My Mother Taught Us the Trade of the Neighborhood

My name is Marisol. I’m nineteen years old, and everyone on my street knew me as la Clara, because of my skin color. What I’m about to tell you happened a couple of years ago, when we still lived right beside a combi bus stop, in one of those neighborhoods where a girl grows up listening to obscenities, double entendres, and a whole lot of men with filthy mouths and even filthier hands.

At home there were my mother, my sister Karina, and me. My father had been locked up for years for being a thief, so my mother went out every afternoon looking for any work she could find, while the two of us made a few pesos selling buckets of water to the drivers and the boys who washed tires at the bus stop.

Over time, we got to know everyone who passed through there. And once Karina and I had finished developing, they began looking at us differently. It was no longer the usual greeting. They were eyes that lingered on our legs, comments we pretended not to understand, that way of coming over to ask for water when it was really just an excuse to come closer to us.

Karina, who is two years older than me, was obsessed with a pair of brand-name sneakers she saw in a shop window at the mall. But there was barely enough money for food. We both told Mom we were going to look for jobs, and started going out in the afternoons to knock on doors. Nobody would hire us. Without education or experience, neither the laundries nor the market stalls would give us a chance.

Weeks went by, and one morning, when I came back from running errands, I found Karina chatting with one of the drivers at the door. I clearly saw the man put some bills in her hand. She quickly tucked them away and went inside. The guy looked me up and down, slowly, and before getting into his combi he told me that if I wanted to make easy money too, all I had to do was let him know.

***

I went into the house with my heart pounding. Karina was rinsing her mouth at the washbasin in the patio.

—What was that? —I asked her—. What did he give you?

—Now I have enough for my sneakers —she answered, smiling in a way I had never seen before.

I froze. I asked her a thousand questions at once. How had it happened, what had she felt, whether she hadn’t been afraid. She told me bluntly that the driver had been hinting at it for weeks, and that when he showed her the wad of bills, she had simply stopped resisting.

—It disgusted me —she admitted, wiping her face with the back of her hand—. But now I have the money.

—What if Mom finds out? —I insisted.

Karina stared straight at me.

—I caught her doing the same thing with one of them a while ago. If she charges to be with those old men, I can too. I’m sick of never getting anything I want.

Her words made a strange noise in my head, and at the same time they seemed like the most logical thing in the world. I thought about the house falling to pieces, the carefully counted food, the worn-out shoes. I thought about the men who already looked at us as if we belonged to them.

If Karina can do it, so can I.

—I’m going to do it —I told her—. Mom leaves early and comes back at night. The house is ours all afternoon.

***

The next day we got up early. We bathed leisurely, fixed our hair, put on the shortest shorts we had and cropped blouses without bras. Karina and I are thin, fair-skinned, and light brown-haired; more than one person told us we looked foreign. We opened the front gate as we did any other morning and stood in the doorway, ready.

The drivers started complimenting us as soon as they saw us. Double entendres, whistles, stares. We pretended not to notice, giggling under our breath. I was nervous; my knees trembled a little. Karina, on the other hand, was completely calm. She took a bucket, poured a stream of water over herself, and her blouse clung to her body. I did the same. Soaked and gleaming beneath the sun, we gathered half a dozen men within minutes.

One of the drivers came over. He was one of the old-timers, one of the men who had bothered us the most over the years.

—You two are getting all worked up, huh? Look at you, dressing like that in front of everyone.

We laughed without answering. He called over another man, younger, and asked him what he thought.

—That you’re old enough for someone to take care of you properly —the other man said, without taking his eyes off me.

Karina stepped forward, more self-assured than I had ever seen her.

—If you want, it can be arranged. But it’ll cost you.

—For this one, I’ll pay whatever it takes —the old-timer said, pointing at me as he reached toward my waist.

Karina stopped his arm in midair.

—Payment first. Then you touch.

The man smiled, pulled out some bills, and tucked them himself into the elastic of my shorts. I didn’t even manage to see how much it was. He took me by the hand, and we went inside the house.

***

Inside, my heart felt ready to burst out of my chest. It was my first time, and I was having it with a stranger whose nickname was all I knew. He took me to the living-room sofa, bent me over the back, and yanked my shorts down. He didn’t say anything sweet, and there was no need. I felt his open hand against my back, holding me still, and then felt him parting me with his fingers, squeezing my buttocks as he tried to position himself behind me. I was tense, my breathing cut short, and he spoke into my ear in a hoarse voice that made my face burn.

—Relax, girl. If you squeeze any tighter, I’m going to split you in two.

He moistened his fingers with saliva and touched me down there again, slowly spreading me apart, without tenderness but with a confidence that left me trembling. When he finally pushed the tip of his cock against me, I felt a brutal stab, as if I were being forced open. I clenched my teeth and a few tears escaped me, half from the pain and half from the vertigo of what was happening. He muttered a low curse, gripped my hips with both hands, and entered me little by little, inch by inch, until he was buried completely inside my tight pussy.

—That’s it, fuck —he growled—. This way I can last longer.

When he began to move, the sofa creaked beneath us. At first he gave me short, rough thrusts, and every impact jolted my pelvis forward. I gripped the fabric of the backrest, feeling him filling me and scraping me inside while his breathing grew heavier. The sound of his hips slamming against my buttocks filled the entire room. He slapped me hard once, then again, and afterward spread my legs farther so he could enter better, slipping his hand between my thighs to rub my clitoris with his sweaty fingers. My shame began blending with a kind of dirty heat rising from my crotch.

Karina came in at that moment with another man, younger and thin, and sat him down at the other end of the sofa. She took off her shorts without hurry, spread her legs over him, and sank down onto his cock as if she knew exactly what she was doing. The guy squeezed her tits through her blouse, lifted the garment until her hard nipples were exposed, and sucked them hungrily. Karina arched her back, threw her head back, and began moving her hips with a ease that left me watching her from the corner of my eye, still pinned over the sofa and already completely impaled.

The old-timer behind me wouldn’t let me rest. He pulled his cock out and shoved it back in with such roughness that he tore a moan from me. He grabbed my hair, forced me to lift my face, and spoke through clenched teeth.

—Don’t play innocent. If you’re here, it’s because you want me to fuck you hard.

I didn’t answer him. I was too busy feeling him split me open with every thrust, feeling the skin of my buttocks grow hot with each slap, feeling his balls strike against me as he fucked me standing up against the sofa. He humiliated me and excited me at the same time. The pain of that first penetration had already become something else: a deep burning that made me bite the fabric of the backrest and wait for the next thrust with an anxiety I didn’t understand.

Karina, beside me, was already panting. The skinny boy was fucking her while seated, with her on top, and sucking her breasts as if he were truly hungry. She held the back of his neck, pressed his face against her tits, and kept telling him not to stop. The sound of breathing, slaps, the creaking sofa, and the two men’s groans blended with the heat of the closed-up house. I watched Karina getting wetter and wetter, her thighs trembling every time he gave her a deeper thrust of his hips.

The old-timer changed his rhythm and began driving into me harder, no longer taking any care. Each thrust drew a louder moan from me, and when he reached around to touch my pussy with two fingers, sliding through my wetness, I felt him taking me to the edge. He told me I had a beautiful ass, that I was made to be split open, and then slapped me again, louder than before. I moved backward on pure instinct, seeking him, asking for more without wanting to admit it. He chuckled under his breath and buried himself in me to the hilt.

Then Karina let out a sharper moan than all the others and came on top of the other man. I heard it in her voice, in the way her body broke apart. The skinny boy hugged her around the waist and kept moving until he began trembling too. I was close. My legs were giving way, my pussy pulsing around the cock filling me without mercy, and every time the man slammed my hips against the sofa, I felt a hot pressure building in my belly. He noticed and sped up even more, gripping me hard around the waist so he wouldn’t lose his rhythm.

—That’s it, little slut, squeeze me —he said—. You’re going to make me come.

And he did. I felt him throb inside me, his entire body tensing all at once as he released a hot ejaculation that filled me in thick pulses. I stayed motionless, swallowing my gasp, feeling him continue pumping into me for one second, two, three, until he was completely drained. The man pulled out slowly, gave me one last slap on the ass, and stepped away with a satisfied smile.

At the other end of the sofa, Karina’s boy finished almost at the same time, holding her against him while he sprayed semen across her belly. We both remained there breathing hard, our skin sweaty, our legs weak, our bodies still vibrating inside. They left laughing, tossing bills onto the table as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

We had no idea how things were done or what men liked. But we were young, pretty, and willing, and that was enough for them. That same afternoon, word spread through the bus stop, and men came in one after another. By nightfall, Karina had collected four thousand pesos, and I, being the newcomer and the younger of the two, five thousand.

***

We were in the bedroom counting the money, laughing ourselves silly and exhausted, when Mom arrived. She heard the commotion and opened the door. She stood looking at the bills scattered across the bed.

—Where did you get that? —she asked, very seriously.

Karina didn’t even flinch.

—We earned it. Doing what you already know how to do.

I closed my eyes, expecting a scream, a slap, anything. But Mom let out her breath slowly, sat on the edge of the bed, and, to my surprise, smiled.

—I’m glad you’re making use of what you have —she said—. But you’re going to do it properly. With me.

It turned out she had been doing it for years, in secret, whenever the money ran short. That night she talked to us as she never had before: about taking care of ourselves, not letting anyone deceive us, and not trusting just anybody. The next day she didn’t go to work. She stayed home with us.

***

My mother became something like our manager. She taught us how to dress, how to talk to clients, how to set rules and prices, how to tell who could be trusted and who couldn’t. She collected the money at the door, and we took care of the rest. Within a few months, we stopped being the two sisters from the bus stop and became a secret whispered throughout the neighborhood. Even some neighbors, men who had watched me grow up, eventually came knocking at our door.

Each one asked for what he wanted. Sometimes it was quick, against the sofa, over in five minutes. Sometimes it was threesomes, because more than one man liked the idea of being with both sisters at once, one on each side, while we laughed at how little they could take. They almost never lasted long; we knew how to make them finish quickly so the next one could come in.

With what came in, Mom bought us clothes and shoes, took us to the doctor for checkups, and paid for our salon appointments. We started with drivers and mechanics, but the level kept rising. Suddenly men in suits and expensive cars began arriving, paying three times as much for discretion. We saw everyone. There were weeks when we had forty or fifty clients between us, although, to tell the truth, most of the encounters lasted only a few minutes.

Karina and I competed over everything. Who could collect more in one night, who could make more men finish before sunrise. My record was fifteen; hers was twelve, something she never let me forget. I developed a strange fondness for that life. I thought it would last for years, that I would grow old counting bills in that room. But we barely made it to our first anniversary as the most sought-after women in the neighborhood.

***

One afternoon, Mom arrived looking hurried and told us we were going to visit relatives in another state, far away. We barely had time to pack a couple of suitcases. On the way, Karina and I commented that we were already in need of a break, a real vacation. Still, something didn’t add up: with everything we had earned, Mom remained stingy even with the basics, and she had never wanted to furnish the house or give us any big treat. We began to suspect the worst.

The journey was long, almost six hours on the highway, and we imagined every possibility. What if she had spent the money behind our backs? What if she was taking us somewhere else to work? At last we reached a small town, and the man who had driven us left us in front of a large, beautiful house on the outskirts, with a yard full of trees. Mom took a set of keys from her purse and opened the door.

As soon as we went in, she turned toward us, her eyes shining.

—It’s ours —she said—. I bought it and furnished it with what we earned. We’re going to live here. And the old life is over: we’re taking over a food stall in the market, and the three of us will run it.

Karina and I were speechless. All our suspicions collapsed at once. The stinginess, the trips she had refused us, the treats she had never given us—it had all been for this, to get us away from that bus stop and give us a real home.

***

Almost two years have passed since we came to this town. I won’t lie: sometimes I miss those crazy nights, the adrenaline, the money, even the silly competition with my sister. But this quiet life has a beauty of its own. The place is peaceful, the people are kind, and in the mornings the air smells of wet earth.

The stall is always full. Karina and I serve customers in light clothes and with a smile, taking care not to anger the market ladies, who watch us from the corners of their eyes. Mom cooks like no one else. At the end of the day, the three of us count the stall’s earnings at the same table where we used to count the other money, and laugh about how far we came.

Thanks to everything we went through, we lack nothing now. Sometimes, when I pass the town’s combi bus stop and see the drivers, I smile to myself and keep walking. That Marisol stayed behind, in another neighborhood, in another life. And the truth is, I don’t regret either of them.