The frigid air pierces through my felt pea coat, sending cold shivers down my body. I dig my hands deeper into my pockets and tuck my chin deeper into my collar. My 6 inch stiletto heels click against the pavement, crunching in the freshly fallen snow.

A group of drunken men catcall and holler at me from across the street. I feel their eyes slide up my body like sludge, clinging to the bend in my knee, the curve of my lower back, the hint of copper skin at the nape of my neck, the cascade of thick, luscious hair. I stop by a window and stare at the woman peering back at me. Her warm, chestnut eyes starkly juxtapose her steely gaze, weathered and hardened over years of struggles, pain and disappointments. 

I check into work just as the sun slips below the horizon. I take a deep breath and smoky, acrid air tinged with the smell of alcohol and the pungent odour of cheap perfume fill my lungs, a polyphony of clinking glasses and obnoxious voices fill my ears. Shaking off my coat, I stride into the room. 

  I join the other unfortunate women, lined up against the wall, teetering in their high heels, faces heavily made up, bodies frail, skin shivering, totally naked in the flickering light from the fluorescent tubes. The fat, greasy men file past us, lazily inspecting us, eyes catching on the nubile breasts of one, the sloping shoulders of another, the curve of a third’s waist. We are prized fish in a supermarket: lined up behind a glass, our glossy eyes stare blankly at the wall ahead, copper skin sleek and shiny in the dingy light, waiting to be deemed fit for dinner. 

        These women were so weighed down by all their grief that they couldn’t pull themselves up, couldn’t straighten their hunched backs, bowed under the weight of their sorrows and misfortunes. These women continued to bear the weight of Indigenous people’s inaudible history on their backs, very often passing away under that weight in silence.

A stubby, pink finger with a filthy nail points at my body. The gold ring on his fourth finger twinkles in the purple tinged light. This process repeats for the entire night. The early morning is the worst. The crazies, the obnoxious drunks, the insomniacs fueled by alcohol replace the unhappily married, benign men. One girl walked out last night. Her skin was too delicate: she couldn’t bear the weight. She left, head bowed for us who stayed behind, the girls who had the strength to strip the money of its power. 

At the end of the night, I held the door for another worker as she was leaving. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, and was stunningly beautiful despite her misty eyes, bruised jaw and smeared makeup. I wanted to be a heroine to this girl, to open the world to her, to show her that life has more to offer than this tiny, grimy rat hole. We walked together to the bus stop, her tattered sneakers soaking up the late January slush. With eyes focused on the sidewalk, we didn’t see each other so that our conversation was actually a collection of confessions. Holding nothing back, she described her experiences honestly from the perspective of a juvenile for whom prostitution is merely a question of adults and money: an act in exchange for a dollar and fifteen-cent meal.