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“I want to release you. I just need you to explain to me what the fuck happened out there. I wasn’t prepared for you to set off running toward them. What the hell was that?!” I ask.
She begins to become less agitated as if realizing,Oh yeah, I guess he really wouldn’t know.
“Let me go,” she says in a less threatening tone.
“Promise you won’t set off running and stick around to fill me in?” I ask.
“Yes, Mikhail,” she says in frustration. “Now, come on. Let me go. We don’t have a lot of time to be wasting, doingthis, we could be here chatting when who knows what the hell is happening with those kids,” her voice is worried now and I hear genuine fear.
I gear myself up for what she’s about to tell me as her chest starts to rise and fall rapidly and she looks around in a panic. This is about to be bad. I know it.
“Okay, I’ll tell you, only to save time but don’t fucking judge me and start fucking doubting me. There’s this girl…” she starts.
I interrupt her, “I won’t,” I say as I try to reassure her.
She doesn’t seem to hear me. She continues. “…that comes into the restaurant daily. She has that look, a look we’ve all had. I’m sure if Axel saw her too, he’d agree. At first, I wasn’t sure what to believe about this town and figured she was probably just a runaway. But then seeing my father…” she shudders at calling him that, “got rid of all of my naive imaginations of this town. If he’s here. Who knows who else is here? And I began to recognize signs of her being trafficked.”
I’m looking at her in fright and she mumbles this part to herself, “and I didn’t act on it because I was trying to fucking respect this stupid fucking commitment,” her tone is filled with regret.
She adds, “I saw her today trying to cover up a bruise with make-up and it confirmed everything for me. I gave her some money and was watching her leave when the guy I know is her pimp, hurried out soon after her trying not to look suspicious and of course, maybe he succeeded because no one else in the restaurant seemed to see him but I did because I know fuckers like them all too fucking well and I watched him as he watched her and I hoped she got away.” She seems to retreat in thought and fear about another reality for a brief moment before she returns to this one.
“I saw him again just now. The same man is outside fuckface’s house. And he had the kids running to him, telling them to hug him, calling him uncle and I just fucking snapped. I was about to charge in and kill them until you stopped me. And I’m not lying!” she says, staring at me with wild eyes.
I feel exposed and ashamed, knowing she has to convince me of her sanity. “I believe you,” I say, needing her to know that I regret the way I treated her with everything inside of me.
She doesn’t acknowledge that. She has no time for me and my guilt. “Great, now that we’ve got the explanation out of the fucking way, let’s go.” She starts walking off in the direction of the house of that fucking waste of breath and I feel like shit for grabbing on to her arm, stopping her.
“What the fuck?! I thought you said you believed me! Let me go!” She starts to pull herself away from me but I hold on tightly.
“I do believe you. And you’re right, we should do something. We should inform the authorities. Maybe call child protective services,” I try to drive through to her.
She balls her fist up. “Look at your face. Look at you saying all of that with a fucking straight face. I could fucking knock your fucking teeth out of your head for your fucking stupidity. I’m this close to slapping the fucking skin off your face.” She continues to try to pull herself from me but I’m still not letting go. “Do you understand that you’re enabling the fuckers right now, keeping me here?”
I shake my head at her accusation, needing to ‘unhear’ what she just said. “Don’t say that. You’re wrong. I’m trying to protect…”
“I don’t need your fucking protection! How many goddamned motherfucking times do I have to tell you the same fucking thing?! Listen, if you want to go to the fucking “authorities”, go the fuck ahead. But I’m not going to. Let me the fuck go!” she screams at me.
“Trust me, I’m tempted to go there with you and break their fucking necks too. Tear them apart, limb by limb…” I start to say before she interrupts me again.
“All I’m hearing is a bag of talk, talk, talk,” each time she says ‘talk’, it’s strained as she struggles to pull herself free with each beat, “and no fucking action!” she finishes.
“Will you stop fucking pulling yourself like that? You’ll wring your fucking arm out of its socket!” I yell.
“Oh, will I? I bet you won’t guess what would prevent me from wringing my fucking arm out its socket. Take a great, big guess!” she yells.
She doesn’t wait for a response from me because she isn’t asking me for one. “I’ll fucking tell you!” she rages. “If you fucking let me go! That’s what! Talking some bullshit about me wringing my arm out when you’re the fucking one restraining me. I don’t have time for this fuckery.”
She fucking flings her other arm up so quickly, I’m not able to dodge it in time, and her fist connects with my temple. I begin to feel dizzy as she follows up quickly with a punch to the fucking eye and another one to the nose. “Let me fucking go!” she yells as she lands each blow. I grab her hand midair before she strikes again and she immediately begins to launch her fucking feet, throwing them against my shins and my knee making me a little unsteady.
I know she doesn’t need me to protect her and she doesn’t want me to but I fucking will. “Stop this!” I yell, trying to gather up like I am trying to hold together arms filled with items without a grocery cart. Her arms are flailing, then her legs, then her fucking head. It’s like trying to put a fitted sheet on the fucking bed and one side keeps jumping off as I throw her over my fucking shoulders and take off with her again. This would be a lot fucking easier if we had brought the fucking car and planned this a whole lot better. Because I’m not against getting those kids justice and I might even be down to kill the fuckers and risk it all for the fucking kids if we fucking planned it better. Who knows if the pimp ass motherfucker was armed?
The more distance I put between her and the house, I hear her cries of agony. Not just screams of being handled or screams of frustration. No, it’s agony. I can almost feel her although I can’t see what she’s doing behind me, reaching her hands out as if I’m tearing her away from the house, from the kids and she’s struggling to hold on. I can feel her slipping like she’s still trying to run out of my hands, over my shoulder and I shatter inside at each step I take further and further away because I don’t want to walk away from those kids either.
“Let’s go home and plan it better,” I shout over her cries so that she can hear me.
“We don’t have time for your fucking plans! I can’t believe this is happening. That I’m being dragged away by a man again in my life. That my freedom to act is being taken away from me.” She sobs.
And it’s tearing me apart. “This is not the same thing Julissa. I promise you. I’m not like them. I never will be. I just think we’ll do better having a plan.”
