Divine (13 page)

The officer with the mustache dropped down to the edge of the bed. He looked like he was about to cry, but he blinked a few times instead. "How old are you now?"

She kept her knees beneath her, her arm across her chest.  "Fifteen." Her cheeks were hot from shame, hot in a way that they never were when Jimbo's friends came down the stairs.

The tall man moved slowly around to her arm. "Just a minute. Let me free you,- then we can talk." He took a ring of keys from his pocket, working them around until he found a small narrow one. He slid it into the handcuff, where only Jimbo's key ever worked, and the metal snapped off her wrist.

She pulled her hand to her chest and rubbed at the blood,-then she shrank back into the corner and waited. They weren't going to shoot her—she could tell that much. And if they were going to take her to jail, now was the time they'd make their move. She shook worse than before, and her stomach hurt.

The shorter man with the mustache looked around the basement until he spotted her cardboard closet. He went to it, flung it open, and grabbed a heavy silk robe. It was one of the only things she owned that wasn't sheer enough to see through. He brought it over and handed it to her. "Here."

She worked it over her shoulders, staying low to her knees so they couldn't see her. When the robe was on, she sat straighter. They weren't going to take her to jail. Otherwise they'd already have her halfway up the stairs.

And that could only mean one thing: Jimbo had lied; all the time she'd been living here he'd lied.

"Can you tell us your name?" The tall officer crouched down so he was eye level with her. His voice was soft, but not the sort of soft that most men had when they came to visit her. His was more like a daddy or a grandpa, like someone trying to help her.

"Mary." She brushed her long hair off her face and looked straight at him. The fear was leaving her. "My name's Mary."

"Mary what?" The cop with the mustache pulled a pad of paper out of his back pocket. "Do you know your other name?"

Her other name? Yes, she knew it. Jimbo called her by that name all the time. "Mary Margaret."

"Margaret?" The officer wrote something on his pad. "That's your last name?"

Mary felt another wave of shame. "I think so. I . . . can't remember." Her head was spinning, and her heart beat fast inside her.

The tall officer leaned against the wall and ran his fingers hard through his hair. "We need to ask you a few questions, Mary, but first let's take care of that wrist." The muscles in his jaw flexed as he gently wrapped his clean handkerchief around her bloody wrist. "These questions might not be easy," he warned her.

"Okay." She pulled the robe tighter around her waist.

He nodded at his partner, then looked back at her. "Has anyone ever hurt you while you've been living down here?"

Hurt her? The question was harder than she thought, not because it made her sad, but because she wasn't sure how to answer him. "Jimbo, you mean?" Her voice was quiet, timid.

"Yes. Him or anyone else."

Mary sucked at the inside of her cheek. Without thinking about it, she brought her hand to her face and rubbed her cheek. "Sometimes Jimbo hits me." She jerked back, because in that instant she could picture him raising his hand to strike her. Her eyes closed for a moment, and when she opened them, she could feel the strangest thing. They were wet and blurry. She was crying—something she hadn't done since her first year here. She nodded. "Yes, he hurts me."

The tall man kept asking the questions, and the one with the mustache wrote things down—her answers probably. He leaned over and pulled in a long breath, as if it were hard asking her questions and learning about her life. "I'm sorry, Mary." He gritted his teeth as he straightened. "Jimbo will never hit you again." He looked at her, and again his eyes were sad. "How 'bout anyone else? Does anyone else hurt you?"

Mary lowered her chin to her chest. "The customers do once in a while. Jimbo's friends." After so many years of lying, it felt good to tell the truth.

The officer with the mustache lowered the pad and pencil to his sides. He looked from his partner to Mary. "The customers?"

Surely they knew about the customers. They were men, and all men had needs. Wasn't it obvious that's why she was here? To meet the needs of men? But the look in the eyes of both officers told her that whatever needs men had, this was not a normal way for them to be met. She swallowed hard. "Jimbo takes the money, and he sends the customers down here for visits. It's not a lot of men. Fifteen, maybe. The same ones come all the time."

"How long has he been doing that?" The tall man crossed his arms and pressed them against his middle. His face looked pale.

Mary lifted one shoulder and felt it poke through the opening in her robe. She pulled the ends tight once more. A realization hit her. None of this must be normal. Otherwise the officers wouldn't look so surprised, so shaken. She looked up at the ceiling, and some of the wetness in her eyes slid down her cheeks. "Since I first came here. When I was ten."

"Every day?" The tall officer didn't have to say so,- it was obvious how he felt about her having customers since she was ten. He was disgusted.

"No." Her voice faded some. "Most days, though."

The one with the mustache was writing notes again. Twice he rubbed his eyes with the back of his fist. Was he crying? Was her story that sad and broken that a police officer would cry? He made a fist around his pencil and pressed it to his lips. He whispered, "I'm gonna kill that guy."

"Wait—" the other officer shook his head at his partner— "not in front of the girl."

And in that moment, no one had to tell Mary what
victim
meant. She knew what it was because she felt it deep down to her soul. A victim didn't have any choice about the things that were done to her, and the things done to her were the most awful things of all.

The officer with the mustache relaxed his hand and looked at her. "I'm sorry, Mary. No one—" he clenched his teeth, and the words sounded trapped between his lips—"no one will ever hurt you again. I promise you."

He was about to say something else, but there was the sound of more cars pulling into the driveway. Cars and something else, something in the sky.

She pressed herself farther back into the corner. "What's that?"

"Great." The man with the mustache lowered his notepad again. "Backup's here and the media with 'em. They must've heard the call and come for the news."

The
media?
Did that mean the television people? Mary wanted to hide under the bed until everyone went away.

"Not many news stories come out of Virginia hill country." The tall officer pinched his lips together and blew out hard, so hard his cheeks filled up. "I'm sorry about this, Mary. We need to get you out of here and somewhere safe. But there's going to be a lot of confusion, a lot of people asking questions as we leave. You don't have to answer any of them, okay?"

She nodded. What was he talking about? They were taking her somewhere safe? Where would that be? An idea hit her, and she felt her eyes light up. "Could you take me to my Grandma Peggy's house? She lives . . . she lives in the city. In New York."

The faces of the officers changed, and they looked less shocked and sad. The officer with the mustache almost smiled. "You have a grandma?" He raised his pencil over the pad of paper. "Tell us her name, and we'll call her right now."

The tears were back. They stung her eyes and made it hard to see. "I'm sorry. I . . . can't think of it."

"We can figure it out later." He reached out as if he might touch her arm, but then he stopped himself. Instead, he walked to the bed and picked up a blanket. Without touching her, he put it carefully over Mary's shoulders and nodded toward the stairs. "We're going to take you out now. Stay between us, okay?"

"Okay." The shaking was back. How would she get up the stairs if she couldn't get her legs to move? "What about the other officers?" She looked from the tall cop to his partner. "Will you tell them not to shoot?"

The tall officer's shoulders slumped. "Mary, no one's going to shoot you. You haven't done anything wrong, understand?"

She nodded and took a step toward them. As she did she rubbed her wrapped wrist and looked back at the bed one last time. The bed where she had worked and slept and had nightmares for most of the past five years. How could she have thought any of it was normal?

The tall officer nodded toward the bed, then gestured toward the rest of the basement. "Is there anything you want to take?"

Mary didn't hesitate. She moved past the officers and over to the old couch against the wall. With practiced ease, she reached in behind the center seat cushion and pulled out the only thing that mattered to her at all—the small red-beaded purse. The single thing in all the world that she would keep with her, wherever the officers took her. It mattered to her for the same reason it had mattered when she was a little girl.

It reminded her that someone, somewhere, still loved her.

Mary took a slow breath and finished her coffee. Sometimes when she told her story, she stopped here. The details of her life were hard to take in big sections.

Across from her, Emma was wiping tears off her cheeks. "Did they take you to your Grandma Peggy's?"

A heaviness settled in Mary's chest. The answer was never easy. "No. I couldn't remember my last name." She stood and stretched. The room was stuffy, and outside the sun had broken through the clouds. She opened the window and took in a deep breath of the air that rushed in. "Even in the heart of the city you can smell the blossoms. Even in June."

Emma nodded, but her eyes never left Mary. "What happened? Where'd they take you?"

Mary sat back down on the sofa. "We can pick up again tomorrow, or we can take a short break and I'll keep going. You decide."

Emma didn't hesitate. "Please, Mary. I want to know what happened. If you don't mind."

They agreed to meet back in Mary's office in ten minutes, long enough for Emma to check on her girls and use the restroom.

When they met again, Emma was anxious and fidgety.

"Are you okay?" Mary had poured water for both of them. She was settled back in her place on the sofa.

"No." She covered her face with her hands for a few moments. Then she looked at Mary again. "I can't help but think . . ."

"Yes?"

"It wasn't fair, what happened to you." Her voice held a cry, as if it was taking all her energy not to break down.

"Abuse is never fair. It leaves its mark on everyone involved."

"But. . ." Emma leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling for a few counts. The struggle was so real it filled the room. "This story is supposed to involve God, right? God's power?"

"Yes. Like I said yesterday, it isn't finished."

"But why did God allow it?" She ran her right hand over the scars on her left forearm. "Don't you ever ask yourself that?"

It was a timeless question, one every victim asked at some point or another. "We'll talk about that at the end of the story, okay?"

"Promise?"

Mary smiled. "You keep coming every morning, and I promise I'll answer that question at the end."

Emma relaxed her hands, but she sat at the edge of her seat. "Okay, then, go ahead. What happened next?"

A breeze filtered through the room and took Mary back. "Well, most of the time I was so scared by my new life, I wondered if maybe I was better off before."

A shadow fell over Emma's face. "This morning I thought about going back to Charlie."

"I'm glad you didn't."

"Me too."

A red flag shot itself through Mary's consciousness. This was the first detail Emma had shared, and it proved she was still so much at risk. Charlie was the man who had abused her. If Emma went back to him, he would be angrier than ever. Angry that she left him, angry that she waited so long to come back home. That sort of rage could lead to his most violent act yet.

Mary swallowed and kept her thoughts to herself. Emma was waiting for more details. "I spent two nights in a hospital, and then a social worker explained that I'd be paired up with short-term foster parents."

***

At the hospital there were machines, people poking Mary with needles and taking blood from her arm, and doctors and nurses whispering to each other, sometimes right in front of her. They'd look up and catch her watching, and sometimes they'd give her a nervous smile.

"Tests, honey," they told her. "We're discussing the tests. We need to make sure you're okay."

On the second day, a doctor gave his report to Mrs. Campbell, Mary's social worker. "Mary is surprisingly healthy," he told her. "She has traces of disease, but nothing life threatening. We'll give her strong antibiotics for a few weeks, and she should be fine."

"Physically." Mrs. Campbell lowered her voice, as if maybe Mary couldn't hear her.

"Yes." The doctor frowned. "Physically. The rest. . . well, that's up to your department."

Mary understood. Her body was going to be okay. But her dreams, her hopes, her reasons for believing in tomorrow . . . all of them were diseased and dying. She still couldn't read, and there were so many things about life that she didn't understand. In some ways she was still the same child Jimbo and Lou had kidnapped and taken to the basement five years earlier.