When Smiles Fade (15 page)

“Sure,” Syd said, her voice void of commitment.

A couple of days later the two older girls finally found temporary work at a deli. The deli was getting ready for its annual inspection by the FDA and needed to clean out the back of the kitchen area. The two girls were paid twenty-five dollars a day, under the table, for sorting through boxes and throwing away expired food.

While the two girls worked, Gracie hung out nearby. The owner said that she was too young and didn’t want her working in his store. She was sitting on a curb watching in fascination all of the tattered people roaming the streets when she was approached by three boys. They were a couple of years older than she was, but that didn’t seem to bother them when they stopped to talk to her. Within minutes the boys had her laughing, and since it was the first time that any boys had paid her attention she felt giddy.

She sat with them for a couple of hours. In that time, Gracie forgot all about being scared of every living being that lurked over her shoulder. “So where are you from?” one of the boys finally asked.

“Norristown. We moved out here a while ago. You know, we just figured we’d come here and hang,” Gracie told them, trying to be cool and appear more mature.

“Oh yeah?” the boy replied. “Where are you living?”

“Well, we haven’t found a place yet. Right now we’re sorta living out of our car,” she said with shame, and pointed to Pam’s car that was parked in front of the deli.

“Oh, that’s cool. Do you sleep in it here? At the deli?” he pushed.

Gracie giggled. “Of course not! We move around to different places. Tonight we’re gonna check out the lot behind that huge abandoned building off of Lehigh Avenue. You know where I’m talking about?”

“Sure we do. Sometimes we sleep inside that building. Just depends on how crowded it is. We like to move around too,” one of the other boys told her.

“Why did you leave home?” Gracie asked, wanting to know their story and keep them talking to her.

“Ah, we all have different reasons. But we were all pretty much not wanted by our parents. We met up in elementary school and have been friends since then. Once we turned thirteen we all decided to split together and come to Kensington to live a little,” he said.

Gracie forgot that she was in the smelly armpit of Kensington, known locally as “the stroll.” So captivated by the attention she was getting from the boys, she was blind to the fact that she was sitting on a curb in the heart of the city’s heroin and prostitution scene. Drug users and hookers were all around her, yet she failed to notice them now. The boys had suddenly become the temporary relief she needed from her miserable existence.

That evening, after Gracie fell asleep in the car, the two older girls walked three blocks to meet up with a couple of teenagers that worked in the deli. They had agreed to hang out with a few of the girls with plans to drink a case of beer that one of them had scored from a dope head in exchange for five bucks.

Gracie was sleeping peacefully just a few blocks away when the rear passenger window smashed in on her. Her eyes flew open, her heart raced, and she froze. Unable to scream, her fear holding her voice hostage, she watched as an arm reached in and unlocked the car door. As it opened, she recognized one of the boys from earlier that afternoon.

“Hey, Gracie,” he taunted her. “We know that you like us. Why don’t you take your pants off and we can show you how much we like
you
?” he snickered.

She tried hard to form the word “no,” but instead her whole body began to shake. She knew what they were talking about; after all, Jake had raped her before he put her in the grave he’d dug in the basement. As she stared at them with wide eyes, the first boy slipped into the backseat of the car with her. He pulled her pants off with ease and tore at her underwear, already tattered from age.

He unzipped his pants and pressed himself inside of her. She lay on her back without moving. She commanded her body to fight, but her legs and arms wouldn’t budge. He was hurting her, and tears silently streamed down the sides of her face.

When he was finished the second boy climbed on top of her. Somehow she found her voice and began to scream. The boy was much stronger than she was and grabbed a fistful of her hair, slamming her head against the car door. Gracie began to punch and kick at him. He straddled her, pinning her down so she couldn’t get away. He picked up a pillow from the floor of the car and shoved it into her face. He held it in place until she had stopped kicking and lifted it only after she had fallen unconscious. He reached into the front seat and grabbed the gallon of water he’d seen sitting there. Then he poured some in her face.

She sprang back to life, gasping for air.

“Now, are you going to give us what we want?” he asked cruelly.

Before she could respond, he held the pillow over her face again. This time he didn’t let her lose consciousness. He held the pillow just long enough for her to stop struggling, removed it so she could draw in a few gasps of breath, and did it again. After he’d done this to her several more times, causing her to pee herself, he unzipped his pants and rammed himself inside of her angrily.

By the time the third boy was finished raping her it was as if she was no longer in possession of her body. She couldn’t feel anything. Not the pain from being raped or the fear that had plagued her in the beginning, making her such an easy victim.

When they were finished they quickly left. Gracie lay staring up at the roof of the car, unable to understand what had just happened to her. They had been so nice to her earlier. Why had she been so stupid?

An hour later Emma and Brianna came stumbling back to the car. They were drunk and giggling at their own inability to walk a straight line. Emma spotted the broken car window about twenty feet away and began to run with her friend following behind. She flung open the back door and found Gracie just as the boys had left her, in a catatonic state, naked from the waist down.

“Gracie!” Emma shrieked, thinking she was dead.

Gracie’s eyes moved to Emma’s. “What happened, Gracie? Tell me who did this to you!”

Brianna ran to the other side of the car and opened the other back door. The two girls looked at each other, each searching for a sign from the other of what they should do. They both knew she’d been raped. “Bri, start the car. We have to find Sydney. We’ve got to get Gracie to a doctor.”

Brianna nodded. Her beer buzz instantly replaced by adrenaline, she moved into the driver’s seat and began to drive. They drove for just under an hour when they saw Syd sitting in the park with her street family. Emma rushed out of the car and ran to them. “Syd,” she said, gasping for breath, “it’s Gracie. She’s been raped. I need to get her to a doctor. She’s completely out of it.”

Syd rose with urgency. “Oh fuck! Here’s what you do. You have ID, right?”

“Yeah, I have a fake ID.” Emma could feel her throat closing up on her. “But Gracie doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Syd said, cutting her off. “Drive into the city and take her to CHOP.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Syd. What’s a CHOP?”

“Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, you know, the hospital,” she explained. “Oh, come on, I’ll go with you guys.”

They ran back to the car, and within twenty minutes they were sitting outside of the emergency room. “Em, you take her in alone to make it seem more real. Tell them it’s your little sister and your parents are on vacation. Don’t put her clothes on. You want them to bring her right in, give them less time for questions. Because she’s a kid they’ll check her out quick. After you find out she’s all right you take Gracie and beat it. Okay? You got that?” she persisted.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Emma responded, thinking how clever the girl was.

Emma practically had to carry Gracie into the depressing waiting room of the ER. The girl was still naked from the waist down, and just as Syd had told her, a woman and a security guard hurried over to them. The woman wrapped a blanket around Gracie’s waist and sat her in a wheelchair as others looked on in horror.

Gracie was in bay 12 in the emergency room within minutes. A nurse strode in and began asking Emma questions. How old is she? What happened to her? Where did it happen? Where are your parents? How long has she been like this?

Emma answered the questions rapidly. She told the nurse that their parents were in Italy, but that she was twenty-one and could consent to treatment. Finally the nurse approached Gracie. “Hi, sweetie. You’re going to be fine. In a couple of minutes a doctor is going to come in and check you out. You don’t need to be afraid, you’re safe now.”

Gracie began to come out of her deep coma-like state and looked over at her sister. “You’re fine,” Emma assured her.

The doctor came in, his face tight, his eyebrows raised, and his forehead lined with concern for the young girl he’d heard about in bay 12. “Hello, Gracie. I’m Doctor Knoll. I’ll be taking care of you. Can you tell me what happened?”

In a weak, almost inaudible voice, she said, “Three boys had sex with me.”

Hearing Gracie utter those six words made Emma’s stomach rise and drop, as if she was riding a roller coaster.

“Gracie, I know you’ve been through a great deal tonight. But I have to ask you some questions and then I’m going to take a look at you,” Dr. Knoll explained in a kind voice.

“Are you related to this person that brought you in here tonight?” He motioned toward Emma.

“She’s my sister.”

“Good. Now, is there any chance you could be pregnant?” he asked gently.

Gracie looked at Emma with alarm. “She doesn’t get her period yet,” her sister responded for her.

“All right, that’s fine. Now, Gracie, the boys stuck their penis in your vagina?”

Gracie nodded and turned her head away, embarrassed.

“Listen very closely, Gracie. It’s not your fault,” Dr. Knoll soothed. “Did they do anything else to you?”

Gracie shook her head.

Just then the nurse walked back into the bay. Addressing Emma she asked, “Do you have identification? We’ll need to do a pelvic exam and I’ll need you to sign a consent form.”

Emma handed her the fake ID. The nurse wrote down the information from the card and handed the form to her. “Sign and date at the bottom.”

Once Emma had signed the form the nurse opened a rape kit and methodically went through the procedure, capturing all of the evidence. She drew blood and sent the samples off to the lab, not knowing that the girls would never be around long enough to know the results. Once the nurse was finished, the doctor returned to bay 12 and looked at the scared young girl. “Gracie, I’m going to have to take a look at what they did to you. It may be a little uncomfortable, but it will only last a couple of minutes. I promise.”

Emma stepped up to the bed and grabbed Gracie’s hand. When the doctor was finished he looked at the two sisters. “You’re going to be fine. I can see that you’re bruised, but it doesn’t look like there is any internal damage that won’t heal on its own. We’re going to send in a social worker to talk to you about where you can get counseling. I’ll come back in to see you after she is finished.”

The nurse gave Gracie a pair of scrubs to put on since her clothes had been taken for evidence. Once she was dressed Emma said to her in a calm, firm voice, “Gracie, we are going to leave now that we know you’re all right. If anyone asks, we say that you need to go to the bathroom. Are you ready?”

The two girls proceeded along the short corridor of the emergency room. Doctors and nurses rushed by them with a gunshot victim lying on a gurney. No one noticed as the sisters walked out of the emergency room doors. They found Brianna and Syd sitting in the car exactly where they said they’d be waiting.

The two girls looked on from the front seat in anticipation. “She’ll be fine. The doctors said she’s gonna be okay.” Then Emma was silent as she considered what to do next. “We can’t take her back to Kensington, it’s too dangerous. We need to lay low for a couple of days where no one can bother us. Where the fuck can we go?”

Syd smiled. “I know the perfect place.”

Sydney led them to the Penn Tower across the street from the hospital. She explained that they could park the car in there and be a little safer. Emma decided they’d stay there for two or three days to give them time to figure out where they could go next. The parking garage was used mainly by medical staff and people visiting sick patients.

They parked on the roof where there were fewer cars because they were exposed to the elements. The next day they moved the car down two levels, just to be sure that no one became suspicious of them. Gracie woke seeming more herself. She told the girls what the boys had done to her and they reassured her that she would be fine. “Gracie, living on the streets is tough,” Syd explained with her eleven-year-old wisdom, “but you have to be tougher than the pricks that want to bring you down. There are all kinds of assholes out there. You have to be more careful. You can’t tell anyone where you’re staying. What do these guys look like?”

“Two of them are tall and one is short and fat. They all have dark hair,” she described vaguely.

“How old?” Emma pressed.

“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen,” Gracie offered.

Emma looked at Sydney for confirmation that she could make a connection, but the young girl just shook her head. “Okay,” Syd blurted, “Brianna and I are gonna go find something to eat. You two stay here. You don’t want to run into anyone from the emergency room.”