Pray for the Girl

by Joseph Souza

  “He tried to kill me,” I say, my entire body trembling.

  “I know,” the woman says. “I see everything out kitchen window and call police.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Come, let’s get wet clothes off you. Police should be here any minute.” The woman helps me to my feet, and to my surprise I realize that she’s wearing a hijab and burka.

  “Please call my sister and tell her to come get me.”

  “Come. Let’s get you inside.”

  I stare down at Dalton’s lifeless body before we leave. His eyes are open, and he’s staring up at the autumn blue sky. A rivulet of blood trickles out of his mouth. The woman helps me inside her house and instructs me to go into the bathroom and dry off. She runs upstairs and returns a few minutes later with some fresh clothes to wear. Then she opens the bathroom door and hands them to me. It’s a black burka and headscarf, loose fitting but it’ll do. Her kindness and generosity astound me after all the turmoil her people have gone through in this town.

  The police arrive as I lie on the sofa in a daze. A detective sits across from me and begins to ask me a series of questions. In my throaty voice, I tell him all that has happened in Fawn Grove and what the guilty parties have done. He looks confused at first, but when he sees Dalton’s lifeless body out in the field, he begins to take me more seriously. I tell him to interview each kid separately and pit one against the other. He sighs, telling me that he knows what he’s doing.

  After I’ve answered all the detective’s questions, two cops escort me out to Big Russ’s truck, advising me not to leave town. I turn back and smile at this kind woman as she waves good-bye. Standing in front of every door are Afghani women and children, watching the police lead me down the stone path. What are the odds that an immigrant would help me through this ordeal, then hand me a fresh, clean burka to wear home?

  Russ doesn’t say a word as he drives me back to the house. I wonder what he’s thinking. Was I suffering a nervous breakdown? Drunk? He’ll no doubt want to know how I ended up in an Afghani woman’s home wearing a burka and headscarf. He doesn’t know yet about Dalton, but he will by this evening. He has enough sense not to ask me anything while I’m in this dazed state.

  I’m unsure whether to tell him the truth about his daughter. He’ll find out soon enough the kind of monster he’s raised. I’m betting that a police car is already at the house, waiting to take Brynn down to the station for questioning. I imagine that police cars are now pulling up to each kid’s home, ready to ask them what they know about these crimes. What will Russ and Wendy think of me when that happens? What will they think of their daughter? Will they defend Brynn? Will they say that her behavior was that of a frightened young girl? A girl who was forced to do the bidding of two adults, one of whom was a cop?

  “Is this as awkward for you as it is for me?” Russ finally says as we pass through the center of town. “I’m not even supposed to be driving.”

  I look over at him and say nothing.

  “Feel like you need to tell me something?”

  I do but say nothing.

  “Come on, now. Say your piece.”

  I turn and stare out the window. “Brynn’s not the girl you think she is.”

  “What right do you have to lecture me about my daughter when you’ve never had kids of your own?”

  The town of Fawn Grove flies past, and it looks sadder than ever.

  “We’ve been good to you, Lucy. Took you in when you were sick and had nowhere else to go.”

  I see Pam’s coffee shop and the mill’s steaming smokestack.

  “I didn’t want to say this, Lucy, but you’re a train wreck waiting to happen. You act like everything’s all a game to you. Now I find you in an immigrant woman’s house doing God knows what, dressed in a burka, the police surrounding the place. You hear voices at night and suffer from PTSD. Maybe you should worry more about your own mental health rather than questioning my parenting skills.”

  I continue to stare out the window because a response is not warranted. They’ll soon learn who Lucy Abbott is and what she’s made of. Never again will I be bullied or pushed around. Or let innocent kids get hurt for no reason. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m completely free from Jaxon’s long shadow. May that poor boy rest in peace.

  Epilogue

  IN MANY WAYS IT’S BEEN DIFFICULT TO RETURN TO NEW YORK CITY. The transition has been hard, the fallout in Fawn Grove even worse. Initially I thought that’s where I belonged. Home is where the heart is, and all that corny bullshit. In the end I realized it was never meant to be. Jaxon left that place for a specific reason—to be free from the scrutiny of small-town minds. It was these same small-town minds that made life miserable for Jaxon, and he knew this far before Lucy arrived at the same conclusion. Like anywhere else, most of the people in Fawn Grove are kind and hardworking folks. It’s always the assholes who make up a tiny percentage of the population. But as they say, a few bad apples can spoil the barrel. And it’s those bad apples one tends to remember in life.

  So from Jaxon’s ashes Lucy Abbott was spawned.

  I haven’t talked to Wendy and Russ since leaving. It’s understandable. This has been a difficult time for them as well. I don’t think they blame me for their daughter’s actions, and let’s face it, how could they? But it’s still hard for them to accept that their only child is a murderer without conscience. It’s hard for everyone in town to accept. These children were born and raised in Fawn Grove. What these kids did was so horrible that the only option for many people is to deny it ever happened. Put it out of mind. Who would have thought kids could be so cruel? But they are. And they were.

  And yet the adults were worse. These kids learned this behavior from their parents. Or, to be more specific, in their parents’ absence. Now Nadia is serving time in prison and Dalton’s dead.

  We were a broken family before all this occurred. Now we are nothing, because you can’t break what doesn’t exist. Both of my parents are gone and buried. Brynn is now serving time in a juvenile correction facility until the age of eighteen. Me, I’m living in New York City where I belong. Wendy and Big Russ still live in that old creaking Victorian, their health deteriorating with each passing day, spirits broken, never to recover. And that’s just in my own messed-up family. Imagine how many families have been ruined by this depraved cycle of abuse.

  I remember driving back with Russ and seeing the horrified look on his face when he saw all those cop cars parked in front of his house. He drove slowly up the driveway before hobbling inside. I trailed behind him, sensing what I was about to see once I walked into that living room.

  Brynn was sitting on the couch and talking to one of the detectives in a calm and cutesy manner. Her arms had been cuffed behind her back and she spoke in a low voice, as if she was speaking to a three-year-old. Despite the grim circumstance, she looked beautiful. I’ve always thought she looked that way because her true self was finally revealed to the world. I remember at the time wondering how she could look so lovely after all that had happened. How could she maintain her composure and act so damn calm? It made me slightly jealous. That she didn’t have a care in the world.

  My problem had always been that I cared too much.

  Brynn was telling the cops everything she knew, or at least her version of events. I distinctly remember her glancing up at me and smiling. I’ll never quite forget how sweet she looked at that moment. She seemed extremely confident of her powers of persuasion, as if she could talk her way out of all the terrible things she’d done.

  She blamed everyone but herself. She blamed Dalton and Nadia. No surprise. She blamed her own parents for not adequately supervising her during her formative years. She blamed Fawn Grove and the effects small-town life had on her development. She blamed the Afghani girl for falling against that boulder and hitting her head. She blamed boredom, drugs, and alcohol. She claimed she’d gone along with everything only because she was scared for her life. Dalton was an influen
tial detective in town who held a lot of power. And Sulafi had threatened to send her Muslim brother back to that river and kill her and all her friends. Nadia threatened any of them who opened their mouths, which was how Taylor ended up in that lonely cornfield with his throat slit.

  Please! I wanted to run out of that room screaming. But I had to admit she was good. A natural.

  I knew immediately she would receive a light sentence once convicted. Brynn had a lot of things going for her: She was young, pretty, and a very skilled liar. At the age of fifteen, she had a spotless record and a history of good grades. Her parents were invalids and in declining health, and she claimed that her grandfather’s death had greatly affected her. It didn’t hurt that she could act sickly sweet on cue. I knew juries typically went easy on teens who’d been used as pawns in the commission of violent crimes, especially when it involved cops and murder.

  I feared for a world in which this manipulative psychopath might one day roam free to prey on others. This lying, murderous girl with the addictive blue eyes and dimpled cheek was a menace to society.

  I told the police everything I knew. I handed over the video of those kids speaking in the cornfield and told them about Dalton’s reflection in the selfie. They sent the original photo to the police lab, blew it up many times over, and confirmed that it was Dalton. When they combined my statement with the testimonies of all those kids, the pieces started to fit together.

  Surprisingly, Stefania had no compunction about testifying against her mother. But she adamantly refused to testify against Brynn. Whether it was out of loyalty or fear, no one knows. As much as Nadia tried to protect her daughter and keep her safe, a mother’s love will never be reciprocated in full. I know this because my own mother felt the same way. It soon became apparent during the trial that Stefania greatly resented Nadia. Stefania had abandonment issues, a psychologist testified. Her mother focused all her energies on the Afghani immigrants instead of her long-neglected daughter. It came at a steep price. I think this compulsion Nadia had to help these refugees manifested from the shame of her own immigrant past. But at that I’m merely playing dime psychologist.

  The more I reflect on things, the less surprised I am that something like this happened in Fawn Grove. Everything that occurred there was the result of an imperfect storm: small-town dynamics, dysfunctional families, cyclical abuse, economic hardship, a clash of cultures pitting two desperate peoples against each other, drugs, alcohol, resentment, boredom, the mill’s toxic history. You name it. It makes me wonder why something like this hadn’t happened sooner.

  I returned to Manhattan and found work almost immediately. A chef with my skills will not sit on the sidelines for long. An enterprising young woman I knew opened a fabulous bistro in Brooklyn and, to my surprise, asked if I’d come work for her. I’d gained somewhat of a reputation while slaving away all those years, refusing promotions and lucrative job offers. I interviewed with her, and she hired me on the spot.

  The bistro took off, and I found myself once again immersed in kitchen work. Beautiful, glorious kitchen work. It took my mind off all the bad stuff that had happened in the last year. In my spare time, I began to see a therapist, and she helped me through my various issues. We talked about the voices in my head, and I told her about the day before the roadside bomb that rendered my lower legs moot. For the first time in years, I began to sleep at night, and it changed my life. It gave me a newfound hope that I might one day live as a normal woman, and that I might be able to share my life with someone. It provided me with the framework to at least think about making the full transition to womanhood. Cutting the cord, so to speak. In my mind, I’d been a real woman for quite some time, but now the physical transformation would seal the deal. I just needed to pull the trigger when I was ready.

  I told her about the girl from the fruit market and how I vowed to never sit idle again. I told her about the night before my legs got blown off and how I couldn’t get that young child’s voice out of my head. It was a cry for help, and although I’d heard these children’s voices many nights in the past, I’d never done anything about it.

  It had been a difficult week. Soldiers were dying on the battlefield and in the operating room. I’d been wrestling with my gender identity and confused that it was finally coming to a head. I experienced random bouts of dysmorphia mixed in with a crippling sense of depression. At the time, I didn’t think I wanted to be a woman. Or deserved such privilege. It seemed unnatural and perverted, and yet so right. What was wrong with me? Why was I the only soldier in my unit made to feel this way? To want to be something that he was not. It seemed that God had a cruel sense of humor.

  My confusion that evening was compounded by the relentless sound of the child’s cries. I covered my ears and hummed a tune. But the cries now seemed as if they’d been branded into my brain. After an hour of this torture, I couldn’t tell if the voice was real or imagined. I just wanted it out of my head.

  That last night before the roadside bomb took my legs had been the worst. I lie in my cot sobbing and cursing all that was wrong with me. Was it really so bad to be a woman when I was a man? Then I heard that child’s voice, and it was like a switch had been thrown in my head. Enraged, I thought about how I’d failed to save that beautiful girl from the market. I ran out and made my way down to where the voice was coming from. I stopped when I arrived at the tent, which belonged to an Afghani general we were helping to train. When I pulled up the flap to his tent, I saw a very young boy sitting on a cot. The boy was wearing a heavy gloss of red lipstick and a long dress and was crying. He looked surprised and relieved to see me. For a brief second, I wondered if he was real or just a figment of my imagination. The general, an ugly war hog with a bad case of acne, turned toward me and smiled knowingly. At that moment, a thousand thoughts ran through my mind, and not a single one of them was good.

  I snapped. I completely lost it like Brynn did down by the river. Maybe it’s in our shared DNA to lose control of ourselves so fully. My vision turned dark. Confusion turned into chaos, which resulted in moral anarchy. I lashed out, that’s all I know for certain. After that I don’t remember a thing. I only remember waking up the next morning and noticing that my hands were bruised and bloodied. Someone shouted a command, and in minutes we were being ordered to head out to the battlefield to save lives.

  During the ride, one of my fellow soldiers explained how he and another soldier had pulled me out of that tent and hustled me back to the compound before anyone noticed. The boy had run off. I’d beaten the general so badly that everyone feared I’d killed him. Good, I thought. I secretly hoped I had, despite the consequences facing me. I only hoped that my fellow soldiers wouldn’t have to pay the price for my impulsive actions.

  My unit never made it to the battlefield that day.

  I never found out what happened to that general, whether he lived or died, and honestly I don’t really care at this point. Because the next memory I had was of lying in that hospital bed and listening as the doctor told me that my lower legs had been blown off.

  * * *

  I’d gone to visit Brynn in the juvenile facility where she was assigned. The institution was located just south of Portland and a two-hour ride from Fawn Grove. A year had passed, and I hadn’t been back to Maine since. My contact with Wendy and Russ had been cut off, due to the bad feelings still lingering over all that had happened.

  The visiting room was a nondescript rectangle of cinder blocks filled with old tables and rickety chairs. On one side of the room sat a hunkering steam radiator that hissed and knocked. It sounded like an inexperienced xylophone player making soulful music. All the windows were covered over with steel bars. I was nervous as I waited for her. What would she look like? How would she react to seeing me, knowing that I had lied to her about my identity? Anyone looking in might have mistaken me for her fashion-conscious mother.

  And I was scared. Scared of facing her.

  After ten minutes of waiting, Brynn waltzed in.
Even dressed in a hideous orange jumpsuit, she took my breath away. She flashed me an All-American smile one might see in a Gap ad. Her blue eyes shimmered in the cold light, and she’d combed her hair straight back so that it flowed naturally. I was surprised how much she’d grown in such a short time; ironically, at least three inches taller since I’d last seen her. But what I noticed most was that she looked weathered. Or weary. Maybe a cocktail of the two that struck a subtle note in me at the time. Serving with other juveniles had irrevocably changed her, despite all the cutesy gestures she made trying to persuade me otherwise.

  “Look at you,” Brynn said, making a show of sitting across from me. “Lucy Abbott, private investigator.”

  “Hello, Brynn.”

  “You sure are a sight for sore eyes.”

  “I’m not here to argue with you.”

  “Why should you? I’m the victim here. The neglected child who’s been taken advantage of and used for others’ personal gain. If you had just gone back to New York City, I would have never ended up here.”

  “You can’t blame me for what happened.”

  “I was a frightened young girl and scared for my life,” she said as if she’d really convinced herself of this lie.

  “Have you spoken to your parents?”

  “Of course I have, and they’ve forgiven me completely. They know how dangerous Dalton was and what Stef’s mom put us through. They’ll do anything to help me get back on my feet when I leave this dump.”

  “What will you do?”

  She laughed and flipped her hair back. “Like you really care. You probably wished they’d locked me up and thrown away the key.”

  I did but would never admit to it. “I know you can’t stay in a juvenile facility forever,” I said. “Will you go back to Fawn Grove?”