Shattered (17 page)

“¿Estás lista, mami?”
he said before walking toward me and yanking me up.

I dropped the chain that was in my hands. I was too scared to move.

“¡Vamos!”
Skinny Man said as he pushed me toward the sheet.

“No!” I screamed.

He pushed me harder. On the other side Oily-Haired Man was stuffing a thick tube down Nakeeda’s throat. Her eyes was closed, but she still looked like she was out of it.

“Sientate,”
said Skinny Man, shoving me into a chair. He took a syringe from the table and stuck it in my arm before I could prepare myself.

I watched Oily-Haired Man attach a funnel to the tube before pouring a bottle of clear liquid down Nakeeda’s throat. I felt groggy from whatever Skinny Man put in my arm, but I could see him reaching for a tube like Nakeeda’s before my eyes closed completely. The next time I opened my eyes, Oily-Haired Man was leading me back to the mattress. My stomach grumbled and rolled in waves. I groaned as I laid down beside Nakeeda on the dirty bed. I felt nauseous and closed my eyes.

When I woke up again, I heard chains scraping the floor and Yenee’s voice.

“I can’t stop shitting,” she was saying to Jacylyn.

“Me, either,” Jacylyn said, pacing back and forth.

I looked around the room. The sheet was gone, and Yenee was coming out of what must’ve been the bathroom. She was holding her stomach. Where there used to be windows was bricks blocking out any light. I couldn’t even tell what time of day it was. “What happened to us?” I asked groggily.

“All I know is whatever they put down our throats keeps making me go to the toilet,” Yenee said.

Nakeeda woke up beside me and rubbed her eyes. She popped up and ran toward Yenee. Her chain scuffing the floor as she dragged it across the concrete, Nakeeda slammed the bathroom door shut.

“It’s so rancid in here. They barely left us anything to wipe ourselves with,” Yenee said with her heavy Ethiopian accent, like we all knew what the hell
rancid
meant.

“And there’s nothing in here to eat, either,” Jacylyn said. “Just bottles and bottles of hot water.”

“I can’t believe this,” I mumbled just as vomit rushed up my throat. I ran over to the huge trash can and let everything pour out. The trash can was disgusting. The smell was so trifling, I threw up again. Jacylyn gave me a bottled water.

“Where are we?” Nakeeda asked when she came out the bathroom.

Yenee shrugged.

“The last thing I remember was getting into that minivan,” Jacylyn said.

“Them Costa Rican bitches set us up,” Yenee said.

We all nodded cuz the triplets knew what they was doing the whole time. My stomach tossed and flipped like I was on a cruise. I rushed to the bathroom, squatted, and let everything out. By the time I was done, I felt so weak. I dragged my chain back over to the mattress and laid down. I swallowed the rest of the water.

“What the hell do you think they made us swallow?” Jacylyn asked as she pulled the doorknob on the locked door in vain (cuz it didn’t budge an inch).

“Can’t be but one reason I can think of,” Yenee said, worried. “They must be getting us ready to put something inside us.”

“How do you know?” Nakeda asked.

“My brother used to tell me these crazy stories about how a gang in my old neighborhood back home used to stuff drugs down the throats of girls, then send them to the UK. He told me how they had to get the girls ready. Flush them out first, so there’s room on the inside. Then stuffed them like turkeys.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Stuff them? What you mean stuff them?” I asked, sitting up.

“I don’t know for sure,” she said, shaking her head.

“Oh my God,” Jacylyn said. “What if something goes wrong?”

Yenee and Nakeeda shook their heads.

“I tell you one thing, I’m not letting them use me however they want to without a fight,” Yenee said sternly. No wonder she had a bloody nose already.

This was a nightmare. Of all things that could happen to me, I’m here? In this situation? How could paradise turn so quickly to hell? It couldn’t be really happening. I closed my eyes and opened them again.

Then Yenee said, “No, KiKi. I am sorry…You are not dreaming.”

I
t seemed like forever had come and gone by the time we heard someone unlocking the door. The muggy heat seemed to make the dingy walls let out a deep breath when the door swung open. We all was too drained and hungry to even sit up to see who it was. Just an hour earlier, a gigantic jungle fly had squeezed through a vent, and instead of killing it, we all welcomed its company. It gave us something new to watch as we waited for whatever was gonna happen next. It was Skinny Man. He stood over my bed smiling, showing his disgusting brown teeth. Then he squeezed my breasts like it was mangoes on an oxcart in the market. I was too exhausted to even fight him off. I guess he got bored with me cuz he went over to Yenee. I watched him run his hands up her thighs, then underneath her skirt. She screamed and pounded on his chest.

“Get off of me, you filthy dog!” she yelled as loud as she could, straining her already hoarse voice.

Skinny Man punched her in the face. I looked away cuz I couldn’t bear to watch him beat her. But the sound of her crying didn’t stop, and it was just as painful as me watching him smash her face up. Finally, Skinny Man shouted,
“¡Silencio, punta!”
then he walked back out the room, slamming the door and locking it behind him.

That’s when I noticed Jacylyn and Nakeeda had been covering their eyes, too. Nakeeda went over to Yenee first with toilet paper from the bathroom so she could wipe her eyes. Yenee cringed. Jacylyn and I looked at each other. I could tell she felt the same way I did—clueless about what we could say or do to make her feel any better. I shook my head and sat beside Yenee, rubbing her thigh. Nakeeda tore off a piece of her dress and damped it with water. She laid it across Yenee’s forehead.

“Why? What did I do to deserve to be here?” she cried.

“None of us deserve this,” I said. I couldn’t believe what we was going through. We couldn’t even give her ice for her swelling eye.

“I can’t take being here!” Yenee cried.

“Shhhh. It’s no need for you to scream now. You’ve already lost your voice. Just catch your breath now,” Nakeeda said, trying to fan her with her fingers. “It ain’t nothing we can do but sit here and wait for whatever they brought us here for.”

“Maybe they want to make us prostitutes,” Jacylyn said, twisting her face up and shaking, like she was disgusted. “I could never, ever do that. Please God, don’t let that happen to us.”

“As gross as it might sound, if that’s all they want, they can have it. Just let me go back home when they done,” I said, shaking my head.

They all looked at me like I was crazy, but it wasn’t nothing worse than what I had ever done before.

“I am not a whore,” Yenee snarled at me. “I will not let them have me as they will. My parents did not raise me to be a whore, and nobody with any self-respect would let anyone use them. I don’t care if it’s for sex or drugs.”

I rolled my eyes cuz being a whore is what saved me from a lot of shit. But that wasn’t none of their business.

“Who am I kidding? My parents would disown me if I slept with anyone who was not my husband,” she said, half laughing. “They’d kill me if they ever knew I was even dating a guy like Donte.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because number one, he’s not Ethiopian, and number two, he’s not Ethiopian.” Yenee laughed again.

“Well, at least you’re laughing,” Jacylyn said with a slight smile. “I am so hungry. How long are they gonna let us starve in here?”

“I wonder what time it is,” Nakeeda said.

“Do you think we’re in a house or an apartment?” I asked, walking to the walls and touching it. When I knocked, it felt hard like cement and not the weak stuff they used for walls at any apartment I’d ever lived in.

“I think we’re in a warehouse or something,” Nakeeda said.

“I still don’t know why we’re here,” Jacylyn said. “My mother is going to go ballistic when she finds out.”

“You better hope we get out of here alive,” Yenee warned.

I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that we might not make it out of here. Fear crawled down my back like cold air had just entered the stuffy room. I wondered if Rich was worried about me. He had to be back from his meeting by now.

The locks on the door was being unbolted. We all froze. My eyes went from Nakeeda to Jacylyn and then to Yenee. Skinny Man and Oily-Haired Man walked in with bowls.
Finally, we could eat.
When I got mine, I saw a few spoonfuls of beans with red and green peppers.
Was this it?
They walked back out and locked the door. Everybody but Yenee dug in and ate like it was the best thing we had ever had.

“Look at you…licking your bowls like the dogs they’re making us out to be,” Yenee whispered.

I rolled my eyes. She must’ve bumped her head if she thought I was gonna let myself starve to death on top of all of this other shit.

“You really need to eat, Yenee,” Nakeeda said. “You don’t know when the next time they gonna give us something.”

“I am not an animal, and I will not live as one,” she mumbled. “This squalor is for pigs.”

Jacylyn snorted and shook her head. “Leave her alone then. I’m getting sick and tired of all these African proverbs.”

Yenee grunted. “It doesn’t surprise me that you feel that way. The first day we met at the airport, you looked down your nose at me the moment you heard my accent.”

Jacylyn said, “No, I didn’t. You were seeing things.”

Yenee coughed, then said, “Like I saw you take my bag off the conveyor belt and leave it on the floor when you saw it wasn’t yours?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re selfish,” Yenee said bluntly. “Yesterday at the market, you only bought yourself things. You come all this way and you only think about yourself as you shop, didn’t even buy anything for the person who brought you here.”

Jacylyn rolled her eyes. “It ain’t none of your damn business what I do!”

“You two stop!” Nakeeda said, trying to be a peacemaker.

“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” Yenee said, coughing more. “So you can learn about yourself. This is a perfect time to reflect, don’t you think?”

Jacylyn stood up and snatched Yenee’s bowl of food from off the mattress, and then she dumped it in the trash.

“That’s taking it too far, Jacylyn,” I said.

“Again, selfish,” Yenee said. “You could’ve at least offered it to one of them.”

Yenee was right about that part, but I couldn’t understand her. After that incident, we all stayed to ourselves for a while. I could tell Jacylyn was still mad at what Yenee had said. Her forehead was crinkled up in rows. Nakeeda tried to get Yenee to drink some water, but she said she wasn’t taking nothing from the men who had her locked up like a beast. I watched Yenee bend the spoon back and forth until she finally got the round part to pop off. She put the handle inside a hole in the mattress. What she was doing or thinking about doing seemed too crazy to even ask her about.

An hour went by, and me, Nakeeda, and Jacylyn had each gone to the bathroom at least once. Soon Oily-Haired Man came back to collect the bowls and spoons.

“¿Donde son su plato y cuchara?”
he asked Yenee.

She pointed to the trash can and smiled. The trash still reeked from my throw up and whatever else was in there before I hurled in it. Oily-Haired Man made a face and stormed back out the door.

“So even they think it’s revolting in here, too!” she giggled in a hushed tone.

More time seemed to slowly tick away. A gigantic chocolate cockroach slid between the crack in the door. At first I wanted to kill it, just like I would do if I saw one at home, but it ran up the wall and waited for a while, like it was watching us. The antennas moved back and forth like it was shaking its head. I watched it run across the door and over to the bathroom, then disappear. I shut my eyes and thought about Rich. The last kiss he gave me. The couples massage we shared at the resort. How he looked at me like he never wanted me to be somewhere without him. I thought about the last time he fucked me like he loved me. I could feel the tears sliding down my face, but I wasn’t gonna open my eyes and let the memory disappear. I wanted to forget where I was and be back in the tree house with my man, making love. The tighter I closed my eyes, the more I really felt like Rich was touching me. His strong but gentle hands rubbing my body. I felt his warm kisses all over my neck and down my belly, then down my thighs. It felt like butterfly wings flapping against my skin. It felt so real I opened my eyes.

“Aiiii,” I screamed at the gigantic cockroach that ran down my knee. I jumped off the mattress and grabbed my shoe. “I’ma kill your nasty ass!”

“No, don’t kill it,” Nakeeda said.

“It’s all that perfume,” Yenee said, laughing. “What is it called?”

“Le Funk Couture,” I said in my best French accent.

“What I would do to take a bath right now,” Jacylyn finally said.

Yenee sucked her teeth. I laid back down on the mattress beside Jacylyn and practiced my sign language alphabets.

“You know how to do sign language?” Nakeeda asked.

I nodded.

“Wow. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that. I think it’s so amazing that people can have full conversations without saying a single word.”

“I would’ve never thought you could do that,” Yenee said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“You just don’t look like the type,” Yenee mumbled.

“And what type is that?” I asked, confused.

Yenee ain’t answer me; she just looked away.

“Why don’t you just say it?” Jacylyn said, rolling her eyes. “‘You look too ghetto to know anything.’”

“Is that what you meant?” I asked Yenee.

Yenee was quiet, but tucked her lips back like that’s what she wanted to say but was choosing not to.

“Can’t get her ass to shut up no other time, now the bitch can’t talk,” Jacylyn snapped.

“Yenee, is that how you see me?” I asked, sitting up on my elbow.

She looked away.
I guess if you ain’t had nothing good to say, don’t say nothing at all.
I shook my head and looked the other way.

“I guess you got flaws just like I do,” Jacylyn snarled. “Bourgie-ass bitch.”

“Y’all need to stop being so damn catty,” Nakeeda said, looking back and forth from Yenee and Jacylyn. “The last thing you need to worry about is who we was before we got caged up in this room. What matters is who we are now—four women with nothing but the slightest bit of hope—and who we gon’ be when we get out. Survivors.”

“I don’t know about hope. I have my dignity, not hope,” Yenee corrected.

“No, you have too much pride if you ask me,” Jacylyn cut in.

“I have hope, Nakeeda,” I said. Maybe only a little bit, but I had it. Wasn’t no way in hell I was gonna give up after all the wild shit I been through in my life.

“Good,” she said, giving me a tight smile.

We was all quiet again for a long time, and then soon I fell asleep.

The next time the locked door opened again, someone hurried over to the lightbulb and smashed it. Pieces of glass rained to the ground, and it became pitch-black in the room.

“Get off of me!” Yenee screamed out. “I can smell your rotten breath, you dirty dog!”

I was too scared of what was going on to move. No one moved. It sounded like a lot of commotion. Yenee fighting back maybe, but her screams was muffled under something. I thought about Ryan and what happened to me. I shook my head to erase the memory. I wanted to help her even though she thought so low of me. I wondered if Nakeeda was gonna jump in it. She seemed to want to be peacemaker so bad, but when she ain’t move, either, I rolled over and covered my head with my arms, trying to block out everything but the sound of skin slapping on skin and the groans coming from the throat of Skinny Man.

When I woke up a few hours later, the room was still dark. I heard Yenee’s soft crying. I tried not to feel guilty for what had happened to her earlier. I wondered why none of us had jumped the Skinny Man. We probably all could’ve taken him if we wanted to. Two of us could’ve held him down while the other one wrapped our leg chain around his neck. I never even seen him or Oily-Haired Man with a weapon. Yenee sniffled more. The sounds of her whining in the dark like that made me feel sick to my stomach. It seemed like she cried for hours. I tried to block it out as best as I could. Then like she was reading my mind, Jacylyn said, “Shut the fuck up!”

Yenee sniffled again and then was quiet for a while. I wondered why she ain’t use that broken spoon she had stuffed inside the mattress. After several long, quiet minutes, Yenee started crying again. I knew what she was thinking about. Her parents. What people was gonna say? She seemed to feel more guilty about what had been done to her than sad.

“Shut the fuck up!” Jacylyn shouted again. “You brought that shit on yourself, running your damn mouth!”

This time I ain’t agree with Jacylyn. Ain’t nobody deserve to be raped.

“That’s enough,” Nakeeda said. It was the first time I had heard her voice in some hours. I wondered if she still had hope.

Time kept going by, at least an hour or two, cuz I practiced signing “The Pledge of Allegiance,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and every song I knew by heart. I thought about Mommy and what she’d think of me being here right now. She kept telling me to slow down. I guess she was right. Soon I heard someone messing with the locks on the door.

“¿Que pasa con la luz?”
Oily-Haired Man asked. He shut the door and locked it again before coming back, this time with Skinny Man. One of them put another lightbulb in the light. As soon as they cut the lights on, Nakeeda let out a high-pitch scream. I looked at what she was looking at and couldn’t believe the bloody red mattress. Blood was even on Nakeeda’s dress. Oily-Haired Man and Skinny Man seemed to go crazy, speaking in tongues at one another. Yenee had cut open her wrists. Who knows how long she had been bleeding out. Her eyes was slightly open.

“¡Está muerta!”
Oily-Haired Man shouted.

“Oh no,” I said. I felt another chill take hold of my body, even though it was steamy hot in the room. I ran to the trash can and threw up. Yenee had definitely been right about one thing—I wasn’t dreaming cuz this nightmare wasn’t ending.