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“I didn’t know that.”
He smiles and glances at me. “Because I didn’t tell you. I don’t tell anyone about this place.” He glances back at the house and his smile fades away. “It’s a lot nicer now. Whoever bought it after we left must’ve put a lot of work into it because when I lived here, it was a piece of shit.”
“Really? Did you live here long?”
“Years.” He’s quiet then, staring at the door. “My mom was a sex worker back before she had me. One of her clients is my father, but I don’t know who he is or where he’s at now. She never talked about him and I’m not sure she ever knew. She got pregnant with me and quit sex work after I was born, but it was a struggle. She was homeless for a while when I was young, but I don’t remember it. She worked a bunch of dead-end jobs until she could afford to rent this place here.” He goes quiet, staring.
I try to imagine what it must’ve been like growing up with a single mom, struggling through poverty, a former sex worker struggling to make ends meet. It sounds horrifying and I understand why he doesn’t want to talk about it, but this seems like a nice neighborhood, low-middle-class, but still comfortable. The way he’s staring at that door suggests it haunts him, whatever’s inside.
“My mother wasn’t good at taking care of me. She loved me, but she didn’t know any better. When I got older, she started locking me in my room with food and water while she went to work because she couldn’t afford childcare. I’d be left alone in the room with toys and books, nowhere for me to go potty, only enough food and water for the afternoon, and I’d be expected to survive. I remember those days plainly, the hours and hours of quiet monotony, nobody talking to me, seeing nothing. Day after day of that room, the same thing every day. I began to make things up, you know, like kids do. Imaginary friends, stories, that sort of shit. One day, I drew on the wall with crayons, and my mother hit me so hard my nose started bleeding. I was four years old. I didn’t use crayons ever again. Still hate the smell of them.”
He closes his eyes. I sit there in mute horror, trying to imagine what a little four-year-old boy might do locked in a single room all day long, too old to wear diapers, too young to understand how to get out. The bathroom aside, it must’ve been a nightmare, a horrifying, never-ending hellscape.
“That room shaped me,” he says through clenched teeth. “That quiet turned me into what I am today. I learned how to control myself in that room. She kept me in it for two years, from three to five, two years of daily torture, until she finally enrolled me in school. But it was too late by then.
“I didn’t fit in with the other kids. I was bullied relentlessly. Teachers tried to diagnose me with autism, with all different things, but my mother wouldn’t let them treat me. I was a walking zombie, barely conscious, barely able to do much more than follow along and perform rudimentary tasks. It took years before I finally was able to interact like a person, but I’ve never had emotions the way normal people do. I left them behind in that room.”
“I’m so sorry, Ansell,” I whisper, blinking back my tears. I can’t begin to imagine the suffering he must’ve gone through and still deals with to this day. “That’s horrible.”
“That room is why I am what I am. My mother didn’t mean to ruin me but the scars are still there and I never thought that they’d heal. After all this time, I figured I was ruined, until I met you.” He turns to me then and I stare into his eyes. They’re so filled with emotion that it’s startling. It’s like years and years of his repressed desires and needs and hate and sadness are coming to the surface, and it’s almost overwhelming, how much he’s feeling. He reaches out and takes my hand.
“I shouldn’t have left you the way that I did. I should’ve believed you when you said you had nothing to do with the emails.”
“You should have, but I understand why you didn’t.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Oh, Pearce. I’m angry. I feel everything right now. But most of all, I’m thankful, and I don’t want to risk losing you again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He nods slowly and shifts closer. “Promise me.”
“I swear. I won’t.”
“Good. Because I’m not going to let you run away. Even if you want to, you’re mine now, Marie. You’re all mine.”
I chew on my lip. Marie. Hearing my name from his lips is like heaven. It’s always been Pearce, Pearce, Pearce, but now? Marie. I want to scream with joy.
