Page 57 of The Broken Places

“Plus, it’s safe. A lot safer than the girls I see walking the streets.”

“That’s true. Are you ever asked to do things you don’t like to do?”

Trinity hesitates. “Yeah, sure. That’s part of the business too. There’s always another girl who will do that forbidden something, and they’re the ones who get the jobs, so sometimes ... a lot of times, you end up bending the rules you started out with. But again, Jamal, I know how to become invisible.”

“What’s your drug, Trinity?”

“Heroin, mostly. Stops the pain, you know? Makes everything quiet. At least for a little while.”

“So I hear. Do you see yourself doing anything else besides the pornography?”

Trinity shrugs. “I did pretty well in school. I liked to read.” She tugs at her earring again. “And I was always good with clothing. I made this.” She points down to the peasant top she’s wearing. “When I was a kid, I used to dream about being a fashion designer, going to Paris, seeing my designs on runways.” Her lips tilt, even if her expression is slightly sad. “Maybe in another life, you know? Maybe this is just a practice round, and I’ll do better next time. Trip the light fantastic, as my granny used to say.”

“Trip the light fantastic. What a great saying.”

“Isn’t it? Brings to mind this beautiful euphoria. But not the kind you achieve from getting high. The joy you get offlife, you know? The kind kids experience before someone fucks them up.”

Jamal nods. “You said you had dreams when you were a kid, but what about now? What are your dreams now?”

Trinity looks off to the side, silent for several long moments. The studio is quiet, only the gentle whir of the camera equipment. “I had a friend in the business. She used to say, ‘Trin, dreams are how people get by in a place like this.’” She lets out a small, sad chuff. “Anyway, that friend, she took her life a year ago. Beautiful girl. Legs like a colt. Milk-and-honey skin.” She lapses into silenceagain before her gaze meets the camera. “I regret not telling her that she was wrong about dreams. Dreams are dangerous. Dreams will break the last shards of your heart when you think there’s nothing left to shatter.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lennon sat down in an auditorium chair near the back, her eyes focusing on the older man at the front of the room. Dr. Sweeton was facing the whiteboard. His name had already been spelled out above what he was currently writing. He finished the last letter with a flourish and turned toward the audience. Lennon’s gaze went to the word behind his back:Trauma.“What is trauma?” he asked. “And what part of the individual does it affect?”

A young woman in the front row raised her hand, and he pointed at her. “Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event that the person perceives as inescapable.”

“Mostly correct,” Dr. Sweeton said. “However, trauma is not simply an emotional response. Trauma affects the body, the mind, and the brain in profound and lasting ways.” He joined his hands in front of him. “Posttraumatic stress syndrome is the body continuing to fight back against a threat that’s already over. We see this in war veterans and others who’ve survived a harrowing and highly distressing experience, such as a mugging, being raped, or an automobile accident.” He paused as he glanced around. “What happens in our body when we’re confronted with trauma?”

A different young woman raised her hand. “The sympathetic nervous system activates, priming your heart and your lungs and your muscles to either fight or flee.”

“And if both are impossibilities? If there’s no way to escape the threat? No hope in fighting it? What does the body do if the brain ascertains that the person must accept the inevitable incoming horror?” Dr. Sweeton asked. No one answered, and so he went on. “The body experiences a dorsal vagal shutdown. Our metabolism slows so that heart rate plunges very suddenly, our blood pressure drops, our gut and kidney function decrease, as does our immune response. The body ‘saves’ us”—he lifted his hands and made air quotes—“by dissociating, collapsing, or freezing.”

He cocked his head and looked around for a moment. “But what about the child who grew up in a household where they experienced frequent, ongoing trauma? A constant influx of cortisol and adrenaline? What happens to our natural alarm system when it’s constantly activated against a threat the individual has no hope of countering? What does the human mind do when its exposure to rage and terror is almost never ending? How does that child cope? What does the body do to save the mind?”

Lennon looked down at the sea of heads below her. Finally a lone hand went up, and Dr. Sweeton nodded to the young man. “Ah, do you mean, like, a child who experiences sex abuse by a family member from the time they’re very young?”

“Yes. That scenario is more common than we like to acknowledge. One in five children in this country is sexually molested, according to the CDC. And that number is likely even higher, considering many such instances go unreported and therefore untreated in any manner.”

“Damn,” she heard a girl in the row in front of her murmur.Indeed.Lennon crossed her arms, drawing her shoulders up momentarily. It was a difficult thought to consider, even briefly, that right that minute, untold numbers of children were suffering, their brains twisting as their little systems tried their best to protect them. The very same thought she’d cried over after watching all those videos. Another reminder. As if she needed one. Were those kids all fated to wander the streets someday,in filth and misery? To sell their own bodies? The ones they’d been taught were worthless and did not really belong to them anyway?

“What if someone intervenes and they get help early?” someone asked.

“If early intervention occurs with a mental health professional who understands the intricacies of trauma, especially as it affects the brain, then there is always hope that that individual can heal. Specifically, there are windows where the brain is experiencing rapid periods of growth, such as during the teen years, when such treatments are even more effective. However, often, traumatized individuals are too on guard to submit to normal human relationships where it’s necessary to become at least somewhat vulnerable, and this includes a relationship with a clinician. The body doesn’t allow this. Even mothers who’ve experienced extended trauma cannot dial down their natural vigilance long enough to nurture their children. Their mind and body are in a constant state of arousal. Either that or they are too numb to bond with other human beings. They are stuck in fight or flight, or they are permanently shut down. Their circuits need rewiring. Their internal alarm system is very simply broken.”

“Are you saying that people who’ve experienced chronic trauma are brain damaged?” a man in the middle of the theater asked.

“Yes, I am saying that. Individuals who have experienced chronic trauma, especially as children, are brain damaged. The first step in healing must target the brain itself.”

A low murmur went up. Lennon agreed that that was a bold statement. But did she disagree? She wasn’t sure.

“What I’m saying is not as controversial as it might sound,” the doctor went on. “We have scans that record what happens in different sections of the brain when a person is traumatized. It’s quite clear. Moreover, traumatized individuals are well aware something is very wrong and suffer because of it. They vacillate between agitation and numbness. They’re often suicidal and have extremely low self-worth. They experience chronic mental and emotional pain.”

A woman raised her hand. “Thank you, Doctor. Are there medications that can help these people?”

“Mostly no, at least not without getting to the heart of the problem. Diagnoses are thrown at those who suffer with PTSD. Attention deficit disorder. Oppositional defiant disorder. Borderline personality disorder. Intermittent explosive disorder. Reactive attachment disorder. Substance use disorder. And none of these diagnoses are completely off the mark. But none of them address the root of the problem. You can throw all the labels and all the pharmaceuticals in the world at them, and you won’t make a dent in the underlying issue. The most these substances will do is temporarily control them. In some instances, a history might be taken and a PTSD diagnosis tossed into the mix. But again, until we have ways of treating these individuals that don’t force them to deal with side effects that are worse than the diagnosis, it matters little to the person suffering.”

Lennon pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. She was familiar with the list of diagnoses the doctor had just listed. How many times had she arrived at a call for family trouble and met a child who’d been diagnosed with all those things and more?A child.In most cases, and in her gut, she believed there was something far deeper going on with a kid who acted out to that degree. And even now, sometimes she saw one of them wandering the streets of San Francisco, still high on something—only now it was of the illegal variety.

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