Chapter 9: Beginning to Hope

The next time I saw Carmen, I was afraid she wouldn't want to talk to me because I had made a scene while she was "working". I asked her if she was offended.

“Why?” she asked, confused.

“Because of…because of what I said last time,” I ventured. “You motioned for me to keep going, but I stopped anyway to talk to that man who was with you.”

“What? Of course not,” she answered, laughing. Suddenly, it seemed perhaps the very words I thought might have separated us, may have proved to her that she is worth fighting for.

What she told me next, came from a heart torn by pain. Until now, she had never shared any intimate details about her “work” with me, just surface information.

She said that same night I ran away from her with tears streaming down my face, a man picked her up in a car later. He took her to a "cabaña" (pay-by-the-hour motel) far away, used and abused her, and then didn't pay her as agreed.

He just left her there, alone on the other side of town.

"Dios lo pagará por lo que hizo a mi. –God will pay him for what he did to me.” She said she cried many tears that night.

“I don’t think I have ever cried so hard,” she said.

I listened. I couldn’t believe that the night I had cried out to God in so much desperation, had ended like this. Yet, I began to hope that this experience, as horrible as it was, would somehow serve to show her that her heart wasn’t numb yet. She still felt pain. If only that pain could turn to hope!

 “Estoy cansada de esto—I’m tired of being on the streets.” She said the words with disgust, yet they gave me faith that something was shifting. That was the first time I remembered her speaking so bluntly about how she felt about it.

Suddenly, I asked,

“Carmen, were you raped as a child?  Is that why you want to be like Berenice when you grow up—the woman who fights for justice for the abused children?”

“Yes. When I was four years old,” she said.

My heart felt as though something heavy was pressing down on it.

Four years old.

I wept inwardly. Yet, I realized during that conversation that Carmen was finally admitting her brokenness. The wall I often felt when I was talking with her had started to crumble, and she seemed ready for a change.

All along, I had been talking to her about this not being her forever if she didn’t want it to be, about new opportunities for change, about going back to school and getting a different kind of job. I always told her she is made in God's image and has talent, and her past does not define her future.

We would always pray together when we talked, but this time it was Carmen, not me, who asked if we could pray.

Something was definitely shifting. Something I had been praying for since the moment I met Carmen.

The very next day, I wrote to Allison, the director of a safe house in San Pedro, asking about the capacity of their safe house. I wanted to be ready with the details of what she could do next, as soon as she was ready to get out.

 I wrote,

“Carmen told me that if it were a real option to go work and make jewelry and move to San Pedro, she would take it in a heartbeat. She is weary and broken with the life she's in. She's ready to get out.”

I continued, “The other thing is, she lives alone and has to pay rent daily (200 pesos, or about $5). So her goal is to earn 500 pesos every day on the malecon. But she is due to deliver her baby by C-section on December 2, and she has no idea how she's going to make it after that. Her dad lives in Puerto Rico and doesn't send a penny to the family, and her mom earns a very low wage as well.”

Later, I would tell my friend Melissa to pray:

“It seems God is working in her, and bringing her to a breaking point.”

“God is so good,” Melissa answered.

“And He’s breaking my heart also every time I see her, re-centering me in His grace.”

My friend and mentor Viola reminded me that God is my Abba Padre, Daddy God. She said my experience of praying for and loving Carmen was going to rise up as a memorial in my life. On October 28, I wrote in my journal,

May it be the kind of memorial that reminds us how mighty and how loving You are. May Carmen herself be a walking memorial to Your grace and mercy, bringing peace and joy and beauty from the turmoil and pain and despair. Amen!