Nobody's Girl

by Barbara Amaya

  Cancer. Just hearing the word seemed like a death sentence. I knew nothing about it, but I knew people died from it. I didn’t want to die. I had no friends, thanks to my depression and isolation, so I pulled the pharmacist—a complete stranger—to the side and talked to her about my diagnosis because I had no one else to tell. She seemed to care, and reassured me I would be okay and that I wasn’t dying right then.

  When Samantha came home from school, I tried my best to act strong and to make my diagnosis seem like no big deal. “I have to have a small surgery sometime in the next few weeks or so, okay?”

  I looked at my daughter as she stood poised on the staircase, clearly ready to run up and away from me, and I wondered if she’d even heard what I just said.

  Then she spoke. “Why?” She turned toward me, holding on to the wooden banister, her blue backpack in her other hand.

  “I’ve been having a long period, and the doctor wants me to have surgery to check out what’s going on.”

  “I’m going with you next time you go to see him.”

  At that moment my teenage daughter seemed like a young woman to me for the first time, and not like a little girl at all. She wanted to go with me? I was surprised and touched. I was hungry for her attention, but since she’d become a teenager I’d thought I must be the last person she wanted to spend time with. Having her offer all on her own to go with me and support me meant the world to me.

  Arrangements were made for the first of three surgeries to remove the cancer. I remembered the infertility surgery I’d had years before, and wondered if it was all related. What about all the early trauma and all the men I’d had sex with? After educating myself years later I began to suspect that I had contracted the HPV virus, which may have caused my uterine cancer. I wish I had been able to be honest with the surgeons and doctors who helped me.

  The first surgery took several hours due to complications, and Samantha was there in my room when I woke, her face looking more exhausted than mine. She’d stayed the entire time and never left the hospital waiting area. In fact, Samantha was at the hospital each time I went back; I never had to feel completely alone. Strangely, my cancer brought us closer together.

  I was already tattooed and ready to begin the next step—radiology treatments—when the radiologist read my chart in depth and suggested I consult a specialist instead. I followed his advice, and after a final surgery at George Washington University Hospital, I was cancer-free. I will always be grateful for the extra time and effort the radiologist took. He saved me from having to undergo unnecessary treatments.

  After Samantha saw that I was indeed going to live, things went back to normal fairly quickly; she began spending more and more time with her friends, out of the house as much as possible. I felt lonelier than ever, though I never wanted to admit it. That all began to change, though, the day Samantha shocked me by asking if we could get a dog.

  “Please, I really want one! I promise to take care of him.” Samantha knew how to get whatever she wanted from me, and I was so happy to have her even talking to me at all that I agreed.

  “A dog? We can go look at some, but I am not promising anything. Let’s go to the shelter.”

  We bought a small black dog at the shelter because Samantha wanted him so badly, but her interest lasted about a week. At that point Scooby became my dog, and more than a dog—my best friend. At the end of his life more than a decade later, putting him down would be the hardest thing I ever had to do.

  With Scooby, I felt like I was beginning to heal somehow. I grew to trust that dog more than I had ever trusted a human being. His love was unconditional and faithful; he never judged, he loved me no matter what, and he seemed eternally happy to see me. I used to take him out for walks and tell him all my secrets.

  Scooby would turn his furry head to the side, and his long ears would perk up as soon as he heard my voice. I could almost see his mind working as he listened to me. Sometimes I would imagine how his voice might sound if he were able to talk. More than once I wished he could tell me how he felt.

  I was sure he understood me, though. Scooby could sense my feelings and moods better than any human ever had. If I was suffering from muscle spasms in my back, he would look at me with sympathy in his brown eyes and put his paw on my foot, whining softly as if he were trying to tell me it would all be okay.

  He was protective of me, too. If we approached a stranger, Scooby would quickly check them out, and if they seemed harmless to him he would wag his tail. Otherwise he would back up, looking up at me with his big brown eyes and seeming to say, “This one’s not good.” Sometimes he would even growl softly.

  Taking Scooby for long neighborhood walks took me out of my dark living room and into parks and along paths I never realized existed. For years I had known about the small park near my home, but I had never ventured down to really look at it.

  Deep inside the park there was a small creek, a place where turtles, frogs, and small fish made their home. Scooby and I would sit in the park and watch the water flow. One afternoon I saw a furry brown animal with a long tail; it was swimming around in the water and eating flowers and leaves. I thought it was a rat. After I did some research, I discovered it was a muskrat, and I was delighted to have found so much wildlife in my own neighborhood. During my years in New York, I hadn’t seen any animals except pigeons, rats, and an occasional sad-looking squirrel. People, I saw now, need nature to help them feel human.

  For a long time I still preferred the company of my dog to other human beings. I was beyond antisocial; I had given up on the entire human race. Because of Scooby, though, I began to meet other people who walked their dogs, people I never would have talked to otherwise. Most of them I knew only by their dogs’ names, but still, I was actually talking with other humans.

  And whether it was because they were dog people like me, or just really nice, I found that they were not so bad after all. I stumbled over my words and felt out of place—you could barely call it a conversation—but I began to open up a tiny bit. Just like Scooby, who wagged his tail when he spotted people he knew, I felt myself brighten, smile a little, and look forward to greeting my new friends.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Tonight at ten, we have a story that is sure to bring chills down your spine. Several local Alexandria, Virginia teens have been victims of human trafficking, sold for sex by gang members.”

  Hearing those words shook me out of my sleepy daze as I lay on the couch in my living room. I stopped flipping channels, turned up the volume, and clutched the remote control as I sat riveted to the television, listening to each word the anchor said.

  She explained that the gang members preyed on the young women, telling them that they were beautiful, and that they loved them and would be their boyfriends. Then they manipulated the girls into selling their bodies door to door like vacuum cleaners. Some of the young women were recruited from high schools; others were found at bus stops, and even more, online on Facebook and other social networks.

  It sounded very familiar.

  One of the things that shocked me the most was seeing how young the girls on the television were. I knew I had only been thirteen when I first began working for Moses, but it had never before hit me how young that really was. I remembered how I had been sold from one pimp to another and how I had believed Moses when he told me that he wasn’t like the others—that he loved me and that he would protect me. The girls on the news had been told the same thing.

  So many feelings washed over me as I listened to the anchor speak: sadness for the young girls, anger that what had happened to me was still happening to others, and then a sudden feeling of validation. All my life I had thought I needed to keep those missing years in New York a shameful secret from the rest of the world, something to explain away with made-up stories. I had lost a job due to the criminal records I had accumulated. I had been sure that the bad things that had happened in my life had been my fault. Now I began to see the truth: I’d been a
victim. A walking target. I had been trafficked, and now I had a name for it.

  I had been a damaged young soul, not a dumb one. I had wanted so badly to be accepted and loved by someone, anyone. Nancy, James, and Moses had said all the right things to me, and I had believed them, but it was all a lie. For the first time I began to feel anger toward the people who had exploited me, rather than toward myself .

  For so long I’d been wrapped up in my own survival, but something in my heart and mind shifted as I watched the newscast that night. I wanted to talk to the girls and tell them that they were beautiful and smart and that those gang members who told them they loved them, were lying. I wanted to tell them that they were worthy and that I understood their pain—that I knew what it was like to feel as if no one loved me. I wanted to help them find out if they could go home—if they were safe there—and if not, I could direct them to a safe place. Just like I had been, these young girls were being beaten, abused, and forced to sell their bodies. I thought that if I could talk to them, I could show them how to get help and really begin to live their lives. I wanted to tell them my own story.

  That evening was the beginning of an important part of my life, a real epiphany. I began educating myself everywhere I could. I learned about human trafficking in all of its forms, and as I learned I thought about how I could begin speaking out and sharing my own story. Sometimes I felt as if my head would explode from all the information I was putting into it.

  I joined several survivor groups online and began reading books by survivors like Rachel Lloyd, Holly Austin Smith, and Carissa Phelps. Talking with other women like me helped me see that I was not alone, and that other women had also survived and lived and gone on to make a difference with their lives. Being able to talk openly to them and know in my heart that we understood each other gave me a strong sense of family and of belonging.

  I also began searching for an organization or group I could work with. I knew that the girls on the newscast weren’t the only ones who were in need of help; there must be other girls like them, girls like I had been when I ran away the summer I turned twelve. I wanted to do street outreach and speak to young runaways before they were lured into the life by traffickers and pimps. I felt the need to go outside into the world and do anything I could to help everyone understand human trafficking—what it truly was, who was at risk, and how we could all make a difference and work together to stop it.

  Finally I found a nonprofit that did street counseling for homeless and runaway youth. The group handed out food and personal items like deodorant and clothing to kids who were living on the streets of the nation’s capital. They were the exact kind of people that I wish had been there when I ran away from home. I thought of how much good they did, and I knew I had found the right group.

  To my surprise, after I filled out a volunteer application, I was contacted by the organizer and asked to share my story at the next training meeting.

  The thought terrified me. I felt so strongly about making my horrific past mean something, and I wanted to help people understand that what happened to me was still happening today to millions of vulnerable people. But I had a full-blown phobia about speaking in front of more than two people. The thought of doing it for a group made me feel like I was having a heart attack.

  At the same time, I knew that I had a real chance to educate with my story. If I spoke out and shared all of those traumatic years, other young people could learn from my experiences and maybe avoid becoming victims like I had been. I thought of all the counselors who volunteered with at-risk youth and how my words could help them in their work. Eventually I agreed. I told the organizer I would speak, even though I had horrible thoughts about what could go wrong.

  ***

  I didn’t know it at the time, but what happened at that meeting would be the beginning of a completely new journey.

  When Walter, the volunteer trainer, introduced me, I could feel my heart beating so loudly that I wondered if everyone else could, too. I barely heard his words: “Tonight we have a special visitor, Barbara Amaya, who has graciously agreed to speak here and to share her experiences of being a young runaway and what she went through here in DC and in New York…”

  Walter turned and smiled at me. He seemed to want me to come to the front of the room, but I couldn’t even bring myself to stand. Instead, I sat at the long table with my notes in front of me. I couldn’t pick them up because my hands were shaking so badly.

  When I began to speak, my voice trembled so much that I was sure everyone must be laughing at me. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I thought about excusing myself, leaving, and giving up. What was I thinking? I wasn’t a public speaker; I was nobody. I didn’t belong in this square world. That’s what had been beaten into me during my time on the streets. Why did I think I could suddenly change?

  But then something miraculous happened. I folded my hands and held them together, my eyes closed tight as I told myself I did not need to change. I was a survivor. A survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of my loved ones. A survivor of human trafficking under the belt of one of the most evil men I had ever met. A survivor of an aftermath so long and horrible that it threatened to swallow me whole.

  I forgot all about the pile of detailed notes on the table; my words came from my heart, not from the papers. As I sat there speaking, the people sitting around the long gray table faded away, and I heard my own voice telling how scared I had been when my father abused me when I was just a young girl. I told them how frightened and then how angry I had been when I’d tried to tell my mother and she hadn’t believed me, and that after a while I didn’t bother telling anyone anything because I’d learned that no one would listen to me or help me. I told them how I began to trust no one.

  Tears came to my eyes as I described how I ran away from home the first time. I had been so sad, but felt compelled to leave the home where I seemed to go unnoticed and felt unloved. I told the group how I hitchhiked to nearby Washington, DC that summer of 1968, and how I found other young people there who had introduced me to drugs. And how I found that using speed, LSD, hash, and pills made me forget all the abuse and bad feelings I had.

  When I spoke of how Nancy and James had tricked me and lied to me, and then sold me to willing customers, I felt a growing anger at them, instead of at myself. What had happened during those years had not been my fault. I was a young, damaged, and vulnerable victim, just like the homeless and runaway children that the nonprofit worked to help. I spoke for them and for myself, and it was a powerful, cathartic feeling.

  Afterward, people from the group wanted to hug me and congratulate me on sharing my experiences.

  “Thank you so much for all that you taught me tonight,” a hopeful young counselor told me as she reached out to me.

  “What you have shared tonight will help me so much in my work,” another counselor said.

  “I was afraid to talk. I’m not a public speaker by any means, so thank you, all.” I smiled as I listened to their kind words, and I felt a warm glow inside.

  I knew then that I had found a purpose for all that I’d gone through. I was a victim, but I was also a survivor; and because of this I was able to help young girls in a way few others could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  After that first speaking event, I went on to tell my story in over thirty different venues in less than a year and a half. I never got over my fear of speaking in public; I would always experience a deep anxiety when I was presenting my story. But I knew that I had found my purpose in life. For me, sharing my experiences was always about breaking a silence and no longer being ashamed.

  Sharing my story with the world was also a way to share my story with my family. When I was interviewed on the ten o’clock news, all my neighbors and family members saw it, and I was happy they did. Making excuses for my past had been exhausting. For the first time, I was being my true self, not lying about who or what I was.

  My older sister called me not long after the news a
ired. We talked about our father. She wanted to know why I had never told her about my abuse, and she sounded like she finally understood why I had run away from home. I thought about all the times when I felt as if I were not worth anything, and how all I wanted was someone to love me and believe me. Telling my sister the truth made me feel as if a huge weight had been lifted off my chest.

  My mother’s response was mixed. She told me she was proud of me for my advocacy work, but she asked me to stop saying I was abused. Even from the start, she was always in complete denial of my abuse. I’d long held so much anger and rage against my mother for not protecting me when I was a little girl, but now I realized that I needed to let that go for my own peace of mind. Sometimes forgiveness isn’t about the person who hurt you; it’s about forgiving them so that you can help yourself.

  Around this time I told Samantha my whole story, too. I’d been afraid to tell her about Moses—afraid that she would think I’d been dumb, easily fooled. But when I explained to her the relationship between trafficker and victim, she was wonderfully supportive. She asked me a lot of questions and seemed to want to know more.

  “Why didn’t you leave? Why did you stay for so many years? Didn’t you want to go?”

  I thought carefully about how to answer her and share something that for me was so hard to put into words. I myself had only begun to fully see why I’d stayed with Moses for years. But I wanted her to understand.

  When I had first read about trauma bonding and Stockholm syndrome, I had thought those terms only related to victims of war and other atrocities. But I had come to learn that pimps and traffickers like Moses use the age-old tricks of trauma bonding to their best advantage. First, be nice—really, really nice—to a young, already-damaged girl; take her to a restaurant, buy her some clothes, and listen to her problems. Then beat her up just a little bit when she steps out of line, or even if she doesn’t. Then once again lay on the “I love you” stuff, and then another beating.