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charge, how much?” If it was enough I could always
have the more literate of my students supplement their stipends
with a few hours work.
    “ Depends,
can be as much as $10,000 a student. If they need a lot of help
that is.”
    “ Wow. I had
no idea it was so profitable.” Something told me the university
didn't either.
    “ It really
works too. One of my students, Xa Shen, could barely read English,
but after two months, he scored well enough for MIT.”
    I was
speechless. It sounded too good to be true.
    “ There's my
bag! Say 'hi' to Dr. Lee for me.”
    2
    I first
noticed the Bengali contingent when we were transferring in Miami.
International travel to the US goes through customs at the first
airport where you land. There was some number, more than I could
quickly count, of excited young women in matching brightly colored
saris, chatting away over in the foreign passport line. I didn't
think much of it at the time as Danny was asking where there was a
bathroom and I wanted to make sure that we reentered the good ol'
USA successfully.
    It wasn't
until we met again at the baggage claim at Hartsfield Jackson
airport in Atlanta that they impinged more seriously on my
consciousness. I chatted to one, who looked barely 16 and knew some
variety of English, while we were waiting for the bags to arrive
from the bowels of the airport.
    “ So is this
a girl scouts or youth group outing?”
    “ No, we have
jobs, in the US.”
    “ Oh,
where?”
    “ Atlanta,
maids. So exciting.”
    A rather muscular man came over and interrupted
us. He very brusquely told the woman “Don't talk to anyone.” and
then warned me, “This is none of your business. Nosy people who ask
questions tend to lose their noses.”
    “ I was just
being sociable, welcoming them to Atlanta.”
    “ Don't.”
    “ Fine. Suit
yourself.”
    “ I mean it.
Stay away from this.”
    After picking up our bags I told Laura about out
conversation. “Sounds like you've run into one of the human
trafficking rings.”
    “ Trafficking
rings?”
     
    She pulled up a photo on her cell. “Did the man
look like this?”
    “ Yes, that's
him.”
    “ Can't prove
it yet, but those poor girls don't have a clue what they're in
for.”
    “ Damn. They
seemed nice enough. They seemed just like a bunch of excited
freshmen eager for their first classes.”
    “ INS is on
it.”
    “ Good.” I
had other problems to pursue, and the Feds could look after that
one.
    3
    The next day
I caught up with my student Tom and found out how the class was
going. The physics teaching was fine. Unfortunately the rest
wasn't. “We're down to 48 students now, and not another
dropout.”
    “ Damn. Did
he survive?”
    “ She
collapsed about halfway through the class. Might make it, at least
she was alive when the EMT's left. Our friend Steve helped with the
CPR.”
    “ I'm glad
someone was there.”
    “ Yeah, he
said it was much nicer with a pretty girl than the CPR
dummy.”
    “ Let's not
go there, shall we. Who was it?”
    “ Tamika
Harris.”
    “ Which one
was she?”
    “ She was the
young black woman who always sat up in the front, the middle of the
row.”
    “ Damn, one
of the better student's wasn't she?”
    “ Do you know
where she went?”
    “ Dunno,
probably Grady.”
    “ When was
this?”
    “ A week ago,
just after you left.”
    “ Has anybody
tried to contact her or her parents?”
    Not
surprisingly, no one from GSU had tried to find them. I opened up
'gosolar', the web-based grade tool we used, and found her record.
There was a picture, her student e-mail address and little else. I
sent her an email, in the hope that maybe someone was reading
them.
    A few
minutes later, my office phone rang. It was her parents.
    Grady hospital, being only a few blocks away
from campus, was an easy walk. I found Tamika and her family in her
hospital room.
    I was
greeted enthusiastically, “Dr. Sharpe, we're so glad you could
visit. Tamika was enjoying your class.”
    “ All part of
the