And they would giggle and laugh, in the most polite of ways. Even the big burly transwoman, Honey, who towered over all of us in the heels that she always wore, even at ten in the morning.

They all had families to support, and some had children. Minah had a son, aged 10, who always glared at me with disdain. He was a scrawny little thing, with scabies all over his arms and face, who refused to learn to read or write, but who was an expert when it came to pimping for his mother. He was the one who approached potential clients, making eye contact with them and then deftly negotiating a price. There were times when I really thought that he saw me as a threat.

Then there was Jaya, who had fled from an oil-palm estate in the heart of Perak whilst she was six months pregnant with her father’s child. Nini was the centre’s darling—she was born with cerebral palsy, but she was happy and content in her crib surrounded by toys.

One day I showed up to class and found Jaya in tears with a black eye and bruises on the right side of her face.

What happened?

He slap me.

Why?

Because I ask him wear condom. He don’t want. Then he pull my hair and kick my stomach.

I just sat and hugged her, while she sobbed loudly. Nini sat and smiled in her crib.

Then I go back and wash with Clorox because he don’t want to wear the condom.

What? You wash what with Clorox?

She looked at me with eyes that told of only pain and heartbreak and they pointed downwards. So it was true. I had heard of stories of bleach and vaginas and how the girls used it to clean their insides. I could only imagine the horror of what it did to the sensitive folds of flesh, of how it tore up the mucous membranes. And then they had to continue working, with or without condoms. That night, as I lay with Omar, I thought of a pink, bloodied vagina and dreamt of a giant river of pestilence and pus.

Marina decided to go across the road to get some food. It was a Saturday night and the streets were surprisingly quiet. Marina put on a pair of shorts and a faded pink T-shirt, and slipped on a pair of plastic sandals.

The night air was cool. The weather lately had been hot, dry. Many of the girls were ill with the flu and cough. Many smoked too much but the arid heat swallowed them up in the stifling streets, creating a cocoon of confined illness. Many were also addicted to heroin. Some nights, you’d see a two or three of them shooting up in the alleyways, squatting in the dark, their presence betrayed only by the intermittent flares of cigarette lighters. Marina had never tried heroin and didn’t intend to.