Her feet dangle far above the cracked gray surface of the concrete floor.
Henry stands and stares. Fists opening and closing, opening and closing. He tongues at a molar. His breathing sounds funny. It gets heavier and thicker and faster.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’
His breathing stops. There is silence.
Then: ‘But you’re really not, are you?’
‘I am.’
‘What are you sorry for?’
One two three four five six seven eight.
She looks around for Borden, just to know that she isn’t alone down here. Just to know that she isn’t alone with Henry. Maybe he’s standing in the shadows somewhere. She knows he cannot save her from whatever punishment Henry will be delivering, but seeing him would be a comfort still. She does not see him.
A hand across her face so hard it makes her eyes water and a bruise above her ear begins to throb. She had forgotten about it, that place where Henry punched her earlier, but now it is throbbing with the beat of her heart.
‘I said what are you sorry for?’
She looks down at her feet once more. They are filthy, black with dirt, and if she ignores the pain she can pretend she is simply floating above the floor. A crack in the concrete moves left and right beneath her as she swings by her wrists. Just pretend you’re floating: above the ground without a care in the world.
He reaches toward her. She instinctively recoils. He slaps at her cheek, a quick whip-crack of his fingertips, then grabs her chin and tilts her head up so that she is looking him in the eyes. An uncaring cruelty floats in them and nothing more: pools of bad water. She hates them.
‘You don’t know?’
‘What?’
‘You don’t know what you’re sorry for?’
‘I’m. .’ she says, and licks her lips. They are dry and cracked. ‘I’m sorry for running.’
‘You’re sorry for getting caught.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, you wanted to get caught?’
She turns her head and looks away. She can feel fresh tears welling in her eyes. She tries to blink them away. She doesn’t want to cry in front of him. She doesn’t want to be weak in front of him. He is a cruel man and weakness makes him angrier, more likely to attack.
‘You didn’t want to get caught.’
‘No.’
‘That is why you’re sorry.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well I do.’
With the last word he puts a fist into her stomach, punching all the air out of her. It leaves her in a single rush. If she weren’t strung up by the wrists she would curl into a fetal ball. Instead she swings and gasps for air like a fish on the end of a line.
Henry stands and watches her swing. Fists opening and closing.
‘You’ve made me very angry, Sarah.’
He has always called her Sarah. Both he and Beatrice. Another way of torturing her. Another way of confusing her. Of making her confused about who and what she is.
She is just getting her breath back when Henry grabs her by the hips and stills her swinging. He looks at her in silence.
Then: ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’
She breathes in and out, chest heaving. Her stomach is a tight, cramped knot.
‘My daddy’s coming,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I called my daddy and told him everything. You better just let me go. If you don’t he’s going to, he’s going to get you and he’s going to-’
‘Lies!’ Violence like a large wave crashing upon a beach. She flinches away but does not break eye contact. ‘You’re lying,’ he says. ‘Tell me you’re lying.’
She shakes her head. ‘He’s going to get you,’ she says.
‘Henry?’ Beatrice’s voice stumbling down the stairs.
‘What?’
‘You’re gonna be late for work.’
He looks at his watch and curses under his breath. ‘I’ll be right up,’ he says.
He grabs Maggie by the waist and lifts her off the hook and sets her down on the cold concrete floor. Then he unties her wrists and makes four loose loops of the bloody rope.
She looks down at her wrists and sees the shape of the rope imbedded in her skin. She pushes herself backwards until she is up against the wall. She looks up at him, awaiting some final act of violence. It does not come.
He nods to the rusty sink in the corner and says, ‘Wash up before Bee brings you supper.’ Then trudges halfway up the stairs before turning around again. ‘You’ve broken Bee’s heart with your behavior. All she wants is a daughter. She loves you, you know. Even though you’re a failure as a daughter, she loves you.’ Then he heads the rest of the way up the stairs, turns off the overhead light, and closes the door. A moment later, the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place.
The only light left in the basement is the laundry-water gray of late afternoon coming in through the basement’s sole window.
Her hands begin to throb with sharp pain as the circulation returns to them. She cries silently, trying to bend her fingers. It hurts too much, and she knows from experience that it will take several minutes for the pain to recede. And she knows, too, that the tide of pain hasn’t yet even fully come in.
But she knows something else as welclass="underline" she almost got away.
After years in captivity she managed to get out. Hope which she’d long thought dead throbs hot in her chest. Even now, back here in the Nightmare World, there is a new sense of possibility. The world on the other side of the window is not unreachable. She has walked upon its ground. She has run through its woods. She has heard her daddy speak into her ear.
Getting out today was a fluke, she knows that, but if she plans it she can get out again. And this time she will not be brought back.
Henry walks to the fridge and pulls it open. On the top shelf, a brown-bag meal Bee has packed for him. He grabs it and looks inside. A Tupperware bowl with a chunk of corned beef in it and a soup of cabbage and water. Every day he gets the leftovers from the day before. He’s already looking forward to tomorrow’s meatloaf sandwich. In addition to the corned beef there are two pre-packaged chocolate cupcakes. He folds the bag, grabs the five beers left in a six pack he broke into at lunch, and lets it dangle from a finger by its one empty plastic ring.
He walks out the front door and into the late afternoon daylight. Long shadows stretch out on the ground. He walks down the steps and across the gravel driveway and out to his truck, sliding onto the seat, tossing his lunch next to him, and popping one of his beers from its ring. He opens it and it foams up and spills down the side of the can before he can get the can to his mouth and suck at it. It drips down his chin and the front of his shirt and into his lap. He takes two good swallows before looking down at his Levis.
‘Goddamn it.’
Looks like he sat here and pissed hisself.
Then another swallow before resting the can between his legs. It’s a hot day and the cold feels good. The heat also means the beer he spilled will be dry by the time he arrives at work. Good thing: one of the office administrators has already complained once about him smelling of alcohol. But he supposes right now that is the least of his worries.
He feels sick about what Sarah said in the basement. That she called her daddy. That she told him everything. If she was telling the truth he will end up in prison. Not jail, where, in his youth, he spent more than one drunken night, but prison, where bad men go.
He starts the truck, puts it into gear, and gasses his way up the driveway to the street.
The first Sarah was born thirteen years ago in Mencken Regional Medical Center. They had not planned on having children. Beatrice was forty-four, and in the twenty-eight years she and Henry had been together they had never used contraceptives, so Henry didn’t even think they could have children if they wanted any. But Beatrice got pregnant and when Henry saw how it affected her he was glad. She was happier than he had ever seen her before. Henry had never heard someone sing so much in his life.