When she returned a few minutes later, she sat down behind her desk again. But a woman who followed her out approached me. She was a petite, middle-aged Asian woman with jet black hair twisted up into a chignon, two decorative oriental sticks crossed in her hair. She was dressed finely in a dress suit and lightly painted with makeup that left her cheeks with a soft rosy glow.
“Megan? I’m Anise Belchek. I’m the Director of Prevention here at Operation: Recovery.” She reached her hand out to shake mine. If you’re comfortable coming to my office, I’d love to speak with you.”
I nodded my head in agreement and followed along, receiving a soft look of encouragement from the receptionist as we passed. I couldn’t help but fall behind once we entered the back hall. The walls were covered with framed pictures of various sizes, some black and white, some in sepia, some in color. But most depicted a group of people, who according to the text below them, were enslaved and rescued at one time. They were women and men of all ages – some even younger than normal puberty age. Some even had babies and toddlers buried in their arms, who I suspected were the product of rape and born into captivity. There were so many pictures from locations all over the world.
Anise didn’t rush me either. She just simply stood at the entrance to her office, her hands joined in front of her, giving me every second I needed to make my way down there. By the time I made it, my heart felt a little more broken. I couldn’t imagine the turmoil of facing that world as a child. Talk about feeling helpless and alone. Especially in third world countries where the authority figures who were supposed to help you were corrupt and part of the problem. Talk about feeling hopeless. It even made me think of the person who gave Zander information from my file. There was always a surplus of people who were immoral and willing to screw someone else over for a little money.
I followed Anise into her office, taking up the upholstered chair opposite the desk she sat behind, admiring the eclectic art décor from around the world. And seeing how she had her actual boots on the ground for some of those pictures when she was younger, I didn’t doubt their authenticity.
“So as Director of Prevention, what is it you do exactly?”
“Education, mostly. Not just with schools but government agencies. I also coordinate with other non-profit agencies in an effort to advise and implement strategies that aid organizations on a global basis in effort to minimize people from entering trafficking. It’s a tiresome position, but not a thankless one.”
My lips tried to squeeze into a smile. That kind of prevention never made its way into my classroom. Guess the U.S. still liked to pretend trafficking didn’t happen in our country.
“Having any luck yet?” I asked skeptically.
Now her smile was just as forced as mine.
“It’ll never be enough. The number of those being trafficked is indeterminable, but it’s suspected to still be more than twenty million worldwide. With a world population of seven-point-four billion, that’s one in thirty-seven hundred people. Three out of every four are used for an illegal work force, but it’s the one out of four that we focus on here at Operation: Recovery. And sexual slavery has become such common practice it happens right under our noses. So many taken in this country don’t even leave our borders.”
After a brief pause, she softly asked, “Were you?”
“No,” I replied. “And for part of my time I was just hours away from my family.”
Anise shared a confused expression. “I’m sorry, I thought Mirna told me you had no family to turn to.”
“Once upon a time I did, but not anymore.” I took a moment to share with her the bare basics of my story. How I was taken at seventeen, brainwashed, scarred by the fire, learning I had a family only to be stripped away again. Then how they were taken from me for once… permanently.
I kept all names and places to myself, including Zander and our recent turn of events.
Looking like she’d been punched in the gut, she said, “I’m speechless. I’m sorry I have no real words of comfort to offer you. But I am happy you survived and are trying diligently to find your place in this world. Highly respected. If you’re interested, there are some programs out there I could point you to that have personnel trained specifically to help victims of trafficking.”
I think I actually snorted. “No offense, but I’ve done the shrink thing. There’s no one out there who’s been trained in a way that’s going to make me comfortable. They can empathize all they want, but they’ll never truly understand unless they’ve gone through it themselves. I was hoping you’d have someone like that here.”
Anise shifted in her seat. “I understand. It’s not that we couldn’t offer services to our victims – there are other organizations that do – it’s just that we find older victims of sex trafficking are far less willing to accept help. Children are easier to keep in rehabilitation homes because they require care to survive. Adults don’t. Adults are harder to break down and analyze because they know we’re doing it, and they begin to feel violated in a completely new way, and dare I say downright defiant against opening themselves up. They feel they’re being judged for the atrocities they faced.
“In all truthfulness, the majority of victims pulled from their situations are damaged so irretrievably that rehabilitation is extremely long term and nearly impossible. They begin to fear the outside world so greatly many will take their own life within two years of rescue. Of the remaining, many will stay heavily medicated to numb their senses to avoid dealing with the pain, which also keeps them from psychologically dealing with their past.”
Veronica flashed before my eyes, and the fact that she couldn’t testify against Zander because she overdosed and died. It made me wonder how many others couldn’t find the strength to insert themselves back into the real world again.
“Believe me, I understand your plight,” she continued. “One of the long term goals for this agency is to be able to offer what you seek. In fact, our Survival Care Program Department exists on paper but has yet to be brought to life. And that’s because we don’t want to create just any program. We want one that works. And we want the people who are running it to really be able to connect with those utilizing it. Quite honestly, I need survivors like yourself who come out the other side ready and willing to fight back. As I’m sure you’ve witnessed, most who return are either heavily damaged by the time spent inside that world, or desperate to hold up somewhere and never come back out again.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a program to offer you. But I might have something else for you.” I was mildly confused when she began to rummage through her desk drawer. “We had a girl contact us just last week. I took down her information so I could send her a few things to help her get back on her feet. You say you’d like a program that offers counselors who have been through the same as you? Perhaps you’d like to reach out to her.”
Anise opened a file folder and passed me the paper on top. It had the name Kyleigh Richards, her phone number and Colorado address. “I don’t know if Kyleigh will be completely receptive, but she called us with similar hopes as you. Maybe you’re both exactly what the other needs.”
Anise guided me to an empty office. I sat behind the desk several minutes debating whether or not to call. True, I wanted to talk with someone who had once been in my shoes, but not just anyone would do. I came across so many who were destroyed to the point I doubted recovery was ever in the stars. Could this girl help me the way I needed to be helped? I had doubts.
But maybe I could help her.
Hell, maybe we could actually help one another.
I picked up the phone and dialed. My heart began racing, my anxiety coursing through my veins like electricity. By the fifth ring I figured I was getting kicked over to voice mail, so it surprised me when a woman’s voice quietly asked, “Hello?”
“Hi. Is this Kyleigh?” She was hesitant to admit it, but once she did, I told her, “My name is Claire. I’m calling from Operation: Recovery. I was just calling to
see how you were doing. Would you like to talk for a moment?”
Kyleigh was hesitant again, leaving me in silence. “I honestly don’t know what good it would do at this point.”
Her disappointment and misery saddened me, in a way that was completely different than the sadness I carried around of my own making. “I know how you feel.” I could hear the soft murmur of disbelief on the other end of the line. “No, really. I was taken, too. At seventeen. And it was only recently that I managed to break free. So I do know how you feel.”
I gave her a moment to process, and when she was ready, Kyleigh asked, “How long?”
“Off and on for a few years. I kept escaping, kept running, but kept getting taken again. It’s only now I’m beginning to really believe it might be over.
“How about you?”
“Um… I wasn’t so much as taken. I met a boy older than me. I was fifteen and he promised me the world. I was dumb.”
“You weren’t dumb,” I affirmed. “Naïve, yes. But not dumb. You were young. An easy target. Old enough to be away from your family for several hours without any of them worrying something might be wrong.”
“I went willingly,” she rebutted, her voice finally showing signs of life.
“You were groomed. Tricked. Not one part of you willingly wanted what awaited you.”
“My parents…” she muttered, her voice weakening again. “They look at me like they’re afraid of me.”
“They probably are,” I admitted. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not the same girl my parents raised. It’s not to say I’m either better or worse, just that I’m different. Your parents have probably noticed some character changes in you. Add to that your trauma, all the triggers you’ve got now, this version of Kyleigh is a whole new person for them to learn. They love you, and they’re scared to death to lose you again, but they don’t want to push you or set you off or make you feel like you need to run. Give them time. Give yourself time. One of these days you’re all going to wake up and the daily family routine will feel natural again. It’s just not something you can force, you know?”
“Yeah, maybe. I just hate that everything feels weird. I always think everyone’s looking at me differently. Even strangers. I can’t even go to the grocery store without thinking everyone just knows by looking at me that I was a slave. God, sometimes I stare and wonder, ‘Were you one of the ones who paid to rape me?’”
“How many? If you don’t mind answering.”
She took a calming breath. “I don’t even know. Several a week for a few months? It was dark. The room had no windows. I had no concept of time. I don’t even think that one sandwich came every day.”
“Not that you were hungry for it anyways, right?” I asked with a knowing tone.
“No.”
“Me neither. I even tried starving myself to death once,” I admitted solemnly. “I just ended up making things worse.”
“There’s always a worse no matter what,” she finished. I silently nodded my agreement. We let the silence hang for more than a minute. To be honest, I didn’t think either one of us were uncomfortable about it. It was soothing, just knowing someone was there, sharing that same moment of time and space.
“Would you be opposed to talking again sometime?” she asked.
“No. I’d like that actually. I don’t really have anyone to talk to anymore.”
“Me neither,” she replied. “At least not about this. But then again, I don’t really talk to anyone about anything that much anymore anyway.
“Whoa,” she said with a tiny spark of energy. “That was a lot of any’s.”
I don’t know how, but we both began to laugh. It was light and short, but it was enough to feel this immense amount of pressure lift off my shoulders.
I exchanged contact information with Kyleigh, then said goodbye. I sat there swaying back and forth in that chair, reliving our conversation, a small smile taking over my lips. I felt like I helped her. I felt like she helped me. Hell, I knew she did just by the smile on my face.
I guess Anise realized my phone line switched from red to green, because she soon appeared at the door. She took in my appearance and smiled as she crossed her arms and leaned into the doorway. “I take it the phone call went well?”
“Yeah, it did. Thank you for that. That’s exactly what I came looking for. We’re going to keep in touch. It’s nice to know there are people like me out there struggling with the same things I am. Makes me feel less like an outcast.”
“You see? That right there,” she said. She pointed as she made her way to the other side of the desk. “That’s what we really want to offer in a program. Not just assistance in getting their lives back in order, but healing their soul. I can already see your aura shining more brightly.”
“I do feel lighter. More at peace,” I admitted. “For four months now I’ve felt dead inside. Alone. Really alone. I knew I wanted out of this funk but I did nothing to achieve it. I’ve just been wandering. Looking, I guess. Trying to find something I’ll be at peace with.”
“Maybe you found it right here.” I gazed to her curiously. “I have an entire department begging to be started. How would you feel about coming on and initiating the start up?”
“Say again?”
She lightly waved me off. “It’s not as overwhelming as it sounds. Like any good program, we’ll start off small. Make it feel intimate. Learn what these individuals truly need to heal. Then we’ll slowly begin to build and meet those needs until the program thrives. So what do you think?”
“You really want to hire me?” I asked with a questioning tone. “You don’t even know me.”
“I’m a really good judge of character, Claire. And what I haven’t sensed in you so far can be backed up with a background check.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I should probably mention I legally changed my name a while back. I haven’t been Claire in a long time.”
With a knowing smile, Anise expressed, “I’m not worried about your name. Given your history, we’ll probably let you list whatever name you want for the company. We’ll probably never even put a picture to that name if you don’t want to. The victims come first here, not the politics.”
Wow. I was stunned. I came here just looking for someone to talk to, to try and find a way to push past the fog I constantly choked on, to find a reason to live in a world that had become so cruel in my eyes. And now… Well, for the first time in a long time I actually felt some excitement, felt my cells beginning to swell with life again. I could actually feel the slight happiness behind the smile. With a renewed sense of confidence, I asked, “So how do we do this?”
True to Seattle’s reputation, the sky was gray and the air windy as I made my way across the moist green grass of the cemetery, zigzagging my way between paths. Calling Detective O’Neill after all this time wasn’t easy, and she laid into me a little for disappearing the way I did. Other than my brief letter saying I was alive, no one knew exactly what happened to me, and everyone they captured denied, denied, denied about knowing anything. Not even Zander gave them anything at the hospital, but truthfully, he hadn’t a clue what happened to me either. It wasn’t until he got out that he was able to track me down and know for sure I was still alive and free. Not surprisingly, he didn’t share that information with the authorities. He slipped into the night as easily I had.
But thanks to O’Neill, I knew where my family was buried, and I was finally ready to face them. I was doing okay until I found their headstones lined up one after the other. Tears stung my eyes more than the breeze, and soon steady drops traveled in rivulets down my wind-burned cheeks. Thomas Whitaker, Rebecca Whitaker and Thea Whitaker. It seemed with all three of them passed and me missing, close family friends contributed to make sure they received a good burial. So I had several sincerely grateful thank you notes to send out.
Purplish-blue hydrangeas had been added to the vases centered in front of each grave, somewhat recently too, because the petals had
hardly turned in the warm, sunny conditions. Given the floral selection, Nick was the obvious contributor. And that was taking my thoughts in a direction I couldn’t handle right now.
I sucked in a deep breath. I came here expecting to say something, but now that I was here, I had no words. I wanted to tell them that I was sorry, that I loved them. That I prayed they could forgive me. They never should have died for me, never should have been involved. I wasn’t sure if forgiveness was possible, but I was a long way from ever being able to give it to myself. And it didn’t matter how many people told me it wasn’t mine to bear – I would forever wear that guilt.
Baby steps, Mia.
I added a single white rose to each of their vases and walked away slowly. One day I’d be able to stand here and say what needed to be said. One day emotions wouldn’t get the best of me and the words wouldn’t escape me.
One day…
I took a long drive after that. Like to the next state long. One I hadn’t planned on making but knew I needed to make. It was evening when my GPS brought me to the destination that had the nervous ticks nibbling away at my insides the past three hours.
Why was I so scared to do this?
Just breathe, Mia. Just breathe.
And I did just that, closing my eyes and taking in three long and heavy breaths of air before finding the courage to exit my car. As my hand wrapped around the slick metal door handle, another shot of panic flushed through my veins, fueling my already active heart. I swallowed it down and forced myself inside.
“Good evening,” a hostess greeted with a tired smile, one I recognized well from my own experience running around on my feet all night. “Welcome to Kettle Fusion. Table for one?”
I froze again, my lungs feeling heavy with unbreathable air. “Y-yeah,” I said on an exhalation. Dinner would be good. Dinner would be a good distraction.
But then again, dinner would take long enough that I might chicken out on what I needed to do. Before the girl could lead me away, I said, “No, wait. I think I’ll just have a drink at the bar.” She barely got out the hesitant, “Okay,” before I headed off in the opposite direction. I took the last seat on the side that gave me a clear view of the kitchen doors, laying my bag and jacket on the one beside me.
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