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She closes her eyes and after a few moments of silence finally starts to talk.
"That's not their cage down there," she says. "It's mine. It's why I missed Constantino's dinner. It's why I look the way I do."
"Look the way you do?" I ask.
"Thin, pale," she says.
"Did they lock you up in that cage?" I ask her.
"All the time," she says. "Mother told me I was an ungrateful child. That my grades weren't good enough. That I ruined her body during pregnancy so she couldn't give my father a boy. That my father works so hard to send me to a good school."
For the first time all morning tears start to fall from her eyes.
"Maybe she was right. Maybe I am just an ungrateful, horrible child."
I'm out of my seat in a moment. I kneel on the ground in front of her. My movement is enough to startle her so that she opens her eyes and looks at me.
"Don't say that. Don't ever say that," I say. "They had no right to lock you in that cage. Not once and definitely not repeatedly. I know evil, Raven. I've seen bad, bad men. There's no evil behind your eyes."
"It wasn't an accident," she sniffles.
I stay right where I am in front of her. I don't break my gaze. She's the only thing in the world right now. There's a deep burning desire inside of me to protect her. I can't explain it or why it's there.
It's just that she seems so fragile and the world has clearly been so cruel to her. I can hardly bear it.
"That's okay," I reply. "Start from the beginning. The first time it happened. Keep going until today. I'm not going anywhere."
"I think I was five," she says. "When I first realized that my mom wasn't like other moms. You start to see parents and their kids in school. How they interact.
"Their moms seemed to love them. Seemed to be proud of them.
"My mom was never that way with me. She only ever thought I was a bad child. That I was ungrateful. No matter how hard I tried to do what she wanted, it was never enough.
"That year, my parents adopted a dog. It was a little corgi. They bought that cage for him. They never let me play with him, though. No one played with him. They just put him out in the yard or in that cage. All he did was bark and bark so eventually they gave him to the pound.
"I didn't want them to take him, though. Even though I couldn't ever play with him, I still loved him. He was the only thing in this house that didn't seem to hate me. He used to lick me through the cage and I would sit down next to him in the dark just to be with him.
"When they finally gave him up, I was so upset that I crawled into his cage just to try and connect with him. I guess I cried too much over it, because the first time my mother ever locked me in that cage was when they came home from the pound.
"I can't remember too much about it. I was so young at the time. I just remember being so scared and so hungry. Time works differently in the dark. You never really know how long you're down there for.
"Ever since that day she would lock me in that cage whenever she was upset with me. At first it wasn't that often. Maybe once a month. But then, the older I got the more frequent it became. And the longer it became. I knew I was missing meals frequently. All the other kids started gaining muscle and shape and I started to thin out and become like I am now.
"The dog was the lucky one, honestly. He'd been given a chance at another family. A chance to find happiness."
I can tell just getting through that much had taken an incredible emotional toll on her.
"Did you tell anyone what was happening?" I ask her.
She shakes her head. "Who was there to tell? And who would believe that a prominent and respected family was locking their daughter up in a dog cage?"
"Surely your father wasn't okay with this, was he?" I ask.
She looks pensive. "He never could stand up to my mother."
"Are you okay to keep going?" I ask her. "We can take a break if you need to."
She shakes her head. "It's okay. I want to just be done with it."
