Little Angel

 

Her name

Means little angel.

 

It is a fitting name,

Though she does not know

How he came to choose it.

 

She did not know her name-

Her original one-

If she had even had one.

 

Not all girls have names;

Not all children have love.

Not all girls have faces;

Not all children have families.

 

She had no name,

Only the dirty words so many of the men spat at her,

The words that she believed were true.

 

She had no love.

No one loved her for who she was,

Only for what they got from her,

When they stole pieces of her away.

 

She had a face,

A beautiful, little face,

But only men knew it.

 

To them,

It was the only part of her

That mattered.

 

Its beauty

Was metal for those lustful magnets

That claimed to be men.

 

It was the only part of her body

That was forever clear of marks,

That was constantly preserved from physical harm,

From the continual abuse 

That they piled upon her helpless frame.

 

She had no family,

No one she could turn to in her times of need,

Which were so many.

 

Her owner

Said that he was a father to her,

The only father she would ever have,

The only father she could ever hope to have.

 

He did not bother to tell her

That no father,

In the truest sense of the word,

Would treat her 

The way he treated her.

No father,

In the truest sense of the word,

Would do to his daughter 

What he did to her.

That was why she was not his daughter,

But his slave. 

 

She never knew

How she got into this dreadful world.

It was all she knew.

 

All she knew

Was pain

And punishment

And no love.

 

There was always pain.

She could never think of a day

When there had not been pain

For her.

 

No matter what she did,

It made no difference. 

 

There was never any pain for them.

She could never think of hurting them;

Such a thing

could never be in her mind.

 

They had conditioned her so

That this could never be a thought.

Much like the fighting dogs,

Who are killed if they harm their owners,

She could never think to give

As much as she got.

The only difference

Between the dogs and her

Is that while they fought to live,

She died if she fought.  

 

She never went to school

When she was there.

She was,

Without  a doubt,

A student of pain.

Pain was the most unforgiving of all teachers,

But it was straight forward.

 

Much like pain,

Punishment for the innocent- 

And not the guilty- 

Was a part of daily life.

No matter what she did to please them,

It could never be good enough, 

Would never be good enough.

 

There was no reward for her

If she behaved well.

There was only punishment for her

If she behaved badly.

She hardly ever did this.

 

They had a cruel way

Of twisting her mind

When they punished her.

When they punished her,

They told her

That they punished her

Because they loved her.

 

To her,

Punishment and love

Were one in the same.

 

Love was a word

That made no sense,,

That had no meaning.

It was too confusing.

 

The men said they loved her. 

What they did to her

Was how they showed

That they loved her.

How much it hurt her

Was how they showed

How much they loved her.

What they did to her

Was the only kind of love she knew.

 

 Her owner

Also gave her

That kind of love,

And more,

When he thought that his men 

Were not doing a good enough job

Training her.

 

The men would tell her

That they loved her.

So would her owner.

However,

They also loved others.

Sometimes,

When the men were finished 

Stealing a piece of her,

They would talk to others-

Their wives and children-

And tell them

How much they loved them. 

 

She could never dream

Of being like those children,

Of being married.

She knew her place in the world,

What they had told her was her place.

She knew not how to hope,

But how to exist.

She knew no different,

Nor could she know

What she could not know. 

 

The story of her life

Is not for the ears of those,

Who see themselves as civilized, 

Those, 

She lives with now. 

One of them was not always so civil,

And, in fact, had lived most of his life as a savage.

 

She was barely four years old

When he came into that room.

Her owner

Had made himself spent,

And had put

All his energy

Into destroying her.

 

He had made a bargain

With an unknown man,

Whose original name

Meant superior one.

 

The man came into the room

To look over one of her owner’s wears-

Little children-

Children who had never been taught

Or told

That Jesus loves the little children,

All the children of the world.

 

The only love they knew

Was the kind men made,

The kind their tender bodies

Were never designed to take.

 

This corruption of man

Was not part of God's design. 

On that very day,

The earthly angel

And the earthly devil

Would meet.

 

The man’s face

Went red with anger.

His muscles tensed.

Before he even paused to think,

He fled from the room

In a furious rage.

 

The little girl,

Broken beyond any belief or description,

Did not know

What turned his mood so.

 

All she knew

Was that anger

From men

Led to even more pain

Or death

For her.

 

She thought

That it was her fault,

That she had done something

To make him mad.

It was always her fault.

She would never be good enough,

No matter what she did.

She always did something.

She always messed things up.

 

That was why he was getting rid of her,

He was punishing her.

Because she was a bad girl.

Bad girls deserve to get punished,

And owners got rid of bad girls when they were too bad to deal with,

Or could no longer make enough money.

 

She did not know

That her owner

Had not told the man,

Who came to see her,

That she was at death's door.

 

In his mind,

He thought that she would be fine.

He had no idea

That he would look anguish in the eye.

 

It was then

That she began to hear sounds,

Sounds that she had heard before,

But the voices

Were different.

 

Screams of tortured anguish 

Were nothing new for her;

The only thing that was

Was that it was not a girl screaming.

 

It was a man,

Made utterly powerless.

It was not just any man;

It was the man,

Who always screamed at her,

And all the others,

Who told them how worthless they were,

That they were damaged goods

Because they were too used,

That no one would ever love them,

That this,

This love,

Was all they would ever get,

And the best they could ever hope for.

 

It was the same man,

Who had beaten her within an inch of her life,

Who had almost killed her,

And left her there,

Bound,

Bloodied,

An animal,

Nearly slaughtered while still breathing.

 

It was the same man,

Who was now screaming and terror,

Begging for his life,

The same man,

Who had heard so many others beg for mercy,

But had refused to listen.

Much like the rich man in the parable,

He only knew torment

When he felt it for himself.

He had no care for the suffering of others,

For he caused much of it.

He only cared

when he got as much as he gave.

 

After a while,

His cries

Were muzzled.

The lion

Roared no more.

 

Soon,

The screams stopped.

Everything was still,

But it was the deadly kind of silence.

 

She did not know to move,

Not that she could have.

He had beaten her so badly

And bound her so tightly

That there was no way

For her to escape.

 

Once again,

The new man came in,

But he was no longer angry, 

Only beside himself

In the calm type of grief.

 

As gingerly and gently as he knew how,

He picked her up in his arms,

And took her far away to another world

A world where there was no more harm.

 

He laid her on a bed

In a clean, plain room,

But no one came to hurt her there,

Not even him.

 

Over the days, weeks, months, and years to come,

He would tell her his story,

And she would meet the loves of his life.

 

He was born in a tumbledown house

in a baron village.

 

Whatever prosperity,

Whatever optimism,

Whatever hope,

That had once been there,

Had vanished long ago.

There was no part of it left,

Only the memory,

Faded and fleeting,

Of what once was 

Of what had been

Before it was irrevocably annihilated 

By that all-pervasive force,

Whose Name Is evil. 

 

Every room 

Was filled with the ghosts 

Of those,

Who used to live 

Yn a  place 

That was so devoid of life.

 

All the people there

Seemed to have their own elephants in their rooms,

Their own skeletons in their closets,

Their own secrets that could never be let out.

 

His father was no different.

He had the worst secret

Anyone could have;

He kept three of them

In his house.

 

The man’s mother,

Whose name

Meant a princess,

Lived a life worse than a slave.

 

She had been brutalized

For so long

And by so many

That she almost knew no different.

She had almost forgotten how to love.

 

so many of her family died

In the genocide

So many years ago.

It was especially cruel.

That she had been allowed to survive.

All she had known since then

Were men and men and men.

 

She had lived her first three years free,

Then ended up in a prison camp.

After that,

The prisons were called houses,

But she was never free.

Instead,

She was continuously subjected

To a life of sexual slavery.

 

At first,

He appeared to be her saving grace,

Her night in shining armor.

He bought her from the man,

Who had claimed her,

So many years ago

Inside the barbed wire.

 

Yet,

She would soon discover

That there was no grace for her,

Only more pain

And torment.

 

She bore him four children.

She did not know

With any certainty

Who the fathers were.

She did not have time to care.

 

he did not care

Anything about her.

There was barely any her

Inside her.

 

She was a shell,

Her personality lawn since driven away.

Her breath of thought

Was shorter than the chain

That she was forced to wear

When she was allowed 

To walk around

In his house.

 

The boys –

Like so many others –

Learned their father's trade.

 

In their home,

There were no normal rules.

For them,

The rule was not 

‘Protect your sister,’

But ‘Hurt your sister.’

The rule was not 

‘Honor your mother,’

But ‘Degrade your mother.’

 

They were never punished

For hurting their mother

Or for hurting their sisters.

They were always punished

For not hurting their mother

And for not hurting their sisters.

 

From an early age,

Once they became strong,

They were taught

To treat all the girls and their house

How their father did.

 

If one of them did something wrong,

The others would be punished

In front of the wrongdoer.

Yet,

In their paradoxical sense of justice,

The wrongdoer Was never left unpunished.

 

Any time,

Any  thing,

They wanted,

Their mother and sisters had to give.

Their mother and sisters were expected

To cater to their every whim,

To wait on them hand and foot.

 

The worst lasting effect of all this 

Was that both parties- 

The owners 

and the owned- 

Sincerely believed that this was normal.

 

After all,

This was all the sons knew.

They knew no different,

Knew no other world,

Knew no other way of living.

 

In short,

The people,

Who should have been members of their family,

Were little more than test dummies.

Or training subjects

For their future lives ahead.

 

They learned how to traffick,

How to sell,

How to exploit,

How to abuse.

They never learned

How to love,

How to feel,

How to care,

How to save.

 

She could hardly teach them anything,

For she knew so little herself.

 

He knew nothing.

 

He was a product of the genocide,

Though he was born much before.

 

It was a pity 

That his name

Meant someone who is well educated,

For he murdered the learned.

 

He had been used

To torture and murder

His own family

And so many others

As a soldier.

 

This wiped his morals away;

He was all too willing to prey

On the vulnerable and innocent.

 

The girls

Were forced to do what their mother did.

They knew no different.

 

She was hardly around enough

To teach them how to love.

She barely knew herself.

 

It would not be too long

Before he sold her,

Then his first daughter,

Then his second.

 

In between,

He would buy others,

Other mothers,

Other sisters,

Other daughters.

 

He would never stop doing evil,

Not until he took his last breath.

Yet,

One of his sons

Would be different.

 

His oldest,

Whose original name

Meant superior one,

Took a different path

After an outside intervention

Showed him a new light.

 

It was her,

The girl,

Who he named little angel,

Who opened his eyes

To the true evil

With which he had made his bed.

 

In time,

He would discover

That this was not a bed

That he would have to sleep in forever

 

After he took her away

From that earthly hell,

He worked to meet others

To turn him away from being a trafficker.

 

He went to a gym

And learned skills

And started to make a new living.

 

He also had to learn how to love,

But that was more difficult

Than learning a trade.

Learning a trade 

Required him to use his hands,

Learning how to love

Required him to use his heart.

The muscles in his hands were well-used and strong.

The muscle that was his heart was barely used and atrophied.

 

When he looked into her eyes,

He saw

What he had never hoped to see.

When he looked into her eyes,

Overtime,

There was love

And trust

And hope.

 

Somehow,

Even she knew

How hard he was trying.

 

After all,

No one before

Had ever killed her owner

And then brought her back to their home

To raise her as their daughter.

 

She would have a mother,

Something of which she had never dreamed.

She would go to school

And play

And learn.

Most importantly,

She would be able to slowly heel.

 

Though she would never know

What happened to her biological family,

She would meet some of his,

And all of hers.

 

His mother

Had died in slavery.

His oldest sister

Was lost to the sex trade.

His younger brother

Was murdered by a trafficking gang.

 

yet,

There was one more sister,

A stunted, brutalized doll,

Who,

In his memory,

Would forever be in that basement.

 

He saw each of them

When they were sold away.

He remembered

Telling her to be a good girl

As the next man

Carried her into hell.

 

He never thought or hoped to ever see her again.

Yet,

In one of the sessions,

There she was,

Older, 

Clean, 

Healthy, 

And most of all free.

 

Her eyes shone

With love,

Hope,

Optimism,

And freedom.

 

She was full of life,

Was no longer a member of the living dead.

Her eyes were expressive, wide open to the world,

Not dark, and hooded against every assault.

They were the windows into a living soul,

Not a puppet of a girl,

With the thousand yard stare

Of horror

And all-pervasive darkness.

Yet,

What was done to her

Was still visible in those windows.

 

She stood as tall as she could,

Her head held high,

Her gaze fixed straight ahead.

 

Her face was ironic,

Her eyes aged 

By existing in the purgatory 

Between the living and the dead,

But the rest of her face strikingly young.

 

He knew why this was.

His father had done this on purpose,

To feed her so little as to make her stunted,

So that she would forever appear to be young,

Small framed,

And innocent.

In so doing,

Her appearance would fool the men,

Perpetually persuading them to think.

That they were always buying a young one.

 

She was well groomed,

But not in the sick way 

That she had been before.

 

She was strong and steady,

Confident and alert.

She stood like an immovable tree,

Refusing to yield to any wind,

No matter how strong or powerful.

 

She was dressed professionally,

Like a businesswoman.

Her  profession,

Her business 

Was saving lives 

On both sides 

Of the proverbial fence 

That was sex trafficking.

 

Four people -

A man,

A woman,

And their two children-

Stood to the side

As she spoke

With passion.

 

During her speech

About the evils

Of sexual slavery,

She looked up

And saw a face,

Straight from her worst nightmare

That was her memories.

 

There he was,

Tall,

Strong,

Healthy,

But strangely calm.

 

His eyes were different, too.

No more were they

The black holes of hate

That forced others to sync into their depths.

Now,

They were clear pools of light,

Hope,

Love,

Kindness.

His face was different, too.

No more was it

Contorted with anger

And malice.

Now,

It was shaped

By contrition 

And understanding.

His body was different, too.

No more was it

The looming frame

That lawn to do nothing more

Than to crush others

Under its immense weight.

Now,

It, too, was different,

Burdened by its deeds,

The shoulders shrunken,

But still,

It was somehow lightened.

Its posture was straight,

Glad,

But not pompous,

Or proud.

 

The most striking contrast

Was in his arms.

There,

A beautiful, baby boy,

A mirror of another,

Lay content,

Peaceful,

Shielded by his protector

From all the evil in the world.

 

Beside him,

A small woman stood

Hand-in-hand

With a beautiful, little girl.

 

She studied their faces

While she spoke

And tried to determine

If it was him,

And regardless,

Who they were.

 

Afterwards,

As the crowd parted ways,

She went forward

and asked for his name.

 

In bewilderment,

He said

That his original name was too shameful to say,

But that his new name was transformation.

 

His wife’s name,

For that was who she was,

Meant beautiful.

 

She froze.

 

She had known another beautiful,

But that name also had another meaning-

Virgin girl.

 

That girl

Would forever be young.

She never lived

Long enough

To be grown up.

 

The men had killed her

Because she fought too hard.

The girls had teased her

Because her name was no longer true.

 

He gestured

To his daughter,

For that was who she had become.

He told the person,

Who he thought was his youngest sister,

That her name

Was little angel

Because she had lived in hell,

But had done nothing wrong,.

 

Finally,

He asked for her name.

She paused,

And finally stated

That she had no name

In the beginning

When she was young.

However,

After she was rescued,

She chose a name

That meant someone who is busy and hard-working.

 

His wife spoke to the young, beautiful stranger

In front of her,

Who seem to know her husband from somewhere,

To assure her 

That her husband had changed.

She said 

That,

To her,

To be ashamed 

Of something he could not have chosen

Was a folly of men.

His original name 

Was superior one.

 

After this,

Their eyes truly met

With a dreadful flash of recognition

In that penetrating gaze,

She knew it was him.

 

She did not know how to react,

But simply trembled,

Then looked down,

Then bowed,

And finally fell to her knees.

 

it was as though

Her years of freedom

Had vaporized

In a disorienting mist.

 

She was suddenly eight years old again,

The age she was

When she was sold away.

She was suddenly six years old again,

The age she was

When she had been punished beyond belief

By all three of them

For looking out a tiny window

Into a world she could never hoped to know.

She was suddenly five years old again,

The age she was

When she was begging for mercy

From the merciless.

Her please

Fell on deaf ears.

Her slightly older brother,

A shadow of her father,

Had lied

To save his own skin

When he offered to help her cook,

But instead,

Messed everything up,

And left her 

To face the consequences

Alone.

They were both never meant for that underworld,

But in entirely different ways.

While one would gain their freedom,

The other would die trying.

She was suddenly five years old again,

The age she was

When she was being scrubbed clean, 

Beyond the point that it hurt,

For a very important customer.

As young as she was,

She already knew

Not to cry out

Or make any sound

When she was in pain.

He was the first nice man

She had ever known.

Yet,

No man,

Who brutalized a child,

Could ever be nice.

He was nice to her

When he took her out of that hellhole

To take her shopping,

To buy toys she could never keep,

To take her to town,

To show her places she could never go.

Yet,

For all his perceived generosity,

The end was the same

As all the others.

No matter if they were rough,

Or gentle,

No matter if they came and left,

Or took her somewhere first,

They always did the same, terrible damage,

No matter which way,

Or ways,

They decided to abuse her..

She remembered

How he took her to that bed,

And did what all the other men did

With no thought

Of what it did to her.

at that time,

She did not know

Such things.

At that time

In her life

That was not really hers,

She was simply a slave,

A shell of a human being,

Her tender humanity destroyed,

Her mind entirely blank,

Incapable of thinking.

She could still remember

Posing for that photo,

Wearing that pretty, pink dress,

Her hair braided,

Her body surprisingly clean.

In that photo,

Which she can still see,

She sat in his lap,

With a beautiful doll in her arms.

At first glance,

It might look like a father with his daughter,

But no true father

Would have his daughter

Pose in such a seductive way

With his arm wrapped around her waist,

While leaning close to kiss her face,

Like she was a lover.

The doll

Also was not hers.

Much like her,

It, too,

Was a prop

In this play,

Created for his fantasy.

Now,

All she can wonder

Was where it ended up,

And how he could possibly explain it

To someone else.

She was suddenly four years old again,

The age she was

When she was being held fast

By both brothers

As her father sold her older sister away

To a total stranger.

While she saw a terrifying glimpse into her future,

The men bantered back-and-forth,

Joking with each other

That he might be back for her

And that they would gladly part with her.

She was suddenly three years old again,

The age she was

When she was screaming and crying and pounding fruitlessly,

As she watched through that window

Of that godforsaken basement,

When she saw her mother for what would be the last time.

Her arm

Was in a man’s strong grip,

A man,

Different from her father.

Her mother‘s body

Looked almost dead,

Vacant.

She could not struggle,

Not even to try to get back to her children,

For they were not truly hers.

Nothing was hers.

Everything was his.

 

A few moments earlier,

She had been brave,

Brave enough

To tell her story

To those,

Who had previously

Caused so much harm

to those

Like her.

 

She scanned the faces

Of the woman and girl with him,

And the young child in his arms.

They seemed

Completely at ease.

 

Her brother,

Who had always forced others to the ground,

Bent down

And helped her rise to her feet.

 

He finally told her

That he was her brother,

Not her owner,

That he had truly changed.

It was because of Little Angel

That he had changed.