"I remember seeing a spot on the news."
"Yes!" I say. A flutter of hope trills in my chest.
Sister Margaret glances at her watch.
"I"m late," she says. She looks up into my eyes. "Wanna go for a ride?"
A ride? I shrug. What have I got to lose?
"Sure," I say.
"Come on," Sister Margaret says, nodding towards the front door. She s.n.a.t.c.hes Robyn"s picture from the hand of the man behind the desk.
Before opening the front door, she spins around. "And Jerry, if Carlo so much as steps one toe into the lobby before he"s done studying, tell him he"s going to have to answer directly to me!"
"Yes ma"am," Jerry says, giving her a mock salute and a grin.
Outside, the air feels even colder and I tug my sweater to my chest. The haze of stale Chinese food hangs in the air. Sister Margaret is walking so briskly that I am almost trotting in order to keep up with her. We round the Center, and behind the large building is an alley. Parked in an alley is an old pickup that looks like something from The Andy Griffith Show. In its bed are a dozen large coolers in various colors and brands. The truck"s maroon paint is pocked by large deposits of rust and the front b.u.mper is tied onto the truck with dull yellow nylon rope. Sister Margaret opens the driver"s side door, motioning me over with a nod.
"Hop in," she says.
The look of surprise on my face makes her laugh.
"Pa.s.senger side door is broken."
"Oh," I say sheepishly.
I slide across the worn bench seat, smoothing out the blue flannel blanket which covers various gouges and rips in the Naugahyde as I go. The smell inside the cab reminds me of a thousand pleasant memories.
We lurch forward and I try to conceal my alarm as I notice that Sister Margaret is so short, her feet barely reach the gas and brake pedals.
"Come on, you old bucket of bolts!" she exclaims, giving the steering wheel a sharp rap with the heel of her hand. The truck cannons onto the street, and rounding the corner of the alley, I feel the back end pitch upwards as the back wheel strikes the curb. The cover to the glove compartment flops open. Sister Margaret eyes the cover and then looks at me. I snap the cover closed and give her a hopeful smile.
"This whole outfit is held together by prayer and Scotch tape," she says with a broad grin.
We wind our way down city streets, Hayes to Baker, and then onto a major thoroughfare, Oak and to another rundown looking area. Murals of colorful graffiti cover many of the dull grey walls of the buildings that otherwise look abandoned.
"How long has your daughter been gone?" she asks.
I recount the events of the previous two weeks. Sister Margaret grimly nods as I talk, as if she"s heard all of this a thousand times before.
"Did the police advise you to call the NCMEC?" she asks.
"What"s that?"
"National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They can create posters for you that can be distributed nationwide." Sister Margaret"s voice is dead serious.
"But Robyn"s friend Jenny said she"s in San Francisco."
"If Robyn got mixed up with prost.i.tution like your P.I. friend suggested, then it"s possible she could already have been moved."
"Moved?" I ask. My heart thuds in my chest.
"You mentioned BLU BOY?"
I nod.
"He is is a pimp," she says, confirming Bart Strong"s earlier suspicion. "It"s common for pimps to move their girls from city to city to evade law enforcement. a pimp," she says, confirming Bart Strong"s earlier suspicion. "It"s common for pimps to move their girls from city to city to evade law enforcement.
I fight the sting of tears and try swallowing down the burn that flares in my gut.
"But she"s only fifteen," I say.
"The average age of a teen prost.i.tute on these streets is twelve to thirteen."
I groan aloud.
"Customers vastly outnumber the prost.i.tutes. For every fifteen hundred girls there are between fifteen and thirty thousand johns. These girls come from all kinds of homes. Neglect, abuse, you name it."
"There was no abuse or neglect," I argue.
Sister Margaret sighs. "Society puts enormous pressure on young women to be perfect and s.e.xual from a very young age. Teenage girls are notorious for their low self-esteem," she says. "Was she having trouble in school?"
I feel struck, as if by a dagger. I nod. Silent tears fall to my lap. "Always," I whisper.
Sister Margaret nods.
The truck pitches to the curb and slows to a stop on a street that looks as forlorn and hopeless as I feel.
Sister Margaret yanks the gearshift into park and gives me a steely look.
"Make no mistake," she says, "You"re in a war that you must win here. And if BLU BOY"s got a hold of your daughter, getting her back will be the fight of your life."
The nun switches off the engine.
"Give me a hand," Sister Margaret says, shooting out of the cab of the truck.
Even before I"ve come round to the back of the vehicle, the agile nun has already lowered the truck bed door and torn the lid off cooler closest to her. Inside, dozens of sandwiches are piled to the rim of the cooler.
"Grab that blue cooler," says Sister Margaret.
I pull it towards me and flip off the lid. Inside is bottled water.
She turns around, leaning on the truck folding her arms across her chest, a rampart against the frigid wind that buffets both of us. The rank odor of sewer hangs stubbornly in the air. I grit my teeth to stifle a gag, and my hand dives into the pocket of my jeans for a Rolaids. Sister Margaret kicks away an empty Styrofoam container stained with spaghetti sauce that the wind has blown against her leg.
"What do we do now?" I ask.
"We wait," Sister Margaret says with a smile.
A siren screams in the distance.
"Do you have any recent video of your daughter?"
"What?"
"Home movies?" Sister Margaret adds.
I search my memory. The last time we used the video recorder was when we moved to Pittsburg. I nod.
"It"s about a year old," I say.
"Contact the media again. See if you can get another segment aired that includes that video. And you should call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; have them make up posters. They"ll distribute them throughout the U.S., also to the F.B.I. and the state clearing houses."
"But the police said Robyn probably wasn"t abducted."
"The NCMEC can register her has an "endangered runaway"."
"My husband says it"s best to let the police handle all this," I say.
Sister Margaret shakes her head. "You are your child"s most powerful advocate. Don"t surrender that position to law enforcement. They are understaffed and overworked." are your child"s most powerful advocate. Don"t surrender that position to law enforcement. They are understaffed and overworked."
Before I can respond, I see, from the corner of my eye, a young Hispanic girl approach us. She has red platform shoes and a matching red miniskirt. She hugs a faux fur jacket to her chest and gives Sister Margaret a tired smile.
"Good to see you Felicia," the nun says reaching into the cooler for a sandwich.
"Hey Sistah," Felicia says in a heavy accent.
Another girl approaches. She is a young black girl, wearing shorts, so short I cringe inwardly at how uncomfortable they must be. She ambles towards us unsteadily, clopping down the street in ultra high heels. Two more girls appear behind her similarly dressed.
Half a dozen young girls crowd round us, greedily chomping down the sandwiches. Some girls eat two or three sandwiches before guzzling down the bottled water. Sister Margaret makes small talk with them, calling each by name as the girls give me a wary eye. Each one is wearing a different perfume, producing a sickeningly sweet olfactory cacophony that wreaths us.
"Yolanda, where"s your coat?" Sister Margaret asks one of the girls who"s only clothed in a mini skirt and halter top.
"Sistah, I done tol" you my name is "Delicious"," the young girl says giving the nun a pointed look. The other girls laugh good-naturedly.
Sister Margaret trots round to the cab of the truck and opens the door. From behind the bench seat, she pulls out an old navy pea coat. As she approaches Yolanda, she flings the coat at her.
"If you catch cold, you"ll end up in the ER again," Sister Margaret warns.
"Nag, nag, nag," Yolanda says, rolling her eyes. She shrugs into the coat giving Sister Margaret a grudging look, but it"s plain from the relief on her face that she is grateful.
Sister Margaret then whips out Robyn"s picture.
"This girl"s name is Robyn. Anyone seen her around?"
My heart thuds in my chest, not only at the abruptness of the nun, but also as each one of the young girls cranes their necks for a peek at my daughter.
One of the girls emits an audible tsk-tsking as she shakes her head no. Two of them withdraw back to the grimy streets.
"This is Margot, her mother," says Sister Margaret. "She just wants to make sure that Robyn"s okay."
I dart a concerted glance in the nun"s direction, but she ignores me.
"If you see her, tell her to make contact."
The girl in the red platforms nods, giving me a wary look.
Eventually all of them drift away.
"I want Robyn home," I say sternly.
"I know that," says Sister Margaret. "They know that too. But you have to know how to talk to these girls without scaring them off." Sister Margaret arches an eyebrow at me.
And so the morning progresses. They come in twos or threes. All of them young. All dressed in ridiculous outfits. All of them hungry.
"How often do you do this?" I ask, as we enter a lull.
"Five days a week."
"Is it the same group of girls?"
Sister Margaret shakes her head. "Different every day."
"Where are their parents?" I ask.
"Most of these girls" parents are either addicts or prost.i.tutes themselves, or worse."
"Worse? What could be worse than that?"
"Remember Yolanda? Her mother actually sold Yolanda to johns when she turned eleven in order to support her crack habit. She was placed in the foster care system and shuttled from one home to the next for two years. She ran away from the last house because they beat her. She"s thirteen."
A car alarm screeches a block away.
"The ones that do come from decent homes a lot of times are just too embarra.s.sed to go back home."
"Don"t you try to get them off the street?"
"You think I"m doing this for my health?" says Sister Margaret jerking a thumb in the direction of the coolers.
"The convent I belong to, The Sisters of the Presentation was founded by a nun whose dream was to establish a safe haven for child prost.i.tutes; boys and girls.
The goal is to get them to stop tricking and into the youth center. But you have to establish trust. That takes time. And that"s something that none of these girls have a lot of." Sister Margaret squares her jaw and looks away from me.
In the distance, three more girls amble towards us. Sister Margaret seems to give one of them in particular a familiar grin.
"See that one there? The one in the black stockings?"
I nod as they approach.