moni ☭

Keysha’s mother was a heroin addict who sold her own 10-year-old daughter to a pimp for drug money. The girl was violated the same day and put to work on Figueroa Street before she finished elementary school. She never saw the inside of a junior high or a high school. The only education she ever got was how to survive on a corner in South Central LA. Her pimp beat her for years. Dragged her across the pavement, shattered her tibia and fibula, broke her ankle - and sent her right back out to the corner that same night with a broken leg. She was his top earner and he was going to use her until there was nothing left. At 17 she tried to kill him. She waited until he fell asleep, superglued him shut, and when he woke up and came for her she drove an ice pick into his side and punctured his lung. She was tried as an adult and got nine years for manslaughter. When she got out at 26 she had no education, no family, no one waiting for her. She went straight back to the only thing anyone had ever taught her how to do. This time in downtown LA where the money is worse and the streets are harder. Her mother overdosed on heroin and died. Keysha didn’t go to the funeral. She says she didn’t feel anything when they told her. The woman who sold her for a bag of dope was gone and it changed nothing. She’s 39 now. She’s never been in a relationship. Never had a first kiss. Never had a sweet 16. She says the only time she ever felt loved was when she was being used by someone. When a man was paying her that was affection. That was the closest thing to love she ever knew. “I wanted to know why didn’t I have a happy ever after? I’ve never had a happy ever after - or a happy ever start.” Is Keysha a survivor of the streets - or living proof that some children never had a chance from the day they were born?