She puts her thumb against the tip of the shard. It is very sharp, as is the inside edge. Too sharp to simply hold and attack with. She would cut her own hand to pieces. And she doesn’t want to have to get too close to use it. She needs to make a handle.
She scans the basement’s dark corners for something to use. There’s her mattress piled with blankets, the cardboard box in which she keeps her few dresses and some books that Donald snuck down here for her (she has read them all at least three times), the sink at which she washes herself, the toilet plunger on the floor beside it for when it gets clogged, the boxes of Christmas ornaments and rags and dirty magazines and cowboy novels. She has read all of the cowboy novels, she likes that the good guy always wins, and flipped through the magazines. The magazines sometimes have good things to read between the dirty pictures.
She walks to the sink and picks up the toilet plunger and tries to pull out the handle. That doesn’t work, it won’t budge, so she tries to unscrew it, first one way, then the other, and that does work. After four counter-clockwise turns the handle is free of the black rubber suction cup. Hopefully the sink doesn’t get clogged between now and her escape. If it does Henry will notice that the handle is missing and know she’s up to something. He’ll suspect it, anyway, and that will be enough. He’ll be mad. He’ll stand looking at her as his face goes red and his hands open and close, open and close, open and close. His nostrils will flare in his diseased nose. He’ll reach into his pocket and pull out a roll of those things he eats and thumb one into his mouth and chew. He’ll ask her what she’s up to and no matter what she says he will call her a liar. Finally, once he’s worked himself up enough, he’ll come after her. She’ll run, but he will catch up. He’ll knock her down and kick her in the gut. All the air will rush out of her. She’ll look up at his red face, and then he’ll kick again. Darkness will come then. When she wakes up she will be hanging from the punishment hook. Her wrists will be bleeding. He will have found her weapon and he will walk toward her with it in his hand. He’ll grin as he walks toward her. There will be no humor in his grin.
One two three four five six seven eight. She used to try counting down, so she could deal with large numbers right away, numbers that filled her head, but counting down made her feel that when she was finished something terrible would happen. Five. . four. . three. . two. .
She opens a box of rags and pulls out a yellowed and torn T-shirt. It smells like Henry, a peculiar combination of garlic and sweat and beer and bleach. Just the stink of him causes her chest to go tight, makes it difficult to draw in breath. Her mouth is dry.
With some effort she manages to tear the shirt into strips. She has to use her teeth to get the strips started, and it hurts her teeth and gums, and the cloth comes away from her mouth pink with blood and saliva, but once she gets the shreds started the fabric rips easily. After she has several strips of fabric ready she uses them to tie the shard of plate to the toilet plunger handle. She has to tie several knots and wrap one of the strips tightly around the handle just beneath the blade, putting an X around its base, to keep it from sliding down, but once she’s done with it the blade is in place securely and hardly wiggles at all. She’s pretty sure the glass would break before it came loose from the handle.
Now: how will she do this?
She closes her eyes and tries to picture it happening. She imagines several scenarios. In all of them there is blood.
After a few minutes she opens her eyes. Tomorrow night after Henry has left for work she will wait under the stairs for Beatrice to bring down her dinner. Henry will have been gone at least an hour by then. There will be a much better chance of things going her way if he is miles and miles away. She will wait under the stairs for Beatrice with the home-made knife in her hand. If Donald comes over to eat as he sometimes does, rather than simply picking up a plate to take back to his mobile home parked behind the house, she will wait till the night after tomorrow. But if things are as they usually are, if she and Beatrice are home alone tomorrow night, she will wait under the stairs with the home-made knife in her hand and when Beatrice walks down them she will thrust the blade between the steps. She will slice Beatrice’s ankles. Beatrice will fall down the stairs. She will scream but the walls are concrete: no one will hear. She will scream and fall down the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs she will hit her head on the concrete floor. She will be knocked unconscious. Then Maggie will simply run up the stairs and out the front door. She will run through the woods to the street. She will run down the street to the phone. She will call her daddy and her daddy will come and pick her up and take her home. He will let her sleep in his arms. She will be safe.
If Donald is here she will wait till the night after tomorrow-she does not want to have to confront him if she doesn’t have to-but no longer than that. She cannot stand to wait longer than that. She has to get out. She would do it tonight if she could, but can hear Donald upstairs already. She can hear him laughing at something on TV. But that means he’ll almost certainly not come over tomorrow night. It is a rare night when he eats dinner here.
She can do this.
Tomorrow night she will feel her daddy’s arms wrapped around her.
And she will not feel afraid.
Henry pushes his way into the second-floor ladies’ room, leaving the cart in the doorway. He pulls a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the back pocket of his dirty Levis and slips his hands into them. The insides are still wet with sweat from the last time he wore them and slick, so his hands slide right in. He flexes his fingers within them, then pushes into the first toilet stall, its brown-painted metal door swinging open and hitting the inside wall.
Bracketed inside each stall is a stainless steel receptacle for tampons and sanitary napkins. He pulls this one from its bracket and walks it to his cart and turns it upside down over the trash can and shakes. He glances inside. Bloody pads stick to the stainless steel walls. He bangs it against the inside of the trash can. He hates the smell of this part of the job: a musty stink of curdled blood and pussy. He glances inside the receptacle. One blood-streaked pad still sticking to the bottom. He reaches in and pinches it between two gloved fingers, index and middle, and pulls it out and drops it into the trash can.
Then back to the toilet stall and sliding the receptacle into place.
It is strange to him to be doing this. He remembers when this college wasn’t even here. When he was a boy this was just trees and weeds and mustang grapevines and blackberry bushes. He remembers climbing the vines. They grew so thick they weaved themselves into baskets and sagged between the branches of the hickory and oak trees. He would climb in those baskets of vines and lie in them like hammocks.
It is strange how a town can grow up around a person. You’re standing still but all around you the world is moving, and one day you look up from your tiny piece of it and you’re lost: all the landmarks you used to know are gone, replaced by new landmarks that might mean something to someone but mean nothing to you. The woods in which you played as a boy were cut down for cordwood and have been smoke in the wind for decades, replaced by a city college you’re now expected to clean.