Chapter 14 #3
“As for your other job, you’ll have no need of it.
I’ll take care of your living expenses while our arrangement is ongoing, if I didn’t make that clear.
For ease of access, it’s preferable if you live with me, and beyond that, I’ll take care of clothing, medical needs, car insurance, your phone plan, property taxes on the farm, anything else you need. ”
“I’ll still have my sister’s groceries and phone plan—”
Bell pulls a hand from his pocket and waves my protest away. “Of course I’ll take care of those things as well. I want all your attention on me, and when it’s not on me, on your work in the studio.”
“That’s kind of you,” I say slowly. Numbly.
He laughs. “Birdie, it’s not kind.”
He’s right. Either way, I have to remember that this transaction will eventually end, and I’ll still need a life to come back to. If I can keep up my carpentry commissions, that’s a huge piece, but I also hate the idea of losing Buddy’s.
“I work at a gas station fifty to sixty hours a week,” I say. “I don’t want to lose that job.”
“You are not working sixty hours a week when I’ve already paid for all the hours in your day,” he says, voice clipped. “You can quit.”
“I’ll need that job when our year is over,” I argue.
It’s not easy for me to argue with anyone, but I can’t cede this point.
“It’s good for me. My boss is nice about when I need to be gone for Busy.
I never have a problem getting forty hours a week there because no one else wants to work the night shift.
Please. At least give me half the week.” I’m not sure how Buddy will feel about me knocking my hours down to part-time for an entire year, but I’ll figure it out.
Right now, I just have to convince Bell.
Those straight brows are arrowed down. He doesn’t like this at all. “You’re asking for four days away from me a week.”
“Just for those nights. I can drive back to your place after my shift.”
“You can have one night a week. To the gas station and straight back again.” The words drip with irritation.
“Three nights.”
“Two.”
“Three nights until school starts in mid-August,” I counter. “Then only two until school lets out again in May.” Summer is when the night shift is busiest. Bored young people who have nothing to do in rural Kansas except buy junk food and drive around.
He thinks about it. “Okay,” he agrees. “But this is conditional on my satisfaction. If I dislike having you gone for three nights until school starts, then I’m not letting you expand your hours again in May.”
It is surreal to be standing here and doing a mutual cartography of this arrangement, discussing things like paying for car insurance when he’s purchasing my body for the next year.
And more than my…my…cunt. All of it, along with my consent.
He’s purchasing the right to force me, to take something I might not want to give.
And I can leave, sure, but then that’s it.
I can’t wait until I want to say yes; I can’t come back.
My no would be a resignation of my post and a surrender of the best chance I have at caring for Busy with any kind of permanence.
Is it rape? If my refusal is a card I can only play once and with disastrous consequences?
It’s coercive certainly, and while it might fall short of a criminal definition of rape, I’ve heard enough from Busy’s social workers and counselors over the years to know that this would not be considered full consent.
But I’ve already endured so much for Busy.
I’ve already sold my body in every other way possible.
I’ve cut and accidentally sanded my hands in this barn.
I’ve given Buddy’s my back and my knees and my sleep.
I’ve sold plasma, and I’ve even looked into selling my eggs, but I was too old by the time I thought of it.
My fingers have been broken for her; my cheek has burned with the imprint of her hand.
Why should my vagina be more precious than my blood or my phalanges? Because the priests say so? A brief but hot flare of anger comes after the thought. The priests have a roof over their heads no matter what, but I’m the only thing keeping Busy safe and sheltered.
I’ve already suffered so much, and if I’m honest, it’s impossible to think about this without being so, so aware of the throbbing ache in my shoulder, of the corrosive, pulsing pain in my calf, only barely contained by ibuprofen and duct tape. I’m so tired. I hurt so badly everywhere, all the time.
Maybe this way, I’ll get something out of the hurting.
But of all the questions I ask myself, I do not ask myself if things can get worse because I know they can. Instead, the last question I ask myself is: Does it matter?
Does it matter if things get worse? If this goes south? Do I still have so much left of myself that I’ll feel like I’ve lost something if I endure this and it turns out Bell was lying all along? If I get nothing?
I’ve got nothing to lose, not even myself.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “I’ll do it. You have me for the year.”