Nearby, at the street corner was Bakkers Grocers, a small grocery store dresses in deep green with large goldfish letters atop the doorway.
Gustav Bakker was from Germany and spoke in a thick accent through a dark black, dragging mustache. His thin wire glasses perfectly matched his slim, wiry frame.
His wife worked at the store with him. Magda always had her hair up and bunned over her apron and naked arms. She moved quickly, frenetically as if trying to escape an ever-present captor. I didn't interact with Magda often but Gustav was my first regular, weekly "customer". Mom and he had worked it all out. I was to be given to Gustav once or twice a week in exchange for bread and milk. I was 5 years old.
Mom sat me down and taught me what a "customer" was, a man that needed to be pleased in sexual ways. I was to do whatever Gustav said or asked without question. He loved little girls because he and Magda could have no children of their own. I was to be Gustav's little girl in the same way that I was dad's little girl, a sexual object whose job was to satisfy.
Gustav would start off with a game. Pick either the one quarter on the counter or the pair of quarters next to it. See, I wanted the two because I knew it was more but to get more I would have had to do more. If I picked the two quarters that gave Gustav permission to do more things with me than if I had picked the one quarter.
I was five. I wanted two quarters. I picked two quarters a once, maybe twice before I realized the trick. I didn't want to do those things. I learned to always pick one quarter. Always. Most of the time.
I see pictures in my head of memories that happened over fifty years ago. Little me walking into the grocer. The rings sound of the bell above the store signaling. Gustav smiling as he looks up from behind the cash register to see me standing there.
Next, I see three quarters on the counter, divided in to one and two. I have to make my choice.
Gustav shouts to Magda as he whips off his apron, hangs it quickly on the hook and motions me out the store door to the backroom. The smile so broad as to be evident even underneath the thick mustache. He holds the door open for me. I know the way.
I start up the stairs. Actually more than one of me ascends. I'm Multiple and I have many parts of me. Back then, in the store two of Usses vyied for the stairs as fast as we could as Gustav had a nasty nasty habit of grabbing at our private parts whenever we were on the stairs ahead of him.
6-7, one Part on me, one Person or Alter, made it to the landing, the toppest of the stairs first. She won. She didn't get grabbed.
4-5 was the Person that had to walk through first the outer door on the landing. It was a door which was half glass and made that familiar shimmy noise when it opened or shut.
Then, there was the porch like larger part of this landing that, too was enclosed by half wood and half glass at the top part. Then while standing on that porch, Gustav would take his keys out and open the thick, inner, nonglass door to the place he lived with Magda, above the store. When this door shut, not the store entry door, not the store to stairs door or even the halfglass landing door elicited a reaction but the door into their above store apartment, when that shut tight with Gustav's hand, it's like all the air left the room. It felt thick and sick like games gone bad. We didn't know the first time what would happen but we quickly learned that it was the same stuff we did with dad but in a different place with a different man.
"And different men like different things", my mother said as she taught me how to treat my customer. I was to do it like the customer wanted and maybe that wasn't the same way daddy wanted it done. So do what the customer says he wants.
Momma's little whore.
I was sold for bread and milk.
I learned about customers.
I learned not to like to walk up stairs.
I learned that if someone closed the door behind me and it was just him and me in the room, I would be hurt.
I learned I hate towels because if someone, like Gustav or dad, Saif spread out the towel, bad things would happen on me.
Afterwards, on the couch, never in the bedroom, on the towel, Gustav would wipe himself off and take me to the bathroom. I remember standing in the cold tub. The sound of water from the shower and Gustav scrubbing me off. I wasn't allowed to do it myself. My body belonged to him as long as that outer door was shut.
He'd dry me off and help me put my clothes back on. I could have done it myself but he liked doing that, too.
Down the stairs, he never grabbed me when I was going back down the stairs. Mother said that's cause he was satisfied, he'd put his apron back on and bring out a small box big enough to hold milk and bread.
I remember seeing him give me the quarter and usually a lollipop which I liked because it tasted better than Gustav.
I recall feeling so proud of myself as I brought home groceries for mom and brothers. Mom was happy to see me, too. She'd smile with those big red lipstick lips as she took the groceries and put the milk in the fridge and the bread in the box.
I was happy and proud. I had a quarter and candy. I made mom smile.
