Love In A Time Of War

Chapter 1: My life

New Orleans:1860

"Aren't you a pretty little thing. Want some money?" Men on Bourbon Street ask me, as their wives cook frog potions and drink from flasks. Children cough and beg for money. Women prostitute as rich carriages run by. I dart down the alley to my job off of Bourbon and open the door. Back home my eight year old daughter suffers from a paralyzed condition she's had  since she was born. Making clothes in this factory is hard work. My fingers are run ragged from all the sewing and my feet are tired from walking to work in the cold, heat or snow. It's possibly the worst feeling in the world, but I don't see another way. I sit down at my station and begin sewing tiny little seams on a ugly green fabric. Someone will take this and wear it until the threads come undone. A woman like myself who works from sun up to sun down.

Hours later the sweltering heat is still in the air as I strip  down to my corset and one of the regular customers, a man named Isaac leads me to a room and closes the door. He's not bad looking, and he's not rough with me as I crawl onto the bed and he pulls the curtain around. This job lasts for about two hours with the last man, a young man who leaves me about $20 and then leaves the room. I button my dress back up and then gather my money and head back home. It's night time now, around 8:00 and the men selling potions are gone, replaced with a gang of wild men going to saloons to drink. At last I reach my home. A cottage, if you will not far from Bourbon Street. I walk in and collapse on the bed, prepared to do it all again the next day.