Yanika was an ant under a child's looking glass in the sun. Burning. Desperate. In Pain.
She was a ten year old in the smoke filled, dung-scented darkness. She sang to herself a desolate song.
Momma made me get on Line
Red Light District hear my cry
This isn't the life that I would chose
Forced to follow in her high heeled shoes
I walk the streets
I walk the filthy streets
I give them what they want
and ask for
Money
I walk the streets
I walk the streets for rupees
Ancient men coughed dust and Ancient women shivered.
The night too black. The smoke too gray. Her lips too red.
Murmers, Snickers, buzzed past her as a swarm of angry mosquitoes.
Girls with streaming tears, don't get customers. Yanika studied the others. Thirty Lips too Red. Thirty pairs of Heels too high. Thirty sets of eyes that were too dry. Thirty bodies much too young. Thirty pockets too empty. They walked the streets. Each night. For Money. For Rupees. They smelled of sweat, of tears, of old beds and of the mud of poverty. Shadows of lowly men with pockets that Jingle. Shadows that seduced. Seduced Lips too Red and Heels too high. For Money. Money that was passed on to mothers. Too old. Too hurt. Too desperate.
Mothers that were once Lips too Red and Heels too high.
Fathers Too Stoned to Care for Lips too Red. Anymore. They stagger in and out of dingy hallways like one-legged men. They are broken men. Broken from the time European explorers conquered their lands, Broken from the time History was kept by pen and paper. Orthodox methods had been discarded, no longer were they recounting narratives for their beloved India. The world possessed its own dusty, yellow-paged, barely worn, account. Families too Fragmented. History, a broken mirror, could not be patched up to present the Truth.
Lips too Red and Heels too high were expected to finance the Fragmented Families. Broken men were dependent on their daughters to be seduced by Shadows in the smoke filled, dung-scented darkness. Walking the streets for Money. For Rupees. No matter how many times Lips too Red were obliged to work, Debt would never unleash the Fragmented Families of India. Debts that were owed to a British government after a long rule of tyranny. Debts owed from Fragmented Families comprised of Broken men, Mothers that were once Lips too Red and Heels too high and daughters to be seduced by Shadows in the smoke filled, dung-scented darkness.
With the same kind of concentration a medical student has on their first live scenario, Yanika stared into the mirror. If she looked hard enough, she hoped, she could dissect the person she is from the person she is not. She is not the bright, red lipstick. She is not the powdered face. She is not the streaming mascara that is in a race from her eyelashes, down her face, dripping off her cheek and finally to her pink sari. Girls with streaming tears don't get customers. She wants to see herself not as as the little girl that sleeps with men with leather skin and smell of must. Yet, the person she wished to see must have been hiding.
If only she could see beyond that heavy-painted adulthood, was a child who could finger-paint upon the night sky and dance between the raindrops. She was the sad, brown eyes. She was the salty tears that washed the ink from her face. She was the honey that dripped from the comb. She was the crescent moon and the smell of lilacs that sometimes hangs upon the cooling winds of spring. But nothing lasts. The bees die, the moon is reborn and the lilacs pass with the season. After the fist night of high heels and lipstick something inside of her perished not unlike the lilacs.
