The Seduction Of Claudia by Antoinette Chauvet Page B

happened, adjusted his clothes and left my room. I heard him walk into the living room to get his keys and he left the house."
    "I lay there feeling violated and scared, gasping for breath. I finally got up, took a shower and scrubbed his filth off of me," she said emotionlessly. Andrew was worried about her. She didn't seem to register the horror of any of what she was telling him. She relayed the incident almost as though it had happened to someone else.
    "I waited up until Maman came home and I told her what had happened. She didn't exactly have the reaction I had wanted her to have." Claudia said dolefully. With a sneer in her voice she continued,
    "She didn't take me in her arms, soothe me and tell me that everything was going to be OK. Nooo, not my mother. Instead, she said that she was sorry it had happened the way it had, but that I had to learn about what was between men and women some time, and the sooner the better. Then, she went over to a little antique snuffbox that sat on the mantelpiece and took off the lid. She took something out of it and turned around to face me. She was beaming with pride as she held out two crisp hundred dollar bills. She said, 'Well, well, bébé, looks like I've got a little competition. You earned double what he usually pays; he must have liked you,chére.' "
    Andrew's heart broke.
    Finally, she turned away from the fire to look at him.
    "Again, I was frozen with shock. I'd had no idea that she took money from all those men. I knew she slept with them and that she accepted gifts from time to time, but I never knew she took money for what she did. It took me a moment to put all the pieces together."
    "She must have seen the wheels turning in my head as I made sense of it. She asked me where I thought my clothes came from, how I thought we could afford to live in the neighborhood we lived in, where did I think the money came from to pay for my flute and my music lessons... I was speechless. My mother was a whore. A prostitute. A high-priced, very selective one, to be sure, but a prostitute is still a prostitute, right?"
    Andrew sat quietly, knowing that her question was rhetorical. He didn't respond because he knew that anything he said would sound trite and contrived. He was horrified. He ached for her, wanted more than anything to erase all of the hurt she had endured. He watched her as she stood facing him, looking at him, but not seeing him. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but held back sensing that she needed to have her say.
    "I lashed out at her, got right in her face and called her a whore. She slapped me then. Over and over, knocking my head back and forth as she struck me. She told me I was complicit in what she did because she did it for me. She told me I was guilty, too. She screamed at me, telling me that I was no better than her, that I was more like her than I realized, that what had happened that night proved it."
    Her voice trailed off as she tried to compose herself. Her shoulders heaved as she took a few deep breaths. With an effort, she continued talking.
    "I stood there and let her hit me, let her attack me in every way she knew how. I stood there and it was like something in me clicked off. I numbed out and couldn't feel or hear a thing... I guess she must have been waiting for me to respond to something she said, because the next thing I knew, she was pulling my hair, yanking my head all around and her face was right next to mine as she screamed at me that it was my fault, everything was my fault. She cursed my father, cursed the day I was born. Told me I was ungrateful and didn't deserve the breath I drew. She told me that she should have aborted me..." Her voice broke.
    Andrew stood up from his seat on the couch, determined to stop her from reliving the awful scene from her childhood. With a sharp motion of her hand, Claudia stopped him from approaching her, gestured for him to sit again.
    She pressed on. "She had hoped