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Thursday, June 18, 2009 

Current mood:  hopeful
Category: Life
Melissa’s Story
By Ivy
 
“…ten days ago. They found Melissa’s body in a hotel room ten days ago.” It was my sister Lily telling me on the other line that Melissa was dead. I dropped the phone as my knees gave out, and I fell to the floor in my living room. I felt my heart break. All I could say was, “No. Oh No.” J.C. and the kids came into the living room. J.C. held me. Samantha said, “What’s wrong, Mom?” She asked over and over, but the words would not come out of my mouth. Sadness quickly turned to anger as I realized that Melissa’s twin sister Maribel knew for ten days and hadn’t told me!

I composed myself long enough to call Maribel. She arrived quickly and we drove together back to her home. I kept yelling through tears, “Why didn’t you tell me?! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” She kept saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Then she stopped the car and said, “Wait. Did you think I knew? I just found out today.” I felt bad when she said that. She said the police had just come to the house. They didn’t want to tell the family until they were sure which twin it was. Melissa had been in the morgue for ten days. Alone. Cold. Her family had gone to view the body that afternoon. Maribel said she was still in shock. She said, “Ten days ago, I had an overwhelming feeling that my heart was complete. That the other half of it had come to stay.”

Melissa’s lifeless body was laid out on the rectangular banquet table that the eastside funeral home provides to its not-so-prosperous clients for their memorial services. Her hair was jet black when she was young. She had made an attempt to dye it an auburn color, but anyone could tell that it had turned entirely gray, and her face was covered in wrinkles. Following a hard life, she looked fifty-seven rather than her actual thirty-seven years. Only a handful of people were in attendance, mostly her immediate family. Her mother, embarrassed by the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death, did not want anyone else to be present at the service. Melissa was found on her daughter’s eighteenth birthday, in a rundown hotel, on South Sixth Avenue, a street in South Tucson, notorious for drug dealings and prostitution. She had overdosed on morphine after turning a trick. The call to report her death was phoned in more than likely by a john, who did not stick around for emergency personnel to arrive. At the funeral, her young daughter, Taylor, hugged her and cried out for her mommy not to leave her. She sounded like an innocent, naïve, child, but she had more life experience than most girls her age. Taylor was a straight A student that had always dreamed of becoming a doctor, but that dream fell away, and she was declared a ward of the state at the age of fourteen. Ashley had followed in her mother’s footsteps, being arrested for the first time, charged for the offense of solicitation, at the tender age of fifteen.

When Melissa was as young as five, her father would sign her out of class, in the middle of the school day, drive her to the nearby Dairy Queen and buy her an ice-cream cone in exchange for sexual favors. Also when Melissa’s father would want to have sex with her twin sister, Melissa would insist on taking her place, to save her sister from sexual abuse. When she would do this, it pleased her father, and he would reward her by sliding a one or five dollar bill under Melissa’s bedroom door, after he finished with her. Melissa always believed this trained her to be a prostitute. Although Melissa may have saved her twin sister from the bulk of the abuse at the hands of her father, she, beginning in their teenage years, had no trouble selling her twin to strange men, starting at age fifteen.

I often pass by the hotel where Melissa died just a few years ago and think about why I left the life. Why was I successful and why did Melissa succumb? It killed her. She was my friend. I shared that life with her. I could relate to her about “the life.”

Melissa made efforts, countless times, to reach out to different organizations for assistance, but she frequently felt humiliated and stigmatized when people would inquire about her profession. It is already too late to rescue Melissa, but with the right intervention and appropriate aid it is not too late to save others who want desperately to walk off the street.

I hope that the Little Pink Dress Project will provide an alternative to that hotel room where Melissa was left to die. Alone.
8:57 PM 
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Monday, March 17, 2008 

Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
So what is a dress form?
A dress form is used to give a three-dimensional view on the article of clothing that is being sewed. They come in all sizes and shapes for almost every article of clothing that can be made. When a piece of clothing is made, it can be put on the dress form so one can see how the piece of clothing turned out. Then one can make alterations upon the clothing after seeing what it looks like on a body.

The Little Pink Dress Project will be sending dress forms to artists. The artists will then design/decorate the form in the style of their choosing and send it back to us. We will be holding a gala inwhich we will auction these dress forms to raise funds for the "dream center." A place for street prostitutes to get rest, food, shelter, and support if they are wanting to quit walking the streets and find new employment and a new lifestyle.

Soon we will be posting the true stories of prostitutes who have or have not made it off of the streets. We found their stories compelling and we think you will as well. Let’s all work together to give hope where it seems like there isn’t any left.

Amor y respeto,

Andree & Sofia
The Little Pink Dress Project

dress forms
5:37 PM 
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Little Pink Dress Project



Last Updated: 10/19/2009

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City: TUCSON
State: Arizona
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