The dream that inspired The Last Bordello.
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Staring at Fear
Madam Fannie Porter stares at fear. (From The Last Bordello)
I reminded my fingers to turn the knob slowly, quietly. I crept through the kitchen’s side door and held my breath.
A voice in the parlor. Not one of my girls. I tiptoed into my bedroom and made my way to the far wall. Wiped my sweaty, shaky hands on my dress. Removed the painting.
Only Reba and I knew about the coin-sized peephole Constructed long ago for keeping an eye on questionable customers. Exactly my eye level, as intended.
The voices would be clearer now. I inched the cork from the hole. Fighting for breath, I peered through the hole and into the parlor.
Stuck in a “Shining Closet”
From The Last Bordello: In Madam Fannie’s voice, she and her “girls,”and Meta – who was misled to the bordello – must wait out a storm in the crawl space under the stairs.
I shifted my knees, trying to get comfortable. “Girls, if this is the worst that’s ever happened to you, I’d say you’ve lived a fine and easy life.” I knew better, of course.
“Etta’s leaving is much worse,” Sadie said, her hands shaking.
“Horsefeathers.” Lillie tucked her head between her knees and mumbled, “Worse is saying good-bye to your betrothed.”
“Carver will be back,” Sadie retorted. “Etta won’t.”
True. I couldn’t see Etta returning, which made it worse for Sadie. She and Etta had been as close as silk on a corncob.
I made note to speak privately to Sadie and the others. Under no circumstances were any of my fallen angels allowed to mention the names of the Wild Bunch or Etta’s connection with the gang.
Meta had Faded into the wall, her owl stare flickering in the lantern’s light. No doubt, she didn’t expect to spend her first night in San Antonio stuck in a bordello’s crawl space.
Like a Rodeo Bull
From The Last Bordello (1901). Madam Fannie Porter talks to Reba, her best friend and co-worker.
Miss Reba (as I picture her)
Reba’s voice brought me out of my doldrums.
She stood just inside the kitchen, her hip holding open the screen door. “Freshness growing from the ground up. Picked and served like He made possible.”
“You woke up from your nap.”
“Thought I died of a soft underbelly?”
“You? Hell, you might be eleven years older than me, but you’ve got more vim and Vigor than a rodeo bull. Just as stubborn, too.”
“Speakin’ a that. Tell ’em, Fannie. You don’t wants to beat a path around that ponderin’ bush. They needs to know.”
I followed her motion to come back inside. “You’re right, Rebie. We’ll tell them when they come down to eat.”
“We tells ’em? Ain’t no we about it. No, ma’am. That jawin’ session be yours.”
This time, it wouldn’t be a regular house meeting that consisted of reminders about chores that needed doing, client appointments, and Reba’s nagging them to douche and keep their pee-shes clean. This powwow would be different.
Entering the Insane Asylum
The Pungent smell of an insane asylum.
From The Last Bordello (voice of Sadie):
My limbs shook. My knees buckled. The men in white held fast to my elbows and pulled me toward a thick wooden door. When opened, the fragrant air vanished and was replaced with the malodorous smells of urine, vomit, rubbing alcohol, and something else I couldn’t quite place.
I saw only a few women, one being dragged in another direction. “Not surgery, not surgery!” the woman wailed.
The driver unlocked another door and pushed me into a small room that contained a stained mattress on the floor and a bucket for excrement. He told me to sleep well. I heard him laughing down the hall long after they had locked the door.
I thought it was a cruel joke, that my mother had followed behind and would now take me home with an “I told you so.” Before the tears had a chance to come, someone unlocked the door again.
Raw Journal Kernels – 5
Ooh! This was a special find! (See other Journal Kernels here) This was a dream that inspired The Last Bordello. See the short excerpt below.
Most nights, I see Papa in my dreams. In a slower-than-life pulse, in a not-so-common four-count measure, he smiles as he grabs the knob of our screen door and opens it to enter. His movement repeats. He smiles and opens the door. Smiles and opens the door. Each time, he never enters. He never falls.
But Papa did fall; collapsed before crossing our threshold into the house his neighbors helped him to build. Four years ago now, all of the notes of Papa’s life faded away with his last breath. A stillness so loud that my ears still burned.
If only Papa hadn’t died.
Sadie, before becoming a prostitute
At age fifteen, Sadie Sated Timothy – from The Last Bordello.
It started the day Timothy and me sat on a gentle slope on the banks of Geronimo Creek between the honey mesquite and Texas spur grass. He’d snuck a bottle of whiskey from home and had been thoughtful enough to bring crackers and a small chunk of cheese to our Sunday afternoon picnic. I was smitten with the boy, the twin to my best friend, Kat.
He spread the blanket and, for the first time, I spread my legs. The weight of him, slight as it was, felt like a made-to-fit blanket.
He was finished before I had the chance to feel him inside of me. “I might only be fifteen,” I said, laughing. “But I don’t think that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”
Offended at first, Timothy managed a grin. “Then I guess we need to try it again.”
Then I caught sight of the ugly housedress that Lucinda, my so-called mother, wore almost daily. Ugly like her character. Ugly like her words. Stupid like her Bible-mouth that preached how Jesus would protect her yet Lucinda wouldn’t get up on a ladder if her life depended on it.
She split us apart, yanked me up by the hair, and ruined my favorite dress as she dragged me home.
“You miserable bitch,” I screamed. “Just because you couldn’t keep my father at home doesn’t mean I have to be a spinster. I love him! Love him! Any time Timothy wants me to pleasure him, I’ll be willing and ready.”
Lucinda slapped me. I slapped back, harder. She fell on the warped flooring of our kitchen and dabbed a finger at the corner of her bloodied lip.
For the next two weeks, we didn’t speak. Still, I heard her mumble on occasion, “Ticktock, ticktock. They’ll put you under key and lock.” I didn’t pay attention to those words. I should have.
A Gift to Frame
A friend of mine gave a copy of my latest book, The Last Bordello, to her mother, Del. She doesn’t email, nor does she know how to write a review on Amazon. So, she sent me a “real” letter! What a special gift!
Don’t mess with the Madam
Madam Fannie Porter vs. Mayor Hicks: Excerpt from The Last Bordello
“Pull the reins back, Mayor. Sadie’s not evil. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He was using Sadie as an excuse, a reminder I hadn’t moved into the mandated zone a stone’s throw down the road.
“If she could pull a knife on a man who harmed a friend, what measures would she take if she thought she had been wronged? It’s no secret she hates the temperance women.”
True. “What are you getting at? Do you still think that just because she found a yellow scarf, she’s guilty of a crime? Had something to do with the missing girl?”
“It’s likely.”
“It’s preposterous. Now, is there anything else?”
“She was there at the meeting. You know it as well as I do.”
“That’s no secret.”
“Too bad for her it’s not.” He stood, approached the front door, and yanked his jacket off the hook. “Not looking good for her. Nor for you and this place.” He waved an index finger around the parlor like a gun. “I’ll be watching.”
I didn’t escort him to the door, but watched him exit at the same time thunder rattled the porch. Good. For all I cared, he could glide back to the office on his own slime.
Two sets of eyes peeked over the swinging doors and into the parlor. “Okay, nosy children,” I said and joined Meta and Reba in the kitchen. “What happened to those good old days when Bryan Callaghan was our mayor?”
“We’s been scorched by a stinkbug, that’s what.” Reba palmed her newly straightened and gelled hair.
Meta’s expression remained grave. I had the feeling she felt a kinship with the missing girl.
Daily Prompt – Pimp
“The pimp–prostitute relationship is widely understood to be abusive and possessive, with the pimp/madam using techniques such as psychological intimidation, manipulation, starvation, rape and/or gang rape, beating, confinement, threats of violence toward the victim’s family, forced drug use and the shame from these acts.” – Wikipedia
I beg your pardon!
Madam Fannie Porter did none of these things to her “soiled doves.”
As an acute business woman, she was stern but fair, made sure her girls had health checks, gave them a Class A bordello to live in, kicked out unruly clients who mistreated them and, in The Last Bordello, she defended one of them who was accused of murder.
What’s that you say?
Oh.
The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt was PRIMP?
Never mind.
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 