Katrina Prado - The Whore of Babylon, A Memoir

“Did the police advise you to call the NCMEC?” she asks.

“What’s that?”

“ National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They can create posters for you that can be distributed nationwide.” Sister Margaret’s voice is dead serious.

“But Robyn’s friend Jenny said she’s in San Francisco.”

“If Robyn got mixed up with prostitution like your P.I. friend suggested, then it’s possible she could already have been moved.”

“Moved?” I ask. My heart thuds in my chest.

“You mentioned BLU BOY?”

I nod.

“He is a pimp,” she says, confirming Bart Strong’s earlier suspicion. “It’s common for pimps to move their girls from city to city to evade law enforcement.

I fight the sting of tears and try swallowing down the burn that flares in my gut.

“But she’s only fifteen,” I say.

“The average age of a teen prostitute on these streets is twelve to thirteen.”

I groan aloud.

“Customers vastly outnumber the prostitutes. For every fifteen hundred girls there are between fifteen and thirty thousand johns. These girls come from all kinds of homes. Neglect, abuse, you name it.”

“There was no abuse or neglect,” I argue.

Sister Margaret sighs. “Society puts enormous pressure on young women to be perfect and sexual from a very young age. Teenage girls are notorious for their low self-esteem,” she says. “Was she having trouble in school?”

I feel struck, as if by a dagger. I nod. Silent tears fall to my lap. “Always,” I whisper.

Sister Margaret nods.

The truck pitches to the curb and slows to a stop on a street that looks as forlorn and hopeless as I feel.

Sister Margaret yanks the gearshift into park and gives me a steely look.

“Make no mistake,” she says, “You’re in a war that you must win here. And if BLU BOY’s got a hold of your daughter, getting her back will be the fight of your life.”

The nun switches off the engine.

“Give me a hand,” Sister Margaret says, shooting out of the cab of the truck.

Even before I’ve come round to the back of the vehicle, the agile nun has already lowered the truck bed door and torn the lid off cooler closest to her. Inside, dozens of sandwiches are piled to the rim of the cooler.

“Grab that blue cooler,” says Sister Margaret.

I pull it towards me and flip off the lid. Inside is bottled water.

She turns around, leaning on the truck folding her arms across her chest, a rampart against the frigid wind that buffets both of us. The rank odor of sewer hangs stubbornly in the air. I grit my teeth to stifle a gag, and my hand dives into the pocket of my jeans for a Rolaids. Sister Margaret kicks away an empty Styrofoam container stained with spaghetti sauce that the wind has blown against her leg.

“What do we do now?” I ask.

“We wait,” Sister Margaret says with a smile.

A siren screams in the distance.

“Do you have any recent video of your daughter?”

“What?”

“Home movies?” Sister Margaret adds.

I search my memory. The last time we used the video recorder was when we moved to Pittsburg. I nod.

“It’s about a year old,” I say.

“Contact the media again. See if you can get another segment aired that includes that video. And you should call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; have them make up posters. They’ll distribute them throughout the U.S., also to the F.B.I. and the state clearing houses.”

“But the police said Robyn probably wasn’t abducted.”

“The NCMEC can register her has an ‘endangered runaway’.”

“My husband says it’s best to let the police handle all this,” I say.

Sister Margaret shakes her head. “ You are your child’s most powerful advocate. Don’t surrender that position to law enforcement. They are understaffed and overworked.”

Before I can respond, I see, from the corner of my eye, a young Hispanic girl approach us. She has red platform shoes and a matching red miniskirt. She hugs a faux fur jacket to her chest and gives Sister Margaret a tired smile.

“Good to see you Felicia,” the nun says reaching into the cooler for a sandwich.

“Hey Sistah,” Felicia says in a heavy accent.

Another girl approaches. She is a young black girl, wearing shorts, so short I cringe inwardly at how uncomfortable they must be. She ambles towards us unsteadily, clopping down the street in ultra high heels. Two more girls appear behind her similarly dressed.

Half a dozen young girls crowd round us, greedily chomping down the sandwiches. Some girls eat two or three sandwiches before guzzling down the bottled water. Sister Margaret makes small talk with them, calling each by name as the girls give me a wary eye. Each one is wearing a different perfume, producing a sickeningly sweet olfactory cacophony that wreaths us.

“Yolanda, where’s your coat?” Sister Margaret asks one of the girls who’s only clothed in a mini skirt and halter top.

“Sistah, I done tol’ you my name is ‘Delicious’,” the young girl says giving the nun a pointed look. The other girls laugh good-naturedly.

Sister Margaret trots round to the cab of the truck and opens the door. From behind the bench seat, she pulls out an old navy pea coat. As she approaches Yolanda, she flings the coat at her.

“If you catch cold, you’ll end up in the ER again,” Sister Margaret warns.

“Nag, nag, nag,” Yolanda says, rolling her eyes. She shrugs into the coat giving Sister Margaret a grudging look, but it’s plain from the relief on her face that she is grateful.

Sister Margaret then whips out Robyn’s picture.

“This girl’s name is Robyn. Anyone seen her around?”

My heart thuds in my chest, not only at the abruptness of the nun, but also as each one of the young girls cranes their necks for a peek at my daughter.

One of the girls emits an audible tsk-tsking as she shakes her head no. Two of them withdraw back to the grimy streets.

“This is Margot, her mother,” says Sister Margaret. “She just wants to make sure that Robyn’s okay.”

I dart a concerted glance in the nun’s direction, but she ignores me.

“If you see her, tell her to make contact.”

The girl in the red platforms nods, giving me a wary look.

Eventually all of them drift away.

“I want Robyn home,” I say sternly.

“I know that,” says Sister Margaret. “They know that too. But you have to know how to talk to these girls without scaring them off.” Sister Margaret arches an eyebrow at me.

And so the morning progresses. They come in twos or threes. All of them young. All dressed in ridiculous outfits. All of them hungry.

“How often do you do this?” I ask, as we enter a lull.

“Five days a week.”

“Is it the same group of girls?”

Sister Margaret shakes her head. “Different every day.”

“Where are their parents?” I ask.

“Most of these girls’ parents are either addicts or prostitutes themselves, or worse.”

“Worse? What could be worse than that?”

“Remember Yolanda? Her mother actually sold Yolanda to johns when she turned eleven in order to support her crack habit. She was placed in the foster care system and shuttled from one home to the next for two years. She ran away from the last house because they beat her. She’s thirteen.”

A car alarm screeches a block away.

“The ones that do come from decent homes a lot of times are just too embarrassed to go back home.”

“Don’t you try to get them off the street?”

“You think I’m doing this for my health?” says Sister Margaret jerking a thumb in the direction of the coolers.

“The convent I belong to, The Sisters of the Presentation was founded by a nun whose dream was to establish a safe haven for child prostitutes; boys and girls.