by Betty Webb
What now? Back to Los Perdidos? The Lazy M?
After reflecting on Jimmy’s information, I decided to pay Reverend Hall a dinner visit, but before I pulled the Jeep back onto the highway, his battered Taurus approached in the direction of town. A passing car’s headlights provided enough light for me to see that there was only one person inside the Taurus: Hall, so intent on a cell phone conversation he didn’t notice me. Good. Now I could get his wife’s take on Nicole’s disappearance. I suspected she would tell a totally different story.
Wrong.
When I pulled up to the parsonage, Olivia Hall was standing just inside the open front door, her expression bleak. She snapped out of it when I exited the Jeep and crunched across the gravel.
“What do you want?” Not the most welcoming of questions. Apparently the good reverend had never taught her how to handle the public.
“To talk about Nicole,” I said, climbing the steps. “I want to find her for you but to do that I need to know what’s really been going on.”
She shut the door in my face.
Shocked, I stood there for a moment, then pounded on the door. Nothing. After a few more minutes of pounding, I realized that Olivia’s fear of her husband was stronger than her love for her daughter, so I gave up.
While driving to Los Perdidos, I thought about Olivia’s behavior. All pretensions to religion aside, the Halls appeared to be just another dysfunctional family. And an investigative dead end.
But perhaps not the Wahabs.
Praying that the Wahabs had reevaluated their belief that I’d kidnapped Aziza, I drove to their place. The house appeared deserted, but when I started up the walk, a curtain twitched at a front window.
Quibilah Wahab answered the door as I lifted my hand to knock. Instead of flinging accusations at me, she said, “I am sorry my husband accused you of such a terrible thing.” She wrung her hands so desperately I was amazed the fingers didn’t fall off.
“He was just upset,” I soothed. “Is he home?” I had expected to find the Wahabs huddled together in their grief, but the house was silent behind her.
“On Fridays Kalil stays late at work. As manager, he must see to the shutting down.”
“And your other children? Where are they?”
“With friends.”
“Leaving you alone?”
“Yes.” Those hands still twisted.
Remembering the Middle Eastern penchant for courtesy, I said, “You know, I was thinking about that wonderful coffee of yours. May I have some? The night’s getting chilly.”
It was obvious Quibilah preferred me gone, yet she ushered me in and gestured me toward the sofa. She disappeared into the kitchen, returning quickly with a tray containing a carafe and two tiny cups.
“Everyone is working hard to find Aziza,” I said, putting my cup down after one sip.
“The people of Los Perdidos are very kind.” She had trouble meeting my eyes.
“Mrs. Wahab—Quibilah—is there anything you didn’t tell me about Aziza or the girl known as Precious Doe, that you forgot to mention during my last visit?”
“There is nothing.”
I took the photo of Precious Doe out of my carry-all and thrust it toward her. “You’re certain Aziza didn’t know this girl?”
She shook her head, not taking her gaze from her cup, which was pretty, but not pretty enough to deserve such undivided attention.
“Quibilah, you didn’t even look at the photograph.”
She still didn’t look up. “My Aziza does not know that person. Neither of my daughters or my sons know her. No matter how many times you ask, the answer will always be the same.”
“Perhaps if you studied the picture more carefully?”
“Ask my husband these questions. Kalil will be home around nine.”
I tried another way around her evasions. “A mother always knows more about her daughter’s acquaintances than the father.”
At this, she finally met my eyes. “That is not true of Egyptian fathers.” Then she resumed staring at her pretty cup.
“Did you ever hear Aziza speak of a school friend, someone she’d grown close to?”
“It is as my husband told you, neither Aziza nor Shalimar have friends we do not know.”
Such certainty might be possible in Egypt, where a parent could more easily control a child’s environment, but not in America. Here children brushed up against one another at school, in the library, on the street, or shopping at Wal-Mart. And they weren’t usually accompanied by their parents.
Keeping my tone as gentle as possible, I asked, “Did Aziza ever point to anyone while you were shopping and say something like, ‘Oh, look, there’s Nicole.’ ”
“Nicole? Who is this Nicole? Neither of my daughters knows anyone by that name.”
Peggy Binder claimed the opposite, so something was wrong here. “Are you certain?”
“All of our children’s acquaintances are known to us.”
I tried again. “There may be something you noticed and forgot. Think hard.”
Her hands were red from all that wringing. “As I said, Kalil will tell you there is nothing. Now, if you do not wish more coffee, please forgive me, but I have much cleaning to do before he comes home.” She gestured at her immaculate house. However politely, she had given me my walking papers.
Outside in my Jeep, I checked my messages one more time before heading back to the Lazy M. During my interview with Quibilah, Victor Friedman had called. His message said it was urgent that he talk with me right away.
Friedman must have recognized my cell number from his Caller I.D., because he didn’t even bother saying hello when I rang him back.
“Nicole’s here,” he said. “And she’s not alone.”
Chapter Eighteen
Nicole no longer resembled the photograph Sheriff Avery had released to the media. As we sat in the Friedman’s den, I saw a face thin to the point of hollowness, hair hacked into a porcupine bristle. A voluminous dress covered her from neck to ankle, as if attempting to make the pretty teen inside disappear into its folds.
By contrast, Aziza Wahab’s snug hijab accented her Mediterranean beauty. Even at seven, it was easy to see the breath-taking woman she would become. But now terror distorted her features and she clung to the teen in desperation.
Evelyn tried to coax her away. “Dear, everything will be all right, didn’t I promise? So why don’t you go join the other girls while we talk to Lena in private?”
“I will not leave this room without her!” Aziza’s diction was formal but unaccented. It puzzled me until I remembered that she had lived in Los Perdidos since infancy.
“But there are personal things Nicole needs to discuss,” Evelyn said, as gently as she could.
Aziza buried her head against Nicole’s narrow chest. “No!”
Nicole stroked her hair. “Hey, kid, it’s all right. These people aren’t gonna make you do anything you don’t want. But I gotta talk to Miss Jones.” The maternal sweetness in her voice reminded me that although Nicole’s baby had been given away, she was still a mother.
Aziza twisted around until I saw the corner of one dark eye. “Make the man leave.”
Bending close, Nicole whispered, “He already knows, honey. When we first got here and you were in the bathroom, I told them both.”
“I said no men!”
Without a word, Victor Friedman left the room.
We would be talking about a sex crime, then. As a former police officer, I had been in similar situations before, where women related terrible accounts of molestation and rape, so I steeled myself for what was to come. Aziza’s continued presence in the room disturbed me. Why didn’t Evelyn just pick her up and take her away? I decided that if Nicole’s story became too graphic, I would do that myself.
Holding the child close, Nicole took a deep breath. “They cut me.”
I waited for the details, but none were forthcoming, which wasn’t uncommon among abused children. Opening up
about the pain they endured was difficult for all, impossible for some. Yet no matter how bad their experiences, they usually remained loyal to their parents, their abusers.
To prompt her, I asked as matter-of-factly as possible, “Where did they cut you, Nicole? On your arms?”
The sleeves of the teen’s old-fashioned dress extended past her wrists. In this wicked old world, parents cutting or burning a child’s arms wasn’t uncommon, but they usually targeted their children’s backs, where the scars were easier to hide.
Nicole shook her head. “They cut me down there.”
Her legs? Not so common a target, but I had seen vicious scarring on children’s legs before. “Your calves or your thighs?” I asked, hating whoever had done that to her. My bet was on Reverend Hall, making Nicole pay for getting pregnant, making her pay for not being his. What, I wondered, did Olivia Hall’s legs look like?
The den grew so quiet that in the next room I heard the polygamy runaways giggling as the channel switched from CNN to some laugh-tracked sitcom. From the pasture nearest the house, a sleepy horse nickered.
I prompted Nicole again. “You don’t have to tell me everything at once, just a little at a time. That’ll make it easier.” Until I have enough information to give to the police. I wouldn’t tell her that last part. Even abused children hated to be removed from their homes.
When Nicole spoke, I could hardly hear her. “Not my legs.”
“Your back, then? Your torso?”
Evelyn Friedman, that tough, rifle-toting Annie Oakley, sniffled. Nicole flicked a look at her. Seemingly drawing strength from the other woman’s sudden weakness, she lifted her chin and said in a voice so flat it gave me shivers, “They cut off my genitals.”
Surely I’d heard wrong.
Aziza wailed, “And they were going to do it to me!”
***
“She’s telling the truth, Lena. I saw for myself,” Evelyn said, shaking with fury after Nicole had ushered the weeping child out of the den. “Her genitals have been amputated and she’s as bare down there as a eunuch. The only thing left is her vagina, but even that’s mostly sewn shut. She says there’s a plastic tube shoved up in there to keep it open enough for her periods but too narrow for intercourse. Which, I guess, was the whole point. My God, the sadistic bastards didn’t even bother to anesthetize her.”
I stared at her in shock, unable to speak. Then the door opened and Victor came back in, followed by a resolute Nicole. “Aziza’s calmed down now,” he said. “We gave her some chocolate milk and talked her into staying out there with the other girls. They’re watching the The Brady Bunch.”
“Reruns on TV Land,” Evelyn muttered. “The polygamist kids love it.”
“They wish their families were like that,” Nicole said, sitting down. “Me, too.” Then she looked at me. “Okay, what else do you need to know?”
“Who castrated you?” I demanded.
Before she could answer me, Victor said, “They didn’t take her ovaries, Lena, so technically, it’s not a true castration.”
“It might as well be, for what it did to her,” I retorted. Then I repeated my question to Nicole. “Who? Your father?”
She shook her head. “The Cutter. I never knew her name and I didn’t see her face ’cause I was blindfolded the whole time, but she had some kind of African accent. She musta been the same person who cut those other girls—Tujin Rafik and Sahra Hassan. Except they were lucky. They bled to death.” She sounded so forlorn I wanted to cry.
Tujin Rafik, the missing Iraqi girl. Not just missing, then. Dead. And Sahra Hassan? I saw a small black hand protruding from a shallow grave, heard a plea from a nightmare. “Nicole, was Sahra Hassan the child we’ve been calling ‘Precious Doe?’ ”
“Yeah. She used to live in Los Perdidos, so her parents brought her back to get cut. After I found out she died, I grabbed Aziza and split before the same thing happened to her.”
When I was able to speak again, it sounded like I’d been crying for years. Which maybe I had. “How did you find out the girl was dead? I thought your father didn’t let you watch television or read the newspapers.”
She managed a weak smile. “You think I don’t know how to get out of that house? I’m here, aren’t I? There’s a meeting place by the river where us kids go after our parents are asleep. Even Aziza’s sister, Shalimar, hangs out there. Well, used to, anyway.”
She was describing the teen encampment I’d found, probably the location where Nicole used to make love with Raymundo. “All right, so you were down at the river and heard what happened to Precious…” I still had trouble not calling her by her correct name, “…what happened to Sahra Hassan. What made you think something like that was about to happen to Aziza? I’ve met her parents, and they seem like nice, polite people. Surely they wouldn’t do anything like that to her.”
Nicole’s face twisted into a sneer. “Nice people? Because they have good manners? Don’t make me laugh. Tujin’s and Sahra’s parents acted polite, too, but they still paid the Cutter to do what she did. Eighty-five dollars, bandages extra. My father told me it was my own fault I was getting cut, because I fell into sin, just like my mother. He said once I got cut I’d be numb down there and never get tempted again. Well, guess what? He was right. Now the thought of sex makes me sick.”
She stopped, then added, “Those girls that died, they got cut at seven, before they could feel anything for a boy.” Then the well-practiced teen sneer fell away, revealing the pain underneath.
Genital amputation to prevent physical pleasure, purity at the risk of death. I could barely speak I was so outraged. “You’re telling me Shalimar just volunteered the information that Aziza was about to get, ah, cut?”
“Yeah. She was kinda upset, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it, was there?”
“She could have called Child Protective Services. Or talked to a teacher.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized how foolish they sounded. Shalimar Wahab probably didn’t even know what CPS was, let alone how to reach them. As for talking to a teacher, most teens would never consider the idea. Teachers were part of the adult hierarchy, therefore not to be trusted.
Nicole’s next words proved me right. “Talk to a teacher? Gimme me a break. But what’s Child Protective Services? That sounds interesting.”
I wanted to scream with frustration. Why weren’t kids given this information? “CPS is a government agency designed to help children in trouble.”
At that she laughed, but there was no joy in it. “The government? Oh, pul-eeze!”
With dread, I asked the next question. “Nicole, has Shalimar been cut?”
She nodded. “About a year ago. Some guy in Egypt, the one her parents are making her marry, insisted on it. That was the only way to make sure she’d be faithful, he said, and he wanted it done here so she’d be healed in time for the wedding. Since his family has tons of money and has already paid the Wahabs for her—Shalimar called it a bride price, but to me it sounds like he’s buying her like a slave or something—her parents did what he wanted. Anyway, that’s why she doesn’t meet us at the river so much anymore. She got sewed up wrong and limps real bad.”
Beside me, Evelyn groaned. Victor looked like he wanted to kill someone.
I felt sick. “Shalimar’s what, fifteen?”
Nicole nodded. “Yeah, but she’s been engaged to that guy since she was five or six. Just like Aziza, who’s supposed to marry the creep’s brother. It’s an Egyptian thing, I guess.”
But this was the U.S. We didn’t allow arranged marriages here. Then I remembered the polygamy runaways in the next room, who had fled forced marriages to elderly men. “Wait a minute, Nicole. Why didn’t your mother put her foot down when Reverend Hall said what he wanted to do?”
That terrible laugh again. “Have you met my mother?”
She was right. That spiritless woman couldn’t even protect herself, let alone a child. Nicole wasn’t anything like that. Although the teen
hadn’t been able to save herself, she’d risked everything to save Aziza. If Olivia Hall had managed to muster up a fraction of her daughter’s courage, none of us would be here tonight.
But then Aziza…
Nicole turned to Evelyn. “Okay. I did what you wanted. I told her everything, and now I’m done. I’m not going back home, not ever, and I’m not letting them take Aziza back, either. Next week’s her seventh birthday, and they’ve already paid the Cutter.”
With that, she stood up and slipped out the door. Before it closed behind her, I heard Marcia Brady say something witty to her mother. The laugh track went wild.
As the evil that had been done to Nicole sank in, I thought of all the terrible things I had seen in my career as a police officer, and later as a private investigator. Yet I had never heard of anything like this: genital amputation on a living child merely to ensure that the genital-less girl would make a faithful wife.
Victor Friedman’s face was grim. “You realize this has to be reported to the police.”
“Tonight.” Once the doctors saw Nicole’s genitals, or rather the field of scar tissue where they had been, the Halls would be arrested. But Aziza hadn’t yet been harmed, and despite Nicole’s claims, there was no way to prove she was in danger of being harmed in the future. Not unless Arizona law allowed a forcible genital exam on Shalimar, which I doubted.
Victor wasn’t finished. “Our safe house will be in danger if we’re the ones who tip off the authorities. CPS would be out here in a shot, and if they find those other girls, they’ll be returned to the polygamy compounds.”
It had always been CPS policy to return runaways to their parents, even when the parents were polygamists about to force the girls into sham marriages with men who already had multiple wives. This was why activists like the Friedmans had established a chain of safe houses across Arizona and Utah.
“Nicole won’t reveal your location, but Aziza’s a different story. She’s young, and if the authorities question her hard, which they will, she’ll blurt out everything. There’s no way around it.”
