D4 :: Imogen "Iggy" Avé

i've been up all night
tryna get that rich
i've been work work work work
w o r k i n g
on my shit

No money, no family. I was sixteen when I wound up in the community home, the orphaned daughter of a crackhead maid working in a rundown motel — the kind used less for sleeping and more for sleeping around. Before she overdosed, she used to take me with her so I could scrub the bathroom floors while she laid down in the empty bathtub and had a smoke. Always told me what a good girl I was, so strong and hard working, and that I'd never end up like her, even though I was a hard-knock high school dropout with no-good parents and empty pockets. My life would be different. Said she'd had dreams about me when she was pregnant and saw me living in a great big house and walking with fancy heels on my feet. Mothers are clairvoyant, she told me, as if I'd ever been in school long enough to understand what she was on about or have a fighting chance at finding out.

When the home took me in, I had cigarette burns all up one arm and a bald patch on my scalp where a handful of hair had been ripped out. If my mother could see the future, then I guess I inherited something of that from her. The day she died, I saw it coming and tried to toss her crystal candy out with the motel trash, but she was a bloodhound when it came to glass and stole it back out from the bins, none too happy about my stunt. You can still see a couple of the scars scattered across my pale skin, puckered pink polka dots I have to smooth over with makeup every day before work. The lady running the orphanage took one look at my damage and wrote me off as a lost cause. I couldn't tell her she was wrong.

For a while she tried to put me back in school and I went, ducking my head every time the teacher asked for an answer, knowing I didn't have one. I kept my momma's old job for a year, working nights to save up enough scratch to run away and look for something better than what I was living. Maybe it looked like I was going through the motions of being her, but each new day and dollar was my getaway, because I didn't need an education to figure out that things had to change before I started repeating her mistakes. Where I wound up might not be anything to brag about, but at least it's my own.

These days I'm bottle blonde like my momma never was, masquerading as though I've got a head full of sunshine and not the darker truth. While I can't get rid of the burnt memories of her that color my eyes, no one seems to look closely enough to see her in me there. In my line of work customers don't care much about my soul so long as the wide curve of my hips keeps its shape, distracted by the way the blinding stage lights ache to skin me alive for their pleasure. The other girls swear that what we do is called dancing, but I don't care who says what or how much dirt, glitter, and shame I have to wash off my face at the end of the night, just so long as my pockets are heavy with paper when I head home.

After each shift at the club I set just enough money aside for rent and food, rolling the rest up and tucking it beneath a loose floorboard, just like I used to. I left the community home in the dark and aimed for the light, not realizing I was unable to tell the difference between an electric ceiling and the daytime sky. It's alright; I still can't. All of it looks about the same to me — too bright to look or to look away. At least the so-called Ferry Man who runs this joint doesn't make me scrub the floors and the only meth-head I have to worry about is the girl who sells it to hard partiers, her hands wandering devilishly if I walk too close by the booth she haunts.

Really, it's not hard work — pour a few drinks, blow on the dice of the superstitious gamblers, and shimmy a bit while wearing fake diamonds and feathers — just so long as I don't think about the way I hate myself for it. All I've ever wanted was a life that was my own, but over and over again I keep winding up at the beck and call of other people. So many of the recent ones look up at me from their drinks as though they think I could change their lives, but how could I do that when I'm still trying to figure out how to change my own?

I don't want to be a daydreamer. Sometimes the girls I work with catch me staring into space while putting mascara on or doodling on scraps of trashed paper and ask what has me lost in my imagination. They say it like whatever it is I'm thinking about could never be real and I hate they way they're probably right. My thoughts get caught up in what that big house my momma told me I would wind up living in might look like or how a pair of expensive heels could change the way I walk to be something different from the cheap ones I take the stage in. Those things could be a real future, but not for a girl like me.

Instead I've got a basement apartment with a stained ceiling and a nearly empty fridge. I've been making decent money lately, but I can't help scrimping hard like the old days so I can stash just that much more away. Every night I work and I work hard — shaking my hips with the same kind of frantic rhythm I used to scrub floors with. People look at me and think all sorts of things without knowing a thing about the kind of place I'm from, but one of these days I'm going to pry up those floorboards and make another run for it. This time I'll do it right and leave it all behind. This time, I'll buy myself a new life.

every night
i'mma do it like it's my
l a s t
this dream is all that I need
cause it's all that I ever had