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 afamiliar 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 timesdid 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 missionariesand 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?—”
