Violent Despair
It’s a short life full of sickness, violence and fear. The customers I really don’t like are the ones that come after they have been drinking and gambling up in Fan-tan alley. If I don’t get a beating from my pimp it will be from them.
The customers which are headed to interior BC to look for gold or build the railway are the best because they don’t know when the next time they will see a female.
In this business the girls don’t live past 20; if it’s not the abuse, it’s syphilis that will steals your life. Bruises heal but there is no cure for syphilis.
It is not fair to see the young ones catch it. There is a 7 years old girl in here who caught the fatal disease. Inside I am secretly happy because she wont have to live through this life of despair.
Bad abortions are something I fear too. A girl I worked with had a fairly tidy abortion, no haemorrhaging and when she was almost finished paying off the operation to the pimp, she got an infection and the fever took her life in a day.
But I am hopeful that to live past the years I owe on the contract to my pimp. It is up in 3 years and then I am free to marry a nice Chinese man, if I don’t die before then. Marrying is my only choice. Some of the Chinese women are seamstresses but I didn't have a mother to teach me.
A girl here got tuberculosis a little while ago. I knew she was going to pass away soon so I took her to Christian ladies home. They like to ‘rescue’ Chinese and Native prostitutes. They tell me about a kingdom in heaven where there are no pimps and disease, where I can go to if I listen to their stories and pray with them. It is hard for me to believe anything after I was told I was going to Gold Mountain and I ended up in hell.
