I Kick and I Fly, page 23
My voice is shaking less now, and I manage to look at the people in front of me.
“How do people survive when they aren’t allowed to do the work they know and love? For my family of nomads, it meant asking people for a place to live, and then doing just about any job they told us we could do. One of these jobs was having sex with people for money.
“These children and women had no choice but to sell their bodies in exchange for a place to live, for food to eat, and for their husbands to be given work. And though people say that times have changed, they must not have changed everywhere, because I have been told since I was a little girl that selling my body was what I had to do to support myself and my family. And I believed it. Many in my family believed it too.
“Finally, earlier this year, it was my turn to be put up for sale. My family was in a tight spot, in debt to the wrong man. I grew up in a red-light area, so I knew what it meant, what it involved. There are no secrets kept from kids where I come from. So, I said no, and we tried to get around it.
“My mother paid back our loan, but the traffickers came for me anyhow. The first time, I got away. The second time, they got me, but I was rescued by my brother and teacher.
“When I was stuck in a tiny room, with my traffickers outside the door, I asked myself, why had they kept coming for me even when they had no claim? No right? And it wasn’t until that happened that I fully realized that they believed that my body belonged to them, and I knew for certain that it did not. It was kung fu that helped me understand this. Because it is through kung fu that I learned that my body would do what I told it to. That my body listened to me—and only me.” I take a breath. “There is power in my body. My body connects me to my cousin, my aunt, my grandmother, who were all sold for prostitution. But kung fu also connects my body to my ancestors, who were champion wrestlers. If both these things lived within me, could I choose which course I wanted to take?” I look up now, realizing that I’ve memorized the final words on the page. “For most of my life, I thought the answer to that was no. But suddenly, I felt that maybe there was another possibility. I didn’t do it on my own: I needed my family to stand with me, and most importantly, a cheerleader who made me believe that safety could be mine. Rini Di taught me kung fu and opened the doors of the world to me. And that is how I have come to stand before you now.”
I pause and there is a moment’s silence. And then the audience bursts into applause. As I walk away from the podium, all I can think about is how I forgot to thank them at the end of my speech. I feel like my legs will give way, but I’m held up by the cloud I feel inside me until I reach my seat.
At the end of the talks there are a few questions from the audience, and then we wrap. Some of the teachers and caregivers in the home come forward to speak to me, but I don’t have energy to do anything except nod and smile and say thank you. And then Sue is at my side, giving me a glass of juice and gently leading me into a seat.
“You were wonderful,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say, my heart still beating in my ears.
“Feeling exhausted?”
“Just like after a kung fu routine,” I say.
“That’s the adrenaline—it’s what holds you up and then you come crashing down,” Sue says, patting my shoulder. “I’ll get you a plate of food.”
A couple more of the adults come to congratulate me on my speech and wish me luck for the competition while Sue deposits some snacks in front of me, but I find that I have no appetite. A girl comes up to me then, older than the students but younger than the staff.
“That was very cool,” she says. And immediately, I know who she is.
“Thank you,” I say as my eyes scan the crowd in search of Connie. “I’m just glad I didn’t faint onstage.”
The girl offers a chuckle. “I grew up not very far from you. Just over the border in Nepal,” she says, extending a hand. “I’m Azra, by the way.”
“I—I think you know my friend,” I manage to say, waving my hand above my head when I finally find Connie. She spots us and comes rushing over, abandoning her own crowd of admirers.
“Azra!” Connie exclaims, throwing her arms around the tiny girl. “You made it!”
“You girls were fantastic,” Azra says before looking back and forth between the two of us, seemingly putting together the details of Connie’s email. She looks at me. “So you’re the one who’s worried about your friend.” She takes a quick look around. “It’s too crowded here to talk properly, but I wanted to meet you and try and understand what you’re trying to figure out.”
I look around to make sure Sue isn’t within earshot. The hall is sprinkled with groups of people huddled in their own conversations, but I keep my voice low.
“There’s a girl from my school, a friend of mine, who we think is in danger,” I say, reading the concern on Azra’s face. “We think she might be in the same brothel where you were kept.”
Azra’s brow shoots down. “What makes you think that?” she asks.
“Because she was brought over here by the same gang that brought you.” It’s only then that I realize that Azra might have already met her. She’s stayed in Rosy’s house, after all. “The man with the Krishna tattoo. It’s Suraj Sharma’s daughter, Rosy.”
Azra goes pale. “He brought his daughter here?”
“That’s what her brother, Manish, told me,” I reply.
“And you want to try to get her out?” Azra says skeptically.
Another wave of adrenaline shoots through me. “Yes,” I say firmly.
Azra inhales deeply. “I’m not sure how you’d even track them down. They don’t stay in one place. They move around every few months. They had me for a year before I escaped, and I was in four different houses.”
“Do you know any of the girls there still?” Connie asks.
Azra takes a moment to think. “It’s been a while. I don’t know if they’d talk to me even if I tried.”
I try to think of other options as quickly as I can. “Did you talk to the police when you escaped? Are they going to arrest your traffickers now that you can testify against them?” I ask.
Azra bites her lip. “It’s not simple. It takes time to build a case. Our support group has several lawyers who are following the case and gathering evidence, but there isn’t a lot in the news. That happens when it’s an active investigation.”
“Do you think you can find out more?” I ask, desperate for any help we can get.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I do have one person I could ask.” Azra looks at her watch anxiously, and I worry that we’ve asked too much of her. But when she speaks next, her voice is assured. “I’ll be in touch.”
I look for refuge in the kwoon. In my body. I waste no time. I set to work with a concentration that allows nothing else. I let nothing slip—from the curves of my fingers and toes to the bend of my back. Everything has to be precisely perfect. I note how one jab is slightly stiffer. It needs more fluidity. It has to be effortless. I wobble a little in the dragon stance. My hips pull my thighs back. I test my balance and change my position a little. I stretch like a cat and pounce like a tiger.
I do it again, over and over, first the right hand and left leg and then the left leg and right hand, until I have it as it should be. I listen intently to my body.
But again and again, I’m interrupted by thoughts of Rosy. How can I find peace in my body when my friend is out there in the dark, her nose pierced, her body invaded? I can’t unsee the fear in her eyes as she looked out that window.
My technique gets better but my thoughts are in turmoil. After meeting Azra and the other girls at the Sunshine House shelter, the battle I’ve been fighting feels bigger and more powerful than I had ever imagined. It preys on little girls like us all over the world. Our small resistance in Girls Bazaar is like an ant standing up to an elephant.
For the next few days, we don’t hear from Azra. Perhaps it’s for the best. The kwoon leaves no time for anything else. We’re approaching the halfway point of training, and there’s no more room for mistakes. Our choreography is ready, and my routine is miles more advanced than what I did in Forbesganj. But as hard as I try, I can’t seem to get the hang of my weapon, the bo staff. I will never get it right. Master Yi says I will control the bo when I control my thoughts. But my thoughts keep going to Rosy.
The longer we go without hearing from Azra, the more I feel as though I’m abandoning Rosy. And the longer I go without confiding in Rini Di, the more I feel as though I’m lying to her. The only thing I can do is go through the documents on my phone again and again, searching for a clue that I haven’t yet noticed. I stare hard at the report about the girl from Nepal for hints that I may have missed, wishing I could ask Rini Di what some of these words in the police documents mean. Between the handwriting and strange English, they’re hard to decipher. The only things I recognize are the names of Ravi Lala and Suraj Sharma.
But then my inbox dings. When I look at the sender’s email address, my mouth nearly falls open.
Manish.
Heera,
I thought you should know that you were right. Well, we both were. I heard my father talking last night and it’s true that Rosy is in the US, in New York. It’s also true that she’s gone to work at the Taj Mahal. But it’s not a code word as you’d thought. Apparently, it’s a restaurant. Don’t get caught this time.
Manish
I can feel my heart beating in my ears. Finally, I understand.
That’s why Ravi Lala’s men were laughing.
I scold myself for not thinking of it sooner.
“Do you have any idea how many Indian restaurants there are in New York called Taj Mahal?” Connie says once I tell her. She scrolls through her phone feverishly. “I’m not sure what we would do even if we could figure out which one it is. We can’t just call them up and ask for Rosy.”
“We could tell Rini Di or Sue?” I say now that we know Rosy’s really here. “What if we just tell them everything we know?”
“It’s not that simple,” Connie says, echoing what Azra told us. “They’ll want to involve the police, who won’t risk going right now because they’re in the middle of an investigation. At the very least, they’ll say it’s too dangerous for us to get involved. And it’ll be out of our hands.”
“And they would be right,” I admit.
“So? Do you want it to be out of our hands?” she asks.
As I let my eyelids close, allowing myself to think, it seems to all come flooding back—Mira Di’s cigarette burns, the alcohol on her breath, the scraps of daylight that were able to creep through the wood as I lay trapped in that brothel. “No,” I say. Even though I know it’s dangerous. “Especially not after what happened to Azra.”
“I don’t either,” Connie says. And somehow, I can tell that her own memories have come flooding back to her as well. “So, for now, let’s just go to sleep, and tomorrow we can call Azra and tell her what we’ve learned. Maybe it’ll mean more to her.”
“So, I called one of the girls who I was in the brothel with,” Azra says while Connie has her on speakerphone. “She got away too, but her boyfriend is a part of the gang, and they’re still together. So I think she might be able to help us figure out where they’ve moved to now.”
Connie and I look at each other.
“There’s something else we’ve learned,” I say. “Rosy’s brother told me she’s at a restaurant called the Taj Mahal. He overheard his father talking about it last night.”
“But there are about a dozen Taj Mahal restaurants in New York,” Connie adds. “We checked.”
“She’s at the Taj Mahal?” says Azra, panic in her voice. “Oh God, it must be the same place they took me when I first came. I know where it is,” Azra says, her breath heavy. “It’s a restaurant next to a hotel in Queens. It has an apartment above it. Some of the girls live there.”
“In the restaurant?” I ask, confused.
“Above the restaurant,” Azra says. “There’s a small room with cubicled beds to cram in at least twenty girls. Most of the girls are Indian.”
“So what now? Is that enough to go to the police?” I ask. “We could go to Sue? Rini Di is back in a couple of days too.”
Connie looks at me then as if to say, We’ve already discussed this. Azra sighs. “That would be the right thing to do. But it’ll take a long time to get the police to do anything here now that the investigation is active. They’ll have moved by the time they’re authorized to do anything.”
“But it’s better than nothing,” I say.
“It might end up being nothing,” Azra points out, the only one among us who might actually know what she’s talking about. “What do we have so far? We know that Rosy has been trafficked out of your hometown. If she followed the same route as me, as her brother tells us, she is likely in New York, but we have no evidence. And we have a guess—it might be a good one, but it’s still a guess—that she’s at the Taj Mahal, which I know is definitely used for trafficking, but again, there is no proof outside of my saying so.”
“Taj Mahal is not a guess. Her brother overheard Suraj Sharma say she is at Taj Mahal. I heard a snippet too,” I say with some emphasis, hoping they won’t back down now.
“And then there’s the small matter of us being really, really busy,” says Connie. “Between now and the competition, there’s pretty much no time.”
She’s right; it’s a tight schedule with no time to think, let alone stake out our own plan.
“So, we have a choice—take this to the people in charge, who may not be able to do anything. At least not quickly. Or risk everything and try ourselves,” Azra says, her voice grim with determination. It’s then that I truly understand—Azra isn’t just doing this to help me. She wants to save Rosy from the fate she had to endure, just as much as I want to save her from the fate I’ve avoided. “How sure are you that Rosy is in there?” she asks me.
I look at Connie and see the same determination in her dark eyes, imagining what she had to witness her own mother go through. I take a deep breath. “Do I think she might be there? Yes. Am I sure she’s there? No,” I reply honestly.
“That’s not a strong enough case to take to the police. But it’s strong enough that we should try,” Azra says. “I could take us. I just got my driver’s license.”
“Are you sure you want to help?” I falter. However much I want to find Rosy, I hear the reality of the evil these men can do in Azra’s voice. I have doubts. I don’t want to put my two new friends in danger for the sake of an old friend. I don’t want to keep so much from Rini Di. I wish I never had to make this kind of choice.
“I got away from them once, didn’t I? I want to do this for other girls from my village,” Azra says gravely. But I can hear the worry in her voice. “Here’s what I think we should do: We should try to get in, just to the restaurant. If it doesn’t seem safe, we can wait outside, at a safe distance, and see if she comes or goes.”
“We can’t go there now—we’re training all day and there will be no chance for us to slip out,” Connie says. “But we have time over the weekend.”
“All right. It’s a plan, then. But I have to stress to you girls—this is dangerous, for all of us. I know I’m only nineteen, but that technically makes me the adult in charge and the one who will be in the most trouble if things go wrong. We need to be careful, and I need to know you’ll listen to me if we do this.”
“Yes,” Connie and I both say in unison.
“Okay then. See you Saturday.”
The first of our problems is the permission we need to leave the camp, and I’m almost certain we’re not going to get it. But to my surprise, Connie returns with a smile less than five minutes after declaring she has it covered.
“Done,” she says.
“What! How?”
“I told her about Azra, that she would be with us the whole day, and that we wanted to see some of the New York sites.”
“That’s it? So easy?”
Connie rolls her eyes. “This isn’t jail, you know. It was nothing—she wants us to go out and have some fun, quiet our nerves before the big day. She told me they had to cut all the sightseeing stuff this year due to funding. Save the awe for when I do something really cool.”
When Saturday finally arrives, I seem to be the only one who feels guilty about the lie, but this is soon forgotten in a fresh bout of uncertainty. We have set out on an errand that seems impossible in the light of day. It’s too late to pull out, and Azra and Connie are both pretty much in this position because of me, so I can’t buckle now.
It takes about an hour and forty-five minutes to get to the neighborhood called Queens. I look out the car window; we’re on a busy road called Roosevelt Avenue full of delivery trucks, taxis, cars, and bikes. I hear the familiar sound of a train, but then I realize that the train is above us, raised on tracks. We drive past shops, restaurants, bars, and parlors. There are photographs of girls in bras and panties advertised under signs saying GENTLEMEN’S CLUB, different but also similar to the posters around the fair back home. The road is asphalted, and the sidewalks are cemented, but the avenue in Queens has begun to feel like the dirt stretch of Girls Bazaar. Banner photos of girls in various seductive poses offering relaxation, fun, happiness, and even heaven are stretched out above massage parlors and nail salons.
“This is the road,” Connie says, pointing to the green road sign. We turn onto a street, shabbier than the avenue but equally crowded. Shoppers, vendors, deliverymen, people giving out handouts litter the sidewalks. “Those are chica cards,” Azra explains. They have pictures of half-naked women with a phone number and the words FREE DELIVERY printed on top. “Chica means ‘girl’ in Spanish.”
Near the upturned crates and overflowing garbage bags are women checking their cell phones, the same glazed look in their eyes as in Girls Bazaar. “They’re scanning the street for anyone who wants a massage,” Azra tells Connie and me, though we need no explanation. We are both all too familiar with this. One woman drags in a deep puff of smoke from a cigarette.
