by Lori Roy
“I didn’t know them watches was special,” Mrs. Tillie says. “I locked them up in the safe. You know, like we always do. You check in there?”
First, Tillie laughs, and Mrs. Tillie smiles and laughs too. But then he stops, and she stops at the same time because she’s figured the same as Tillie.
“That don’t solve my problem of how to tell Robert his son stole from him,” Tillie says. “I’m still wedged smack between the two of them. They wouldn’t think twice about destroying everything we got. And that don’t solve what Imogene’s up against.”
“Well, I know one thing for certain,” Mrs. Tillie says after the two of them have sat quiet a good long time. “We ain’t got to worry about Imogene. She won’t have no part of Timmy Robithan. And as for the rest, well, you listen to me, Jean Tillerson. This here is what we’re going to do.”
Chapter 13
IMOGENE
Today
Imogene stares at the boy. The single light shining at the bottom of the stairs makes him blink in steady sets of three. The stone floors and walls and the low-hanging ceiling trap the sound of his voice and keep it from ringing clear. He said something to her. She knows he did, but it’s as if he spoke in a different language. She is staring and wants to speak but can’t. He’s waiting for her to say something. He’s tilted his head and is leaning toward her. It’s her turn. She can see it in the way his eyes have grown wider. He’s waiting.
“What did you say?”
“If I’m good,” the boy says, buckling his toes again, “he always brings Mama back.”
The boy is growing smaller, the distance between them growing larger. It’s because of Imogene. She’s backing away from him. The boy takes a step toward her. She stumbles, shakes her head at him.
“He brings me special things,” the boy says. “When I’m good. And he always brings Mama home.”
Imogene backs away until something stops her. She swings around, her arms rising, but it’s only the sofa. She leans against the back of it, and with her head turned away from the boy, she closes her eyes. A moment is all she needs. One quiet moment to think on this. She tries to make sense of what he said, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t grab hold of a single thought. They’re vanishing like puffs of smoke. Squeezing her eyes tight and pressing her lips into a hard line, she tries harder, but that motor is still humming, and it won’t let her make sense of what the boy has told her.
She can’t grab for the boy because that will frighten him back under the staircase. Instead, she digs her hands into the coarse upholstery covering the sofa. She already knew there was someone else. She already knew it was a man. And he’s coming back. The boy has told her what her instincts had already warned her about. She opens her eyes and turns back to him. He’s close enough now to touch.
“Where is it?” she asks.
The boy shrugs.
“What’s making the noise?”
He points with one small finger to the other side of the staircase. Imogene nods.
“Wait here,” she says, holding up a hand to signal the boy should stay put. “Everything’s going to be fine.” And as she says it, she thinks of her car parked outside and of her cell phone sitting in the basket by the sink up at Mama’s. She has no idea how long she’s been in the house, can barely remember walking through the back door, standing in front of those three locks. She left the headlights on, and maybe the engine is running, maybe not. She tries to remember how much gas is in the tank.
On the other side of the stairs, past the table and three chairs, the piecemeal carpet stops and the floors become bare stone. A large crack appears from under the carpet, travels the length of the room, and disappears into the back of the basement. A small refrigerator stands against the far wall, and a cast-iron sink, white paint chipping from its edges, hangs next to it. A coffee maker and a hot plate with two burners sit on a piece of plywood, but it’s the sight of a white tea towel that stops Imogene. It’s embroidered with a single magnolia and hangs perfectly and evenly over a slender silver bar. Like the sight of the bed, something about a tea towel, something she might see in any home, maybe even Mama’s home, makes her fingers grow stiff. She gives them a good shake and turns away.
It’s darker on this side of the basement, but the sound of the motor is instantly louder. It must be some sort of heater or dehumidifier—an old one judging by how loudly it’s running—because the air is light and the room doesn’t smell of mold like a basement normally would.
Forcing herself not to look at the embroidered towel again just as she forced herself not to look at the cradle, Imogene takes a few more steps and she sees it—a small window unit. It’s mounted high in one of the slender windows and rattles as warm air blows out of it. She yanks its cord from an outlet that dangles loose. Again, the house falls silent.
Imogene thought she wanted the silence so she could hear, but instead of comforting her, it frightens her. She walks toward the foot of the stairs, sliding her feet rather than picking them up. She could leave the boy and run to the car alone. But she left the lights on, and she doesn’t know how long it’s been or how long a car can sit like that and still start. She could take the boy with her, and if the car’s battery is dead, she could lock him inside and run home. She could tell the boy to hide on the floorboards, don’t look up, even if someone comes banging on the windows. Mama’s house isn’t so far. If she has to leave him, it will only be for a few minutes, fifteen at most.
“He said someday I might live in the house where you used to live.”
Imogene swings around. The boy stands in front of the staircase.
“Is that why you’re here?” he says. “Are we going to go live in that house?”
“Who told you that?”
The boy doesn’t answer and instead squats to the carpet squares and begins picking at the duct tape that pieces them together. Imogene drops down beside him and grabs him by both shoulders.
“Tell me,” she says, looking from the boy’s face to the top of the dark stairwell.
The boy’s shoulders cave, and as he tries to pull away from her, he shakes his head.
“Why? Why won’t you tell me?”
“If I tell, he won’t bring Mama back.”
The house is full of silence now that the window unit is off, and it’s choking her, muddling her thoughts instead of clearing them. She drops her hands from his shoulders, grabs one of his wrists, and pulls him to his feet.
“We’re leaving.”
When the boy makes no move to follow her, she drags him toward the stairs. His body goes limp. She grabs that same wrist with her other hand. He begins to scream. She reaches the bottom step, but the boy is kicking now and rolling his body from side to side as he tries to break free. He screams again. Not just once. He screams over and over, shouting that he won’t go, can’t go. Whatever else he is saying, she doesn’t know because she can only see the next stair and then the next and all the stairs between him and her and the door at the top.
Imogene has made it to the third stair when the boy’s screams change and he begins to cry instead. It is the switch from fear to pain. He’s hit his head on one of the wooden steps. She drops his wrist and slides down the stairs where he lies in a ball, both hands pressed to his forehead. At first, there is no blood, and then only a single stream trickles from between two fingers. It dribbles over one knuckle. He must feel it because he pulls his hands away and looks down at them. Then he holds them up so Imogene will see they’re smeared with blood. His cries turn back into screams again as he tries to scramble away from her. This time, she grabs one of his ankles.
“Stop,” she says, looking back at the stairs because she’s certain they’ll have been heard. “You have to be quiet. Please.” Dropping his leg, she holds her hands out to the side to show she won’t grab him again. “I won’t make you go, okay? But please, you have to be quiet.”
Not knowing what to do next, she sits back on her knees.
“When he tak
es your mama,” she says, “how long until he comes back?”
“Not long,” the boy says, his chest shuddering as he slowly stops crying. “Mama is never gone for long. But this time, I think she’s been gone too long.”
Chapter 14
BETH
Before
We walk up three outside steps and into a house, the man leading me by one hand. The house is wooden and white paint is peeling and flaking near the door. I hear my feet hitting the ground but don’t feel anything. Still, they keep moving me forward. Then we’re inside a dark kitchen and it smells like the underneath side of our house where a man crawled when our toilet stopped flushing right. He flashed his flashlight under there so I could see the guts of where I lived. There were thick pieces of wood under there and pipes and cobwebs draped between them. Look at here, he said, digging his hand down into the thick red dirt. He lifted a handful, opened his fingers, and let it drain through. This here is good Georgia clay. I could see only as far as his flashlight reached and always wondered what else was under there. I’d fall asleep some nights, thinking about the dark corners I couldn’t see. Sometimes I’d hear things down there and would stay still and quiet, hoping whatever it was didn’t crawl up to the surface.
Just inside the kitchen, I stop my feet and lean back because it feels like I’m walking into the guts, all the way in, even where the light doesn’t reach, and I know this place is bad. With one yank, the man pulls me forward. My legs give way and I crumble. I press my hands to the floor. I want to melt into the darkness. I know I shouldn’t be here, and if I close my eyes, this place will be gone and I’ll be home again with Mama.
Those same hands hook me under my arms. He wants me to stand, but my legs won’t hold me. And then he’s dragging me. My feet bounce across the floor. My head sags. The farther he drags me, the darker the house becomes even though it should be getting lighter. The sun was just beginning to rise when we drove up to this new place, and the air was wet and heavy. Mama calls it the seam between day and night, and if a person is going to fall through the cracks, Mama always said, it will happen at the seam—during that cold, wet, orange time of day when no one is looking. But the house isn’t getting brighter. It’s getting darker and I’m going deeper too. Deeper like once I go in, I’ll slip between the seam and never dig my way out.
At a closed door, he wraps one hand around the back of my neck, pinches tight, and holds me upright as he reaches for the knob. I dangle, kicking my legs and stretching my toes until I feel the floor. I can’t turn my head any which way because he’s holding too tight. I’m like one of the giant catfish the men catch down at the river and hold high with one hand while someone takes a picture of their trophy. Keeping a tight grip, the man opens the door, and I close my eyes, and if I weren’t a giant catfish dangling by its neck, I’d turn my head away. Then a light switches on. I hear it and I see the glow through my closed lids. He shakes the hand still holding me so I’ll walk ahead of him, but I don’t because the stairs go down, and even though I can see the bottom, I can’t see what else is down there. This is the deeper part I felt coming. I’m afraid there is something down there, but I’m also afraid there is nothing.
When my legs let go again and I start to sink to the floor, he scoops me up. I cough and cry as the man takes one stair at a time. We go deeper and deeper. At the bottom, he sets me down, holding on while he tests to see if my legs are working yet. He’s staring at me, shaking me because of the coughing and crying. When I get enough air and I can stand again, he begins to lead me around the room. I walk slow because the floor is hard and uneven. The ceiling hangs low, making the room small and dark. This is a basement, the underground part of the house.
“I want to go back to Mama,” I say.
Mama will come home and be sad I’m not there, and she’ll worry that a stranger has taken me away.
“Your mama is long gone.” He walks back and forth in front of me as he talks. “Forget about your mama.”
This place is cold. I try to run back up the stairs, but my legs are heavy and I stumble. He grabs a handful of my hair and I fall backward. Taking hold of me by the neck again, he makes me walk ahead of him. The air is thick and sticky, like I have to wipe it away to see ahead, and it’s wet like fog. It settles on my skin, making me wet too. There is a sofa, one chair, one small table. And there is a bed and a pillow and a pink blanket with satin trim that is torn and hangs loose. The same happened to one of our blankets and Mama stitched it back together with a needle and thread.
“What do I call you?” he asks, stopping in front of the stairs.
I don’t say anything because I don’t know if I’m still Beth down here. Mama is gone and Ellie and Fran will never call me for a sleepover and Julie Anna will never babysit me again. When I think of all of them being gone, the ceiling drops lower and the wet, sticky room starts to swallow me up. Everything that made me real is gone. I don’t know what to say.
“Hey, I asked you a question.”
“Beth,” I say.
“Okay, then, Beth it is.” He doesn’t tell me his name and instead points at square pieces of wood hanging from the walls. With one of his fingers, he lifts my chin so I have to look. “You see there?”
They are boarded-over windows, he tells me. Boarded over on the outside and the inside, and that means there ain’t no way out. Did it himself, he says, so it’s a job well done. He didn’t have time to find me more clothes, but he would soon. Just give him time. I nod, but even though my eyes are pointed at the boarded-over windows, I don’t really see them. Mama is gone and Julie Anna is lying still on the floor and now everything around me is just outside my reach, as if no matter how far I stretch my hand, I will never touch anything solid ever again. Mama once took me to a 3-D movie in Atlanta. Fish of all sizes swam across the screen. As they darted past us, we stretched out our hands, thinking for certain their smooth, slimy skins would slip through our fingers. But no matter how far we leaned or how high we stretched, they were always just beyond our reach.
Next he shows me a small room with a toilet. He crosses his fingers and says we’d both better hope it’s held up. After the bathroom, he shows me a blue box with a lid. He opens it, and the inside is filled with ice. He shoves in a hand and pulls out a small bottle of orange juice. He shakes it, shoves it back down into the ice, and tells me there is plenty of food in there to last me a few days.
“You know how to feed yourself?” he asks, rubbing his hand on top of my head. “Three squares a day? Got sandwich makings in there. Tuna too. You use a can opener? You drink milk, brush your teeth?”
He keeps asking questions and I keep nodding until he shows me the toaster oven.
“I’m not allowed,” I say, staring at it. I want to pinch my nose so I can’t smell. Sometimes Mama leaves our laundry in the washer and never hangs it on the line, and then my shirts smell like this basement.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess not.” Then he reaches under a white sink that hangs from the wall and pulls out a large bottle with a handle on it. “You know what this is?”
I can’t look at him because seeing hands or eyebrows or the collar of his shirt would make him real, and that would make me being here real. I know he wears black boots and his fingers are rough. I know he’s big but only because of the shadow that hung over me when he first pulled me from the metal box. I don’t know if he is young like Mama or old like a grandpa. He asks again if I know what the bottle is, and I shake my head.
“This is what you use if there’s a fire,” he says. “You pull this here and point this here.”
He unravels my pointer finger from my wadded-up fist, pokes it through a plastic ring. When his hand touches mine, blackness starts to close in around me. It starts to swallow me up.
“Can I go home?”
“This is your home.”
I shake my head.
“Only home you got, little girl, little Beth. Better take it.”
“No,” I say, but my voice
doesn’t sound like my voice. It sounds like somebody else’s coming out of somebody else’s mouth. The fish are still swimming past, just out of reach, and I’m sinking deeper.
He grabs me by the arm, drags me to the wall in the back where the light doesn’t reach. I fall on both knees, and he presses on my head with one hand so I have to look.
“See that there?” he asks, pointing to three fat metal rings stuck onto a wall made of large, bumpy stones.
I try to nod but can’t move my head. The stone floor is hard against my knees. I want to sit back to stop them from hurting so bad, but he won’t let me.
“You better figure out right here and now that this is where you’ll stay put or you’ll find yourself chained up to them rings.”
I don’t know what he means, but I think someone else was once here and maybe they were chained to the wall. Maybe I will be too.
“I didn’t figure on this happening,” he says after a time, and he starts pacing back and forth again, his head passing near the light bulb that hangs from a wire in the ceiling. “Damn it all, I knew she’d be trouble. Knew it the moment I seen her. She was the house sitter, you know? You know what that means? Means sitting for the house. Not sitting for you.”
Every time he walks under the bulb, the light twists and swirls. The shadows slipping across the floor make me dizzy. I curl myself up as tight as I can and hug my knees.
“Didn’t go there intending nothing,” he says, still pacing. “Folks want them gone, is all. Her daddy, he shouldn’t be teaching no kids. This ain’t my fault.”
Still hugging myself tight, I say nothing. His voice is deep and too loud. It fills the room, and I want to cover my ears over. I want to scream at him to stop talking, but I’m emptied out inside because there is no one to hear me. I squeeze myself tighter, tuck my head into my knees, make myself as small as I can.
