I Was the Payment for My Brother's Debt
by Nadia Voss
My brother didn't lose four million dollars. He was paid ninety thousand to put my name on the paper — and eight women signed that same page before me. None of them can be found.
My brother owed four million dollars to a man this city will not say out loud, and on a Tuesday morning he walked into my office with two men behind him and settled it with me. Nobody put a hand on me. That is the part nobody believes. They never had to. I walked out past reception, I put my badge in the tray, and I got into the car myself, because the gate at the other end was already shut. They gave me the rules of the house on the first night. Not downstairs after eleven. No questions to the staff. And never, ever answer a door. I thought I was collateral on a bad loan. I was not. The paper my brother put my signature on says the debt is enforceable in kind and not in money, which means no amount closes it. Not mine. Not his. Not a bank's. It was never a loan at all. There were nine of those documents this year. Nine women. Mine is numbered nine in pencil in the corner, and I am the only one of the nine that anybody alive can still find. My brother was paid ninety thousand dollars to write my name. That is what I cost. He should have asked what I do for a living before he sold me to a man who keeps his ledgers in the same house I sleep in.
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