Ten Thousand Lies (10 page)

“She is. I guess we won’t see you until we’re leaving Amsterdam?”

“Something like that,” Rex replied. “I miss you.”

“Miss you, too. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Handing Xanthe back her phone, I sat there, stunned. Something quite profound had just happened to me, and I had no idea what the hell it was. It was as though my entire life had just found its purpose, yet that made absolutely no sense.

Aunt Ellen brought Ulla into Xanthe’s and my world later that night.

Ulla was thirteen years old. Her Asian features would have been stunning if she weren’t so thin and jaundiced. Indeed, the waif looked ill in more than just her body. Her mind, her soul, seemed damaged in ways I hoped never to experience for myself.

I was shocked, and by the look on Xanthe’s face, her emotional state wasn’t far from my own.

“You girls can take my room,” Ellen said softly, gently steering Ulla toward the couch. “Go grab your things, and move them in there.”

Stunned, Xanthe stood. “Okay.”

Gathering our things from our separate rooms, Xanthe and I met in the hallway and stared at one another in silence for a moment before entering Ellen’s bedroom and depositing our things there.

“She’s so young,” Xanthe whispered. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

I nodded, slowly sinking down to sit on the bed.

“Can you imagine?” she asked me.

“Can
you
?” I asked in return.

“This is something I never took into consideration. We’re going to see a lot of…
children
…who have been horrifically abused…”

Again, I nodded. I couldn’t work the words over my vocal cords.

Xanthe sat next to me and took my hand in hers, squeezing tight. “We can do this, Jaime. Ellen…if she can handle this shit all on her own, then the two of us together certainly can. We have to.”

“Yes,” I said.

There was no other option for me. Not because Xanthe, Ellen, and Rex were the only true family I had, but because seeing Ulla and to do
nothing
was morally inconceivable.

“It’s never too early to start,” she whispered.

“Then, let’s do this,” I said firmly, finding my strength and my voice. “We got this.”

“We do.”

Over the next two and a half weeks, Xanthe and I spent all of our time with Ulla even though she rarely spoke. I knew Ellen was proud of us for stepping up. After the first few days, Ellen left Ulla in our care, getting on with whatever other jobs she did for the Locals.

Ulla didn’t just look sickly. Ellen had told us the whole of it the day after the girl had come to live with us. Examined by the Locals’ medical staff, it was revealed that Ulla had full-blown AIDS and a host of other STIs. Once the treatable infections were taken care of, Ulla’s health improved a little, and we took her out of the apartment to experience what freedom was.

Sitting at an outdoor café, Xanthe and I sipped our coffees while Ulla enjoyed a cola, something she’d only tasted a few times before and loved.

“This is really nice,” she told us, her voice barely above a whisper.

She never spoke any louder than that, and I could only guess she’d been conditioned not to.

“Thank you for taking me.”

“It’s our pleasure,” replied Xanthe. “I guess you were never allowed to go out into public before?”

Ulla shook her head.

“Can we ask what happened to you?” asked Xanthe.

Ulla cast her eyes down, but she nodded. “I was kidnapped when I was very young. I was sold to a household to clean and cook.”

“How young?” I asked.

Ulla shrugged. “Four or five?”

“Do remember your family at all?” asked Xanthe, who had taken out a notebook and pen.

“I try to. Sometimes, it feels like I can, but I don’t know if the people I remember are my family or…” Ulla took a deep breath and told us her horrifying tale.

After about a year of living in this family household, she had been sold off to another owner, who raped her the first night. She was maybe six years old. She spoke of the pain and blood—what she remembered most—and the old woman who had tended to her after, another slave who had great sympathy for the other girls this man owned. Ulla remembered her and sometimes thought of this woman as her mother.

She had been this man’s slave for a few years until, one night, a few men had come into the house and murdered him and the unattractive older slaves, her “mother” included. Then, they’d stolen her and the other girls away.

Once more, she’d been sold off, and her new owner did the same.

Over and over, Ulla had been bought, sold, traded, used, abused. Beaten, raped, and forced to do hard labor.

She told her story to us in a very quiet, monotone voice that broke my heart and seared its way forever into my memory. By the time she finished, I was silently weeping, wiping the tears leaking from under my sunglasses every few seconds. Xanthe, too, had to put down her pen several times to blot her face.

Ulla didn’t shed a single tear. Perhaps she’d shed enough already, but, my God, I was broken inside.

“I am very tired,” she said. “Could we go back to Ellen’s?”

Xanthe sniffed. “Of course.”

Reaching across the table, I took Ulla’s tiny skeletal hand, squeezing gently. “Thank you.”

Startled, Ulla’s almond-shaped dark eyes met mine. “What for?”

“For sharing that with us. It couldn’t have been easy.”

Ulla smiled. “It was a lot easier than living it.”

If I’d had any doubts before about dedicating the rest of my life to helping these victims, there were none by the time I stood by my gate in the airport. Being with Ulla had opened up my eyes to the horrors that people faced, and there was no way I could live my life without doing something about it.

David was the first to hug me. “If you ever need anything, Jaime, don’t hesitate to call me or Xanthe. Or Ellen,” he said almost as an afterthought. “We’re family.”

Reining in my tears, I nodded.

Rex pulled me in. “I’m going to miss you, cheeky-deeky. Don’t forget us.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” I replied, giving off a drowned-sounding chuckle.

Xanthe openly wept, pulling me into a tight embrace. “No matter what, Jaime, we’re in this together. I can’t do this without you.”

“Always, Bro Dawg,” I said, making her snort through her tears.

She pulled back and retrieved a large envelope from her knapsack. “Here,” she said, handing it to me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

She sniffled. “It’s Ulla’s story. In case we ever lose sight of what we’re meant to do, we’ll have Ulla to keep us on the right track.”

The lump that had formed in my throat dissolved, and I broke down in Xanthe’s arms.

“We got this,” she whispered in my ear, choking back her sobs.

“We got this,” I replied.

Eleven hours later, my flight touched down in Newark. Exhausted in body and spirit, I made it through customs and baggage claim, and I called my mom. Getting no answer, I tried a few more times, only to wait for an hour before I broke down and used my last bit of money to take a cab home.

My mom had forgotten to pick me up.

I wasn’t surprised, which was just sad. After knowing what Ulla had lived through, being forgotten by my mother didn’t seem so bad, and I couldn’t find it in me to care about something so trivial.

The fact was…I had been emotionally starved nearly my whole life. My mom was an okay woman, had made sure my siblings and I were taken care of, but she wasn’t ever the emotional type of parent. Perhaps it was because she had worked two jobs and was so physically worn out that she couldn’t muster up the energy to hand out her love. We were fed and clothed, and that was that. I was the youngest; my brother and sister had long ago left the house, being ten and six years older than me. I supposed my mother’s reserves of affection had been sapped by this point.

My father, on the other hand, was a piece of shit. A cocaine addict and an alcoholic, he’d bled our family dry for years. He’d cheated on my mother with several women until she’d had the sense to kick his sorry ass out the door. After, he’d only come around once in a while—usually after a stint in rehab, feeling remorse for his cheating, whoring ways. But he
always
went back to the drugs and booze.

I’d learned early on that a woman should never depend on a man, and men should never be given second chances. My father had had so many chances from us—to be faithful, to be clean, to be a fucking father—and each time, he’d proven to us that it was all lies.

I dragged my suitcases into the dark house I’d called home for the last seventeen years of my life. Mom must have been at work, which would be a decent reason to forget to pick up the child you hadn’t seen in nearly two months from the airport.

It smelled the same as when I’d left, and the familiarity should’ve given me a sense of comfort, but it didn’t. Instead, it really hit home that I didn’t belong here.

It could be worse.

I could have been a thirteen-year-old girl with only memories of rape and slavery while my life drained day by day from complications due to a case of full-blown AIDS.

Two days later, I lay back on my bed, watching my ceiling fan spin lazily, resigned that the first day of my senior year of high school would start tomorrow.