by Marnie Perry
My mother couldn’t believe it and neither could the other people in the house, her friends. They said it was too good to be true, but mother trusted him. She said, hadn’t he been coming here taking care of them for months now?
So a week later we left that place and made our way to the coast where we caught a boat and that it turn brought us to a truck that he said would take us to America, it would be a long, tiring journey but it would ultimately be worth it.
We did catch the boat and it did take us to a waiting truck. There were lots of people in the truck, it was full and cramped and very hot. The man told my mother that I would be better riding up front with him and my mother asked why she could not ride up front with me too. He said because the driver was his friend and he had gotten papers for him to cross the border so he was the only one who could pass inspection if questioned. He would say I was his daughter and that her papers had been lost, and with my being so young they would be more lenient and let it pass.
My mother didn’t like the idea of being separated from me. He said that of course it was up to her, I could stay with her but it would be uncomfortable for her let alone a six year old, so my mother eventually gave in and I sat up front with the man and the driver.’
Olivia stopped talking here and took a drink of her lemonade then stared into the glass.
Adela said softly, ‘and that was the last time you saw your mother.’
Olivia looked up at her and nodded. Adela said softly, ‘I’m so sorry, Olivia, so very sorry.’
It had been a long time since Olivia had seen compassion in anyone’s face and it did something to her insides and caused her have to swallow the feeling. She had to steel herself to continue, ‘when it got dark we stopped somewhere. I was half asleep but I recall being picked up and carried and when I awoke I was in a car with a man and a woman and my mother was nowhere to be seen. I asked for her and was told to go back to sleep when I didn’t but kept asking for my mother the woman hit me across the face and said, ‘I’m your mother now, kid, ‘and the man laughed.
We drove all night until we reached a strip of land which I know now was a private airfield, we got on a plane in which there were other girls all about my age or slightly older.’ She stopped talking as Adela put her hands over her face obviously deeply shocked.
She removed her hands and Olivia saw tears in her eyes, tears of sympathy but Olivia saw anger there too. Neither said anything but in that moment Olivia knew that no matter what happened she could trust this woman, with her secrets, with her safety, with her life.
She said, ‘I see there’s no need for me to tell you the rest, as you said I never saw my mother again. And I started my life, if that’s what you can call it, in America.’ Adela’s tears were flowing freely now. ‘When I was about ten a man came to the house we lived in. I knew he was very important because there was lots of activity leading up to his arrival. They told us to bathe and put on clean clothes something they did not do too often, we rarely wore underwear, we didn’t need them. Anyway he arrived and came into the room where we were kept; he inspected all the girls and chose three who were then taken away crying. He looked at me intently and the woman, the same one who had been in the car with me the night I was taken, what would you call her?’
‘A Procuress?’
Olivia gave a small laugh, ‘yes, that’s a good word, procuress. She advised him not to choose me, I was trouble. From when I had first arrived I would defy them, as young as I was I was going to make sure that whatever they took from me they would not get easily. I thought that if I was going to die then I would not die easy. Maybe I got that from my mother, she was a fighter and I didn’t want to let her down. When I first arrived I was put into a cage, the type you would put a dog in and left there for days without food or water. I got more beatings than anyone else and was given to the some of the worst customers, or clients as they liked to call themselves. Anyway, the man looked at me with interest when the woman told him this and said, ‘trouble, huh?’ Then said to me, ‘yes, you look like trouble, but sometimes trouble is a good thing, it prevents boredom. What’s your name troublemaker?’
I didn’t answer so the woman slapped me and then the most unexpected thing happened, the man turned to her and punched her in the face, she fell onto the floor. I had never in my life up to that point come so close to laughing out loud. The man must have seen this because he grinned at me and said, “Troubles come not as single spies but in battalions.”
Adela said, ‘Shakespeare, Hamlet.’
Olivia nodded, ‘I discovered that. The man loves Shakespeare and quoted him all the time, even when it was not cognisant with what he was talking about. When he took me home with him he called me Desi, short for Desdemona. Of course I didn’t know then that her husband, Othello, killed her in a fit of jealousy. Those two men you saved me from and were in the woods today, their names are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, of course they’re not their real names but it’s what he calls them.’
‘Again, Hamlet. But this Glissando sounds like a real nutcase,’ said Adela.
Olivia smiled, ‘you have no idea.’
‘So this man took you home with him.’ Olivia nodded, ‘and you’ve been with him ever since?’ Again Olivia nodded. ‘And he’s who you’re running from.’
‘Yes, he’s who I’m running from, and it isn’t the first time.
‘So I take it that his motives weren’t philanthropic.’
Olivia smiled wryly, ‘you take it right. I don’t know what happened to the other girls they took that day, but they were not taken to his place.’ She shook her head confused, ‘his homes are huge and beautifully decorated. They have a pool and tennis courts and magnificent gardens. Everything you would think a child would want. I had fine clothes, a soft bed and plenty to eat. But you know, if given the choice I would have gone back to Moldova, to that hovel my mother and I both lived in, amongst friends.’
Adela said softly, “Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
Olivia’s eyebrows went almost into her hairline, she said just as softly, ‘I’ve never heard that before, but it’s very appropriate. I must remember it.’
Adela said, ‘you were saying that this isn’t the first time you’ve run away from this man.’
‘No. I’ve run from him twice before, once when I was thirteen, I thought I was old enough to cope by myself, I thought I could get a job and be free of him, of the life I’d been force to live since I was six years old. But I was wrong, I made it to New Orleans before they found me, I don’t know how they did, but they did. The next and last time was just over a year ago. I got as far as Washington D.C that time, but suffice it to say they found me again.’ She hesitated and once more stared into space, she licked her lips nervously. It was obvious to Adela that she found this part even harder to speak of than the rest.
Olivia began speaking again, ‘the first time I ran away I just got a severe beating and was locked in my room for a week fed only dry bread and water, but I’d had worse than that at the first house. He told me that he was forgiving me this aberration because I was so young still, but next time he would not be so lenient. He said I should count myself lucky, I could still be at that house or on the streets, at least here I only had to please him and his friends.’
‘His friends? Asked Adela in amazement.
‘Yes, his friends, he would loan me out as payment for favours received, or as an incentive for a business proposition.’
Adela shook her head in dismay, ‘it’s unbelievable.’
Olivia’s smile was almost sympathetic, ‘Adela, you’re an innocent. You had a bad time with your mother, she used and abused you and that was bad, but there are things happening in the world of which you are unaware. I’m younger than you but you’re a child when it comes to such things. You’re naïve of the ways of the world.’
Adela bristled and said with some asperity, ‘I may not have been out in the big bad world as you have Olivi
a but I can read and I know such things go on. I’m not as innocent as you might think. I know about the horrors of human trafficking. I just meant it’s hard to believe that men could act so, that’s all.’
Olivia’s face was pink by the time Adela had finished speaking. ‘I’m sorry, Adela, I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.’
Adela’s annoyance evaporated instantly, ‘it’s all right, Olivia, I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have snapped. This is hard enough for you as it is.’
Olivia still embarrassed and ashamed had to smile. A few days ago she would have gotten a slap, or worse, for speaking to someone as she had, and Adela did not deserve what she had said and yet she had apologised and had understood. She was a rare woman, but she had known this already hadn’t she.
Adela said, ‘look, let’s take a break and have some coffee, okay?’
Olivia nodded, Adela stood up but she said, ‘no, stay where you are, I’ll do it.’
Adela smiled, ‘okay, but I could get used to being waited on.’
She realised that maybe she shouldn’t have said that but Olivia returned her smile, ‘well I’m used to doing the waiting on.’ Adela laughed.
When they had their coffee and they were once more seated Adela said, ‘I don’t really understand why he kept you all this time though, I mean surely when you got, you know older, he would have…
‘Traded me in for a younger model?’ Olivia interrupted.
‘Well I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but yes. I mean if his preferences were for children.’ She shuddered as she said this.
‘He had them too, but what he most wanted was a slave, someone he could mould into the perfect handmaiden. As soon as the woman told him I was trouble he saw me as a challenge. That’s what he liked you see, he didn’t want just anyone, someone who would be a submissive, subservient tool, weak and cowed, where would be the fun in that? He wanted someone who would fight him, not necessarily psychically but emotionally and mentally, all the better when she was tamed.’ She saw Adela’s horrified expression and went on, ‘I mean think about it, if you’re a sadist where's the fun in torturing a masochist, they’d enjoy it wouldn’t they. Same goes for a girl, who was too cooperative, too frightened to fight back, just lay there and took it. He saw something in me that day at the first house; he knew that I would resist, that I would not be easy, and more importantly, that I would not enjoy it.’
‘I don’t think I really want to ask,’ Adela said, ‘but by “it” I take it you mean more than sex.’
Olivia nodded, ‘oh yes. Look, I won’t tell you if you don’t want to know, and I’m not sure that I really want to go into it too much myself. But maybe I could show you instead.’ She stood up and pulled up the T-shirt revealing her stomach. Adela did not speak she was too stunned, instead she just stared at the red criss- cross welts across Olivia’s skin, obviously from a belt or whip of some kind, probably both. Then Olivia turned around displaying more mottled, pitted and scarred skin. Olivia pulled down the T-shirt, turned to look at Adela then sat down. She took in her shocked face and said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, it wasn’t fair.’
Adela shook her head, ‘no, no I’m glad you did, I’m happy that you trusted me enough to show me. But that’s not all is it, there’s more and much worse.’
Olivia shrugged, ‘he was into pain, inflicting it I mean. He had a special place in the cellar of his house all set up for his particular predilections. A torture chamber. He calls it his fun chamber. That’s where I was taken the last time I ran away, I spent a month there. He would come to see me every day and every day he would punish me.’
She paused here and Adela knew she was reliving those four weeks. Eventually she went on, ‘he used a soldering iron on my breasts and buttocks and sometimes a stun gun which sends electrodes through the body. He used that on my genitals and breasts.’ She shivered as she recalled those tortures as did Adela. Olivia went on, ‘after he’d had his fun I thought he would get rid of me, but he didn’t. He was enjoying himself too much. No, he vented his need to inflict deadly force on others, young girls fresh in from foreign parts, girls that meant nothing to him; he tortured them to death in his dungeon.’
Adela’s hands were wrapped tight around her coffee cup because she did not want Olivia to see how they shook. After a while she said, ‘I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. How you must have suffered. You were right, I don’t know about such things, I have been cosseted somewhat, sheltered from the world and all its horrors. And that wasn’t my mother's doing but mine.’
‘We all have our trials and troubles, Adela. I apologise again for saying what I said before.’
‘No, don’t apologise. You make me feel ashamed.’
Olivia was aghast, ‘why should you feel ashamed? You didn’t hurt me did you; on the contrary you saved me, helped me, gave me a bed and hid me from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. If the world was full of Adela’s I wouldn’t be sitting here now relating this awful story.’
Adela’s eyes filled again and she looked away. There followed a silence until Adela had composed herself enough to ask, ‘but you speak so nicely, and you’ve obviously been well educated.’
‘Oh yes, that was part of the fun, take an almost illiterate kid, a child with no manners, no education and transform her. You see, I would have the best of everything, every luxury, every nice thing so that it was made so much worse when I was pulled from my soft bed and taken to the room beneath the house. I suppose I could have lain there and given in, given up, but I knew even at a young age that he would rid himself of me, so I fought and stayed alive always hoping for the chance to escape.'
Adela nodded, consumed with admiration mingled wit pity for this young girl. There followed a silence after this, Olivia obviously worn out from relating her story, both psychically and emotionally. Adela herself was stunned. She couldn’t stop imagining a dark and dank dungeon where Olivia had been kept subject to a wicked man’s whims, while she bemoaned her own life living in a semi- detached house with a garden and a little pool full of fish. Her own room with it’s pink and green flowered bedspread and curtains and her bookcases filled with detective and crime novels and how she would lose herself in those books, wishing for adventure where a dishy cop would save her from the bad guys, and all time Olivia had been living a life like the one’s she sometimes read about. She had told Olivia she felt ashamed and she did. She asked, ‘so how did you escape this time? I mean, he must have had you closely watched after the attempt.’
‘He did, he even went so far as to put a GPS chip in my stomach,’ at Adela’s gasp she gave a sad smile, ‘it happens a lot, they use them on many girls and boys they bring in to work as slaves, but Glissando never did that to me until after the second escape attempt, most are put in the back of the neck because it makes it difficult to remove by yourself, and some have tried.’
‘But Glissando did not do that with you?’
‘No, he put it here, ‘Olivia touched her abdomen, so I removed it.’
Adela was incredulous, ‘that must have hurt.'
'It wasn’t embedded too deeply but yes, it hurt very much. But it was worth it.’
‘I feigned sickness a few days before my escape, put my fingers down my throat to make myself throw up, I knew Dashiel would not come near me then. I’m a pretty consummate actress,’ she managed a smile now, ‘not anywhere near as good as Meryl Streep, or you of course, but good enough to convince him that I was really ill.
Although after I removed the chip there was nothing feigned about my stomach pains. I waited and bided my time waiting for an opportunity. I knew there would come a time when he would be distracted with business or have trouble with his competitors. Eventually the opportunity came; he’s been very preoccupied with some business deal or other. I don’t know what, he was always very careful about showing his feelings, he says it’s a sign of weakness but I think there’s more to it than that, he has a fixation about it. Anyway I overheard him talking abou
t some guy who's business he was trying to take over, he wanted his restaurants, clubs as so on.’
‘Clubs? What kind of clubs?’
Olivia looked at her for a moment before saying, ‘oh he has all kinds of clubs, strip clubs, gambling clubs. He’s into all kinds of things, drugs, prostitution, adult and child. He has fingers in all kinds of pies and none of them legal. But he’s clever, very, very clever; he hides these illegal activities behind other legal businesses. But more importantly he has cops in his pocket, even FBI and DEA agents, these people cover for him and are paid very well for their trouble. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ex F.B.I, that’s why they’re so good at what they do. Plus they still have contacts in the agency.’
Adela was dumbfounded, ‘I can’t believe that federal agents would do that, that they would betray their office, their country, themselves. I read a lot of crime books and there’s nearly always a rogue agent in there somewhere but I always thought that was literary license.’
Olivia gave a small laugh, ‘I’m here to tell you that it’s not, some people will do anything for money, believe me I’ve seen what they will do for even small amounts of cash. Sometimes they would take payment in kind.’
‘In kind?’
‘Yes, forgo the money for other pleasures.’
Adela shook her head not in disbelief at Olivia’s words but with incredulity.
Olivia went on, ‘he was distracted for several days, then he did what I knew he would. He sent for the man.’
