While Kennedy and I were wasting our time talking about nothing at all significant, I was still eyeing that big man in the Hawaiian and the teen he was with. At one point, he leaned over and said something to her, and she pulled away. It happened so fast I can’t be certain I actually saw it, but I could have sworn he yanked her by the hair.
That’s when I finally did tell the flight attendant. Tracy. The one whose name I’ll never forget. The one whose family background I’ve checked online a hundred times to see if there’s anything more to learn about her.
Mother of two. The family’s trying to stay out of the public eye (yeah, good luck with that), but one picture from a family vacation has been all over the press. It’s Tracy and her kids, out camping in the woods somewhere. She was married too, so I kind of assume her husband was the invisible man behind the camera. And they look so happy. So happy and healthy.
So alive.
I told Tracy that this man pulled that girl’s hair back. Mentioned that she looked super uncomfortable with him. I don’t know if this is where your mind goes or not, but I immediately started to think human trafficking. It’s absolutely ridiculous how many Americans are convinced that sort of stuff doesn’t happen in their own backyards. I’m pretty sensitive to it. As a feminist, even as a halfway decent human being, there’s no way I can stand for any sort of enforced slavery. It’s terrible. And absolutely disgusting if you ask me how many smug suburbanites sit in their comfortable middle-class privilege and assume that any girl — any child — who’s subjected to rape, violence, and exploitation on an hourly basis must like the life she’s chosen.
So yeah. You probably don’t want to get me started on that. But that’s exactly where my mind went. Strange man flying across state borders with a teen girl who’s obviously uncomfortable with him? No, I’m not paranoid to have worried that’s what was going on.
I didn’t tell Tracy all of my suspicions. You’d be proud of me. I spared her the lecture, the statistics, the stories of trafficked girls I’ve read online. But I did tell her about how that man pulled her hair and yanked her head back. I was sort of thinking she’d poo-poo it away, but she was actually very professional about the whole thing. “Thanks for bringing this to our attention,” and “we’ll definitely keep our eyes on them,” that sort of thing. It’s nice to have your concerns validated.
And then we waited.
Except what we thought we were waiting for was the plane to land in Detroit.
I’m so ashamed to think that after I brought up my observations to Tracy, my biggest concern was whether or not I’d join Math Babe for drinks. We had several hours’ layover, but I didn’t want to ditch Kennedy or make her feel like the third wheel. It’s kind of funny since she’s the one who not only saved my life that day but also introduced me to the Lord, but at the time, I still felt like I was the one who was looking out for her.
She was real sheltered growing up. At least in some ways. Private all-girls’ school. Paranoid, safety-addicted father breathing down her neck. Stay-at-home mom baking cookies every day of the week. That sort of thing. It could have been any upper-class American suburb, except the only difference was it was overseas. You should have seen my face last year when I learned my college roommate grew up as some missionary kid. I was totally convinced she’d be this backwards, socially incompetent child who wore Catholic school-girl uniforms (and I’m not talking about the Halloween party kind, by the way). So I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how normal Kennedy actually was. If spending five hours a day studying for a test that’s still two weeks away can ever be considered normal.
The point I’m trying to make is I felt like it was my job on campus to look out for Kennedy. She had this whole international city chic thing going on, but in other areas she was totally clueless. Like the first time one of my theater friends and I decided to medicinally help ourselves reach a state of deeper relaxation (if you get what I’m saying), Kennedy came back to our room a few hours later and seriously had no idea what the smell was. She asked me if I had put on some new kind of perfume. I should point out that I’m doing my best to give up that sort of thing now that I’m a Christian, but I’m not going to lie or pretend that I didn’t come from a pretty hard partying background.
I actually used to pity Kennedy for being so up-tight. Thought it was my job to teach her how to let her hair down (both metaphorically as well as literally). I thought she was sheltered and naïve for her beliefs. And I’ll go ahead and admit that I teased her sometimes. It was all in good nature, I should mention. She never got angry. Never fought back. On the other hand, she didn’t do what some Christians might have done and made the practicing of her faith that much more obnoxious just to spite me.
No, she kept on living her quiet, Christian life, never realizing how closely I was watching. Never realizing that with each passing week my respect for her grew more and more.
Never guessing that when I came face to face with death on that doomed flight to Detroit, it was the God she served so quietly and steadfastly that I’d call on to come and rescue us both.