It had only been a short while in her new bedroom before her uncle had joined her, sitting beside her on the lumpy bed roll and sighing hard. The room was sparse, cramped by the frame of the bed and a small table beside it. One small window and the only other furniture was a spindly chair that barely looked like it could hold weight.
"I miss your father already."
She nodded silent agreement, her small bag of personal items clutched into her belly as she stared forward.
"Your papa was a good man."
She knew that. She also knew that he was very different from her uncles. And she knew that all while he'd been sick he had been terrified of them being sent to this uncle in particular. But he'd been the only Salamis brother able to support another three females, so they had been sent to him.
She was just thankful her little sister had been safely sent off to school for the rest of the year. That kept her out of the mix. But Tasha had graduated the year before, finding small jobs to help bring in money while she mentored at a printers. There was still ink staining the pads of her fingers.
Her uncle lifted a hand then, rubbed her back softly. She froze at the feel of it and kept staring ahead, wary of his touch and how close he was sitting.
"Do you have any suitors, Tasha?"
She swallowed hard, felt air go down her throat like a solid rock. "Not yet, Uncle."
"You work?" He asked, his hand flat between her shoulder blades as he leaned closer. She didn't fight when he took her bag from her, almost relieved when he stood and took the two steps needed to reach the door. He set the bag on the hook at the back of the door.
"Some. I do small jobs and mentor at -"
"No mentoring. No unpaid work. We can't have you wasting time when you could be earning money. We have mouths to feed, yes?"
She nearly flinched, tears already forming in her eyes as he stepped back toward her, pressing into her knees. The room felt even smaller as he loomed over her but she knew she had nowhere to go.
"Yes, Uncle."
"Maybe in time," he softened, seeing her tears, touching her hair and making her tuck back. "Maybe if you please your uncle. But not now, alright?"
She just nodded, lifting a hand to wipe at her tears.
He caught her fingers before she could lower them again and pulled them toward himself, making her look up sharply.
"Let's begin now. Please your uncle, Tasha."
She cried harder as he undid his belt with the free hand and pressed her fingers inside his pants, sobbing when she touched his flacid penis.
"Take it out," he told her. "Earn your bed, sweetheart."
*
She could hear her mother's moans, long and sad, either groaning or high pitched in pain. They had been bringing tears to her eyes for more than ten minutes.
Their rooms couldn't have been far from each other, likely even sharing a wall. Tasha buried her face in her bed roll and tried to pull the thin blanket over her head to block the guttural and pleased sounds her uncle was also making.
For every moan of her mother's she could hear him groaning and grunting. Luckily whatever he was saying to the older woman was just garbled enough, muffled by the wall between them.
At least until a loud, "Stick it back in!" preceded a slap, a yelp, and then the sounds of bodies joining wetly again. She could hear the other bed creak and rock and she did her best to stuff her head farther down, her arms over the blanket.
She knew he would come to her soon and demand the same. That was the cost of living in his house. But without money or anything left to sell she really had nowhere else to go.
This was what her father had been so afraid of happening.
She promised herself that she wouldn't cry when he came to her. At least not in front of him.
*
"Shhh," he whispered when she jumped at his touch in the dark. "Just lay still. I'm not going to hurt you."
"My mother -"
"Your mama asked me to fuck her," he said conversationally, climbing onto the small bed behind her and making her stomach turn. "She said your papa hadn't fucked her proper in months. I'm sorry you had to hear that Tasha but it's just life. It happens everywhere."
