S.O.S.

While in law school, I was introduced to and became enamored with John Grisham’s books.  It was almost inevitable that if one of his books went to screen, I was going to see it.  The litany of his work is grand, but one feature film had a profound impact on my professional life. That book/film was A Time to Kill.

The whole movie hinged on the raping of an 8-year-old black girl in Mississippi.  She was sent to the store by her mother to pick up a few groceries when two drunken, racist white men decided to rape her.  While the act itself was horrific, the pivotal moment for me came when the little girl’s father was called home from work. Seeing the bruises on his daughter’s face, he gently caressed her while fighting back tears.  Not understanding what happened, she looked up at her father as if it was her fault, then apologized for dropping the groceries. I all but sobbed out loud in the theater. The father, played by Samuel Jackson, conveyed my same sentiment in his facial features.  Then he tried to soothe her fears. From then on, the story centered around the father taking revenge and the trial that followed. This scene would later present itself in a dejavu moment as I stood in front of my class.

I was teaching American history in the South Bronx to seventh graders whose average age was 12. Seventh grade is a major transitional year for pubescent children.  They can either be very small or appear to grow over night into an adult body that they cannot handle. One of my female students who hailed from one of the Central American countries, was extremely tiny.  To me she looked as if she was 9 years old. She was a regular presence in my class, a hard worker with a sweet disposition.  Sitting to the far left, against the wall, in the first seat, she hardly missed a day of school.

It was around February, way after the Christmas holidays when many of my Latinx students took extended breaks, when her two weeks absence flashed on my radar. This is when I began my inquiry into her whereabouts. Starting with the attendance office, they had not received word that she had transferred or moved, so she was still on the roster. I spoke with her other teachers, and they were clueless as well. I began calling the home and never received an answer or voicemail.  Three weeks passed and I was just about to give up, figuring she had moved away, when something told me to ask my students. 

At first, there was silence.  No one seemed to know her whereabouts.  Then one boy finally spoke up.  He told me that he had seen her regularly at Hunt’s Point encircled by a group of men. He said this with hesitation. I’m not sure if he did so because he felt as if he was snitching or if he understood the implications behind what he was saying. Hunt’s Point is a main truck stop off I95 for commercial trucks traveling to and from the New England states.  It is a very grimy area, well known for prostitution and other crimes.  Immediately, my thoughts raced to the scene in A Time to Kill and my heart began to ache.  I had to steady myself so as not to alarm the students.

At this point I did not know what to do, or if I should do anything at all. You hear so many horror stories about children gone missing and no one checked on them, only to find them dead somewhere. Social services usually bear the brunt of most of these complaints even though they are understaffed and overworked. As a teacher with a duty to act, I wanted to do all that I could to ensure her safety. The thought of pulling a vigilante move and kidnapping her briefly ran across my mind. If I had called social services, it could have ignited a powder keg of events, placing her in a worse environment. My greatest concern was not knowing her immigration status and triggering ICE to get involved. Then I thought about the damage that was happening to her little body and this outweighed everything. The girl in the movie was unable to bear children after being raped. Who knows what those grown men were doing to this little girl?

Finally, I sought the advice of someone above my head, and they suggested that I place an anonymous call to social services.  After a few more days of contemplation, hoping and wishing that this child magically appeared in class, I reluctantly placed the call.  By the following week, she was back in class. I sighed with relief. Not to make her feel uncomfortable or reveal that I was the anonymous caller, no words about her whereabouts were ever exchanged between us. She went back to being a little girl and finished out the school year.