by MC Webb
“I’m s-s-sorry. I s-s-shouldn’t yell. We’ll have n-n-no more worries, so go to s-s-sleep and rest. We will talk m-m-more when you are b-b-better.”
He tucked a blanket under my chin and kissed my forehead. As he left, he snapped on my TV, which he’d moved into the room, probably when I was passed out. Daniel left the door open, and I could hear him moving around the trailer. I lay in the dark, still and unthinking. My head was pounding. I tried to sleep, as my lips throbbed. My last thought was,
You wanted this. You wanted him to look at you. You wanted him to kiss you. This is all your fault, stupid ugly Piper.
Knowing in my heart that I desired to be loved, but not expecting this to be the love I would get, I prayed silently for forgiveness. I prayed not to be dirty. I prayed for Nathan to come and find me and take me to Nana’s. I prayed I wouldn’t wake up in this nasty old trailer with a broken body, with a mother who hated me so much, and a crazy man I had thought was my friend. All of my thoughts circled back around to the idea that somehow, this had to be my fault. I was in the middle of a prayer when sleep took me once more.
…
I did eventually wake up. I knew immediately from the smell that I was still in Daniel’s bed. I kept my eyes closed and listened to him laboring with something heavy. Then I heard the sound of plastic bags. After wrestling with whatever he was doing, Daniel dragged the bags outside, and the backdoor shut behind him. When I could no longer hear his footsteps on the porch, I opened my still protesting eyes.
I realized that while I had been sleeping, Daniel had used some kind of cable to tie my wrist to the brass headboard. It was dark outside, and the only light I had was from the silent TV.
I scooted to the window above me and peeked underneath the filthy blue blanket that covered it. I could see by the dim porch light that Daniel was pushing an empty wheelbarrow with one hand and with the other he balanced a shovel over his shoulder. I quickly put the blanket back in place, scared he would see me. I could hear him on the porch, dragging something again.
After a minute of silence, I pulled the blanket aside slightly again. My teeth chattered as the draft from the window swept over me. Daniel had something in the wheelbarrow now and was headed into the cornfield. He disappeared between the thick, frozen stalks, and I think I took my first breath in several minutes.
I was sore, but my head was clearer. I began tugging at the plastic cable, which tied my left wrist to the bed. I don’t know how long I worked on it, but it didn’t budge. I had no idea if my mother was in the trailer or not, so I tried to be as quiet as I could. I listened hard for any sound, outside or in. My stomach growled, and my mouth was dry.
After a long time of tugging and pulling I was exhausted. Finally, I gave up, and lay back in the bed. The smell made me nauseated. I tucked the blanket around my feet the best I could with one hand. I was cold to the bone. My stomach ached with hunger. For a long time I lay, watching the TV lights flicker across the ceiling.
I dozed off, lying in the filthy bed. When I woke up again, I tried to focus on the TV, but the images came in fragmented pieces without making sense. A shampoo commercial came into focus, where the woman was smiling, and teeth brilliantly white, and tossing her hair back and forth, pleased with its beauty. I wanted so badly to know what that was like. Being clean again. Being pretty. Being happy.
My head pounded, and I was bleeding between my legs. The lip that my tooth had bitten through throbbed painfully. I drifted in and out of sleep for a while. It was near sunrise when I saw a flicker of light in the cornfield through the one-inch gap between the blanket and window. The smoke from a lit cigarette announced Daniel’s approach from out of the frozen stalks. He was pushing the wheelbarrow, stopping every few feet to take a drink from a bottle, and a puff of his cigarette. I froze, watching his progress. When he reached the steps, I arranged myself as best as I could to look like the dead.
I waited, listening to his entrance and the sound of him discarding his winter coat and boots. When he came to bed I didn’t move, trying to breathe evenly, to make it seem as if I were asleep. Daniel put his cold, rough, whiskered face against my cheek. The smell of cheap whiskey burned my nose. I stayed still as he kissed my face and laid back to sleep. His heavy breathing became soft snores almost instantly. I lay looking at him in the light of the TV, wondering if my mother had really gone. Her clothes and makeup were still scattered around the room. When she returned, what would happen? I could not survive another beating, and I would rather die than be raped again.
I watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie until the sun was bright. On the edge of sleep once more, sore and hungry, a thought hit me hard. It might have been the movie, but I knew for certain my mother was not coming back. The realization was there, and it was undeniable.
It was her in the trash bag. It was her in the wheelbarrow. She wasn’t coming back, because she was freshly buried in the cornfield. I knew this without question as I stared at Daniel’s hands and the dark stains on them, I knew it wasn’t just dirt, and at that moment, I didn’t know how I felt about it. I wouldn’t cry and couldn’t if I wanted to. Somewhere in my little-girl mind, I felt that I had asked for all of this.
I had wanted attention and had loved when Daniel gave it to me. I was starved for a friend. For love. I’d wished my mother gone. Maybe I’d even wished her dead. Now, I had gotten that wish, and I was paying for my evil ways.
chapter three
In the days that followed, I healed. Daniel never mentioned my mother, except to say she had quit her job and told everyone she was heading to Nashville, to live closer to Nathan. It was a believable story. This was in fact her plan, he said, but Nathan knew nothing of where we were, and more importantly, no one knew I wasn’t with my mother, so no one would be looking for me. This cleared me from ever returning to school.
Daniel repeatedly told me no one wanted me. Not my brother, my mother, or Nana and Papaw. He reinforced this when I tried to run from the house one day, after he allowed me to take a shower without him present. He caught me, and whipped me with the old leather belt he wore. Huge, bloody welts appeared on my legs and back. After that was over, he cried and said I made him hurt me, and why would I want to leave him? He was the only one that loved me and wanted me.
By my birthday in February, I was in a dog collar with a chain that slid through its locked ring around my neck. This, as Daniel explained, would allow me access to the bathroom and the bedroom while he was away at work, without his having to tie me up each time.
I was no better than a dog on a leash, or maybe even worse. My life was isolated from the outside world. Daniel hung plywood over the windows so I could not see out, or more importantly, so no one could see in. No one ever came by, and the mailbox was far enough away from the hillside that no postman would make the trip up the hill.
Daniel said everything was for my protection, so that when he was at work, no one would be able to break in the house. I knew this was a lie. The trailer was a dump, in the middle of nowhere with one road in, and one road out. I did not know which side of town we were on, but I watched the sun through a two-inch space the plywood did not cover at the bottom of the bedroom window.
The sun rose on the right and I knew somewhere Nana was watching it with me. My mind was saying nobody would want me now, I was so dirty, but my heart kept saying, every sunrise, Nana and Papaw were waiting on me. I hoped somehow Nathan was too. I missed my brother so bad, it physically hurt me to think of him.
Life went on without me every day. I got to eat as long as I did whatever Daniel wanted. When he was on top of me, I would become the people on TV. It was the only way I could escape where I was, and what was happening to my dead body. I became numb to it all. I did everything Daniel wanted, so I could eat mostly, and he would allow me to read while he was at work.
I quickly became pale and even thinner than before. Within a couple of months my ribs began to show through the old T-shirts I was permitted to wear. I would sit with my kne
es pulled up inside the shirt, trying to keep warm. I had a thin blanket, but no socks. It was a frigid hell, that much I was sure.
I read of Jonah in a small Bible that was stiff from never being opened. What he described, I understood. I took comfort in his escape from the whale, or rather the deliverance God provided him. I did not believe I would be delivered from my own hell. As Daniel repeatedly told me, no one would want me anyway. They were not even looking for me. I was nothing more than Daniel’s little dog on a chain.
We had a huge ice storm in March. Daniel and I stayed in bed for a week. It was so cold in the trailer, I would breathe just to watch my breath for entertainment, when I was not watching TV. After the storm finally passed, the woods finished shedding the weight of ice and snow from its branches and brush. They looked bare in the distance. Under the bed, I had found a scope from a hunting rifle Daniel had changed out for a new one, and with it, I watched the birds and deer when he was gone. The scope became my secret treasure.
I craved being outside, and seeing the birds and deer gave me a little bit of freedom in my dark world. Every morning, as soon as I heard the heavy steps out the door and Daniel’s truck start down the drive, I went to my crack at the bottom of the window, and I would watch as the sun rose high in the blazing blue sky.
It was the end of March. I was sick at my stomach and felt weak all over. When Daniel did allow me food, it was very little. He told me he despised fat women, and I was perfect the way I was. I was skin and bones. The night before I had four saltine crackers and a cup of cold chicken broth out of the can. I drank the broth down, grateful for every drop.
By morning I was light-headed and felt like I needed to sleep a little longer. After ten minutes of lying still I had to guide myself, careful not to choke on the chain I was attached to, into the bathroom to throw up. I drank water from the sink and lay on the floor heaving and sweating.
I prayed that God would just let me die a real death on the floor. I asked that if Jesus came and took me, I would not be buried next to my mother because that was way too close to the devil for me. I prayed my Nana and Papaw were okay. I prayed Nathan made it big, with a song everybody would know the words to one day.
I woke up, almost disappointed, two hours later. After washing my face, I began to feel much better. Placing my hand on my chain I went back to the bedroom, turning the TV up as I came in. I Love Lucy was one of my favorite shows and one of the only things I watched with the volume on. I loved listening to Ricky’s Cuban accent and tried to mimic it, pronouncing the words just like him. After it went off, I turned the TV back down and got my scope to watch the woods again.
The day was beautiful and clear. Sunny and bright, the woods were alive with activity. I watched birds bring their babies worms. Spring was near. I was so caught up in the birds’ daily feeding, I almost missed the barn in the distance. Once I spotted it, I began to cry real tears for the first time in weeks. My shirt was soaked before I realized what I was doing. I thought maybe it was a mirage, like they showed on Bugs Bunny, so I watched and waited for it to disappear. The sun was to my left now, shining off the glass window on the top of a huge blue barn.
Never had I seen a more beautiful thing than this. I knew it well. It was the barn of the Logue family. It had been the source of great humor in the county for many years. My papaw would say, “Looky yonder, at that ugly blue barn.” Then he would chuckle and shake his head. “There ain’t no missing that thing, no sir,” he would say with a smile. I liked it, because everyone else would paint their barns red, but being blue was different in a place where everything seemed the same.
I was afraid if I looked away it would be lost in the woods. It was not until I heard the truck pull in that I stopped looking for signs of anyone in the woods. I hoped with all my heart that I was not imagining this unbelievable sight. Had the ice storm not come, I would have never seen through the trees. I said a prayer, and with all my heart I thanked God for the storm.
I had no way of knowing exactly how far that barn was, but knowing its general direction I knew I could find it just by watching the sky. The sun would be my guide, just as my dad, Nathan, and my papaw always taught me, when I would go hunting with them in the woods for days. I knew the patterns of the sun and the moon and the seasons by heart.
I knew without even thinking that if I could reach that barn, I could continue over the hills and be only a small ways away from Nana and Papaw. The only problem with that was, what if what Daniel told me was true. Was I not wanted, or loved any longer? The very thought brought tears to my eyes again, and then with the sound of heavy boots on the porch, I remembered I was dirty and unworthy of a family anyway. I was now Daniel’s pet, attached to a dog leash. That’s who and what I was.
chapter Four
Every day, as soon as Daniel left the house, I would look for that blue barn. It didn’t take long to lose sight of it through the woods, after the trees put out their leaves. I continued to be sick off and on. I stayed hungry, but I seemed to gain a little weight over the next couple of months, nothing too noticeable.
I found myself obsessing about how to get free, and to that blue barn. I had very little energy and tired easily when I worked on the rings that held me captive. I knew if I did get away, Daniel would kill me. He assured me of this many times. I also knew I was dying slowly anyway, and it would be worth the chance, just to see home again.
Home was the place I knew better than anything else, in the dark or in the bright light of day—my grandparents’ home, old as it was, and big enough to get lost in. I thought hour by hour of Nana’s cooking, and the feel of Papaw’s calloused hands touching my face. His crazy songs my dad told me to never sing in public, and especially Sunday dinner after church. I remembered Nana’s old dusters she would wear on off days. I loved to get lost in them in the closet when I played.
I thought of the smell of wood polish and the sound of breaking runner beans. All that mattered in the world was getting to that blue barn. I was consumed by it, but I was trapped in the collar that refused to let me go as much as Daniel did.
In late May, I noticed a difference in Daniel and the way he would look at me. My brown eyes stayed bloodshot, and purple circles formed beneath them. My skin became even paler, almost see-through and my once reddish-blonde hair hung limp and dull down my back. I was withering like a tree that had been pruned too much and refused to grow any longer.
Something about the way I looked did not please Daniel. He was rougher with me and seemed disgusted with my weight gain. It was not until he asked me if I were pregnant that I even thought of the possibility. I had started my period just after my eleventh birthday. I had missed it, but I had no idea about babies. When he asked one night, looking at my swollen belly, if it were so, I immediately said no, being ignorant and naive. The next day, Daniel brought home a book about girls and their bodies, along with a pregnancy test.
I was pregnant, at twelve years old. I did not know or understand what was happening to me. Daniel would not allow any talk about it, and he was cruel most of the time once he knew. When he drank heavily, he would slap me and whip me with his belt. His drinking became heavier, as my stomach became bigger.
Judging by what the book for girls Daniel gave me, I was at least five months along when, in a drunken rage, Daniel whipped me so hard from head to feet, my flesh separated and peeled away from the wounds. If I whined or complained, Daniel would pour pure alcohol on my open sores. It burned me to the point that my mouth watered from the agony. I could not scream, or I would pay for that as well.
Daniel beat me until he was exhausted from it. When he finally stopped, he laid back on the bed and began smoking, ordering me to lay down beside him. Holding my breath so not to whimper from pain, I did as he said. I closed my eyes and got my breathing even again. My side hurt, and I wondered if Daniel’s intention all along was trying to beat the baby out of me.
I began to really look at him for the first time in months. He was dozing slightly
now, his mouth slightly parted completely relaxed. I was convinced he was not human, but evil in the flesh.
A lit cigarette dangled from his fingers, hovering over the ashtray. It was the first week of August and miserably hot. I had on my dirty T-shirt, and panties, which clung to my skin from sweat. The cotton rubbed at my injuries, causing them to burn. My body was not taking to the baby well. I was in my own little hell, sick and swollen.
I checked again. Daniel had passed out in his clothes, and barely sticking out of his pants I saw, with sheer delight, his keys. Keys I knew contained the key to the locked dog collar around my neck. In an instant I saw in my mind, me running to the barn I knew to be on the hill. By the light of the TV, I began to slowly work the keys from his pocket. I was sweating profusely, and the cigarette in his hand was nearly burned to the filter.
I moved as fast and as quietly as I could, fearing he would wake from the sound of the loud thumping of my heart. When the collar was unlocked, I peeled it away taking pieces of my skin with it. With the thing finally off of me, I sat in stunned disbelief at what I had just done.
I stared down at the collar in my hands. I do not know how or why, but I made the decision in that instant and placed it around Daniel’s neck. Sliding it through the small space between his neck and his pillow, I held my breath, and moved like I was playing the board game Operation and at any moment the buzzer would sound.
When the lock clicked down in place, Daniel’s eyes snapped open. He was on top of me choking me before I could blink. His fist flew at me, hitting my face, my stomach, and my sides. I fought for my life. Blood gathered in my teeth, and ran from the corners of my mouth.
You will not die here, I thought. Although I knew I had prayed for it, I knew now I wanted to live.
I sucked in air that was chalky and ashy. Clutching the keys in my closed fist, I began to hit back connecting with Daniel’s left eye with the point of a key. Only giving me a moment of pause as he grabbed at his eye, I began trying to slide out from under the weight of his body.
