Broken Glass

  There was a shard of glass still in the side of my palm. I gazed at it and then closed my eyes and felt my body turning boneless. Nevertheless, I tried to stay conscious. How many times could I faint and live? I kept myself from going completely dark this time. He had me sprawled on the floor and began to work on my hand wound, cursing and complaining as he did. He was mumbling like a drunken madman. I tried not to think of the pain, to imagine myself somewhere else, but even my imagination was exhausted. It was as if I had drained every nice thought, every pretty memory, and every ounce of happiness from my bank of cheerful and blissful times.

  “No matter what I do to make us happy, you spoil it,” he muttered. “Spoil and spoil, that’s all you can do. That’s you, spoiled to the core. I was afraid of exactly this. Yes, I was. My mother told me, warned me, girls, pampered girls, are poison. They’ll turn your blood to ice water. They’ll make you hate yourself for ever caring about them. And they’ll always make more trouble for you than they’re worth.”

  He began to imitate a woman’s voice. “ ‘They don’t love you. They never love you. They love only what you can do for them. Their love doesn’t come to you; it bounces off you. You become a reflector . . . they’ll just be looking at themselves. They’ll see and want what’s good for them only. Stay away from pampered girls. You hear me, Anthony?’

  “I heard, but I didn’t listen good. What you go and do this for? I got this great dinner planned. I bought you new clothes, new shoes, and your favorite things to eat. Why did you do this to me?”

  He plucked a shard of glass out of my palm and then washed my hand roughly, mumbling and repeating his mother’s words like some chant. He smeared disinfectant cream over the deep cut before he wrapped my hand in gauze and bandaged it so tightly that I couldn’t move my fingers. Then he stood up and looked down at me with such disgust I couldn’t imagine him wanting to keep me any longer.

  These have to be the final moments. Surely he’ll either let me go or kill me, I thought, but I was almost too tired and defeated to care which it was.

  “You ain’t getting another mirror, Kaylee. And you ain’t gonna spoil my dinner. No, ma’am, no. You’ll sit there at our table, and you’ll eat everything I put in front of you with your other hand. Whatever you don’t eat, I’ll stuff down your throat either tonight or for breakfast tomorrow. That’s what my father did to me many times, made me eat for breakfast what I didn’t eat for dinner. You hear what I’m saying? Do you?”

  He straddled me, both hands clenched into fists that looked like mallets, his knuckles strangely bruised, like those of someone who had been punching walls. The muscles in his neck were tight, embossed against his skin. His jaw looked locked open. My imagination was going wild. I thought I saw two tiny eyes gazing out at me from the darkness of his mouth.

  I nodded.

  “Say it!”

  “Yes,” I managed. Every time I thought I would simply give up and die, the fear within me boiled higher and higher. I didn’t want any more pain. I couldn’t refuse to speak to him. I had tried that and failed. He would simply imagine my words, imagine them the way he wanted them to sound. I couldn’t deliberately starve myself. My body wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t defy him in any way, and yet somewhere so deep inside that I had never gone there before, I felt the twitter of resistance, a part of me still alive. I couldn’t give up, no matter how futile it looked. I was in that strange place where you could only shut down your mind and try to step outside yourself, no longer caring what happened to your tortured body but still dreaming of escape.

  “You get yourself up and go sit at the table. Don’t do anything else to get me mad,” he warned. “My patience is on empty. And I’m not putting on any of the music you like. This ain’t a romantic dinner now. It’s just a dinner, tossing food at you like feeding hogs. Don’t get me mad again.”

  He stared down at me, imprinting his threat on my forehead with his angry eyes. I closed mine and waited, half expecting him to stamp on my face and maybe kick the last drop of life out of me.

  He returned to his dinner preparation, mumbling to himself as he worked. I sat up slowly. He hadn’t picked up the pieces of the mirror, so I had to be careful where I put my left hand as I stood. My right hand was pounding with pain, but I walked out and sat at the table. He began to bring food, but not pretending to be a waiter this time. He was more like who he really was, my prison guard, my abductor. He served the salad and then sat and glared at me, defying me not to eat.

  I began. It was impossible to use my right hand, and I was clumsy with my left, but he didn’t say anything. He watched me unhappily. I was eating, but his rage was not subsiding. Maybe the end really was near, I thought.

  “Nice new clothes, the best steak, good food, plans to fix up our place with you picking out what colors to use, planning new furniture, new flooring, all of it, and none of it making you happy,” he recited with the speed of an automatic weapon. “Ah, why waste my breath?”

  He stabbed at his salad, nearly splitting the dish in two, and began to eat. It sounded like he was growling when he chewed. He poked at his lettuce and tomatoes, nodding as if he had been listening to someone speak. Suddenly, he threw his fork down and sat back.

  “What’s it gonna take to make you happy, Kaylee? You told me things you like, and I made sure you got them. Love ain’t a one-way street, you know. Yeah, I remember you said you was spoiled and I might have to be a little tough with you, but you were just being honest, and don’t forget, you invited all this. Did I tell you to meet me? Did I keep contacting you, or did you keep contacting me? I told you, I warned you, I don’t like just fooling around, and you said you weren’t. You swore. You even got mad at me for even thinking you were. And now this behavior? You think a man is just another toy for you to play with? Is that what you think? I ain’t no toy—no, ma’am.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and sat back, scowling at me.

  Did I dare try again? Did I have the strength for it?

  “That wasn’t me,” I said. “I told you, that was my twin sister. Her name is Haylee. You were supposed to meet her, not me.”

  He didn’t speak; he simply shook his head, looked up at the ceiling, nodded again as if he heard someone speaking, and returned to eating his salad.

  After a few quiet moments, he spoke, but he looked down at the table as if he was speaking his thoughts not to me but to himself.

  “It’s just gonna take time. Patience, like Ma always said. ‘Patience paves the way to satisfaction. Impatience lets the air out of your tires.’ ”

  He rose and went to the stove to finish fixing our dinner. Everything he did was still lined with anger, as he slammed pans and cursed under his breath. I kept my head down. I was eating and swallowing, but I wasn’t tasting anything. I was trying to get it down as quickly as I could, thinking that my eating would calm him and give me the strength to resist again. When he brought my steak, he stood over me and cut it into small pieces for me. I kept my eyes down and ate. He did the same and stopped talking. We were both almost done when I heard what sounded like a doorbell. He paused and listened. It was there again, definitely a doorbell.

  Did I dare hope? I had never heard the doorbell ring.

  He looked at his watch, thought a moment, and then smiled and nodded to himself. Why was he happy that someone had rung the doorbell? Was he bringing someone else down here? He stood up.

  “Just finish eating,” he said, “and don’t make any loud noises, either.” He walked out, closing the door behind him. I heard him run up the stairs.

  I listened as hard as I could. If I heard another voice, I decided I would get to that door and that stairway and, with all the strength I had left, scream and scream for help, no matter what.

  But I heard no one. Less than a minute later, I heard him coming back down the stairs. He opened the door and stood there with a large carton in his arms, and he was smiling again, smiling as if nothing that displeased him had ever happened.

/>   “Federal Express. This was easier to get that way. It’s not exactly something a husband goes to the stores to get for his wife anyway,” he said, crossing over to the table, “even if she is a special woman. It’s addressed to you.”

  He pushed everything aside and placed the carton on the table. I saw the name he had created for me, Mrs. Kaylee Cabot. It was from an online clothing store. He took the steak knife and sliced the top so he could open the carton and take out its contents. He lifted them all with both hands and dropped them in front of me. I was confused for a moment. What sort of new clothes were these? He stood there smiling like someone who couldn’t wait to see the reaction to his gift. I lifted the first garment with my good hand. Impatient for my understanding, he seized it and held it up with both his hands. The realization of what it was washed over me like a cold wave in the ocean.

  It was a maternity dress.

  “It won’t be long now,” he said.

  What won’t be long? I wondered. He had not yet raped me. Did he believe I was somehow pregnant? Was this part of his imaginary world?

  He dipped his hands into the pile of garments and showed me each one.

  “Three different colors, but each one a color you favor, right?”

  Did I dare say it? Would I be bringing on my own rape? “But I’m not pregnant,” I said.

  “Well, you’re gonna be, ain’tcha?” He folded the dresses and put them back in the carton. “Just a matter of time,” he muttered. “Everything grows better when it’s planned well. I’ll have everything ready way ahead of time. It’ll get so you won’t think of anything else but our child. I told you that, and I believe it. That’s the cure to being selfish, having someone besides yourself who matters more. Ma was never selfish. Of course, men can be. My father proved that in spades, but I swear, I won’t be. No worry about that, Kaylee Cabot. Say,” he said, “you want to keep your middle name? I kinda like it . . . Blossom . . . Kaylee Blossom Cabot. Sounds almost like a song, don’t it? You know what? If we have a girl, maybe we’ll name her Blossom. Whatcha think?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, it’s a little too soon to plan all that. Probably be a boy anyway.”

  He closed the carton and brought it to the right corner beside the bed.

  “For now, we’ll keep it here,” he announced. “And now, to further celebrate, we’ll have that chocolate cake I promised you.”

  He went to the counter and took the cake carefully out of a box. I watched him cut it up with that same meticulous attention to the size of the pieces that he gave to the sandwiches he made for me. He brought the slices over and sat.

  “Can’t help liking the name Blossom Cabot, though. Maybe I’ll wish for a girl. Don’t matter to me if my father’s name is kept going with a male child. Yes, sir, time to think about it seriously now.”

  “I thought you said that your mother told you a woman in pain won’t have a good baby,” I said.

  He nodded and smiled. “You remember Ma’s words? Yeah, sure, but you ain’t gonna be in pain much longer, even with that stupid cut on your hand. Your feet are almost healed, and in less than a week, I’ll have you looking just fine,” he said. “Don’t you worry your little head about it. Dr. Daddy is here. Hey, guess what I’m gonna bring down tomorrow. My crib. That’s right, my own crib. Ma wouldn’t let my father throw it out or sell it or anything. It’s still in my room. I’ll take it apart to get it down and put it back together here. You’ll watch me do it, and you’ll look at it every day and think about our baby crawling around in it. There’s lots more I’m gonna do. I’ve been studying up on what a newborn baby needs.”

  He nodded toward the wall on my right.

  “I’m gonna build some more shelves over there, shelves just for baby stuff.”

  When he was happy and reasonable like this, despite what it suggested for me, I wasn’t as afraid to speak. “Babies need sunshine and fresh air most of all,” I said.

  “Oh, sure. By then, I’ll have the backyard fixed up, too. I got lots to do but never before had a good reason to do it. Now I do. We do. So stop your worrying, Kaylee Blossom Cabot. You’re in good hands now.” He started to eat the cake and nodded for me to do the same.

  I did.

  With every bite, my will to survive and escape inched its return. Why shouldn’t it? I thought as the level of my energy rose. I’m smarter than he is. I can escape. All I have to do is convince myself, and a new plan will come.

  He smiled at my enthusiastic eating of the cake. “Want a little more?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “That’s what I like to hear, more please and thank you. You’re going to change. You’re going to be perfect, a perfect little wife and mother.”

  He went to get me more cake.

  Yes, I will be someone’s perfect wife and someone’s perfect mother, but not your wife and not your child’s mother.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Haylee listening. As the determination returned to my face, she began retreating.

  She even looked a little sorry and now a little frightened.

  Oh, don’t worry, I thought. You will be sorry. You have good reason to be frightened.

  Anthony returned with my second piece of cake. I ate it faster than the first.

  “Well, I’ll be a dog in heat. You want to be better faster, too, don’tcha? You want that baby even more than I do.”

  I looked up at him.

  And smiled.

  This had to lead to another way out of my prison. I was already thinking of ways to use it.

  17

  Haylee

  “I’m moving back into your mother’s bedroom tonight,” Daddy declared as we drove home from the restaurant.

  “Really?”

  “Mrs. Lofter has given us all her time without taking any time off for herself because it was important in the beginning, but we can’t expect her to be at our house day and night seven days a week.”

  “Oh.”

  So he wasn’t falling back in love with her or anything like that, I thought. It was something temporary.

  “Does Mother know you’re doing that?”

  He looked at me as if I had just arrived on the planet and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Haylee. I know it’s difficult for you to wrap yourself around it, but your mother doesn’t know what’s happening right now. She’s in a sort of limbo state of mind. I doubt she’ll think anything of my moving back in . . . or maybe it will nudge her back into reality. Like shock treatment or something.”

  “Then what? I mean, when she realizes again that Kaylee is really gone?”

  “We’ll see, but if she should regain her bearing and her strength to the point where she can handle things again, I’ll move out, not just out of her room but out of the house.”

  “Out of the house? I’ll be alone with her?”

  “You were before this happened.”

  I turned away and stared out the side window. I would never say it, of course, but Mother’s psychological breakdown was a bonus. She’d had such a firm control of our lives before all this. She practically knew how many breaths we took daily. From the time Kaylee and I could move around the house by ourselves until Kaylee’s disappearance and the aftermath, I felt we had lived in a Big Brother world, only it was a Big Mother world instead. She had homeschooled us until the third grade and then reluctantly gave in and let us attend a real school. But when we were at that school, she was still watching us closely. She had taken a teacher’s assistant job just to spy on us.

  To do what I considered normal things, I’d had to devise ways to sneak around, and I’d had to do it for the two of us. Kaylee was never very good at coming up with clever deceptions. I was the one who had to invent the excuses and the good lies. She was the timid and reluctant one. No other girl my age had such an added burden. There were many times when Kaylee had stupidly revealed the truth and ruined things for us, or maybe she’d done it deliberately because of her fat conscience. I probably had fewe
r hairs on my head than the number of times she’d gotten me angry at her since we were born together. I wouldn’t doubt that she’d angered me in Mother’s womb, too. Mother used to complain about all the kicking we did. I’m sure it was all my kicking. Kaylee was too considerate to kick while she was inside Mother.

  “Hey,” Daddy said now. I turned back to him. “I wouldn’t be too optimistic just yet.”

  Optimistic? It was just the opposite. He should have said, “I wouldn’t be too depressed yet.” After all, what did “the point where she can handle things again” mean? It wasn’t simply going to be a return to the past. It couldn’t be with Kaylee gone.

  Oh, no. I imagined new restrictions, especially on my social life. For one thing, Mother might come up with the insane idea that whoever took Kaylee would come after me, too. Wouldn’t he want both halves of a perfect young girl?

  Besides that irrational fear, she’d conclude that since Kaylee wasn’t here to do something, then I couldn’t do it, either. Night after night, I’d be sitting at home having to console Mother. She wouldn’t simply accept that Kaylee was gone and there was nothing more to do, no reason to punish me by restricting my life. Perhaps she would stop pretending Kaylee was here, yes, but she wouldn’t give up on her returning. If I happened to die before her, Mother would tell the undertaker to wait before burying me: “Her sister is on the way home, I’m sure.”

  One insane moment after another was sure to occur. Could I imagine bringing a friend home, even if she let me, especially a boyfriend? After ten minutes with her, whoever I’d brought would find an excuse not just to leave but to flee. Eventually, I’d feel like I was the one who had been kidnapped. Maybe I’d think I would have been better off and become jealous of Kaylee again.