Eleven

IT was very early in the morning when Arianna and Tommy woke up to pick vegetables and fruits from their garden at the back of the house to sell.
The day seemed no different from past days except Tommy now worked beside her… somber, quiet and very focused.
Tommy was the one who actually started selling fresh produce from their garden, but he hadn't done this for a while now.
The money they earned was enough for food but could not completely provide for his needs in school and their mother's regular medicine prescriptions, and it frustrated him.
He said it was too slow a job to earn money, and he started trying to find odd jobs from other farmers or commercial establishments in town who would let him work before or after school, even though he was just fourteen.
Unfortunately, their mother had to be confined for a mild stroke and this really scared both of them.
That was when he told her he would quit school.
They were paying in installments for the hospital bill already, and though she insisted he enroll for the next school year during the summer, he didn't tell her until it was too late for registration that he didn't obey so they couldn't force him.
Their mother had been so upset that Tommy found a way to get old copies of school books for his class for that year and studied at home, promising her he would take an aptitude exam and would pass it so he could cover that year and wouldn't be left behind by his classmates.
This calmed her down.
Therefore, he scheduled at least four hours of his time daily studying on his own, carefully picking a spot where his mother could see him all that time.
Her brother was so stubborn because he was so passionate about protecting his small family.
Despite his age, he'd worked harder than young men older than him to help her earn money.
He was so young to have become this burdened by his mother and sister, who were both older than him, and who should have been the ones taking care of him.
But he was very close to their late father. He'd adored him. He'd promised him he would take care of them before he passed away.
Arianna caught herself crying for her brother a few times as she discreetly watched him while they worked.
She knew, although she was the one who had the 'adult' experience last night, it was Tommy who'd quickly grown up.
She should be protecting him, and god knew she had tried. But as he'd shouldered the emotional burden of what his mother was going through, now he was also carrying in his conscience the belief that his sister had been 'raped' because of what he'd done.
She did know how to correct this in his mind. She did not know what to do.
She couldn't tell him that, despite what happened, whenever she remembered last night with the Señor, she did not feel violated at all.
How could she explain something like that to a child who was barely an adult when she couldn't even face whatever really happened inside her head?
She straightened from the tomato bush, pretending to stretch her back. But as she looked up at the sky, she uttered a simple prayer.
She didn't know what to do anymore. But she prayed that they would eventually get back to the normal cheery family that they were.
They were very poor, but they had the treasure of that happiness. She prayed that Tommy would recover soon from the guilt sitting heavily on his shoulders, that he stooped more today than he normally would on days he was being burdened by his thoughts.
It was breaking her heart.
When they finally managed to load their tri-bike of the produce for that morning and they started cycling from house to house once they got to the busier part of the outside edges of the hacienda, customers were happy to see Tommy with her.
They even bought more than they usually did. It brought a smile to his face that the morning became lighter.
But meanwhile, as she smiled, too, she also carried her own guilt.
She should never have allowed him to seek work in town. That was how he ended up in Madame Venus' bar assisting the janitor.
He also did various errands for the women workers that kept him out of the bar when it opened after he was done with cleaning up, since he was a minor, before coming home before eight in the evening as she instructed.
She threatened him after his enrollment fiasco that if he didn't obey her this time, there was no way she would even allow him to go back to town.
She should have been stricter.
But she couldn't, because their mother needed medicine.
Then she had a bout of intermittent sudden muscle weaknesses, and she couldn't get up from bed one morning.
They took her to the hospital.
Tommy was gone for a while and when he came back, he had enough money to cover the bill and new prescriptions, telling her it was accumulated savings he had been keeping over his earnings from doing odd jobs every evening.
She did not even suspect him of lying. He wasn't a convincing liar and thinking back to the time when he was putting the money into her hand, he was very uncomfortable.
But both of them were very worried about their mother, so she only thought about it later, when she was summoned by Madame Venus' janitor, telling her discreetly that her brother had confessed to taking the money that went missing from a drawer in the office.
They were holding him, but he escaped and ran away.
She begged Madame Venus for a reprieve and enough time to pay for what was stolen, but the older woman was so angry because they couldn't get ahold of Tommy for days. No one could tell where he went.
She dreaded the moment when their mother would realize her son wasn't coming home every night. Arianna had her believe that Tommy would come home after she'd slept and went early to sell vegetables before she could wake up. She couldn't use the same excuse for longer.
It was very irregular for Tommy not to be sitting by her bed to hug her when he'd come home, even when she was sleeping.
Sometimes she would wake up. He would even still sleep by her side some nights.
On the fourth day, she went to Madame Venus to plead with her again.
That was when the older woman said her brother was found and being held by some of her police friends.
He would eventually be confined to a place called a boys' town somewhere in a distant province where male minors were kept to get disciplined and rehabilitated because of stealing.
Unless Arianna would solve Madame Venus' predicament that night.
The thought of the possibility of their mother finally finding out and dying because of it froze her blood then.
Mama would think it was all her fault, that she was a burden to her children, she would have a heart attack thinking what Tom could possibly be going through away from them and she would not survive from it.
Arianna knew she would do anything to prevent this.
And she would do anything to make sure Tommy didn't stay one night in jail.
He did it for their mother! She would do anything to get him home, safe in his bed.
She'd spent sleepless nights thinking about where her young brother had been sleeping the three nights he hid, or if he was even eating well.
She would do anything even if it was something she hated, as long as she lived after it. She knew she would.
She was told that she would have sex with a man she did not know, and after that, all the amount Tommy took would get paid.
She would be saving Madame Venus from a bind after the young woman who was supposed to do this got herself pregnant with her boyfriend so she couldn't be sent. The madame didn't use sex workers who were pregnant.
Whatever hesitation she'd felt about what Madame Venus wanted her to do, it did not show when she said 'yes.'
After that, it barely registered that the women workers were sympathetic to her as they helped get her ready.
They tried to comfort her by telling her the man she was going to be with wasn't going to be a problem.
They all knew she was a virgin. They told her she was very lucky to be chosen to do this job, or they would have snatched it from her if only they were eligible.
She was just numb.
All her senses were focused on surviving while they had her shower, helped fix her hair and make-up, and chose a dress for her to wear before they drove her to the location of her anonymous ‘client’ that night.
How could she know she was going to get driven back to the hacienda, to the farthest edge of it from her own small house, and that she was going to be with Señorito Enrique?