The rest of the Williamson could be used for nailing.
She took the pillow from the bed and placed it on the dresser. Then she placed the wood on the pillow and began to drive in a three-inch nail. The pillow deadened the noise a little, but didn’t make the hammering any easier.
They were knocking on the wall but she finished six nails before she got into bed, taking the hammer and saw and cut pieces of wood with her.
Soon the floor superintendent would be there to complain. She would be sound asleep then, and their voices would not be able to reach her.
4.
He had taken to hitting her more lately, as if he had tapped a new and extraordinary vein of pleasure. While he grunted above her he called her horrible names, names so vile that they broke through the soft pink walls of her jungle dreams and hurt her even there. The passionate blows lay on jungle paths like brightly coloured snakes and their fangs sawed and ripped at her running legs. They would not leave her alone. She built houses on high stilts and climbed into the leafy heart of the mango tree but they were everywhere and pain oozed through the air, covering everything with its black ink.
Her sanctuary was violated. The blue sky was torn to ribbons.
Afterwards she retired deep into the recesses of the Lost and Found, like a hurt animal in search of a place to recuperate. He left her alone then and went to smoke cigars in the front office. She climbed the high steel ladders and lay stretched out on shelves twenty feet from the concrete floor. It was on one of these shelves that she found the old pillow. She placed it under her aching head and stared at the grey metal of the shelf above, dimly recognizing that she had come to a crisis from which she could not escape.
If only there could be another job, but there were no other jobs to be had. Even as he assaulted her, he liked to remind her of this. Even as he bent her arms behind her back, he increased his pleasure by taunting with this hard steel fact, as cruel as a serrated knife.
If he threatened the peace of her private places she would have to fight him. She had never fought. She did not know how. She had been a tree, or a rock, and hate and anger were strangers to her. Storms had assailed her, rivers washed over her, but they had not hurt her. Now she lay on the uncomfortable pillow and felt the hate come, like a visit to the toilet too long postponed because of other business. She was surprised at the pleasure it gave her. It came from her in a long slow flood and she felt suffused by a lovely warmth which she kindled with puzzlement and wonder.
Her revenges were far-fetched and extravagant but they began to radiate the blue light of her beloved mangoes.
5.
She hid from pain. Twice she avoided him for a whole afternoon, lying on the high shelf just below the ceiling. She lay in dread, barely moving while he bellowed with rage in the canyons below. He screamed her name and threatened her with horrible pains. He shouted tortures through the air and chanted the chilling litanies of dismissal.
Yet in the mornings he was a quiet respectable man with a briefcase. He pretended nothing had happened. She sensed a strange embarrassment about him, as if he knew that he had behaved badly. But that did nothing to stop the tangled schemes she continually constructed for his punishment.
It was on a third afternoon, lying in her hiding place, that her nervous fingers began to explore the peculiarly uncomfortable stuffing in the pillow. As Mr Jacobs began to climb other ladders and look into high shelves three rows away, her closely bitten fingernails plucked at the threads of the pillow. She explored the soft kapok interior more through agitation than curiosity and when her hands touched the bank notes she played with them for a while before she thought to pull them out and see what they were.
There were five hundred and six of them, all single dollar notes.
While Mr Jacobs threatened death, she calmly counted them.
When she had finished, she counted again.
6.
She lay the notes across her bed so they were like a patchwork quilt.
She put them in one single pile and wrapped them in tissue paper.
She spent three of them on a chisel.
She bought a three-foot section of four by two.
She stood outside the bank for half an hour before she got the courage to go in and then she told them what she wanted.
When she emerged fifteen minutes later she had deposited two hundred dollars in a savings account and she had a withdrawal form with her.
7.
It was morning. Mr Jacobs sat at his desk smoking his thin black cigar. She leant, as usual, against the wall. But this was not usual. Nothing was usual. She trembled with excitement at the impossible thing she was going to do. She watched him closely, her heart beating wildly, her fear dominating all other emotions.
Today she would teach him to leave her alone. Today she had money.
“What’s the matter with you, stupid?”
“Nothing,” she said. She was going to have to say something else soon. Say it now, she thought, say it now.
“What is it?” The voice was already becoming blotched with anger. She was not prepared for a Chinese Burner. She was the one who would give Chinese Burners today.
It was time to say.
“Mr Jacobs, would you really eat dog’s poo for two hundred dollars?” She said it as she always said it, with innocent curiosity.
“I told you I would.”
“I bet you wouldn’t.” There. She had started. She had never doubted him before.
“Listen, doll, I said I would, I meant I would. What’s the matter with you? What the fuck are you smiling about?”
She had it behind her back, wrapped in a little piece of clear thin plastic film. Now she held it out.
“There it is,” she smiled.
He looked at her in disbelief. He took the cigar out of his mouth and put it on the ashtray. He wasn’t looking properly and the cigar rolled off the ashtray and lay on the desk, quietly blistering the varnish.
“What’s that?”
“Dog’s poo.”
“Pull the other leg, honey.” But his eyes were riveted on the strange little parcel.
She walked over to his desk and unwrapped it gently. It wasn’t a very big piece, about three inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter.
“You dirty little bitch.” He was staring at her with astonishment.
“Will you eat it?” She was surprised how controlled her voice was, how quiet and firm and reasonable.
“Two hundred dollars,” he said, but the voice trailed off at the end and lacked conviction. He was staring at the turd which lay on the desk in front of him. The neglected cigar was making a strange smell but he didn’t seem to notice.
She took the bank book and withdrawal form and placed it beside the turd. She saw then just how little he wanted to eat it.
“It’s all right,” she goaded him softly, “I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Sign the form,” Jacobs said thickly.
“I’ll sign it when you’ve eaten it.”
“Sign it now.”
“No. Afterwards.”
There was silence then. She picked up the cigar and put it in the ashtray. Jacobs stared at the turd and poked at it with a pencil.
“I didn’t think you would,” she said.