Girls Like Us Read online

“Ty, honey, we don’t do that and we won’t ever do that. Not just because it’s against the law, but because we don’t want to. Ever. We believe that you shouldn’t be hit, that you should be protected. That’s why you’re at GEMS, to be safe and not hurt.”

  She looks skeptical.

  “Why do you think it would help for you to be hit?”

  “Because I’m hardheaded and when I get hit, then afterward I listen. I need it sometimes; I act better then.”

  “Did someone tell you that?”

  “Yeah, my ex.” At GEMS, you don’t really need to add the word pimp onto ex; it’s a given. “He said I needed it to act right. He didn’t do it all the time, just when I was wildin out and needed it, but afterward I did what I was supposed to. It’s just discipline. It’s not bad.”

  I picture her subdued and compliant after a beating. Of course she did what she was told. You don’t have that much fight in you after a beating. It’s the calm after the storm. If anything, you try harder, act sweeter, and feel more attached than ever. This behavior would of course prove his theory that she “needed” to get hit. I’d heard the same line myself many times.

  I ask her about the times she “acted up” and what she thought she’d done to deserve it. She cites the heinous crimes of being mean to one of her wives-in-law, getting jealous, not making enough money, forgetting to do something he’d asked her to do.

  Tyria’s a bright, no-nonsense girl, so I figure we’ll use some logic to take each incident apart and try to explore the notion of what “deserving” it really means.

  “So, let me get this straight, you’re in love with him, right?”

  She nods vigorously.

  “And he’s sleeping with another girl and you get jealous? That’s pretty normal, though, right? I know I’d be mad jealous. I might even say something slick. You’ve got the right to feel jealous, he’s hurting your feelings. But then you’re the one that gets beaten up?”

  She catches on quickly and starts smiling. “OK, so it wasn’t that bad what I did, but still. . . .” She’s not sure how to justify this one.

  “OK, how about the money thing. . . . He’s selling you, you’re the one that’s out there in danger, having to put in all the grind, while he’s in his car chillin, and he’s mad at you for not making enough money?” I mimic him posted up in his car, doing nothing.

  Tyria’s laughing now. She knows it sounds a little off. It just feels so logical. “OK, OK, so I didn’t do a lot of bad things but it did make me act better.” Her need for “discipline” has been drummed into her so hard that even though a part of her brain knows that she probably shouldn’t get beaten up, in her heart she remains otherwise convinced. We talk for a while about abuse and love, about hitting and deserving and the concept of healthy, safe consequences for her behavior at the house. I can see it sinking in just a little on the surface, but still barely penetrating her core beliefs. Somehow we get to the subject of how she met her pimp and she mentions in an offhand way that she met him the night she ran away from home, trying to escape her mother’s violent rages and extension cord beatings. Apparently her mother also believed she “needed” to get beaten in order to behave. It’s not really surprising that Tyria wants us to hit her. That’s her baseline for normal. Boundaries, respect, unconditional love are not. Neither is it surprising to me, although still upsetting, that a few weeks after this conversation, Tyria goes back to what feels normal, where she understands the rules and consequences and knows exactly what to expect.

  In the language of sociology, a subculture comes replete with rules and norms, a common language and social mores. This is true for the culture of domestic trafficking. Pimps use mind control and domination to teach girls the norms and mores of “the game,” building on the core values and beliefs that have been ingrained in them since childhood. Many people often think that sexually exploited girls want freedom, but even if that’s true for a few, what they find is a level of control and structure in their new lives that is far greater than anything they ever experienced at home. It’s precisely the freedom from that control that can be incredibly frightening for girls in the beginning of their recovery. If a pimp feels like an anchor, then leaving feels like being cut adrift in a world where the rules aren’t always clear and the consequences don’t always make sense. Just as ex–cult members need deprogramming after leaving an abusive cult, there’s a lot of unlearning to do once girls escape the commercial sex industry. Their attitudes and core beliefs have to be reframed. Their boundaries are so blurred and distorted that even once girls get the basic concept that violence is not OK under any circumstances, it can still be a struggle for them to develop healthy boundaries in intimate relationships and in friendships. Commercially sexually exploited girls are used to giving and giving and giving—taking care of their pimps, taking care of their johns’ “needs”—an ingrained pattern that often goes back to childhood when they took care of family members, whether it was younger siblings or parents. Most girls struggle with codependency in and out of the life, and it can take a while to stop being the caretaker. Even their relationship with money is distorted. Money, love, and sex have all become entangled, and girls often have a tough time setting limits on giving money to needy family members, and especially needy boyfriends, even when they’re barely making ends meet themselves. For girls who’re used to seeing but not keeping large amounts of money, it’s hard to adjust to getting paid biweekly and making less in a week than she made, for him, in one night. Trafficked girls, and girls who’ve grown up in poverty, haven’t had much opportunity to think about the future, let alone plan for it financially. It can be very tough for them to save money. When I first started making a salary, I was so convinced that I was going to lose it soon anyway that I frittered and gave it away like it was tap water. Helping girls develop a healthier relationship with money, seeing it as something neutral and showing them that people can make money doing something they actually enjoy, is an important step in helping them unlearn old patterns.

  When your self-identity has been tied up in how much money you can make and how many men want “you,” it can feel scary to not have any of those things left to define you. So many girls have told me, “I don’t think I’m good at anything else,” and within their words, I hear their fear that this is their destiny, what they were made for. Once a ho, always a ho, and Can’t turn a ho into a housewife are phrases that stick in your brain. When you’ve been told the same thing for years by your family and every adult man you’ve ever met, and society’s attitude confirms it, why wouldn’t you believe that this is who you are and all you’ll ever be? Undoing these lies is like unraveling a twisted ball of yarn; each distorted belief leads to another.

  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 man
dated 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.
r />   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.