“You saw.”
“I don’t think so. You’re cradling your belly as if you’ve been punched and that limp tells me you may have been kneed or kicked. That guy was a lot bigger than you. He wouldn’t have needed that much force to pin you in the corner.”
Josie rubbed the blood off her lip and cupped her swollen cheek. “It’s been a rough night. So what?”
“Maybe I can help.”
“Who do you think you are, my guardian angel? I don’t want your help. I’m fine all by myself.”
I let her limp ahead, holding back until her gait slowed and her shoulders relaxed. Then I rolled up beside her. “You don’t need me. Got it. But maybe I need you.”
“Híjole, chica! What is wrong with you?”
I nodded toward the diner. “How ‘bout I buy you dinner? I’ll even pay for your time. What do you say?”
She crinkled her nose. “Is this some sort of food fetish with you? Buying girls food and watching them eat?” When I didn’t answer, she sighed. “Whatever. I’ve been paid for worse.”
Once settled in our booth, Josie relaxed and ordered a hamburger, fries, and a shake without checking the menu. I followed her lead and ordered the same.
“Clock’s started,” she said. “What do you wanna know?”
“How did you get into the life?”
“It was my birthday wish.”
I opened the menu to a decadent lava cake, chocolate dripping down the sides, and turned it around so she could see. She eyed it greedily. “Fine. I was already living on the streets, so, you know, whatever.”
“Why weren’t you at home?”
“Why do you think? It sucked, okay? I started hanging with the local pandillas and moved in with them.”
“The local gang? How old were you?”
“I don’t know. Twelve. Thirteen? Something like that.” She bit her lip. “It didn’t go like I thought it would.”
“They didn’t want you?”
She scoffed. “Oh, they wanted me. They all wanted me. And when they were done, they tossed me like garbage.”
I schooled my expression, afraid to show any sympathy. “Why didn’t you go back home?”
“Para qué? For more of the same? No. And before you ask, foster care is a joke. They take the money and do whatever they like. At least out here, I’m free. If somebody makes money off of me, it should be me.”
The food arrived and Josie dug into the hamburger with such zeal the cut on her mouth bled.
“So it wasn’t your pimp who beat you up tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you were free. That mean’s you don’t have protection, right?”
“Don’t be estúpido. Of course I have protection.”
“Then where is he?”
She stuffed her mouth with fries and winced when the salt entered her cut. “I don’t know. Around?”
“How old are you, Josie?”
“Fifteen.”
“And he beat you up because you weren’t making bank?”
“Hey, I always make bank.”
“But you don’t get to keep the money.”
“Yeah…about that.”
I set my wallet on the table and covered it with my hands. “I still don’t understand why you do this.”
“Of course you don’t. I bet you had a big family with a nice father and lots of brothers. And I bet none of them ever snuck into your bedroom at night and did nasty things to you.” Her eyes burned into mine. “Why do I let men use me? Because they always have.” She held out her hand. “Except this time, I’m the one who gets paid.”
Her words struck home in a way I hadn’t expected. Love, support, opportunity—so much of it depended on who gave birth to you and where. If my family had done to me what Josie implied hers had done, would I have sought friendship and protection from a gang? If so, her fate could have been mine. It all felt so arbitrary.
People called prostitution the oldest profession in the world, one that women had the right to choose. None of this felt like a choice to me.
Josie tapped the menu. “Do I get that cake?”
“Sure.” I flagged down the waitress and ordered while Josie finished her hamburger.
“You ever find that chica you were looking for?”
“No. But if I find Manolo, I think I will.”
“Yeah…about that.” Josie shrugged. “I know him.”
I perked up. “You do? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you. Quiere saber, o no?”
I sat back and took a breath. “Yes, please. I want to know.”
The cake came and Josie dug into it, speaking as she ate.
“He was hanging around, back when I was with the gang. He had this stable of chicas. When they came with him, I had to get lost. Made feel feel like an ugly kid, you know? Pissed me off. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to be with Manolo. He acted all dreamy and shit, but he was mean. I could see it in his eyes. They were like tar. You know? Like the La Brea Pits.”
She gobbled another bite and washed it down with the shake.
“Did he do anything to you?”
“Me? No. I didn’t look all fancy like I do now. And I didn’t have these.” She gestured to her breasts. “So, you know, what good was I? My homies didn’t mind, so screw Manolo, right?”
“Except they tossed you out of the gang.”
“Yeah. Fucking pendejos.”
She blotted the cake crumbs with her finger and ate them.
“I saw Manolo again after I’d been living on the streets for a few months. He had his chicas with him. They looked good, you know? Nice clothes, clean, well fed. Not like me. I looked like a sewer rat. I said, ‘take me.’ And you know what he did? He laughed. So, yeah. I know Manolo.”
Josie wiped the plate with her finger until all the crumbs were gone, but instead of eating them, she flicked them off her finger.
“Where did you see him?”
“Long Beach Boulevard, north of Rosecrans. But his chicas also walk Pacific and Alameda. He rotates them around Los Angeles—Sepulveda, Lankershim, Western—you know, to keep it fresh and avoid the sweeps. Your best bet is Long Beach Boulevard.”
I pushed aside my uneaten food and glanced at Josie’s bruised and swollen cheek. “You don’t really have protection, do you? You’re out here on your own.”
She scoffed. “That ain’t gonna last.”
“Why not?”
“Because everyone belongs to someone, and tonight, they’re fighting over me.” She pushed away from the table and stood. “Can I have that money now?”
“Sure. How much?”
Josie shrugged. “Twenty.”
Was that all Josie’s time was worth?
I doubled it and walked her to the street. “You should call Ms. Ruiz sometime. I know she’d like to hear from you.”
“I might.”
Josie straightened her skirt and pulled up her guard—ready to hit the street.
“Thanks for the food,” she said. “Be careful of Manolo. Don’t buy his Rico Suave act. He’s not a lover. He’s a monster.”
Chapter Twenty
Since I wasn’t foolish enough to ride my bike twenty miles south into Compton at eleven o’clock at night, I did the next best thing: I headed two miles east to Western Avenue, one of the many prostitution tracks Josie had mentioned. The detour wouldn’t add too much time to my ride home, and if I got lucky, I might spot Emma or someone who fit Manolo’s description hanging on the street. In any event, it was too early for me to call it a day.
Western Avenue cut down the edge of Little Armenia, which bore its cultural stamp more subtly than Chinatown, Koreatown, or Little Tokyo. I had ridden through Little Armenia in daylight before and had only spotted a few restaurants, bakeries, and churches. Aside from those, it resembled the seedier sections of Hollywood. At night, the commercial road looked me
nacing and desolate.
I kept my pace quick and my eyes sharp.
Half a mile down the road, I crossed over the 101 and slowed to a stop. The vibe of the neighborhood had changed. Large, stark buildings had given way to small side-by-side shops, barred with security gates for the night. The corner stores were larger with parking lots, ideal for clandestine conversations and drive-thru pickups—which was exactly what appeared to be happening at the auto shop across the street on my left.
Three females of undeterminable age loitered in the lot bent over the windows of two different cars below a bright orange billboard with the words “Syphilis is Serious.”
Someone in marketing deserved a gold star.
The women—or girls—hustling the guy in the white car were short. The one leaning through the window of the gray car was tall. She had long legs and straight, light-colored hair that may or may not have been red like Emma’s. When she got in the car, I followed.
The driver exited the parking lot and turned right onto a narrow one-way street that ran along a freeway embankment and around the back of the auto shop. A community of homeless people had set up tents and tarps on the freeway side of the busted chain-link fence. No sign of the car I had followed—until I rode around the curve into one of the meanest back alley neighborhoods I had ever seen.
Barbed wire protected vacant lots with nothing but scrap metal and rusted appliances. Beyond them, prison-style apartments stood in the dark with tiny windows glowing like beady eyes. As I rode farther, shabby buildings pressed in from the sides and a canopy of crisscross wires descended from above to cage me in.
I pedaled slower along the line of cars crammed against the buildings on the right and searched for Emma. Bodies writhed in the back seat of the first. Even in the dim light, I could tell it wasn’t her. I rode past the second and third: Each car contained different stages of the same. None of the participants so far resembled Emma.
As I rode up to the next car, a man lunged at me. The impact jolted me forward and rammed my head into his chest. He grabbed my handlebars and shook the bike with a growl.
“What are you doing here?”
I could have asked the same: The man had appeared out of nowhere.
“Wrong turn. Now, if you could just let go of my bike…” I jerked the handlebars, but they didn’t move. I stomped on my pedals and went nowhere.
He leaned forward and peered into my eyes. “You don’t belong.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The moment he grinned, I punched him in the throat, using the same Boshi fist I had playfully used on DeAndre. This time, my thumbnail drove deep into his windpipe.
He clutched his throat with one hand and grabbed my hair with the other. Before I could ride away, he yanked me from the bike.
I grabbed onto his arm to support my dangling weight and take the pressure off my scalp. The pain receded, but the attack did not. He swung at my face with his other hand. I blocked it with my forearm and vibrated from the impact like a tuning fork.
Since he was determined to hold me in the air, I used him like a jungle gym. I pulled up my feet, hooked my left leg over his shoulder, and stomp-kicked his face with my right. His arms flung apart from the force of my kick and swung me out to the side like the boom of a sailboat. In a moment, he would scrape me off or pummel me against the wall of one of those shabby buildings.
Time to break free or double down.
As he flexed his arm, I used the upward movement to rotate my hips and hooked my left ankle in front of his throat. With my right leg braced against his back, I scissored with my left and leaned all of my weight into the space behind him. Like all big men, he hung at the tipping point as he fought for balance. I leaned out farther, like a sailor on a catamaran, hanging onto his arm and forcing back his neck with my leg. After three excruciatingly slow seconds, he tipped beyond the point of balance and—ever so slowly—fell.
I hugged his arm and rode him down, using my small amount of weight and considerable leverage to make sure the first thing to hit the cement was his skull. Bone met asphalt in a reverberating clank, and the force of the impact knocked him unconscious.
I scrambled to my feet in time to meet the next threat, but the john in the nearest car wanted no part of me. He yanked the woman out of his car and shoved her in my direction. Close up, she looked nothing like Emma. Then he jumped in the driver’s seat and screeched out of the alley.
The woman fell onto the unconscious man laying in the road. “Narek! Wake up. He stole my money!” She shook his shoulders, bouncing his head on the cement. “Did you hear me? He didn’t pay.”
I picked up my bike and flipped it around. I’d had enough of Little Armenia. I wanted out.
The women in the auto shop parking lot had moved to the sidewalk. Under the streetlight, I could see they were adults like the woman I had left in the alley. They were too old and too short to be Emma. And if the pimps around here all looked like the guy I’d fought in the alley, I was in the wrong part of town to find Manolo.
I rode down Western Avenue to Pico Boulevard and took it west toward home. I pedaled fast, but still scanned the sidewalks. Although I didn’t find Emma, I passed a sorrowful amount of teens—almost all of them children of color.
I thought of Josie, Sharelle, and Ana Lucía and how the conditions of their lives—sexual abuse, poverty, fear of parental deportation—had made them vulnerable to traffickers. None of that, as far as I knew, applied to Emma. Her vulnerability came from drugs and whatever emotional issues had caused her to use them. And while I suspected this was common, it didn’t compare to the systemic vulnerability of poverty.
Would this realization help me find Emma Hughes? No. But perhaps her differences would make her easier to spot.
Chapter Twenty-One
I awoke the next morning with a cramp in my leg and foul memories. A hot shower washed away most of the residue. A focused meditation took care of the rest. All I needed now was a quick meal and a pretty dress.
I rolled the soft material so it wouldn’t wrinkle, then stuffed it in my backpack. Until I reached my family in Arcadia, I’d bear the heat in my yoga shorts and tank.
My phone rang.
“When will you be here?” Ma asked.
“Good morning. How are you?” I countered.
“Don’t be fresh, Lily. When do you plan to arrive?”
“That bad?”
She sighed. “You’re still at your apartment, aren’t you?”
“I’m walking out the door.”
“You won’t be running here, will you? Or riding that bike?”
“Why? Because of the time it would take or the sweat?”
“Both.”
I laughed. “No. I’ll take the train.
“Call for a ride. I’ll pay.”
“You sure? I can be there in ninety minutes.”
“Not soon enough.”
“Okay. Hang in there, Ma. I’m on my way.”
I whipped off my tank, put on the dress, kept on the shorts, and slipped into a pair of feather-light running sandals. Their five-millimeter sole and stretchy thong-and-strap design looked delicate enough to pass Ma’s scrutiny and provided the athletic freedom to satisfy mine. Then I called for a rideshare and headed to Arcadia. Forty minutes later, I hurried up my parents’ walkway and opened the front door.
“Hello?” I said, my voice echoing in the marble foyer.
Ma answered from the back of the house. “We’re in the kitchen.”
Gung-Gung and Po-Po sat on counter stools drinking tea the Chinese way. Each had delicate ceramic cups with equally delicate lids. Po-Po held hers at the lip of the cup with her middle finger and thumb, and used her index finger to hold the lid in place with a slight opening so she could sip her tea without an invasion of leaves. Gung-Gung was not so dainty. He used a two-handed approach—one for the cup and the other for the lid to sweep back the leaves as he slurped.
; “Would you like tea?” Ma asked, as she refilled my grandparents’ cups with hot water. Although outwardly poised, I could feel her tension.
“Yes, please.” I kissed Po-Po and Gung-Gung on the cheeks. “Jo sun. Good morning. How’d you sleep?”
“What kept you so long?” Po-Po asked.
“Sorry. Late night.”
She nudged Gung-Gung with her elbow. “See? Lots of boyfriends.”
Ma raised an inquiring brow. I shrugged. It would take too long to explain. And, besides, what harm could come from Po-Po’s misconception?
Gung-Gung grunted in disapproval. “Quantity is not the same as quality. Living in America is no excuse, Lei Lei. You should not waste yourself on inferior boys when there are men of quality available.”
Ma set down the kettle, harder than necessary, and forced a patient smile. “Lily isn’t dating anyone. Are you, Lily?”
“No. I mean…” I thought of Daniel and shook my head. “No.”
“See? Now that that’s settled, perhaps you’d like to go to lunch.” Ma turned back to me. “You may borrow my car. The key is in the drawer.”
“I’ll get my sweater,” Po-Po said, hopping off the stool and followed by Gung-Gung.
When my grandparents were out of earshot, Ma hissed through her teeth. “You know what that was about don’t you? That talk of America and inferior boys?”
“Baba?”
“Of course. Your grandfather never misses an opportunity to remind me of my failure. Well, I won’t give him the satisfaction.” She retrieved her keys from the drawer and placed them in my hand. “You will not mention my reaction to either of them. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good.”
The doorbell chimed and Ma sighed. “It’s probably another delivery. Please answer the door and have them leave whatever it is in my office.”
“Sure. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
I allowed her the lie and kissed her cheek. “I’ll get them out of your hair.”
“Thank you.”
By the time I arrived at the door, Gung-Gung had already opened it and had the visitor’s hand firmly in his grip. “It’s good to see you again, Daniel.”
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