Cassie Layne pulled her already practically translucent T-shirt up and over her head, and flung it into the audience of drunk, cheering men. She had to close her eyes to do it. She always had to close her eyes to do it. It was the only way Cassie could simultaneously deal with how low she'd sunk and, at the same time, continue doing it. Because, every time she closed her eyes, Cassie was blocking out the sights and sounds and smells swallowing her alive inside this fetid, sweaty strip-club, and focusing on the one thing that truly mattered: her beautiful little girl, her precious, perfect Tammy.

The state had taken Tammy away. They'd come waving their court-orders and dropping words like "unfit" and "irresponsible," and they'd ripped her baby out of Cassie's arms. Poor Tammy had been so scared, sobbing and clinging to Cassie so hard that she actually ripped a few blonde hairs out of Cassie's head when they finally wrenched her away.

Like Cassie, Tammy had first tried to be reasonable with the Social Services people. Even through her sobs, she'd tried to insist, "No, no, I want to stay with my Mommy. Please, I'll be good, I promise. Please, I want to stay with my Mommy. Please."

Her plaintive "please" was the final straw that ripped Cassie's heart out. She'd tried so hard to raise Tammy right. To teach her to be well-mannered and polite and to always use words like "please." Cassie taught Tammy to always ask nicely for things to ensure getting them. Well, here Tammy was, asking as nicely as she knew how. And here was Cassie, actually getting down on her knees to beg, "Please don't take her away from me. She's all I have. Please." And what good did it do either one of them?

Nobody cared about Cassie and Tammy. They didn't care that Cassie loved her daughter more than anything in the world, that she would never, ever let anything happen to her, that she would starve herself before Cassie let Tammy even feel a little bit hungry. All they cared about was that Cassie had no job, that her ex-husband, Rob, Tammy's father, had disappeared without so much as a trace, much less a child-support check. They thought that having no money made Cassie an unfit parent. And so they took a sobbing Tammy away, and put her in a foster home. And, worst of all, they told Cassie she wasn't allowed to see her daughter. Not until she "got her life together." Not until she got her life together the way THEY wanted her to.

Now, Cassie was pretty certain that stripping in between drunken brawls was not exactly what Social Services had in mind when they told her to get her life together. But what choice did Cassie have? It was the only job she could find. And if there was one thing that Cassie knew from her own childhood being bounced around from one foster-home to another, it was that, most of the time, Social Services equated getting your life together with having money.

And so Cassie stripped. She bet she was the only stripper in history who went through the majority of her routine with her eyes closed and her mind focused on the menagerie of stuffed animals she intended to buy for Tammy just as soon as they were reunited. Just as soon as Cassie found out where in the world her little girl was...

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