When Smiles Fade

by Paige Dearth

  Emma was quick to share the news about the showers at the high school with Brianna and Gracie. They went to the store and purchased the cheapest bath products they could find.

  “We can’t afford towels,” Emma explained. “So we’ll have to use the two sheets we have to dry ourselves.”

  As they left the store Gracie started to whistle “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses, so happy that they would be stealing a scrub the next day. The girls had grown up listening to music from all generations. They were quite familiar with the artists of the past and present. Emma looked at her now. “Patience? Yep, I get it.”

  Gracie stood on her toes and raised her arms to the sky, “I haven’t been this fuckin’ happy in ten days, you guys. Who would have thought that some water and soap could make me feel like I just won a million bucks? Hey, Bri, maybe you can wash some of that stink off ya!” she teased.

  “Stink? You wanna talk about stink, your ass stinks,” Bri bit back in fun.

  It was in these special moments of being nothing more than teenagers that the three girls could release the anxiety caused by their hopeless living arrangement. The next day, just before school let out, the girls went over to the high school and, following Sydney’s instructions, entered the girls’ locker room. Emma felt the muck of days fall off her body as the water washed over her. With the funk of the last eleven days washed away, the girls emerged in high spirits.

  It was just a few days later, as the girls were trying to settle in the car to go to sleep, that Gracie complained of a headache. “Emma, my head feels like someone is beating on it,” she moaned.

  “Alright, I’m gonna walk down to Kensington Avenue. I’ll find a market and buy a bottle of aspirin. You two stay here. Make sure you keep the doors locked and the sheets over you. I’ll be back quick,” Emma told the two girls.

  Emma left the car and made her way down the quiet street. She walked for over twenty minutes before she found an all-night market. Having purchased the aspirin, she tucked the bottle into her jacket and headed back to the car. She followed the same route she’d come, cutting through a long alleyway to get back onto Stouton Street.

  Emma walked at a fast pace to make it through the alley as quickly as possible. She could almost feel the imminent danger of being in such an isolated spot. There were overflowing trash dumpsters, which seemed to be home to every rat in the city. Various abandoned household items lined either side of the brick walls. Spooking herself out, she began a slow jog, but was abruptly stopped when someone grabbed a handful of her hair.

  Emma instinctively spun around and came face to face with the prostitute she had had the run-in with on Kensington Avenue when they were eating hotdogs. Before she knew it, she was surrounded by the four other hookers that Emma had seen with her that day. She immediately knew she was fucked. There was no way she would be able to take all five of them on. So she did the only thing she could do. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble. The other day, well, you just caught me at a bad time. That’s all.”

  The prostitute gave her an icy cold smile, exposing the few teeth she still had in her mouth. “You think we care that you havin’ a bad fuckin’ day? What-cha think, we livin’ good and ain’t never had no bad days? Ha! Every fuckin’ day a bad day for us, motherfucker! Bottom line is, bitch, ain’t nobody fuck with Rock’s girls.”

  As she finished her sentence she threw the first punch into Emma’s gut. She immediately doubled over holding her stomach. One of the other girls kicked her in the ass and she flew head first to the ground. It all became a blur as the girls punched and kicked her without restraint. Emma made her best attempt to cover her head; the beating was far worse than the crime she had committed by standing up to the girls days prior.

  As Emma lay on the ground taking blow after blow, she resigned herself to the idea that she may die in that alley, beaten to death, and then she heard a young girl yell, “Rock, make them stop!”

  “Why?” she could hear the man’s voice responding. “What’s she to you?”

  “Come on, Rock. She’s a friend of mine, okay? She got her ass kicked already, look at her,” the young girl pleaded.

  Rock told the crazed young girls, “K now. That’s ’nough. This bitch just got lucky.” Then he turned to Sydney. “You get her the fuck out of here before I turn them loose on her again.”

  Sydney rushed over and helped Emma to her feet. She half carried, half dragged Emma out of the alley. Once she had her on Kensington Avenue she sat Emma down outside a drugstore. When Sydney came out she was carrying a bag of ice and a can of Coke. “Here, drink this,” she told Emma. “Sip it slow. You need the caffeine to wake you up. I need to get you back to your car.”

  After Emma finished the Coke and Sydney had iced her legs and ribs, she helped her up and practically carried her back to the car. The young girl knocked on the window, and a startled Brianna shot up from under the sheet. After her vision cleared and her heart rate returned to normal she saw it was Emma.

  Throwing open the car door Brianna gasped, “Oh my God! What the fuck happened to you?” She helped Sydney get Emma into the backseat of the car.

  “Who did this to her?” Gracie screeched in a state of panic.

  “Those hookers she stood up to the other day. They beat the shit out of her. They ganged up on her in an alley. She didn’t have a chance. There were too many of them. By the time I got there they had fucked her up pretty good,” Syd explained.

  Emma was awake but not completely aware of what was going on around her. She finally spoke up. “Syd saved my life.” Then she slid down on the backseat and fell asleep.

  Gracie leaned into Sydney and hugged her. “Thank you, Syd.”

  Syd nodded at the two girls and headed off toward her home in the streets of Kensington.

  “What are we going to do, Bri? I’m scared,” Gracie asked, worried about her sister.

  Brianna embraced her. “We’re gonna stay in the car with Em. Tomorrow when she’s awake we’ll figure out what we should do,” Brianna explained calmly, but inside she was terror stricken at the thought of being in charge. The two girls exchanged a worried look before lying down to try to sleep. It was as if they both sensed what was yet to come.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A couple of days passed before Emma felt like herself again. Luckily, the gang of girls hadn’t broken anything, but almost her entire body was bruised. Emma told the other two girls, “Thank God for Sydney. If she hadn’t shown up they probably would have beat me to death.”

  Now that she was feeling a little better the girls ventured out to look for a way to make a little money. As they roamed around the ghetto, Emma noticed Sydney standing with a group of teens on a street corner. She approached Syd, extending her arms to give her a hug. “Ah, she lives!” Sydney exclaimed.

  “Yeah, thanks to you,” Emma returned. “So how did you get them to stop?”

  “Well, the hookers work for Rock. He’s a drug dealer and pimp. Him and my dad used to work together dealing drugs. Then my dad got hooked on coke. Once my old man went to prison, Rock went solo. He’s known me from the time I was born. After I told him you were a friend of mine he called his bitches off. Don’t get me wrong, Rock is a total asshole. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him. But he doesn’t give me a hard time like he does the other girls around here,” she explained.

  Emma listened to the eleven-year-old, wondering again how she managed to survive on her own and grateful that she had been brave enough to speak up that night. “Well, listen, Syd, I owe you one. That was pretty fucking cool of you to step in and take that kind of risk for me. I mean, we don’t even know each other that good.”

  Syd took a seat on the curb and lit a cigarette. “Yeah, well. You told me what you’ve been through. I get it. None of us asked for this shit life, so if we can help each other every once in a while I figure what the fuck, why not? Right?”

  Gracie sat on the curb next to Syd, and even though she was two years older, she felt like
a weak child next to Sydney. “I wish I could be as brave as you are,” she confided. “I’m with my sister and I’m scared all the time. Aren’t you afraid that someone is going to hurt you?”

  Syd took a long drag from her cigarette and offered it to Gracie, who shook her head. “Nah. I was born in Kensington. I mean, sometimes I get scared. Mostly that I won’t have anything to eat, but other than that, being homeless doesn’t scare me. I have my street family and we get along fine. When you’re out here long enough you learn how to get by on whatever comes your way. You’re lucky. At least you have them,” she stated, gesturing toward Emma and Brianna.

  Gracie nodded. “Yeah, Em has been protecting me my whole life. She’s pretty much been my mom since I was really little. I guess I am pretty lucky, huh?”

  “Yep,” Sydney replied with a note of sadness in her voice. The worst part of her life was that she had no real family. Syd envied Gracie for having a sister like Emma and secretly wished that she could have been her little sister instead.

  Gracie gently bumped her knee into Sydney’s. “Well, thanks for helping Em the other night. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to her. We’ll see you around, right?”

  “Sure,” Syd said, her voice void of commitment.

  A couple of days later the two older girls finally found temporary work at a deli. The deli was getting ready for its annual inspection by the FDA and needed to clean out the back of the kitchen area. The two girls were paid twenty-five dollars a day, under the table, for sorting through boxes and throwing away expired food.

  While the two girls worked, Gracie hung out nearby. The owner said that she was too young and didn’t want her working in his store. She was sitting on a curb watching in fascination all of the tattered people roaming the streets when she was approached by three boys. They were a couple of years older than she was, but that didn’t seem to bother them when they stopped to talk to her. Within minutes the boys had her laughing, and since it was the first time that any boys had paid her attention she felt giddy.

  She sat with them for a couple of hours. In that time, Gracie forgot all about being scared of every living being that lurked over her shoulder. “So where are you from?” one of the boys finally asked.

  “Norristown. We moved out here a while ago. You know, we just figured we’d come here and hang,” Gracie told them, trying to be cool and appear more mature.

  “Oh yeah?” the boy replied. “Where are you living?”

  “Well, we haven’t found a place yet. Right now we’re sorta living out of our car,” she said with shame, and pointed to Pam’s car that was parked in front of the deli.

  “Oh, that’s cool. Do you sleep in it here? At the deli?” he pushed.

  Gracie giggled. “Of course not! We move around to different places. Tonight we’re gonna check out the lot behind that huge abandoned building off of Lehigh Avenue. You know where I’m talking about?”

  “Sure we do. Sometimes we sleep inside that building. Just depends on how crowded it is. We like to move around too,” one of the other boys told her.

  “Why did you leave home?” Gracie asked, wanting to know their story and keep them talking to her.

  “Ah, we all have different reasons. But we were all pretty much not wanted by our parents. We met up in elementary school and have been friends since then. Once we turned thirteen we all decided to split together and come to Kensington to live a little,” he said.

  Gracie forgot that she was in the smelly armpit of Kensington, known locally as “the stroll.” So captivated by the attention she was getting from the boys, she was blind to the fact that she was sitting on a curb in the heart of the city’s heroin and prostitution scene. Drug users and hookers were all around her, yet she failed to notice them now. The boys had suddenly become the temporary relief she needed from her miserable existence.

  That evening, after Gracie fell asleep in the car, the two older girls walked three blocks to meet up with a couple of teenagers that worked in the deli. They had agreed to hang out with a few of the girls with plans to drink a case of beer that one of them had scored from a dope head in exchange for five bucks.

  Gracie was sleeping peacefully just a few blocks away when the rear passenger window smashed in on her. Her eyes flew open, her heart raced, and she froze. Unable to scream, her fear holding her voice hostage, she watched as an arm reached in and unlocked the car door. As it opened, she recognized one of the boys from earlier that afternoon.

  “Hey, Gracie,” he taunted her. “We know that you like us. Why don’t you take your pants off and we can show you how much we like you?” he snickered.

  She tried hard to form the word “no,” but instead her whole body began to shake. She knew what they were talking about; after all, Jake had raped her before he put her in the grave he’d dug in the basement. As she stared at them with wide eyes, the first boy slipped into the backseat of the car with her. He pulled her pants off with ease and tore at her underwear, already tattered from age.

  He unzipped his pants and pressed himself inside of her. She lay on her back without moving. She commanded her body to fight, but her legs and arms wouldn’t budge. He was hurting her, and tears silently streamed down the sides of her face.

  When he was finished the second boy climbed on top of her. Somehow she found her voice and began to scream. The boy was much stronger than she was and grabbed a fistful of her hair, slamming her head against the car door. Gracie began to punch and kick at him. He straddled her, pinning her down so she couldn’t get away. He picked up a pillow from the floor of the car and shoved it into her face. He held it in place until she had stopped kicking and lifted it only after she had fallen unconscious. He reached into the front seat and grabbed the gallon of water he’d seen sitting there. Then he poured some in her face.

  She sprang back to life, gasping for air.

  “Now, are you going to give us what we want?” he asked cruelly.

  Before she could respond, he held the pillow over her face again. This time he didn’t let her lose consciousness. He held the pillow just long enough for her to stop struggling, removed it so she could draw in a few gasps of breath, and did it again. After he’d done this to her several more times, causing her to pee herself, he unzipped his pants and rammed himself inside of her angrily.

  By the time the third boy was finished raping her it was as if she was no longer in possession of her body. She couldn’t feel anything. Not the pain from being raped or the fear that had plagued her in the beginning, making her such an easy victim.

  When they were finished they quickly left. Gracie lay staring up at the roof of the car, unable to understand what had just happened to her. They had been so nice to her earlier. Why had she been so stupid?

  An hour later Emma and Brianna came stumbling back to the car. They were drunk and giggling at their own inability to walk a straight line. Emma spotted the broken car window about twenty feet away and began to run with her friend following behind. She flung open the back door and found Gracie just as the boys had left her, in a catatonic state, naked from the waist down.

  “Gracie!” Emma shrieked, thinking she was dead.

  Gracie’s eyes moved to Emma’s. “What happened, Gracie? Tell me who did this to you!”

  Brianna ran to the other side of the car and opened the other back door. The two girls looked at each other, each searching for a sign from the other of what they should do. They both knew she’d been raped. “Bri, start the car. We have to find Sydney. We’ve got to get Gracie to a doctor.”

  Brianna nodded. Her beer buzz instantly replaced by adrenaline, she moved into the driver’s seat and began to drive. They drove for just under an hour when they saw Syd sitting in the park with her street family. Emma rushed out of the car and ran to them. “Syd,” she said, gasping for breath, “it’s Gracie. She’s been raped. I need to get her to a doctor. She’s completely out of it.”

  Syd rose with urgency. “Oh fuck! Here’s what you do. You have
ID, right?”

  “Yeah, I have a fake ID.” Emma could feel her throat closing up on her. “But Gracie doesn’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Syd said, cutting her off. “Drive into the city and take her to CHOP.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Syd. What’s a CHOP?”

  “Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, you know, the hospital,” she explained. “Oh, come on, I’ll go with you guys.”

  They ran back to the car, and within twenty minutes they were sitting outside of the emergency room. “Em, you take her in alone to make it seem more real. Tell them it’s your little sister and your parents are on vacation. Don’t put her clothes on. You want them to bring her right in, give them less time for questions. Because she’s a kid they’ll check her out quick. After you find out she’s all right you take Gracie and beat it. Okay? You got that?” she persisted.

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Emma responded, thinking how clever the girl was.

  Emma practically had to carry Gracie into the depressing waiting room of the ER. The girl was still naked from the waist down, and just as Syd had told her, a woman and a security guard hurried over to them. The woman wrapped a blanket around Gracie’s waist and sat her in a wheelchair as others looked on in horror.

  Gracie was in bay 12 in the emergency room within minutes. A nurse strode in and began asking Emma questions. How old is she? What happened to her? Where did it happen? Where are your parents? How long has she been like this?

  Emma answered the questions rapidly. She told the nurse that their parents were in Italy, but that she was twenty-one and could consent to treatment. Finally the nurse approached Gracie. “Hi, sweetie. You’re going to be fine. In a couple of minutes a doctor is going to come in and check you out. You don’t need to be afraid, you’re safe now.”