Girls Like Us (22 page)

One night, I’m facilitating a focus group with the girls in our program for a city research study. One of the questions is: While you were in the life, do you remember an adult who tried to help you? While the conversation has been animated and raucous up till now, with girls weighing in excitedly on pimps, johns, and cops, the room goes silent. Finally, Jessica speaks. “This trick took me to a house and he brought a whole bunch of other guys, like maybe fifteen guys, and they all were raping me and I was crying and crying. And one guy wouldn’t rape me and he helped me find my clothes. I guess he felt bad cos I was crying.”

She was grateful. Not because he stopped the other guys from raping her, not because he called the cops, simply because he didn’t participate in the rape of a fourteen-year-old. It was significant enough for her that he remained, in her mind, a good guy. A small perceived kindness in the midst of terror.

SUMMER 1994, GERMANY

I’m barely inside the apartment when JP locks the door behind me and grabs me by the throat. For some reason that I can’t yet fathom, he’s wearing surgical gloves. “I’m sorry, Raych.” I’m struggling for air. “I love you, I really do.” He kisses my face as I try to pull his hands off my throat. “Tonight’s the night. I’m sorry.” Now I know what’s happening. He’s going to kill me.

He’s been threatening for weeks—stabbing me in my sleep, and sometimes when I’m awake, with hypodermic needles that he’d gotten from the drug clinic, pretending to be a heroin addict. An episode of
Matlock
where someone is killed by sending an air bubble to their heart gives him the idea. Last week, I’d been taking a bath and he started to drown me with the shower hose, sitting calmly on the side of the tub as I flailed and fought. It’s become less of a threat and more of a promise. I’ve already made arrangements for my body to be shipped home and left a note at work with his name and birth date on it, making it clear that when I’m found dead it will be him who is responsible. My death, and his son’s mother, who he feels has wronged him, have become his fixation. It’s unclear what my crime is; according to him, it’s just what has to happen. Sometimes the narrative ends with his suicide too, depending on his mood. He’s even offered to do a suicide pact. I, of course, have to go first. I’ve been trying desperately to talk him out of it, but it always just feels like a stay of execution. Apparently I’ve run out of time.

He lets go of my neck and pulls me into the living room. I’m crying and begging for my life, professing my love, but he’s resolute. “You can choose. How do you want to die?” He says it like he’s asking me what I want for dinner.

“What are my options?” I’m trying to stop crying and think clearly, despite all the champagne I’ve consumed.

He picks up the wooden leg from the coffee table that had broken in one of our fights a few nights earlier. “You can be beat to death with this or you can be strangled.” Neither option appeals to me. I try to think rationally.

“Beat.” I’m banking on this taking longer, making more noise and hopefully making him squeamish enough to give him second thoughts.

“OK.” He doesn’t seem too concerned. Now I’m second-guessing my choice.

“Can I sit down for a minute and have a cigarette?” I’m trying to stall.

“Go ahead, but I’m fixin to do this, Raych. You don’t have long.”

My mind is racing, trying to think of a way out of this but I can’t. We have no phone in the apartment and the neighbors are used to the sounds of me screaming by now. They all find him charming. I remember that I have weed in my bag. There’s no way he’ll turn it down, he’s an addict. The weed might mellow him out and could potentially put him to sleep.

“Can we smoke a blunt together? Please? It’ll be easier for me.”

“Yeah, roll it.” He’s pacing the apartment, still holding the table leg. “I wiped the apartment down. So they won’t find no prints.” He holds up his gloved hands. “And I stole these from the clinic that day.” He seems to want me to be impressed by his ingenuity in planning the crime scene. I want to throw up but I’m scared that I’ll lose my chance to get him smoking. It takes me longer than normal, but I finally get the blunt rolled and I take a few hits. I don’t want to smoke too much and dull my own reactions although passing out right now might be the most painless option. He sits and finally puts down the wooden leg to smoke. I see him relax just a little. I wait till he’s taken a few more pulls. “What about my family, Jay? They’re gonna miss me.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s fucked-up.” He looks sad for a minute. “It has to happen, though. You have to die. Ima be dead soon anyway. I love you, I really do. But you know it has to be like this, right?” I’m crying again. Unable to speak in the face of this logic.

“You can write your mom a letter if you want to say good-bye.”

“Thank you, baby.” A temporary reprieve. He gives me a pen and notebook he’s been scribbling paranoid ramblings in. I write slowly.
Dear Mum, I’m sorry
. I don’t know what else to write. I picture my mother reading the letter. “Can I look at some photos before . . . I go?” He gets up and hands me the photo album from the bookshelf. I was using it to stall, but as soon as I start looking at the pictures of me as a baby, me dressed up as Paddington Bear as a toddler, me smiling in elementary school, I’m sobbing. This is it. This is how my life will end. I pore over the pictures, committing each detail to memory. It takes me a few minutes to notice that JP has leaned back on the couch. He’s still smoking and his eyelids are starting to look heavy. The weed might actually work. I start over at the beginning of the photo album, turning the pages as slowly as possible. He’s drifting a little and paying me less attention now. Everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion. He’s trying hard to stay awake. I’m praying for him to fall asleep.

Finally, his head nods and his eyes are closed. I wait a little longer for his breathing to get heavier and then make a dash for the door. The lock and chain take too long to open and make too much noise and I hear him wake up. I’ve just got to get outside. The door’s open and I’m in the hallway, just a few more steps to the stairs. He’s coming. “
Hilfe
, help, help, please!” I’m screaming, praying that this time one of the neighbors will actually care. I reach the step and it’s too late. My head jerks back as he grabs me by my hair. I twist hard and somehow I’m on the ground. Crawling. Scrambling to get away as he tightens his grip on my hair. “Help, please, please! Oh God, please!” I know the whole building has to have heard me. He lifts my head up and I see the concrete coming up to meet me. Each time he smacks my head into the floor it feels as if my brain is exploding. I see stars and all I can think of is a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
It’s true, it’s actually stars
, I’m thinking, as my head smashes into the ground again and again. And then it’s over. He’s dragging me back into the apartment. I blew my only chance to escape. He’s yelling at me but I can barely focus, the room keeps spinning and fading in and out to black. I don’t care anymore. There’s no point in fighting this. I just want to go to sleep. Somehow he’s brought me into the bedroom and is now on top of me. He’s crying and kissing my face, saying he loves me, he’s sorry, he loves me, he loves me, he loves me. His hands are around my neck and he’s still kissing me. I don’t even try to fight. He adjusts his hands to get a better grip on my neck and to be helpful, I lift my hair up.

“I’m ready,” I say.

When I first wake up in the morning, I think it must’ve been a nightmare. But my head is throbbing and my throat and neck feel so sore and bruised I can barely swallow. I get up from the bed and see my reflection in the closet mirror. My face is swollen and discolored. I look closer and see that the red and purple marks are made up of tiny little lines. Hundreds of blood vessels have burst all over my face and neck. My eyes are bloody red. I’m not sure why I’m still alive.

I walk into the living room, where JP is lying on the couch smoking weed. He looks pained when he sees my face. “What happened?” I start to cry. Every inch of my head hurts.

“I don’t know, Raych, it’s weird. I don’t know.”

“You were going to kill me.” I’m not sure if he’s managed to forget that part already.

“I know. I tried. You were almost dead.” He starts to cry. I sit on the loveseat, scared to get too close. “I was doing it, I mean, I was choking you.” He holds up his hands as if they’re still around my neck. “Your face was turning colors and your eyes looked like they was gonna come out. Your tongue was coming out too. You wasn’t breathing. I figured I had about thirty more seconds left, if that.” He makes a tightening motion. I cannot move. Listening to him describe my near death. “And then, I don’t know, I can’t explain it.” He looks spooked. “It was like something came and pulled my hands away. It was crazy. And it was enough, just those few seconds when my hands came off, for you to get a breath again. And then I couldn’t do it again. I just came in here and let you be.”

I don’t know what to say. He could’ve killed me but he didn’t. He nearly killed me but he didn’t. I know I have to leave him. He will kill me one day. But I stay still on the loveseat. He reaches out and strokes my hand. “You want some orange juice, Raych?”

“Yes. Thank you,” I say.

Chapter 10
Leaving

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.

—Step 2, “The Big Book,” Alcoholics Anonymous

FALL 1994, GERMANY

I can barely see with the tears and mucus running down my face. I know that it’s not worth it, I know that I’m tired, that I don’t want to go through this anymore. The situation with JP is out of control; either I’ll kill him or he’ll kill me, although the odds are squarely in his favor. The copious amounts of alcohol I’ve consumed help calm my nerves. I know it’s the best decision. I feel bad for my mum but figure she’ll get over it eventually. Besides, she wasn’t thinking about my feelings all the times she tried to take her life, so it’s hard to feel that bad. Mind made up, I wrap the cord to my bathrobe around my neck and tie it tightly, and walk out to the balcony. It’s raining hard but I figure that getting wet is, at this stage, the least of my problems. I’m relieved it will all be over soon. The rain and the darkness make it difficult to see the drop from the balcony, but I know it’s about ten feet. JP had forced me to make the jump one night when his crack-induced paranoia had him convinced that the cops were about to break down the door at any moment. Of course they didn’t, but I cut my knee open and sprained my foot. Tonight, though, I’m not worried about the drop. I have no intention of ever hitting the ground. I climb over the railing where there’s a little ledge and tie the other end of the belt around it. I say a quick prayer, “God, please forgive me,” take a deep breath, and jump into the blackness.

It’s hard to tell how much time elapses, but I come to while it’s still dark. I wait for a heavenly light, a tunnel, something, but nothing appears. For a few moments, I’m perplexed. Am I in heaven or hell? I wonder if there really is a purgatory, or perhaps everyone’s wrong and in the end there’s just a nothingness. As I still try to make sense of the afterlife, it slowly dawns on me as I regain consciousness that I’m lying in about three inches of water and that not only am I not in heaven, hell, or any combination of the two, but I’m still quite alive. I cannot fuckin believe it. My plan failed. I failed. I’m about to cry when suddenly the absurdity of the situation hits me. I’m lying flat on my back on the second-floor roof in a puddle at 4 a.m. in the pitch-dark, and in the middle of a rainstorm. I feel ridiculous and I can’t help but laugh, albeit a little hysterically as it has been a rough night. As I lie there, soaking wet, rain mingling with tears of both sadness and now full-out laughter, it occurs to me that despite all my best efforts to end my life, I’m still here. No matter how many near-death experiences I’ve had in the last few years, I’m still here. Maybe there is someone somewhere protecting me, someone who sees more of a future for me than I see for myself. I think God has saved my life. Suddenly I’m grateful. As I feel the rain on my face, I realize I don’t want to die anymore. Finally, sore and knowing I’ll be bruised all over tomorrow, I get up. The only way off the roof is to knock on my downstairs neighbor’s bedroom window and climb through into his apartment and back up the stairs to mine. I hadn’t taken the key with me, not thinking I’d need it, but I remember that there’s still a spare key under the doormat. I’m way past the stage of feeling mortified, so I knock on my neighbor’s window until he wakes up. He’s a little startled to see my face peering in, but he lets me climb in without any questions. I try to mumble something about needing to get something off the roof, but trail off halfway through hearing how silly I sound. I figure while I’m there I might as well ask for a cigarette. Staring at me standing there soaking wet in the middle of his bedroom, he gives me four. It’s not until I get upstairs to my own apartment that I realize that the bathrobe cord is still tied tightly around my neck.

That night I have an epiphany that will change my whole life. At the time I don’t realize it. At the time, I’ve probably never used the word
epiphany
in a sentence. But the thought that maybe I have a greater purpose leads me to a small nondenominational American church the following Sunday, and that sets me on a path that will result in my walking away from the life two months later and never going back. This inexplicable belief in God’s love for me at a critical moment sustains me over the next few months, and ultimately over the next decade. It doesn’t make leaving easy, but it does make me leave. It is perhaps an atypical exit, although as I’ve come to learn from many girls that while recruitment generally follows the same script, leaving the life looks very different for each individual girl. There is, however, to borrow language from the substance-abuse community, always a sense of hitting bottom. A feeling of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. For some girls, it’s the indignity of a brutal beating that forces them to finally escape. For others it may be a change in the status quo—a new girl comes into the house, a wife-in-law gets pregnant—that shifts the dynamic and helps them to see that all their labor is in vain. Jail may interrupt the cycle, with a pimp’s arrest taking him out of the picture and giving her a chance to think clearly. Even sitting in jail waiting for him to bail her out and realizing that despite all the money that she’s made him, his refusing to come and put a mere five hundred bucks down to get her out of Rikers might be the final straw. Some girls may even view an unexpected pregnancy as a sign, an opportunity to start afresh with a new life, a chance to give their baby something they never had.