When Smiles Fade (35 page)

“I’m sure you will, little woman,” Sydney responded with conviction, assured in her belief that Izzy would be whatever she wanted to be. “I think you’ll make a great lawyer. You’re definitely smart enough and you’re bossy too, for a three-year-old.”

“I’m almost four!” Izzy protested, but a satisfied smile played on her lips. Not only was she getting to buy a game, she could also be a lawyer when she grew up. Then a thought struck her. “Sydney? What do
you
want to be when you grow up? Maybe you can help me be a lawyer?”

Sydney and Emma chuckled at the child’s willingness to allow her friend to be something that could help her in the long run.

“How about if you figure out what game you want to buy first, before you plan out your whole life and mine?” Sydney suggested, running her hand fondly through Izzy’s hair.

“I already know what game I want, Syd,” the little girl replied indignantly. “I want Chutes and Ladders. That’s my favorite one, because that’s the one Lucy played with me.”

“Oh, all righty then, I see you already know what you want,” Syd remarked.

“Aunt Em? When can we go see Lucy again?”

“Soon, baby, real soon,” Emma said soothingly. “Right now I’m busy working, but in a couple of weeks, we can go to the park where you first met Lucy. Remember that park?”

Izzy rolled her eyes dramatically. “Of course I remember, Aunt Em!” she exclaimed with a touch of exasperation, as though her aunt had just questioned the obvious. “I
love
that park! It’s my favorite one ever!”

“Hmm, well that’s interesting, since it’s the only park you’ve ever been to,” Emma said wryly, then leaned over and tickled her niece until she begged her to stop.

Before Emma knew it fall had faded into winter. Two days before Thanksgiving, on a bitterly cold night, the group decided to celebrate the holiday by preparing a sumptuous dinner. No one in the herd, apart from Sydney, who had some knowledge of Emma’s past, was aware of her consummate culinary skills. Few could have guessed that she had honed those skills while cooking meals for her family from a tender age. As Emma roamed around the kitchen with her friend, planning their grocery-shopping list, Sydney felt the time had come to ask her some of the questions that had been playing in her mind since they’d arrived to live in the house.

“Em?” she now asked hesitantly. “What was Ethan like? You said when you first met him that he was really nice. Then after a while he started treating you like shit. What did he actually do to you?”

“Well, Syd, he’s a total asshole,” Emma replied. Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “I found out that he’d raped Gracie. He’s Izzy’s father.”

Sydney gaped at her. Every time Emma disclosed a fact, she was left wondering how, after living through such terrible ordeals, she could still be so resilient. Sydney knew that Emma had been beaten as a child, that she had lost her parents, and that her sister had died. And she had just learned that Gracie had not only been raped, but borne her rapist a child—Izzy.

“Well, I mean, what did he do to you, Em?” she persisted.

Emma put down the pen she was writing with and wondered if she should tell her friend the whole truth. Her gut told her to share every detail of her sordid experiences with Sydney. Maybe someday it would save her from a similar fate.

“He hit me,” she said. “He berated and insulted me and accused me all the time of being stupid. He called me a whore and a slut for working at Doubles. But the worst he put me through, when I refused to obey him, was to put a gun to Izzy’s head and pull the trigger. The gun wasn’t loaded, but I didn’t know that then. Then he threatened me that the next time it would be loaded.”

Sydney gasped. “Fuck, Em! He’s a crazy prick.” She sprang to her feet and came to stand next to Emma. “He won’t ever see Izzy again,” she said with conviction. “We’ll protect her.”

Emma reflected on what her life had been like with Ethan. She had not only lost her sister, but a great deal of herself during that time. She hoped that Sydney was right about them never having to see Ethan again. If she did ever see him, Emma promised herself, it would only be as a God-given opportunity to kill him. Dead was the only way she ever wanted to see him again.

Izzy woke up excited on Thanksgiving Day. The house was buzzing with conversation as everyone discussed the big dinner Emma was planning. The little girl had helped her aunt make pumpkin pies the night before. Emma had even let her mix the pie batter.

Izzy ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Aunt Em, Syd! Happy Thanksgiving!”

The two looked up from their work and gave the child a hug. Sydney was cutting pieces of bread to use for the stuffing.

“Syd, can I help you cut the bread?” Izzy asked.

Sydney hoisted her up on the chair next to where she stood and let her rip the bread into small pieces. As they worked and chatted, Earl, a herd member, came into the kitchen.

“Man, it sure smells good in here!” he remarked.

“Well,
you
don’t smell very good!” Izzy commented disapprovingly. “You better go take a shower or you’re not going to get to eat with us.”

Earl walked over to the little girl and gave her a big, affectionate hug. “What do you mean I smell?” he said, pretending to sound offended. “Boy, you sure are bossy!”

“EWWWW!” Izzy shrieked, pulling away from him. “Get off me!”

The teenager laughed and went off to take a shower. On his way there, he wondered if the others thought he smelled too. He didn’t have a steady job, and while he showered fairly regularly, he was losing the incentive to wash his clothes as often as he should.

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to Earl, was it?” Sydney asked Izzy. “He doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on clothes,” she explained. “We should always be nice to everyone who lives in the house, ya know.”

Izzy was defiant, shaking her head from side to side. “Well, Syd,” she retorted, “he stinks. You can’t stink on Thanksgiving.”

Emma butted in. “Izzy, there was a time when I used to stink too. So did your mom. We didn’t have anywhere to live and we couldn’t take showers.”

Izzy looked perplexed. “You used to smell?”

“Yeah. We didn’t
want
to smell, but couldn’t help it, because we couldn’t take a shower.”

“Well, Earl
can
take a shower,” Izzy stated.

Emma gave her an exasperated look. “You know, I think you’ll make a great lawyer!”

Izzy had a magnetic personality and was the kind of kid people wanted to be around. She could be both sassy and compassionate. She was straightforward and able to see things clearly, like most children her age. For Izzy, truth had no boundaries. Emma hoped that her niece would always be able to see the world as clearly and that nothing would ever happen to cloud her vision.

After a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, Sydney and Emma settled in their bedroom. Sydney wasn’t done with their earlier conversation, however. She really wanted to know Emma better, even if it meant prying. She idolized her and considered her the ultimate role model.

“Dinner was delicious!” she began, then quickly broached the topic that had been on her mind. “You know, I don’t really understand, Em. You’re such a strong person and you were so close to Gracie. Why do you think she didn’t tell you Ethan had raped her?”

Emma pondered the question for a long time. Then the answer came to her.

“Because she thought that I would hate her for having sex with Ethan. He fucked with her mind and I think he convinced her that it was all her fault. You have no idea how much I wish she had told me what was happening. I feel like I let her down. She put up with all kinds of crazy shit from him. It really bothers me, Syd,” she confessed.

Sydney listened to her in silence, thinking about her own life on the streets since she was eleven and comparing it to the horrors Emma and Gracie had been through. Suddenly her own situation didn’t seem quite so bad. At least she had always been able to love and care for people, she reasoned.

“Well,
I
think you’re wonderful, Em,” Sydney told her.

“Thanks, Syd,” Emma said gratefully. “I appreciate that. And by the way, I think you’re pretty great too. Now I need to go to sleep. Tomorrow is Black Friday. I volunteered to work a double shift for lunch and dinner. I need to make some extra money, if Santa is going to visit Izzy this year.”

They both glanced at the child, fast asleep on Sydney’s mattress. From the look of it, Izzy was in a Thanksgiving dinner coma. Her arms and legs lay sprawled across the bed as if she owned it. The two friends laughed at the sight, then settled into sleeping bags for the night.

On “Black Friday,” Sydney took Izzy into downtown Kensington. Since people would be out shopping in that area, there was a better chance of them making a little more money from begging. As the two of them sat on a busy street corner, Rock, the drug dealer friend of Syd’s father, approached them. People called him Rock because he specialized in the sale of crack cocaine, or “cookie,” as the drug was known on the streets. He looked every bit the picture of a man involved in a shady business. He wore his black hair long, combing it back with a greasy hair-care product, and kept a full beard and a mustache. Even in the heat of summer, he never went without a leather jacket. He patrolled Kensington Avenue regularly, keeping a close eye on his street dealers and “whores,” as he referred to the prostitutes working for him, and was always on the lookout for young people to make money for him.

“Hey, Syd! You get hotter every time I see you. You know, if you’re tired of making nothing begging I can offer you some work. All you’d have to do is sell a little dope for me. I bet you’d be pretty good at it, like your father was until he decided to fuck everything up,” he suggested and eyed her up in a way that made her uncomfortable.

“No, man, I’m not interested.” Sydney told him, knowing the troubles that come with dealing dope. “I don’t want to sell your drugs.”

“You’re an awfully beautiful little girl,” he murmured, redirecting his attention to Izzy.

Izzy shrank back and hid her face behind Sydney. Cold as it was, Sydney began to perspire in sheer terror as Rock looked Izzy over in a way that made her skin crawl.

“Leave her alone, Rock,” she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “She’s a kid and you’re scaring her.”

“Ohhh, I didn’t mean to scare this beautiful creature!” he wheezed, bending down to Izzy’s level and extending his hand with its long fingernails toward her.

Sydney pushed his hand away. “Stop it! Leave her alone.”

Rock let out a sinister laugh. “Well,” he smirked, “if she ever needs a home, my old lady and I would be happy to take her in. Would you like to come and live with Rock, sweetheart?” he asked Izzy.

“NO! I want to go
home
, Syd,” the child said, beginning to cry. “I don’t
like
it here!”

Sydney jumped to her feet, clasped Izzy’s fingers in a tight grip, turned quickly, and started down the street back to their home.
It was a stupid idea to come here in the first place
, she thought to herself. She should never have taken Izzy into Kensington. She should have known better. Over the last year, every time she ran into Rock, he tried unfailingly to convince her to join his gang of dope peddlers. He had even suggested that she could make a lot of money prostituting, promising her protection from other men on the streets. She had grown increasingly worried about seeing him. As a child he had looked out for her, but now that she was older he wanted nothing more than to exploit her for his own good.

Rock was infamous for arm-twisting people into doing what he wanted. Since he controlled most of the drug pushers and prostitutes in the area, he had any number of people at his beck and call. His reach was endless. If he wanted to get to Sydney and Izzy, he could do so easily.

When they got back home, Sydney quickly locked the front door and sat in the common room with Izzy on her lap. Although some of the other herd members were there, they were already too drunk to take much notice of the girls still clinging to each other out of fear. Sydney wasn’t afraid for herself; she had lived on the streets for years and was used to Rock and his slimy ways. She was frightened that she had exposed Izzy to a person like him.

Fuck
, Sydney now said to herself, holding the child tighter,
I’m such a fucking idiot
!

She resolved never to hang out with Izzy in Kensington again. From now on, they’d take the bus into Center City, Philadelphia. She brooded for hours over their encounter with Rock and decided not to tell Emma about it and hoped that Isabella wouldn’t either.

As Christmas quickly approached, Emma worked as many hours as she humanly could to earn enough to buy presents for Izzy and something special for Sydney. She hadn’t talked to Brianna or Katie since she fled Ambler. It was just too risky for her to have any contact with anyone from her past. She knew that Ethan wouldn’t give up on hunting them down.

Izzy’s excitement over Santa’s imminent arrival mounted and she could barely contain her enthusiasm on Christmas Eve when Emma put her to bed.

“Santa’s coming tonight, right?” she asked her aunt for the hundredth time that evening.

“Yep, he’s coming,” Emma assured her.