Chapter 14: Don't Fall Back!

The last time I had stopped by her apartment after work, I had told Carmen I would be taking a day off. Things had gotten a lot lighter at the office, and I wanted to take some time off to recuperate from all my overtime hours.

Carmen didn’t seem to understand how I could take a day off if I needed it. I explained it was only because the tight deadlines had passed. Before, I had been taking work home for weeks, laboring on Excel spreadsheets at the kitchen table until the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes, though, it seemed like she thought I wasn’t telling her the truth about who I was, and what in the world I was doing. I knew suspicion was a survival skill that could help keep a child like her alive on these streets, but it felt like a wall I kept colliding with, no matter how I tried to earn her trust.

I told Carmen I would come by the next morning and give her an update about the search for her birth certificate. But since I didn’t hear from anyone  the next day until around 11am, it was nearly lunch time when I walked to her apartment.

She had already left, the shirtless neighbor told me, as I stared at the padlock on her door. She was one of several tenants in a “hotel” where she paid a daily rate of $3.75 a day to live in a cramped, dark 2^nd floor room with only a tiny window to let in some air from the street below. The ceiling was so low in most of the room, that I had to bend low at the waist or crawl on hands and knees just to get in.

But not today, because no one was there.

On the way back to my own apartment, I stopped to see Andre's stepdad, Virgilio, who is a security guard at a famous building about halfway between her apartment and mind. The building was just at the junction of the nice neighborhoods and the more difficult ones, but the little stock yard Virgilio guarded was paved with mud and frequented by street dogs. Andre’s dad slept inside one of the old houses used to store props and old supplies, on an old mattress. Once, I had seen smoke arising from the side of the house, which was overgrown with weeds. Andre told me that he would build a fire there to cook whatever food he could buy with his earnings from polishing shoes and selling limoncillos, or a small fruit, to tourists visiting the nearby Palacio Nacional, or the Dominican equivalent to the White House.  

I slid open the heavy iron door. By now Virgilio, his friend Richard, and even the dogs knew me. Stepping between puddles and thanking him for the chair he always offered me, I asked if he had seen Carmen today. She would often come by the stock yard during the day, to escape the heat of the apartment, and spend time with her friend Andre.

Virgilio said he hadn’t seen Carmen that day, but that Andre would be back any moment.

I told him to tell Andre I would bring him lunch—a casserole I had made the night before.

But by the time I packed the lunch and returned to the stockyard, Andre had already left. On a whim, I decided to check the malecón for Carmen. I went to her usual spot on the boardwalk, this time taking public transportation instead of jogging, since it was the hot part of the afternoon. I didn’t want to see her there, but I figured I would enjoy the sunshine on the waves and the lull before the rush hour traffic either way.

She was there. I think we were both surprised and a bit dismayed to see each other. But I just smiled and sat down anyway.

We ate the lunch I had packed. I could tell she didn’t relish my roasted vegetable cheese casserole as much  as I did. But it was food, so she ate it, with a bit of reluctance.

As we finished, I said, gently but without reluctance,

“If you decided to "dejar esto" or leave this life like you told me, what happened today?”

She confessed that she had a debt of 1100 pesos of rent to pay in the apartment and she was going to get kicked out if she didn't pay that day.

“But, I haven’t seen any "clientes" today because I keep telling them I won’t do what they’re asking for, because I’m "recien parida"—I just gave birth.”

“Well, that’s good,” I conceded. You have to give yourself some rest.”

She confessed she was still worn out from the labor, now about two weeks ago.

She agreed to walk back with me.

I said, “Let’s ask God to provide for your rent.”

“I did. I asked him this morning,” she said.

We talked about how God answers prayer, how He is merciful, and how He is faithful even when we are unfaithful. But how she never needs to go back to prostitution when she needs something, because her Father will take care of her.

Although I almost never carry more than 300 pesos with me anywhere on the streets, I had exactly 1100 pesos (about $27) and some change in my pocket. I’ve learned not to question the nudge to generosity in certain moments, although I had previously decided not to make our relationship based on money. But this seemed like a desperate situation, and I felt peace from God about giving. 

“Carmen,” I began. “I think God is providing for you by sending me here to find you today, with exactly the money you need. I don’t imagine this will happen again, but I feel this is a special situation and God wants to show you His special provision today. If I pay this it's so that you can have a place to stay while we wait for things to work out for you to move as you asked, but don't go back to prostitution, ok? God will always provide a way out.”

“Si.”

I didn’t feel like a hypocrite saying God would provide a way out, because I was proving it to her this time. I wouldn’t always be the one to prove it to her, but that’s because provision comes from God, not from any human. I tried to explain it a bit without complicating things too much.

As we walked up one of the side streets through a nicer neighborhood, we passed a white SUV.

“That’s him. That guy hasn’t left me alone all day,” Carmen said. “I told him I wouldn’t do what he wanted, but he wouldn’t give up. He just kept coming back and pressuring me.”

I looked into the bright, new vehicle and wondered what kind of job and family this man had. I wondered who else rode with him that car. I wondered what kind of double life he lived. I wondered what kind of perversion would make him persist in harassing a 14 year-old girl who had just given birth.

“I really don’t want to go back to this life,” Carmen said. “I am really looking forward to going to school.” It was something she mentioned all the time those days. She would always say,

“It seems like the Lily House is such a beautiful place.” I held onto her words. I couldn’t think about the SUVs and the return to the malecón.

“We have to hope in God,” I told Carmen.

I just wanted her to be at Lily House, but we still didn’t have the birth certificate.

We prayed together for good news—and for strength and healing in the meantime.