Roxy’s Story Read Online Free PDF

at inexpensive restaurants for a while, and I had enough clothing. I
     walked around with this Pollyanna belief that somehow, someway, something would happen
     that would provide me with some sort of future in which I wouldn’t be dependent on
     my parents ever again.
    But as my money began to diminish and wandering about the city lost its novelty, I
     could feel myself beginning to despair and began to sense a growing desperation festering
     beneath my breasts. Sometimes I felt hot and flushed, and sometimes I just felt numb.
     Returning at night to my dingy room only reinforced this growing depression and melancholy.
     How low had I sunk? Where could I go from here? Had I lost my senses? Had my pride
     blinded me to reality? I didn’t want to answer any of those questions.
    Even so, I’d lie there at night, forbidding myself even to think of going home and
     begging for mercy, despite how many times I actually set out to do so, leaping off
     the rotten bed and charging toward the door. I never opened it. I stood staring at
     thedoorknob and then retreated when I imagined the expression on Papa’s face coming back
     at me in wave after wave, his angry smile rippling through my eyes and into my brain.
    Even after hearing someone try to open my door at night, something that would surely
     terrify any other girl, I remained determined and stubborn. I was confident that I
     could deal with anything unpleasant. Where did I get the fortitude? Was it from my
     father? Should I be grateful to him for that, at least? Could I ever admit to being
     grateful to him for anything? Just thinking about it made me even more miserable.
     I was there because of him, and I could survive there because of him, but I didn’t
     want either, not really.
    To feel better about all this, I tried to call up images of my parents suffering.
     Surely they were both up all night thinking about me out on the cold, indifferent
     streets. Perhaps they feared that I had already been mugged, raped, or murdered. Now
     that time had passed, days had gone by, and I had not come home with my tail between
     my legs, my mother surely had become more frantic. She was crying, pleading every
     day, maybe even demanding that my father do something. Maybe they were at the stage
     where they weren’t talking to each other, and every time Emmie asked about me, my
     mother would just break into hysterics, driving my father out of the house. He was
     suffering, I told myself. He had to be. He could put on his act, pretend to be strong
     and indifferent, but he was tossing and turning when he went to bed, maybe even taking
     sleeping pills, and all day, he was regrettinghis rage, regretting what he had done. I convinced myself that his bitterness was
     eating him up inside.
    Convincing myself of all this did make me feel better for a short while, but the stench
     of the room, the ugly sounds from outside, the crying I heard frequently coming through
     the walls from other rooms, and the sight of other, far more lost young girls already
     down some path of drugs and prostitution, their complexions blotchy, their necks dirty,
     their eyes full of fear and dread, sickened me and filled me with new despair.
    Was I looking at my immediate future? I couldn’t get over the growing feeling that
     I was somehow dwindling and disappearing. I would soon lose my name, and one day,
     I would look into the smoky, cracked mirror in the rusty bathroom and be unable to
     recognize myself. The girl looking back at me wasn’t the girl with stubborn pride
     anymore. She was a shadow of who she had been, a corpse on the prowl.
    This really was a hotel for the dead, I thought. I had crossed over into Hades. The
     people living in it didn’t realize who and what they had become. Soon I could be one
     of them, moving like people in a chain gang, drudging their way through the muck of
     their own making. They struggled to get up the stairs and to their rooms—or tombs,
     I should say. Some of