What Does it Take to Get Our Attention on Sex Trafficking? (Draft I)

As an exercise, I used a headline in the weekly paper's Metro section. Rough draft. Teen-Mature

What Does it Take to Get Our Attention on Sex Trafficking?

“Heyyy -- Chin up, Velvet. This life is better than the crack house you was livin’ in a few months ago, isn’t it?” He wiped the solitary tear from her cheek and gave her shrink wrapped sandwich from the Plaid Pantry across the way. She held it limply in her cold smallish hands. She sat down. The frigid concrete curbside held her stiffly and without mercy but she didn’t notice as much anymore; the cold. She only hung her head over her lunch and the gutter using her hair as curtains to prevent her from seeing the world around her. This was her safe place. Here she was what she always wanted to be. Velvet was pure; a princess; a real princess. Was. 

“You look just like a princess.” The words fell from his fat oily lips like the oil that collects beneath a hood vent. His breath was heavy and quivering. His stumpy fingers approached her thigh and caressed it up and down as he expressed his indulgence in awkward moans. Gazing outside the car window, she focussed on the little beads of rain that beat heavy --though gently somehow. Velvet’s mind fell through spirals and clouds and the abyss but dwelt on the rain because it was always there; expressing her emotions for her; plummeting; cold and usual. She imagined herself as a single drop collecting from condensation. “I am a rain drop,” she thought as she fell. Imagine the would-be self-consciousness of a rain drop. It is aware and then it is falling and it is cold. The rain drop doesn’t notice it is falling because it was falling ever since it could remember with only the rising landscapes speeding around it. Not aware that it could ever stop falling until -- 

He wiped the sweat from his brow and let her out of the car. His face still quivering with a grin that was stuck. Velvet just kept wondering why she couldn’t just burst like the rest of the rain drops that fell. “Maybe I’m not a rain drop. Maybe I’m a cloud that rains. Maybe I’ll just disappear someday.” Velvet didn’t look over her shoulder but stared out at the bridge in front of her and wept; her tears indiscernible from the rain that beat upon her cheek. 

Tears began to stream; held back for too long; like a flood. Velvet looked at the sandwich, now unwrapped. It was roast beef and cheese. At least that’s what she interpreted it to be. She never had anything like that growing up. It was always something with gravy made from cream of mushroom soup. Every night. Sometimes she would have to make it herself because her parents were gone. Off looking for another hit or two. Always looking for a hit. The place reeked of piss and was soiled from corner to corner with mold, dirt, uneaten food scraps, dirty clothes, tied off condoms, some dirty needles scattered, and everything was askew. Nothing was in a place where it should have been. The bed lay diagonal, the blinds on the floor; a cheap used blanket tacked in their place, chairs turned over, and that seemed to be appropriate since there was no table unless it was somewhere beneath the large pile of clutter in the corner of the room. She never saw that corner bare in the 13 years that she lived there and she never went near it because of the nest of aggressive rats that made it home. Velvet wished they were more friendly. She might share her food if they weren’t always stealing it with threatening bites. She wondered now if running away were such a good idea.

Velvet’s nimble fingers ran up and down along the roast beef and started to weep quietly to herself. With her dead innocence and teetering sanity, she inserted her finger inside the sandwich slowly and then her heart immediately leapt. She held back throat rupturing screams  and focussed her emotion and with a lurch and an unexpected belch, vomited down upon into the gutter between her knees. She reeled up and winded her arm back and threw the sandwich across the lot beneath the overpass. The sandwich splashed in a puddle and she looked at it for a short time. She remembered the lifeless and limp meat and cheese gleaming at her surrounded in damp white bread. Now it was soaked and left to decay or be eaten by rats. “Right where it f*****g belongs,” Velvet thought.

The man called Powder came back to her and gave her a ball of cash and said, “Here’s yo’ share. Now go play honeh-honeh. Run ‘long, now. See you same time tomorrow, girl.” He gave her a weak smile and then turned to go as if he hadn’t finished the expression that he began. Velvet wondered if Powder liked what he did. “He must make an awful lot of money,” she thought, recalling that there were somewhere between ten and fifteen girls that he paid a cut to. Velvet looked down at the ball of money in her wet hand, “I guess I could buy something better to eat. Maybe get a better coat,” she gripped the fronts of her unzipped jacket and tugged out at it accidentally making the hole in the lining a bit bigger than before. The jacket remained unzipped and she started walking avoiding the shelter from the rain. Hoping she would melt.

Velvet saw the bridge in her sight and forgot about getting food. There was a pain inside of her and she felt sick again. She remembered the fat oily man in the car and that he hadn’t used protection like most of them did. Velvet never went on through the 5’th grade. Her parents failed to register her. Velvet’s parents were dead beats destined for an overdose that was long past due. Velvet tried not to think about love. She never really knew love though she saw other people enjoying it -- the honest, dry, and yet shining smiles that love brought to people’s faces. The strong motivation that it gave their every step; knowing that they had no problem getting up in the morning knowing they were in love or had love in their life. Velvet tried to love before but felt awkward passing off crumbs to the rats who just snapped and hissed at her; dismissing her weak and tender approach and attempt at loving someone. Her parents fed her and clothed her of course but it was only because she cried out of hunger and discomfort for food and warmth. They were gone more and more as she grew and she hoped that one day they might not ever come back until finally one day, they didn’t. It was a week before Velvet’s 13’th birthday and they had been gone for two weeks. Velvet had fed herself in that time and taken better care of herself than they ever had. She even cleaned up the place a bit and thought about staying there and raising herself and getting a job. Maybe someone would pay attention to her then and love her. . .

Velvet’s heart shrunk at the thought and almost erupted. After gathering what things she could find around the house (a couple kitchen utensils, some soup cans she had been saving, soiled clothes, a box cutter, and a copy of “The Velveteen Rabbit” that she stole from school long ago, loving the story), she packed them all in a backpack and throwing it around her shoulder made for downtown Portland to see what work she could find. 

She began closing in on SW 82’nd Avenue when she felt like she was being followed by a group of thuggish looking men. Her steps grew gradually quicker in pace but before she even knew it, they had herded her into an area unseen by traffic. “Here’s a pretty little p***y, boys,” one man heckled. There were a series of whistles and other names cried out. “She’s a dirty little p***y though, ain’t she. Let’s see if we can clean ‘er up a li’l.” She started shivering wildly and then a voice broke beyond the men, “Hey there, you f****n’ f*****s! What the f**k you think yer doin’, huh? Look at ‘er. She’s gotta be like 12, ya f****n’ perverts, Jesus!” The man was very white, even for a white guy. Velvet saw him and didn’t know what to think and just stood there knees bent and shivering like a kitten in the cold. The man was very tall but thin. He was wearing a white, ribbed, and sweat-stained tank top and thick baggy jeans with a few hole probably made by hopping fenses. He wore ratty sneakers that looked like they had been never taken off. The thugs made some threatening comments but this mystery man made some pretty obscene threats, Velvet recalled and they all took off. The man introduced himself as “Powder”. He said it was a nickname someone gave him. “Something having to do with a movie,” he said. Velvet recalled how Powder offered her shelter and food and said that he could give her work. Velvet had never seen that kind of compassion or attention before. For a time, Powder was like a knight to her; a savior. Velvet met the other girls that Powder “saved” and they all were pretty close exchanging stories and sharing interests. Velvet learned a lot there but began to understand when it came to be her first day of work.

Powder told her lies and said that in order for the girls to make money to make something for themselves and leave “the nest” as he called it (the girls were his “chicks”) they had to earn their wings by offering themselves to men like those thugs. Powder would go on and on about how sick it made him that thugs and other men like them could just go around and take women off the street when they pleased. He said it was an “atrocity”. Velvet heard that word a lot from Powder. Powder said that men like that should be paying for pleasure and receiving it in a controlled environment rather than stealing it. In that way, Powder felt that he could turn these “atrocities” into “progress”. Velvet started to recognize over time by what powder and his “chicks” talked about that Velvet was going no where. She was stuck; stuck amongst a world of unloved slaves and tyrants.

Velvet went up to the bridge now. It was dark except for the street lights that shone through the fog like a gloomy watercolor and traffic was dead. The fog settled in and there was a mist of rain that fell. But it was a night in which the rain seemed to sit still in the air and at times appear like it was coming up from beneath the ground. She didn’t notice the cold. She was numb and she didn’t care anymore. No one else cared either and she knew it. Velvet began to walk the strongest steps that she had ever taken forward to the center of the bridge at it’s arc’s apex. Each step was heavier and with more purpose than the last. The rain smelled pure and pristine like nothing she’d ever smelled before. She followed this feeling with the impulses that came to her and began to remove her soiled clothing. She stared up through the rain. It fell in chaotic patterns; swirling one way, blowing straight in another, and then falling again. It was disorienting to Velvet and she felt herself swaying in the moment. The moment wasn’t interrupted by headlights that paused before her followed by a car door slamming closed. She hoisted herself up on the edge of the bridge. Time slowed down for her as she looked around her; she span lifting one leg bent at the knee like a child mimicking a ballerina and smiled seeing the person rushing to her aid with fear in their eyes. They shouted something incoherent to Velvet as she closed her eyes after looking up at the rain as she pushed her heel back against the bridge giving her the momentum to release herself into midair. She was amongst the rain now. Plummeting in a beautiful display of purpose, she felt the world around her rising but knew she was the one rising. Up, up, and up into the river. It enveloped her and she felt its calm and cold embrace. She took a moment to remember and to prolong the experience. She thought of the velveteen rabbit and how its familiars were burned alive but how the velveteen rabbit came to become realized and brought to life. Velvet felt like she was about to become alive; as if this life were but a starting point for something exponentially greater. With that thought, she took a deep breath of river water in and slipped away with tranquil and waveless water. The river took her with neutral acceptance and along with her body, it took every memory and instance of pain and gave her peace. 

Author's Note

Teen-Mature