The Seduction Of Claudia (9 page)

"He asked me again where she was and I told him I didn't know, that it wasn't unusual for her to be gone from home until late. He was royally pissed and started calling her names and saying things about how he bought and sold people like her every day and that a man of his status shouldn't have to wait in line for his whore to fuck him. Then he apparently decided that he didn't have to wait. He said the most vile, disgusting things to me, treated me as if I were nothing at all, while he undressed me with his eyes and wondered aloud if I was as good a lay as my mother. He came and sat on the bed next to me. I was frozen with shock. He reached out and touched my hair, told my how pretty he thought it was. He touched me gently at first, stroked my back, my buttocks, my legs. He spoke to me softly, telling me how pretty I was, much prettier than my mother. There was something sinister in the low, whispery tone of his voice. Creepy..." she shivered as though she were hearing the sound of that voice even as she stood safely in her own living room some twelve years later.

"He pushed me onto my back and started touching my breasts through my blouse. He was breathing hard and getting aroused, his touches became bolder and rougher. He put his hand around my throat and squeezed, told me that since my mother liked it rough, I probably would, too. The situation had quickly gone beyond my ability to control." She smirked, "That is, if I had ever been in control to begin with. I knew what was going to happen and there was no way for me to stop it. I was terrified."

Andrew didn't want to hear any more, couldn't stand to listen.

"Honey, no. Stop," he interrupted. "You don't have to do this."

"But I do, Andrew. It's who I am..." she said desolately, tonelessly.

"No, it's not! That guy was a sick pervert and your mother... Your mother..." his voice broke as he struggled to find the right words.

"It's OK, Andrew. Nothing really happened that night. Well, not what you think, anyway; my virginity was left intact," she said with another bitter smile. "The guy sat there beside me with his hand wrapped around my throat and told me to take off my blouse and bra. I was scared, so I did it. He touched my nipples, squeezed them so hard it brought tears to my eyes. He was disgusting, drunk and slobbering all over himself and slurring his speech. He opened his pants with one hand and pulled out his penis. He stroked it as he continued to punish my nipples. To me it looked huge. Hard, red and angry-looking..."

"I was crying and begging him to stop. I began to panic and fought him as though my life depended on it. I pushed him away and tried to get up, but my thrashings only seemed to excite him more. He forced me down and straddled me. Told me play time was over and not to move. The 'or else' was implied and I was disinclined to find out what he would do if I angered him. He sucked on my nipples ruthlessly, bit them so brutally hard that I couldn't help but scream. He laughed at me and then put his hand around my neck and squeezed again, told me to shut up; he watched the fear build in me as he choked me so hard I couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to die while he brought himself off. He sat on top of me, stroking himself as I struggled to breathe, saying things I'd never heard before, things that made me feel dirty, degraded and worthless. He came after what seemed like an eternity and it went all over... My chest, my face, my hair... I was covered in it. He let me go then, stood up like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, adjusted his clothes and left my room. I heard him walk into the living room to get his keys and he left the house."

"I lay there feeling violated and scared, gasping for breath. I finally got up, took a shower and scrubbed his filth off of me," she said emotionlessly. Andrew was worried about her. She didn't seem to register the horror of any of what she was telling him. She relayed the incident almost as though it had happened to someone else.

"I waited up until Maman came home and I told her what had happened. She didn't exactly have the reaction I had wanted her to have." Claudia said dolefully. With a sneer in her voice she continued,

"She didn't take me in her arms, soothe me and tell me that everything was going to be OK. Nooo, not my mother. Instead, she said that she was sorry it had happened the way it had, but that I had to learn about what was between men and women some time, and the sooner the better. Then, she went over to a little antique snuffbox that sat on the mantelpiece and took off the lid. She took something out of it and turned around to face me. She was beaming with pride as she held out two crisp hundred dollar bills. She said, 'Well, well, bébé, looks like I've got a little competition. You earned double what he usually pays; he must have liked you,chére.' "

Andrew's heart broke.

Finally, she turned away from the fire to look at him.

"Again, I was frozen with shock. I'd had no idea that she took money from all those men. I knew she slept with them and that she accepted gifts from time to time, but I never knew she took money for what she did. It took me a moment to put all the pieces together."

"She must have seen the wheels turning in my head as I made sense of it. She asked me where I thought my clothes came from, how I thought we could afford to live in the neighborhood we lived in, where did I think the money came from to pay for my flute and my music lessons... I was speechless. My mother was a whore. A prostitute. A high-priced, very selective one, to be sure, but a prostitute is still a prostitute, right?"

Andrew sat quietly, knowing that her question was rhetorical. He didn't respond because he knew that anything he said would sound trite and contrived. He was horrified. He ached for her, wanted more than anything to erase all of the hurt she had endured. He watched her as she stood facing him, looking at him, but not seeing him. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but held back sensing that she needed to have her say.

"I lashed out at her, got right in her face and called her a whore. She slapped me then. Over and over, knocking my head back and forth as she struck me. She told me I was complicit in what she did because she did it for me. She told me I was guilty, too. She screamed at me, telling me that I was no better than her, that I was more like her than I realized, that what had happened that night proved it."

Her voice trailed off as she tried to compose herself. Her shoulders heaved as she took a few deep breaths. With an effort, she continued talking.

"I stood there and let her hit me, let her attack me in every way she knew how. I stood there and it was like something in me clicked off. I numbed out and couldn't feel or hear a thing... I guess she must have been waiting for me to respond to something she said, because the next thing I knew, she was pulling my hair, yanking my head all around and her face was right next to mine as she screamed at me that it was my fault, everything was my fault. She cursed my father, cursed the day I was born. Told me I was ungrateful and didn't deserve the breath I drew. She told me that she should have aborted me..." Her voice broke.

Andrew stood up from his seat on the couch, determined to stop her from reliving the awful scene from her childhood. With a sharp motion of her hand, Claudia stopped him from approaching her, gestured for him to sit again.

She pressed on. "She had hoped that by keeping me, she could also keep my father. She'd planned to trap him into marriage. He was rich and well-connected and she wanted a piece of that. But her plan backfired. He set her up in the house I grew up in and gave her money each month, but told her he never wanted to lay eyes on either of us again. Ever. By then, it was too late for her to get rid of me. She told me she hated me, Andrew, she said that every day of her life since I was born, she looked at me and hated me for ruining her life."

"I think she had enough decency to feel remorseful for all the things she'd said to me. But, she never apologized, because, she meant every word of it. Probably, the only thing she was sorry about was finally having said it. We avoided seeing and talking to one another for awhile after that. I turned sixteen shortly thereafter and was able to start teaching private flute lessons at the elementary school. I stayed away from home as much as possible and I never took anything else from Maman. I stayed under her roof, because I had no choice, but I bought everything I needed and could afford to buy with the money I made teaching. If I couldn't pay for it myself, I went without."

"In her typical self-absorbed way, she didn't notice that I hadn't asked her for anything for awhile. When she figured it out, we had another ugly confrontation. I think she hated it that, even at my young age, I was self-reliant in a way she never had been and never could be. She did her best to tear me down; all the hatred she had for me came pouring out. This time was different, though. I had developed a pretty strong dislike for her, too. When she hit me, I hit her back and told her that she'd better never lay a hand on me again and walked away."

Claudia's eyes focused suddenly on Andrew as she finished her story.

"I felt utter contempt for her. We managed to get through my last year of high school without any more problems. I did my own thing, she did hers, though she did stop doing her 'thing' at home. I graduated and spent the entire summer at a music festival in Colorado, then went straight to college. Thank God for scholarships... I haven't lived under my mother's roof full time since the day I graduated and never willingly took a cent from her since I was sixteen. When I couldn't find anywhere else to go on school holidays, I went back there. I had learned by then how to protect myself, physically and emotionally, so she never really got to me anymore, even though she tried. She purposely taunted me, telling me that I could fool myself into thinking that going to college would give me a better life, but that the truth would eventually out. She always said that I would see that I was nothing more than my mother's daughter - a chip off the old block. I refused to be goaded into a response and I could see that my self-control nearly killed her."

"I knew she was still whoring, but I just refused to acknowledge it, or her, for that matter. Until a few years ago that worked, then she started calling me, telling me she missed me and wanted to see more of me. She apologized to me for being a bad mother, told me she was sorry she had hurt me and that she had never meant any of the things she had said. She told me how proud she was of who I'd become. Idiot that I am, I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I was such a fool... A grown woman and I still wanted my mommy," she sneered.

"I went to see her, thinking we were going to start over and have a real relationship. I was hardly in the door before she got to the reason she had wanted to see me: money. I guess business must have dried up," she said wryly. "I wrote her a check and got the hell out of there as fast as I could. She finally went back to Martinique and got married. I thought maybe she could be happy for once. Her husband dotes on her and gives her everything she wants. And now this..."

"I don't know what happened between the two of them, but I have no doubt that my mother was at fault. She wouldn't know goodness if it bit her in the ass. I'm sure she intends to take that poor husband of hers for all he's got, so she can come back here and pick up where she left off," Claudia said venomously.

"So that's that. Now you know exactly who I am," she finished, trying for a light tone and failing miserably.

Andrew went to her and folded her in his arms, squeezed her tight, wishing that he could take on all of her pain. He guided her to the couch and sat down with her on his lap. He held her, saying nothing, because no words seemed appropriate in the face of what she'd revealed. Andrew's mind reeled as he synthesized all he'd learned about her tonight. His primary feeling was grief; he grieved for the little girl who'd never had the stability or support that he had been able to take for granted. He grieved that her innocence had been stolen in such a cruel way. Despite the life her mother had led and the things Claudia had been exposed to, that sixteen-year-old girl had still managed to hang on to some semblance of innocence and it had been violated as wholly as if her hymen had indeed been broken that night. Yes, she had maintained her viginity, but had lost so much more. Having cared for herself and navigated life largely on her own, Claudia had always been perceived as mature for her age; but, for all that maturity, she'd still been a child. She had grown up the rest of the way when her mother hadn't provided her with comfort and reassurance after the abominable violation she'd endured. She'd emerged on the other side of that night a fully formed adult with scars and wounds that should have taken her years to acquire. It explained a lot, Andrew thought.

Anger was hard on the heels of the grief and sorrow he felt. He was enraged that a mother would willingly endanger her child. She had brought hundreds of men into that house, men she didn't know, men who could have been murderers or pedophiles. It was a miracle that nothing awful had happened before the night in question. That she'd told Claudia in such cruel terms about the circumstances surrounding her birth was inconceivable. How could any mother curse the day her child was born and tell her she wished she'd had an abortion when she had the chance? How could a mother inflict such psychic trauma on her child? He hadn't met Marcheline Beaumont, but after tonight, he harbored intense revulsion for her. He would do his damnedest to protect Claudia from being hurt by her again. He wished he could turn back the clock, so he could fight Claudia's battles for her. He wished... Well, wishing wasn't going to change anything. He'd have to do his best to help Claudia through what was destined to be a difficult visit from her mother. He wanted to stand with her as she faced this so that she would see that he was there for her no matter what. He hoped she would see that she was worth everything he had to offer and more.

He thought she might have fallen asleep in his arms and he shifted her in preparation to stand and carry her to bed.

"Don't feel sorry for me, Andrew, I don't need your pity," Claudia said, sitting up so she could look him in the eye.