“Anna?”
She must hear me breathing, because she waits for me to speak.
“I’ll speak…at Luis’s trial.”
“Oh, Anna. That’s terrific. But I want you to know, if you’re not comfortable with this, you don’t have to. We’ll figure something else out.”
“But I want to.”
“What?” It’s the first time I’ve heard her sound this surprised. She’s always so…calm.
“I want people to hear my story. I need to face them. To face him.”
Jackson’s right. Testifying doesn’t have to mean condemning Luis. I’m just there to tell the truth.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I get a text the morning of the trial from Jackson.
Good luck.
It’s small, but it’s enough. Enough to give me a pulse of strength, just for a moment. It’s an odd feeling, but those pulses have been coming more often.
Everyone knows today is the day. For the past week, the trial seemed to be all anyone talked about. Apparently everyone wants to hear my story.
I dress in an outfit Sarah picked out for me. Most of it is new. It’s much nicer than the clothes she bought me when we first met. It’s a pretty pink sweater that comes up past my collarbone, a pair of dressy black pants, and some low wedge shoes. She even does my hair that morning, pulling some of the strands back and pinning them with a flowery clip. I realize that the way she dressed me makes me look very young, and I guess that’s the point.
Even though my mom’s going to drive separately, she holds my hand and walks me to Sarah’s car and lets me know that she’ll be with me every step of the way, even when I can’t see her.
It’s a little more than an hour drive because we have to go all the way back to New York for the trial. A part of me looks forward to seeing my city again.
I look at the busy streets, shocked at how different they seem. They aren’t as bright today. Today they look dark and scary, like they know what I’m about to do.
Or like I don’t belong anymore. Maybe I don’t.
We arrive an hour early, but already there are people standing on the steps of the courthouse, groups of teenagers and parents standing protectively nearby. Some I recognize, some I don’t.
I’m actually surprised people really came. I mean, Westchester is only an hour from New York, but it still seems surprising that anyone came all this way to hear me talk about how I became a prostitute.
Sarah takes me in near the back.
“I don’t like the idea of this being such a public trial,” Sarah says once we make it inside and things quiet down.
She knows very well it’s what I wanted, what I asked for. There was a motion to control the people who could come, something about the nature of the crimes and my age, but I’m glad to see it must not have worked out. I want people to hear me. That’s the point.
I’ve been going over what I’m going to say. I will tell them about how Luis saved me, took me in, became my one and only friend. I’ll remember his warm, dark voice telling me I’ll be okay. I’ll remember the swallow necklace. And then I will tell them how his friends pushed themselves on me, and how that eventually turned into sex for money. It wasn’t Luis’s fault—it was theirs.
But now I’m scared.
Scared of saying the wrong thing and hurting Luis. Scared that that’s actually what I want.
I’m scared of exposing my deepest secrets and worst moments in front of a hundred people. Scared of what they will think.
But more than anything, I’m scared of seeing Luis again.
I sip water while sitting on the cold metal chair. I wish we hadn’t come this early. It’s given me time to think about what will soon happen.
I’m going to see Luis again for the first time in months, and I have no idea how I’m going to take that.
A man walks into the room and tells me it’s my time to speak. I follow him down a long hallway. My feet echo on the concrete floor. He opens a door in front of me, and I see a police officer. I close my eyes for a moment and try to pretend this man is Jackson’s dad, with his kind smile.
My stomach is somewhere in my feet at this point, but when the stiff air hits me and I see the faces, somehow my confidence comes back. Whatever happens, this is my chance to stop hiding from the truth.
I sit in a seat near the judge, kind of like on TV. I take a couple of deep breaths and manage to look up into the crowd. I see Sarah, who nods reassuringly. I see my mother, who smiles.
In the rest of the seats—I purposefully start toward the back—there are more strangers. Then I recognize a few. Lamont is there. And Charles. And Dez. All Luis’s friends. All men who paid to sleep with me. They don’t look at me very kindly. They shouldn’t. I’m going to call each one of them out if I get the chance. They never held me when I cried, never gave me a home when I needed it, never loved me.
And then I see Luis at a table in front of a barrier separating the courtroom from the public seats. He’s sitting next to his lawyer.
I don’t know what I expected I would feel when I see him again. I tell myself he loved me. He saved me. But all I can remember is him giving me up. Telling me good-bye forever.
How could he say he loved me if he was willing to give me away that easily?
A woman in a suit stands and begins to talk to me, but I barely hear the words. I feel like my head is filled with water.
I’m looking through the crowd, but I’m brought to reality with the sharp, unkind sound of my name. “Anna,” the woman says firmly.
I look at her, but I’m really just wondering how red my face actually is.
“I need you to focus.”
I nod.
She starts out small.
“Do you know this man?” she says, pointing to the front row, on the opposite side from where my mother and Sarah sit.
She’s pointing at Luis.
His face is thinner, and he seems more serious than I’ve ever seen him.
I nod and look away.
“Is this the man who solicited sexual favors to other men for money?”
I reply calmly. “No.”
She looks frustrated. “Is this the man you lived with while in New York City?”
“Yes.”
“And did he make you have sex with men for money?”
“No.”
Now she spins away from me, but not before I see her cheeks tinting red. She looks down at her notes and then turns back to me, composed once more.
She thought she already knew the truth. She doesn’t understand that it’s not as simple as she wants it to be.
“Tell me about your experience with Luis Santino.”
Here we go; much better. I’d rather do this on my terms.
“I ran away from home when I was thirteen.” I say, and the woman nods, like this is a return to the black-and-white story she wants me to tell. “But I didn’t have any place to go. I was lost in Grand Central, and an odd man was following me.”
“Mr. Santino?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know who the odd man was. I never found out, because Luis stepped between us. He saved me from him.”
The woman pauses. This was not what she expected. I look over at Luis again, and his eyes look softer, but he’s still tense. Still serious.
Still scared.
I take the moment to search the crowd again. I see a police officer in the middle of the crowd, and next to him I see a skinny boy with hazel eyes. Jackson.
His eyes light up slightly when I look at him. I give him the slightest of smiles, and he smiles big in return. Here is the guy who convinced me why I shouldn’t be scared. Right or wrong, I can’t hide from my choices. All I can do now—all anyone can do—is face the truth.
“Then what happened, Miss Rodriguez?”
“He gave me a place to stay.”
“With him.”
“Yes.”
“And did you sleep with him?”
I look over to Luis instin
ctively. Funny how easy it is to go back to old habits. I’m looking for him to tell me what to say. Should I answer this?
“Yes,” I say, because there’s no point in lying.
“And you were thirteen.”
“Yes.”
“He was nineteen.”
I nod.
“Was this the first man you had sexual relations with?” she asks, pacing a little as she speaks. When she finishes, she pivots quickly to look at me. She’s not very good at keeping me comfortable, but maybe she doesn’t want to.
“No.”
She cocks her head slightly.
“No?” she says. “Who, then, did you sleep with before your interaction with Mr. Santino?”
“I lost my virginity when I was twelve. Luis did not push sex on me.”
My descent into prostitution started long before New York.
The woman’s eyes narrow, but she keeps going. “Tell me what happened next. You say Luis Santino never pushed sex on you. But you do admit to having sex for money while living with Luis, correct?”
“Yes.” This is hardly a question, everyone knows. There is no denying this anymore.
“So how did that happen, then?”
“You want the whole story?” I ask.
“Yes.” This is the answer I was hoping for. This is the reason I am here. I want people to understand.
“Please tell us what happened,” the woman says.
“I lived with Luis for a month or so. He didn’t make me go to school. He didn’t make me work. He didn’t make me do anything, really. He was nice to me, fed me, showed me around the city. One night he brought a friend over to watch a movie with us.” I swallow and look around the room again. Most of the faces are unfamiliar, but there are so many teenagers that I wonder how many drove all the way here from my school, just to hear my story.
This is what I want people to know, but now that the moment’s come, I’m scared to death to say it out loud and relive the memory.
“After the movie, I went to my room. Luis’s apartment had a spare room, which is where I usually slept.”
I take a couple of deep breaths, imagining the moment. The dark room, the silence. The horrible sounds of creaking footsteps that got closer.
“I was in my bed, lying there, when someone came in.”
My heart is pounding now.
“It was dark and I couldn’t see much. I called out, thinking it was Luis. He got into bed with me and started touching me and pulling off my clothes. I realized quickly that it wasn’t Luis.”
The room is filled with at least a hundred people, but everyone is deadly silent. Not that they were loud before. It’s just that now, the silence feels…louder. More complete. I feel like my voice is echoing. My heart, my labored breaths, I am sure, can be heard by everyone in the room.
I swallow again and realize my throat is dry.
“I tried to get away. I called out. But no one came, and the man didn’t let me go. I don’t know if I’d call it rape, he didn’t hurt me or really even hold me down or anything, not the whole time.”
“This man had sex with you, though, when you didn’t want to?”
I nod but remember I’m supposed to speak my answers aloud. “Yes.”
“And did Luis tell him to do this?”
“No. Afterward the man left and Luis said he was sorry, that he didn’t know. But he told me that the man had paid us, he gave us money for the sex.”
“What did you use the money for?”
“We went out to eat at a sushi place in Manhattan. It was my favorite.”
“So, sex for a nice dinner?”
I shrug.
“Then what happened?” the woman prompts.
“More friends came over.”
“That night?”
I shake my head. “That weekend.”
“And what happened? Did Luis ‘not know’ it was happening this time, too?”
I take a deep breath. “He wasn’t home.”
“Then how did they know to come over?”
I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure I asked at the time, I’m sure Luis had a good excuse, but I don’t remember it. He always sounded so mature, so reasonable.
“I don’t remember.”
“You’re sure? Men just randomly came into your apartment to have sex with you against your will and you don’t know how or why?”
I shake my head.
“And the next time?”
“The second night I made five hundred dollars. I was glad I made the money. I knew Luis needed the money to make rent. He had just lost his job. I wanted to stay with him. I couldn’t go home. So the next time, I did it willingly.”
“You did it for Luis?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“So for the next three years you had sex with Luis’s friends for money?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t always Luis’s friends.”
The woman nods, but apparently that’s not important for her purposes.
“And never, during this time, did Luis say anything to you to keep you working?”
I shrug. “We made plans about opening a shop, selling goofy tourist stuff. But we needed money to do it.”
“But you never opened a shop, did you?”
“We never got the chance.”
The woman walks over to a desk with papers spread over it. “Anna, what if I told you that Luis never lost his job?”
My eyes narrow quickly. I’m confused. I don’t know what she means.
“The year you met, he was working for a construction company.”
I nod.
“And you said you had sex for money because you needed the money for the apartment.”
I nod again.
“And you needed it because Luis lost his job.”
“Yes,” I say, waiting for her to make her point.
She holds up a piece of paper. “This is Luis’s resignation letter. It’s dated forty-two days after you were officially listed a missing person.”
“That can’t be…” I lean in to look closer at the paper. Luis needed me. If he chose to leave his job, did that mean…
“He quit his job just after he started selling you to his friends.”
I see Luis’s lawyer begin to stand, but I beat him to the punch.
“He didn’t sell me,” I say firmly.
“Right, since Luis’s friends forced themselves on you without his suggestion. Well, he quit right after that. You don’t think that’s odd?”
I don’t know, I don’t know.
I shake my head slightly, fighting back tears. I came here to tell the truth, and now I’m finding out maybe I never knew the truth at all.
I remember the kind Luis. The funny Luis. The guy I was in love with.
I look into the crowd and see a girl from my health class. She’s thirteen, the age I was when I moved to New York.
She’s so young, so innocent. I think about all of the girls like her, their awkwardness, braces, acne, and stringy hair. Was I like them?
Could I imagine that girl sleeping with older men for money on her own?
I can’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t, right?
I take a deep breath.
But what if Luis really did use me? He suggested my name, Exquisite. He introduced me to Tamara, the hooker from the Bronx. He brought all his friends over.
He quit his job before I ever agreed to do it on a regular basis.
The woman puts down her paper.
“Anna, do you really believe it was your idea to sleep with men you didn’t know to pay the rent?”
I shake my head.
“What was that?” she asks, wanting me to speak aloud.
“It wasn’t my idea,” I say, and it feels like the most honest thing I’ve said today.
“Then whose idea was it?”
Faces of men pop into my head, flashing like one of those stupid slide shows they use in school, all the men that paid me for sex, willingly or not. I hated it. I hated them all.
Luis was the only one I didn’t hate, but was he worth it?
Was I just too young to see, to understand?
I gave him everything.
Now I’m nothing because of him.
A string of words ring through my mind. Tears roll down my cheeks.
“He used to—” My voice breaks, so I start again. “He used to tell me, ‘Sex is a good thing. People would kill to be paid to have sex.’”
Maybe sex can be a good thing. But is it a good thing for a thirteen-year-old? Is it a good thing to have sex with people you don’t know, men you could get diseases from? Is it a good thing to do it when you don’t want to?
Would it have been good if I had gotten pregnant from one of these men? Would Luis have taken care of me?
I remember my last days with Luis. I remember how he brought home five guys to have sex with me.
He didn’t ask.
And if I had said no, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not to Luis, and certainly not to them. I would have just ended up with a bloody lip and more ripped clothing.
A few days later, he took me to lunch, met a “gang” pimp, the kind who owned and sold a bunch of girls throughout the city, sometimes even in more than one city. Those kinds of guys take away a girl’s future forever. There’s no getting away from them once they have you.
Luis walked away from that restaurant without me, a pile of money in his hand instead.
He sold me.
I always knew this, but right now it hits me like a subway train.
I’ve tried to tell myself that he cared about me. That maybe he sold me because he had no better option. Maybe he even thought it would be for my own good. That we had started out good, only to crumble with time.
I only had one chance to get away from the gang pimp before he could get his hooks in me, before Luis was gone forever.
Getting away was the easy part. The pimp was a huge guy covered in red tattoos named Axel. He was cocky. He knew I’d try to run. He just thought he could handle it.
I remember that I started crying and pretend to have given up. Then, when he wasn’t looking, I ran. And I ran fast.
Down the streets of New York, Luis the only thing on my mind. I had to find him, get to him. Convince him to change his mind.
He wasn’t very far down the street, so I reached him easily. I thought I’d won. For one glorious second, I thought it would be okay, just like Luis always said.
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