Dolls in Cages

Originally published at Lazy Day Writing, now closed.

***

My name is Diya. I am a miracle. I am not as good as a boy, but my mother’s womb lay dry for so long, it seemed to have been forsaken. Then I emerged—healthy, strong, and beautiful. I would find a husband and bring a good bride price. I would rescue my family from the wretched poverty of our village. I would be our salvation. My name is Diya.

But no one asks my name anymore.

There is a fly on the wall beside me. I watch as it crawls over the cracked paint and dirt. It flicks its bulging eyes toward me, studies me for the minutest of moments, then kicks itself away from the wall and hums out of the room—leaving me alone.

I wish that I were alone more often. The room is humid, and my sweat sticks to me. I watch the door, wondering when my peace will be interrupted.

Peace. There is no such thing, not for me. A silent room could never conceal the turmoil of the heart and mind, the storm raging within a body so slender and frail it threatens to collapse.

I am broken, now. I can feel that somewhere deep in my heart. I have not seen a mirror, but I know that the heavy makeup—like a decorated doll—could not hide the dullness of my eyes, resigned to bear any burden. For what choice have I been given? I would need strength to fight.

Footsteps from outside the room. Heavy and impatient. I know what accompanies them—rough hands and a face like brick. They are all the same. The door opens, and I smile. My grin entices the stranger, not that he needs incentive. He is already stripping me, removing my body from my jurisdiction. I am no longer myself, but a doll—useful only in serving his pleasures. And I am devastated by my smile which drew him with such haste toward my flesh. It was not a smile of longing nor of happiness, of joy nor of contentment. It was a smile which held in its simple and unruly form the destruction of my resolutions. I smile in my pain so that more pain will not follow. It is a smile of resignation.

He is finished now. He leaves me in a heap. I wait until his footsteps die away before drawing the ragged clothes over my body once again. No tears escape my eyes. A passerby will hear no whimpers. I am numb, and I wonder if there is still a soul to be saved. Perhaps my body is truly all that exists of me now. And even that is worth little more than dirt.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember a time—though it seems a fairytale now—when I had a home, a family, a future.

The day was warm, and clouds marched like soldiers across the sun, giving the village brief moments of reprieve from the yellow glare. I was looking toward the tobacco field, shielding my eyes and wondering when my father would return. I thought I made out his form, obscured by layers of haze, but the image dwindled from my sight until I wasn’t sure it had ever existed. A gentle sigh trod across my lips, and I lowered my callused hands back to the washing.

“Diya! Diya!”

My mother’s voice wound around the house like yarn around an old woman’s hands.

“Yes, Mother! I’m coming.”

My steps were quick, my motions clumsy as a young goat. I was no more than twelve, but I was already blooming. It would not be long until I found a husband, and I was already dreaming of the pride swept over my father’s face.

The smell of cooking food wafted about the rats scurrying over the floor. My mother kicked at one with her foot, but the brazen thing did not retreat. It merely changed directions and continued to make use of our home.

There was a man standing in our hut, just beside the entrance. He was not tall and thin. There were no shadows cast over his features. He did not have a demon’s claws or tail. He did not hold a scythe or wear a crow-colored cloak. He was short, and his face was etched with wrinkles.

But he would be the death of me.

“Diya.” My mother’s voice was soft and gentle. “Remove your skirt.”

My brows knotted, and my eyes shifted between my mother and the stranger. What was that expression on her face? What was that tremble in her eyes?

My brows parted, and my eyes opened wide. My pursed lips suddenly dropped open, and the understanding flushing through my mind and over my face made my mother take steps toward me. But she didn’t touch.

“Mother…”

“Come now.” The man’s voice. It made me cringe. They thought… They thought I… “Come now. It will only take a moment. Remove your skirt and lie down on the floor.”

The whimpers inside of me, like paws scratching on a closed door, would not quiet. But I did as I was told. I did as I was told. And I cannot erase the expression on my mother’s face as the man spoke the words that would end me.

“The hymen is not intact. This girl is not pure.”

As I sit alone in my windowless room, I feel the tears coming along with the memory, like the plague of rats which stormed our crops. I push them down, again and again, but they only leave when there is nothing left to ravage.

“You are useless, now.” My father swung at me again—solid contact against my jaw. I could feel the bruise begin to blossom. “Admit it! Admit what you have done!” He waits, but only a moment. Then he strikes again, drumming his fist against my shoulder. “Admit it!”

“I did nothing.”

He did not move, but I could see the rage. It swarmed his flesh, swam through his veins and dripped from the pores of his cheeks.

“Liar.”

Then he struck me one final time, blackening the world.

I hear a young girl screaming. She is being beaten. Probably new. Maybe she hasn’t given in yet. Maybe she tried to get away. It does not occur to me that I am a young girl myself. I feel so old.

Not long after I was deemed impure, a man passed through our village. He said that he could get me a job selling fruit in the city. I would have to leave my family for a few years—maybe longer—but when I returned, I would bring with me good earnings, enough to help provide for my family. I was afraid, but I wanted so badly to be a blessing for my family. I wanted to prove to them that I was not useless. I wanted to prove it to myself.

So I left, along with another girl from my village. Her parents had been hesitant until they heard that I was going as well. Surely two young girls must be more secure than one. My own family had no such scruples.

I was, no doubt, far from their minds when the man sold us to the trafficker. Even farther when we arrived at the brothel. And by the time I met Shakti, I’d venture to guess I had ceased to exist to them at all.

My tears rolled onto the floor of the room, hot and stagnant with my fear. New bruises flowered across my arms, and the drumming in my chest seemed out of place. They told me I did not have a heart anymore.

“Who do you think you are?” Shakti slammed a brick into my stomach and used the sound of my retching as the perfect accompaniment to her sinister words. “You think you’re better than her? Or her? Or her?” Girls stood in a cluster around us, their backs crumpled, too afraid to look away. “They’re nothing, and so are you. You’re worth even less…” The brick struck my arm, and I cried out. But I was too afraid even to beg. “You think you’re too good to work? You think you can drive customers away and get away with it?”

They’d put me in a room with blank walls and a crippled man’s hungry stare. His cane stood in the corner, and he approached me with a slight limp. He put his hands on me and I screamed. He tore my dress away and I struck him. He put his hand over my mouth and pulled my hair hard. I bit down on his fingers. He left the room and didn’t come back. He forgot his cane.

Shakti struck me again, with her fist this time. I thought it seemed harder than the brick. “Well you’re not going to get away with it. You’ll learn, one way or another.”

Her hand clamped around my wrist, and she barked at three other girls to pin my limbs. They obeyed, though their eyes stuck firmly to the floor. Her son’s name jumped from Shakti’s lips, and he was there in an instant. I glanced from him to his mother, the sick grin of the son twisted into the dutiful expression of the mother. I lay still, not knowing what was coming.

Then he was on me, his black hair like smog, his skin like a thousand wasps swarming my flesh. I thrashed and screamed, but they held my malnourished body as though I were weightless. I prayed, but there was no one listening—no one but the fiend writhing over me, enjoying my desperation, my helplessness. He got to take something from me, something I could never get back. He got to take it, throw it away, and wash his hands of it. He never had to look at me again. But I had to go the rest of my life knowing I was worthless—as worthless as my parents made me out to be, as worthless as Shakti insisted I was, as worthless as the whole world deemed me, because I could not take and torture the way that a boy could.

They had backed away from me, all the girls. They were staring, perhaps remembering. They looked at me with a cold kind of sadness, a regretfulness. They knew something that I myself had not yet begun to comprehend.

I was broken.

The sounds of the beating have ended. I sit in the room and wonder if it was only a beating or if perhaps another girl has met my fate. Where does the innocence go, I wonder, when one girl’s is taken? Should it not be set free if its claimer does not wish to keep it? Should it not be released into the world, so that perhaps it will find a use somewhere else? I sigh because my musings are hollow. Of course that is not so. If it were, this place would not exist.

My thoughts are useless, yet still I think them—slowly, sparingly. I have lots of time to waste.

I turn my arm over and see the scars, the fingerprints of angry needles ground into my skin. It seems such a trivial thing, the meth. It takes me higher and then sets me down. Compared to the monstrosities of this place, it is the stuff of angels.

I bet angels take prostitutes. After all, everyone else does.

It was winter. The snow was driving like knives, and whispers overcame the coarse evening air. The window was open. I would have to do this quickly, before anyone noticed the draft seeping into the already cold building.

The snow-covered garbage fifteen feet below me beckoned. I had fallen out of a tree once when I was younger. Mother had scolded me. I could scrape my beautiful face doing things like that. And then what?

She’d stopped at that. And then what? What she had meant was, and then what would you be worth? The answer, of course, was nothing.

I thought about jumping again. I even leaned forward a little bit, far enough for the cold to bite down hard on my bare shoulders, my torso covered only by a sleeveless shirt. The wind was licking its chops, waiting for me to dive.

Maybe the fall will kill me, I thought. Or maybe Shakti will catch me, and she will finally succeed in beating me to death. Maybe I could end it. The thoughts lounged sweetly in my mind, but hidden within them was a bitter seed. I did not want to die.

As fervently, as desperately as I wanted to stop living, the simple fact rang out within my chest, solidly and deliberately: I did not want to die.

My body felt shattered, my mind devastated. My one real hope of release was gone. For as I had sat, so many days and nights, in the cell of a room—tormented by the torrent of attackers that never failed to come—I had known that I had a way out, if I chose to take it. I had known that one last grain of power still rested with me. I had known that I could still choose.

But with that terrible sensation came another, one that I could not place as lethal or benign. I could not tell if my trembling hands were a warning or a call to action. I had no idea whether my racing heart meant I was finished or I was only beginning. But somewhere, struggling to find a foothold in a world trying to drag it down, was a small bit of hope. If the will to survive was still within me, who was to say what else I had neglected. What strength lurked just beneath the surface? What tenacity skulked through shadows of my heart too dark to see? I could never surrender with a loaded gun inches from my hand. I could never give my soul when so much of it still clung to me.

I leapt.

I heard the crash of my bones against the pile of garbage and smelled the rotten trash not tempered by layers of ice and snow. My limbs were still intact, with only minor cuts and bruises as tokens of my escape.

A mousey woman passed by, apparently returning from the market. She had surely seen my fall but did not speak. She would probably feel more concern for the trash than for my expendable flesh. Anyone would.

The building behind me cast out a warning. Feet were stirring within. I took up a runner’s stance and bolted, driving my legs as fast as the abused and drug-worn things would go. At first they seemed nearly rotten from disuse. But fear is a curious thing. It can drive you away as easily as it can entice you to stay.

Dusk swept the streets of the mold, the salty tears, the rats and the half-dead people walking from place to place, never knowing where they’re going until they stumble and fall face-first toward their destinations. Dusk wound its way through the city, hiding from humanity the worst of itself. Through the layers of darkness, there was no pain, no famine, no sorrow. There was nothing but the flattened carcass of day. Through the dark, cool air, a person could see the streets lined with gold, with nothing to contradict him but the whispers of his brothers.

Through the dimness, the police station was a sanctuary. It was Heaven’s gates opening up to meet me, congratulating me for enduring my journey, reassuring me.

The door swung open as though by its own design, and I found myself face to face with an angel. His flaxen hair was pure as the wings adorning his back, and his stature offered a protection that I had never known. I took his hand, and he lead me into my personal Heaven, my reward, so long awaited.

I told him where I was from, what I’d been through. I told him how glad I was to be free, that I never thought I would know that feeling. I told him I had been so afraid.

Then there were more. They surrounded me. And though the night was black as a frying pan, a light seemed to fall across the men encircling me, showing me their faces, showing me what they truly were. I saw police badges, demon eyes, and hands reaching out for me. They were bought and paid for, just like everything else in this place.

A man jumped on top of me, like a snake lashing out at its prey. I could see him clearly, now. He was the angel. His hair was black as any I’d ever seen, and his face was streaked with mud. His hands were rough and grimy, and he hurt no less than any other. I screamed and fought, but my strength against his was a grain of sand against a mountain.

When he pulled away to give another his turn, I stumbled to my feet. The world outside was scary and vague, but I would rather be eaten alive in a world unknown than become a walking corpse in the places I had seen. There had to be a way. There had to be a chance.

I made it to the door before they dragged me back. Back to the pain. Back to the brothel. Back to the only place that I would ever know.

What good is hope in a world as hopeless as this?

The room enclosing me is silent. The walls are mute. I know they are deaf, too. But even if they weren’t, they would never listen to me.

I touch the matted makeup on my face and stunt my thoughts. They only make the days longer. The more swiftly the days move, the more swiftly death approaches.

There is no question, now.

I am broken.

The door swings open, and a man enters.