My partner in crime in Berlin, Karissa, spent a lot of her time working on projects for Alabaster Jar, a ministry that works in the West of Berlin with prostitutes. Once in a while, I got the chance to go with her. This particular week, we gave hand massages and manicures while chatting with the girls.
Tina looks like she could be in her late 50s, but in reality she's in her early 40s. She has short, reddish hair. She hails from southern Germany, where her 10-year-old son lives with her parents. She speaks German only, no English, but we were still able to have decent conversation as I practiced my language skills with her. Her hands were weathered and tan. Her tights were ripped, her skirt short, her top low-cut. When she first walked into the cafe, she was quiet and unsure. When I massaged her hands, she turned into a little girl. She smiled, laughed, talked to me. When I finished her second hand, she smiled and reached out her first again. "Another? May I have another? Es tut so gut! It does such good for me." I did each of her hands three times because she kept placing another hand in mine. She'd close her eyes and sigh, thanking me for doing this one small thing for her. Instead of spending time in jail for a tax problem, she's chosen to volunteer at this cafe for two months. Once she even came in to pray with us, though she was insecure and didn't know how.
The second girl never told me her name. She is cute and alive, with dark hair and pale skin, constantly talking and shifting from one place to the next. I had to call her away from distractions three times just to finish doing her hands once. They were calloused, and the nails short. I got to hear about her unstable relationship with her girlfriend. (Many of the girls who do this job are lesbians.) She told me that her landlord makes her have sex with him instead of pay rent because she's usually broke. I could see scars on her arms from where she'd injected life-ruining substances into her veins. She comes back to the cafe because people will listen to her and love her.
Socke came in late in the day. When she first walked into the cafe, I started to kick her out, because no men are allowed. Her head was totally shaved, her baggy shirt and oversized shorts hid any curves she might have had, and her shoes made her feet look huge. There was nothing about her that suggested that she was, in fact, female. She had just started to come to the cafe the previous week, but she'd lived and worked in Berlin for 8 years. She asked me if I liked the city as I began working the tension out of her hands. I told her yes, and that I liked the energy and the people. She said that it got old after awhile. Scars from hypodermic needles stared at me from the crook of her elbow.
I expected her hands to match the rest of her- abused and manly. Instead, her hands were soft, her nails trimmed short, her wrists fine. She was silent through most of the massage, looking out the open door and seemingly waiting for it to be over. When I finished, she smiled in friendship and left after telling me that she'd really enjoyed it.
For every girl, I wondered when the last time was that someone touched her with love, the last time that someone really wanted to cherish her. It's such an intimate thing in such a different way to hold somebody's hand, to work lotion and scrub into the skin that's been so abused by its owner. Hundreds of other people could touch those hands in the lifetimes of these girls, but it could be that they're never held without demand, without expectation, without judgement or lust ever again. You can see it in their eyes. They're hundreds of years old but they have no wrinkles. Shells of people offering a shell of intimacy to shells of other people.
So Alabaster Jar is there, offering a place where others will look at them without judgement, give them water or a sandwich, and tell them to come back any time. God is moving there. Please pray for this ministry. Please pray for me as I continue to process the times that I got to work there.
Peace.
Beautiful post, Natalie.
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