Out of the Cages Read online

  ‘As the CEO of Destiny Rescue Australia, I see and hear of these atrocities every single day. Penny has captured the strength & determination of Meena beautifully as a shining example of all rescued children. A truly riveting read! The only way evil can triumph is if good people do nothing.’

  Michelle Winser

  CEO, Destiny Rescue Australia

  ‘Out of the Cages reveals the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual suffering of young girls trafficked into global systems of prostitution. Young adult readers will gain insight into the deception, the betrayal of trust, the systemic collusion, and, above all, the extreme suffering of vulnerable girls whose bodies have become fodder to fuel a global industry. I hope this book will compel all who read it to do all they can to bring an end to sexual slavery.’

  Melinda Tankard Reist

  Writer, speaker, activist

  ‘Amazing. One cannot read this gripping and beautifully crafted novel of Meena and her rehabilitation without being moved by the plight of trafficked children … [it is] ultimately inspiring, showing the strength of the human spirit to hope and believe in friendship during traumatic times.’

  Rosanne Hawke

  Author of Shahana: Through My Eyes

  ‘Compelling and confronting, this is a story that provides an insight into a life seldom seen and gives voices to women who are seldom heard. The journey of a girl from being trafficked to rehabilitation is raw and gritty but also filled with glimpses of hope.’

  Melody Tan

  At the Table

  ‘An excellent drama of truth that takes place in a world we are not aware of … I am excited to see what this book can do to rescue the lives of many in cages.’

  Daisy George

  Former aid worker, Oasis India

  ‘An intricate tapestry of emotions and information on the global curse of child sex trafficking.’

  Patricia Weerakoon

  Sexologist and author

  ‘Beautifully written, touching and heartbreaking. It engraved a powerful message that we all need to do something to combat human trafficking.’

  Ambika Baniya

  Editorial adviser, Nepali language/culture

  ‘Jaye’s words resonated deeply, touching on a story that is so often told only after the horrific events unfold. Jaye’s unique perspective on the sex trafficking industry and the lives of these women gives voice to the human experiences behind the headlines. This isn’t just a novel about brutality, cruelty and evil, it’s a novel about hope and friendship.’

  Kate Marchesi

  Lawyer and women’s rights advocate

  ‘Jaye doesn’t write with sentimentality or condemnation to gain the reader’s approval. She tells the story with courage and describes the brutality and sex scenes genuinely from the character’s perspective. A brave book written from the heart.’

  Robbie Kirk

  Macleay Island Street Library

  Penny Jaye

  The Cages

  Out of

  Out of the Cages

  Published by Rhiza Edge

  An Imprint of Rhiza Press

  PO Box 1519

  Capalaba QLD 4157

  Australia

  www.rhizaedge.com.au

  © Penny Jaye, 2018

  Cover Design by Carmen Dougherty, Book Whispers

  Editing by Emily Lighezzolo, Rhiza Edge

  Layout by Rhiza Press

  ISBN : 9781925563535 (Ebook)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  For those who have not yet returned,

  and those that fight for them.

  Prologue

  Nepal. Three years ago ...

  Two girls squat by the bank of a river. Their brown hands plunge sudsy clothes into water, and out again. A blouse, a skirt, a colourless handkerchief. They talk as they work; the taller one, Meena, often looks up, laughing. Her hair sits in a dark oiled braid down her back. The gold-plated stud she wears in one side of her nose shines in the morning light. She is twelve years old.

  The girl beside her is not yet eleven. Her smile is softer, her cheeks fuller. Her name is Putali—Putali Maya—which means ‘butterfly’ and ‘love’.

  They work by the river until their hands hurt and the wet clothes are stacked, twisted and wrung in metal basins. Then, still talking, the girls carry their basins to a nearby fence. A group of younger children walk along the road towards the school. Their uniforms starched white and blue. Red ribbons laughing in the small girls’ hair.

  ‘Pretty, pretty,’ Meena mutters under her breath.

  There are no ribbons in Meena or Putali’s hair.

  ‘I’d go back to school if I could,’ Putali murmurs. She lowers her basin.

  Meena shakes her head. ‘Hoina. I wouldn’t. Can’t make money at school, and my baa’s not like yours.’

  Putali doesn’t comment. She knows what Meena means. Their fathers are as different as day and night. Before he went away, Putali’s father used to save his daily wage to buy his children twisted toffee from the sweets seller. But Meena’s drunken father beat her because they didn’t have enough to eat. She understood now why Meena chose to store food among Putali’s mother’s supply, and why Meena often joined them for the night. Her laughter quiet, her shoulders trembling in the darkness. Still, she follows the school girls with her eyes. ‘I’ll go back to class, once my mother is better,’ she says.

  They let the school children pass and begin to hang their washing out. One by one, they stretch the clothes over the barbed wire to dry in the sun. Putali’s long shirt catches on the wire and tears slightly. She groans. Her clothes are always worn. Always old; always from someone else.

  As the last piece of clothing is hung out to dry, the boys ride up. Rajit and Santosh. They are Meena’s uncle’s boys. They’re on motorbikes and have spare money. Syringe packets lean out the top of their jacket pockets.

  ‘Timi-lai kasto chha?’ Rajit asks Meena with his usual coy grin. ‘How are you?’

  Meena just giggles in reply and Putali ducks her head to hide a smile. It’s obvious Meena likes the boys. She always has, but it’s gotten worse since the boys started meeting them at the river several months ago. At first, they just brought sweets, but it soon progressed to larger gifts. Like a pretty hair clip, or a bunch of bananas for Putali’s sick mother. Lately the boys have been offering them rides on their motorbikes. Putali never goes, but Meena does—she laughs and laughs until her face glows and her cheeks don’t look so hollow.

  ‘Did your baa tell you about the job?’ Rajit asks Meena as he rolls a cigarette.

  Meena shakes her head.

  Rajit nods slightly, as if he understands. ‘Our fathers have been talking,’ he says. ‘They’ve found out about a job. It’ll pay well.’

  Meena smiles quickly, hiding a flash of disappointment. ‘Congratulations. When do you start?’

  Rajit raises his eyebrows. ‘Me?’ He and Santosh share a chuckle. ‘It’s not a job for me. It’s for you, both of you. You won’t have to chip rocks or wash some rich rani’s filthy laundry ever again!’

  ‘A job for me?’ Putali asks, lifting her face to stare openly at the boys.

  Santosh shrugs like it’s no big deal. ‘Yeah, Meena’s baa said your mum is sick. She could do with the extra money, couldn’t she? And your dad’s, where—?’

  ‘Arab.’ Putali’s answer is barely a whisper.
‘He has work there.’

  ‘Right. Arab. So he’s not coming back anytime soon, is he?’

  Putali looks away, back up the hill towards the settlement. No, her father isn’t coming back soon. And her mother isn’t getting any better. She feels a hand on her shoulder. Meena. Hope is sparkling in her eyes like the bangles on the wrist of a dancer. Putali feels the excitement catching, even over her own sadness.

  ‘Are you interested?’ Santosh pushes. There is something unreadable in his expression.

  ‘What about my aama? My mother? Who will care for her, if I have a job? Or do the washing?’ Putali waves a hand towards their clothes, flapping along the wire.

  Meena leans closer. ‘Your bajai-aama, she can help. And your little brother—he’s almost six now. That’s much bigger. A job will change everything—just imagine! Enough money for proper medicine and masu, meat, to make your aama strong ...’

  Putali frowns. She is thinking.

  The boys are impatient to get going. Rajit stubs out his cigarette and they climb back onto their motorbikes.

  ‘Think about it,’ he says. ‘But don’t tell anyone. You know how hard it is to find work these days. You don’t want someone hearing you talk and snatching your spot on the bus.’

  ‘B-b-bus?’ Putali stammers.

  Santosh almost rolls his eyes but he catches himself and instead bends as far over the bike’s handlebars towards Putali as he can. His face is so close, Putali can smell his dry breath and the aftershave he wears. ‘The interview’s in India’ he whispers.

  ‘Interview? India?’ Meena squeals. ‘Like a real job? In Kolkata? Or Delhi?’

  ‘Why not?’ Santosh flashes her a grin. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow and pick you up, if you’re interested that is. But remember—don’t tell anyone.’

  Meena nods and grips Putali’s hand. ‘We won’t tell a soul,’ she says, beaming. ‘You can trust us.’

  A strange expression flicks across Rajit’s face for a second, but then he pulls the visor on his helmet down and kick starts his motorbike.

  As the boys ride off in the dust, Meena gives another squeal and spins on the spot. Putali watches her and can’t help but laugh. A grey roller bird swoops low over the rice fields, the blue underside of its wings brilliant in flight. Meena runs ahead, up the dirt paths between rice fields, towards the settlement. Then she spreads her arms, just like the roller bird, and swoops back to take Putali’s hand.

  One

  Meena leaned over the plastic bowl. Her head ached. Her eyes stung. She retched one more time.

  ‘Is that all of last night’s dinner now?’

  The voice was Meena’s roommate, Sarita. The older girl clicked her tongue and entered their shared room before kicking off her thick heels and pulling the unused condom packets from her bra. Meena could see the shoes over the bowl’s rim—black platforms, sparkling with plastic diamonds. She groaned and held out the bowl. Her hand was trembling. She felt the spit hang from her lips and attempted to wipe it away. Sarita muttered something under her breath about losing income while Meena was sick, then took the bowl and disappeared from the room to empty it. Meena lowered her aching self back onto the hard mattress that was their bed. Even with the bowl gone, the room smelt like vomit and sweat. There was only so long Madam put up with girls in Meena’s condition before they disappeared. Meena wasn’t sure where to. She pushed the thought away and curled her body, staring at the poster hanging on the wooden partition that was the wall between their room and Deepa and Devi’s. Muffled noises from the other side told her Devi had a client. Meena’s stomach threatened to heave again.

  Sarita returned with the now empty bowl. She dropped it on the floor beside the bed and shook out their blanket to rearrange it over Meena. Meena felt the warmth of it, distant over the false cold of her fever. Somehow, after all her years in Madam’s hotel, Sarita still knew how to care. Meena felt as uncaring as the cardboard they used under their mattress for extra padding. She groaned involuntarily.

  ‘You’ve been throwing up too much. It’s disgusting.’ Sarita scolded without venom. She felt Meena’s forehead. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you? I’ve heard of girls getting pregnant in the wrong stomach. Maybe that’s your problem?’ A flash of concern crossed Sarita’s face, contradicting the businesslike tone she used.

  Meena winced as she shook her head. Although she’d barely had a period since coming to the brothel, she knew she wasn’t pregnant. Devi had been pregnant three times. Deepa at least five times and Sarita more than she admitted. But Madam was quick to organise abortions and the girls were back working a week later. She knew the procedure.

  ‘I’m not pregnant.’ Meena fumbled over the side of the bed until her fingers felt the bowl’s wet plastic. ‘It’s my gut. I ache ... I get fever, and I’m weak, so weak I feel like ... I’m ...’ She stopped. A distantly familiar tinge of emotion was holding back the truth. She snapped it away. She couldn’t admit to fear, not here, not in front of Sarita. That was the rule. The only way to survive. When she finally let the words out she had herself back under control. The words sounded like someone else’s: ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Psshiit, you won’t die!’ Sarita stalked away, a sudden anger tensing her shoulders. It was the same restless anger Meena had noticed increasing in Sarita over the past few months. Something was bothering her roommate. And nothing ever bothered Sarita.

  Meena willed herself to watch as Sarita dragged a comb through her thick hair. The repetition of the action seemed to shelve the older girl’s restlessness. Meena didn’t know Sarita’s story, only that she’d worked for Madam longer than any of the other girls in the hotel. Sarita was one of Madam’s privileged working girls—privileged because she was technically free to leave. At almost thirty years old, she was no longer indebted to Madam. Sarita chose to make a living from what Meena and the other young girls were forced to do. And she contributed to the running of the hotel, which kept Madam happy.

  ‘You’re not grateful enough,’ Sarita lectured without turning around. ‘That’s always been your problem. Sure, you don’t cry all the time like you used to three years ago—lucky for you, you learned that lesson quickly—and you don’t gouge the eyes out of your clients anymore.’ She laughed at a memory Meena could no longer place, like so many memories she refused to consider.

  ‘But, you never did learn to be grateful, did you? I know better than anyone that it’s not paradise here. But if you work the system—’

  Meena stopped listening and allowed the words to sink into the anaesthetic-like fog she’d constructed to survive. She willed her mind to absorb only the immediate: Sarita eyeing her reflection in the tiny mirror pinned to the wall. Sarita’s pink fingernails moving swiftly on her hair, changing the style, pinning half of it up and pulling loose strands down either side of her face. Meena’s own hair felt like her soul: dry and flat.

  ‘Will you die here too?’ Meena asked.

  ‘What?!’ Sarita spun round to glare at her. ‘No one’s dying! Look, I’ll be back in an hour. I’ll try and get Madam to come up and see you. Maybe she’ll call a doctor—’

  ‘Nain, no. She won’t.’ The fog was thicker now.

  ‘I’ll make her. You used to bring in good money ... before you got sick. You’re too valuable to lose, she’ll see that.’

  ‘But I’m ... older now ...’

  Sarita spat onto the floor. ‘You’re so ungrateful, you know that! One of your clients brings in twice as much as one of mine! Do you think I like working here? Do you think that’s why I stay?!’

  Sarita snapped her mouth shut, as if she’d let out a truth she hadn’t meant to. For a moment her eyes glared a strange mixture of emotions Meena had never seen before, and then it was gone. Meena felt her stomach tighten but Sarita just clicked her tongue, back to normal, and deftly reapplied the dark kohl to her eyes. Once she had finished, she ran her fingers slowl
y down the scarf that hung beside the mirror.

  ‘I’ll never wear this scarf here,’ Sarita had announced to Meena after she’d received it from a regular but cruel client. ‘I’ll never give him the pleasure of seeing me wear it. But when I’m rich, and have my own beauty parlour, and do the hair and nails of movie stars—then I’ll wear it. I’ll wear it every day so that when he sees me he’ll know who I am, and he’ll know that I know the animal he really is.’

  She’d never spoken of it since. But Meena had been noticing, as she did now, that Sarita’s fingers were lingering longer and longer on the scarf. Its purple-and-silver threads almost begging for Sarita to carry them into the sunlight.

  Sarita sucked a quick breath before she turned and held out an open palm. ‘I’ll buy you some medicine.’

  ‘I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘What? None at all?’

  Meena tried to shake her head. The action made it throb. ‘I ... gave the last bit to Bala ... to buy antibiotics ...’

  ‘So where are they? Why haven’t you been taking them?’ Sarita demanded.

  Meena cringed. Her gut was cramping again. ‘I did ... they didn’t work. Nothing’s worked.’ She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Sarita sighed in irritation. ‘I’ll talk to Madam,’ she huffed, then left the room.

  Meena listened to Sarita’s flip-flops on the stairs. Meena didn’t trust Madam like Sarita did—or at least, like Sarita said she did. Madam only showed kindness when she expected something in return.

  ‘You weren’t cheap. I paid a lot of money for you,’ she’d heard Madam say to the new girls just as she must have once explained to Meena. ‘I can’t just let you go home because you don’t like my business! I’ve got financial problems now, and if you continue to act like a baby they’ll get worse.’

  Meena must have fought the system once, she had scars that told her so. But that was a long time ago, before she moved downstairs, before she had shut down her memory and the ability to feel. She had become just like the rest of them; working like she was told to. Every day. No weekends. No holidays. No time off for cups of tea, or watching TV, or recovering from rough clients.