America 1982-Chapter 130 - 40: Calm Susan

Thirty-two-year-old Vanessa was sitting on the living room couch, folding freshly dried clothes, while seven or eight children ran around the living room, dining area, and bedrooms causing a ruckus. Two quieter girls were treating the walls as their canvas, intently drawing graffiti indistinguishable from the works of abstract artists.

These children belonged to the neighbors, who had to work in the citrus orchards and hence had entrusted their children to her for paid childcare.

At that moment, the television was featuring Bob Costa selling a weight-loss cola. Vanessa had nothing but disdain for the product. She didn’t believe such a cola existed and, even if it did, she had no intention of buying it. Her husband came home every day exhausted from tending to the fruit trees in the orchard, lying in bed like a corpse after dinner, showing no interest in her whatsoever.

All she wanted was to buy some cheap cereals or food to fill the stomachs of these little devils as economically as possible, so she could save more on childcare fees. Sooner or later, she hoped to use the money she saved to start a small business to stop the ridicule from her farmer husband, who had married a daughter of privilege unable to do even the simplest peasant work.

In Florida, where the citrus production made up eighty percent of the entire United State America’s output, most lower-class women worked alongside their husbands in the orchards. After all, as long as you were willing to work hard, it was impossible not to find a job here, even for women.

But Vanessa didn’t want to be a farmer; she was not content because she had once been a pink-collar worker, with greater social status and presence than her husband.

Pink-collar referred to a job category exclusively for women, positioned between blue-collar and white-collar, for non-professional female service workers.

She used to be a pink-collar nurse at a senior home, a job with decent income and benefits, until the damned equal rights movement emerged and caused her to lose the job she thought she could keep until retirement. Ever since then, she was mocked by her husband.

She had not understood why American women sought gender equality, only to realize later that those who proposed such concepts were the wives of the wealthy, politicians’ wives, and a host of other women who could live comfortably without working. The women in her circle, scraping by on meager wages, had no desire for equality.

Why pursue equality? Why strive for equal rights and opportunities without regard for gender? This meant women being enlisted in the military, women not automatically gaining the courts’ sympathy and winning custody of their children during divorces, working as many hours as men, and losing the protective measures tailored for women...

Those women claimed that females should be equal to men in all aspects, without any protective legislation, to gain the same respect and independence as men.

These women, who didn’t need to work, set off a trend, a nationwide response that even Vanessa naively supported, only to find herself and many other unskilled pink-collar workers jobless.

The senior home had actively embraced the movement by canceling the special benefits for female nurses, such as six-hour work days, no night shifts, and not having to deal with lecherous old men alone. The grinning manager told her he supported the equal rights movement and respected their choice: female nurses must work the same eight-hour shifts as male nurses, take regular night shifts, and care for the elderly alone. If they failed to meet these requirements, they would be dismissed equitably, just like the male attendants.

Her unemployed female colleagues had said that this seeming pro-women’s independence and equality movement was definitely a conspiracy plotted by wealthy, contemptible women.

Vanessa had no doubts about that, as it made life even harder for lower-class women who had no education, no knowledge, no protective policies, less physical strength than men, yet had to compete for jobs on an equal footing. They had no chance to climb higher, to attain a life and status like those wealthy women and forever remained appendages to men.

Those women who initiated this movement would never be unemployed, and could live quite comfortably without ever working. They lost nothing and even gained attention.

"My name is Susan Curtis, from San Jose, California. Not long ago, I was a prostitute," a woman’s voice came from the TV.

I was a prostitute, this phrase instantly caused Vanessa to fix her gaze on the screen, then she confidently judged for herself: That woman was definitely not a prostitute, at least not the low-level kind she had seen.

On the TV, the woman who looked to be about twenty-four or twenty-five, was dressed simply in a black T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, with her brown hair neatly tied back, and confidently smiling as she sat on the couch next to Bob.

"You don’t look like that kind of woman, Susan. May I call you Susan?" Bob asked on Vanessa’s behalf.

Susan laughed and handed over a copy of "Seeking Pleasure" magazine to Bob: "The California edition of ’Seeking Pleasure.’ I know there is a Florida version too, so Bob, you must be familiar with this kind of magazine, right?"

"...What can I say? You’re putting me in a difficult spot. Familiar or not familiar? I have a girlfriend, and she might be watching me on TV right now, Susan." Bob forced a smile as he took the magazine: "What about this magazine?"

"This is a magazine from five months ago, turn to the tenth page, the fourth advertisement in the regular order, see what it says and read it out loud," Susan said to Bob.

Bob turned to the page in the magazine as instructed by Susan and then revealed a shocked expression, "Oh my~"

Then he stood the magazine up to face the camera, and the camera instantly zoomed in for a closer view. Vanessa clearly saw on the TV, an advertisement next to the picture of a woman with heavy makeup striking a provocative pose. Without having to look closely at the advertising copy, just the photo itself made Vanessa recognize that the woman in the picture was indeed the same as Susan on the TV.

"I borrowed money from a friend to post my own call girl advertisement, choosing what I thought was the most satisfying photo of myself at the time," Susan said confidently, looking at the magazine in Bob’s hands with a laugh, "Now looking back, it’s pretty awful."

Bob nodded, "Of course, if you weren’t here beside me and I just looked at this photo alone, I might still think it’s not bad, but now... What happened to you? Susan? In just five months, you’ve completely transformed."

"I have indeed changed. I was a prostitute for five years. I thought that for the rest of my life I would only be able to huddle in that shabby room in the slums where I could only enjoy the sun at sunset, lying in bed too scared to go out, afraid of being killed or missing a call from a client. I would just rot and mold away in that room until I died. But one evening, I saw a strange advertisement, and my fate changed," Susan took out another copy of "Seeking Pleasure," and handed it to Bob:

"It’s on the back cover this time."

"Free computer training, free job recommendations..." Bob displayed the advertisement from the second magazine and simultaneously exaggeratedly said, "Who would place such an advertisement in... I mean, shouldn’t it appear in more serious magazines and newspapers?"

Susan looked towards the audience with a serene smile: "A person who genuinely wanted to help poor women placed his advertisement in ’Seeking Pleasure.’ At the time, I was just as curious as you, so I made the call, intending to mock such an idiotic deed. But as it turned out, the advertisement didn’t deceive me, nor did he. He taught me computer skills for free, recommended me for jobs for free, and even because I got an A during the free training, I received a computer as a reward from him."

"You get a gift for scoring an A? I feel like enrolling right now. The cheapest new computer costs six hundred bucks," Bob said exaggeratedly.

Susan looked at Bob, shook her head slightly, and continued with a smile: "It’s not just about gifts, Bob. I, who previously had an unstable income, now earn a weekly salary of $270, live in a clean and bright room, have health insurance, a pension, vacations. I even became a partner in a small company, owning shares, and I chose to join him in his mission to help more women. So far, we have helped nearly a hundred women, who, like me, had no competitive power in society, complete computer training, and secured them stable jobs in various tech companies earning no less than $200 a week. They are not just non-professional pink-collar workers earning a bit over a hundred bucks a week. They are professional white-collar workers."

"You are different from the other guests, Susan. My previous guests were always very emotional, either jumping around or crying. In short, they would do anything to draw attention, to garner sympathy or whatever. But you’ve remained very calm," Bob asked Susan curiously.

"I am doing the right thing. When you know you are doing something right, you feel calm inside, neither too happy nor sad. I’m not educated; I don’t understand what all those decades of talking about women’s rights mean. But I do know, the thing I’m doing right now is genuinely helping women, helping the poor. OSS gave me a chance to be reborn, closing the knowledge gap between me and those rich people. He told me that as long as I was willing to work hard, I could always change my miserable life. This is the right thing, no matter how sales go, we will keep doing it. I come from the bottom, I have faced all the hardships, so I want to help them." Susan looked directly into the camera:

"I am Susan Curtis, and I am willing to take responsibility for everything I’ve said. In the end, for just $49.99, give you who are longing for a change an opportunity for a different life."

When Vanessa saw this scene, she immediately grabbed the phone and dialed the shopping number displayed on the TV.

"OK, although the tone is very calm, it contains powerful confidence and strength, Susan. In your speech, you mentioned a ’he.’ Would you mind telling me who he is?" Bob asked.

Susan nodded, "Of course. He is the man who changed my fate, the only man willing to give me guidance in life after my father passed away. A student from Stanford University, the founder of Actor Corporation, the developer of OSS software, a country boy willing to help all the poor, Tommy Hawk."

Before Bob could loudly call for Tommy Hawk to come on stage, he already received a tip from the director through his earpiece:

"We sold one hundred and fifty-two units before this woman even finished speaking, and the numbers keep increasing. I don’t think it’s a good idea to interrupt her. Let her keep talking, Bob."

While the camera focused on Susan, Bob turned away to switch off his microphone, and whispered:

"This woman is just his disciple. Believe me, the guy coming up next has an even greater power to influence. I’ve seen it for myself."