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My real name is Elvira
I had a laugh you wouldn’t forget
My street name was Maria
I’ll never laugh again
He took me from my village
With a promise of decent work
Drove me across the Chetumal border
In the trunk of his father’s Merc
I laughed when I tasted sea-spray
As the boat crossed the night black sea
Out to the island paradise
On the sand of Ambergris Caye
My new life started easy
Serving drinks behind the bar
The other girls were nice enough
And he was never far
I started to believe perhaps
Real love had come my way
Then he told me I had to sleep with two
Rich gringos down for the day
When I refused he beat me till
I lay senseless on the rug
I came round late that evening
And by then he’d done his stuff
Pumped me full of some dark thing
That meant I’d never run
I cried: My life is over
He said: It’s just begun
A beautiful young woman
With a laugh you wouldn’t forget
A beautiful young woman
I’ll never laugh again
From then I barely left the bar
The servicing rooms and latrines
The smell of beer and vomit and sex
Clung to me like my skin
They fed me crack cocaine through a hole
In a bag tied over my head
When I tried to hold my breath they screamed at me
Breathe you bitch or you’re dead
And when I refused to take men
He threw me out in the street
Where the drunken dregs from the bars
Used me like dead meat
I’d try sometimes to hide out
And with other girls make a stand
But no papers and the need for a fix
Brought me crawling back
A beautiful young woman
With a laugh you wouldn’t forget
A beautiful young woman
I’ll never laugh again
The months crawled by at hell’s pace
Nothing I could do to fight
Ten to fifteen men were usually
Brought to me each night
Then one day he called me
From across the noise-filled bar
Said: There’s a man who’s paid big money
You just do everything he asks
He handed me on to another
I followed him into the night
Down to the south of the island
And a cove hidden out of sight
A boat sat on the water
Girls in it and men with guns
It looked like a hell still worse
I turned and tried to run
They caught me in a second
Tied my hands and bound my legs
I was scared to death and stoned
I screamed and started to beg
But they laid my body gently down
On the floor of the boat as it swayed
And as they pushed away from the island’s shore
They told me I was saved
I tasted the salt spray on my lips
And they told me I was saved
Tasted the salt spray on my lips
And they told me I was saved
You may say I’m one of the lucky ones
But I’ll never laugh again
I had a laugh you wouldn’t forget
But you won’t hear me laugh again
(Copyright Tim Eldridge 2010)
