But the little girl must now return to an orphanage. And there I learned that a child who had been raped and overheard the most vile of murders was not quite suited for the stamp of quality, and certainly not the pretense of innocence. Especially since I carried a darkness within me from that time on. The others—the children and the ladies at the home—could sense it. I could no more play children’s games than fly to the moon on a hog’s back. If my mind had been shattered, it healed itself with crooked scars. I became as Robson was: alone in my flesh, carrying private torments I would show to no one. And the result was that on the days when people came from outside to view the orphans with intent to adopt, I was the one they could not bear to look at and rushed past. I was the dark blot on the white sheet of paper. I was the ugly scowl in the picture of smiles. I was thirty years old at the age of twelve.

I remember that I was chosen as a challenge by a well-meaning reverend and his wife. They returned me after almost two weeks. When he told me that God loved me and had a plan for my life I laughed in his face. And I called his wife a fat old cow, which she was, and threw a soup bowl through the window.

But let me move ahead two years. In that span of time I was released from the orphanage in the custody of a man who—honestly speaking—craved young girls. The ladies at the orphanage were glad to be rid of me, so what was the difference? And not only did this man crave young girls, but he craved using the whip on them. As he did to me. And then he revealed his nice little plan: for me to go out posing as a young innocent in the city’s parks and playgrounds, and to draw other young girls to him with the promise of sweets. I ran away from that house the very night, and then I was on the street.