Believe Like a Child (26 page)
W
hen the Fourth of July holiday came around, Alessa and Lucy were living comfortably. Alessa had passed her GED and applied for grant money to attend the Philadelphia Community College. After months of working with the homeless on the streets and in shelters, Alessa knew she wanted to go into counseling. She was good at it, especially when it involved teens and children. She related to what they were going through and encouraged them individually to be strong and resilient. Her work with each of them was limited, though, since she was only a volunteer.
On July 4
th
, Alessa took Lucy to Penn’s Landing to watch the fireworks on the waterfront. There were thousands of people there. Most were drunk by the time they arrived, at seven p.m., but Alessa kept Lucy clear of those who were openly too drunk to be near. Alessa was no stranger to drunks and the drug addicts. She wasn’t afraid for herself. She just wanted to protect Lucy. She had seen way too many perverts at the club and some of them had really given her the willies. She knew there was evil in the world and that also included the world in which Lucy lived. She found a spot where a family was standing and planted Lucy and herself next to them. She figured staying close to a family would keep them safe from all the rowdy party-goers.
Lucy and Alessa stood on Columbus Boulevard and enjoyed the beautiful fireworks display. Both the girls felt exhilarated and hopeful, as they watched the burst of color against the night sky. The show didn’t get over until well after ten p.m. and Alessa decided it would be best for them to take a cab back to the hostel instead of riding the bus. The crowd began to thin out and Alessa noticed that those who remained were still partying and having a good time. She saw a pay phone in the strip mall across the street and took Lucy by the hand to lead her there.
Just as they were crossing Columbus Boulevard, they noticed a young man sitting up the road, barely in sight. From what Alessa could see, he was doubled over and rocking back and forth. With Lucy at her side, Alessa walked past the strip mall and over to the young man who was sitting under an overpass. The street was dark. As she approached, Alessa called out to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked anxiously.
“No, I need help!” the young man cried out.
Used to the streets and to people who called them their home, Alessa hurried over to him and bent down to look at his face. Within seconds, three other young men had surrounded them. Seeing them up close, it was clear to her that these were not homeless men. She knew at once that she had made a huge mistake.
One of the men seized Lucy and eyed her with longing. Another twisted Alessa’s arm behind her back as the young man on the curb jumped up, a smirk on his face. They were all very drunk and the stink of alcohol seeped out of every part of their being. Alessa could feel the adrenaline pumping through her body as she frantically tried to think of a way to get Lucy out of there.
The young man holding the child said, “I don’t know about you assholes, but I’m gonna get me some virgin lovin’ tonight.”
Alessa felt her heart flutter in her chest. With more aggression in her voice than she intended to display, she said, “Oh no, motherfucker! That virgin is my kid and she doesn’t know shit about how to make a man feel good. Here’s what we’re gonna do: you’re gonna let her go and I’m gonna make it worth it for all of you. I have more experience and know what I’m doing. You don’t need to take a crying kid, ’cause that’s all she’s going to do, just cry and scream. Me, on the other hand, I’ll have you crying and screaming, once you lose those pants.”
The young men eyed her with curiosity. Then one of them asked, “Oh yeah? Whatcha gonna do for us?”
With more courage than she actually felt, Alessa replied, “Whatever I need to do to make you feel better than you ever have! But you need to let my kid go first.”
She looked at Lucy who was crying, her face stricken with pure terror, and said, “Sweetheart, I want you to go back to that restaurant we just passed, the Ruby Buffet. Buy yourself a soda and wait there until I come and get you.”
The child nodded and Alessa told the men to give her a couple of dollars for a soda.
As one of the men handed her three dollars, he looked Alessa in the eye. “This better be worth it, bitch,” he warned, “and if your kid tells anyone we’re here, we’ll slit your fucking throat!”
Alessa looked at Lucy calmly and said in a steady voice, “I want you to go have a soda. Drink it slowly, don’t tell anyone that I’m here and don’t leave there, until I come to get you. Do you understand me?”
The child was crying, but she nodded vigorously and ran off toward the strip mall.
The four men led Alessa deep into the underpass. The first man demanded a blow job. The second wanted to have anal sex with her, as did the third. The last man, the one who did all the talking for the group, wanted regular sex, but he wanted it rough.
When his turn came, Alessa was already fully naked and lying on her stomach. He started by slapping her hard on her ass. Then he turned her over on her back and told her to jerk him off. When he was hard as a rock, he straddled her, his feet planted close to her shoulders, and ordered her to lick his balls. Finally, he lowered himself onto her bare stomach and gripped her breasts hard. He pinched her nipples so viciously that she couldn’t stop herself from reaching up involuntarily to push his hands away.
“Oh, you like that, don’t you bitch?” he snarled. Then he slapped her hard across the face. “You like that too, you little cunt!” he leered.
He motioned to his buddies who each grabbed one of Alessa’s legs and spread them wide. His entry was so brutal that she screamed out in agony. In response, he punched her in the ribs and went back to thrusting himself into her. One of the men holding her legs reached in, while his friend was on top of her, and sliced her thigh with a large knife he was holding. She flinched backward in pain and shock. The man having sex with her paused momentarily, yanked her head up by her hair, and slammed it back into the ground.
“What did I tell you, bitch?” he growled. “You’re a real fucking killjoy! How the fuck am I supposed to come, with you moving all over the place and yelling out like that? If I want that, I’ll go get that kid of yours.”
He noticed Alessa’s eyes widen with fear and knew, at that moment, that he was in complete control. When he finally came inside her, he began to pound his fists into her body and her face. The other men joined in by kicking her legs, sides, head and arms. Alessa found herself drifting in and out of consciousness. She was being beaten so badly that her body had gone numb. She had stopped feeling anything at all. And after a while, she could barely hear or understand what they were yelling at her with each blow they delivered. Before losing consciousness, Alessa believed she was going to die. They were going to beat her to death and she asked God to keep Lucy safe.
It was eleven thirty p.m. when the waitress at the Ruby Buffet asked Lucy if she was there by herself. “We’re getting ready to close, honey,” she told her. “Is there someone you can call?”
She took the child over to the phone and she dialed Ebby’s number. When the night manager came on the line, Lucy told her who she was and said she needed to talk to Ebby. It was an emergency. The night manager, like the rest of the shelter staff, knew about Alessa and Lucy from the many stories Ebby had shared with them. He took the phone number of the restaurant and promised to have Ebby call right back.
A few minutes later, the phone rang and the waitress picked it up. “Yeah, she’s here,” she said to the caller. “She’s all by herself and we need to close. Here, you can talk to her.”
Lucy broke down and started to sob as soon as she heard Ebby’s voice.
Trying to conceal the panic in her own voice, Ebby asked, “Where’s Alessa?”
“With some men down the road. They wanted me to stay too, but Alessa made them give me three dollars to come to the restaurant and have a soda,” Lucy answered, disclosing the information with obvious reluctance, as Alessa’s instructions played in her mind.
Ebby asked the child to describe her exact location and promised to be with her in less than thirty minutes. Then she asked for the waitress to be put back on the phone.
“Hello?” the woman said.
Ebby concocted a story about Lucy being her granddaughter and how she had been separated from her mother during the fireworks. Then she asked, “I know you’re trying to close, but can you just stay with her, until I get there?”
The waitress looked at the child who was plagued with fear. She had also overheard her saying that her mom was with some guys down the street.
“Yeah, sure,” she assured Ebby before hanging up the phone.
The waitress walked over to the counter, poured Lucy another soda and sat down in a booth with her arm around the small child to wait for her ride to come.
E
bby lost no time. She called a detective she knew at the Philadelphia Police Department. They had become friendly over the years, while dealing with various domestic and drug-related issues faced by the residents at the shelter. She admitted to him that she didn’t know much, but suspected foul play. She told him where she was headed and asked if he’d meet her there. When Ebby arrived at the Ruby Buffet, her detective friend and his partner were already sitting in their car in front of the restaurant. She immediately thanked them for coming.
When Lucy saw Ebby enter the restaurant, she sprang to her feet, rushed over to her and clasped her in both arms, as though she would never let her go. The child sobbed and poured out her story, as Ebby held her and tried to make sense of the nearly incoherent words. The detectives grasped as much of the story as they needed for their investigation and headed down Washington Avenue to the underpass. With Lucy having told them there were at least four men involved, they had radioed for back-up, just in case. Moving deep into the underpass, they came upon a lifeless form, lying face down in the dirt, naked. At first, they feared she was dead. That she was badly bruised and bleeding was apparent even in the darkness that hung like heavy curtains around her body. One of the detectives leaned down and felt for a pulse.
“It’s very faint,” he announced to his partner, “but there is a pulse. Call for an ambulance.”
While one officer stood over Alessa, another covered as much of her as he could with his jacket. They didn’t want to move her for fear of aggravating the damage already done to her broken body. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics gently turned Alessa onto her back to place her on the gurney. The sight of her battered face drew a collective gasp of horror from the men. She had been beaten so brutally, you could barely tell she had any features left. Her face, in fact, her entire head, was bruised and bloodied and swollen so badly that it looked like a perfectly round ball. The men suspected that she might have suffered severe head trauma. They quickly loaded her into the ambulance and took her to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, not far from the hostel where she and Lucy were staying.
The emergency-room doctor and nurses converged on Alessa as they brought her through the doors. The ambulance staff had alerted them they were bringing in a young woman who had been severely beaten around her head and body. The attending doctor suspected multiple fractures and possible internal hemorrhaging.
When Ebby and Lucy arrived at the hospital and rushed through the emergency-room doors, the nurse at the front desk asked them to have a seat and called back to the ER to let them know “the poor girl’s family had arrived”. Ebby drew Lucy onto her lap and held her tight as they waited. When the ER doctor came out, he told Ebby that Alessa had been badly beaten. An arm, a femur and several ribs had been fractured. There was bruising all over her body, including her genitals. His greatest concern, however, was the injuries to her head. Alessa was getting a CAT scan, as they spoke, and he would know more in the next hour or so.
“We are doing everything we can to help,” he assured Ebby. “Her pulse was very weak when she arrived.”
Ebby already knew from the paramedics that Alessa had lost a lot of blood from the deep cuts that covered her body and the doctor’s prognosis filled her with alarm. Sick with grief over what had happened to her, she was relieved that the exhausted Lucy had fallen asleep in the ER and would surely stay asleep for the rest of the night. Ebby’s mind spun with endless questions as she prayed that Alessa would survive this ordeal and come through. She begged God to give her some coverage from heaven or just leave her the hell alone and let the girl get on with her life. For the first time in her life, Ebby was angry at God. Where was he and why had he neglected this child? How much shit did Alessa have to take before she caught a fucking break? Ebby was livid at the rotten bastards who had hurt her. She cursed all the pricks who had abused her in the past. She was even angry at herself for failing to protect Alessa.
It was hours before the emergency-room doctor came out. He told Ebby that Alessa did have some minor head injuries, but nothing she wouldn’t overcome. They had set her broken leg and arm and she was sleeping peacefully and comfortably with the meds they had given her. She hadn’t regained consciousness since she arrived, but given the degree of trauma she had suffered, that was par for the course.
The ER doctor planned to admit her to the surgical intensive care unit so that they could keep a close eye on her. He still wasn’t satisfied with her vital signs and they had had to give her a blood transfusion. He suggested Ebby go home and rest, but she refused. So he took her in to see Alessa. Ebby gazed at the girl, shocked. Her injuries were so extensive that she was virtually unrecognizable. She knew there was no way she could allow Lucy to see Alessa in this condition. The nurses promised to watch the child to allow Ebby to catch some much-needed sleep.
Ebby sat in the chair next to Alessa’s bed and rested her head on the edge of the mattress. She woke up several hours later. It took her a minute to orient herself. Then her eyes went directly to Alessa. She was satisfied that her young friend was still sleeping peacefully and was moving carefully off the bed so as not to awaken her, when she noticed one of Alessa’s eyelids fluttering. Ebby spoke to her in a soothing voice, told her where she was and assured her that Lucy was okay. Alessa acknowledged her words with the slightest nod of her head and struggled to speak.
Ebby knew exactly what was bothering her. “Alessa,” she reassured her, “they never got near Lucy. She is fine. In fact, she was the one who called me from the restaurant. I won’t let her see you just yet, but you needn’t worry. Lucy will be staying with me, until you get better.”
She saw Alessa’s body relax and in minutes, she was asleep again.