He climbed into his car and aggressively spun away from the side of the road. The only sound was that of my crying, the noise of the birds and the wind rustling the tree branches.
I sat on the ground for a very long time wondering what I could do.
I had very limited options.
I had no real friends who lived nearby. I could try to sneak into the church and sleep there, but God already hated me so I doubted that would work out for me. I couldn’t put Topher in the middle of this again. I was already worried about what had happened when he’d handed my backpack over.
There was only one place I could go that I knew would be safe, and it was the place of my nightmares.
The woodshed.
It was the only option I had, and whether it had scared me silly as a little girl or not, it was nothing to how scared I was at the thought of sleeping rough in the woods or getting caught sneaking into the house.
I stood up gingerly, bent down to pick up my backpack, and winced in pain before walking towards the house under the cover of the trees. Every now and then a bird fluttered and made me jump, but I had to get used to it. I’d need to stay outside until I was sure Edward wouldn’t come outside to refresh the log supply for the fire. I knew I wouldn’t survive if he caught me in there.
After the sun had gone down, I climbed into the woodshed and gave myself a stern talking to. This was it for tonight. It was the best I could hope for and I had to make the most of this crazy bad situation. I had no idea what time it was, but I was already shivering and dreading the night ahead. I knew he wouldn’t even feed or help Momma.
My night only got worse when I heard the sound of motorcycle engines getting closer. Their lights appeared through the darkness followed by loud revving. I had to duck my head into my lap as the brightness from the lights temporarily blinded me. The motorcycles were so loud I was sure if I screamed no one would have heard.
Suddenly, all the engines died.
I peeked up and could still see the headlights streaming through the wooden planks of the woodshed as a figure appeared and stood in front of it, blocking me from seeing anything.
“You got what we’ve come for?” I heard from a voice with a hint of a Spanish accent.
“I do. You got my money?” Edward replied, clearing up who was stood in front of the woodshed.
“Cash on delivery, Hermano.”
“How many bricks?”
There was talking amongst the visitors. I heard ‘cuatro’ before one confirmed, “four.”
“Wait here.” The lights Edward had shielded me from only moments ago were back to scorching my strained eyes as he left, and a number of voices all started chattering in Spanish. I inwardly cursed myself for not paying more attention in Spanish class. I could order a drink or a meal in a restaurant and get by with pleasantries, but none of what these guys were saying registered with me. The voices then started to snip and argue amongst themselves as one of them shushed the rest.
“Put them in the saddlebag,” came an order.
“Put them in the fucking saddlebags yourself, Cruz. After I’ve counted my fucking money,” Edward growled, bending down to put a bundle of stuff wrapped in one of Daddy’s old oil clothes at his feet. A gap in the material showed me it was some of the drugs that were covered in my fingerprints.
I felt sick.
This was a drug hand-off and I had been involved.
I was guilty.
Wherever those drugs ended up, I was a part of it. If some kids died taking them, their blood was on my hands, too.
A guy stepped forward and handed him a huge roll of money as Edward took off a rubber band and started to thumb through it.
“It’s all there, Hermano.”
“I ain’t your fucking brother. All good?” Edward stuffed the money in his pants pocket and one of the bikers stepped forward to collect the packages from the floor. “We’re done.”
“Careful, Eduardo. You refuse to acknowledge it, but blood is blood in Mehico. In the Hermano del Mal, our blood is our bond, until it stops flowing of course.” He laughed sharply before his tone of voice changed. “You’d do well to remember that. See you soon, Hermano.”
Feet moved and motorcycle engines started. I put my head back in my lap as their departure kicked up dust that swirled in the air and seeped through the cracks in the woodshed slats.
By the time I was brave enough to look up again, once the woods and world around me had quietened down again, it was dark and Edward had gone back into the house.
I was scared before about what Edward was doing with drugs, but now I knew he was involved with bikers, I was downright terrified.
This was only going to end badly for Edward and there was nothing I could do to get Momma or me to safety.
Gigi
I didn’t want to sleep. Being alert would keep me safe, but my body was exhausted.
At odd times I would jump awake because of a creepy noise or the wind, but the cold was the worst. Every time I was conscious, I could feel my heart beating in my head because I was so confused, tired, hungry and hurting. Then I remembered how I ended up here and what I’d seen by accident, and it all came back to me like a movie roll.
I wept constantly and with no tissues to blow my nose on or mop up my tears, I ended up using my t-shirt. I waited until well after dark, when the moon was high and I was sure Edward would be asleep, to creep out and relieve my bladder. In all I’d ever endured, having to squat and pee outside like a feral creature was the most degrading. I thought about trying to rearrange the logs into a more comfortable position, but the woodshed was dark and I was terrified of disturbing a snake or a scorpion.
I continued to pray to a god who had let me down so much already.
Dear God, My heart is heavy, my mind is racing and my life is dull and pointless. Please free me from this darkness. Make me strong and heal me, or let me find peace on the other side.
During the minutes when I was at my lowest, I thought to hell with it. I should just poke around in the woodpile and get bitten just to end it all.
But I still couldn’t do it.
After all I’d been through, after everything I was still going through, I was still too weak to take my own life.
Just how much did I have to suffer before killing myself became a real option?
The next morning, I did another jump-start back to consciousness and realized I’d been woken by my tormentor leaving for work. I could see him through the gnarly holes of the old outbuilding and for the first time the prayer I sent to God wasn’t selfishly about myself and helping me. It was about him.
Dear God, why can’t you see the evil that I live with? Why is my suffering acceptable? Edward doesn’t deserve to breathe air. Make him suffer. Please. When will you make him suffer?
Watching him from my overnight prison without him knowing, I repeated my prayer again hoping God would strike him down and unleash some great undoing upon him. I didn’t care whether it was a car crash, a nasty disease or a simple heart attack. I needed him out of our lives, and if by some miracle I survived living here before my prayers were answered then I would leave as soon as I was able to.
I would save Momma and me, because she was never going to leave this house of her own free will. When my daddy died, she entered a period of eternal mourning that tethered her to this horrible place.
I tried to count the minutes in my head, wondering if enough time had passed to make it safe to go into the house. Uncurling from the floor of the woodshed and slowly pushing the door open, I stepped outside, listening for the sounds of a car returning before I finally headed into the house via the kitchen door.
The sight of the dirty dishes and pots that greeted me confirmed my suspicions. Edward had cooked for himself only last night. The greasy pan from his breakfast was already congealing on the side and there was no breakfast tray from Momma. She’d be starving like me. If I was thinking straight, I would have cleaned up his mess in an effort to get on his good side,
but I needed food. I was thirsty, ravenous and chilled through to my bones, and putting something in my tummy would help that. With my head stuck in the refrigerator, I hastily pulled grapes off the bunch on the shelf and stuffed them in my mouth as a floorboard creaked behind me. I spun around, terrified he’d come back and I’d let my guard down, only to see Momma barely holding herself up in the doorway.
“Ginny, where were you?”
“Oh, Momma,” I cried, fresh tears already flowing before I’d wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, too tight because she groaned in pain.
“Did he hurt you last night?”
Ignoring my question, she fired one straight back at me. “He told me you’d been caught.” She gulped, unable to use the same words he’d said to me yesterday. “And that he… he… set you out of the house.” Momma at least had the good sense to look embarrassed for me. “What did you do?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“He told me lots of things, but tell me what really happened.”
“Momma, I’m in trouble at school. I got into a fight and they sent me home. I knew I couldn’t come here, so a friend took me to theirs and I hung there until it was time to come home. We fell asleep and missed the bus.”
“A boyfriend?” Her eyes popped open wide. The way I said it made it sound so sleazy.
“No. A boy who’s a friend.”
“He was so mad. I could hear him banging around down here,” she whispered and then the guilt kicked in. “But I’m glad you found a friend who let you stay at their place last night. You were best not here.” The look she gave me hurt. I was so disappointed. She knew I had no friends who would let me sleep over and was content to believe her own lie in order to make how he’d treated me acceptable. No matter what Edward did to us, she was happiest with her head in the sand, telling herself stories to excuse him. There was an insistence to the way she said it that told me she was in her safe place where her son wasn’t a monster who had made her daughter sleep outside for the night. “I feel tired,” she muttered, shutting the conversation down so I wouldn’t fight against the falsehoods she was content with.
I was too tired and bitterly disappointed to fight with her. “Let’s get you upstairs.”
“You should stay home from school today, Ginny.”
I wasn’t going to school or leaving the house until my homeroom teacher had called about the fight with Aurora Reynolds. I did not want Edward intercepting that call. Even though the likelihood was slim, the fallout would be huge. My safest option was to be here and take that call.
“I won’t. I’ll get the house straight and tidy ready for when he comes home.” My response seemed to appease her, which just annoyed me more.
I settled her back in bed and saw that she had some fading bruises on her collar bone. She’d lost so much weight that the night dress she wore hung off her. Walking downstairs had taken so much out of her that her eyes were fluttering closed before her head was fully snuggled on the pillow. Momma looked awful and didn’t need the marks Edward left on her to make things worse. She was genuinely ill and instead of getting better, she was withering away more and more every day. I made sure she was tucked in, grabbed a couple of moldy coffee cups from the bedside and left. Just as I was about to close the door, I heard, “Ginny?”
“Yes, Momma.”
“I know things are bad, but we’re better together.” I spun around, hoping that she’d seen sense and was about to declare we were going to leave before he came home again, but that hope was dashed when she continued. “I wouldn’t make it if you weren’t here. Don’t leave me, Ginny. Don’t leave me with him. He hates what I’ve done to him.”
“What have you done to him?”
There was no reply. She was already drifting off to sleep.
All the dreaming I could do about forging my life on my own away from this hell flashed and disappeared in an instant.
I’d never leave her with him. She just wasn’t strong enough and I’d never live with that on my conscience.
I was as stuck as she was.
I ate breakfast, more than I normally would, because I’d seen that Edward was capable of anything and if he came home and decided to extend my expulsion from the house, I at least wanted to have a decent amount of food in my belly. I was even scared enough to grab some spare blankets and hide them underneath Daddy’s old tractor.
Next, I took a shower, longer than usual in an attempt to somehow drive the cold from my bones. I was dealing with the trauma of last night well until I saw myself in the mirror. I was a horror show. Gaunt and underfed I was used to, but the bruising that had started to cover most of my lower abdomen looked angry and swollen. My brother truly was possessed by the devil.
I cried again. I was so sick of crying. It was such a weak way of dealing with everything. I hated that I couldn’t leave because of Momma, and I hated that I was weak.
Too weak to end it and so weak I kept crying.
Just weak.
As I was prepping some lunch for Momma, the phone rang. I prayed that this was it.
“Hello?” If I could get this over with, I could concentrate on surviving and figuring out how to face Edward.
“Mrs. Livingston, this is Marion Hartwell, Head of Pastoral Services at the high school.” Ms. Hartwell was a lovely, rotund older woman who helped out in the sick bay but usually mediated between staff and kids who were perceived to be disruptive and jeopardizing studies. I’d never seen her for mediation, but I’d had my fair share of bumps and bruises that needed attention, and more embarrassingly, when I got my period, Ms. Hartwell always had a supply of sanitary products. Momma never remembered to bring home pads or tampons for me when she went to the store. If there was any teacher in the school that I would trust enough to pour my heart out to, it would be her. I was just never brave enough to do it.
“Oh dear…” I put on my best adult voice. “I totally forgot to contact you this morning and let you know Ginny was too sick to attend school.”
“That’s okay. I’m actually calling because she was involved in an altercation yesterday.”
“Not my Ginny.” I acted all shocked and indignant.
“The decision has been made to suspend Ginny from school for a week. All class work she misses will be held for her and she’ll be expected to catch up. She’s a bright student so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“My, oh my,” I faked.
“I can’t tell you what a shock it is to have to make this call. It was out of character for the Ginny we all know and love as a hard working, kind hearted student, and although I advocated for a lesser suspension or different punishment, the other child’s parents were pretty insistent.”
Of course they were. No one was going to get away with beating up the rich kid head cheerleader whose only claim to fame was probably going to be prom queen.
Pushing that aside, I gulped and forced back the lump of emotion in my mouth.
No one had called me kind hearted since Daddy died.
No one had told me that they loved me since daddy died, either.
I just took it for granted that my family did and look how that was turning out. Momma’s love was tied up in feelings from the past, for a man no longer alive, and as time passed, it wasn’t getting any less. I was just drifting further away from her emotional awareness as she desperately clung onto a dead person. Edward, as far as I was concerned, was incapable of any rational human emotion.
“Well that’s all. I’m sure you’re busy, Mrs. Livingston. I’ll speak to her when she returns.”
“Okay,” I rasped back.
By early afternoon I was exhausted, and I finally crawled into bed desperate for sleep. I was still scared about being in the house without Edward’s approval. I hated that I felt the need to check for permission to be back in my own home, so I did something I’d only done on very rare occasions in the past. I jammed a chair under my door handle in the hope that if he did come back and fly into a rage, I’d have some
time to prepare. In reality, he was capable of just kicking the door through, but knowing I’d done something to protect myself helped me rest easier.
I hadn’t been asleep long when I heard retching from the bathroom.
“Momma?” I rushed to remove the chair and go check on her. She was in a heap on the floor surrounded by her own vomit. It looked like she’d dragged herself in from the bedroom and didn’t have the strength to keep herself upright and over the toilet bowl long enough for her stomach to empty. “Let me help you.”
She groaned in reply. “Ginny?”
Noticing the state of the floor and sink, I realized her health was drastically worse than I’d thought. There were flecks of blood in her vomit and she was pale, a lot paler than earlier. She was shaking chronically and her face was all grey and sweaty, with her bangs stuck to her forehead.
“I’m calling 911.”
“No! Don’t do that,” she mumbled. “Get me some water, please. I’ll be right in a few minutes.”
“Momma, you’re puking blood. That’s not right! You need help.”
I gave her the glass of water and soaked a facecloth with cold water before patting it against her face and brow.
“Don’t worry, I feel better now.” Her attempt at a reassuring smile was nothing more than a grimace.
I was sick of this. “Don’t be silly. You need proper medical help, the type you can only get from a hospital.”
She opened her mouth to refuse as a fresh bout of sickness hit her and she threw up again, narrowly missing me this time. “Momma!”
“No. Doctors.”
Then it came to me. “How about a compromise? I’ll clean up here, get you back in bed with a ginger biscuit and some fresh water, and take the car to town. I can find a drugstore and just get a little something to ease your tummy.” It was the best I could come up with and next time this happened, I would call the paramedics with no arguments. She went to refuse, but couldn’t because waves of stomach stabbing pain already had her doubled up. If it got much worse, she knew I’d call 911 for sure. Momma was terrified of something and I imagined it was a mixture of bringing strangers into the home and those strangers seeing the marks on her body. If anyone saw the marks on either of us, we’d be in a world of trouble. It would be like blowing the roof off the house.
Gigi: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 6
