Riding Lil' Red Hard

by Eddie Cleveland

  “Ella García! We’ve had an anonymous tip that you’ve been illegally working in this country for over six years.” They rush me like football players scrambling for the ball at the championship game.

  “I, um, I…” I have no real words. None to defend myself and none to protest. My mouth dries up as fear climbs up inside me, scratching its way to my brain, freezing me to the spot and leaving me breathless.

  “Jackson, what’s going on?” Marie lifts Chloe up on her hip and waits for her son to explain.

  “I said to get out of my house. You can’t come in here without a warrant. I know my rights.”

  I’ve never seen Jackson so angry. His fists ball up at his side the same way they did when he punched out Raymond.

  “Don’t, Jackson, don’t make this worse,” I plead with him not to make a stupid mistake that will land him in a jail cell too.

  “Daddy, I’m scared,” Chloe cries, her cheeks stretching out and turning bright red as fat tears trickle down to her quivering chin.

  “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.” I try to reassure her. Or maybe it’s myself I’m trying to calm down. Either way, it’s not working.

  “Ma’am, can you provide proof of American citizenship or a visa to prove your legal status in this country?” the woman barks at me.

  The room is almost silent except for Chloe’s sobbing. Still, it feels like a train derailing. Twisting metal, screaming voices, and shattering glass would be quieter than the air is right now. I take in Jackson, the man I love. The man I’ll never see again. Tears blur my vision and I shake my head from side to side slowly.

  “Then I need to inform you that you’re under arrest.” The man walks over to me and pulls out handcuffs, clicking them down onto my wrist tight.

  “Is that really necessary?” Jackson rushes over to me. “She’s not fighting you. Take it off,” he growls.

  “It’s procedure.” The man ignores him, but instead of clipping my hands together behind my back, he at least lets me keep them together in front of me. It’s a small human kindness, but it’s still one I appreciate.

  “Jackson, please, listen to me.” I twist my mother’s ring up off my finger and hold it out to him. “I want you to have this.”

  “I can’t take that.” Tears fill his eyes as he looks from the officers’ faces to mine. “I know how much that ring means to you.” His voice breaks.

  “And that’s exactly why I need you to have it. Someday you’ll find me and put it back on my finger, but until then, I want you to keep it to remember me by,” I sob.

  “Ella, are you sure?” He reaches out and touches the diamond crusted band and I nod, no longer able to utter words from how hard I’m crying.

  “Okay, enough of this. Do you have the ring, sir? Great, time to head out!”

  “Where are they taking her? Ella! Don’t go,” Chloe cries as the officers lead me back out the front door. “Ella!” Her tiny voice cracks as she screams for me. “Please, don’t go!”

  The officers lead me out of the house. A house that only half an hour ago I considered my home. My home. How stupid could I be? I can’t even look out the window as the police put me in the back of the car. I can’t face the shattered expressions of the family I fell in love with. I broke their hearts. I can’t believe I let myself think I could ever belong here. That I could have my own happiness. That I deserved my own love. I lean over in the seat, my breaths hitching in my throat as tears pour down my face.

  I must be cursed. I’ve lost everything. And everyone I’ve ever loved.

  Again.

  35 | Jackson

  I trudge into my empty bedroom and flop down onto the bed. I’m completely worn out. After work, I had Mom stay and babysit Chloe so I could call every number I could possibly get my hands on to try to figure out how to get Ella back. I spent hours getting transferred from department to department and then back again, only to be told there’s nothing I can do.

  There’s nothing they can do.

  Apparently there’s nothing anyone can do.

  Their best advice was to wait and see what the outcome would be. Ella has been gone since yesterday. That’s when the ICE officers ripped a gaping black hole in our lives and took her away from us. ‘Wait and see’ doesn’t exactly cut it.

  My bleary eyes settle on the alarm clock. I can’t believe it’s only a little after nine. I haven’t been this exhausted since my days in the SEALs. How can dealing with red tape and bureaucracy make me just as tired as when I did physically grueling training for sixteen hours a day?

  I don’t even bother getting all tucked into bed. Instead, I yank the corner of my blanket over me so I’m wrapped up like a burrito and let my head sink into my pillow. I blink slowly. My head is pounding and the voices of all the government agents I spoke to on the phone buzz in my ears as my body drifts into sleep.

  “Oh no! Daddy! Help me!” Chloe’s voice makes my eyelids pop back open as I fling back the blanket and leap from the bed. Immediately I rush to her room, my heart pounding as my suddenly very awake senses search for danger.

  Tears streak down her face as she shakes like a leaf under her little blanket. “Chloe! What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  Her finger trembles as she points to her window. I cross the floor and look outside but don’t see anything.

  “I saw him, Daddy.” She chokes on her words and sputters them out. “Hampy was there. He came back again.” She winces at the giant imaginary spider that I thought we’d gotten rid of for good.

  Of course Hampy is back. Ella is gone. Her magic song is gone. All this confusion and sadness is too much for me, let alone a little girl. Her world has been tossed into chaos and her young brain is trying to make as much sense of all this as it can.

  “Chloe, it’s okay, hon. Hampy isn’t real, remember? You just had a bad dream, sweetheart.” I sit beside her bed and my daughter scoots into my arms, clinging onto me tight.

  “No, he’s real,” she insists, “I saw him on the window. Ella isn’t here and he’s not scared of her song no more.”

  I rock her gently in my arms and listen to her fears.

  “Sometimes dreams can feel real, but I promise you, hon, there’s no big spider like that here. I swear.” I brush her tear-soaked hair from the side of her face.

  Chloe regards me skeptically. Like she wants to believe me, but she isn’t fully convinced just yet. “Dad?” Her eyebrows scrunch together.

  “Yes?”

  “Is Ella a bad woman? Is that why the police took her?” She sits back in her bed, waiting for me to make sense of a senseless act for her.

  “No, she’s not bad at all,” I reassure her.

  “Then why’d they take her?” She frowns again.

  “It’s complicated.” I sigh. “The police might want Ella to go back to the country she was born in.” My lips tug down as her eyes grow wide.

  “No! She can’t leave. Tell them she can stay here, with us. Don’t make her go away!” Fresh tears fall from the brim of her eyes and blot on her fuzzy pajamas.

  “We don’t know if that’s going to happen yet, so let’s not get too worried about it. These things take time.” I echo the frustrating words I heard over and over on the phone today.

  “But I miss her so much.” Chloe holds her hands over her heart and it almost tears mine right out of my chest.

  “I know, hon. I do too. And I know she misses us.” My voice cracks. I swallow hard to get control, pushing down my own pain. “Come here.” I give her another hug and Chloe begins to calm down.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did I do something bad?” she whispers against my chest, like she’s afraid of the answer.

  “Not at all. Why would you say that?”

  “I dunno.” Her tiny shoulders shrug. “First I had a mommy and then she died. Then I had Ella and she was taken away too. Maybe I did something bad? Maybe I can’t have any more moms.” Her brilliant blue eyes shine with tears.

&nbs
p; “No, Chloe.” I swallow the growing lump in my throat as her question reached into my chest and tore out my heart. “You’re not bad at all. Those things have nothing to do with you, baby. You’re a perfect daughter, okay? Nothing you ever think or feel or say or do will ever make people go away. Don’t think that because it’s not true.” A tear slides down my face and I brush it away quickly, struggling to keep myself under control, to be the rock she needs. Her question was like a dagger to the gut, leaving me emotionally crumpled on the ground.

  Chloe sniffles and I hold her close, rocking her in my arms as we both try to understand the dull ache that Ella’s absence has left in our lives. I don’t have the heart to explain that Ella might never be coming back. It’s too awful to even think those words. I don’t have the strength to admit it to myself that we may have both just lost a woman we loved.

  36 | Ella

  I’ve been sitting in this room for probably close to an hour, but no one has come to talk to me yet. It doesn’t look like the dark, sinister interrogation rooms I’ve caught glimpses of on television shows. There’s no bare bulb hanging over the table and no fake mirror on the wall that they can watch me through.

  Fear keeps splashing around in my gut like waves tossing around a small boat on the open seas. I try not to let it overtake me, but I want to lean over and hyperventilate. I want to scream. I want to bang on the door and cry until they let me out of here. But I know none of that will help me. It’s no use. I’m trapped. Again.

  No, this space is bright. Almost too bright. The multiple fluorescent lights overhead make me want to shield my eyes. The desk is similar to my family’s old kitchen table and the chairs could have easily been taken from a classroom. On the opposite wall is an unblinking eye of a camera, recording my every move.

  Not that I’m giving them much of a show. Occasionally crossing and uncrossing my legs and fidgeting with the space on my finger where my ring should be isn’t exactly interesting for them to watch.

  The door silently opens and my head pops over to watch an officer I haven’t met yet walk in with some papers in his hand. He’s taller than average with silver hair and milky blue eyes.

  “Hello, I’m Officer Parks.” He sounds bored and never lifts his gaze from the page he’s reading. “I’ll be asking you a few questions today.” He shuts the door behind him and takes a seat across from me.

  I don’t say a word. He hasn’t asked me anything yet and I’m not sure if I should speak. I just watch as he keeps reading, acting like we’re not even in the same room. Just as I wonder if he’s ever going to say anything the door opens again.

  “Sorry.” A woman looks over at the aging policeman sitting across from me. She smiles at me brightly and comes over to the table. “Hey, I’m Sofia. Well, Officer Martinez.” She holds out her hand to me and I shake it gingerly. I’m surprised to hear her Spanish accent roll from her tongue. With her rich, brown hair and deep mahogany eyes, she makes me think of how much different my life could’ve turned out if I had become a legal citizen of this country.

  She takes a seat beside her partner, the man who still hasn’t uttered a word. His silence makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know how to read him. His expression is stony as he finally lifts his eyes from the page and pins them across the table on me.

  “Let’s get this started.” He sounds like this is the millionth time he’s gone through this routine and he couldn’t possibly find it less interesting. “For the record, state your name, your age, and your country of birth.”

  “I am Ella Garcia, I’m twenty-one years old, and I was born in Colombia,” I answer obediently.

  “Oh, we would’ve been neighbors.” Sofia’s eyes light up. “I was born in Ecuador, but I came here when I was very young,” she explains.

  There’s something about her that makes me relax. Listening to her familiar accent, seeing the kindness in her eyes, the tension in my muscles eases as I relax into the chair.

  “I’ve never been to Ecuador,” I admit, “but I’ve heard it’s very beautiful.”

  “Okay, enough chit-chat. How about we get into how you found your way into America, Ella.” Officer Parks snaps the focus back to his case.

  “My father crossed the Úsuga Clan in Colombia.” I stop and peer across the table at Sofia, who shakes her head knowingly. “My mother and two brothers paid the price for his betrayal. I hid under the bed as they raped her and then killed them all.” I try not to think about my words. I don’t want to feel attached to them, to the images. I just can’t let my mind go there right now.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ms. Martinez whispers.

  I nod, swallowing the lump rising in my throat. “Thank you. So, my father knew I would suffer my mother’s fate if he didn’t get me out of the country. He had business ties to a family here and paid a coyote to have me shipped up here in the back of a truck with a bunch of other girls. I was the oldest one and that was six years ago.” More thoughts I try to push away, knowing full well that the lives those children were thrust into made mine look like paradise.

  “Okay, so you didn’t come up to stay with family? You went to a business associate’s house? What kind of business?” Officer Parks frowns at me.

  “Human smuggling business.” I bite my tongue, not sure if I should tell them. Should I spill everything about Sylvia’s job? Should I tell them how she buys girls, the younger the better, and sells them into sex slavery or off to rich psychopaths who are probably much worse? Part of me fears like I’ve been trained to for years now, that if I give up too much, somehow she’ll find me and make good on every single threat she’s screamed in my face over the years.

  “You said this was six years ago?” Sofia furrows her brows. “So you were, what? Fifteen when you came here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said the other girls, they were younger?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much younger?”

  My thoughts jump back to the dark heat of being locked inside of the back of the long haul truck. The other children were several years my junior. Many of them clung onto me since I was the oldest, like a child clings to their mama.

  “I would guess the youngest was eight and the next oldest after me was twelve.”

  “Do you know if they were also being placed in homes?”

  “No, they were not.”

  Sofia and Officer Parks exchange a glance.

  “Tell me, Ella, what have you been doing for the last six years? You haven’t gone to school, right? Have you been working here?” the man with the icy blue eyes asks me.

  “I’ve been working, but I didn’t get paid. Most times I wasn’t allowed to leave the house or eat more than one meal a day. I cooked, cleaned, ran errands and basically did whatever I was told,” I admit.

  There’s that look again. The officers are having a silent conversation in glances.

  “Ella, do you know what the woman’s name was that you lived with?”

  “Yes, her name is Sylvia Thurston.”

  “And do you know how she made her money, Ella?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I swallow and force myself to be brave. There’s nothing she can do to me now. I must tell the police what a horrible person Sylvia is so maybe they can stop her from harming more children. “She bought very young girls and sold them into unpaid prostitution. They became slaves. She never talked to me about it, but I met some of them and she constantly threatened to do the same to me if I stepped out of line.” My voice wavers as I make the heavy confession, releasing a burden from my soul so dark, so completely horrid that as soon as the words finally tumble off my tongue I can’t help but break down and sob.

  I shelter my face in my hands, letting my tears fall into my palms, and my shoulders shake ruthlessly. All of the years of tears I’ve been swallowing come gushing out like water from a broken levy.

  “Okay, um, I’m going to need you to hang tight. Officer Martinez and I need to discuss some things, but we’ll be back, got it?” he gruffly asks
me.

  I nod, still unable to get myself under control. All the faces of the kids I’ve met and watched be taken away over the years swirl through my mind. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, and right now I don’t even care. As long as the police do something to stop yet another girl from being processed by Sylvia and shipped off to the most disgusting men in existence, I will be happy.

  37 | Ella

  “So all of your paperwork, your statement, and your photos are being sent off for processing,” Officer Knight explains everything again, her deep chocolate eyes brimming with compassion.

  “Does that mean I’m free to go?” I search her face anxiously, watching her thick lips pull up into a soft smile.

  “It does. We’ve already gotten a hold of Mr. Wilcox. He’s agreed to come pick you up. Listen, before you go, I just want to tell you how sorry I am to hear what you’ve been through. I can’t imagine how difficult any of this must have been, and I want to thank you for how brave you are to help us prosecute the human traffickers who enslaved you.”

  Sylvia’s and Raymond’s faces flash before my eyes. I can only imagine that it was them who called in the anonymous tip to try to have me deported. Who else would’ve done that? The only other person in this entire country who knew I was illegal was Jackson and he’d rather die than betray me. They must have thought I would be tossed out of the country, keeping their sinister secrets safe and their business running. Lucky for me, I had the opportunity to tell my story.

  “Thank you.” I peer down at my hands. “I’m so grateful for all of your help to get the T-visa. I didn’t even know such a thing existed! I hope it goes through quickly.”

  “Well, I can’t say for sure that you’ll get it, but I will say this, I’ve never seen such a compelling case for that visa. And, if you do get it, you’ll be permitted to stay in the country for four years. After three years, you’ll be eligible for a green card, so just cooperate with the police in this case to your fullest ability and I can’t see why you’d have a problem on your path to citizenship,” she explains.