Shattered (18 page)

A
fter they took Yenee’s lifeless body out of the room, we ain’t say nothing to each other. Jacylyn even seemed to be deeply fazed by what happened. I couldn’t believe they left the mattress right where it was. My soul felt empty. Yenee’s spirit seemed like it was hovering in the rank room, still judging us. Even though I knew she’d rather die fighting, in the end, killing yourself still meant they won. And as much pride as she seemed to have in herself, I couldn’t believe she chose to go out like that.

We all tried to flip the mattress over cuz it hurt seeing Yenee’s bloodstains there. The other side was just as trifling as the front. It made me think there was a lot of other girls here before us, doing God knows what. My mind went back to the triplets. Where did Smurf meet them? Was they some random girls he and his two friends happened to run into somewhere? Was they hookers trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents? I just couldn’t understand how they could let these men have their way with us.

Nakeeda had squeezed on our full-size mattress cuz nobody wanted to sleep on Yenee’s deathbed.

“It’s starting to get to me,” Nakeeda admitted.

“Don’t give up. We gon’ be all right,” I said, surprised that I had said it.

“Think so?” Nakeeda asked.

I nodded. Hell, if I couldn’t believe that, I might as well kill myself, too.

“Have y’all ever thought that maybe they had something to do with it?” Jacylyn asked.

“They who?” I asked.

“Our boyfriends,” she said. “Ty, Ed, Rich…Donte.”

“No, not my Ed. No,” Nakeeda said, shaking her head. “I’m not even trying to hear that.”

“Why you think that?” I asked Jacylyn.

“Cuz it’s yayo,” Jacylyn said. “Think about it. They went to a meeting on some island. Probably met some people who flew in on some crop duster, and now suddenly we’re here.”

“Not my Ed, honey. I’m not even going to believe that,” Nakeeda said, shaking her head some more. “We been together too long and through too much for him to even consider making me do that.”

“Hmmm….” Jacylyn sighed, sounding doubtful. “What you think, KiKi?”

I took a deep breath. I could only hope my Rich ain’t set me up like that. Even though I could see what Jacylyn was getting at, my heart said Rich would never do that to me. True, we hadn’t been together long enough for me to think that he wouldn’t do it, and no, unlike Nakeeda, we hadn’t been through a lot. I just ain’t think he would do me this way. He told me he saw something in me that even I hadn’t seen in myself. I knew smuggling drugs back home wasn’t what he saw for me.

“Niggas will do anything for money,” Jacylyn said.

“So will bitches,” I said. “Trust me on that one.”

“Well, this ain’t the first trip that he’s taken me out of the country,” Nakeeda said. “We just came back from Martinique for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, I was supposed to go, but I needed my passport,” I said.

“Wait, was Ty there?” Jacylyn asked with an attitude brewing in her voice.

Nakeeda was quiet for a while. She gave her that innocent church girl look that I’d come to notice about her ever since we’d been stuck in this room. The kind of look that said, “I might think dirty thoughts, but you’d be the last to know.”

“Nakeeda, tell me the truth!” Jacylyn said angrily.

“Yeah, he was there,” she said.

“He brought another girl, didn’t he?” Jacylyn asked.

“Why are you worried about that right now?” I had to ask.

“Cuz that motherfucker probably set me up to be in here right now! You should wanna know if Rich took another girl.”

“Did he?” I asked.

“No, he was the only one by hisself. Even Donte brought another girl, too.”

I felt relief wash over me.

“See, is that what they do? Bring chicks out of the country and turn them into…mules or whatever it is they call them?” Jacylyn asked.

“Was Smurf there?” I asked.

“Yeah, he was. I think it was their first time meeting Salvador,” she whispered.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Fuck that,” Jacylyn said. “Who is it?”

“It’s Smurf’s connect,” Nakeeda whispered.

“See, all this shit just seems too fishy. I promise, these dudes set us up,” Jacylyn said, clapping her hands for more effect.

“Not my Ed,” Nakeeda said without flinching. I admired how secure she seemed about her boyfriend.

“How long y’all been together?” I asked.

“Since I was a freshman at Temple. This is our third year together.”

“Oh, for real?” I said.

“Yeah, he would never do anything to hurt me,” she said. “Ever.”

I wished I could make Rich feel that same way, but I had betrayed his trust. He never even asked me details about what happened with Ty. Just the thought of me and Ty doing something that I would ever consider keeping a secret left him hurt. I thought he’d be pissed about the coke, but me and Ty’s incident was worse. My heart still told me he’d never hurt me, especially not like this.

I stood up to get another bottled water. As soon as I went back to the bed, I heard the door unlock again. This time they shoved another girl in the room. She was Hispanic. I could see how afraid she was. I couldn’t believe they replaced Yenee like it wasn’t no big deal. We ain’t know what to say to her, and since she only spoke Spanish wasn’t nothing we could say to each other. I understood tears, and I understood fear. I even tried to use sign language, wondering if she might recognize some of the letters, but I found out real fast that was a dumb idea.

The two amigos came in later with needles. They poked each of us, then gave us a glass of clear liquid to drink, except for the Spanish girl. It tasted like lemons and vinegar. It had to be the same stuff Mommy gave me when I was little, constipated from eating too much cheese or something. They made us drink it all. They used the tube and funnel to force the Spanish girl to swallow. The drug they stuck us with made us all groggy and sleepy. When we finally woke up, it was a fight to the bathroom. Later, I tapped the girl and pointed to myself. “KiKi,” I said. Then I pointed to Jacylyn and said her name and then to Nakeeda and said her name, too.

I could tell she understood cuz she said, “Elena.” I smiled, hoping she wouldn’t feel as afraid as she did before. Elena smiled back even though it wasn’t a true smile. Who could really smile in a room as trifling as this?

A couple hours seemed to pass by before the door unlocked again. I could smell burning cinnamon as soon as the door opened. Instead of it just being the fat oily-haired man with the scruffy beard and the skinny man with all the tattoos, Smurf walked in, smoking a cigar. My mouth fell open. It
was
him. Elena jumped off Yenee’s mattress and stormed toward the door. Skinny Man punched her until she collapsed on the floor.

“Calm that bitch down,” Smurf said, his Haitian accent strong.

Skinny Man picked her up off the floor and threw her on the bed. Smurf plucked his ashes on the floor just where Elena had been lying. He said, “I see y’all been giving them problems. That’s why I had to come down here myself to see what’s going on.”

I couldn’t believe he was standing there.

“Look at you, KiKi. You look bad. Real bad. All of you do. But it won’t be for long, ladies. I just need you to do something for me. Something really, really important.”

We all was too stunned to speak. My ass was still on fire from the last trip to the toilet. I ain’t even wanna wipe my butt cuz it was hurting so much, and here he was walking in here smoking a cigar, like he was on vacation.

“Well, don’t look so happy to see me.”

Yenee had killed herself cuz of
him
. Her blood was still on the mattress across from me, and her spirit was still in the air. We been starved, beaten, chained, and locked in here like animals, and he was standing there with a grin on his face like this was just another day at the beach.

“In a few minutes, you’re going to swallow something important for me. KiKi, you should be good at that,” he said, smiling. My eyes grew small at his cheap comment. “In exchange for your service, I’ll let you go home. If you fuck up in any way, you’ll be carried out of here in a trash bag, just like your girlfriend was.”

Nakeeda winced. I covered my mouth with my hand, closed my eyes, then shook my head. I couldn’t believe he had said that so easily. I couldn’t believe he was someone who I’d had sex with before.

“But why us?” Jacylyn had to know.

“Why not you?” he said. “You enjoyed yourself in Costa Rica, right? Did you pay for anything?”

Skinny Man laughed, making me realize he understood English the whole time.

“I have your passports. I have your IDs. I know where you live back home. I know who you live with. I know who you love and who loves you. If you want to fuck with me, try me now.”

I thought about Mommy and Yodi. That was the address on my license. I thought about Rich.

“Come here,” he said, looking at me.

I stood up and reluctantly walked toward him. He put his hand on my stomach and kneaded his knuckles. “Nice.”

“You come here,” he said to Nakeeda.

I hadn’t noticed until now that she was crying. Smurf rubbed her stomach, too, then he did the same thing to Jacylyn. “They’re ready now,” he said to the two Spanish dudes.

After Smurf left, I watched Oily-Haired Man fill the fingertips of latex gloves with the packets of white powder. Then he cut and knotted it with a plastic string. I couldn’t believe how simple they made it look and that the thin casing was supposed to be strong enough not to tear inside of me. I think all of us was terrified that one would leak. Elena was the only person who wasn’t gonna have to swallow the packets now. Next, Oily-Haired Man made me swallow three pellets straight. He gave me bottled water to help them get down. By the fifth pellet, I was already starting to feel full.

Oily-Haired Man shouted,
“¡Tragarlo! ¡Tragarlo!”
and moved his hand back and forth, showing me to hurry up.

I drank more water and took the next pellet from his hand. It hurt to swallow, and the water wasn’t helping. By the time I had got to eight, I wanted to lie down. My stomach felt so tight, but Oily-Haired Man looked angry. He said,
“¡Tragar mas! ¡Tragar mas, bonita chica!”

I walked around in tiny circles to see if the packets would settle in my stomach. I put my hands on my hips and blew air in and out. My stomach hurt more when I did that. Tears slid down my cheeks. I couldn’t squeeze no more pellets inside of me. I couldn’t, but I could tell Oily-Haired Man ain’t wanna believe it. How did it come to this? He gave me another packet and waited. I looked at Nakeeda. Skinny Man was giving her more packets to swallow, too. Jacylyn had already reached her max and was laying on the mattress. I took the packet from Oily-Haired Man, rolled my eyes, and threw my head backward so that the packet would fall straight back without hitting any teeth or even my tongue. Then I shut my mouth and tried to swallow. It felt like it was stuck in my throat, so I took a long swig from the water bottle and tried to suck it down my throat for a second time. Wasn’t no way in hell I could ever snort this shit again. I wondered if people who snorted it knew this was how it had to come in the country first.

The two sweaty men made sure that the number of pellets they wanted us to smuggle in was inside each of us before they left. Jacylyn had eleven. I had twelve, and Nakeeda had managed to swallow fourteen. She wouldn’t stop crying after they had left.

“You not losing hope, are you?” I asked.

She sniffled, then said, “I think this is karma.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She just shook her head and kept her mouth closed for a while. I could tell her mind wasn’t in the room for a while. Then she said, “When I was a freshman, I did something bad.” Her eyes was in a far-off place.

“Don’t start talking crazy, Nakeeda,” I said, but even Jacylyn had sat up to hear what she was saying to me.

“Ed got me pregnant. I don’t know what happened. I was on the shot. Well…I forgot to get another one when I was supposed to. I lied to Ed and told him that I did. I was being selfish. When I found out I was pregnant, I was devastated. I had just got to college. My parents had sacrificed so much so I could be there. Neither one of them had ever gone to college. I was the first one of their kids to go. Plus, with the grades I had in high school, it seemed like I could really graduate and be something they could be proud of.” She paused for a while before saying, “I wasn’t ready to have a baby. I wasn’t ready to deal with it.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“You had an abortion?” Jacylyn asked.

Nakeeda shook her head, then wiped new tears that had just as quickly fallen. “I was four and a half months when I found out I was pregnant. My periods was coming on but real faint. Ed couldn’t believe it. He said he wasn’t ready to be a parent, either. I knew I couldn’t. How was I gonna disappoint my mother and father? Daddy had been dropping dollars in a savings account ever since I made the honor roll twice in a row in fourth grade,” she said, smiling. “Mommy told all her coworkers I was gonna be a lawyer or a reporter. How could I disappoint her by dropping out to be a mommy instead?”

“What happened already?” Jacylyn asked, clearly annoyed.

“Me and Ed went back and forth about what to do. He said give it up for adoption. I said abortion. I ain’t want my child finding me later, making me feel terrible about what I decided to do. I just couldn’t do it.”

“So you was selfish, too?” Jacylyn asked.

“Yes, I was,” Nakeeda said with no feeling in her voice. “I was selfish. I wanted to make my parents proud. I wanted to have a career and be more than what my brother and sister had ended up becoming, and I ain’t want no baby to tie me down.”

Nakeeda’s eyes swelled up with more tears. “I hid the pregnancy cuz I had missed the cutoff time. I ain’t go home for breaks. I told them not to come visit me. I wore big clothes, did whatever I had to. Five months was too old. I could feel the baby moving. Kicking and twisting around, but I ignored her.”

“Her?” I asked.

“The baby was a girl,” Nakeeda said, wiping tears.