I mean, I guess you could say I was a hard kid. My paw was rough with me, ever since I can remember. My ma wasn’t happy with it but he was rough with her, too. I think she just tried her best to make him happy so that he wouldn’t go off the deep end all the time.
And yeah, maybe I was pissed, and I took it out on my teachers, mostly. I got in fights a lot with the boys at school. I liked getting hit. It was like this physical proof of the way I was hurting inside. If it left a mark, even better. I had a map of scars. A story that my body narrated. I thought it was deep. Smarter than all of them.
Anyhow, at some point it was just too much. I figured I’d be better off on my own, and no one would miss me anyhow. I had Juvie up my ass, a probation officer, and my asshole ol'man. I figured I could do it. Easy. I could make it on my own.
And so I took off like I was going to school, but I packed a big duffel-bag. The plan was to hitch-hike West, either California or Oregon. And my dream was to grow weed on a big farm out there. Hell yeah, bruh. It was the life, man. Living the dream.
I grew up in Morrison, Illinois. My ol'man worked the steel mills. He’d tell me if I wouldn’t go to school, I could come work with him in the mills, and that sounded like light-dimmer. Like those ideas that walk into a room and the lights flicker. No way.
So I headed out west. The first ride took me long. An old hippie. Decent tunes if you’re like 60. But he was cool, and he had weed. He just talked and talked. I shook my head. It was easy. He dropped me off in Omaha, and I slept under an overpass. Thunder storms were killer that night. I felt free, man. Like, FREE.
I figured truckers were in for the long haul, and so I walked to a truck-stop west of town, got some coke and candy bars for the road, and bummed a coffee in the cafe there to look around and see if I could catch a ride. At this point I was looking for someone who was going to have the best tunes, you know? When you’re on the road for hours, the tunes matter.
And then I found my brah, bruh. He looked like I imagine some of the guys I hung out with would look in 10 years. Someone I could relate to maybe, I don’t know. But you get the idea.
So I was like, “Hey man, where you headed? Think I could catch a ride?” He said he was heading for Seattle, and if I was headed to Portland area he’d take me as far as Pendleton. I had no idea where that was, but it sounded good to me.
His name was Eddie.
The first few hours were good. I was right about his taste in music. “Bingo!” I thought. And he was cool. Said he wanted to see the country and so he got into trucking. It made sense to me.
Eventually, Eddie asked me if I wanted to get high, and of course I did. He had two boxes, and pulled a joint out of each and offered me one. I took the joint he offered but was looking at the one he pulled for himself. “This is my personal stash for me, but you can have the schwag." Beggars can’t be choosers, I figured, and thanked him. We both lit up and the joint he gave me was great. If this was schwag to him then more for me, right?
There was a slightly bitter after taste, and I noticed my lips got a bit furry, but it tasted good so I kept smoking. After a while I noticed my feet getting tingly. I thought it was on account of so much sitting, but the numbness kinda crept up my legs. I can’t remember what happened next.
When I woke up I was on a concrete floor. I was a bit dizzy still, and it was dark. My hands and feet were tied and I seemed to be in a jail-like situation. I started yelling, “Hey! Anyone here? HELLO?”
I heard a faint voice tell me, “Don’t bother. You don’t want them to come.”
“Who are you?” I asked, “Where are we?”
“My name is Rob,” he said, “and we are in Hell.”
“Where is Eddie?” I asked.
“Who?” he responded.
“Eddie, he was giving me a ride.”
“I don’t know. Kids get dropped off here a lot. Big trucks. I can hear their jake brakes.”
He was speaking in whispers, and so I also whispered. What I gathered was that whatever Eddie gave me to smoke had put me out.
Rob had a similar story. He was a runaway also, but younger. He’d been in this sort of cage like me for weeks, maybe months. He said he lost track. He said that they only come for two things. One is to drop off bread and water. And the other was to take him into a room where they hooked him up to a machine that gave him electric shocks and also took blood from him. It did not seem possible. Why did they want his blood?
Did I hear him right? I kept trying to remember how I got there but it was a big blur. What I figured was that Eddie had drugged me and then passed me off to others. It was dark, and at some point I stopped talking.
It wasn’t long before what Rob had said would happen, happened to me. I was sleeping and heard a door open. A guy came in and grabbed me hard and took me down a hall. It was so bright and my eyes had a hard time adjusting. The guy strapped me down to a cold metal table, and put some wires on my belly and my head. They shocked me hard, man. It was so painful, and then when I thought I could not take anymore, I felt a needle go into my arm, and saw my blood moving through a little tube. My skin was crawling like there were bugs underneath. The table I was on reminded me of a hospital gurney.
I was there for a while, and then someone came in, took the needle out, back through the long barren hallway with lots of doors, opened one of those doors and threw me back in the cell I was in. Then they took Rob.
Of course I was yelling at them at first, but the guy would just slam me down or punch my head into the wall. You learned quick to keep your mouth shut. And honestly I was getting really really tired. It seemed like they took me at first every two days, but the cell and room were windowless, so keeping track of time was hard.
At first I kept count of what I thought were days by scratching marks into the corner of the cell, but after 18 marks, I stopped. This went on for a long time. Rob was eventually replaced by another boy. I am not sure what happened to Rob. He was taken to go for his shocks and just did not come back…
The boy who replaced him was much younger. 8 years old. He cried a lot at first, but like me, eventually got quiet. I would hear him crying sometimes softly. It was better if they didn’t hear you. We talked a little. He had been taken from a park where he played after school. I felt so badly for him. I ran away, and so I blamed myself for what happened to me, like I was being punished, but this poor little boy had no choice in the matter.
I couldn't tell you how long I was there and after a while I just became numb to it, and felt sick and dizzy and limp.
One day, they took me in to the room and strapped me up, and I was in and out, you know? Like couldn’t even really feel the shocks. It was like I was slipping away. I felt them trying to wake me up, and they felt my neck, and I heard the guy say, “He’s dead, take him away.”
I passed out, and when I woke up I was in this hole, and it smelled bad, and there were other bodies also in the hole. Some were slimy. I had to crawl on some of the bodies to get out, and could feel their bodies get mushy under my feet. It honestly made me wish I was dead. It was incomprehensible what I was doing. I was still very weak and cloudy, but somehow I crawled out. It was night time and I seemed to be in the middle of the desert.
It was cold, and I just started walking and then would get woozy and would rest. I had no idea where I was headed, and was not able to make out any lights. I was so thirsty, but there was no water.
About 2 days later, I was sure I was a goner. I had laid down under a bush to stay out of the sun, but I was in and out of consciousness at that point. It was early morning and I heard this noise. At first it sounded like a jake brake, and my heart started pounding. Then I thought the sound was in the sky like a plane but nearer by. It was a helicopter, and I jumped up and started waving my arms at it.
The helicopter saw me, and came nearer. As the helicopter approached it got really sandy and windy, and I must have fainted again because when I woke up I was in a hospital bed. The nurse saw me awake, and came in.
“Hey there,” she said, “it’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You are in Tucson at a special hospital,” she said. “You are safe. The Border Patrol picked you up near the border, and brought you here.”
I started bawling.
“It’s okay, honey, you are going to be okay, you hear me? You can relax. Save your energy,” she said. “You have been through a lot, and you are still very weak, but you are going to be okay. You are lucky, not everyone they bring in gets through it. You have survived quite an ordeal, and we are going to make sure you are taken care of, okay?"
She handed me a Kleenex.
"Okay," I said.
Children who are trafficked for labor purposes might be removed from their families and forced to perform domestic household services, or work in factories or agriculture.