Girls Like Us (27 page)

My weekly group, brilliantly titled “Rachel’s Group,” is one of my favorite parts of the week. Our theme tonight is “struggling with relapse,” a recurring topic among others such as “how to deal with my feelings about Mom when she’s still using/going back to the man who abused me/bringing up my past and throwing it in my face/not acknowledging how she hurt me,” and frequently “should I/how do I tell this new boy I’m dating that I’ve been sexually exploited?” As always, we have girls in the group who are at various levels of recovery, and the conversation quickly gets intense as Isabel, the oldest member of the group at twenty-one, begins to share her frustrations about “missing the streets.” Isabel is tall and slim with a permanent pout and a mountain of curly braids cascading from her head. She’d been mandated to GEMS by the courts several months ago, successfully completed her required amount of “days,” and then disappeared. She returned a month later but didn’t seem to want to engage with anyone. She’d sit on the couch, pull a book out from her purse, and begin reading. Attempts to interact with her were generally met with a sullen look and a bothered sigh. Requests to participate were turned down with a vigorous shake of her braids and sometimes simply by her getting up and leaving. Still, she kept coming back, almost every day. I’d thought that Isabel was mandated again, so reluctant did she look to be here, yet I’ve just found that she’s actually been coming—and glaring—voluntarily.

In the last couple of weeks, she’s slowly begun to warm up, hesitantly entering into brief and cursory conversation, smiling slightly and being asked to be called by her real name, Isabel, not her alias Rebecca. This is a major victory and a sign that’s she’s beginning to feel a little more comfortable. Tonight she begins to talk openly for the first time.

“It’s hard, Rachel, it’s like I know it’s messed up but I feel kind of lost and lonely. I almost went back last week but I decided not to.”

“That’s a really big step, Isabel; how did you manage to not go back?”

“I dunno. I just thought that maybe bad things would happen and that I might not make it back out again, so I went to sleep instead and when I woke up I felt a little better.”

“That’s great.”

“Not much, though,” she cautions, as if I think she’s gotten over the hump. “It’s still really hard, every day.”

Other girls in the group uh-huh and nod vigorously in agreement with Isabel’s assessment. Nee-Nee, a chubby-faced thirteen-year-old, finally speaks.

“I feel like this is the only thing I’m good at.”

The group sits quietly for a minute, absorbing the impact of the statement and nodding in agreement. Nee-Nee follows her heartbreaking statement with a rambling and unrelated story about some girls who tried to steal her clothes at the group home. I can feel the group itching to get away from the uncomfortable realities that Isabel and Nee-Nee have just brought up and realize that at any moment the group could turn into a vigorous and heated discussion about “them girls who steal clothes,” as everyone in the room has shared this experience, too. I quickly write PROS and CONS in big letters on either side of the chart paper on the wall. When in doubt, make a list, is my general philosophy. “Does everyone understand what pros and cons are?”

A few girls look blank. Michelle, a fifteen-year-old who’s been quiet up till now, says, “The good and bad things of something. Helps you make a decision.”

“Yup, that’s exactly it. So we’re going to write down all the good things about being in the life and all the bad things and then we’ll discuss the lists.”

“I think the cons list is gonna be longer. Right, Rachel?”

I smile. “Let’s see what happens. . . .”

The girls have endless stories about the brutality of their pimps and johns but manage to find humor in much of it. It’s one of the benefits of a survivors-only group; everyone understands the pain. They jump in excitedly to each others’ stories, “Word? That’s the same thing that happened to me except he dragged me out by the hair!” Ebonie dramatically reenacts the hair-pulling incident to gales of laughter. “Nah, son, lemme me tell you . . .” another girl interrupts. “My daddy chased me down the street and I was wearing these heels that were mad high and I kept falling over.” More reenactments, more hysterical laughter. All the girls competing for the funniest beating story, the craziest crooked cop story, the scariest john story. Just a group of teenage girls entertaining one another, having a riot, shooting the shit about getting beaten, raped, and arrested. Good times.

Within minutes, the CONS side of the paper is a mess of words, mainly ones that describe pain and violence. The mood sobers up a bit as we begin to explore what the exercise means to them.

Isabel’s face turns into a frown as she studies the list. “I think there’s something really really really wrong with me.” She pauses, clearly upset by a disturbing epiphany. “I can look at that list, and see all that bad shit, and it’s just mad normal to me. I don’t feel shocked or anything. All that stuff, getting raped, pimps, that’s . . . you know, the life. That’s just what it is. But I don’t think it’s normal to
think
that. I must be sick or something.”

I feel for her. It’s scary to realize that your reactions are deadened and even harder to realize that the way you view life might be considered a little odd, or even awful, to others. I use my standard oldie but goodie for these situations. “It’s a totally normal reaction to an abnormal situation. You were trained to not feel anything by the people who hurt and exploited you. After lots and lots of pain and bad things happening, it gets to feel really normal.”

Isabel objects strenuously. “But I wasn’t forced to do anything. I knew what I was getting into. I just thought I was grown. So . . .” Her logic follows. “There must be something wrong with me.”

“How old were you when you got in the life?” I ask.

“Eleven.” She sees my face and anticipates my reaction. “But I knew exactly what I was doing. No one made me.” She’s vehement about this.

A few of the other girls agree that they were the same age, one was ten and a half, another twelve. Tonight the
oldest
age of recruitment in this group is thirteen. I decide I’ll wait till I get home to be utterly outraged by that.

“Are you the same person as you were when you were eleven? Ten whole years ago?”

“Nah. But that’s different . . .” The idea that she “chose” the life is burned into her brain.

I wrap up the group with a bit of a rah-rah speech about how it wasn’t ever their fault, that they were children taken advantage of by adults and that they didn’t “choose” to be beaten or raped or sold or bought. A few of the girls seem to be letting it sink in just a little, but it’s a message they will need to hear over and over and over again. It’s a little tough to undo years of damage in an hour and a half, so you have to be grateful for the small steps. We hold hands and close out with a prayer for one another, and I hug all the girls as they gather their belongings.

Isabel waits off to the side. Finally she approaches me. “I still think there’s something really wrong with me, though.”

“Have you ever heard about child soldiers? In some parts of Africa or the Middle East?”

She nods vigorously. “You know, how they’re trained when they’re real little, to shoot, kill, stab other people during a war, right?” I say.

“Yup, I saw something about it on TV.”

“OK, so if they manage to survive all that stuff, do you think they feel bad about what they’ve done or seen? Or does it seem normal?”

Isabel is thinking intently. “I don’t think they feel bad, probably at first.”

“Why, honey?”

“Cos that’s what they’ve been trained to do.”

I wait and look at her.

Slowly a small smile begins to spread across her face. “And so were you . . .” I say as she nods in comprehension. She gives me a big hug; it’s the most expansive she’s ever been with me. “Trained,” she says as if sounding the word out for the first time. I nod in agreement. And then she darts out of the door, going home to ponder probably for the first time, how ten years ago her eleven-year-old self was trained to accept the life as normal.

It’s confusing in the beginning trying to adjust your view of what’s normal to what the rest of the world thinks is normal, particularly when you feel so less than normal yourself. The deep-down beliefs that you’ve held for so long are hard to let go of. Other people’s worldviews seem off, and yours
feels
right, even when you begin to know logically that it’s not. It’s lonely and frightening in the beginning and you’re desperate for someone who “gets” it, who makes you feel a little less crazy.

When I first came to New York, one of the most critical things for me was being around other girls and women who’d experienced the life. It was in a Friday night group at the Little Sister Project with adult women, that I was allegedly facilitating, but in truth I needed as much as everyone else in the room; that became the place where I felt most “normal.” We shared a common understanding, remembered similar feelings, and could talk frankly about our experiences without judgment. Those Friday nights with seven or eight women each week made me feel a little less one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other. Less of a round peg in a “square” world.

There was often a lot of laughter in the room and to a casual observer, it would have probably appeared that the violence and abuse meant nothing, yet pain and humor aren’t antithetical. You had to earn the right to laugh at pain. Jokes about the life are funny only if you’ve lived it. And in a group of all survivors, everyone had. It was in that room that we could laugh at what we’d once considered normal, laugh at how far we’d come.
Wasn’t that shit crazy? Can you believe we’re still here?
We’d shake our heads in amazement at some of the bizarre experiences and the ludicrous lies that we’d believed or told to ourselves. It was a relief to make jokes about a john and not have someone judge you, and to laugh about the lengths you’d go to please your pimp without having people look at you like you were crazy. It was in that room that I began to learn and understand the importance of other survivors, how much we needed each other’s support.

Over time I learned that there were a lot of people who would judge you, blame you, and try to make you feel lesser, no matter what you did; that a degree, a good suit, and a career wouldn’t always insulate you from scorn. But Friday nights in a little walk-up in Spanish Harlem, I learned a little about building some of the insulation myself.

Chapter 13
Stigma

Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will,
the pang of it will be always in her heart.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

CHRISTMAS 2008, WASHINGTON, D.C.

I’m looking rather fly, if I do say so myself. I’m wearing my new Jackie O black suit, with black patent heels and a hot pink patent belt. I’d gotten the suit on sale at Macy’s a few months earlier but hadn’t had a chance to wear it, as it was a little much for our office in Harlem. It is, however, perfect for this morning’s visit to the White House, where a small group of us has been invited to attend a ceremonial signing of the newly reauthorized trafficking legislation.

I spot a friend in the field, Bradley, and we chat excitedly for a few minutes before it’s announced that we’re being invited into the Oval Office. I walk in and shake President George W. Bush’s hand. I find myself feeling a little overcome with emotion, as the weight of where I am and what I’m doing sinks in. We’re led in, the president gives a warm and charming welcome, and I find my eyes watering, just a little. I think of President Kennedy and John-John under the desk, FDR, Lincoln, and even Nixon. I think of all the conversations that have been had in this room, the laws signed, the decisions made. I start to well up even more at the thought that in just a few weeks, Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, will be sitting in this very office. I surreptitiously touch the side of the desk, just because I can, and fervently pray,
please GodpleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod please let me come back here when Obama’s in office.

The president sits down to sign the bill and I find myself directly behind him. I sneak a look at Bradley and he’s just as struck by the moment as I am. We make a can-you-fuckin-believe-this face at each other. Clearly neither of us can.

As we prepare for our individual photos with the president, I’m mortified at how incredibly sweaty my palms are and try desperately to wipe them on the side of my skirt. The president does not seem disgusted by my handshake and we take the picture without much incident. It’s over in seconds and I walk to the other side of the room where the previously photographed are supposed to stand. Suddenly, Jeffrey Winter, a Republican lobbyist whom I neither particularly know nor particularly like, grabs both my arms in a vise grip. Before I’ve even had time to register this invasion of personal space, he stage-whispers, “Long way from the street, eh?”

I feel like I’ve been slapped. Hard. The last thing on my mind today was the streets, the life, or my past—it has been fifteen years. Yet apparently it was the first thing on his. I can feel my cheeks flushing and I’m horrified that he would take this moment, of all moments, to remind me of my past, put me in my “place.” How dare he? Unless you’d grown up in the White House, it’s a big deal for anyone to be invited to the Oval Office. And yet apparently I’m supposed to be more honored, more grateful, more something because of my shameful beginnings. I’m humiliated and angry. “Take your hands off me right now and please don’t say anything else to me.”

“What, what? Oh, I can’t say that? I didn’t mean anything by it. . . .” Jeffrey continues talking, adding insult to injury, and I feel my face getting hotter.

“Don’t talk to me. Seriously.” I’m aware that my voice isn’t quite as low as it probably should be under the circumstances, but I don’t care at this point. The moment is ruined for me. We’re standing less than ten feet away from the president and I’m guessing that at least a few people in the room, if not the president himself, can hear us. I’m trying to hold in my tears and the only way to do that is to stay angry. Jeffrey, unfortunately, is making it quite easy to do this. “Please don’t insult my intelligence,” I say under my breath, although at this point we’re having a full-blown argument, albeit whispered, in the middle of the Oval Office. I’m thankful that this administration is on its way out, as it’s doubtful that I’ll get an invite back after this. Fortunately the president is leaving and the event is wrapping up. I just want to get out of there as quickly as possible.