Daddy's Girl, My Mother's Daughter

My phone rang and the caller ID said Private.

“Hello?”

It was Ken. “So you wanna break up, and you want your money? You'll get your money.”

“Okay...”

“You left a suicide note at my house?” He told me he'd read it, and that he understood, sort of. “I got abused, too. I got touched. It was my uncle. But I didn't let it destroy my life because I'm stronger than that.”

Somehow I knew, I just knew, that he was lying in an effort to manipulate me. But I didn't say anything.

“The reason I didn't call you is 'cause somebody stole my phone and my wallet at school.”

“Oh...” My voice sounded soft as sand falling through an hourglass.

He sounded like he was mad at me for the fact he got robbed. “Yeah, and I've just been in the library all day, just doing what I gotta do.”

“So when are you gonna come over with the money?”

“Soon. When I have time. I'll call you when I'm on my way.”

So I waited, went to work, and tried to live my life. Chandra, a friend from the club, took me to a party where I felt young and out of place as the only non-drinker. Brooke gave my number to a Nigerian cab driver who she said had brought her home from the cam studio on a day when she made too much money to take on the bus. We texted for a while, and then I figured I might as well get a free ride out of him.

I didn't ask his age, but I could tell he was way too old to have much in common with my teenage self.

“Where do you live?”

“Oh, with Brooke,” I said.

“Where?”

Thinking he must have forgotten where our building was, I told him the major cross streets and we went back to small talk. We got closer and he asked again, “where do you live?”

Now I figured he just hadn't understood me. “I live in the same apartment as Brooke.” I told him the name of the complex and the street it was on. “You know, where you brought her the other day.”

“The other day I drove her to the Palms.”

“Oh.”

So Brooke was escorting. I was surprised, and not surprised at all. When we worked at the club, she'd always made a point of stating she'd never done extras and never would. Of course, girls who tried to act like goody two shoes were almost always doing something.

And really, I didn't give a fuck about Brooke's hustle. All I cared about was when Ken was gonna call me. I started to think he never would, and started to hyperventilate again. To ward off panic, I filled myself with anger.

“I'm bout to just go to his apartments and wait outside so I can catch him when he gets home and make him give me my money.”

“Take this.” Brooke handed me a knife and I slipped it in my backpack. “Just in case anything happens.”

Lately, she and Mike had been looking out for me, although even then, I wasn't convinced they weren't just looking out for themselves. They told me they wanted to make me over and chose some new hair dye. We went out together and I saw a movie with Brooke while Mike gambled. Mike didn't have a job and he didn't sell drugs. What he did was gamble, play video games, and talk- a lot. He said Ken wasn't shit and never had loved me. He threw around investment ideas, how we should all buy a house together. He told stories about fights and guns and machetes. I liked him and Brooke, but I also was aware that I was separate from them, just like I was separate from the members of Ken's clique, separate from the girls I sat with in the dressing room night after night. So far, the only person in Vegas I hadn't felt separate from was Ken.

I thought about that knife as the bus carried me through air that looked like eye makeup smeared off, darkness blurred by colored lights and even darker mountains. I wondered if I was really capable of using it. I wanted to. I joked with my (crazy, knife-wielding, public transportation riding) self that I should skin him and keep his tattoos- after all, I'd paid for them. I should cut off whatever part of him was responsible for the way he'd started treating me these past few months. If I could cut all the way down to his heart, maybe he would love me and do little things to show he cared, the way he had in the beginning. And if not, at least he'd know how I felt (ah, the emo thoughts of a teenager.)

Really, I never wanted to take the knife out of my bag. I just wanted him to hand me my money- how much it even was, I didn't know- and tell me he still cared.

When I got to his complex, I did a lap to see if the Saturn he and his mother drove was around. It wasn't. I found a spot where I would see cars pulling in before they saw me. For Vegas, it was freezing but I didn't care. I sat down cross legged on the sidewalk and would have stayed there 'til morning if I hadn't seen red and blue lights lashing one of the other buildings. Cops nearby meant it was time to get the hell out of there. I can't even count the occasions when Vegas police stopped me while I was walking to the corner store or talking to a friend in my parking lot, interrogating me to see if I was “working.” I knew that if they spotted me tonight, my backpack and I would have some explaining to do.

I started hiking back towards the bus stop. The wind was even colder now that I was moving. My phone rang. I recognized the number. It was Ken's best friend.

I answered. The moment I heard him, it warmed me with hate and wanting.

Ken said that he'd been waiting for the right time to get a hold of me. He said that whoever stole his wallet had used his credit cards. All the money he'd put in his bank account- including mine- was gone, but he was gonna file a report and get it back. He could show me the bank paperwork if I wanted, he could...

It was hard to hear him over the cars and wind and the voice in my head. He's lying, the voice said, he played you and there's nothing you can do now. He's lying. But then there was another voice, saying maybe not. And even though I knew the first voice was right, I found myself siding with the second.

You realize this is what your mom did, the first voice argued. When you told her about your dad, and he said that had never happened, she believed him, not because she didn't love you, but because she needed him the way you need Ken, and when you need someone, believing lies just becomes a method of self preservation.

If I'd ever been the slightest bit mad at my mother, I wasn't anymore. That first voice was right about something. Still, I knew that identity theft was real- I myself had been a victim of it at one point- and if there was even one chance out of a hundred that Ken was telling the truth, I was willing to take it.

I told him I did want to see those bank papers, and I wanted to see him. The words “I got you” come to mind. I don't remember the conversation exactly, but I told him I missed him and I think he might have said he missed me, too.

I think I might also have said I was sorry.