He ran out to the sink and then back again with another jarful. He gave it to Donny and she drank that too.
“Thanks. Thank you.”
She licked her lips. They were chapped, dry, split in places.
“Do you … do you think you could …? The ropes … they hurt me a lot.”
And you could see they did. Even though her feet were flat on the floor she was still stretched tight.
Willie looked at Donny.
Then they both looked back at me.
I felt confused for a moment. Why should they care what I thought? It was like there was something they were looking for from me and they weren’t sure that they’d find it.
Anyway, I nodded.
“I guess we could,” said Donny. “A little. On one condition though.”
“Anything. What?”
“You have to promise not to fight.”
“Fight?”
“You have to promise not to make any noise or anything and you have to promise not to fight and not to tell anybody later on. Tell anybody anytime.”
“Tell what?”
“That we touched you.”
And there it was.
It was what we’d all been dreaming about in that bedroom upstairs. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. I could hardly breathe. I felt like everybody in the room could hear my heartbeat.
“Touched me?” said Meg.
Donny blushed deeply. “You know.”
“Oh my God,” she said. She shook her head. “Oh Jesus. Come on.”
She sighed. Then thought for a moment.
“No,” she said.
“We wouldn’t hurt you or anything,” said Donny. “Just touch.”
“No.”
Like she’d weighed and considered it and simply couldn’t see her way clear to do that no matter what happened and that was her final say on the matter.
“Honest. We wouldn’t.”
“No. You’re not doing that to me. Any of you.”
She was mad now. But so was Donny.
“We could do it to you anyway, jerk-off. Who’s gonna stop us?”
“I am.”
“How?”
“Well you’ll only do it to me once goddamn you, and only one of you. Because I won’t just tell. I’ll scream.”
And there wasn’t any question but that she meant it. She’d scream. She didn’t care.
She had us.
“Okay,” said Donny. “Fine. Then we leave the ropes the way they are. We put the gag back on and that’s that.”
You could see she was close to tears. But she wasn’t giving in to him. Not on this. Her voice was bitter.
“All right,” she said. “Gag me. Do it. Leave. Get out of here!”
“We will.”
He nodded to Willie and Willie stepped forward with the rag and scarf.
“Open up,” he said.
For a moment she hesitated. Then she opened her mouth. He put the rag in and tied the scarf around it. He tied it tighter than he had to, tighter than before.
“We still got a deal,” said Donny. “You got some water. But we were never here. You understand me?”
She nodded. It was hard to be naked and hanging there and proud at the same time but she managed it.
You couldn’t help admiring her.
“Good,” he said. He turned to leave.
I had an idea.
I reached out and touched his arm as he passed and stopped him.
“Donny?”
“Yeah?”
“Look. Let’s give her some slack. Just a little. All we have to do is push the worktable up an inch or two. Ruth won’t notice. I mean, look at her. You want to dislocate a shoulder or something? Morning’s a long way off, you know what I mean?”
I said this in a voice loud enough so that she could hear.
He shrugged. “We gave her a choice. She wasn’t interested.”
“I know that,” I said. And here I leaned forward and smiled at him and whispered. “But she might be grateful,” I said. “You know? She might remember. Next time.”
We pushed the table.
Actually we sort of lifted and pushed it so as not to make much noise and with the three of us and Woofer it wasn’t too hard. And when we were done she had maybe an inch of slack, just enough to give her a bend at the elbow. It was more than she’d had in a very long while.
“See you,” I whispered as I closed the door.
And in the dark I think she nodded.
I was a conspirator now, I thought. In two ways. On both sides.
I was working both sides from the middle.
What a great idea.
I was proud of myself.
I felt smart and virtuous and excited. I’d helped her. One day would come the payoff. One day, I knew, she’d let me touch her. It would come to that. Maybe not the others—but me.
She’d let me.
So “See you, Meg,” I whispered.
Like she’d thank me.
I was out of my mind. I was crazy.
Chapter Thirty
In the morning we came down and Ruth had untied her and brought her a change of clothes along with a cup of hot tea and some unbuttered white toast and she was drinking and eating that sitting cross-legged on the air mattress when we arrived.
Clothed, freed, with the gag and blindfold gone, there wasn’t much mystery left in her. She looked pale, haggard. Tired and distinctly grumpy. It was hard to remember the proud Meg or the suffering Meg of the day before.
You could see she was having trouble swallowing.
Ruth stood over her acting like a mother.
“Eat your toast,” she said.
Meg looked up at her and then down at the paper plate in her lap.
We could hear the television upstairs—some game show. Willie shuffled his feet.
It was raining outside and we could hear that too.
She took a bite of the crust and then chewed forever until it must have been as thin as spit before swallowing.
Ruth sighed. It was as though watching Meg chew was this great big trial for her. She put her hands on her hips and with her legs apart she looked like George Reeves in the opening credits of Superman.
“Go on. Have some more,” she said.
Meg shook her head. “It’s too … I can’t. My mouth is so dry. Could I just wait? Have it later? I’ll drink the tea.”
“I’m not wasting food, Meg. Food’s expensive. I made that toast for you.”
“I … I know. Only …”
“What do you want me to do? Throw it out?”
“No. Couldn’t you just leave it here? I’ll have it in a while.”
“It’ll be hard by then. You should eat it now. While it’s fresh. It’ll bring bugs. Roaches. Ants. I’m not having bugs in my house.”
Which was kind of funny because there already were a couple of flies buzzing around in there.
“I’ll eat it real soon, Ruth. I promise.”
Ruth seemed to think about it. She adjusted her stance, brought her feet together, folded her arms across her breasts.
“Meg honey,” she said, “I want you to try to eat it now. It’s good for you.”
“I know it is. Only it’s hard for me now. I’ll drink the tea, okay?”
She raised the mug to her lips.
“It’s not supposed to be easy,” said Ruth. “Nobody said it was easy.” She laughed. “You’re a woman, Meg. That’s hard—not easy.” Meg looked up at her and nodded and drank steadily at the tea.
Donny and Woofer and Willie and I stood in our pajamas and watched from the doorway.
I was getting a little hungry myself. But neither Ruth nor Meg had acknowledged us.
Ruth watched her and Meg kept her eyes on Ruth and drank, small careful sips because the tea was still steamy hot, and we could hear the wind and rain outside and then the sump pump kicking in for a while and stopping, and still Meg drank and Ruth just stared.
And then Meg looked do
wn for a moment, breathing in the warm fragrant steam from the tea, enjoying it.
And Ruth exploded.
She whacked the mug from her hands. It shattered against the whitewashed cinder-block wall. Tea running down, the color of urine.
“Eat it!”
She stabbed her finger at the toast. It had slipped halfway off the paper plate.
Meg held up her hands.
“Okay! All right! I will! I’ll eat it right away! All right?”
Ruth leaned down to her so that they were almost nose to nose and Meg couldn’t have taken a bite then if she’d wanted to—not without pushing the toast up into Ruth’s face. Which wouldn’t have been a good idea. Because Ruth was burning mad.
“You fucked up Willie’s wall,” she said. “Goddamn you, you broke my mug. You think mugs come cheap? You think tea’s cheap?”
“I’m sorry.” She picked up the toast but Ruth was still leaning in close. “I’ll eat. All right? Ruth?”
“You fucking better.”
“I’m going to.”
“You fucked up Willie’s wall.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Who’s going to clean it? Who’s going to clean that wall?”
“I will. I’m sorry, Ruth. Really.”
“Fuck you, sister. You know who’s going to clean it?”
Meg didn’t answer. You could see she didn’t know what to say. Ruth just seemed to get madder and madder and nothing could calm her.
“Do you?”
“N … on.”
Ruth stood up straight and bellowed.
“Su-san! Su-san! You come down here!”
Meg tried to stand. Ruth pushed her down again.
And this time the toast did fall off the plate to the floor.
Meg reached down to pick it up and got hold of the piece she’d been eating. But Ruth’s brown loafer came down on the other one.
“Forget it!” she said. “You don’t want to eat, you don’t need to eat.”
She grabbed the paper plate. The remaining piece of toast went flying.
“You think I should cook for you? You little bitch. You little ingrate!”
Susan came hobbling down the stairs. You could hear her way before you saw her.
“Susan, you get in here!”
“Yes, Mrs. Chandler.”
We made way for her. She went past Woofer and he bowed and giggled.
“Shut up,” said Donny.
But she did look pretty dignified for a little girl, neatly dressed already and very careful how she walked and very serious-looking.
“Over to the table,” said Ruth.
She did as she was told.
“Turn around.”
She turned to face the table. Ruth glanced at Meg, and then slipped off her belt.
“Here’s how we clean the wall,” she said. “We clean the wall by cleaning the slate.”
She turned to us.
“One of you boys come over here and pull up her dress and get rid of them panties.”
It was the first thing she’d said to us all morning.
Meg started to get up again but Ruth pushed her down hard a second time.
“We’re gonna make a rule,” she said. “You disobey, you wise-mouth me, you sass me, anything like that, missy—and she pays for it. She gets the thrashing. And you get to watch. We’ll try that. And if that doesn’t work then we’ll try something else.”
She turned to Susan.
“You think that’s fair, Suzie? That you should pay for your trash sister? For what she does?”
Susan was crying quietly.
“N … noooo,” she moaned.
“’Course not. I never said it was. Ralphie, you get over here and bare this girl’s little butt for me. You other boys get hold of Meg, just in case she gets mean or stupid enough to walk into the line of fire here.
“She gives you any trouble, smack her. And careful where you touch her. She’s probably got crabs or something. God only knows where that cunt has been before we got her.”
“Crabs?” said Woofer. “Real crabs?”
“Never mind,” said Ruth. “Just do what I told you to do. You got all your life to learn about whores and crab lice.”
And it went just like before, except that Meg was there. Except that the reasoning was crazy.
But by then we were used to that.
Woofer pulled her pants down over the casts and nobody even had to hold her this time while Ruth gave her twenty, fast, with no letup, while she screamed and howled as her ass got redder and redder in that close little room that Willie Sr. had built to withstand the Atomic Bomb—and at first Meg struggled when she heard the howling and crying and the sound of the belt coming down but Willie took her arm and twisted it behind her back, pressed her facedown into the air mattress so that she had all she could do to breathe, never mind helping, tears running down not just Susan’s face but hers too and splotching the dirty mattress while Donny and I stood watching and listening in our wrinkled pajamas.
When it was over Ruth stood back and slipped her belt through her belt loops and Susan bent over with difficulty, braces chattering, and pulled up her panties, then smoothed the back of the dress down over her.
Willie let go of Meg and stepped away.
As Susan turned toward us, Meg lifted her head off the mattress and I watched their glances meet. I saw something pass between them. Something that seemed suddenly placid behind the tears, sad and oddly tranquil.
It unnerved me. I wondered if they weren’t stronger than all of us after all.
And I was aware that once again this thing had escalated somehow.
Then Meg’s eyes shifted to Ruth and I saw how.
Her eyes were savage.
Ruth saw it too and took an involuntary step back away from her. Her own eyes narrowed and ranged the room. They fixed on the comer where the pick, ax, crowbar and shovel stood propped together like a little steel family of destruction.
Ruth smiled. “I think Meg’s pissed at us, boys,” she said.
Meg said nothing.
“Well, we all know that won’t get her anywhere at all. But let’s just pick up that stuff over there so she’s not too tempted. She’s maybe just dumb enough to try. So get ’em. And lock the door behind you when you leave.
“By the way, Meggy,” she said. “You just passed on lunch and dinner. Have a real nice day.”
She turned and left the room.
We watched her go. Her walk was a little unsteady, I thought, almost like she’d been drinking though I knew that wasn’t so.
“You want to tie her up again?” Woofer asked Willie.
“Try it,” said Meg.
Willie snorted. “That’s real cool, Meg,” he said. “Act tough. We could do it whenever we want to and you know it. And Susan’s here. Remember that.”
Meg glared at him. He shrugged.
“Maybe later, Woof,” said Willie, and he went and got the ax and shovel. Woofer took the pick and the crowbar and followed him.
And then there was a discussion as to where to put it all now that it was outside the protection of the shelter. The basement flooded sometimes so there was a danger of rusting. Woofer wanted to hang them from the ceiling support beams. Donny suggested they nail them to the wall. Willie said fuck it, put ‘em by the boiler. Let ’em rust. Donny won and they went looking through Willie Sr.’s old World War II footlocker by the dryer, which served as a toolbox now, for hammer and nails.
I looked at Meg. I had to brace myself to do so. I guess I was expecting hate. Half dreading and half hoping it’d be there because then, at least, I’d know where I stood with her and with the rest of them. I could already see that playing the middle was going to be tough. But there wasn’t any hate that I could see. Her eyes were steady. Sort of neutral.
“You could run away,” I said softly. “I could maybe help you.”
She smiled but it wasn’t pretty.
“And what would you want for that, David?” she
said. “Got any ideas?”
And for a moment she did sound a little like the tramp Ruth said she was.
“No. Nothing,” I said. But she’d got me. I was blushing.
“Really?”
“Honest. Really. Nothing. I mean, I don’t know where you could go but at least you could get away.”
She nodded and looked at Susan. And then her tone of voice was totally different, very matter-of-fact, incredibly reasonable and very adult again.
“I could,” she said. “But she can’t.”
And suddenly Susan was crying again. She stood looking at Meg for a moment and then hobbled over and kissed her on the lips and on the cheek and then on the lips again.
“We’ll do something,” she said. “Meg? We’ll do something. All right?”
“Okay,” said Meg. “All right.”
She looked at me.
They hugged and when they were finished Susan came over to me standing by the door and took my hand.
And together we locked her in again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Then, as if to negate my offer of help, I stayed away.
Under the circumstances it was the best I could do.
Images haunted me.
Meg laughing on the Ferris wheel, lying on the Rock by the brook. Working in the garden in her shorts and halter with a big straw hat over her head. Running bases, fast, over at the playground. But most of all Meg naked in the heat of her own exertions, vulnerable and open to me.
On the other side I saw Willie’s and Donny’s tackle dummy.
I saw a mouth crushed into an air mattress for being unable to swallow a piece of toast.
The images were contradictory. They confused me.
So trying to decide what to do, if anything, and with the excuse of a rainy, ugly week to live through, I stayed away.
I saw Donny twice that week. The others I didn’t see at all.
The first time I saw him I was emptying the garbage and he ran out into the gray afternoon drizzle with a sweatshirt pulled over his head.
“Guess what,” he said. “No water tonight.”
It had been raining for three days.
“Huh?”
“Meg, dummy. Ruth’s not letting her have any water tonight. Not until tomorrow morning.”
“How come?”
He smiled. “Long story,” he said. “Tell you about it later.”