Believe Like a Child (42 page)
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fter lunch with Regina, Alessa met Ebby back in her office and gave her as much of the girl’s story as she had divulged.
“Jesus, Alessa!” Ebby exclaimed when she had heard her out. “I need to call the police. Her family needs to know she’s alive.”
Alessa grasped her by the shoulder, just as she was about to pick up the telephone. “Not yet, Ebby,” she cautioned her. “I need to find out what her family was like, before we get in touch with them. For all we know, she was abused by them too. We don’t want to send her back to a fucked-up situation. I want to take her home with me for a couple of days. She can sleep with Lucy. She said there were other kids being kept in leg chains where she had been. We need to help them. Okay?”
Ebby was clearly uncomfortable with what Alessa was demanding of her. Now that she knew the girl had been kidnapped, she was conscious of her legal obligation to call the police. However, as Alessa had pointed out, her moral obligation was to obtain a clearer understanding of the girl’s history with her family and potentially gather enough information to save the lives of other innocent kids. Ebby finally conceded that while she was taking a huge risk, Alessa was right.
“Okay, Alessa,” she agreed, “but only two days. They can close the shelter down, if they find out that we withheld information on a kidnap victim.”
“You’re a cool fucking chick, you know that?” Alessa said, poking Ebby in the belly.
“Yeah, sure! I’m cool all right! I’m not going to be so cool, though, when they shut the shelter down because I made a bad decision,” Ebby remarked wryly.
Alessa went back to the day room to find Regina lying on the love seat in the fetal position. As she approached, the girl looked up with an expression of sheer terror.
“It’s okay, Regina,” Alessa reassured her. “You’re going to be fine. I was thinking that maybe you could come and stay at my house for a couple of days. Would you like to do that?”
The girl quickly accepted the offer. Alessa called Remo to come and pick them both up. As she gave him a brief explanation of the recent developments, he silently questioned the wisdom of what they were about to do for the same reasons that had worried Ebby. However, Alessa was so sure of what needed to be done that he did not argue with her.
“Pull up in the back, Remo. I don’t want to take her out the front,” Alessa told him.
Twenty minutes later, he was driving back to the Outside Inn with Alessa and Regina. When they arrived at the apartment, Alessa gave Remo a look he recognized well. It meant that he needed to make himself scarce.
Before he left, he turned to Regina. “Well, welcome to our home,” he said warmly. “We are happy to have you here with us for the next couple of days. I need to run some errands. So I’ll be back later.”
Regina didn’t respond. She merely stood in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed over her chest. After Remo’s departure, it was obvious to Alessa that her guest’s tension was beginning to subside.
“Remo would never hurt you,” she told the girl. “He’s my husband.”
Regina sat down on the sofa. “I just don’t really like boys anymore,” she said. “They hurt me.”
Alessa plopped down next to her. “How did they hurt you?” she asked. “You were telling me that the men who had taken you away gave you new underwear. Then what happened?”
Regina spoke so softly Alessa had to strain to hear her. “They took me upstairs. I had to stand there, while these old men bid on me.”
Alessa was shocked. “What do you mean they ‘bid’ on you?”
Regina looked down at the floor. “Whoever paid the most money got to have sex with me. This ugly, disgusting pig paid the most. He said, ‘I’d take a second mortgage for some of that untapped pussy.’ Later, the other kids who had been there longer told me what that meant. It meant that it would be my first time having sex with anyone. And the first time sucked. It hurt really bad and I bled on the mattress. When that fucking pig saw the blood, he smiled and shoved his dick in even harder. He kept saying, ‘Give me more of that untapped pussy, girl!’”
Alessa felt sick to her stomach. It was the familiar feeling she thought she had left behind her long ago. “It’s really fucked up that a grown man would do such a disgusting thing to a kid or anyone else for that matter!” she exclaimed. “You know that, right? You understand that what they did to you was wrong and it wasn’t your fault?”
Regina shook her head from side to side. “Maybe, but how about all the other times?” she said. “I was sucking guys’ dicks so that the men who ran the house would feed me. There was no food or water, if you didn’t ‘perform’, as they put it. Every day that I was there, men would bid on me. It was weird. You didn’t want to have sex with them, but you knew if you didn’t do a good job of it, no one would bid on you and you wouldn’t be given anything to eat or drink.”
Alessa walked into the kitchen and poured them each a glass of lemonade. She handed one to Regina. “What about your family?” she asked. “I mean, were you happy, before they took you away?”
The girl was crying openly now. “My family was great. My mom and dad made everything so much fun. I have an older brother and we were like best friends. When they first took me, I would pray for my family to find me. But after I started being a whore, I didn’t want them to find me anymore. I was too embarrassed about the things I was doing.”
Alessa was relieved to hear good things about Regina’s family. “You aren’t a whore, Regina,” she said firmly. “You were kidnapped and forced to do things. You had no choice.”
“That’s not what they told me. They told me all the time that I was a whore and my job was to sell myself to the highest bidder. ‘That’s what whores do,’ they would say, ‘they sell themselves.’”
Alessa tried to comfort the young girl. “Well, that was a bunch of dickheads who told you that, Regina. I need to know something: how did you get away from them?”
Regina sat up straight, as if to brave her demons. “On the last bidding war, this guy who had always wanted me won. He told them he wanted me back in his hotel. At first, they wouldn’t allow it, but then I saw him give them a handful of money and they agreed to take me over there. When I got to the hotel, the man who had won me told me to take a shower and wash real good. When I came out in my towel, he gave me something really sexy to wear. He told me it was a present. It was sheer and you could see my body through it. It had a thong and was really short, so you could see my ass. This guy wasn’t as rough with me as the others usually were.”
Alessa’s body tensed at what was coming.
“Anyway,” Regina went on, “I put it on and he gave me some wine to drink. After two glasses, he took his underwear off and told me to suck his dick. So I did. After a while, he had me lie down on the bed and took my thong off. He dipped his fingers into a jar of Vaseline that was sitting next to the bed and starting sticking them in my crotch. It felt really good. No one had ever done that to me before and it was the first time I felt that way. He could tell I liked it and started to kiss my tits. I had never really wanted to fuck any of the men who bid on me, until then.
“When he pulled his fingers out, I thought I would die. I wanted them in me so much, because the other kids, especially the boys, used to talk about orgasms, but until then, I didn’t know what they were. I figured that this was what they must have meant and I mean, if you have to have sex with somebody you don’t know, you might as well like it, right?”
Alessa nodded to assure Regina that she wasn’t judging her.
“So I took his hand and put it back between my legs. He was really happy and asked me if I liked what he was doing. I told him I did and so he put his fingers back inside me. A few seconds later, he told me to suck his dick again and I did. Except that this time, I was really into it, because I wanted him to fuck me so I could feel good too. He was moaning and saying how good it was. After a few more minutes, he had me get back up on the bed and he stuck his fingers in the Vaseline again and shoved them inside me. I felt awful about feeling so good, but I couldn’t help it.”
Regina stopped to take a deep breath. “Finally, he spread my legs out wide and stuck his dick in me. God, it felt so good! I was overcome by this wonderful feeling. It was like I had taken drugs or something. My head was swimming and I wanted to feel that way forever.”
Alessa wasn’t expecting all of this and was a bit shocked at Regina’s description of her experiences. At the same time, she found the girl’s candor an encouraging sign.
“After that,” Regina continued, “he ordered room service and let me order anything I wanted from the menu. I got a burger, fries and a milkshake. I hadn’t eaten that much food in three years. I was in fucking heaven! We talked a lot that night. I told him I wanted to stay with him forever and he said he would see what he could do, but wouldn’t make any promises. The next day, he was on the phone and I heard him say he wanted me to stay with him for good. Then he added, ‘I can go as high as a hundred thousand, but that’s it.’ After he had hung up the phone, he told me I could stay with him for six months. But I would have to go back when my time was up, because they wouldn’t let me stay with him for good. The guilt eats me up, though, Alessa.”
Confused, Alessa asked, “Guilt about what? You have nothing to feel guilty about!”
Regina wished the earth would open and swallow her up. It was evident that she felt great shame over what she was about to confess next.
“I have a lot to feel guilty about,” she said. “I enjoyed having sex with him. He always gave me orgasms. It turned him on to see me come. So he was really good at making sure I did. I know I should have hated it, but I didn’t. And that makes me feel guilty. Like I had asked for it.”
Alessa thought intently about it, beginning to understand how Regina might feel responsible for the dilemma she had been in. It was confusing enough for adults, let alone for kids and teenagers.
“Regina, it doesn’t matter that you had orgasms,” she told the girl. “If you hadn’t been kidnapped and forced to have sex with all those men, you wouldn’t even be here today. What they did to you, all of them—including the man who was nice to you—was wrong. You’re only a child. You should have no guilt whatsoever. It just proves to me how strong you really are.”
A
lessa consoled Regina as best she could, telling her how sorry she was for all that the girl had been through.
“Well,” Regina said, feeling braver now. “It was staying with my master for six months that helped me get away. So it wasn’t all that bad. I mean, he treated me pretty good and all. I was allowed to shower every day and I got to eat what I wanted. He didn’t let me out of the hotel room, but he did let me watch television.”
Alessa asked, “Did you ever think about running away from the hotel room when he wasn’t there?’
“No, I knew they would find me and bring me back.”
Alessa was confused. “So how did you know they wouldn’t find you this time?”
Regina blushed. “I didn’t, but when my master told me they were coming to get me, I decided I would rather die than go back there.”
“Why do you call him your master?” Alessa asked curiously.
“Because he never told me his name. He told me to call him my master. So I did.”
Alessa wished all the bad people could burst into flames and disappear from this earth. There were so many who inflicted so much pain.
“Anyway,” Regina went on, “I found the name of the shelter in the phone book and went there. Then you showed up.”
“We need to let your parents know you’re okay. They have probably been searching for you since you went missing. Okay?” Alessa asked.
Regina shook her head. “Not yet. You said I could stay here for a couple of days. Can we call them after that?”
Alessa agreed, but reminded her that after two days, they would have to contact her parents.
That night, she called Ebby to give her the information she had gleaned from Regina. Ebby was sad for the teen, but not surprised. She had stopped being surprised by the horrors people laid on other people.
Alessa felt they should contact Regina’s parents the next day. “She wants the two days here that I promised her,” she explained. “She is going to need therapy, though. She has a lot of guilt and shame over what happened to her in the last three years. From what I gathered, she comes from a pretty wholesome family and she’s afraid her parents won’t want her back now. I know they are going to be thrilled to know she’s alive and safe, but they need to take this really slowly with her.”
Before they hung up, Ebby cautioned her. “Listen, you need to be careful, because we don’t know if these guys
will
come looking for her. I think you’re okay for tonight, but tomorrow, we get the police involved. In the morning, I need you to get as much information as possible about the location where she was held. There are other kids still in there. Regina is one of the lucky ones.”
Ebby was pleased that Regina had been able to escape her captors. She was happier still that Alessa had proved her right by getting the story out of the girl. She knew Alessa was going to be a great therapist one day. She had a way of gaining people’s trust by just being herself. Once Regina was back with her parents, Ebby planned on telling Alessa what a fine job she’d done handling the whole situation.
The next morning, Remo made breakfast for the four of them, while Alessa talked to Regina again in her bedroom. Lucy was unaware of the reasons that had brought the girl to their home for two days and Alessa intended to keep it that way.
“Regina,” Alessa now began, “we need you to describe the place where those men kept you after kidnapping you. It’s important, because there are other kids trapped there too. We want to make sure that the police return them to their parents and that they catch the men who did this to you.”
The girl looked like a deer caught in the beam of headlights. “But if they find out I snitched on them, they will kill me and my family.”
“No, they won’t,” Alessa said firmly, sitting close to the girl. “The police will protect you. This is a chance for you to help the others. You want to help them, right?”
Regina didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I do,” she said, “but I don’t know where the house is. The only thing I know is that it’s on Dauphin Street.”
Alessa’s palms were instantly moist and her skin felt like it was on fire. She had the irresistible urge to run and hide some place, where no one would ever find her. Then she reminded herself that Harlin was still in prison and Dauphin Street was one of the worst areas in the whole county anyway.
“Do you remember any of their names?” she asked quickly. “You know, of the men who kidnapped you?”
Regina shook her head. “They always called each other ‘dude’ or ‘man’. They never used names. I do know what they look like, though, at least the ones who watched us at the house and a couple of the clients who did the bidding.”
While they were all in the kitchen eating breakfast, Alessa got up and went back into the bedroom to call Ebby and tell her what she had found out.
Ebby detected the note of panic in Alessa’s voice right away. “Alessa,” she said gently, “it’s going to be okay. Harlin is serving a full sentence in prison. He won’t be released for another year. I’m sure he has moved on by now anyway. But you need to relax, because if Regina senses your fear, it will only scare her further.”
Alessa started to cry. “It scared the shit out of me when Regina mentioned Dauphin Street. I haven’t thought about it in a long time. It just freaked me out, that’s all. Don’t worry, though. I’ll keep my shit together in front of Regina. When will the police be coming over?”
“I want you to bring Regina back to the shelter to meet the police,” Ebby told her. “We don’t want to establish any connection with where you live or leave any trails that can be followed. Truth is, we don’t know who these people are or what they are capable of. They may have other houses, like the one Regina was in, all over the city. So I want you to bring her back here at two o’clock this afternoon. I will call the police as soon as you get here.”
Alessa always felt better after talking to Ebby. Somehow, it made her less afraid. “Okay, Ebby,” she said, steeling herself for what lay ahead. “We’ll be there at two.”
After they hung up, Alessa showered and dressed. When she got back into the living room, Remo was playing Monopoly with Lucy and Regina. They all looked up as she walked in.
Remo could tell there was something going on. “What’s up, Alessa?” he asked.
Alessa looked at Regina. “We need to be back at the shelter by two o’clock today. The police are going to come and talk to you. Then they will contact your parents. Today is a big day for you, Regina. You’re going to be back with your family again.”
The girl smiled at the thought of seeing her family. “Okay, Alessa.”
“Come on. Let’s go take a look in my closet and see what you can wear for your homecoming.”