neighbor; it was making its usual morning rounds.

  “You made me look a lot better than I really am,” Annie said finally.

  Jilly shook her head. “I only drew what was there.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Jilly didn’t bother to contradict her. The self-worth speech would keep.

  “So is this how you make your living?” Annie asked.

  “Pretty much. I do a little waitressing on the side.”

  “Beats being a hooker, I guess.”

  She gave Jilly a challenging look as she spoke, obviously anticipating a reaction.

  Jilly only shrugged. “Tell me about it,” she said.

  Annie didn’t say anything for a long moment. She looked down at the rough portrait with an unreadable expression, then finally met Jilly’s gaze again.

  “I’ve heard about you,” she said. “On the street. Seems like everybody knows you. They say …”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Jilly smiled. “What do they say?”

  “Oh, all kinds of stuff.” She shrugged. “You know. That you used to live on the street, that you’re kind of like a one-woman social service, but you don’t lecture. And that you’re”—she hesitated, looked away for a moment—??
?you know, a witch.”

  Jilly laughed. “A witch?”

  That was a new one on her.

  Annie waved a hand toward the wall across from the window where Jilly was sitting. Paintings leaned up against each other in untidy stacks. Above them, the wall held more, a careless gallery hung frame to frame to save space. They were part of Jilly’s ongoing “Urban Faerie” series, realistic city scenes and characters to which were added the curious little denizens of lands which never were. Hobs and faerie, little elf men and goblins.

  “They say you think all that stuff’s real,” Annie said.

  “What do you think?”

  When Annie gave her a “give me a break” look, Jilly just smiled again.

  “How about some breakfast?” she asked to change the subject.

  “Look,” Annie said. “I really appreciate your taking me in and feeding me and everything last night, but I don’t want to be a freeloader.”

  “One more meal’s not freeloading.”

  Jilly pretended to pay no attention as Annie’s pride fought with her baby’s need.

  “Well, if you’re sure it’s okay,” Annie said hesitantly.

  “I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t,” Jilly told her.

  She dropped down from the windowsill and went across the loft to the kitchen corner. She normally didn’t eat a big breakfast, but twenty minutes later they were both sitting down to fried eggs and bacon, home fries and toast, coffee for Jilly and herb tea for Annie.

  “Got any plans for today?” Jilly asked as they were finishing up.

  “Why?” Annie replied, immediately suspicious.

  “I thought you might want to come visit a friend of mine.”

  “A social worker, right?”

  The tone in her voice was the same as though she were talking about a cockroach or maggot.

  Jilly shook her head. “More like a storefront counselor. Her name’s Angelina Marceau. She runs that drop-in center on Grasso Street. It’s privately funded, no political connections.”

  “I’ve heard of her. The Grasso Street Angel.”

  “You don’t have to come,” Jilly said, “but I know she’d like to meet you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Jilly shrugged. When she started to clean up, Annie stopped her.

  “Please,” she said. “Let me do it.”

  Jilly retrieved her sketchpad from the bed and returned to the window seat while Annie washed up. She was just adding the finishing touches to the rough portrait she’d started earlier when Annie came to sit on the edge of the Murphy bed.

  “That painting on the easel,” Annie said. “Is that something new you’re working on?”

  Jilly nodded.

  “It’s not like your other stuff at all.”

  “I’m part of an artist’s group that calls itself the Five Coyotes Singing Studio,” Jilly explained. “The actual studio’s owned by a friend of mine named Sophie Etoile, but we all work in it from time to time. There’s five of us, all women, and we’re doing a group show with a theme of child abuse at the Green Man Gallery next month.”

  “And that painting’s going to be in it?” Annie asked.

  “It’s one of three I’m doing for the show.”

  “What’s that one called?”

  “‘I Don’t Know How to Laugh Anymore.’”

  Annie put her hands on top of her swollen stomach.

  “Me, neither,” she said.

  6

  I Don’t Know How to Laugh Anymore, by Jilly Coppercorn. Oils and mixed media. Yoors Street Studio, Newford, 1991.

  A life-sized female subject leans against an inner city wall in the classic pose of a prostitute waiting for a customer. She wears high heels, a micro miniskirt; tube top, and short jacket, with a purse slung over one shoulder, hanging against her hip from a narrow strap. Her hands are thrust into the pockets of her jacket. Her features are tired, the lost look of a junkie in her eyes undermining her attempt to appear sultry.

  Near her feet, a condom is attached to the painting, stiffened with gesso.

  The subject is thirteen years old.

  I started running away from home when I was ten. The summer I turned eleven I managed to make it to Newford and lived on its streets for six months. I ate what I could find in the Dumpsters behind the McDonald’s and other fast-food places on Williamson Street—there was nothing wrong with the food. It was just dried out from having been under the heating lamps for too long.

  I spent those six months walking the streets all night. I was afraid to sleep when it was dark because I was just a kid and who knows what could’ve happened to me. At least being awake I could hide whenever I saw something that made me nervous. In the daytime I slept where I could—in parks, in the backseats of abandoned cars, wherever I didn’t think I’d get caught. I tried to keep myself clean, washed up in restaurant bathrooms and at this gas bar on Yoors Street where the guy running the pumps took a liking to me. Paydays he’d spot me for lunch at the grill down the street.

  I started drawing again around that time and for a while I tried to hawk my pictures to the tourists down by the Pier, but the stuff wasn’t all that good and I was drawing with pencils on foolscap or pages torn out of old school notebooks—not exactly the kind of art that looks good in a frame, if you know what I mean. I did a lot better panhandling and shoplifting.

  I finally got busted trying to boost a tape deck from Kreiger’s Stereo—it used to be where Gypsy Records is. Now it’s out on the strip past the Tombs. I’ve always been small for my age, which didn’t help when I tried to convince the cops that I was older than I really was. I figured juvie would be better than going back to my parents’ place, but it didn’t work. My parents had a missing persons out on me, God knows why. It’s not like they could’ve missed me.

  After running away and getting brought back a few times, finally they didn’t take me home. My mother didn’t want me and my dad didn’t argue, so I guess he didn’t either. I figured that was great until I started making the rounds of foster homes, bouncing back and forth between them and the Home for Wayward Girls. It’s just juvie with an old-fashioned name.

  I guess there must be some good foster parents, but I never saw any. All mine ever wanted was to collect their check and treat me like I was a piece of shit unless my case worker was coming by for a visit. Then I got moved up from the mattress in the basement to one of their kids’ rooms. The first time I tried to tell the worker what was going down, she didn’t believe me and then my foster parents beat the crap out of me once she was gone. I didn’t make that mistake again.

  I was thirteen and in my fourth or fifth foster home when I got molested again. This time I didn’t take any crap. I booted the old pervert in the balls and just took off out of there, back to Newford.

  I was older and knew better now. Girls I talked to in juvie told me how to get around, who to trust and who was just out to peddle your ass.

  See, I never planned on being a hooker. I don’t know what I thought I’d do when I got to the city—I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. Anyway, I ended up with this guy—Robert Carson. He was fifteen.

  I met him in back of the Convention Center on the beach where all the kids used to all hang out in the summer and we ended up getting a room together on Grasso Street, near the high school. I was still pretty fucked up about getting physical with a guy but we ended up doing so many drugs—acid, MDA, coke, smack, you name it—that half the time I didn’t know when he was putting it to me.

  We ran out of money one day, rent was due, no food in the place, no dope, both of us too fucked up to panhandle, when Rob gets the big idea of me selling my ass to bring in a little money. Well, I was screwed up, but not that screwed up. But then he got some guy to front him some smack and next thing I know I’m in this car with some guy I never saw before and he’s expecting a blow job and I’m crying and all fucked up from the dope and then I’m doing it and standing out on the street corner where he’s dumped me some ten minut
es later with forty bucks in my hand and Rob’s laughing, saying how we got it made, and all I can do is crouch down on the sidewalk and puke, trying to get the taste of that guy’s come out of my mouth.

  So Rob thinks I’m being, like, so fucking weird—I mean, it’s easy money, he tells me. Easy for him maybe. We have this big fight and then he hits me. Tells me if I don’t get my ass out on the street and make some more money, he’s going to do worse, like cut me.

  My luck, I guess. Of all the guys to hang out with, I’ve got to pick one who suddenly realizes it’s his ambition in life to be a pimp. Three years later he’s running a string of five girls, but he lets me pay my respect—two grand which I got by skimming what I was paying him—and I’m out of that scene.

  Except I’m not, because I’m still a junkie and I’m too fucked up to work, I’ve got no ID, I’ve got no skills except I can draw a little when I’m not zoned on smack which is just about all the time. I start muling for a couple of dealers in Fitzhenry Park, just to get my fixes, and then one night I’m so out of it, I just collapse in a doorway of a pawnshop up on Perry Street.

  I haven’t eaten in, like, three days. I’m shaking because I need a fix so bad I can’t see straight. I haven’t washed in Christ knows how long, so I smell and the clothes I’m wearing are worse. I’m at the end of the line and I know it, when I hear footsteps coming down the street and I know it’s the local cop on his beat, doing his rounds.

  I try to crawl deeper into the shadows but the doorway’s only so deep and the cop’s coming closer and then he’s standing there, blocking what little light the streetlamps were throwing and I know I’m screwed. But there’s no way I’m going back into juvie or a foster home. I’m thinking of offering him a blow job to let me go—so far as the cops’re concerned, hookers’re just scum, but they’ll take a freebie all the same—but I see something in this guy’s face, when he turns his head and the streetlight touches it, that tells me he’s a family man, walking the straight and narrow. A rookie, true blue, probably his first week on the beat and full of wanting to help everybody and I know for sure I’m screwed. With my luck running true, he’s going to be the kind of guy who thinks social workers really want to help someone like me instead of playing bureaucratic mind-fuck games with my head.