Sales

• Tara Choyce, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

My day starts as it ends, with me standing on a street trying to put food on the table, my family doesn’t know about my job, I don’t want them to know. My field of work isn’t the most… respected field of work out there, its something that people look down their noses at. People scoff, spit and generally hate the people that do what I do; being one of those girls who were looked down on because they had no other choice isn’t an option for me. I want to have a life outside of my job, outside of something that I had no choice with.
Its used to be different, back when dad was still here, we used to live in a moderate house that just screamed ‘family’, we had a little garden out the front with flowers in it, there was a children’s swing set and my innocence was fully intact. Then dad got a promotion at work, which at the time I thought was great but then he started to stay at work later and eventually he stayed out for weeks at a time. Then the inevitable happened he left us for his bimbo secretary and everything went downhill. My Mum started drinking and spending all our money at bars. My brothers, sisters and I had to get jobs but in the end it wasn't enough, we needed more money to survive. So I did what I had to do, I took to the streets, to the corner and ever since then I was one of those people, the one's who sold themselves, the type of person you would talk about with disgust.
I go home every night and scrub myself clean but still every night I feel impure, unclean and it's like I will never be able to sleep again. I'll never be able to be me again thanks to what I had to do to help my family survive, but that's okay because now my family can do what they want to do. That makes it okay to me. My family will always come first even if I have to sell myself.
The field in which my job is in is Sales.