“No.”
“I don’t want to see this.”
“Then don’t look.”
They were going to do it to her. Woofer had matches.
He was heating the needle.
I was trying not to cry.
“I don’t want to hear it either.”
“Too bad,” she said. “Unless you got wax in your ears you’ll hear it plenty.”
And I did.
Chapter Forty-One
When it was over and they’d finished swabbing her with the rubbing alcohol I walked over to see what they’d done. Not just this but last night and this morning too.
It was the first I’d been near her all day.
They’d removed the gag once they’d finished, knowing she was too weak now to say much anyhow. Her lips were puffy and swollen. One of her eyes was closing, turning red and purple. I saw three or four new cigarette bums on her chest and collarbone and one on her inner thigh. The triangular burn from Ruth’s iron was an open blister now. There were bruises on her ribs and arms and over her calves and thighs where Willie’d cut her the day before.
And there were the words.
I FUCK FUCK ME
Two-inch letters. All in capitals. Half-burned and half-cut deep into the flesh across her stomach.
Written in what looked like the shaky hesitant hand of a six-year-old schoolboy.
“Now you can’t get married,” said Ruth. She was sitting in her chair again, smoking, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. Willie and Eddie had gone upstairs for Cokes. The room stank of smoke and sweat and alcohol. “See, it’s there forever, Meggy,” she said. “You can’t undress. Not for anybody, ever. Because he’ll see those words there.”
I looked and realized it was true.
Ruth had changed her.
Changed her for life.
The bums and bruises would fade but this would stay—legible, however faintly, even thirty years from now. It was something she’d have to think about and explain each and every time she stood naked in front of someone. Whenever she looked in a mirror she’d see it there and remember. They’d passed a rule in school this year that said showers were mandatory after gym class. How could she handle that, in a roomful of teenage girls?
Ruth wasn’t worried. It was like Meg was her protégé now.
“You’re better off,” she said. “You’ll see. No man will want you. You won’t have kids. It’ll be a whole lot better that way. You’re lucky. You thought it’s good to be cute? To be sexy? Well, I’ll tell you, Meggy. A woman’s better off loathsome in this world.”
Eddie and Willie came in laughing with a six-pack of Cokes and passed them around. I took one from them and held it, trying to keep the bottle steady. The faint sweet scent of caramel was sickening. One sip and I knew I’d vomit. I’d been trying not to ever since it started.
Donny didn’t take one. He just stood by Meg looking down.
“You’re right, Ma,” he said after a while. “It makes things different. What we wrote I mean. It’s weird.”
He was trying to puzzle it out. Then finally he got a handle on it.
“She ain’t so much anymore,” he said.
He sounded a little surprised and even a little happy.
Ruth smiled. The smile was thin and shaky.
“I told you,” she said. “You see?”
Eddie laughed, walked over and kicked her in the ribs. Meg barely grunted. “Nah. She ain’t much,” he said.
“She ain’t nothin’!” said Denise. She swigged her Coke.
Eddie kicked her again, harder this time, in full solidarity with his sister.
Get me out of here, I thought.
Please. Let me go.
“I guess we could string her up again now,” said Ruth.
“Let her stay,” said Willie.
“It’s cold down there. I don’t want no runny noses or no sneezing. Haul her back on up and let’s have a look at her.”
Eddie untied her feet and Donny freed her hands from the four-by-four but kept them tied together and looped the line over one of the nails in the ceiling.
Meg looked at me. You could see how weak she was. Not even a tear. Not even the strength to cry. Just a sad defeated look that said, you see what’s become of me?
Donny pulled on the line and raised her arms above her head. He tied it off at the worktable but left some slack this time. It was sloppy and unlike him—as though he didn’t really care anymore. As though she wasn’t worth the effort.
Something had changed all right.
It was as though in carving the letters across her they’d stripped her of all power to excite—to elicit either fear or lust or hate. What was left was so much flesh now. Weak. And somehow contemptible.
Ruth sat looking at her like a painter studying her canvas.
“There’s one thing we should do,” she said.
“What?” said Donny.
Ruth thought. “Well,” she said, “we got her so no man’s gonna want her now. Problem is, see, Meg might still want him.” She shook her head. “Life of torment there.”
“So?”
She considered. We watched her.
“Tell you what you do,” she said finally. “Go upstairs to the kitchen and get some newspapers off the pile there and bring ‘em down. Bunch of ’em. Put ’em in the sink in back of us here.”
“Why newspapers? What are we gonna do with newspapers?”
“Read to her?” said Denise. They laughed.
“Just do it,” she said.
He went up and got the papers and came back down. He tossed them in the sink by the washer.
Ruth stood up.
“Okay. Who’s got a match? I’m out.”
“I got some,” said Eddie.
He handed them to her. She stooped and picked up the tire iron I’d given to Meg last night.
I wondered if she’d had any chance to use it.
“Here. Take this,” she said. She handed the iron to Eddie. “Come on.”
They put down the Cokes and walked past me. Everybody wanted to see what Ruth had in mind. Everybody but me and Susan. But Susan just sat on the floor where Ruth had told her to sit and I had Willie’s knife about two feet from my ribcage.
So I went too.
“Roll ’em up,” said Ruth. They looked at her.
“The papers,” she said. “Roll ’em up good and tight. Then toss them back in the sink.”
Woofer, Eddie, Denise and Donny did as she said. Ruth lit a cigarette with Eddie’s matches. Willie stayed behind me.
I glanced at the staircase just a few feet away. Beckoning.
They rolled the papers.
“Pack ’em down tight,” said Ruth.
They stuffed them into the sink.
“See, here’s the thing,” Ruth said. “A woman doesn’t want a man all over her body. No. She only wants him one place in particular. Know what I mean, Denise? No? Not yet? Well you will. Woman wants a man in one particular place and that’s right down here between her legs.”
She pointed, then pressed her hand to her dress to show them. They stopped rolling.
“One little spot,” she said. “Now. You take out that spot, and you know what happens? You take out all of her desire.
“Really. You take it out forever. It just works. They do it some places all the time, like it’s just the usual thing to do, when a girl reaches a certain age I guess. Keeps her from strayin’. Places like, oh, I dunno, Africa and Arabia and New Guinea. They consider it a civilized practice down there.
“So I figure, why not here? We’ll just take out that one little spot.
“We’ll burn her. Burn it out. We’ll use the iron.
“And then she’ll be … perfect.”
The room was hushed as they stared at her a moment, not quite believing what they were hearing.
I believed her.
And the feeling I’d been trying to understand for days now finally came together for me.
I
started to tremble as though standing naked in a rude December wind. Because I could see it, smell it, hear her screams. I could see all the way down into Meg’s future, into my future—the living consequences of such an act.
And I knew I was alone in that.
The others—even Ruth, for all the impulsiveness that had made her into a jailer, for all her inventiveness with pain, for all her talk of what might have been had she kept her job and not met Willie Sr. and not married and never had kids—the others had no imagination.
None. None whatever. They had no idea.
For everyone but themselves, for everything but the moment, they were blind, empty.
And I trembled, yes. With reason. With understanding.
I was captured by savages. I had lived with them. I’d been one of them.
No. Not savages. Not really.
Worse than that.
More like a pack of dogs or cats or the swarms of ferocious red ants that Woofer liked to play with.
Like some other species altogether. Some intelligence that only looked human, but had no access to human feelings.
I stood among them swamped by otherness.
By evil.
I broke for the stairs.
I heard Willie curse and felt his knife graze the back of my shirt. I grabbed the wooden banister and twisted onto the stairs.
I stumbled. Below me I saw Ruth pointing, shouting, her mouth a wide black empty gaping hole. I felt Willie’s hand grasp my foot and pull. Beside me were paint cans and a bucket. I swept them down the stairs behind me and heard him curse again and Eddie too as I wrenched my foot away. I got to my feet. I crashed blindly up the stairs.
The door was open. I flung open the screen.
The summer heat washed over me in a single heavy wave. I couldn’t scream. I had to gasp for air. I heard them close behind me. I leapt down the stairs.
“Move!” Donny yelled.
Then suddenly he was on top of me, the momentum of his leap from the landing knocking me down and knocking the breath out of me and rolling him away from me. I was faster than he was. I got to my feet. I saw Willie to the side of me, blocking my way to my house. I saw the knife glint in the sunlight. I didn’t try.
I ran past Donny’s outstretched arms across the yard heading toward the woods.
I was halfway there when Eddie hit me, threw himself hard across the back of my legs. I went down and suddenly he was all over me, punching, kicking, trying to gouge my eyes. I rolled and twisted. I had weight on him. I wrestled him over. He grabbed my shirt. I let it tear and pulled away. I stumbled back and then Donny was on me too and then Willie and it was only when I felt Willie’s knife at my throat and felt it cut that I stopped struggling.
“Inside, cunt,” he said. “And not a fucking word!”
They marched me back.
The sight of my own house tormented me. I kept looking at it for signs of life but there weren’t any.
We went up and then down into the cool, paint-smelling dark.
I put my hand to my throat. My fingers came up wet with just a little blood.
Ruth stood there, arms folded tight across her breasts.
“Fool,” she said. “Now where the hell were you going?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well, I guess you’re with her now,” she said. “Don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with you all.”
She shook her head. Then she laughed.
“Just be glad you don’t have one of them little spots like she does. ’Course, then, you’ve got something else to worry about, don’t you?”
Denise laughed.
“Willie, you go get some rope. I think we better tie him up, in case he feels like wandering again.”
Willie went into the shelter. He came back with a short length of rope and handed Donny the knife. Donny held it while Willie tied my hands behind me.
Everybody watched and waited.
And this time Donny seemed to have no trouble at all looking me in the eye.
When they were through Ruth turned to Woofer and handed him the matches.
“Ralphie? You want the honors?”
Woofer smiled and lit a match and leaned way over the sink. He reached back and lit a corner of one of the rolled-up papers. Then he lit another comer nearer to him.
He stepped back. The paper began to burn brightly.
“You always did like a fire,” said Ruth. She turned to the rest of them. She sighed.
“Who wants to do this now?” she said.
“I do,” said Eddie.
She looked at him, smiling a little. It seemed to me the very same look that once, not long ago at all, had been pretty much reserved for me.
I guess I wasn’t her favorite kid on the block anymore.
“Get the tire iron,” she said.
And Eddie did.
They held it to the flames. It was very quiet.
When she judged it was hot enough she told him
to remove it and we all went back inside.
Chapter Forty-Two
I’m not going to tell you about this.
I refuse to.
There are things you know you’ll die before telling, things you know you should have died before ever having seen.
I watched and saw.
Chapter Forty-Three
We lay huddled together in the dark.
They’d removed the work light and closed the door and we were alone, Meg and Susan and I, lying on the air mattresses that Willie Sr. had provided for his family.
I could hear footsteps passing from the living room to the dining room and back again. Heavy footsteps. Donny or Willie. Then the house was silent.
Except for Meg’s moaning.
She’d fainted when they touched her with the iron, gone rigid and then suddenly limp as though struck by a bolt of lightning. But now some part of her was struggling toward consciousness again. I was afraid to think what it would be like for her once she woke. I couldn’t imagine the pain. Not that pain. I didn’t want to.
They’d untied us. At least our hands were free.
I could tend to her somehow.
I wondered what they were doing up there now. What they were thinking. I could picture them. Eddie and Denise would have gone home for dinner. Ruth would be lying in the chair with her feet up on the hassock, a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside her, staring at the blank screen of the television. Willie sprawled across the couch, eating. Woofer on his belly on the floor. And Donny sitting upright on one of the straight-back kitchen chairs, having an apple maybe.
There would be frozen TV dinners in the oven.
I was hungry. I’d had nothing since breakfast now.
Dinner. I thought about that.
When I failed to come home to eat my parents would be angry. Then they’d start to worry.
My parents would worry.
I doubt that it had ever occurred to me before exactly what that meant.
And for a moment I loved them so much I almost cried.
Then Meg moaned again and I could feel her tremble beside me.
I thought of Ruth and the others sitting in the silence upstairs. Wondering what to do with us.
Because my being here changed everything.
After today they couldn’t trust me. And unlike Meg and Susan, I’d be missed.
Would my parents come looking for me? Sure, of course they would. But when? Would they look for me here? I hadn’t told them where the hell I’d be.
Dumb, David.
Another mistake. You knew you might be in trouble here.
I felt the darkness press tight around me, making me smaller somehow, crimping my space and limiting my options, my potential. And I had some small sense of what it must have felt like for Meg all these weeks, all alone down here.
You could almost wish for them to come back again just to relieve the tension of waiting, the sense of isolation.
In the darkness, I realized, you tend to disappear.
&
nbsp; “David?”
It was Susan and she startled me. I think it was the only time I’d ever heard her speak to me—or to anybody for that matter—without being spoken to first.
Her voice was a scared trembly whisper. As though Ruth were still at the door listening.
“David?”
“Yeah? You okay, Susan?”
“I’m okay. David? Do you hate me?”
“Hate you? No, ’course not. Why should I… ?”
“You should. Meg should. Because it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Susan.”
“Yes it is. It’s all my fault. Without me Meg could have gone and not come back.”
“She tried to, Susan. They caught her.”
“You don’t understand.”
Even without seeing her you could tell how hard she was trying not to cry.
“They caught her in the hall, David.”
“Huh?”
“She came to get me. She got out, somehow.”
“I let her out. I left the door open.”
“And she came up the stairs and into my room and put her hand here, over my mouth so I’d be quiet and she lifted me up off the bed. And she was carrying me down the hall when Ruth, when Ruth …”
She couldn’t hold back anymore. She cried. I reached out and touched her shoulder.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s all right.”
“… when Ruth came out of the boys’ room—I guess she heard us, you know—and she grabbed Meg by the hair and threw her down and I fell right on top of her so she couldn’t move at first and then Willie came out and Donny and Woofer and they started beating her and hitting her and kicking her. And then Willie went into the kitchen and got a knife and put it right here to her throat and said that if she moved he’d cut off her head. He’d cut her head off’s what he said.
“Then they took us downstairs. Later they threw my braces down. This one’s busted.”
I heard it rattle.
“And then they hit her some more and Ruth used her cigarette on her … on her …”
She slid over and I put my arm around her while she cried into my shoulder.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “She was going to come back for you. We were going to figure something out. Why now? Why’d she try to take you? Why’d she try to take you with her?”