Twenty-Seven The Child
Twenty-Seven
The Child
“There he is.”
He was practically slobbering at the mouth like a wild dog as he watched the small boy.
Skinny kid, maybe nine or ten years old.
Mexican, or something like that. He was kicking a ball down the sidewalk.
No one else around. I figured he must have been on his way home from a friend’s. Most kids had friends.
But not me.
“What do you want him for?” I asked, an uncertainty growing inside me.
I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice. I tried. I really did. It wasn’t that I gave one shit about this bastard anymore, but I guess it was about survival. This boy—this new kid—was the person who would take my place.
The bastard behind the wheel no longer wanted me. I could tell. And I was glad, sort of. I had made up my mind that he would not hurt me again. I was leaving the first chance I got. But now he wanted someone new to rut. Someone to use to make himself feel good and powerful.
He wanted this boy. A boy, I knew, couldn’t get pregnant. A boy wouldn’t have the blood—the girl teaching me to read called it “the rag.” Having a boy would be a lot easier.
I shouldn’t have cared.
But somehow I did.
“I want you to go talk to him.”
I stared at him as if he had lost his mind. He’d made me play lookout plenty of times when he picked up kids, but not in a long time. Not since that one girl asked if I was his daughter. “Why do I have to talk to him?”
“Talk him into going into that house over there,” he explained. “Tell him you dropped your cell phone and your arm is too fat to reach through the crack and get it. Tell him you’ll pay him.” He dug a five-dollar bill out of his pocket.
I stared at the money. “I can’t do that.”
He backhanded me, knocked me against the window. “Do it now before he’s gone, or I’ll make you wish you had!”
My face stinging almost as much as my pride, I scrubbed away a telltale tear. “Whatever.”
I got out of the car, closed my door quietly, and then went around the bumper. Since the front door of the old house was standing open, getting in wouldn’t be a problem. I hurried up the sidewalk until I was even with the house, then I shouted at the kid.
He stopped, his red-and-blue ball held tightly in his hands. He stared at me, his face full of uncertainty.
“I don’t mean to bother you.” I smiled real big as I hustled across the street toward him. “Can you help me a minute?”
The boy glanced around as if looking for someone to ask if it was okay to talk to me.
“Don’t be afraid. I just need someone with skinnier arms to help me get my cell phone.
” I pointed to the house. “I’ve been staying in there because I have no place else to go, and my phone fell into a crack in the floor and my arm is too big to reach it.
Can you get it for me?” I pulled the money out of my pocket. “I’ll pay you.”
He glanced at the five-dollar bill and then nodded. “Okay.”
It was so easy. The stupid kid did exactly what I told him, except when we got in the house, he was waiting. He pressed the cloth in his hand over the boy’s mouth, and the kid passed out. He told me to watch him while he got the car.
As I waited, I stared at the boy, who looked even smaller lying on the floor. “Sorry,” I muttered.
We took him to our place. He cried and cried and cried.
I watched the way the man, who had been my only family all this time, touched this boy.
I knew he wouldn’t wait long to rut him.
But he was holding off for some reason. Probably prolonging the foreplay or something.
The girl who was teaching me to read said some guys liked that part better than the fucking—that’s what she called the rutting.
Finally, when the boy just kept whining, he got mad. He told me to watch him and that he’d be right back. I think he was going to get some liquor. I remembered he did that to me. Had me drink it so I wouldn’t whine so much. He was probably going to do that to the boy.
I sat stone-still on the tattered old chair and watched him huddled in the corner, his hands and feet bound, the gag in his mouth.
I remembered being tied up just like that before he started putting me in the trunk and then the box.
It wasn’t this place. It was somewhere else.
But he had done the same thing to me. Tonight, after he got enough liquor in the boy, he would fuck him.
I would be forced to listen . . . to remember.
Then the boy would look at me with those big brown eyes, and he would blame me because I was the one who trapped him.
No.
I was not going to be a prisoner any longer, and I was not going to be the reason this boy lived the kind of life I had lived.
Hell no.
I was suddenly so angry and yet I was terrified. How would I do this? Thinking it was one thing, but where would I go? Could I really take care of myself?
I thought of my new friend, and I realized I could haunt a street corner just like her. I could survive the same way she did.
I went over to the boy. He drew away as if he feared I would hurt him.
“I’m sorry I helped him catch you.”
He sobbed, snot running down his skinny face.
“I’m going to help you, but you have to promise me something first.”
He stared into my eyes, the sobs fading to a hiccup.
“When he comes back, I’m going to knock him out and then cut you loose. You’ll have to run for help. Tell the police what he did to you so they’ll arrest him. But you can’t tell them about me. Promise?”
His head bobbed up and down like one of those crazy street beggars on crack.
“Okay. But if you break that promise, I will come back in the middle of the night and . . .”
He shook his head fast.
“We have a deal, then. You just sit right there and be quiet. When he gets here, you start your whining again. I’ll be ready.”
I didn’t have much. Two pairs of jeans. The shoes I wore.
A second pair of socks and panties and one other T-shirt.
I packed all of it into a plastic bag from the supermarket.
Then I remembered my teddy bear. It was the one thing I’d had for as long as I could remember, so I put it with the bag. I hid them behind the ragged couch.
In the kitchen, there was no knife. He never left stuff like that lying around.
But in the very back under the sink, there was one of those big old forks—the kind people used for barbecuing.
I guess the people who lived there before us had a grill.
I took the big fork and tucked it between the cushion and the sofa arm, and sat down to wait.
Half an hour passed with me and the kid just sitting there, waiting for him to return. I was pretty sure the kid had shit himself, since I smelled something bad. I couldn’t risk helping him clean up because I needed to be in position for when the monster returned.
Finally, he unlocked the front door and came in, a paper sack in his arms. “Got you something, too,” he announced, grinning at me. He pulled out a bottle of Coke and a bag of chips. “I thought you might want to go next door and watch TV.”
We often heard the girl next door’s television playing. He didn’t know that I watched it sometimes when I went over there for my lessons.
“Okay,” I said.
He put the bag down on the sofa next to me. “Me and the boy are going to bed now. He’s tired.” He slid the half pint of liquor into his back pocket and turned toward the boy. “Smells like you need a bath.”
I watched for a moment, the racket the kid was making growing as he sobbed louder and louder. The piece of shit bent to touch him, and that’s when I moved. My fingers curled around the handle of the big fork, and I rammed it into him as hard as I could.
He screamed, jerked away from me.
The fork still grasped in both hands, I jumped back as he twisted around. His eyes were big and round, and he was staring at me as if he intended to kill me.
He dove at me. I thrust the fork forward, ramming it into his gut this time. He just stood there staring at me. I pushed harder, driving the fork as deep as I could.
He crumpled to the floor, but he started to rant at me. Screaming that he was going to kill me. I had to do something!
I grabbed the old ceramic lamp from the table. Jerked its cord free of the wall and crashed it as hard as I could over his head.
He collapsed onto his back and stopped moving . . . stopped making sounds.
My heart was in my throat. I crouched next to him and reached into his pocket in search of the knife he carried. I knew he had one. I had seen it before. I dug until I found it. My hands shaking, I ran to the boy and cut him loose. I pulled the balled-up sock out of his mouth.
Before he could take off, I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him toward the monster on the floor. His feet dragged and he cried as if he feared I was going to back out on our deal.
“Shut up,” I snarled. I reached down and pulled the fork out of the bastard’s gut. Blood dripped from its two points. He still didn’t move. He might have been dead.
I didn’t care. I hoped he was.
“Take this,” I ordered. The boy took hold of the bloody fork with both hands, the same way I had held it when I stabbed the bastard.
“Go outside and start screaming. Throw this on the sidewalk so people see it and know something bad happened in here. Then run down the street screaming for help. Don’t stop until someone calls the police.
They have to call the police. Do you understand? ”
He nodded frantically.
“If the police don’t come, he’ll get away and find you again. You have to tell them what he did to you and that you stabbed him to get away. Understand?”
He nodded again, big tears rolling down his cheeks.
“You can’t tell them about me, remember?”
Another bob of his head.
I got my bag and my teddy bear from behind the couch. “Go!”
I watched for a moment as he ran out the door. He threw the big fork onto the sidewalk just like I told him and started to scream for help.
I dared to breathe, and then I turned to go.
Harsh fingers wrapped around my ankle.
My heart stuttered to a near stop. I fell face forward. My bag and teddy bear flew from my hands.
“You fucking bitch!”
I twisted around and kicked him in the face with my free foot. He howled and his fingers released me. I grabbed my shit and ran.
That was the last time I saw the monster that stole my life . . . until one week ago.