Jimmy Lam

By Jimmy Lam

I spent one day and two nights in the cabin.  When I had gathered the courage to muster a voice to ask Shirazi if we were almost there yet, he told me to shut my mouth.  I fell silent until I felt the need to use the toilet.  He’d press hard against the breaks so that my head banged against the mesh barrier between Shirazi and me.  I didn’t speak again until we arrived at Sunita’s. 

When I woke up from the night’s drive, I was on the floor with a room full of other girls.  The girls were giggling, and I couldn’t understand why until I pushed the weight of my upper body with both hands unto my feet in a kneeling position.  I was wet.  I had held my urge to urinate for the entire ride and finally it flooded me while I was asleep.  I also noticed on the unfinished clay floor that there was blood. A puddle of urine was decorated by thick swirls of what presumably was my own blood.  I knew it was not my period because mother had said it would only happen once every month.  When I stood up to my feet, I felt a stinging pain and discomfort between my legs.  I couldn’t conceptualize why this pain was tearing from deep within me and scraping against my lower spine.

Before I could inquire through the other girls where I was or who they were, Shirazi came into the room and introduced me to my first client.  My urine-soaked dress alarmed Shirazi.  He’d say to the client, this one’s new, please excuse her behavior.  The client was all the more enthused that none had touched me prior, or so he thought.

After I bathed, I was quickly cornered in a room.  Screaming got me nowhere; he would slap me with his knuckles and wrangle my neck from behind with his right arm and clutch onto my genitals with his left hand until I was just about unconscious.   When he asked me to take off my clothes, I refused.  He then took off his belt with the assumption that I knew the consequences if I did not obey.  I refused.  With his clenched jaws and pursed lips, he kept his eyes on mine, as he slowly folded his belt in half.   Without any warning, he whipped me across my face, barely missing the cornea of my eyes and commanded with a direct and dry voice that I take off my clothes.   He belted me again, yet another surprise, in the same spot that just had just begun to pulsate with heat from the first whip.  I bled and turned around to begin removing my dress.  I was tremulous and too uncouth to unbutton.  Before I could stumble anymore, he pushed me unto the bed, teared at my dress, and demanded that I put my mouth on his members.  I could not bear the most putrid smell of fermenting cheese below his skin.   The client forced me to lick at the filth and said that if I dared bite him, he would ensure my mouth would never close again.  Afterwards, he forced himself inside me.  The pain may have been excruciating.  I could not tell.  Shrouds of darkness enveloped my eyes.

When I woke up again, I was back in the room with the other girls, lying in the same position that I had soaked.  The smell of my own urine had not left.  From that day on the sight or the smell of any dairy product was enough to induce vomiting.

I finally understood where the pain between my legs had come from, but I did not understand who stole my virginity.  When I had my first period, my mother told me that I shall not be with men until marriage to preserve my purity and that should I fool around, I would be forced to marry the man that enters me.  I still do not know who took my virginity, perhaps it was Shirazi or one of his co-workers.  It is probably better if I do not know.

I could hear the whispers of the other girls.  Many were from Nepal shipped here to India, many with similar stories as mine.  Most seem indifferent with this lifestyle because they do not know of any other.

For those who were sold to Shirazi since they were toddlers, Sunita’s is a shelter, a place where they receive a distorted sense of comfort and support.  For those suddenly taken away from their families like me, there is a sense of emptiness and passivity.  They…we no longer define our work as sex or rape.  These words attach a certain sense of emotion to them, an emotion that we do not possess, cannot possess.  We cannot feel or we would be drowned by dangerous concoctions of terror, misery, despair, and depression.  We have nowhere to go, nothing to look forward to, and harboring these feelings bequeaths a false sense of hope that would keep me earnestly looking forward, earnestly looking forward to a sinking boat for refuge.  We see a client and it is like seeing another rock on the road.  We push away these rocks on our paths so that we can move onward towards the unknown.

Shirazi pulled me aside at the end of some days and beat my feet with a wooden broom stick.  He wouldn’t use the metal pole that kept the front entrance open to beat me anymore after he broke my ribs the first day I started working.  Another injury like that would cost him the sum of 15 clients per day or more.  He also learned not to beat areas where I would receive visible scars, as this would generate fewer clients for me.

Sometimes I try to make the best out of what I have, but Shirazi numbs us with opium, such that the beatings don’t even hurt.  I’ve come to enjoy the beatings; they intensify the high.  Sometimes I would miss the 15 clients per day quota just so that I could have a thrill.  I guess you could say I am thrill-driven, but I’ve never seen much beyond the confines of Sunita’s or the dull highs from the impurity of the drugs.  But I try not missing my quota too often.  Sometimes if I don’t shed tears from the beatings, Shirazi would have me until he saw that I could shed no more tears.  Only Shirazi can make me feel like a cow being milked for all its worth.  Then the next day would start…all over again.

I’ve been here for a total of six years now.  I started when I was 14 years of age.  It was the second week that I was enslaved in Sunita’s when Shirazi told me that my mother had paid 360 rupee (the equivalent of $5) to Shirazi to sell me to his brothel at Sunita’s.  I found out when I insisted on leaving to see my parents.  I still send them money even though I will probably never see them again.  The 14 years that they did raise me were the only 14 years that I understood love.

Back at home, my mother would wake up every morning to send my brother off to school.  She’d come back and brush my hair 100 times through with a comb made from a water buffalo’s horn.  That’s how I learned to count.  I also remember how mother would sing Timrai Mayale, as I counted off to a 100 strokes.

Chudaina Timro Mayale Yedi Timi Nai Yeha Nabhaya 
Chudaina Timro Mayale Yedi Timi Nai Yeha Nabhaya

After brushing my hair, my mother would take a damp cloth to wipe away the dirt on the corner of my eyes and gently kiss me on my forehead and whisper in my ears ma timilai maya garchhu.  The day that she did not follow this routine was the day I met Shirazi.

I was told I would be attending school with my brother.

In the car off to school, I was elated and frightened at the same time.  There I was in the back cabin of the car with only one square window in the back that allowed me to see the last glimpse of the only person who ever loved me.  As the car zoomed off with rattles of smug from the engine, I could see mother’s discomfort through the square window.  She brushed her index finger through the needles of the comb that she would have brushed me with that day and watched as I stared back with my palms pressed against the window, outlining the steam imprints of my hands.