She was young ,hip, and beautiful with a fine- boned body and smooth , chocolate brown skin.

Her face was like a goddess with her sloe eyes and full sensual lips painted red to match her red dress that clung to her body like a second coat of paint.

As she listened to a black trumpet player belting out a soulful blues number in the smoky joint.her mind turned to her child staying at a kind neighbour’s home, a tear trickled down the corner of her eye .She hated this job, selling her body , but she had to live and with her little schooling and a baby as well ,she had no choice but to do this despicable thing to survive in this dreadful ghetto she called home .

She sipped her drink slowly from a long ,slim glass. as she waited for her first clients to arrive.  Inevitably, they did ,one after another, through the night ,lustful men venting their lust and frustrations into her young fresh body.

Afterwards she always felt dirty,cheated,degraded ,every moral fibre in her being screamed out against it ,but the forces of survival were too powerful to resist ,so she succumbed .She must live was her dominant thought, if not for her self ,then for her baby ,so with this thought in mind she endured the onslaughts of the lustful, lecherous men bitterly .

Feeling filthy and debased ,she made her way back home into the indifferent night .

As she collected her baby from the neighbour,thoughts of ending it all flitted through her mind ,but a stronger voice whispered “Don’t be a fool ! you must survive ! you are young and alive ,better days are ahead !” After attending to her child she took a warm shower and went to bed and cried herself to sleep dreading to face another day in the filthy, sickening degrading ghetto!

She was only sixteen !