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,hewas 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.
