Marmalade

[Honey (DELETED 9612)]

Hell became the trunk of a 1992 Chevy Cavalier. Crammed into the space, my wrists and ankles bound, I felt more like spare baggage than a human being. There, in the darkness of the trunk, my bare body shifting and bouncing along with the movements of the car, I embraced Honey. I lost the part of myself that made me Emiko. Honey, when they held me. Honey, when they beat me. Honey.

---

Emiko had a family who loved her dearly. She had a mother, a father, two sisters, and a son. Everyday, she thought of them. In between clients, she asked herself, again and again, how she'd ended up with such a dramatic transformation, how Honey came to light. The change occurred over the days and nights spent in dark, damp basements and hot, overloaded trailers. And maybe Emiko had always been Honey, somewhere deep inside. She didn't know. She knew an endless parade of men and a constant change of scenery, where her sunrises and sunsets mixed together. Emiko knew the ways of human trafficking.

Honey became a coping mechanism. Her fear kept her rooted in the industry; she was tied, first to a madam and then to a john. She didn't have a preference, not when they beat the spirit out of her fragile body. At the beginning, Honey took refuge in the relationships she built with her fellow victims, but they disappeared, one by one. They were beaten to the point of disfigurement. They became unusable, and so they became burdens. Burdens didn't exist in the industry. Burdens left in body bags.

Life became a rollercoaster ride, with so many twists and turns that she became a passenger known for motion sickness. Emiko had left Japan for a job in Canada offering her more money a month than her job as a waitress. She'd been unable to support her mother and son on such a low income, and the offer seemed too good to pass up. When her papers went through, when she took the flight to Canada, she'd expected an easy transition; instead, Emiko had been loaded into a moving van and transported to the basement of a city home. She never made the connecting flight. There had been no job. There had been lies. She'd been deceived. In broken English, she'd tried to explain the confusion to her captors, but she'd quickly realized the state of her situation.

Being sold to a brothel was a lot like being sold to a farm. Before her transfer, the captors branded the women with characters Emiko associated with yakuza, and then she left one pair of hands for another. Madam treated her two companions with disgust. She worked them to the bone with chores, sometimes selling them out to do the same. They returned with bleeding hands and raw feet, from where they'd cleaned beyond clean. Madam had called Emiko honey, and that became her first transition to the darker side of the moon.

Her first client was a man named Carson (no last name given), and he beat her until she sobbed, until she begged for mercy. He said he liked her pain. After, she had three more clients. Their names and faces faded to the background. Madam explained to Honey that she had a debt of at least 5000 US dollars, and each man represented fifty dollars. Every man treated Honey worse than the last. When Honey asked why she hadn't entered into servitude like her other two companions, madam said that they were ugly, too ugly to make money.

When madam sold Honey, Honey made a journey in the trunk of that infamous Cavalier. She shared the space with a girl called Svetlana. (Everyone called her Daisy.) A story which had begun in Japan and traveled to Russia quickly transferred to the United States. They left New York for Chicago; they left Chicago for Las Vegas. They moved from city to city, following the money, until they eventually passed into Canada. They graduated from that Cavalier to the back of a tractor trailer, from two people to nearly fifty. Every city felt the same though, since they moved from crack den to crack den, from basement to basement, separating and reuniting.

Nothing overcame the feeling of being someone's property. The whole process of degradation began the moment that hot iron met Honey’s shoulder blade. She ceased being a human being and began being part of a massive movement. She became another sheep, another cow. Takahashi Emiko died the moment her captors destroyed her paperwork, likely the moment she stepped onto that first airplane. She likened her death to that of a drowning, where the water slowly filled her lungs. She gasped for air, but she got only more and more water. The whole process killed her. Her own desire for wanting more killed her, in both instances. On her worst days, she blamed herself for her circumstances, not the business of human trafficking, not her captors or her john on her madam. If only Emiko hadn't been so selfish. If only Emiko had languished in poverty like the rest of the people in such similar situations.

Everyone loved Honey. They had to love Honey. They paid fifty dollars for half an hour. They dressed her up and led her through casinos. They left her bare in the midst of private clubs. Drugs. There were so many drugs. New. Old. Liquid. Powder. Pill. Honey flourished, even as she wilted. The dark world she'd fallen into, the endless chasm that became her new home, reminded her of a world of fiction. They kept her high because she was more compliant, easily bent into so many different directions. It became hard to say no when no lacked meaning, when up became down.

Canada should have been better, but better became another victim of reality. Canada was more of the same, with more violence and more drugs. Honey changed hands again, along with twenty-two other girls. She never saw the faces of her new handlers, and Daisy said it was a good thing. The first a girl laid eyes on them became the last time. Their punishments were harsh and swift, dealt through a Chinese woman they all called Mama and her two sons, nicknamed Big and Small. Big carried the guns, while Small carried the knives. Wherever one went, the other followed. One girl lost an ear. Another girl lost an eye. Mama still believed in foot binding though, so her small feet made her slow and unsteady. Her cane reached far though.

Honey had once been beautiful, but a poor diet, constant stress, and daily drug usage destroyed her body: Her hair was falling out, and her nails were brittle. She had a bright smile, one forced on her lips by threats, kept on her face through punishments. Throughout her years in the underground, she'd never tried to take her own life, but she had acknowledged her own apathy. Every client took her one step closer to freedom, until she met that magic five-thousand-dollar mark and realized that she'd never taste freedom again. She knew she'd likely go the way of other girls and women, the ones incapable of performing their duties.

The first time Honey had seen someone shot, she watched a young girl wrestle her tiny frame from a bathroom window and take off down the street. Night had just fallen, so the girl's bare body blended in with the scenery, and yet, somehow, Big still made the shot. The bullet tore through her skull. The front of her head blew out, a mess of brain matter and blood. Big carried her body back and threw her in the tub, where it remained. Days later, when lazy flies began to circle over the body, Small stuffed the corpse in a large garbage bag and carried her away.

After violence came a time for reflection. Honey had been 15 when taken and was nearly 22 by the time they finally allowed her to play escort by day and prostitute by night. And as always, a gunman followed. Always Big. Around this time, Daisy killed her client and made an escape. She tasted freedom for six days before Small finally brought her back. They cut off her pinky finger and ring finger on her right hand and then took turns abusing her. Daisy was never quite the same. She was demoted back into the ranks, where men never cared beyond a woman's pretty face. Honey blamed herself. If only she'd been there to talk sense to Daisy. If only they'd escaped together.