“The boss is giving my route to a new boy,” he says with a shrug.
The other girls tickle and kiss him and tell him they will miss him. The cook ruffles his hair with her hand, then slips him a piece of fresh bread. Anita takes a rupee note from her waistcloth, presses it into his palm, and says good-bye. Shilpa asks if the new boy will bring her what she needs.
I look at him with frantic eyes. He says not to worry, it is not my fault.
He steps toward the kitchen door. My heart is pounding so hard I think it will burst from my chest. I do not think. I run to him and throw my arms around him.
The others cackle and bray.
“Stupid girl,” Shilpa says. “She must be in love with him.”
I do not care if she thinks I’m in love with him. I don’t care if she thinks I’m a fool. Because I didn’t just hug him. I whispered in his ear and slipped him the flying-bird card.
WAITING
More than a week has passed since I gave the street boy the flying-bird card. Each day the new boy comes in his place. The new boy is slow and surly. He does not joke with anyone, and he refuses to give out so much as a single teacup without getting his money first.
I ask if he ever sees the boy who used to bring us our tea. “Who?” he says.
I realize then that I do not even know his name.
NOT A NEW GIRL ANYMORE
I look around the table at mealtime. There is a pair of new girls. One is sniffling over her rice and dal, the other is too dazed to eat. A third girl, one who has been here a while, is wiping her plate with her bread.
The first one is sitting in Monica’s old seat, the second in Shahanna’s. The third is sitting where Pushpa used to sit.
It occurs to me that, except for Anita, I have been here the longest.
COUGHING
I awake in the middle of the night to a familiar sound. It is the hacking of someone with the coughing disease. It took me a moment to realize, though, that Pushpa has long been gone. And a moment more to realize that this time, it is Anita.
DIGITAL MAGIC
It is only afternoon, but already a customer is at the door. I see at once that he is an American. It is not the same one who gave me the flying-bird card; this one is taller, and he is wearing a vest of many pockets. I shrink behind the door frame; every day I have prayed for an American to come. Now that one is here I don’t know what to do.
I hear a noise from the counting room and see that Shilpa is watching. So I go to the man like a thirsty vine. I tell him I will make him happy. I tell him I know some good tricks.
Shilpa goes back to her movie star magazine, and the man follows me up the steps.
When we get to my room, he grips my hand in greeting, the same uncouth way the first American did. I pull away.
He says hello in my language. I say nothing in reply.
“What is your name?” he says. His words are hurried, and he looks nervously over his shoulder.
“Your name,” he says again. “What is your name?”
I cannot open my mouth.
“How old are you?” I don’t reply.
He sighs. “May I take your picture?” he says. He takes a small silver box from one of his pockets. He touches a button and its eye blinks open with a whir.
I do not like this seeing box, but I do not object.
“? will not tell the fat woman,” he says. “You have my promise.”
A tiny lightning jumps out of the box, the eye blinks shut. And for a moment, I see doubles and triples of the man, framed m a red glow. He is smiling, looking at the back of his little lightning box.
“Come see your picture,” he says.
I take just one step toward him and wait. He holds the silver box toward me, and I can see a tiny version of myself—smaller than the people on TV—in a tiny TV in the back of the silver box.
“Digital,” he says.
I don’t know this word, but it must be the name of the strange American magic he has that allows him to put me in his silver box. “Do you want to leave here?” he says.
I cannot answer.
How do I know if he is a good man?
What if he is like the drunken American?
What if he is like the ones Anita talks about, the ones who make young girls walk naked in the street?
“I can take you to a clean place,” he says. “Look,” he says. “Pictures. Of the shelter. Other girls.”
He holds out the silver box so I can see the tiny TV in the back.
He pushes a button.
There is a tiny image of a Nepali girl smiling back at me.
He pushes the button again.
There are girls in school uniforms sitting at a desk.
Girls fetching water at a spring.
The man turns off his digital magic machine. I am afraid, all of a sudden, that he is leaving. I wish there was a way to say something, to keep this American here a little longer.
I reach under my bed and pull out the American storybook, the one Harish gave me. I hold it out toward the American. He cocks his head to one side, puzzled.
I point to a picture. “Elmo,” I say. He nods slowly.
“Ice cream,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “Very good.”
“America.” The man smiles.
I do not mean to, but I am smiling at this queer-looking man, smiling and trembling at the magic—not of his digital image-taking box—but at the magic of a handful of nonsense words to keep him here a little longer.
BELIEVING
The American man whispers. His way of speaking my language is hurried now as he reads from a battered Nepali wordbook. I see that it has the image of the flying bird on its cover, and I say a silent prayer of thanks to the street boy whose name I will never know.
“What the fat woman does here to you is bad,” he says. “Very bad.”
I nod.
“She cannot force you to do these things,” he says.
This American is not so magical after all, I decide. He doesn’t know about Mumtaz’s leather strap. And the goondas. And the chain on the door.
“I will come back for you,” he says. “I will come back with other men, good men, from this country—fathers and uncles who want to help—policemen who are not friends of Mumtaz. We will take you away from here.”
This is too good to believe.
“You must believe me,” he says.
I shut my eyes tight. I don’t know what to believe. I believed that the stranger in the yellow cloud dress was taking me to the city to work as a maid. I believed that Uncle Husband would protect me from the bad city people. I believed that if I worked hard enough here at Happiness House, I could pay down my debt. And I believed it was all worth it for the sake of my family.
I am too afraid to believe him.
And so I am going to believe that this strange pink man is a dream, a cruel trick of the mind. I am going to believe that when I open my eyes he will be gone.
I count to 100. Count to 100 again and open my eyes.
He is still there, gripping his battered Nepali wordbook.
“The clean place,” I say. “I want to go there.”
NAMASTE
The American man says he will come back. He will return, he says, as soon as he can, with the other men and the good police officers who will force Mumtaz to let me go.
When he returns, I must go with him quickly, before the goondas can try to stop us.
He bows and says, “Namaste,” the word in my language that means hello and good-bye.
And then he is gone, leaving me to wonder if he was really here at all.
READY
When no one is looking, I pack my bundle for my journey to the clean place and hide it under my bed.
What I am taking:
my American storybook,
a hair ribbon Shahanna left behind,
my notebook,
my old homespun skirt,
Monica’s rag doll.
What I am leaving behind:
/> the makeup and nail paint Mumtaz made me buy,
the condoms under my mattress,
everything that happened here.
TWO KINDS OF STUPIDITY
It has been three days, and still the pink-skinned man hasn’t returned with the good policemen.
How stupid I was to believe in him and his digital magic.
How stupid I am to keep believing.
FORGETTING HOW TO FORGET
I learned ways to be with men. I learned how to forget what was happening to me even as it was happening.
But ever since the pink-skinned man came here, with his pictures of the clean place,
I cannot remember those ways.
Now, while I wait for the American to return, and the men come to my bed,
I clench the sheets in my hands, for fear that I will pound them to death with my fists.
I grit my teeth, for fear that I will bite through their skin to their very bones.
I squeeze my eyes closed tight, for fear that I will see what has actually happened to me.
PLAYING THE FOOL
Five days have passed, and still there is no sign of the American.
Only a fool would keep waiting after five days.
A KIND OF ILLNESS
This ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.
A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz’s white pills. But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.
This affliction—hope—is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.
PUNISHMENT
It is a simple kitchen sound, the grinding of spices with a wooden pestle. Sometimes it means nothing more than spicy stew for supper. But sometimes it means that the cook is readying the hot chili punishment for one of us. And then it is a sound that turns even the hardest woman here into a whimpering child.
Because it means that someone has crossed Mumtaz, that Mumtaz will smear chilies on a stick and put it inside the girl, and that all of us will be awake through the night, listening to the girl moan.
Anita inches up next to the cook, but doesn’t dare to ask. “Mumtaz is furious,” the cook says. “One of the girls has betrayed her.”
My legs give way beneath me as the tender place inside me imagines the burn of the hot chili stick. And then I am sweating and pacing and quaking and trying to figure out how Mumtaz learned about the American. I am shivering and shaking and forming the words I will use to beg for mercy.
My stomach is heaving with fear as I hear the heavy thud of footsteps in the hall.
But when Mumtaz enters the room, I show her the face of a docile Nepali girl, a girl who will put up no fight. She storms past me, and I flinch as the hem of her sleeve brushes my arm.
She pushes the cook aside, takes her stick, rolls it in the chili powder, and wheels around to face me.
I fall to the floor, kissing her feet and weeping.
She gives me a kick in the ribs, and all the air flies out of me in a whoosh. Then she is gone.
Soon I hear a piteous wailing coming from the next room. Anita bends over me.
“It is Kumari, the new girl,” she says, stroking my hair. “She accepted a bangle bracelet from a customer.”
My shameful heart rejoices that it is Kumari, not me, who is crying. But I wonder. If this is what Mumtaz did over a bangle, what would she do if she knew about my American?
I press my cheek to the coolness of the floor and close my eyes. When I open them I see Mumtaz’s painted toes inches from my face. Anita’s feet scurry away.
“You certainly act the part of the guilty one,” Mumtaz says from above me. What I feel next is the gritty sole of her shoe on the side of my head, gently at first, then with steady, gathering force, relentless, building pressure until her full weight is on me.
She grinds her foot, and the metal edge of my earring bites into the flesh of my ear. But I do not cry out.
The seconds tick by.
Then, somehow, I am outside myself, marveling at this pain, a thing so formidable it has color and shape. Fantastic red, then yellow, starbursts of agony explode in my head. Then there is a blinding whiteness, and then blackness.
Somehow, without warning, the pain is gone. A new pain takes its place as Mumtaz yanks on my braid and drags me to my feet.
We are eye to eye. I can smell the sour tang of her sweat. “Have you done something for which you should be punished?” she says.
I don’t answer.
She yanks on my braid. My scalp yelps with pain. But I don’t say a word. “Have you done something wrong?” she says, spit gathering in the comers of her mouth. “Tell me, you stupid little hill girl.”
Mumtas has called me a little hill girl. Which is, still, what I am.
I meet her gaze. “No, Mumtaz,” I say. “I haven’t.”
She lets go of my hair, and it takes all my strength to keep my knees from giving way.
“Then put on your makeup,” she says, “and get back to work.”
I stay upright until she is gone. Only then do I slump to the floor and touch the side of my head. My earring comes off in my hand, bloodied, but intact. And I know then that my earlobe has been torn clear through.
I know something else as well. I know that I would endure a hundred punishments to be free of this place.
THE WORDS HARISH TAUGHT ME
It is so late at night it is almost morning, and I am awake, ready to begin another day of waiting for the American. There is a banging on the door and a voice shouts, “Police!” Anita bolts out of bed.
“Hurry,” she says, grabbing my hand. I am right behind her, sneaking down the hall toward her hiding place m the closet. We can hear voices coming from downstairs as we tiptoe down the hall. “I am here for a young girl,” says a man. “What kind of place do you think this is?” says Mumtaz. “There are no young girls here.” I know this voice. It is my American. I squeeze Anita’s hand.
“It is an American,” I whisper. Her eyes go wide. “He is a good man,” I say. “He will take us to a clean place.” “It’s a trick,” she says, inching toward the closet. “No,” I say. “I’ve seen pictures. The girls there are safe.”
She shakes her head.
“They are liars,” she says. “I beg you. Don’t go.”
The American is shouting something. I don’t understand what he is saying, but I know, somehow, that he is calling out to me.
“Please,” I beg her. “Come with me. If you stay here, you will die.”
Anita is clutching my arm. “Don’t go,” she cries.
I cannot move.
I cannot go to my American.
And I cannot walk away from my crooked-faced friend.
“The new TV is coming any day now,” she says. “Mumtaz promised.”
She grips my arm and tries to pull me into the closet with her.
I shake my head.
Then, slowly, she lets go of my arm, closes the door between us, and I hear a sad and final sound: the lock sliding into place.
I am alone in the hallway. Mumtaz is cursing downstairs. But I can still hear the American.
I inch toward the steps. But I am too afraid to go down.
The American calls out.
I try to answer, but nothing comes out of my mouth.
I hear more cursing and the scuffle of feet. He is leaving. My American is leaving.
Something inside me breaks open, and I run down the steps. I see Mumtaz, her fat mango face purple with rage, her arms pinned behind her back by two policemen. She lunges in my direction and spits. But the policemen hold her back.
I see my American. There are other men with him, Indian men, and the American lady from the picture.
“My name is Lakshmi,” I say.
“I am from Nepal.
I am fourteen years old.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Each year, nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families, intentionally or unwittingly, into a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India. Wo
rldwide, the U.S. State Department estimates that nearly half a million children are trafficked into the sex trade annually.
As part of my research for Sold, I traced the path that many Nepalese girls have taken—from remote villages to the red-light districts of Calcutta. I also interviewed aid workers who rescue girls from brothels, provide them with medical care and job training, and who work to reintegrate them into society.
But most touching and inspiring was interviewing survivors themselves. These young women have experienced what many people would describe as unspeakable horrors. But they are speaking out—with great dignity.
Some go door-to-door in the country’s most isolated villages to explain what really happens to girls who leave home with strangers promising good jobs. Some of them—even women who are ill with HIV—patrol the border between Nepal and India on the lookout for young girls traveling without their parents. And some are facing their traffickers in court—where it is often their word against the fathers and brothers, husbands and uncles who sold them for as little as three hundred dollars.
It is in their honor that this book was written.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to my patient, wise, and gifted editor, Alessandra Balzer, who raised the bar ever so gently, every time she read this manuscript, and to my tireless and enthusiastic agent, Nina Collins, who believed in this book from the first word. I’m also grateful to all the talented and energetic people at Hyperion, especially Angus Killick, who are indefatigable in their efforts to get books into the hands of readers who need them.
I owe a special debt of thanks to my wise and generous colleagues—Mark Millhone, Andrea Chapin, Rachel Cohn, Mark Belair, A.M. Homes, Chris Momenee, and Mo Ogrodnik—who were every bit as invested in this story as I was. And to Annie and Steven Pleshette Murphy, Bridget Starr Taylor, Chris Riley, Joan Gillis, Patricia and Donald Oresman, Hallie Cohen, and Bill Ecenbarger, who read this manuscript at various stages and who gave honestly and generously of their feedback and friendship.