Chapter 4: Sidewalk Encounter
My life as Victoria Marie soon became surprisingly ordinary, up in the morning (at least an hour earlier than Jeremy did) to take a shower and pretty myself up, off to catch the bus and hear the bus driver’s cheerful “Good morning, Vicky,” (what a joy it was to have a regular driver like him in the sometimes cold, bleak Chicago winter mornings!), waves to my co-workers (some not too cheery-eyed) as I entered almost precisely at 8:55 a.m., intense editing and writing and discussions with my small staff, meeting the daily 3 p.m. deadline (each day seemed to mount different challenges), then the relieved post-deadline chatting and preparing for the next day’s offerings, the not-so-cheery bus ride home, the after-work sharing of the day’s happenings with mom (who was my best girlfriend!), and maybe a little television, checking the Internet, an hour perhaps with Danielle Steele, Nora Roberts, Debbie Macomber or some similar romance author, and soon sound asleep with my bed partner being Harry, my stuffed bunny rabbit, nestled tightly in my arms.

The girls in the office soon accepted me, it appeared, and while small talk was at a premium in the busy editorial office I was welcomed into the circle of gossip, giggles and gasping. At first, Cecily suggested I use her private bathroom to attend to my personal needs, hoping to avoid any unhappy situations with my female co-workers over the use of the ladies room. Within a week or so, I began using the regular facility labeled “Women,” and I felt right at home, sharing conversations with the other girls as we fixed makeup over the large vanity mirror.

It took just a few days after my introduction as Victoria for the staff to no longer use “Jeremy” or “him” or “he” in referring to me. At one point, I mused that I must have been so feminine in my earlier persona that the switch to Vicky must have seemed to them to be the normal progression. Maybe they thought I was really a girl all along. Well, wasn’t I?

To be truthful, I soon missed Paula’s sharp editing eye and tremendously fast research skills. The woman certainly had great skills, but I certainly didn’t miss her sour face and negative reactions to life. Within two weeks, however, we found a more than adequate replacement: a tall, husky, softish young woman with a broad Eastern European face from a farm in Central Wisconsin named Sophia Eleanor Wisniewski. Her sweet peasant face belied her sophisticated knowledge of the classics and the English language. She had both bachelors and masters degrees as a student in classics at the University of Chicago, where because of obvious brainpower she had been a full scholarship student.

“What prompted you to accept the position on this magazine staff?” I inquired of her in her first job interview.

“First of all,” she said in a flat, deliberate voice which betrayed no indication of emotion. “You pay well and have good benefits and I like Chicago. Secondly, I welcome a chance to use the classics in a place which caters to more ordinary folks. I’ve had six years of academia. I figured it’s about time I get back into the real world.”

I smiled: “So many people think a lovelorn column is sewer journalism. What do you think about it?”

“Some of it is, but I read Edith’s column and then Gerianne’s almost everyday in the Stevens Point Daily Journal since I was about 11 years old, and I soon found those columns to be literate and informed and caring. I sometimes even found myself crying with some of the questions.”

When Sophia first entered my office, I could see this strong young woman had a truly sensitive soul; as we talked, she related how lost she felt as an 11-year old girl, being taller than any of the boys in her 6th Grade Class in a small consolidated school located amid the broad vegetable farm fields of Central Wisconsin. She said she found so many of the women and girls who wrote to both Edith and Gerianne went through similar feelings of being “strange, different or odd.”

How I could relate to those feelings, never quite being the boy everyone expected me to be.

“I learned a lot from that period of my life,” she said during the interview. “I realized that my mom and dad and my brothers all loved me. I realized that I was special in many ways. I thought for a while that being the smartest kid in class was just awful, but soon learned that was a blessing. I began to write and work on the school paper and help my dad on the farm. He often said I worked harder than the hired man we had.”

I could tell, too, that Sophia, with her broad face, would be sensitive to our writer’s feelings, something that I don’t think Paula — as talented as she was — ever understood.

Thus, Sophia became a pleasant addition to the staff; soon she would become my closest girlfriend, after mom, of course.

*****
I literally bumped into Rosa Chavez one chilly noon while venturing to my favorite deli on the western edge of the posh North Shore district where our office was. Like so many days in Chicago in February, the sidewalks were damp from melted snow and a light mist that was falling, and I was concentrating more on making sure I didn’t slip on residual sections of ice when Rosa rounded a tight corner colliding with me.

I caught a whiff of cheap perfume as I reached down to pick her up from the sidewalk. Despite the near freezing temperatures, Rosa was dressed in a mini-skirt, four-inch heels and a light jacket fringed with faux fur. On her legs she was black mesh stockings, complete with holes.

“A cheap whore!” was my immediate thought. Instead, I said, “I’m sorry, dear.”

The girl stood now, her dark eyes furtively darting this way and that, as if she were fleeing someone. She was my height, but extremely slender. Her face, however, was cherubic and would have been exceedingly pretty if she hadn’t overdone her makeup, which made her lips a bright, glossy red and her eyebrows and lids darkened with sparkling purple shadings.

“Watch where you’re going, woman,” the young woman’s voice said in a high excited pitch. “Gimme $5. You knocked me down and I’ll sue you. You tore my stockings.”

“You ran into me, miss,” I said, aghast at her outrageous demand, “And I’m sure those stockings were already full of holes.”

“Gimme $5,” she demanded again, but her voice was quickly losing its intensity.

I looked at her closely; this person was just a child it seemed.

I grabbed onto the girl and she tried to wriggle loose. I looked at her closely. She couldn’t be more than 14, I thought.

“How old are you?” I demanded, holding the girl, squirming hard in my hold. She was not strong, as malnourished as she must be.

“Eighteen,” she said quickly.

“Is that what your pimp told you to say, eighteen?”

“I am eighteen,” she persisted defiantly.

Finally, I gave up and asked her if she was hungry. She nodded, but then regaining her confidence, she said, “Just gimme $5 and I’ll feed myself.”

“No you won’t,” I said, grabbing her by the arm and leading her into the deli.

Maximilian, an ageless, angular man with a heavily wrinkled face and tight jowls, scowled as I entered. He usually scowled, but this was a more intense scowl than usual.

“What ya’ bringing that waif in here for, Vicky?” he groaned, looking over as he passed a waiting customer his change. As usual, there was a line of customers waiting for their orders, and they all knew to be ready to shout out their choices quickly, or else Maximilian would move off to another.

Simultaneously, he took orders, greeted most customers by their first names, shouted their orders out to a crew of sandwich makers, salad tossers and dessert chefs, and finally collecting their cash or running their credit cards. It was a marvel to watch him move.

“I caught that one jumping into the dumpster last week, and gave her some food then,” he yelled at me.

“Isn’t my money any good in here anymore, Maximilian?” I yelled back, having learned that once I had become a regular here I could yell back in kind. The deli owner seemed to relish the repartee; I had become, I felt, one of his favorite customers, but realized it was probably because he considered me one of his “cute girlfriends.” Really, the old crouch was a sweetie, and, he made the best deli offerings in the Chicago loop.

Maximilian smiled back, and I yelled my order to him, soup and salad special for me, plus tea, and a soup and turkey sandwich for my disreputable young lady friend.

“You two get outa my sight now,” Maximilian ordered, as he gave me my order. “There’s an empty staff table behind the curtain in the back, and the staff’s all working now, so it’s empty now. Eat there.”

I wanted to argue with him, saying we didn’t want to be treated like second class citizens, but held my tongue. Besides, my friend did give out a disagreeable odor of a combination of cheap perfume and unwashed clothing. I could see his point.

“Don’t let that waif steal anything back there, Vicky,” Maximilian bellowed as we headed for the back.

*****
Maybe it was Maximilian’s navy bean soup that did it, but even before my filthy-looking new friend began her turkey sandwich, she began to talk; the words came haltingly, but as she talked I could see she had perfectly formed teeth, a sign that during much of her life she had good dental care, obviously some parent or caregiver cared deeply for her at onetime.

“No one’s ever been so kind to me,” she said, the words now being accompanied by almost unnoticeable sobs. “And from such a pretty girl, too.”

I smiled, nodding acknowledgment, but saying nothing, realizing the girl would soon be telling me more. I couldn’t but be surprised at the precise language she was using; this was no ordinary street person. Even her eyes seemed to lose their earlier dullness and began to sparkle in the cheerless white light given off by the backroom fluorescent ceiling lights.

“You might begin by telling me your name, honey,” I said.

“It’s Rosa,” she said, her voice shy.

“Nice meeting you, Rosa, and I’m Vicky,” I said, reaching over to take her hand and shake it.

“You don’t want to shake my hand, Vicky,” she said, withdrawing her hand to place it under the table. “You might get lice or something.”

I smiled. “I guess your right, Rosa. You’re very considerate.”

“Mom always taught me to be considerate of others,” she said, suddenly breaking into sobs so loud that I was afraid they could be heard over the din of the crowd in the deli.

I moved and hugged her, forgetting the issue of lice or roaches or whatever was being harbored in this girl’s filthy body clothing. Her tears subsided.

“Mom died last year,” she said, her crying now subsiding. “My stepdad kicked me out of the house.”

“Oh that’s terrible,” I said. “Are you really 18?”

She nodded, but it was a hesitant nod. There was no way, I was sure, that this girl was 18; she looked closer to 12 than 18, I thought. I decided not to pursue the matter at the moment.

“You better eat your sandwich, dear,” I said.

“Thank you, Vicky, you’re kind,” she said.

With that she began eating with gusto, attacking the sandwich as a hungry animal might. As she did so, I realized I had to do something with this girl, and pulled out my iPhone, punching in “Chicago women’s shelters” into the search engine.

“What are you doing?” she asked when she looked up from biting into the sandwich.

“Looking for a place to take you to get cleaned up, Rosa.”

“Where? I don’t like those places.”

“I know of a place that works with young girls like you!”

“No way. They’ll just put me in foster care or something worse, like send me back to Hank.”

“Who’s Hank?”

“My stepdad. He’s just a perv, he is!” she said, and began crying again, only the sobs were softer now, almost plaintive.

The girl put her half eaten sandwich down on the table, as I handed her a tissue from my purse. She wiped her eyes, some of the dark makeup coming off on the tissue as she wiped. I could see under the grime on her hands, she had lovely slender hands.

“I know just the place for you,” I said, seeing the name popup on my screen. The Courtney House on Division Street was just a few blocks away, and specialized in handling street girls, many of whom had been duped into prostitution by pimps. One of the girls on the reporting staff had been doing research on the House, in the hopes of doing a story on street girls. I knew we could probably find a place there for Rosa.

“You’re not 18, are you, Rosa?”

“How would you know?” she looked up, her face defiant now.

“If you’re 18 you wouldn’t be worried about foster homes,” I said.

The girl took on a sheepish grin.

“Ok, I’m 16,” she said, quickly.

“No you’re not,” I replied quickly, and with an authoritative voice. “You’re more like 14.”

I could see I hit a nerve just then with Rosa.

“That’s it, you’re 14.”

Under all the dirt on her face, I could see a blush develop.

“Ok, finish up your sandwich now,” I said, taking my iPhone in my hand and preparing to call the Women’s Place reporter to see if she could arrange for Rosa to be accepted at Courtney House.

Rosa stopped eating, and looked at me closely. “That place only takes girls, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes, especially girls like you.”

“I can’t go there,” she said flatly.

“Why?”

“I’m not a girl. I’m a boy.”

I tell you: I couldn’t have been more shocked.

*****
Even after he admitted to me that he was a boy, he held firm on claiming that his name was “Rosa;” in fact, he even had an Illinois picture ID that showed him to be “Rosa Chavez,” born January 14, 1994, making him (or her) 18 years old. Though the ID appeared to be authentic, it was obviously counterfeit, probably supplied by her pimp.

His features were as fine and dainty as my own, I could see, and my mind soon began running through scenarios in which I might have been facing the same wretched life as Rosa. I guess I had to be lucky I had a mom who must have understood and loved me; I could imagine how rough it would have been to lose a mother and be thrown into the hands of a perverted, cruel stepfather.

At that moment, sitting in the back room of Maximilian’s, I realized I had no choice, except to help this fragile young boy.

In a quick search on my iPhone, I found a Youth Center that caters to LGBT youth on N. Broadway; it was located adjacent to a Methodist Church, and offered showers from 1 to 4 p.m., each afternoon. They also had some used clothing available for the drop-ins. Somehow I needed to get Rosa to that Center.

Luckily, the column for the day was in good shape, and I could trust Maxine, Louisa and Sophia to put it “to bed,” a traditional publishing term meaning to send it for publishing. I phoned Maxine and told her I’d be back late, maybe just 30 minutes before deadline to give final approval. I knew they’d do a fine job in completing it, since we had fully discussed the content of the answers before I left for lunch.

I hustled Rosa out of the deli and into the street; several empty cabs passed us before I finally grabbed one as it discharged passengers in from of Maximilian’s, not giving the driver a chance to avoid us. Obviously, Rosa’s questionable appearance did cause cabbies to avoid us, probably realizing that admitting the girl into the cab might infest it with lice, or at least the residual odor of filth and cheap perfume.

I gave the driver an extra tip, perhaps to excuse my audacious cab-grabbing action, as we reached the Center.

“I’ve been told to stay away from these places,” Rosa said, almost escaping from my grasp as we got out of the cab.

“Well, you’re not going to avoid this any longer,” I said, happy that she was in such a weakened condition that even I could restrain her. “Who told you to avoid the Center?”

She looked sheepishly, as we walked to the side entrance, which had a discreet sign, saying only: Harriet Long Youth Center.

“My man,” she said.

“Your pimp, you mean,” I said.

“I guess, but he was so nice to me, gave me a clean bed and outfitted me,” she said. “I had to do what he asked.”

I scowled; so many girls (and boys like Rosa, too) were found wandering the streets by traffickers and pimps and turned into a life of prostitution. It was shameful, and no one seemed to care. All of these children — and that’s what they were, really, children — were victims, but so many people looked upon them with disgust.

I left Rosa in the good care of the people at the Harriet Long Youth Center, and returned to work that day. If I thought I was done with her, I was wrong.

Less than 10 days later, I got a call from Stanley, the guard at the front desk, who said there was a young boy named Enrique Chavez wanting to see me.

“I know of no Enrique,” I said, puzzled.

“Ok, I’ll send him away,” Stanley said.

“No, don’t send him away,” I yelled into the phone, quickly realizing this young boy might be Rosa.

It was after 3 p.m. and the pressure of the deadline was passed, so I led Enrique to the diner, where he told me a story of being a happy, well-loved boy with a single Venezuelan mother who worked as a hotel maid. He had learned to cook, sew, and keep house for his mother; he shared much with his mother, who warned him against hanging out in their tough South Side neighborhood, particularly with boys. It was only natural that Enrique developed such gentleness.

“Perhaps that’s why I liked so many things that girls do,” he said, as he related his story.

When he was ten, his mother married Ricardo, a Mexican man who worked as an auto mechanic. “He seemed nice at first, but he teased me a little bit for being a sissy,” Enrique said. “Not too much at first, and mom always told him to shut up about it, and he usually did.”

Then, the boy began to cry. He raised a slender, pretty hand to accept a tissue I gave him, gently wiping at the tears. Now that he was cleaned up, I could see what a lovely child he was, still soft and cherubic, with dark, intelligent eyes peering out from his face with its high cheekbones. He was such a dainty child, hardly looking his 14 years of age.

“Then mom died,” he said through his sobs. “It was so sudden, like in two months. Some form of cancer.”

“She was my only friend, and my stepdad then changed for the worse,” he said.

“That’s Ok, tell me only as much as you’d like,” I said, purposefully turning my attention to my latte, so as not to embarrass the boy.

Enrique’s story came out in bits and pieces; it was a tragic story, with his stepfather at first belittling him for his lack of “guts,” for not being a “man.” In a few months, he started forcing the boy to wear girl clothes, put on lipstick and brush his hair like a girl. It wasn’t long before he was forcing the boy to perform sexual acts, giving him an education in the most sordid of them.

“He hurt me something fierce, but I didn’t cry, never!” Enrique told me.

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” I asked.

“Who? Who’d believe me? I’d become the sissy boy in our neighborhood and I was so humiliated. Oh, how I missed mama. I still do.”

He said he snuck out one summer night after Ricardo had fallen asleep drunk, dressed as a sexy young girl; he stole some money from his stepfather’s wallet, threw some clothes, his toiletries and a teen girl novel he’d been reading into a bookbag and left, unsure of where to go.

He went to Cicero Avenue, a main street near his neighborhood and was picked up there by a young man and his girl friend. He said: “They took pity on me, or at least I thought they did. They seemed so kind at first, taking me in that first night, giving me a bed and something to eat.”

He said he awoke the next morning to find he was one of three young boys in the household. The others, like himself, were dressed a girls, but they were immediately jealous of him, since he said he was obviously the prettiest of the three. It wasn’t long before he was being “rented” out for the night to men, apparently for lots of money. “I got only about $10 a day spending money, but they did keep feeding me and giving me a place to sleep.”

At this point, the boy blushed: “He rented me out to only really rich guys, and most of them treated me tenderly,” he said. “But one night, one of the men got really nasty, so I did the only thing a girl could do: I bit his cock so hard it drew blood. And while he was screaming, I escaped. And, when the couple found out I had hurt one of their big spending guys and left without collecting the money, they kicked me out. It was then I finally got wise. They didn’t care about me. The next day, they drove me up to this neighborhood and dropped me off. I had no where to go, and I’ve been just hanging out and about until you found me.”

I didn’t want to know any more details about how she — I still thought of her as a girl — survived, and could only guess. It must have been horrible; who knows what kind of diseases she picked up?

*****
I called the social worker at the Harriet Long Youth Center on my cell phone while still in the diner, who, in a raspy-middle-aged voice told me that Enrique had been truthful in everything he told me. The boy had been raised by a hard-working Venezuelan immigrant mother and was a top student at his middle-school, but had never entered high school due to running away from home.

“He’s an exceptional lad,” the worker, who went by the name of Sol, told me.

“Pardon me, Sol, but doesn’t he have an interest in transitioning . . . ah . . . you know . . . living as a girl?” I asked.

“Yes, he does, and I understand that, but there’s not much we can do at this stage, Ms. Sullivan,” Sol said. “I totally understand Enrique’s situation and, believe me, I sympathize with him. He’s only 14, and with his mother gone, he’s legally under the guardianship of his stepfather.”

“What can we do, Sol?” I pleaded. Enrique, I could see, was listening closely, hearing only my side of the conversation, but obviously understanding what it was all about.

“Not much at this stage,” the social worker said. “In fact, we’re skirting the law right now by not notifying both the police and child welfare, which I’m going to have to do soon, or we’ll be in trouble here.”

“I understand,” I said, realizing that once child welfare was involved, and they learned of the abuse that Enrique suffered at the hands of his stepfather the boy would be placed into foster care, something the boy clearly didn’t want.

“You know we see cases like this almost everyday, Ms. Sullivan,” Sol continued. “I sometimes go home to my wife and kids, literally in tears over the horrible lives some of these kids live, but society doesn’t seem to care. We have hardly enough funding just to provide a warm place for them to hang out, much less give them any real service. And for LBGT kids, particularly transgendered kids, there really isn’t much available for them.”

Noticing how closely Enrique was watching me, I faked a smile, and then said, “I’m aware of that. Really the public should be aware of that.”

“You’re right, ma’am, but Enrique really does have lots going for him. He’s extremely bright and so far he’s only missed one semester of his first year of high school. I’ve been able to get him enrolled in a special school that Chicago Public Schools has set up for kids like him, if he’ll only agree to go.”

As Sol talked and I kept my eye on Enrique, my mind was racing. I couldn’t send this child back out onto the streets.

“What if there was a good family willing to take him in?” I asked Sol.

“Well, that would help,” he answered, “But we’d have to go through child welfare to get the stepfather’s right of guardianship suspended. Then, a lot would depend on what proof there was of abuse. Enrique’s word would not be enough, and after nearly five months on the streets, any signs of physical abuse would be meaningless.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling deflated by the situation.

“But, did you have some family in mind, ma’am?” Sol said.

“Yes, mine,” I said. It was a spontaneous statement, made without thinking; in the following instant I was shocked by my offer, since I hardly could countenance my mother’s reaction to it.

I explained that I lived with my mother, that I had a good job and could arrange my work schedule to be home by the time Enrique would return from school. Furthermore, we had a comfortable home and a room available for Enrique.

“Also, I have a good-paying job, Sol, as does mom, so we’re solvent,” I added.

“You haven’t talked with your mother about this yet?” he asked.

“Not yet, of course, the idea just came to me, but I will this evening.”

We agreed that Enrique should return to the youth shelter for another night; he was certainly safe there. Meanwhile, Sol would hold off notifying the authorities for another 24 hours, while I checked out mom’s thinking on the matter.

Enrique beamed with pleasure when I told him our plans, hugging me when I finished. “Oh Vicky, you’re so good to me,” he said, his voice taking on its little girl timbre. He such an adorable child, I thought.

I cautioned him against any false hopes, that several hoops had to be hurdled before he could stay with us, telling him that from now on he had to be completely truthful in everything he told us and the authorities.

“I haven’t lied to you, Vicky, not even once,” he said, offended by my warning.

I reach over and patted his hand, smiling and looking directly into his dark eyes, now growing a bit moist, and said, “No, I’m sure you’ve told me the truth, honey, but I’m just making sure you understand how important it is now to be truthful. Sol and the people at the Center are totally on your side, dear.”

“Thanks, Vicky, I love you.”

His words made me want to cry; I could see how starved the boy was for love. How lucky I was to have such a loving mom! But then, so did he, and she was gone. There, but for the grace of fate, go I.