Chapter 4-Cont.

 It wasn't the first time a girl had gotten pregnant at the Bordeaux. Lou paid for abortions and the expense was bad enough.  But in the weeks after the procedure the house was always solemn. first the girl would writhe in cramping pain while the uterus coiled around the dead body, rejecting it from the womb. Followed by heavy bleeding and and finally, in some cases, the tiny body.  It was stressful as the was a chance of fever, hemorrhaging and infection. The girl having the procedure was solemn and in pain for a few weeks while the body passed.  

Abortions  were not common but it happened and Lou accepted it as necessary.  The only problems came when a girl wanted to wanted to have the baby, like Meg. Just last year a girl had done just that.  She had the baby and when the social worker came to gather the thing for adoption in the morning, the girl was gone and she took her baby with her. Problem was, the babe had already been signed for adoption to a family and because of that, it became a legal matter.  The police were called and Lou had a lot of "explaining to do" about one of her tenants.

  Having a bastard baby was not going to be good either.  Mother of child and it certainly wouldn't be good for Lou!  But to cast out a woman with child?  To send a woman with a new baby away to live on the street?  This was a horrid thought!  But to house a woman with child and raise it in a whore house?  This was the worst of all the wrongs!  Meg was a fool and and Lou was livid for her foolishness.

 Lou didn't want the girls getting the idea she was lax about this! She knew that seeing a mother nursing a child weighed powerfully on a woman!  Let one have a baby and they were all liable to follow. 

"I don't know what she was thinking!"  Bridget lit two cigs and passed one to Sadie. The two puffed away and Jackie sat by listening while looking at the pages of her Colliers weekly while the older girls discussed the particulars of the morning.

"She obviously wasn't thinking, Bridge!"  Snapped Sadie in Megs defense.

"Well if she wanted baby so badly she should have bought out first!  Now all of us have to go through this again!"  

"Bought out? You know that's a sham!  If buying out was easy we all woulda done it a long time ago!"

"Buying out" was where Lou's trickery collided with her genius.  She lured the girls with free room and board, which sounded nice until the girl wanted to leave.  That's when Lou handed her with a bill for every steak, peach and panty-hoe the girl had ever used.  The longer you stayed to more you buy out was. And if you tried to skip out, she had record of the expenses of her "tenants" and could legally bind them to their debts in a court of law.

"How does a girl know how much she has to make to buy out?" Jackie peered up out of her magazine pictures.

"Lou is charging us ninety cents a day to stay at the Bordeaux. You get a weekly wage for what? Fifteen?  Seems like a lot but Lou's really charging you for almost seven dollars a week on her books.  So there you are spending money you think you have on stuff you like.  Poof!  There goes your chance at freedom."

"Well and who of us know how to do math or read? You Jackie?" Bridget pointed to Jackie's magazine. Jackie shook her head.

"Yeah but can you count?  You know numbers?" She shook her head again.  Is was a source of shame and a remembrance of her childhood she hated to think about. She wanted to go to school but her father was a tyrant and her mother only drank.  "I just trust them when they give me change at the picture house."

Sadie could tell Jackie was ashamed and cupped her chin "You're sweet Jackie!"  

Bridget spanked her, "Too sweet!"

It was true, Jackie was too sweet.  At times she felt it was her only defense.

"Well you're going to have to learn to be smart or tough little girl! One or the other or preferably both like me!" Bridget shined!

"Oh god you're dumb as a doornail, Bridge and you know it." Poked Sadie, "Here Jackie, I'm smart and that ones tough.  But she's right!  Too sweet and they'll take everything from ya!  Its wise up or toughen up."