I was chosen to run drugs once when I was fifteen, I had to swallow two balloons full and fly to Missouri, and transported back. I was given a cot when I arrived back for my good behavior. I thought about running, but I was terrified. I was just happy to be out of the dark in the sunlight. Wearing half clean clothes, and around other people. I guess I’m conditioned to focus on what I’m being rewarded rather than running. However, a year later I was sex trafficked, but it didn’t go well, so it didn’t last long. I kept puking on the clients every time they tried to have sex with me. So, I was taken back, resold like a stereo that was out of date and nobody wanted, but still, I see robust rich men, receding hairlines, and the smell of cologne when I come close to men. I’m broken. Traumatized by the nearness of any man. So that begs the question, what are they doing with me tomorrow? Anxiety eclipses my thoughts, and I have to surprise a shiver. If it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s how to seem cool and collected on the outside. The wolves feed on fear.
“Who you got?”
I carefully glance up, finding a woman staring at me with a blue and yellow dress in her hand, Snow White, I believe. Her dark skin is dry, her hair that was once braided knotted and looking like it’s about to fall off her scalp stares down at me with dilated eyes. I look to the guards, one of them must have given her something, probably in return for sex. I become icy with panic nervous they will think I’m into that if this woman associates with me.
“Um, Cinderella, I think,” I mutter, my fingers sliding against the material. Terror thundering inside my chest. Why is she here? What does she want?
“No shit, my mother used to read that one to me when I was a kid, but the last three pages were missing, so I never knew how it ended,” she says with a thick accent I can’t place, her lips pursed as she talks with her hands. I give a small smile. I don’t know why she’s being friendly, but I’m not buying it. She wants something.
“Name is Kist,” she says, sitting next to me on my cot. Her closeness makes the hairs on my arms raise with alarm. I don’t like people touching me or being this close, not since the whole sex trafficking thing. I just… don’t touch me.
“Why do you think they want us to wear these?” she asks, holding hers up to her chest.
I shake my head. “I dunno.”
They’re trying to doll us up. God, I hope it’s not because we’re being bought or traded for sex. My stomach turns upside down thinking about a greasy fat man’s fingers prying at my body. I cover my mouth in an attempt to stifle a burp, could be puke. I’m not sure.
The lights go out, and I know it’s them telling us to go to bed.
“Ah, damn,” Kist mutters. “I hate when they do this shit.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I reply, trying to be friendly.
“They ain’t even gonna fill our bottles tonight? What’s with that shit?” she sneers, standing with a hand on her hip. She’s thicker than me, tougher too judging by her attitude. I could use her as a friend.
“Well, see ya tomorrow, Cinderella.” She salutes me before walking away. Folding my dress, I place it on the wooden stand and go use the bucket in the corner to pee before bed. I keep my eyes wide open, even though it’s pitch black. I pee with trembling legs, hoping nobody tries to kill me for that stupid dress or my cot. Everything that’s bad, happens at night.
When I climb into my cot, the smell of my own body making me turn up my nose, I pray to God that somewhere along the line of tomorrow’s trip, a fairy godmother appears and I’m finally saved from this world. She’d have a wand, there will be glitter, and smiles, and light of the most beautiful kind. In fact, there’d never be darkness again. She steals me from this dark, bleak world that lives right in front of everyone’s eyes. People in the public see one of us women every day, but nobody ever thinks anything is out of the ordinary. Even though we look the way we do, our eyes staring just a second longer than necessary in the hopes someone will ask if we’re okay. But it never happens, and at the end of the day, we’re brought back to the pit. Here.
When I was a kid, I used to watch Disney movies and kiss the TV just when Prince Charming would come in and save the day. It’s a crock of shit setting you up for disappointment at a very young age. There’s no such thing as Prince Charming, and the sooner little girls accept that, they’ll stop focusing on love and being independent. My kids will never watch those movies.