Chapter 1 #2
I wrap my thin arms uselessly around my belly and try to keep my voice level as I stare into unsympathetic blue eyes. “But Joe, what about parents for the baby? You…you said you’d let me choose someone to adopt it. That it wouldn’t stay here.”
“Did I say that?” With no compassion or remorse for breaking his word, Joe squeezes my shoulders and shoves me down to my knees, forcing me to grab the filthy fabric of his trousers until I get my balance.
“Seems by now you’d have learned that men’ll say anything to make a woman happy.
Keeps ‘em obedient, see? Now, one more suck for old times’ sake before you go, Mara.
Lemme see me how much you’ll miss me. Watch this, Crowley, and see how good her mouth is. ”
He lied to me.
He lied.
My baby is going to be born into this hellhole with me, and there’s no way out for us.
None.
I blindly free his cock, and when he plunges it to the back of my throat, he gets more than just my tears from choking as I stare past his cruel, lusting eyes into a void of nothingness.
He gets my tears of anguish.
An hour later finds me sitting in numb despair with my hands tied in front of me, stowed away in a covered wagon with boxes of supplies for Crowley’s brothel.
Pain ripples across my belly again as I belatedly soothe the little feet kicking inside me.
Joe and Crowley were talking about the fair that had come to town, and I can hear the sounds of it carrying on the evening air.
All the people of Hope’s Stand are likely having the time of their lives with the entertainment a fair brings, all while being blissfully unaware of what’s happening right under their noses.
How foolish and stupid I was to think Joe would keep his word.
I can’t let an innocent child suffer my fate.
To let wandering hands slide into private and forbidden places in the middle of the night.
To let those same hands muffle its cries of pain.
To let what happened to me just moments ago with Crowley and Joe repeat itself.
And there’s no use hoping the baby is a boy because I’ve seen some men eager for only the boys.
No one’s safe in this world. Not unless you’re bigger and stronger.
I knew better than to let myself get attached because there’s no escaping this life. Not with men and guns and punishments when I’m caught.
No, the only true escape for the both of us is death.
And time is swiftly running short if I’m going to kill myself before my baby’s born to spare it the suffering.
Oh, God. I try to draw my knees up, but I can’t with this belly.
If I fail and my child and I are left in Crowley’s hands, its fate will be worse than the boy I couldn’t save.
“Get in there, bitch,” Joe says, voice muffled. A moment later, the canvas covering the wagon parts and a girl is shoved in. So this is the “lucky bitch” I get to start Crowley’s brothel with. That’s a matter of perspective for both of us.
Lucky for her that she managed to catch herself on her elbows since her hands are tied just like mine.
Lucky for me that she’s gagged. God knows I’ve got enough thinking to do on the least painful way to leave this world without having to hear her complain all along the way.
But it’s not just her. Joe tosses in an unconscious boy, too. Pain spikes my heart at his limp form before it dulls into a familiar ache. Not another child. I close my eyes, envisioning his future. The very future Joe’s broken promise cursed my own child with.
A swirl of emotions sticks in my throat as the wagon takes off with Crowley at the reins.
There’s not even a moment’s peace behind my eyes, though, because soon I feel the woman staring at me as I shift on my bruised ass.
Christ, can’t I get just a moment alone with my feelings?
The bumps and ruts jostling the wagon make it easier for me to scowl at her.
“What? Haven’t you ever seen a pregnant half-breed before? ”
She works her gag off, and now I regret asking her anything at all. Her nosy gaze moves from my stomach to my face. “I’m...sorry. Do you know we’re going? Where we’re going?”
She sounds rough, as if she screamed herself hoarse before she was thrown in here, but I can’t stop my empty smile.
Not because I think anything about this is funny.
Quite the opposite, in fact. With her expensive rose-patterned dress and her fancy hairstyle, it looks like she’ll be in for an even ruder awakening than what she just went through.
It’s just the goddamned irony of it all just struck me. Me in my filthy clothes and her in her finery, but the same fate awaits us both.
“Does it matter? We’ve been bought by a man.
Don’t worry, though. All men’s hands and cocks are the same after a while.
You learn to take what they give you and be grateful you’re still alive.
Day in and day out, everything the same.
” A cramp deep in my belly makes me smooth my bound hands over it.
Everything the same until it’s not. “Until one of them gives you a baby and makes you wish for death.”
Death. Swing low, sweet chariot. Christ, how many times did the missionaries make me sing that hymn? Even now, I find myself humming its melody.
“I’m Dove. What’s...what’s your name?”
My name. Again, does it matter? But if it gets my mind off of everything for just a minute, I suppose talking won’t hurt.
“It depends on what my new owner wants to call me. I’ve had lots of names over the last four years, but the one given to me was Mara.
” Bitter, according to my many Bible lessons. And how fitting it is.
“Mara,” she says in a halting manner. “How old are you, Mara?”
“Seventeen.” I almost smile at her gasp of shock.
I’ll be eighteen soon. The Overstreets never celebrated birthdays, but they told me the chrysanthemums in their front yard were almost on their way to dying when they took me in at only a few days old.
By the time I was old enough to remember that, I would note each time I saw the chrysanthemums.
Nine times I saw them open their happy faces toward the sun.
Nine times I watched them wither away into nothing.
And then my life descended into hell itself for the next four years.
In a twist of cruelty, I saw the briefest glimpse of what might have been chrysanthemums when Joe brought me to Hope’s Stand, so maybe I’m already eighteen. Any day between the day the petals bloom and the day they drop to the ground could be the date of my birth.
Regardless, seventeen…eighteen… Either age doesn’t matter. I feel like an old woman.
Dove’s stare is still heavy on me, so I shrug.
“I was broken in young, passed around to whoever paid the most.” Reverend Overstreet and his wife may have been missionaries and proclaimers of the gospel, but their son Neil wasn’t.
And when they died, Neil took it upon himself to teach me the ways of men and women before losing me in a card game.
Is it any wonder I now doubt the existence of the all-powerful God I was taught about?
How could I believe in someone who would let me suffer as I have?
Even a lame horse gets put out of its misery, but no, I’ve not been that lucky.
I’ve had to keep living in mine. Trapped in a never-ending hellhole with no hope of escape.
Dove shudders as if she just read my thoughts. “We’ve got out of here. To get...out.”
I briefly wonder why she skips words sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. Distance, Mara. And I’m not going to encourage her to get her hopes up only for them to be dashed to pieces.
Not like mine.
Then that would make me like Joe, and I refuse to be anything like him.
Time to close my eyes and drift away into nothingness. Over the sounds of the road, I hear her trying to wake the boy and then his groans as he comes to.
“They...the bad men got us, didn’t they?” His little voice cracks at the hardness protecting my heart, but sympathy won’t stop what waits for him when the wagon reaches its final destination.
“They did,” Dove quietly says, “but we stay calm. Have to stay calm.”
She’s not doing him any favors. Hiding the truth is crueler than preparing him for his new reality. “Just tell him the truth. We’ve been sold and—”
Dove narrows her eyes at me and firmly repeats what she said before. “We stay calm.”
The boy stares at us, lower lip trembling as he wipes his nose with dirty hands.
Then, as if he were a sinner on his deathbed and not any older than eight or nine, he decides to clear his conscience.
“I gotta tell you somethin’, Dove. In case…
well, just in case. One time...one time I snuck out the window after my momma put me to bed.
I stayed out playin’ all night long and lied to her when she asked me if I slept good. ”
No more playing for him. Not where we’re going. I wish I had it in me to care about the two of them, but I have my own problems. Mainly that I can’t even save myself and my own child, let alone two others.
He sniffs and continues. “And then one time, I stole a piece of candy when Mr. Howell wasn’t looking.” A pause. “Actually, it was more like five pieces ‘cause I stuffed ‘em in my pants. I only got to eat two, though, ‘cause Momma hadn’t fixed the hole in my pocket yet and some fell out. And then—”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. How much longer is this going to go on for? My eyes roll over to them. “For the love of—”
But the boy just talks over me as if he didn’t hear. “And then one time I left the barn door open and all the horses got out and I blamed my brother even though it was me. He’s the one Pa whooped when it was me who done it.”