“How old are you?” Colleen asked her.
“Sixteen.”
Colleen swore, and kept swearing, and swore until she gasped for air. “Seriously, that motherfucker. What did he do to you?”
Svetlana showed her. Round brands of cigarette burns and scars marked her thin thighs. Her wrists and upper arms were bruised.
“I swear to God,” Colleen said. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
“I don’t know what to do, Colleen. I don’t know where to go.”
Colleen researched child services, women’s shelters, and pro bono attorneys on her phone, coming up with names and numbers. “You’re getting out of here. That’s what you’re doing.”
Svetlana shook her head, her blond curls whipping around her face. “He’ll come after me. If I am in custody of government, he will think I went to police and kill me.”
“The women’s shelters can help you hide and will get restraining orders,” Colleen said, writing down phone numbers on a matchbook with a pencil stub.
Svetlana laughed a scoff. “Sergey is big man in bratva. What do you think American restraining order will mean to him? Nothing. It will mean nothing to him. He will laugh at it.”
She set her mouth in a hard line. “They will make Sergey listen.”
“He probably own half the politicians in Los Angeles. And his name not really Sergey. His name Silvestr Butorin. His younger sister is head of Butorin bratva, and he hates her for it. He feels he was passed over because he didn’t go to some boarding school where everybody became connected. He’s too stupid to take over, though. He likes girls and cocaine too much. But he still powerful enough to find me and kill me because he’s pissed off.”
“You’re only sixteen. Child protective services can send you out of state. They’ll give you a new name, and you’ll just be gone. They might even be able to help you go home to Russia.”
“I don’t have passport, and I don’t want to go back to Russia.”
“But you traveled here. You must have a passport.”
Svetlana shook her head. “Silvestr has private airplane. When we are in New York, an American government man come on plane, say ‘Everyone has visa, right?’ and Silvestr give him money. No one care about passport.”
Yeah, Colleen could believe that. “Okay, but the police or Interpol or some other agency might be able to help you find your family.”
Her young face hardened. “My mother sold me to man who sold me to Silvestr. She say she lucky to get money for me before I become whore and end up pregnant and drug addict on her doorstep.”
Colleen flinched. “Wow, that’s rough.”
Her own mother’s words echoed in her mind. You shouldn’t be taking those kinds of classes in college. How will computer classes help you when you come back to run the feed store? You don’t need those to run a cash register.
Svetlana grated out, “She say it not enough money to compensate her for life I stole from her by being born. She say I don’t clean house for her, that I don’t cook for her, so I am trash.”
Colleen’s father had added, You have to come back here to run the feed store and take care of us in our old age. Your sisters are pretty enough to get married, so you’ll be here with us. You shouldn’t have even gone to college, anyway. College is wasted on girls. You just ended up with a bunch of debt that we’ll have to pay off because you’ll be working in the store for us. I don’t know why you even went.
Svetlana continued, “She say that I am just going to end up dead like my sister, and my sister was the good one. I am trash and should be thrown out like trash.”
What was it about hearing someone else’s family problems that made Colleen’s own rear up in her head like a pissed-off stallion?
Her father: Now, your brother Blade is the smart one of the family. He could’ve gone to college if he’d wanted to. He would’ve gotten a useful degree, too, like education or being a dental assistant, maybe a construction manager. Not like computers.
Her mother: Family first. You have to put your family first. Family always comes first.
Her father: Your brother Mace is such a smart guy. When he was cutting down a tree the other day, he measured out where it was going to fall so it wouldn’t hit the landscaping company’s truck. He probably saved that company thirty thousand dollars by not hitting their truck with a tree.
Her mother: We have done so much for you, raising you up, taking you to church and everything. We didn’t teach you to be like this. You shouldn’t be taking classes with so many boys. How does that make your brothers look because they don’t want to take those classes?
Her father: I’m so proud of your brother Axe. He’s working for that construction company that builds special factories for computer-making. He lit a cigarette in one of those places, and the fire system kicked in. Oxygen-sucking foam filled the whole room. If he hadn’t run out of there, he would have died. But he ran real fast, so he didn’t die.
Her mother: You aren’t putting your family first. You’re abandoning us. You’re selfish because you’re not doing what we need you to, which is to run the feed store for us so we can retire but still have the money. You’re not what we wanted. You’ve never been what we wanted.
