All Faith had to do was poke at it a little bit, and Greer told her everything she felt; she’d always been this way, and it was no different now, though now she spoke less haltingly. Like the others—at least the ones who had been there since the beginning—Greer Kadetsky disliked the glitter of the foundation, the fact that she never directly got to help anyone. Greer still did a lot of writing—strong writing, Faith thought—but it was all for the newsletter or the annual report, which certainly added to that corporate feel she described.
“And when was the last time we did a special project?” Greer persisted. “They energized everybody here, because we could see something happening in real time. Where’s our money going, exactly? I know that Emmett funded the foundation so it could be big. So it could be different from your experience at Bloomer. But my understanding of being big is that it means you have an impact, isn’t that right? You can tell me to stop talking, Faith, but I just think sometimes there’s a self-satisfaction about the whole thing. Not from you. Not from us. But from the events themselves. It doesn’t feel so good to me these days. Maybe it will change, but I don’t know. So I fell asleep. Sorry,” she added.
“I know,” said Faith. “I really do know.” And because she couldn’t think of anything else to say yet, she put a hand on Greer Kadetsky’s shoulder and said, “Let me work on it.”
* * *
? ? ?
Turn over, miss,” said a voice, and Faith, marinating deep in her memories, made a grunting sound, returning from all of that to the present moment. She had to take a second to remember what that present moment was. The smell of baby oil struck her first. Then the all-string version of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” Then the awareness that her face was mashed against a vinyl cradle whose towel had slipped off. The massage had placed her in a stupor.
She obediently rolled onto her back, one breast briefly flapping out from the protection of the towel. She opened her eyes and found herself staring, much too close, into the face of her masseuse. It was startling to really take in how young the woman was. She was almost a girl. Maybe she was a girl. Maybe this was child labor. Jesus Christ. Immediately Faith felt all her muscles contract, and the woozy dream state calcified. “May I ask your age?” Faith asked calmly.
The woman looked down. “I am not a girl,” she said. “I am mom of two. Boy and girl. Keep young by working hard.” She laughed dully, as though she had been asked this question many times before.
“Do you like working here?” Faith persisted, but the woman didn’t answer.
This was a question that now preoccupied her. The day after Greer Kadetsky had fallen asleep at work and then expressed her work frustrations, Faith had called a meeting in the conference room, which turned into an hours-long session, like a kind of consciousness-raising group from the past. They had all sat around the table and she listened as one by one they told her why they had originally come to Loci, and why it felt different there now. They told her about their worries that the summits were elitist, that there was a kind of feel-good feminism in the air. “I recognize that feminism can’t only be ‘feel-bad,’” said one of the newer hires, a very bright IT person, a trans woman named Kara. “But there’s too much of an emphasis on how everything feels, one way or another, and less on what it does.” This was the refrain, said in various ways.
Someone else said that she missed the special projects, and everyone chimed in. Yes, the special projects, which brought immediate results. In a way, Faith knew, another special project might remind them all of what they were doing there. Afterward, Faith had gone upstairs to see Emmett. She couldn’t tell him how unhappy everyone was downstairs—that seemed risky. “If they’re so unhappy, let’s end it,” she worried someone at ShraderCapital might say. Instead, she told him she had a good idea for a special project. “It’s been a while, Emmett,” she said lightly but she hoped strongly. Then she described for him the project she had in mind. Again and again at work over the years there had been bulletins disseminated about human trafficking, an issue around which she felt helpless. Loci had brought in speakers before, but now it felt like it was time to do something more.
Iffat Khan, who was now a researcher on the team and no longer Faith’s assistant, had shown Faith some material on a situation in the Cotopaxi province in Ecuador, where young women—in many cases girls—were being lured from home and brought to Guayaquil to become prostitutes. It definitely qualified as an emergency. “If we can save a number of them, it would shine a light on the larger situation,” she said. “Maybe other corporate entities and charities would get involved. It could be an ongoing rescue mission.” Shrader looked gloomy and unconvinced, so Faith told him the rest of her idea. “I was thinking that after the rescue we could connect these young women with mentors. Older women who would teach them useful skills. How to read, first of all, if that’s needed. And computer literacy. Along with a trade. Textiles, maybe. They could learn to knit, and eventually form . . . a textile co-op. A women’s textile co-op.” Faith was excited by her own idea, polishing those last three words individually as she said them, but Emmett just kept looking at her, unconvinced. “And then we could bring one of the young women over here to speak about it,” Faith said. “What do you think?”
“What, we would fly her here?”
“Sure, why not?”
Emmett paused, slightly more engaged, and bobbed his head from side to side, considering. He promised to bring it up to the relevant people upstairs, and in June of 2014, a memo came to Faith from upstairs telling her that they were actually going to do it. She was very excited. Mentorship was still a very popular concept right now, everyone was talking about it, and the idea was surprisingly well-received. Someone at ShraderCapital had found a local contact in Quito. Alejandra Sosa was described as a dynamic leader involved with human rights issues in the developing world; her résumé was peppered with acronyms, the names of NGOs with which she’d consulted. All those capital letters, when looked at on one sheet of paper, had the effect of a firewall, or a code that could only be broken by someone much smarter than you.
A hasty Skype session was arranged. Members of the ShraderCapital and Loci teams in New York sat around a rock slab of a conference table up on 27 facing the projected image of a group of women in a modest Quito office. “Faith Frank!” said Alejandra Sosa. “This is an honor of honors. You have been very important to me as a woman.” Sosa was forty years old and confident, sexy. Faith liked her at once. They exchanged easy conversation about their shared mission. Alejandra Sosa knew of some skilled older women who could be hired to work with the hundred young women and girls after they had been rescued and relocated. To become their mentors. ShraderCapital would fund it, and the agency that Alejandra Sosa oversaw in Quito would take care of distributing money and making arrangements. She was very reassuring, and at the end she said, “It is gratifying to work with you, Faith Frank. You are a force for good.”
Faith had said to Emmett and his team, “I liked her tremendously, but we need to vet her, of course. You hear about the scamming that goes on in aid work when there isn’t oversight. I don’t want to get caught up in any of that.”