And most nights, it seems, we worked: that means we fucked what one of the girls from Volgograd called the “black and whites.” (Her name was Crystal and later she would come to America with Sonja and me.) The black and whites were men who almost always wore black suits and white shirts. They never wore neckties. They always had stubble—so much stubble that sometimes Catherine or Inga would talk to them about not abrading our skin. They seemed to be rich, and sometimes they were old enough to be our grandfathers, which does not necessarily mean they were really that old; after all, we were all between thirteen and sixteen years old. The clients were Russian and Georgian and Ukrainian and—and you get the point. Very international, it seemed to us. Many worked in “spirits.” Brandy and cognac and vodka. Even, in some cases, beer and wine.
None of them had any interest in us as more than sex toys.
None of them ever paid us; they left the money with Inga or Catherine, or they had paid ahead of time.
And none of them ever complained. We fucked like our lives depended on it—because, we realized, they did.
…
Approval is a funny thing. I needed it from Madame as an aspiring ballerina. I needed it from my schoolteachers as a student poet.
And, eventually, I needed it as a prostitute.
…
I did not view the other five girls as sisters, but we were more than friends. Sonja and I were very close, maybe because we both were Armenian. I looked up to her because she was older. Her family was originally from Gyumri, like mine, and only moved to Volgograd after the earthquake. Much to the annoyance of Inga and Catherine, the two of us were very protective of one another. Sonja also looked after Crystal, since Crystal was also from Volgograd and she was only thirteen.
Sonja was much crazier with the men than I was; she was probably crazier than all of us. I know she did things with them all the time that I only did when I had to. It wasn’t that she was getting any pleasure from the business. But she channeled her anger into her work. She was (and I really understood this use of the word fucking the first time I heard it) “fucking mad.” She was capable of scaring the men—even intimidating them—which meant that once in a while she would get in very serious trouble. The men would complain, though only sometimes would they suggest that she was more girl than they could handle. They would simply say she was difficult. Or disobedient.
That was the worst thing we could be: disobedient.
One time, to punish her for looking Daddy in the eyes—we were never to look Daddy or Mikhail in the eyes—they burned off the hair on one side of her head. I will never forget that smell. Her hair had been regular but beautiful blond.
When it grew back, Inga had her dye it so it was almost white, and then cut it into a bob. Her eyes were sky blue and would grow wide when she was angry inside. Like me, she could dance, and so sometimes the two of us would be ordered to get little parties started. (Mostly that meant stripping to some pop song and then grinding against the men’s pants until the men brought us to our rooms.) Sonja and I sometimes talked about what our lives had been like before: hers in Volgograd and mine in Yerevan. She would tell me the little she recalled of her parents, and I would tell her all about my mother and my grandmother.
And with all of us girls there was some competitiveness in our relationships. Even Sonja, crazy as she was, had to have her share of approval—from us and from Inga and Catherine. That’s just how it is. You lick the hand that feeds you.
And then, of course, there was Daddy.
Daddy appeared every few days. He was a former Soviet army colonel, probably sixty back then. He had the sort of good looks we saw in older male models in Western magazines. I think of Ralph Lauren ads when I think of him. He wanted us to call him Daddy, and he wanted the six of us to view ourselves as wives, like we were harem people, though there was no single man we were attached to. And he never fucked us. I think he would have viewed that as shoplifting, maybe, or stealing from his own company. And if he really did view himself as a father figure, I think sleeping with us would have complicated whatever excuse he had made up in his head to explain why it was okay to kidnap and imprison us.
So instead he fucked Inga and Catherine. He fucked them whenever he came to the cottage.
He was, we were told, much more powerful than Mikhail or even Vasily. Dudes like Mikhail and Vasily were scared to death of the man we called Daddy.
…
One week I was not allowed to use the bathroom. They gave me a tin coffee pot I was supposed to use for everything. I was not allowed to leave my bedroom. I was not allowed my one hour outside each day, because they wanted to be sure I used only the tin coffee pot. Inga checked it to make sure I was filling it up.
What had I done? What was my crime? I was in trouble because a man had said I was not clean there. He was lying. He only said that because he was not clean there and I told him we should shower before we fucked.
…
One day Crystal and I were smoking outside the cottage. We were standing in the middle of the big oval in the driveway where cars turned around and watching ducks in one of the ponds. She always looked like little girl who had stolen Mom’s cigarettes. She had crazy big eyes and no tits. She was so beautiful at thirteen and fourteen. Out of nowhere she asked me, “You think any of the guys would help us?”
I thought she was talking about the guards, and I motioned with my cigarette at the dude who was watching us from the front steps. “Him? You crazy?”