Stealing Grace (2 page)

They all did as he asked. What else could they do? When she opened her eyes they squinted under the harsh bright fluorescent lights in the room.
Oh No!
With a quick count
,
she saw
there were at least 15 girls in the room with her. They were all half naked, all squinting, all scared to death. They were in a warehouse looking room with disgusting furniture and dirty floors.

They ushered them, not nicely, to a room in the back of the building where they waited for about an hour. There was nothing distinguishing to tell them anything about where they were. No windows either.

Then, they were ushered once again down the hall, hurdled really like cattle. They were loaded into the back of the trailer hooked to an old empty semi truck. There was no where to sit and they just shoved them all to the back and to the floor. The trailer was disgusting and stank. There was mushy and liquid stuff on the floor. From the smell Elena guessed it was vomit and urine. Maybe blood too.

A few of the men climbed in behind them with handkerchiefs over their noses and slammed the doors down.

It was cold and dark and they were all still wearing nothing but underwear and bras. One unfortunate girl had not been wearing a bra and they were showing her no mercy. They picked on her, jabbing her with their fingers, grabbing at her arms.

She cried and tried to cover herself but they refused to leave her alone. Elena thought about trying to help but one girl close to her tried to help her by pulling her to her. They slapped her hard enough that she hit her head on the back wall and laid there still.

The ride was long and bumpy and the men flashed their guns at us menacingly the whole way, not speaking. The poor braless girl got no relief from the grabby men the whole ride and eventually gave up trying to fend them off. Just closed her eyes and whimpered.

Elena could feel them stop, then heard the beeping noise of a truck backing up. When they arrived at wherever they were, the doors opened to a bright room. A loading dock of some kind and the spotlights were bright on them as they were pushed out the door and down some rickety stairs.

One of the men came forward and inspected them. He nodded and moved on down the line. When he did that, that girl was taken away into the building. He stopped a couple times and shook his head, hooking his thumb over his shoulder. That girl was taken to a van and put in the back instead.

He got to one of the girls and cursed loudly. He called a man over and asked him why the girl was even there.

“She’s too old. Get rid of her,” he spat and moved on to the next girl.

The man led the girl away crying and screaming, as they all had heard what he said. Elena felt tears streaming down her face. It was the first time she’d been glad about something the whole time she’d been in this mess. Her crying at least meant that she still had her humanity. It made her nauseas to watch him go down the line and judge them, based solely on nothing but face and body and age.

Elena was a couple down from the last. He pushed the hair of the girl next her back from her face and murmured a ‘Very nice’.

When he finally got to Elena he grabbed her chin and moved her face side to side. He grabbed her arms and saw the cigarette burns. They really just looked like a couple of chicken pock marks but to someone who inflicted pain themselves he seemed to know what they were. Then he turned her arm over and saw the long scar running from her upper under arm to her elbow; a gift from her drunken father and a drive around the neighborhood when she was twelve, ending into the side of a Toyota.

“She is damaged,” he said in a heavy Spanish accent.

“What do you want me to do with her, sir?” an English man asked.

Elena gasped and held her breath. Oh no, they weren’t going to use her which meant they were going to kill her. She didn’t know which one was worse.

The man looked at her thoughtfully.

“She’s ok. Her face will make up for it. She’s the last, move.”

The girls at the end of the line whimpered as they were grabbed and dragged to the van. The rest of them had been brought inside the building and were shoved down a long hallway. They reached a big room with steel double doors and entered.

All the girls were lined up on the wall and she was shoved over in the corner with them. They threw a white powder on their skin that burned. They instructed the girls to rub it into their skin and hair. Once they had done that they sprayed them all down with water hoses.

The water was freezing and made the burning powder run into their eyes and mouth as they gasped from the cold. Some of the girls were crying loudly. Some whimpering. Some quiet and numb. Elena wasn’t sure what category she wanted to fit into but she stayed quiet.

They pulled them to the next room through a connected door and told them to stand in front of three industrial size fans. They turned them on and blasted freezing cold air on the already cold girls to dry them quickly.

The men slapped at them and pushed them apart when the girls tried to huddle for warmth. It mostly dried their bodies and hair but their underwear were still wet.

They marched them to the other end of the warehouse. Past rooms with tool and lace curtains, some were just plain white sheets tacked to the doorways. They heard the noises. Some were agonizing screams, some deep moans and grunts, some yelling and cursing, some were all of them blended together as the girls passed the rooms. So many rooms. There were so many rooms with drawn curtains and awful noises coming from them.

Some of the girls were standing outside their rooms, waiting, wearing torn negligees and robes. Their makeup was way over the top and smeared. Some looked beaten, some looked scared. Most of them were American but not all. Some stray men were wandering the halls too, most wearing business suits and loose ties, eyeing them like they were next on their agenda.

Elena knew exactly what was going on behind those curtains.
Oh, God, No! We’re being sold as sex slaves! I’m a virgin! I can’t. I can’t!
She
felt bile coming into her throat and knew she was going to be sick. She passed a trash can in the hall and was sick over and over in it as she felt her stomach heave violently causing hot tears to prick in her eyes. One of the men stayed behind with her and told the others to keep going.

He told her gruffly to hurry up. She tried but how did you hurry up vomiting? He pressed his groin against her rear and pulled her hair back, licking her cheek, and told her if she didn’t hurry up, he’d take her to a room and make use of her right then and there. That got Elena up and going. She practically sprinted down the hall to catch up with the others.

They pushed the girls into a room with nothing in it. Elena could still hear the beat of the music from the hall they’d just come through. There was a stack of clothes in the corner placed on an old dresser drawer, the only furniture in the room. They were instructed to find something closest to their size and put it on.

After the strange men were gone she heard one of the women say “Why did they have us strip? Why give us more clothes to put on us again?”

Elena wondered that herself.

She was eager to get clothes on before they came back and found a pair of jeans and tank top with flip flops, and from the look of the other girls that must’ve been standard issue. Elena couldn’t think. She couldn’t pay attention. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe, waiting for something to happen. Her skin itched and burned but wasn’t red or splotchy and Elena thought that was weird.

* * *

After a while a few more girls were brought in and told to get dressed as well. The men had been in and out several times. Looking them up and down. Not sexually, but like they were a car they were inspecting. Writing down things on pads of paper and checking their teeth.

Most of the men looked tan, foreign, a couple scruffy Americans also. None of them said names or said much of anything to the women. The one woman who did ask what was going on was slapped in front of them without a moment’s hesitation - an example to the rest - so the women were so scared. They didn’t speak another word.

They were baffled as to what could be going on. Apparently they’d all been warned as Elena had in the van. ‘Don’t move, don’t scream, don’t try anything and you might live to see daylight’.

* * *

That first night passed slowly. The men hadn’t fed them or given them anything to drink. The women had slept on the concrete floor, the little bit they could sleep. Staying close to each other, trying to find comfort in anything they could, like somehow huddling together would keep them alive and safe. Most were too scared to sleep.

There was a disgusting toilet in a little closet sized room with no door, sink or faucet. No windows in there either, nothing. Elena’s thoughts ran wild as to what could be the cause for this. She wasn’t anything special. She was a nobody
with
nobody. Or could that be the reason?

She had no family. She wasn’t important so no one would miss her. People quit the concert hall all the time with no notice. They wouldn’t think anything of it, especially since she picked up her paycheck last night.

The next day was much of the same. Not fed, not given anything to drink until that afternoon when they placed a big bowl of water in the room with no cups. They also gave them a plate of plain sandwich bread slices, like they were feeding dogs. The girls were all so hungry that they rushed it and chomped it down like it was the best thing they’d ever tasted.

They took turns with the huge bowl of water and all got a few gulps in. Immediately, Elena knew something was wrong. Her vision started to blur, her tongue felt fat and she couldn’t stand up. The other girls started to act weird too. They lay in a haze for the rest of the day, not able to move or do anything. Just lay there, thinking and worrying in a fog of confusion and nausea.

That was it, nothing else for the rest of the day and night and no one spoke to them.

That night, a few of the girls were grabbed while they were sleeping. All of the girls had passed out from sheer exhaustion and hunger. They woke up in the commotion and watched as three girls were dragged away. They were brought back an hour or so later. Disheveled and dirty.

They ran to the corners and cried and sobbed clutching their shirts, which were pulled up or off and in their arms, and their hair. Someone finally got out of one of them that they’d been raped by the men keeping them here.

That brought another round of hysteria from the rest of them and eventually someone came in and told them all to shut up or they’d get worse.

Elena couldn’t stop herself. She scooted over and hugged the girl close to her who’d been taken. She had a bloodied nose but otherwise wasn’t injured, well on her face anyway. She chanted over and over again that she had been a virgin. How could they do this to her? She was saving herself, it hurt, it hurt so badly, they wouldn’t stop.

Elena eventually shh’ed her and ran her hand down her hair to make her be quiet. She couldn’t listen to it anymore. The pain in her voice was choking her up and she couldn’t handle it. She rocked the girl until she fell asleep. She had to be no more than seventeen years old. She couldn’t think about the things they had done to those girls.

The next morning, Elena woke to devastating hunger pains, cotton mouth and a headache that stretched for miles. It’d been two days since she’d really eaten or drank anything. The girl from last night was laying on her, using her stomach as a pillow.

The men came back and got the same girls they’d taken last night and pulled them away screaming again. They didn’t see them again for the rest of the morning.

The biggest man she’d seen so far, whom she took to be the leader, came in and stopped in front of them. His 7/11 t-shirt had a hole ripped on the front pocket. His jeans were dirty and stained as were his scuffed boots. This must be the boss, Elena assumed, since he seemed to be the one throwing around all the orders, English and Spanish and who knew what else.

“Alright, ladies, up, up. I want you all to stand against the wall with your backs. Some gentleman are gonna come and take a look at you. Just be quiet and still, don’t try anything funny. And smile why don’t you? You never know who you might meet.” He was smiling condescendingly as he spoke and laughed as he walked out.

What was he talking about? Who would we be meeting? Why were men coming to look at us?
Then Elena glanced around the room. All the girls were petite, no wedding band lines on their fingers, all seemed to be pretty enough under the circumstances. They’d gotten rid of the older ones and the ones that didn’t meet standards. Elena didn’t see herself as pretty but didn’t think she was hideous either.

Then it hit her like a ton of bricks. The answer she had been searching for since she was abducted from the bus stop. All these things combined and she’d bet anything she knew the answer.
They are selling us. Human trafficking? Really? Seriously? Is this happening to me right now?
Now it all made sense.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t process. She felt she might faint, then a new face stepped in to the room. This was one of them. He was choosing his prize now. It’d started already and Elena struggled to keep a grip. She hadn’t had time to prepare yet. He was eyeing all their bodies but looking none of them in the eyes.