Free One Safe Place by Alvin L. A. Horn

detail would be needed soon.
    â€œMs. Evita, I could put your car under the cover in the parking garage. If not, I have a spot right over there in the first outdoor slot; you won’t have to wait when you come out.”
    â€œThank you, Phoenix, and as always, please put my car under the cover. Keep it under a hundred if you take it out.” They laughed and came close to hugging, but shook hands instead. She remembered Phoenix could be inappropriate and Evita didn’t play. Phoenix, a naturalized citizen from Canada, had been a runaway at an early age and became prey to pimps and drugs. At first, Phoenix thrived in the program, but it became a revolving door of problems. Other kids became targets for Phoenix’s sexual conquests and preying on the weak-minded, until Evita evicted Phoenix from the program. It took a few short prison stays, but Phoenix finally broke free from the streets, and Evita helped out by finding her this job.
    With each step leading to the entrance, Evita felt her behind moving under her tight skirt. It couldn’t be helped. Her large behind and swayback put on a show under her clothes. Evita wished she could wear heels and expose her shapely calves, but scars distracted from the toned features. If she wore heels, she’d wear pantsuits. The only time her legs were bare was in the house, or when she and Psalms visited a foreign land. All her clothes looked classy and sexy, but were also designed to hide cuts, burns, and scars. She had pretty, perfect feet with no scars, but could only expose them when she wore pants.
    A few times in public, she wore sheer dark stockings with a thick line up the back. The tattoo work on her legs had colors to distract away from the scars. All her life, someone else had dictated her clothing, her sexuality, and her impression of her own beauty. Evita had bits and pieces of her ideas of outward beauty ripped off her mental bones.
    Young Evita dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl to the point that even Catholic nuns would have forced her to release a little sex appeal. Growing up, her abusive father made her dress extremely conservative. Even on Saturdays, she dressed as if she were a nurse in a 1950s mental asylum.
    She owned three skirts: tan, blue, and plaid. Nowadays, it was rare if she wore blues or tans, and for her, plaid had the same effect as someone swallowing sour milk. The sad child had three blouses: white with a frilly collar, white with short sleeves, and white with ruffles. Even old ladies shook their heads in disapproval at a teenage girl wearing patent-leather shoes. She always wore black or white patent-leather shoes, or brown or blue oxfords that were two-toned with white uppers and looked to be polished with dull nurse’s shoe polish. She had one Sunday dress and she wore it every Sunday.
    Evita’s mother was a timid little lady with African-American and Native-American blood, and hair so long she could sit on it. Most thought she was Filipino. Her father, a black man, was a dock worker who drank and stayed high on painkillers. When he couldn’t get enough painkillers for an old work injury, he would become like a hungry wolf—crazed—and he would whoop his wife with switches from a tree that he forced Evita to go pull off. Evita would offer herself as a sacrifice to protect her mother, but that sometimes resulted in mother and daughter both receiving awhooping and other abuse. As with all the families living on 38th Avenue South, life seemed subdued and uneventful, but, behind many closed doors, monsters lived.
    Evita’s homely clothes caused her to be bullied, and she became cautiously shy, and awkward. Ugly-souled children, and some adults, verbally tortured Evita with many unpleasant incidents. Psalms beat down males who mocked her, and gave thug girls sinister stares that said, “I dare you to bother Evita.”
    From birth, life for Evita was different levels of hell. Hell One was her bipolar daddy