Girls Like Us Read online

  Of course, a few months later he calls. He’s home from jail and wants to see her. Tonight. She calls me. What do I think? Should she go? Despite the desire to scream “hell no!” at the top of my lungs, I know she’s already made up her mind. She tells me she knows that she won’t “do anything,” that she’ll never go back to the life, that seeing him will help her move on. I use every analogy I can think of—moth to the flame, invisible bungee cord, alcoholic walking into a bar—to persuade her to perhaps do the “closure” thing just over the phone, but it’s too late. She’s already deciding what to wear.

  We’ve agreed that she’ll call me when she gets there, call me if she gets upset, call me when she’s leaving. For the first hour, she calls every ten minutes. She calls from outside the diner where they’re meeting, calls me when she sees him walking up the street, calls me when he goes to the bathroom. On each call, I can hear her voice changing, the hypnosis of his presence taking effect. In the beginning, she tells me that it’s going well, that he says he’s sorry. I don’t believe him. Within an hour, she calls me to tell me that he wants her to go “work” that night. I’d thought it would take a couple of days at least to introduce this idea; clearly he’s hearing what I’m hearing in her voice. Jasmine tells me that she said no, and I tell her to get out of there, run. Immediately. There’s nothing else to say; he hasn’t changed and she’s never going to get the kind of closure she wants. She agrees. I wait for the call that tells me that she’s getting on the train home, but it doesn’t come. I call and call her phone but it’s going straight to voice mail. I feel physically sick knowing that once she’s crossed the line, it will be a long road back. I drive downtown.

  It’s 3 a.m., and the lights of 42nd Street are still flickering. Crackheads and dope fiends roam the streets in search of another hit, young dealers appear from the shadows ready to oblige, and middle-aged men skulk nervously out of the peep shows. Cars pull up slowly alongside the curb, looking for a girl or a woman from whom they can buy sex. On some of the side streets, 45th and 46th between 8th Avenue and 9th, young girls and older women blatantly jostle for the attention of these cruising cars. On 42nd Street, by the Port Authority Bus Terminal, girls are more discreet, trying not to attract the attention of passing cops.

  I’m walking in circles up and down 43rd, 44th, back down 8th, over again to 42nd, and back up Broadway, not sure what I’ll do once I see her, but I hope seeing me will pull her back from the fuguelike state she’s already slipped into. I know that feeling well. It’s like you’re hypnotized into walking off a cliff. Your eyes can see the sheer drop, you can fully imagine the pain of being splattered against the rocks below, one side of your brain is screaming at you to stop and yet your feet keep landing on the ground, one in front of the other, closer and closer to the precipice. People on either side are yelling—You don’t have to do this, you can turn around—and you hesitate. But then you look into his eyes. He doesn’t have to say anything, he just beckons. As if pulled by an invisible force, you take one step, then another, then another.

  I later learn that Jasmine’s former pimp had taken her straight from the diner to the East Side, as there were too many cops around 42nd Street. While I’m walking around, feeling like the codependent wife of an alcoholic about to fall off the wagon, Jasmine is being sold for the first time in almost eighteen months. Less than three hours after she first saw him again.

  I drive home in tears, frustrated, sad, and annoyed at myself for thinking that I could change things. I know Jasmine believes that this time she can make this work, that he’ll change in the end as long as she does what he wants. I know that she feels powerless to do anything else. But when reality kicks in and the fugue wears off, it will only be worse. She’ll realize how far she’s regressed but be too ashamed to reach back out. The memories of everyone who was so proud of her will make her feel sick inside. The worse she feels about herself, the more she’ll cling to him. After all, she’s risked everything for this and now feels that she’s got to stick it out.

  It takes three hours for him to lure her back in, but it’ll be another two years before Jasmine, tired and traumatized, slowly begins to take steps back. For Sara, it takes four years. For Amanda, eight years. Eboni, Tiffany, Donna, Peaches. . . . we’re still waiting for them to come back.

  After years of watching girls relapse and struggling with my own feelings of not having “done enough,” I eventually discovered the Stages of Change model, a framework often used in the treatment of eating disorders, substance abuse, and alcohol addiction. A critical part of this model, designed as a wheel to emphasize the ever-evolving and fluid nature of recovery, is that one of the phases is relapse.

  To use the language of addiction in the context of children who’ve been bought and sold is not to suggest that commercial sexual exploitation or trafficking is an addiction. We should no more accuse a domestic violence victim of returning to her abuser because she’s “addicted to the violence” than we should misconstrue girls’ struggles to stay free as their “liking it.” Yet it’s important to understand that their relapse and the recovery process bear some similarities to the recovery process of addiction.

  Understanding triggers, staying away from “people, places, things,” and taking it one day at a time, all intrinsic to the language of recovery from addiction, are also important components of the recovery process for girls who have experienced the trauma of being trafficked. Girls have to be equipped with skills and tools to support them through the challenging process of leaving and have to feel empowered enough to remain free from their trafficker. They have to understand that it’s normal to miss the life and to still have feelings for their trafficker but not to act on those feelings. Having conflicted emotions doesn’t mean you should go back, it just means you’ve been conditioned to feel this way. And they have to be equipped with strategies for dealing with the feelings when they arise.

  Long-term healing requires that these girls understand that what they have experienced is not their fault. So many of these girls, their family members, the social workers, and law enforcement officials believe their exploitation was their choice. This perspective keeps them stuck. If I believe that I am inherently dirty, loose, or bad, then there is no hope for me and I might as well go back to my trafficker anyway. If I can begin to understand all the factors that made me vulnerable—the impact of race, class, and gender; the role played by my dysfunctional family; the power of the billion-dollar sex industry; the recruitment tactics of my pimp; my limited options as a teenager—then I can begin to shift the blame to the perpetrators instead of carrying it myself.

  At some point girls have to be able to move past a sense of being perpetual victims and having no control over what happens to them. They need to feel empowered, utilize safety strategies, recognize unhealthy and manipulative relationships before they even begin, understand what might make them vulnerable, and take steps to mitigate that, whether it’s cutting certain people out of their lives or becoming economically independent. Most of all, they need to finally understand what makes for a healthy, intimate relationship, an understanding that has been distorted over the years and which, if not corrected, puts them at risk for victimization over and over again.

  Chapter 12

  Unlearning

  He beats me too, what can I do,

  Oh my man,

  I love him so

  —Billie Holiday, “My Man”

  WINTER 1995, GERMANY

  I’ve been out of the life for a couple of months and am slowly trying to pick up the fragmented pieces of my life. I’ve been attending a small nondenominational church that sits off the American air force base where I live, doing my best to pretend to fit in with the “square” world without betraying my dirtiness, the huge scarlet letter that I’m sure is visible to all. People know I was a “dancer” but that’s all I’m willing to reveal at this stage. While there are definitely some people at church who are giving off a judgmental vibe, there are also some k
ind women who seem to sense in me a desire for acceptance, for love, for safety. Since I cry from the moment church begins till the end of the service, including sniffling through the announcements about Sunday School and the “Can the owner of the Dodge Caravan that’s blocking the entrance please move their car?” it’s probably not that difficult to spot the huge gaping wounds, but nonetheless I’m grateful for their support and their attempts to engage me in conversation. Sonia, a pretty woman with a dry sense of humor that I immediately gravitate toward, invites me over for an afternoon with her air force sergeant husband, David, and their two young children. I’m nervous about being around a man, worried that I’ll give off the wrong vibe accidentally, worried that he’ll be a creep, but I like Sonia and want her to like me, too, so I go. I think they sense that I haven’t had much “normal” in my life, so they keep the visit low-key. We sit around watching The Little Mermaid with their kids. Despite my nerves, I feel myself relaxing and marveling at the picture-perfect tableau of family life: a pretty wife and a handsome husband who seem to genuinely like each other; two beautiful, well-adjusted kids; nice furniture; American accents. I feel like I’m spending a day with the Cosbys. I decide I want to be Sonia when I grow up. Toward the end of the afternoon, my entire worldview is shaken when David asks for a cup of tea. Sonia and I go into the kitchen, start chitchatting while she prepares some snacks for the kids, and we come back out sans tea. “Where’s my tea?” David asks, and I steel myself, preparing for the scene that’s about to come.

  Sonia, who has sat down, begins to rise. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot, honey.” Any moment now. I’m waiting for the explosion.

  “It’s OK, babe, I’ll make it myself, don’t worry about it,” says David, and with that he smiles, rubs her shoulder, and trots off to the kitchen to make it himself.

  I’m stunned. Sonia is acting like everything is normal, but I’m having a hard time figuring this out. What just happened? What happened to the explosion, the anger, the disgust with her forgetfulness? I try to hold it, knowing somewhere in my head that my question is about to sound marginally crazy, but I need an answer.

  “Why he didn’t hit you?” I whisper, worried David will hear.

  “Huh?” Sonia is confused.

  “I mean”—frustrated that she’s not getting the obvious—“why didn’t you get in trouble over the tea, why didn’t he yell at you or something?”

  Sonia looks like she wants to laugh, but when she realizes that I’m serious, she looks horrified.

  “Oh, sweetie. That’s not how we do things in this house. Ever. That’s not how people should ever treat each other.” Now she just looks sad.

  “Oh, OK.” I feel bad that I’ve upset her and realize that I’ve betrayed exactly what I’ve been trying so hard to hide. I’m embarrassed.

  David comes back in with a tea for himself and one for me and one for her. This is just too much. He must be the nicest man on the planet. I’m completely thrown off.

  Sonia, guessing that we probably need to discuss this whole “Why doesn’t he hit you?” thing a little more, tells him we’re going into the kitchen for some girl talk. We spend the rest of the afternoon talking about love and abuse and how they’re not the same thing. While I think I probably know this intellectually, at nineteen it’s the first time that I’ve ever really begun to believe it. Putting this realization into practice will take a few more years.

  Most women have been in a relationship that they know is no good for them. Your friends and family know it is no good for you, but you’re too besotted to see straight. It may take a few attempts, some late-night crying sessions, some serious talking to from your girlfriends, but eventually you’re able to leave and look back with a mixture of regret and disbelief that you put up with that person for so long. The relationship may not have been physically abusive, but bad relationships can fall anywhere on a continuum, from the guy who doesn’t call when he says he will to the guy who has a wandering eye to the guy who cheats with your college roommate. At the far end of this continuum are the men (or women) who are emotionally or physically abusive. Your boundaries or tolerance for an unhealthy relationship often depends on what you’re used to, what the deal breakers are for you, where that invisible line falls. Some girls and women have a higher tolerance for pain, mostly because they’ve experienced it in various forms growing up. Some women have no idea what to expect from a relationship because they never saw a healthy one modeled. Many children grow up watching violence play out in their families, setting the stage for later dating and relational patterns. Sadly, this is even more common than we like to admit, as one in four women in this country will experience physical violence from a partner at some point in their lives.

  Chris Brown’s attack on Rihanna was perhaps the most public example of dating violence for young women. Yet instead of the incident provoking a thoughtful national dialogue, it showed how entrenched attitudes still are about where the responsibility for violence lies. I was horrified by the response on many of the message boards, blogs, and even by some of the celebrities who initially tried to downplay Chris Brown’s culpability. Message after message not believing her, blaming her, excusing Brown’s actions along the lines of “she must’ve done something to deserve it.” A survey carried out by the Boston Public Heath Commission a few weeks after the attack found that almost half of the two hundred teenagers interviewed thought Rihanna was responsible for her alleged beating at the hands of Chris Brown. Only 51 percent thought Brown was responsible for the incident, and 52 percent said both individuals were to blame for the incident, despite knowing at the time that Rihanna had been beaten badly enough to require hospital treatment. Forty-four percent of the teenagers thought that physical fighting was a normal part of a relationship.

  Clearly, then, it’s not just girls who’ve experienced trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation who believe that violence is normal. Even now, thirty-plus years into the domestic violence movement, too many girls and young women are still taught to accept gender-based violence.

  It is well known that Chris Brown grew up witnessing domestic violence. While on some level he knows it’s wrong, on many levels it just feels normal. So too is it normal for girls who have witnessed domestic violence or experienced physical abuse from their family members or “caregivers.” In addition to any exposure to unhealthy family dynamics, girls, especially girls of color, are growing up in a culture that glorifies violence and frequently implicitly and explicitly devalues and sexualizes them. Domestic violence is also often framed as a result of uncontrollable passion, leading girls to believe that men who don’t hit are apathetic and uncaring. It’s not surprising that so many teenage girls accept violence as a part of their relationships—violence as a demonstration of love.

  It’s a Tuesday afternoon at the office and I’m talking to Tyria, who lives in our housing program, about her inability to keep curfew. She’s turning around and around on a swivel chair while I talk to her. It’s clearly not a conversation that she’s thrilled to be having. For our girls, curfew is a constant challenge; they are used to coming home in the early hours of the morning and sleeping all day. They’re also teenagers who need space to be teenagers, to mess up, to break the rules. And yet we still try to maintain order and boundaries for the whole house, all the while recognizing and addressing the trauma that has led our girls to be there in the first place. Even though keeping curfew is not high on Tyria’s to-do list, it is a priority on ours.

  “So, what’s going on with you right now? Not doing so great with this curfew thing, huh?”

  Tyria mumbles that she has a hard time following the rules, which I adamantly agree with. I give her the standard response about the importance of rules in the house, but feel as though there’s something else going on for her around this issue.

  “Why do you think you’re having such a hard time with the rules? You’re doing pretty well in other areas; you’re doing great in school.” By great, I mean that she’s actually
attended class for ten consecutive days. Baby steps.

  Tyria shrugs. “I dunno. It’s like y’all too soft.”

  “Really?” I’m surprised to hear this; earlier she’d been complaining about how strict the rules were. “You were upset though that we’d placed you on an earlier curfew, right, so I’m not sure that I totally understand what you’re asking for.”

  “Y’all should hit me. If you just hit me, I’d listen and follow the rules and stuff,” she says.

  I feel tired and sad, looking at this little girl twisting back and forth and fidgeting around in a rolling chair, a child who’s asking to be hit—who believes that this is how she’ll learn to “act right.”