The madam

     The room was draped in red velvet. Gold tassels moved slightly in the soft breeze of a bayou spring. Dark wooden couches and high back chairs would soon be filled with men who came in the darkness to satisfy their needs. The liquor flowed freely, and cigar smoke left dying clouds of smoke, a sweet sickening smell mixed with sweat and no concern.

     The ladies of the night lined the wall waiting to be chosen for a few minutes of disgust and a few paper bills that the madam took for safe keeping. She loved her girls, each one hand-picked from a slave boat that visited once a year with promises made but never kept.

     She taught them how to please a man while thinking of their freedom that would never come. She could be seen walking the halls listening to groans of pleasure from pot-bellied men making sure no harm came to her pretty young things. This was the way it was, night after night, her bosom growing larger with paper bills.

     The early morning opened shutters, and windows clearing the room of smoke and smells of drunken men with the scent of her girls following them home to plain wives and a daytime life. It wasn't the life she chose, but it was a needed position that she filled with grace and sometimes anger. She walked the silent halls of the morning, blowing out candles and pulling piles of paper bills from her bosom half smiling, half angered at the amount earned. 

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