1000 word excerpt
Chapter 1

Our stage coach driver was drunk or asleep, probably both because we were only a half mile from the end of the line at Borisburg, Kansas where we hope to catch a ride with a wagon train. My mother heard one was forming there and there might be, but my mother is sometimes gullible from lack of experience.

She and I are the only passengers on this sweltering coach ride where the heat forces us to breathe through our mouths. The driver must have been dozing for he idiotically let the team cut the corner of a sharp turn where there is a huge rock in plain view. Our left rear wagon wheel slammed into it. It broke the wheel and the stage turned over and I tumbled to feel my crown hit hard on the oak stay of the roof. I floundered dazed seeing a kaleidoscope of colors.

I guess mother was awake as she is loaded with the vitality and the spirit to tolerate a miserable hot and dirty stage ride across the country. People think shes in her early teens because of her exciting beauty, which is more all right with her than it is with me as I really have to protect her. Mother is, incredibly, 24 now, and people believe she is only my few years older sister. Most guess her, 15.

Mother used to entertain at the Where House and never roamed the docks at New Orleans, like I did, to observe the cruel things men do, though shes an expert on sex, well aware men would love to mate her. One obviously got her pregnant when she was a child, just by sitting on his lap, to produce me. Now I have to look after her.

Many of the Where House girls arent accommodating men just for the money as most are hooked on that intangible feminine mystique, to bed some customers for free at our Where House in New Orleans. It was a shock to realize my adorable mother was as cursed, though she mischievously assured me, it was blessed, having the same urgent desire for men, same as adult men exhibit for females.

Now Im mature, nearly 13 I realize Pookie needs my protection. There is such a thing of a girl being too damn pretty. Attractive, miserably fails to describe Pookie, as she is erotically gorgeous. People impolitely stare at her! Id be in love with her even if she wasnt my mother, whom, of course, I already love as my only parent.

Mother cusses and uses all the dirty swear words taught her by wicked pirates and sailors from the wharf, since she was a little tyke. Her mother was a prostitute at the New Orleans Where House, but she raised mother just to be an entertainer there. Singing, dancing and playing the piano she more or less led a sheltered life as an entertainer under the Where House guards protection. She didnt dare roam around town or the docks without armed protection; she would have been abducted into white slavery the first block out alone. She never knew her beauty could get her killed until a sadist started skinning her with a whip.

I frequently remind her she is very desirable to all kinds of men. She smiles and admits she knows it, but continues to let me worry as she flirtatiously remains lark-happy to be desired by all the bawdy sailors and raunchy pirates who patronize the Where House.

As the stage rolled over onto its top my mother evidently had braced herself as she threw the door, then horizontal above her head, open, and climbed out on the side of the coach cussing like a pirate. She knows swear words most people have never heard. Ive heard them as she has used them on me when she catches me trying to protect her. The only thing shes never called me is a sonofabitch, after a first time. She laughed at the joke on herself. Mammy Tumu, who nursed me milk when I was born, lectured my mother, I heard her say, Pookie, everything you say gotta cuss word in it. That was true. Her ribald audience got a kick out hearing her repeat dirty words when she was tickle-size, and sitting on the laps of immorally teasing pirates and sailors.

Pookie also uses cuss words to emphasize she means what she says. I didnt see much of her as she worked a lot of hours and slept in her time off. Piano lessons and practice took lots of her time so she can play remarkably well, and sing beautifully. Her melodic voice froze people who stopped whatever they were doing to listen. The first time I peeked in a Where House window I was mortified to see her playing and singing in a skimpy dress that she later shed to do a provocative dance in the lounge, wearing only a smile.

Everybody thought it was funny that I was embarrassed for her. She was the stellar attraction of the models protectively escorted around the docks to entice sailors and pirates to come up to the big Where House.