Beautiful Justice

chapter two

Underworld Girl

I AM SEVEN YEARS OLD, and my favorite color is pink. I love ballet. Books, dolls, and art fill my room. I read for hours on my white chaise surrounded by stuffed animals and listen to my music box with the delicate roses and gold edges. My dream is to become a writer one day.

I love to sing “Castle on a Cloud” from the musical Les Misérables. The young Cosette, separated from her mother and condemned to a life of abuse, cries out, “I know a place where no one is lost. I know a place where no one cries. Crying at all is not allowed. Not in my castle on a cloud.”

My teachers at school tell me to stop sucking my thumb. “Big girls don’t suck their thumbs,” they say. What do they know? They do not see what I see. This is how I comfort myself, and I won’t give it up. I stop sucking my thumb at school but continue at home. It helps me fall asleep at night. It helps me forget.

When I take baths, I rest on my back and sing the first song I created, “Flying wings, angels sing, strawberry dreams.” Over and over I sing the same chorus, moving my arms like an angel.

Hanging from the bathroom wall is a framed verse from the book of I Samuel. It is known as Hannah’s Prayer, but in this version, my name replaces the name of the son she prays for. The calligraphy reads, “I have prayed for this child, Brooke, and the Lord has granted me what I have asked of him, so now I give her to the Lord. For her whole life she will be given over to him.”

My mom taught me God is love. But she is in the hospital now because of a sickness that left her unable to walk or speak. The doctors say she may never walk again. I fear she will never return. My dad travels for work to take care of our family and pay for the expensive hospital bills, so I have a string of nannies. One after another.

The fat Irish woman who left us in the house alone and told us it was “hide and go seek.” The lady from India with the scarred face who stole my mom’s credit card and showed us a movie about strippers. The sensitive Polish woman, whose husband painted landscapes with prize racehorses. The baton twirler from Iowa.

The two women from Ethiopia who smiled sweetly and made rich, spicy food, traditional dishes from their homeland. The joyful woman named Dee Dee, who had a thick braid of blonde hair falling down to her lower back and later married a man named Dee.

The studious woman with wiry hair, a mouse face, and glasses who wrapped a towel around me when I got out of the tub. I loved the African ladies most. One of them slept in my pink room for a while. She smelled like red spices and shea-butter body cream.

MY NANNY NOW is a man who says he serves God. Jack wears baseball caps and plaid shirts. He plays video games and refuses to wash the dishes. My nanny talks about God, too. He says it is God’s will for him to punish me for my sins.

What punishment do I deserve? He does not say the word, and I do not have language for what is happening. I cannot tell anyone what his deity demands on my white iron bed with the pink sheets. “You are a worthless whore,” he tells me. “You make me do this to you.” When he hurts me, repeating the Lord’s Prayer, I fly outside my body.

His voice echoes within me: “Deliver us from evil. Deliver us from evil.” A part of me splits off to survive, to guard the truth, to carry the unbearable weight of this. I multiply and disappear.

The first time he hurts me, a door opens into his underworld. A place filled with secrets and shadows, people with dead eyes. He secretly takes me to houses and parties to sell me to men for sex.

They film me with adults and other children. I am caged and taunted like a trapped animal. This all happens in one of the most affluent areas of Texas, Highland Park, in Dallas, where families live and play on idyllic oak-lined streets laced with luxury cars and sprawling mansions.

When they film me, I fly outside my body to take refuge in the beautiful worlds I create: one with a white horse, one where I dance with the angels. Each time they invade me, I soar above them.

I am passed from man to man, hand to hand, like a disposable doll. My soul travels and retreats, crosses oceans, centuries. I live a thousand lives in a single night. Imagination is my fortress.

Reality is unbearable, so I create my own.

This rhythm continues. During the day, I attend school. At night, I belong to him—and whoever is interested in buying me. The buyers are wealthy white men who are hungry to inflict pain. Some of the most painful moments occur when I am forced to watch others being abused.

I numb myself, circling my life as if it belongs to someone else. I became a watcher of the abuse. This is happening to some other little girl, the evil one who needs to be punished, I tell myself. I create a wall, so I can live on the light side and be the good one who lives without pain.

But I cannot fully escape this torment. It bleeds into my writing and art. When I visit my mom in the hospital, she looks like a pale mannequin in her white gown, surrounded by tubes. I don’t know what to say, so I give her a poem I wrote about a baby lamb that is separated from her flock. She encourages me to read my poem aloud.

My brothers laugh when I reach the part about the fear, so I crawl under a table to hide while the nurse comes in to tend to my mom. “How are you?” the nurse asks warmly. “I read a poem,” I reply, as if that explains everything. What I do not say is this: I am afraid. I am afraid I am going to lose her. I am afraid she will stay like this and never come home.

But after a month of treatment and physical therapy, my mom does return home from the hospital in a wheelchair. She is still unable to speak, but she writes notes to me, saying, “I love you.” “I love you,” I write back. “You can talk,” she writes on a small piece of paper. But I don’t want to talk. I am too terrified and ashamed. My mom senses something is wrong, though, and fires my nanny.

WITH BOTH MY parents finally home, I return to the comfort of family dinners, laughter, and music. When my dad is in town, he plays guitar for us and sings silly songs as I dance around the living room with my brothers, Luke and Cliff. He rewrites the lyrics to fifties and sixties tunes, so each one of us has a theme song to dance to. My theme song is called “Brookie Boo,” which is a rewrite of the Buddy Holly classic “Peggy Sue.” Every time he starts the song “Brookie Boo, I love you,” I giggle and prance around the room.

My dad also creates a series of adventure stories called “Sissy and Bubba.” This courageous brother-and-sister duo travel, on their own, to places like the Amazon jungle and Siberia in hot air balloons on undercover missions and overcome countless villains all before their bedtime.

My older brother, Luke, is tall, quiet, and a keen observer of everyone around him. He lives for his time in nature: exploring creeks, fishing, and collecting insects and turtles. Strong yet tenderhearted, Luke exudes a steadfast loyalty.

He doesn’t say much, but fights for those he loves. When one of the cruel neighborhood boys tries to bully me, he stands up to him until he finally backs down. “Leave my sister alone,” Luke demands, clenching his fists. When the same pudgy black-haired boy tries to attack our soft-spoken Polish nanny, Luke stares him down and punches him in the face without saying a word.

My younger brother, Clifton, loves to express himself, radiates passion, and always finds some kind of mischief. He bolted out of the house at the age of three and furiously pedaled his Big Wheel down the street, completely naked. He is endlessly curious and wants to know how everything works. We call Clifton “Day Day” because before he could talk, he would wander around the house repeating the word day, day, day, day.

My dad makes me laugh again. Blaring Led Zeppelin in the car, he does his weird car dance where he pumps his fist in the air as we both sing along with Robert Plant. He plays his favorite classic rock records for me and introduces me to artists like Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Dad also takes me out to eat at my favorite Mexican food restaurant and treats me to trips to the local book and music stores, telling me I can pick out any book or CD I want. “Always remember,” he says as we browse adventure stories and fairy tales, “books are our friends. Readers are leaders.”

I smile, indulging him. “I know, Dad.”

He takes me to art museums, concerts, and Broadway musicals. For my first concert, my mom, dad, brothers, and I go to see the Beach Boys. I adore their music and dance the whole afternoon beside my father, wearing my new pair of white sunglasses. He reminds me joy is still possible.

With all the demands of his travel, providing for our family, and taking care of my mom, my dad notices no signs of the abuse. My parents think my sadness is due to the pain of having been separated from my mom and her struggle with severe health issues. I only want to please him and make him proud of me.

One of Dad’s nicknames for me is “Ferocious Brain.” He walks into the kitchen in the morning and pats me on the head, saying, “How is my Ferocious Brain doing today?” He affirms my intellect, my ability to think for myself, and often plays devil’s advocate, so I have to defend my point of view.