What a weird place, I thought in total amazement. It was huge! There were hallways around every corner and many, many doors, leading into rooms that held God knows what. This place… it was like a maze. So confusing, so bizarre. But somehow very interesting.

            My father had brought me here to see some man. I was scared. Whenever Daddy brought a girl to see a man she didn’t come back. That won’t happen to me, I thought, trying to create some kind of peace of mind, Father loves me. Why wouldn’t he? I was his daughter after all.

            “I don’t know about this, Calvin,” the other man said, uneasily, to my father.

            “It’ll be fine,” he reassured him, “She won’t say anything.”

            “How can you be so sure?”

            “Just trust me,” my father opened the door then and came over to me. I quickly looked away and appeared as if I wasn’t just listening to their hushed conversation. Taking my small, 14-year-old hand in his huge one, he says, “You be good, okay. Don’t talk to any strangers now. You hear me?” I nodded in response, “Good girl. See you at six, Gerald.”

            “Alright, here’s a mop and bucket,” the man confirmed when Dad left, handing me the cleaning supplies, “The stairs are the worst so be sure to scrub them good.” And with that he left me to clean the maze building on my own.

            I sighed, grabbed the mop, dipped it in the soapy water, and smeared it across the tile.

           

            I was washing the second set of steps for the day and humming quietly to myself when a man carrying a large box came trotting downstairs.

            “Sir, watch out!” I cried.

            Both the box and the man came tumbling down, the guy’s head landing in my bucket of dirty mop water.

            “Sorry! I’m so sorry!” I was in a panic.

            Pulling his head out of the bucket, he laughed and said: “It’s alright. I really should watch where I’m going.”

            I couldn’t believe it. Back at home I would have been beaten within an inch of my teenaged life. Rule #1 in my house: it’s always the woman’s fault. Instinctively, I kept my head down, waiting for his arm to come into contact with my face. When it didn’t come, I lifted my gaze to find him gathering the papers that had fallen from the box. I got up quickly and started helping him collect the scattered files.

            “So what’d you do that was so bad that you had to clean the building?” he asked when we had finished gathering the papers.

            “Excuse me?”

            “Most teachers make their students sit around for an hour or even pick up trash around the hallways. Who’d you get the detention from?”

            “What’s detention?”

            “You don’t know what detention is?”

            “Um, no. Should I?”

            “Um, yeah! What have you been home schooled all your life?”

            “Home schooled?”

            “Alright, you’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

            “Huh? I don’t know what you mean?”

            “Never mind. Um, I’ve gotta go.”

            “Bye.”

            Weird guy, I thought. No way I’d ever say something like that out loud. Little did I know that he wasn’t the only weird guy I’d meet that day.

 

            At around 4:48 I was mopping a downstairs hallway. What are those? I wondered, looking at the black dots and lines on the walls. Oh, who cares? It’s not like I’m ever going to see them again. Besides I’ve got to get back to work. Since no one was around and it didn’t seem like anyone would be coming around any time soon, I started to sing. It was a song my mother used to sing to me before she died. But that was ancient history. Right now was what I needed to worry about and I needed to finish cleaning the building before my father got there.

            Fifteen minutes had passed and I was just making my way around the corner, still humming my mother’s song, when I nearly ran into yet another man. He appeared to have been watching me. I of course think nothing of it. It wasn’t the first time I’d be watched by a man and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

            “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“ he stammered.

            “It’s okay. It was my fault,” I interrupted, immediately regretting it. I clenched my jaw, waiting for him to hit me for interrupting him but he didn’t. Oh, great another weirdo, I thought, yet another thing I would never say out loud.

            “No, no, it was mine. I shouldn’t have been spying. It’s just that…I heard singing and… Here let’s start over,” he began, offering me his hand, “I’m Mr. Austiro.”

            I just stared at him like he had just grown another head, not really knowing what to do.

            “Never mind then,” Mr. Austiro said withdrawing his hand, “I had better get back to work. Beautiful voice, by the way.” He turned and walked away.

            “Thanks.”

            “You know what, come with me.”

            Oh boy, I thought. I was hesitant but respected his wishes, not daring to disobey a man. I followed the guy to a small room at the end of the hall. In it was more of the those dots and lines, a bunch of chairs, and a big black thing I’d only seen once before. I think it was called a piano.

“Can you read music?” Mr. Austiro asked, handing me a piece of paper with more of those annoying dots and lines!

            “Pardon?”

            “You know music. That stuff people like to listen to.”

            “I know what music is but I didn’t know you could read it. Don’t you need to be able to see something to be able to read it?” This he laughed at. I was confused. No one had ever asked me to read anything before, much less music. Besides, women weren’t aloud to learn to read at my house, only men. Women were considered too stupid to do anything that had to do with academics. So for the next half hour this… Mr. Austiro tried to teach me about music. All the while, I was glancing nervously at the clock. The minutes ticked by one by one, although I was urging them to stop.

            “And this is a quarter note,” he was saying.

            It was almost six o’clock when the er… lesson was finally over. I was really starting to freak out now. If I don’t finish cleaning this whole building in the next fifteen minutes then father’s going to kill me!

            “Mr. Austiro?’ I said cautiously, “I really, really need to get back to work.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry. You can go.”

            “Thank you… for the lessons.” My heart fluttered with this new found knowledge. I’d never learned anything before that didn’t have to do with the bedroom or a pole. I practically skipped back to my mop and bucket, singing my mother’s song the whole way and naming the dots and lines that I now knew were notes and rests in my head.

 

            I don’t think I’ve ever cleaned so fast in my entire life. After I’d gotten over my merriment and realized what would happen if I didn’t get back to work, I cleared the building with a couple minutes to spare.

            “How’d she do?” my father asked Mr. Gerald when he had finally come to get me.

            “Great! I’ve never seen the school so clean!” he exclaimed, quickly regaining his masculinity.

            “Good,” Father said gruffly, “Let’s go now.”

 

            “You’re back!” my best friend, Leslie shouted as I entered the underground room.

            The underground room was where us women were forced to stay between… shows or until they’re shipped off to live with some rich guy who has nothing better to do with his money than spend it on sneaking around behind his wife’s back while she takes his credit card for a joy ride so either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

            “How’d the appointment go?” an older woman, Sharie, asked.

            “I came back didn’t I?” I laughed.

            “So what’d you have to do this time?” another chick, Anna, called from the other side of the overly crowded room.

            “Surprisingly nothing with real importance toward the male desires,” I answered. (you’d think we were scholars by the complicity of our conversations but does that make the men believe we’re smarter than a blade of grass? Nope, it doesn’t and that doesn’t exactly help our…um… cause very much.)

 “I don’t care if it has to do with the Queen of Shiba! I just wanna know what it was!” she exclaimed in that British accent of hers.

            “I had to clean an entire building in three hours.”

            “Oh, that’s nothing. I had to dance for some eighty-year-old bloke who looked like he would keel over at any second,” Alice, a blonde girl from Germany, yelled.

            And with that everyone started shouting out what they had done that day and who they did it for. Despite our rather depressing professions and treatment, we still tried to make the most of our lives. The older women and girls would do the best we could to help the young ones.

            “Ladies!” Father’s no nonsense voice commanded and that was all it took to cause everyone to fall silent, “We had an impressive day today. We gained seventeen new clients and twenty-six new girls. And since you did such a good job, double rations for everyone tonight.”

            Everyone clapped and cheered until Father held his hand up for quiet. Double rations!! He hasn’t done that since… ever. But the excitement didn’t last.

 

            That night, just before my first shift, all hell broke loose. It started with a crash coming from the parking lot and ended with everyone 18 and under being herded back into the underground room.

            “What’s going on?” Leslie wondered aloud when everything ‘calmed down.’

            “I don’t know,” I lied. I knew exactly what was going on. It was another suicide.

 

            “Who was it this time?” I asked Sharie when the others came down at around three in the morning.

            “Kelly,” she said. Kelly is… was a thirteen-year-old Father had gotten from Brazil. I’m pretty sure her name used to be Marianna but Father insisted that it wasn’t.

            “How’d she do it?”

            “She um… j-jumped off the roof.”

            “How’d she get up there?”

            “Some guy took her up there for a little rooftop fun,” I rolled my eyes (not another one!) “and she took the chance to get out of here for good by jumping of the top of the building and landing on some rich dude’s viper. Boy, was he pissed when he realized it was his car that now has a busted windshield, two broken windows, a caved in roof, and is covered in blood.”

            “Sucks to be him,” I muttered, loving his anger and misery. Serves him right! Son of a bitch!! I don’t think I’ve ever been so bitter. Suicides are normal occurrence here. Hell, I’ve actually witnessed a girl blow her brains out right in front of me and another take a busted wine bottle and stab herself in the throat with it!