by Tanya South
A voice called out, “Natasha.”
“Who is that?” I asked, looking around me.
The voice spoke again. “Natasha, this is your garden.”
Instantaneously, I heard a lot of crying and someone praying. I thought, Wait, that sounds like Mom.
I heard beeping noises and chaos. There were a few voices talking. They sounded far away and echoed almost as if they were talking inside of a tunnel. I walked a little farther to find out if the voices were coming from inside the garden, but after just a few steps, I fell down spiraling. I passed out.
I awakened again.
There I saw Mom and Dad, then a nurse. Wait a minute. Am I alive? My eyes were wide open. The harsh reality then hit me. Why, God!? Why am I still here? I’m left in this wretched world! I yelled over and over in my head. I woke up in a hospital with Mom crying over me. Apparently, they had pumped my stomach.
“Oh thank you, Jesus,” Mom kept saying. “Thank you for saving my baby’s life.”
“What are you doing, God!?” I screamed out loud, looking up to the ceiling.
“It’s okay, Honey,” Mom said, trying to calm me down.
“Noooooo!” I kept screaming. “What do you want from me, God? Why am I still breathing!?” I had become irrational. My soul had been pumped up with so much hopelessness and anger.
Suddenly an alarm rang and a flood of nurses rushed in.
“Mrs. McCarthy, you need to step out,” one of the nurses said.
“I’m not leaving her side,” Mom argued.
I kept shouting at the top of my lungs. Then I thought, Great, now they think I’m crazy.
A nurse rushed up to me with a huge needle in her hand to sedate me.
“NOOOOO!” I yelped. And lights went out again.
I awoke in that heavenly garden again. What is happening? I thought.
“Natasha, this is your garden. It still needs a lot of nourishing and I’ve made you the caretaker of it. There is so much more that will flourish and grow in it. You are needed,” the voice said clearly to me.
My eyes cracked opened. Blurry images hovered over me. I worked really hard to open my eyes. The blurred images looked like Mom and Dad. Then as I had been able to focus more, I realized that it was my parents and that I was indeed in that depressing hospital room again.
“Oh, Natasha,” Mom cried and put her head on my chest.
“Baby, we are here. We love you so much, Sweetheart,” Dad said with tears welling from his eyes as he held my hand.
“What happened?” I asked, a bit confused.
“You’re in the hospital, Sweetheart. I want you to just rest. We don’t have to talk now,” Dad explained.
“Okay, Dad. I don’t really want to talk about it anyway. I love you.”
After some hours had passed, the doctor on call that night told Mom and Dad that they couldn’t stay. After much resistance on Mom’s part, Dad had finally been able to convince her to go. Both promised they’d be back first thing in the morning.
I dreaded the fact that I had to eventually face the world again. It had been too cruel. How would I survive? Then I remembered that dream, which felt real. It had been a real garden that I visited between life here on earth and what I believed to be heaven. I knew in my heart it was God’s voice that I heard in the garden. I was in awe of Him, even though I couldn’t find Him. His voice was clear and close to me. What did He mean by the garden was mine? And why was I needed? I felt a little sense of peace then, knowing I just had to trust Him. It had been the first time that I heard God’s voice in my garden. Common sense told me that it didn’t make sense, but something extraordinary and audacious told me that I needed to trust God. Our God is audacious. I couldn’t shake His presence and that wonderful feeling in the garden. My faith had to be bigger than my fear. I needed to find out what He wanted from me. At that point, I thought, it was going to be a difficult task, but somehow I was still alive and needed to at least try.
A couple of weeks went by. It had been the same routine every day. Mom and Dad came to visit me. Mom had taken a leave of absence from work so she was able to stay most of the day with me. I had mandatory therapy with one of the psychiatrists on staff. But I kept my dark secrets locked up tight inside of me. It didn’t make sense to any of the doctors why I would try to take my own life. Here I was, a well-educated, well-spoken girl who came from a good Christian family. Dad was an emergency room doctor and Mom a sergeant in the police department. The doctors began leaning more toward diagnosing me with mental illness. An easy explanation for what didn’t make sense. But only God, my monsters, and me knew the truth. I wasn’t mentally ill or promiscuous or anything else. I was just a broken girl who had been through some unfair stuff. One night, when Mom and Dad had already gone home, I heard a whisper.
“Pssst. Psst.”
Looking to see where it was coming from, I noticed it came from a girl I’d seen only about once or twice before. I thought maybe she was in the same ward I had been in. But I wasn’t sure. I kept to myself and didn’t want to engage in any conversations with anyone in there.
She was a really pretty girl with dark-brown hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hi.”
“You’re new here, right?”
“Not really. I’ve been here a couple weeks already.”
“You’re so beautiful,” she said to me. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
Lost for words, I said, “Ahh, thanks, but it’s kind of a long story. And it doesn’t really matter.”
“You don’t belong in a place like this. I have a way outta here if you’re interested.”
“Really? How?” I asked skeptically.
“Well, I’m only here voluntarily. I can give you my pass, and at lunchtime it gets crazy busy around, you can walk right outta here.”
“I can’t do that. My parents have been visiting me every day. And besides, where would I go? My parents would go crazy. I’ve put them through enough.”
The girl gave me a look of doubt. “C’mon, I know why you’re here,” she said, smiling.
“How do you know why I’m here? You don’t even know me.”
“Cause I know everything that goes on around here. I know that you tried to kill yourself by overdosing on pills.”
“What!? Wait! How do you know that? Who are you?”
“Listen. I’m sorry. I know a beautiful girl like you wouldn’t try to take out her own life unless her life was really that bad. Am I right?”
I became confused, but at that same time, I couldn’t refute what she said. How could I go back home? How could I return to my secretly dysfunctional life? She was right. Choosing faith or fear became a battle in my mind at that very moment. In one hand, I held on to some hope and faith in God. In the other hand, I held the overwhelming weight of fear that had consumed me for most of my young life. As I prayed in my mind, I caved in to what I was most familiar with. I caved in to the fear. I agreed to escape and run away from my pitiful life.
“So when can we do this?” I asked.
“Atta girl. I have a place. You can stay with me.”
“You have your own place? How old are you?”
The girl laughed. “Girl, I’m nineteen.”
“How can you afford your own place?”
“You’re so cute. Ummm, ‘cause I work. I pay my own bills.”
I became curious. “Wow. What kind of work?”
“I’ll explain what I do later. But for now, we have to make a plan to get you outta here,” she whispered.“Well, how do you suppose I’m able to leave here without anyone noticing?” I asked her.
“I have an idea. When do your parents usually leave to go home?”
“They’re here til visiting hours are over at nine.”
“Okay. Here’s what you’re gonna do. Tomorrow around six or seven in the evening, I want you to pretend you’re exhausted and tell your parents you are ready to just ca
ll it a night. Insist that you’ll see them the next day. That way they’ll leave. Only way we can get you outta here is before visiting hours are over. Leave the rest up to me.”
“What if they insist on staying?” I asked.She chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Just do the best you can. Play it off as if you’re auditioning for a part in a play.”
“All right. I’ll try. I hope it works.”
“It will. Trust me. I’ve done this so many times.”
I looked at her kind of confused. “Really? Other girls have escaped, too?”
“Yeah, only a couple. But it was a while ago. Now they’ve slacked on security again. I got you. Don’t worry.”
So the plan to escape was set. Somehow, I felt a sense of liberation, being freed from my very fractured past. I didn’t have to face those monsters again. I apologized to God in my mind. But somehow I knew He wouldn’t leave my side.
I closed my eyes to go to sleep. And it seemed like minutes later, I heard birds. I opened my eyes and saw that I had been lying in a bed of roses. The roses were every color of the rainbow. It was beautiful.
The voice said, “Stay, Natasha. I need you to stay.”
“Natasha?” There was pause. “Natasha?”
I opened my eyes. The nurse kept calling my name to wake me up. It was breakfast time. God had been chasing me in my dreams. I knew it was His voice commanding me to stay. As soon as the nurse left, I immediately began to pray:
Lord, thank you for talking to me in my dreams. Thank you for trying to help me. I know you’re here with me, but I just can’t stay here in this hospital. I can’t stay in my current situation. I can’t take the chance of being hurt again. I can’t take the chance that I would try to hurt myself and my parents again. All I ask of you is that when I take on this journey in my life, that you protect my parents from heartbreak. God, forgive me again, but I just can’t stay here.
After the day had gone by, I kept telling Mom and Dad how much I loved them. I told them as much I could so that they would remember it when I wasn’t around anymore. The sun went to bed and evening had finally arrived.
My nerves were rattled. I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to do it. I was going to run away from my life and never look back. Lucinda, the girl who was going to save me, had been so cool and calm about the whole thing. Thinking back to that time is a fog. All I know is that the next thing I knew, I had entered the place where Lucinda said she lived. She forgot one very important detail to mention: she lived in a motel. And it wasn’t just a motel; it was seedy and in the worst part of town. I had a really bad feeling. I thought, What have I gotten myself into?
CHAPTER TEN
TRAFFICKED
JOB 3:11–16
Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?
Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?
For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest with kings and rulers of the earth, who built for themselves places now lying in ruins,with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.
Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?
The evening sky became quiet and still. The vault of heaven had been embellished with bunches of twinkling, bright stars. I imagined it reflected the new peace that would chase me down. Oh how wrong I was. Lucinda and I entered her “apartment.” But it hadn’t been an apartment at all; it was more like a suite in a cheap motel. The tiny kitchen was the loneliest room in the apartment. The small area that looked like a living room had a full-size bed toward the back, dressed with a dated floral bedding sheet.
Immediately, I asked, “Why are we at a motel?”
“Don’t worry, Natasha,” Lucinda replied. “This is where I live for now. It’s convenient and affordable for me.”
Somehow, I sensed deep down inside she wasn’t being completely forthcoming with me. But at the time, naive sixteen-year-old Natasha wanted to believe her. So I did.
I heard water running from inside of the bathroom. I looked over and became startled when a man walked out. I gasped and looked over at Lucinda.
She gave me a calculated look.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“So you are, Natasha?” the man asked as if he were expecting me.
He scared me. He was a big, bald, muscular guy. He wore a guinea white T-shirt, and a big gold chain with a big cross that dangled from it; he had big tattoos on his forearms. My heart pounced in my chest.
“Lucinda?” I looked at her shrugging my shoulders.
“Oh, where are my manners? My name is Kage. Lucinda, you weren’t kidding. She’s a beauty.”
Lucinda stood in the corner by the door, wearing a deviant smile on her face.
“Lucinda, what’s going on? You promised me I’d be safe.”
“Natasha, you are safe. Kage takes good care of me. And he’s gonna take good care of you, too,” she said.
“I changed my mind. I want to go back,” I said as I started to walk toward the door.
Kage stood in front of me and then grabbed both of my upper arms.
I told him, “Let go of me!”
“You’re not going anywhere, Sweetheart. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. If you don’t calm down, I’m gonna make you calm down. You decide.”
But I continued to resist him. Before I knew it, he punched me right on my head. The room spun. It looked like Kage had a needle in his hand. I felt debilitated and just couldn’t move, and then suddenly, I felt a sharp sting on my arm.
I awoke again in that garden of despair. All of the plants and flowers around me were dried up and dead. I began sinking in quicksand. My head bobbed all the way back, trying to catch a breath. I could hear a bone-chilling voice. I looked up and realized I remained in that prison of a room again. My arms were tied up. My vision was dim. Who is that? I thought. I didn’t recognize who this stranger was. He appeared older, with salt-pepper hair. He was about in his early forties. He began rubbing my head. I couldn’t scream. I screamed in my head. The monster’s face started to laugh as he overpowered me. The pain he continually inflicted on me became a numbness after a while. A short time had passed. Another monster entered the room as my limp body laid there. He intruded upon me, savoring me in his nauseating desire. Do these monsters know that I am only sixteen? Why didn’t I listen? I shouldn’t have left. Thoughts continued to flood my mind. Before I knew it, I didn’t know how long I had been strapped to that bed, but it seemed like forever. Monster after monster continued to relentlessly invade me. I didn’t know if it had been hours, days, or weeks that passed by. All I knew was that it just kept going. The sun shone, and soon after, nights arrived. Day after day, the suffering continued. My mouth was parched with thirst. My belly ached from hunger. The only thing I could do was pray out loud.
One of the monsters became irritated with my praying. “Shut your trap!” He punched me and I lost all consciousness.
Loud fire truck sirens sounded from outside. My head felt like someone hit it with a sledgehammer. My eyes struggled to open. I could only see through one eye. The sun peeked in through the dreary floral curtains. I looked around. The monsters were all gone. I tugged on my right arm as hard as I could with what little energy I had left. They were tied onto the bed with some kind of fabric.
“God, please!” I yelled. “Please let me get these off of me! Help me, God!”
Tugging and pulling as hard as I could, my left hand somehow slipped through the looped tie. I reached over to untie my right hand. Weakness had a hold on me as I tried getting up from the bed, but all I could do was roll off it. The ground was filled with filth, and there I was as I wriggled myself across the floor toward the door. Once making it to the door, I reached up to grab the knob to help myself up. My body trembled with fear. When I had finally been able to open it, I ran out into the street and hastened as fast as
I could. As I ran, I heard a loud honking noise and I looked to my left. The car screeched and came to a stop just inches away from hitting me. I had fallen to the ground in slow motion in my mind. I thought, God, save me!
Voices echoed.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?” There was a pause. “Hi, please send an ambulance right away! I found a young girl… Yes. She looks like she’s been beaten up pretty bad… I don’t know. She’s maybe about fifteen or sixteen years old. Please hurry.”
The woman spoke on a public pay phone, just a short distance from me. Although my eyes were closed, I could hear her cry for help.
Sirens pierced my ears. Police and medics surrounded my near-lifeless body. Am I having a nightmare? Where am I? Disoriented thoughts swarmed me.
I could faintly hear from a short distance someone saying, “Oh, my God, this is the girl. Natasha McCarthy. She’s been missing for almost three weeks. It’s been all over the news.”
I heard another voice say, “It’s a miracle. She was thought to be dead.”
Dead? Missing for three weeks? I asked myself.
The horror that took place the last three weeks started to rewind in my mind. If I could remember correctly, there were over forty monsters that I came in contact with. My belly suddenly felt sickened.
“She’s been badly beaten.”
I continued hearing different voices speaking as I was carefully lifted up from the ground onto a stretcher and into an ambulance.
Oxygen. Oh wonderful oxygen as they placed the mask on me. An IV had been inserted, too. I had been dangerously dehydrated. The voices became more and more faint. They sounded far away. Then there was no sound at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A TREE OF LIFE
PROVERBS 13:12
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
