It gave me a thrill that still lingers, even now the newness has gone. Being in charge became immediately addictive and the only person getting rough at my sessions, is me. “No. Nothing like that. Nobody’s giving me any grief.”
“You girls are so lucky. Back when I started, we wasted so much time and money staying on the good side of police, and I still clocked up two convictions for solicitation.”
I’ve heard it all before, but I snuggle in closer against her side, happy for the chance to hear it again. The reform act that decriminalised sex work is twenty years old now, but I still hear horror stories from the women who were working at the time.
The lack of protection, the proliferation of pimps. The way you couldn’t go to police to report an attack without the fear you’d be the one who ended up with a conviction, allowing violent men to flourish.
If things were still that way, I wouldn’t be able to finance my way through university. The worry that I’d rack up a permanent blot on my record would scare me away.
And if I couldn’t pay for it outright, I wouldn’t go.
I learned early on the pressures of living outside your means. The debt that taught me might have belonged to my father—now deceased and may he rest in hell forever with demons pegging the shit out of him—but he left the payment of it to my mother and me.
“At least you didn’t have to pay tax,” I counter, falling into the swing of the repeat conversation like pulling on a favourite pair of old boots.
My flatmates gave me pitying looks when I told them my mother is down to around a dozen topics of conversation and she just repeats them over and over. They think it makes her harder to visit with, when it makes it easier.
There’s so much comfort in this familiarity, I don’t know how I’ll get past the loss when it’s finally time to let go.
“You don’t have to pay tax, either,” she says with a soft giggle. “That’s the advantage of working in a cash economy.”
“You’re out of touch, old lady. Most of my fees are paid by credit card.” The billing statement displays the bland business name of Fenn Ltd so nobody casting a casual eye across a bank statement discovers something they shouldn’t. “I wish we were still a cash society.”
Mum makes a disgusted noise as her head tilts to the side, eyes closing. “That’s so lame.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I need to tell you something important,” she whispers, and I check her face, wondering if she’s talking to me or has disappeared inside a vivid hallucination; something that happens with increasing regularity now the cancer has metastasised to her brain.
“What’s that?” I prompt when she’s remained silent for close on a full minute. “Something nice, I hope.”
“Your uncle…”
Her voice trails into a whimper and my body stiffens, icy cold slush filling my veins. Of all the things we don’t talk about, my uncle rates at the top of the list.
Not my real uncle, even if I thought of him that way back when I was a girl of seven and eight. He was a client of my mother’s, then her pimp, then her abuser, then…
But I don’t like to go down the road of what he was at the end. Meant to stay away from us for one. Meant to still be locked up in prison for another.
“He’s out?” I ask, my voice a squeak sounding nothing like its usual self.
“A friend called me.” She raises her head, squinting around the room. “They heard it during a prison visit and thought I should know.”
My muscles soften again. Prison gossip. Not the most reliable source of information in the land.
“He’s not allowed to contact us,” I remind her. “The protective order spells out all that stuff.”
But she’s gone. Making the small snorts and snuffles that happen because her airways aren’t up to the task any longer.
The oxygen tubes under her nose make a small hiss as I lean over to kiss her on the forehead. I wait for a few minutes, but she’s obviously fast enough asleep that she won’t be rousing anytime soon.
I extract myself with the same amount of care I took to lie down before gathering my things and heading out the door.
Despite having late-stage ovarian cancer, my mother isn’t staying in a hospital or a hospice. Her physical state deteriorated to where palliative care was the only thing that made sense, but there wasn’t an appropriate bed available.
The district health board was apologetic when they moved her into the hospital unit of an aged care facility instead.Just until a bed comes free.
Fourteen months later, my mother has outlasted every prediction for her imminent death and that proper hospice bed never eventuated. When she was stronger, she didn’t mind as much. Now her sight is mostly gone, her chief distraction and entertainment is conversation. To be surrounded by people of a different age group, with no common references, wears on her. She enjoys her chats with the nursing staff more but they’re busy.
