“No, I can’t have any visitors,” I said.
“Really? What, is it dangerous there?”
“No, of course not.”
“Does the school know where you’re living?”
“Yes. My sister brought me today, and we met with Dr. Sevenson.”
“Your sister came here with you?”
“I’m surprised no one told you. We attracted enough attention.”
“She met with Dr. Sevenson?” she asked, her face soaked in incredulity.
“She’s my legal guardian now, Chastity. What did you expect?” I left her with her mouth frozen in the shape of an O.
Although I teased and frustrated my classmates when they asked me questions during the next weeks, their curiosity about Roxy and me didn’t wane. The more I evaded their questions, the more they came to their own nasty conclusions. I should have anticipated it, but I was really feeling aloof, finding myself floating above them. I did my schoolwork as diligently as ever, but I avoided social contact almost as much as I had when Mama was suffering and my thoughts were always with her. Maybe I helped to bring about the things that began to happen. Maybe they were inevitable.
Roxy’s decision to “improve” my wardrobe certainly didn’t help defuse the situation. Now that spring was almost here, she decided to update my fashion and brought me to her boutiques, where I was fitted for a blue T-back drop-sleeve dress and a red double-bikini-string halter dress. She also bought me sexy heels and boots. Of course, when it was finally warm enough to wear my new outfits, other girls were fascinated with my new clothes and wanted to know where they could get them, too.
That was all short-lived, however, because Dr. Sevenson called me into her office to tell me that what I was wearing to school was inappropriate.
“We do have a dress code,” she said. “I’ve left a message for your sister. I mean to enforce our standards here,” she added firmly.
“There’s nothing wrong with my clothing,” I insisted.
“Maybe out there, but there is something wrong with it in here. If you wear anything like this again, I will be forced to send you home. That’s all.” She dismissed me with a flick of her wrist.
Roxy was upset about it, but she didn’t put up any argument. I was more unhappy now than ever and wanted to leave the school, but Roxy was taking her “motherly” role very seriously these days, checking on my homework and my grades, making sure that I came back to the hotel when school was over for the day, and demanding to know where I planned to go on weekends and whom I was with. I wasn’t doing much at all, but she was still hovering over me.
“I don’t have a social life at this school and never will,” I told her.
“Just finish up there, M, and we’ll get you into another school. Mama and Papa paid for it. You told me yourself that it was important to Papa.”
Reluctantly, I returned to wearing what I always wore, but the damage had been done. Although Evan was the only boy I had gone out with from the school, his earli
er stories about me now were more believable. I had been guilty simply by being related to Roxy. Now I was condemned forever because of where I lived and whom I lived with. I could see it in the lustful looks boys gave me at school and hear it in the remarks they mumbled when they were near me.
How could I live in a hotel with a sister who was a professional escort?
The truth was that in the beginning, life at the hotel wasn’t unpleasant or uncomfortable at all. Twice a week, Roxy had a guest—or a client, as she called him—and I stayed in my room and read or did my homework, just as I was instructed to do. There were three occasions when I had to leave and stay in one of the other hotel rooms. They were nowhere as comfortable as mine, but I did what I was told. So far, after a few months of this life, I had not yet seen or spoken again with Mrs. Brittany, and I wasn’t sorry about it.
Roxy was successfully keeping me sheltered from the life she was leading and the things she was doing. I obeyed her wishes and asked no questions. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t curious and tempted to sneak a peek or listen to what her clients were saying, but I was too frightened of being discovered and bringing some terrible problems to both of us. I was terrified that it would lead to my being sent to live with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Orman after all.
Then, finally, the situation simmering at school for me boiled over in ways I couldn’t anticipate.
And Roxy was not happy about it.
22
It was Mrs. Brittany who came personally with the complaint. Roxy and I were having the dinner we had ordered from the restaurant on the avenue. I had set the table, and we had just sat and begun. Almost the way Papa would do it, Roxy would cross-examine me about my day at school at dinner every night. In fact, her questions were so similar that I almost broke out into laughter at times. She also wanted to see my tests and comments made on my homework.
“Why are you so worried about my grades, Roxy? You weren’t any sort of student.”
“What I did and what I do is not your concern,” she said. “You’re not me. You have other opportunities out there.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what I want to do.”