Maggie’s Angels

I was early. But I was already late. 

Neon pink script glared at me ‘MAGGIE’S ANGELS’.

My knuckles knocked on the door with white plaster peeling off the wood in the same rhythm as my heart knocked against my rib cage. Boom, boom, boom.

“Where the FUCK have you been”, my mother’s wild eyes screamed. The cloudy focus of her pupils signaled to run run run, but I had to go in. 

Her fuchsia fur coat, and red lipstick (she wore anything with confidence, including lipstick on her teeth) was as loud has her voice. Her presence made every room feel too small. Her sausage fingers, swollen like balloon animals from the humidity and the drinking, caged within thick silver rings one on each finger, clutched a cocktail glass, vodka straight up. With the other hand she clung to a skinny Marlboro Light, like she was holding onto dear life. 

“I had sushi with Marie,” I explained myself.

“Sushi?! Mama’s meatloaf isn’t good enough for you anymore?”

Her stare was as cold as my hands as she blew thick blueish smoke into my face. My eyes watered.

Don’t talk back. Make yourself small. 

She was as unpredictable as hot milk. I never knew when she would boil over, spilling everywhere.

“She needed a friend. Alex broke up with her again. I’m sorry, Ma.” 

“And what do I need? It’s always Marie, Marie, Marie. And if it’s not Marie, it’s Bryan. Or your precious daddy who has never been there like I have been there for you. What do I have to do for you to love me the way you love them? Give birth to you, sacrifice my career for you? Oh right, I did that already.”

Her words hung in the air like deflated balloons. I pushed past them carefully. 

I was staying with my mother for a few weeks during summer break. She lived where she worked, a single-family home in the suburbs with a white picket fence just that the family was Mama as madame, and 8-10 prostitutes (depending on the season) with thick Eastern European accents in their late forties. When I came to visit, I slept in mom’s bed on the ground floor. The women slept but rarely slept on the first floor made up of dimly lit rooms for privacy just big enough to fit a kingsize bed with crimson satin sheets, plastic covered mattresses, and faux roses covered in dust on wooden bedside tables next to overflowing ashtrays of soggy lipstick stained cigarette butts. There was one primary suite for loyal customers with “special” requests that had a jacuzzi with broken nozzles that coughed like a chainsmoker when switched on and one common area where we always waiting for something; customers, UPS, redemption, thawed egg rolls from “TASTE OF ASIA” or the next dubbed episode of ‘The Bold & The Beautiful’.

 The room was sparse, with a white leather sofa with patches of paint flaking off like eczema facing an old TV set with only 3 channels. An IKEA ceiling fan, swirling heavy summer air, hummed along to Mama’s favorite Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as I walked up the stairs. It smelled like stale smoke and vanilla body mist. Cum and Clorox. 

Angel One or Magda leaned against the wall with her hip, armed with one of Mama’s Marlboros. The nicotine stain on the baby pink walls framed her head like a halo. She looked like a cartoon cockatoo with a bony nose like a beak, and her strawberry blonde dyed pixie. Her make-up, at least one shade too dark for her skin tone, sunk into the lines on her face like cracked paint. She was still in her non-work clothes, an ill-fitted V neck stretched over her silicone breasts too large for her frame and pink velour sweatpants spelled “Juicey” with an ‘e’ in gem stones across her butt.

“My darling girl, just in time!” Magda pressed my head against her hard bosom, flashing her toothless smile. She smelled sweet and sour like candy worms.

"We’re just picking out clothes. What to wear, what to keep. Thoughts?” 

Her slender yellow fingers held up a black negligee with a pastel blue ribbon in the center and matching crotchless panties. 

I shrugged. 

The other girls circled around me like vultures.

Angel Two, or the one with “DADDY” stamped onto her neck, pushed a greasy strand of bleached hair behind her ear and held a pink lace bodysuit with a heart shaped opening at the cheeks against my frame as she eyed me up and down like a casting director.

“And this? I think this would look really cute on you.”

“Did Maggie already give you one of these?” Angel Three or Olga asked flashing her tooth gem. She held up a pear shaped sponge that looked like a beauty blender. I shook my head.

“Soaks up your blood, so you can still bone. And yes, I still have my period. I’m not that old. This baby makes me like 1000 euros a month, double that over Christmas,” she proclaimed pridefully as she flipped her long black ponytail into my face. She sucked on the cigarette like a teat giving her life before she added, “don’t worry, it’s not used.”

“She’s taking the black one. You love black, don’t you, sweetie? Makes you look slimmer.” Mama said, her voice now a few octaves higher like talking to a child.

I started picking at the dry, flaky skin on my elbow again.

Don’t talk back.

“Sure.” 

She pulled me close and pressed a big, fat, wet kiss onto my lips. My body flinched.

“Did you just pull away from me?” Mama narrowed her eyes. The milk started to bubble, froth, rise.

Before I could respond, she pulled me close again. This time with more force. 

“I made you,” she hissed like a cat, digging her claws into my skin. “I get to do with your body what I want.”

Make yourself small. 

Where my friends spent summer break and the holidays in the comfort of their childhood homes, I spent May-August, Christmas, Easter, my birthday, mom’s birthday, Mother’s Day, sometimes weekends, at Maggie’s, mom’s biggest achievement after me (her words, not mine), a brothel in a little Bavarian suburb called Obermenzing. Before becoming a madame, my mother had many “jobs” that didn’t require a degree or experience: record store girl, pin-up girl, It-girl, and main girl in German 1970’s soft core flicks with a raunchy titles like Nude and Nasty in Ibiza. Her fine angelic features, hour glass figure and large bust paid the bills until they didn’t. She took a break from being something-girl to become a mother, and at 40+ the offers stopped coming. Her ALAÏA gowns, worth over 5 times our rent each, rotted in her closet, waiting for red carpet invitations that never came. The more dust her autograph cards collected, the more pinot and vodka and rum she poured down her throat. She started trading magazine covers for DUI mugshots and dating ex-con crackheads who beat her to pulp like she thought she deserved. To make ends meet she became a body guard, a phone sex worker, a cocaine dealer, a bartender and lastly, a pimp. Maggie’s Angels wasn’t a high-end establishment designed like a Roman temple of lust with stucco on the ceiling filled with girls with million dollar smiles and sun-kissed legs ripped straight out of fashion magazines, but a bare-bones apartment where real women put price tags on their dignity to feed their children, sisters, nieces and nephews, and cousins back home. 

I was only allowed in the common area because the room was in the back, hidden from the customers. Women who aren’t for sale aren’t allowed at brothels (it might upset men to see something their money can’t buy). So, I never saw the regulars or the walk-ins, but I became so familiar with their voices, I started imagining what they looked like. There was the one who sounded fat and bald. Mr. Sweatsalot. Fleshy nose, sweaty upper lip, with big pores. Probably shoes with velcro fasteners to make things easier. There was the one who sounded young, maybe mid-twenties. I called him Tony. I liked Tony because he was always polite. He said ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ a lot, almost too much like he felt bad for coming, and regularly noticed when mom cut her hair and complimented her although I knew he was lying through his teeth. Then there was the arrogant film director from the city or Footsucker who always managed to sneak in a sentence or two about his next big movie. The angels loved him. Not because he shaved his back, didn’t have to be persuaded to wear protection or was particularly kind, but because a single session (Magda told me he pays her up to 500 euros to suck on her big toe!) meant we could feed our bodies that ran on Cup Noodles steak with mashed potatoes. Not the cheap GMO stuff from Aldi, but real filet mignon from the organic butcher around the corner.  

I always dreaded visiting my mother, especially over the summer because July 7th was her birthday and every birthday she threatened to kill herself by swallowing sleeping pills, slitting her wrists, driving into a tree. One time I found her in the park downing all her valium, cradling an empty Smirnoff bottle like a baby, with crusty blood all over her face and eyes black from punches and smudged mascara. A group of men had robbed and beat her like a piñata. When the cops came, she didn’t lose a word about the boys. Instead she kept saying, ‘gypsy-boyfriend-wants-to-cut-my-face-off-my-gypsy-boyfriend-wants-to-cut-face-off,’ like a scratched vinyl record. They dumped her into a psych ward and pumped her stomach again. Happy Birthday! 

My mother has been wanting to kill herself for 26 years. It all started when she turned 37. She took a plane to Venice where she wanted to throw herself off a bridge to drown in the slimy, emerald green canals. Since then it became a dark day of mourning still being alive and plotting the end because every day longer meant another day older and another day older meant another wrinkle, another grey hair, another cellulite dimple in her thigh that made her invisible to the men that made her feel valuable. When I was 17, she’d say to me: “Cherish this moment. You’ll never be more beautiful than you are now. At my age men don’t turn around to look at you anymore. Poof, you’re just air. Doors fall into your face, taxis don’t stop, you actually have to wait to get a drink. And pay for it!” The Bible, Cosmopolitan, fed my mother the same lie most of us still believe: we can slow down, even stop, becoming invisible if we just use SPF daily, eat the right diet, splurge on the right anti-aging eye cream. And you can’t start early enough! So, to keep my fresh teenage body from going bad like a vegetable, she had me follow certain rules:

Don’t play soccer, it’ll ruin your legs (I still played. She angrily massaged my scars with coconut oil every night).

Don’t eat carbs, it’ll ruin your figure (in second grade I started recording all the ‘bad' foods I ate in a day).

Don’t scratch chickenpox, it’ll ruin your face (she taped leather sheep skin lined gloves to my hands).

‘I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)’ blasted from the blown speakers. Mama lit her third cigarette in a row as she flipped through her planner. Without looking up, it was clear she was talking to Magda who helped run things around here. 

“So, talk to me. What’s on the agenda for today?” Her grown out acrylics went clack, clack on her cracked iPhone screen playing Candy Crush.

“Katrin: BJ at 2 pm. 30 mins. 50 €” 

“Me: Roman Shower at 4 pm. 60 Mins.150 €” 

“Lana: Hairy back guy said he’d come after dinner around 7 pm for missionary. 50 €”

“Oh and Phill dropped off Double Stuf Oreos. Said he wants Olga to eat the whole box and throw ‘em back up, right into his wife’s tupperbox for 400 €.” 

“Men! Filthy pigs.” She cackled shaking her head in disbelief. Then she tossed the Oreos across the room at Angel Three. 

“C’mon, get going. And don’t sweat it, it’s not like you’re digesting them.” She rolled her eyes.

“And where are we with updating Magda’s online ad?” 

According to my mother my creative writing B.A. and “knowing how that thing works”(that thing referring to my old laptop that was now hers. Christmas candles on an advent wreath melted a gaping hole into the back of the screen, so the wiring showed through the white plastic shell like blue veins) made me responsible for writing the angel’s website ads.

I turned the screen around to face her, so she could read my first draft. White light glared through the gaping hole in the back onto the screen. 

Mature teacher looking to discipline you for being a bad, bad boy. Big tits, 45, size 6. 100 Euros/hour. She looked at me the way mothers look at their toddlers when they take their first steps, warm and soft.

The relentless midday sun hit the thick glass windows turning our very own DMV waiting area into a steam room, just that the steam was smoke burning my lungs and eyes. It felt like the sharp sunlight cracked open my skull, sweat rolled down my spine. It was July 6th, the day before her birthday. Every year the angels and I made the same preparations for the big day. Magda hid Mama’s valium in the cracks of the sofa. Olga buried the car keys in the Cocoa Puffs. Katrin poured her secret Smirnoff stash under the bed down the drain. And Anya searched the whore house for small sharp objects. Razor blades, nail scissors, hair-cutting shears, pocket knives, anything she might use to not slash her wrists again. Apart from the big sharp kitchen knife (we only had one, the other ones were blunt). We knew she didn’t actually want to commit suicide, she wanted to attempt it. And I? I got up early to write her birthday card. It was a big deal. I had to pour my heart onto the page every year if I wanted to avoid the milk from burning. One year I was hungover from a night out dancing and drinking Long Island ice teas with Marie. So, I didn’t fill the page with never heard before compliments and just bought her a gift basket from Sephora along with a pre-written card with a cute cat on it. She ripped the card to pieces, grabbed my blonde ponytail and dragged me from room to room and down the stairs, slammed me against a wall and kicked my thigh until the flesh was black and blue like the night sky.  

Mom plummeted onto the white sofa as she exhaled dramatically. 

“Ugh. Another year. Will it ever stop… Make it stop. Can you make it stop? Dany, I’m telling you. I can’t take it anymore. I just can’t. I won’t. I won’t do it. It’s too much. This time I’m really gonna do it. I just don’t wanna live anymore. I mean it. I do. You’d be better off without me anyway. No more embarrassing Mama to worry about. Will you even miss me when I’m gone? No, why would you, you don’t even love me.”

She started sobbing uncontrollably, so I scooched closer. I had no comfort to comfort her with. A hug without feeling is just people touching arms.

“Yes, yes I do.”

The summer air was thick with words unsaid. 

In the summer months most customers came during the day, so we could go to sleep before midnight. I tiptoed downstairs to the bedroom. My neck cracked like the floorboards creaked. Mama was already curled up in the twin size bed, when I tried to slide under the covers like a snake without making a sound. But the box bed squeaked under my weight, waking her. Still with her eyes closed, she flipped around to face my back. Her arms grabbing for my torso, pulling me close like a security blanket. She planted another wet kiss on my neck, stroked my hair softly, her breath hot on my cold skin. Her fingers started drawing hearts, flowers, circles on my arms again. I never knew whether it was supposed to comfort me or her. 

“Me and you. You and me. Forever.”

Tree branches scratched against the window glass like they wanted to come in. I stared at the long thin branches. I envied them for being outside, outside myself.

And there I lay, the little spoon dreaming of being a knife. 

Make yourself small.

The angels’ regulars were on time like garbage men. The walls were paper thin, so I learned to tell the time by the cacophony of their visits. Wheels on tarmac, engine dying, car door slamming, knock knock on the painted hot wood, steps on floorboards. This morning the ceiling groaned like a dying horse. I imagined Mr. Sweatsalot must be anchoring his ship of a body to the front desk. And I knew it was 9 am. The July sun felt like butter on my face. The rough sheets smelled fresh although they weren’t. I opened the window to reach for the branches. The birds were chirping, the grass covered in a carpet of mustard dandelions. I splashed my face with cold water and glanced into the mirror. Her eyes, sunken into my skull, stared back at me. 

I headed downstairs to make coffee. Overfilling ashtrays, lipstick on wine glasses, dirty cereal bowls. Magda hovered over the stove shoving Syrniki, miniature Ukrainian sweet cheese pancakes, into her mouth straight out of the sizzling pan, her aunts recipe. “O, kurwa! O, kurwa” She swore like a sailor as the dough burned the roof of her mouth. Olga hung her head out of the window like a dog using a folded Cosmo to fan cool air into her face. Trucks breathed heavily outside, children’s laughter in the distance like a faded photograph. Mick Jagger’s snarls and shouts spilled into the kitchen from the waiting room. As I poured the last of the almond milk into my cup, I popped open the cutlery drawer and the knife tray caught my eye. It was empty.