Believe Like a Child (45 page)
W
hen Tasha came in with food, Alessa begged her for help again.
“Tasha,” she said, starting to cry, “do you know what that sick pig did to me last night? Please, Tasha, help me!” Alessa’s chest heaved with sobs.
Tasha sat down on the mattress next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. Alessa clung to her as if she were a life preserver.
“Please, Tasha,” she begged, “at least find out for me what they’ve done with Remo and Lucy. Please? I just need to know. I need to know that someday, I can go home to them. Please, Tasha!”
Tasha lingered for a moment longer, but made no promises to help her. She gave Alessa a quick hug and said, “I need ya to understand that it’s either you or me and when you live on these streets, you need to do whatever is necessary to keep yourself safe. Ain’t nothing personal. Just a matter of survival.”
That night, after Alessa had carried out Harlin’s instructions and put on her lingerie, he didn’t take her out to the living room. Instead, the door opened and he stood there with a man in his early twenties. He was skinny, with long, stringy hair. As he reached out for Alessa, she could see the dirt under his fingernails. His breath smelled of whiskey.
Harlin looked at her. “He paid for an hour,” he explained. “Since no one will bid on your old ass, from now on, you’ll just give them whatever they pay for. Give him whatever he wants.”
Four days had gone by since Alessa was brought to the house on Dauphin Street. She was now their resident whore. Men would come in and Harlin would tell her how long she had to spend with each of them.
On the fifth night, Tasha sat down for dinner in the kitchen with Harlin. She looked at her brother and said, “Listen, Harlin, she’s crying all the time. She wants to go home and be with her family. I know you ain’t lettin’ her do that now, but I need to tell her something, before the bitch goes crazy on ya.”
Harlin smiled. “Okay, Tash. Fine. She don’t need to worry no more about going back to her family, because they’re all dead. We killed that faggot husband of hers and that stupid little whore kid she thinks is her daughter. So you tell her we’re the closest thing to family she’s got. If she does what we want her to do now, I’ll let her help with the young girls once we bring them in here. She’s too old anyway. Ain’t nobody willing to give me any real money for her.”
Tasha sat looking at him, her mouth hanging open. “They’re both dead, Harlin?”
Harlin slammed down his fork. “That’s what I said, ain’t it?”
Picking listlessly at her food now, Tasha realized that her brother, the man she had once loved, but had long ago come to hate, was completely toxic. She realized that Alessa’s family had died in vain. For she knew in her heart that Alessa would have done anything to save Remo and Lucy.
As she tried to fall asleep that night, Tasha couldn’t stop the tears. She thought about how close she and Alessa had once been. In fact, Alessa had been the only real friend she had ever known. Tasha knew she needed to tell Alessa the truth so she could come to terms with it and move on.
The next morning, when she entered the room, Alessa was sitting on the mattress and staring at the blank wall. She looked up at Tasha and gave her a wan smile. Tasha sat down next to her and took her hand.
“I talked to Harlin about your family,” she ventured tentatively.
With hope surging through her, Alessa turned swiftly to face her. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, overjoyed. “Thank you so much! Are they okay? Where are they?”
Tasha looked at the floor. “They ain’t with us no more.”
Alessa screeched in alarm, “What do you mean by ‘not with us’? What have they done to them?”
“I mean they’re dead.”
A primal sound, almost like that of a wounded animal, soared up from deep within Alessa. Her grief seemed to be emerging from her very soul. Tasha couldn’t bear to watch her suffering. The woman who was once her friend, sobbed and screamed until she was spent. Then she just stared into space. Her eyes were blank and her mind seemed lost in some other world no one could reach. Tasha sat with her into the early evening, rocking her and trying to console her.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she soothed. “Harlin said that once he gets some young girls back in here, you can help run the house. You don’t have to be a whore no more. He said you’re too old for it anyway. Guess it pays to get old, huh?”
Tasha’s words penetrated Alessa’s mind, but she remained silent. There was nothing anyone could say to make her feel human again.
When Harlin checked in with his sister, she explained that things were fine. “But the girl needs a night off,” she cautioned him. “She needs to grieve.”
Tasha stayed with Alessa that night, holding her, while she cried in her sleep. When Alessa woke up the next morning, she wondered for a moment whether it hadn’t all been a bad dream. Then she rolled over and saw Tasha asleep next to her and she knew it wasn’t. She burst into tears all over again. She had lost the only man she had ever loved and the only child she would ever have. She thought of their innocence and how she had brought this on both of them. She wished a million times she could relive her life and bring them back, but knew she couldn’t. All she had now to keep her company was this dark room and the evil people who lived and played in this house. Everything she had achieved and the people she had loved had been destroyed in a single moment. Her grief now turned to hatred for Harlin. Hatred so intense and real, that Alessa felt her heart had turned to stone and would never feel love for another human being again.
T
hat night, Harlin opened the bedroom door to find Alessa sitting on the floor next to the mattress. She looked more like a robot than a human being. Her eyes were blank and staring into them, Harlin was pleased by what he saw: she had finally come to realize that she was a puppet in his hands, to be manipulated as he wished. Maybe, from now on, he wouldn’t have to see that stupid look on her face, the look that suggested she was hoping for something that would never actually happen.
“Let’s go,” he said abruptly. As Alessa stood up to follow him, he stopped her sharply with a gesture. “Put your lingerie on,” he commanded.
This time, Alessa undressed in front of him without a trace of self-consciousness, as though she no longer felt ashamed or embarrassed to strip before a man. She put on the lingerie and, without Harlin even reminding her to do so, stepped into her high heels. She was like a zombie and Harlin liked it. It made his life a lot easier now. He led her out into the living room and Alessa was surprised to find no clients waiting for her. She was alone with Harlin.
He turned to her and while taking off his shirt, announced, “Tonight is
my
night for a little pussy. Just you and me. You ain’t gotta do
no one
else tonight!”
Alessa faked her relief, as though he were doing her a favor by offering himself as the sole client for the night, and acted like the naïve girl she used to be when they’d first met. But deep in her heart, there was nothing but hatred for him, a hatred so intense she wished he would die. As she stood waiting for him to take his pleasure, Harlin reached behind to put his gun on the sofa. Then he took off his pants and boxers. Naked, he told her to turn on the music. She obeyed his command and went back to him on the sofa. He yelled, “Dance!”
As he moved his hands down her body, a soft moan issued from his lips. He slid her thong off and pulled her into himself. Grasping her by the hips, he lifted her and brought her down slowly to rest on him so that he was inside her. Alessa slowly gyrated up and down. Harlin’s breathing became labored and she began kissing him. He kissed her back lustfully, as he had never kissed anyone before. Between moans, he mumbled incoherently, “We’ll make this work.”
When he came, his arms went around her waist and he clung to her, as if for his very life. Then he opened his eyes and a chill went through him; his own gun, now gripped in Alessa’s hand, was pointing steadily at his temple.
His face twisted in rage. His voice was threatening, as he snarled, “What are you going to do with that, bitch?”
Without a word, Alessa pulled the trigger.
As Harlin sprawled on the sofa, half his skull gone, she stared down at him expressionlessly. Then she said, “Blow your fucking brains out,
bitch
!”
Leaving him there, Alessa went back into the bedroom. She flung off the lingerie and put on the jeans, tee shirt and sneakers she had been wearing the day she had been abducted from the park. She sat on the edge of the mattress, reflecting on the precious moments she had shared with Remo and Lucy. She paid a silent tribute to her love for them and begged God’s forgiveness for being the cause of their deaths. She thought about her life and how empty it would now be. She realized how impossible it would be for her to go on without them. She needed to be with them. Then slowly, she picked up Harlin’s gun, placed it against her temple and pulled the trigger.
T
he police arrived just as the second shot was fired. Tasha was standing in front of the house.
“She’s in there,” she told them.
A police officer asked, “Are you the one who called the police?”
Tasha nodded. “She was the only friend I ever had. Harlin killed her family and I knew she wasn’t gonna make it without her husband and her kid.”
The police entered the house and found Harlin dead in the living room where Alessa had left him. They moved through the house quickly and found Alessa in the bedroom. She too was dead. Meanwhile, a firestorm of police and flashing lights outside the house was attracting attention from people in the neighborhood. On the front steps, Tasha sat wrapped in a blanket, being questioned by the police. She looked up, as a man and an older woman, neither in uniform, approached the front door. The policeman who was talking to her blocked their entry into the house.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said politely, but firmly, “no one can go in there.”
Remo looked steadily at the officer. “I’m Alessa’s husband,” he said.
Tasha started screaming. “No, you can’t be! Harlin said they killed you and your kid!”
Remo looked at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Two policemen now approached him and Ebby, who had accompanied him, and took them off to one side where an officer verified their identities. Then, with deep sorrow in his voice, the policeman said, “I’m sorry, sir. Your wife is dead. It seems like she shot herself in the head after killing the man who had abducted her.”
Ebby let out a gurgling cry of anguish before the words finally exploded from her lips. “Oh my God!”
Remo had fallen to his knees and was bent over with pain. “No, no, no!” he whispered to himself in a voice raw with torment.
The two of them sat on the pavement, holding onto each other and shuddering with grief as a crowd gathered, silenced by the sight of their crippling anguish.
Hours later, the police drove Remo and Ebby back to the Outside Inn. At the apartment, Lucy was sitting on the floor playing Monopoly with one of the young residents who had agreed to look after her. They both looked up and Lucy was startled by the expression on Remo and Ebby’s faces. Remo rushed to the girl and gathered her up in his arms. Ebby stood beside them, as he explained that Alessa was dead. Lucy cried from the depths of her being, clinging to Remo as though she would never let him go. Ebby wrapped her arms around the two and the three of them stayed there, huddled together, united in their sorrow.
Later that night, as the three of them sat together, Lucy asked, “Why did Alessa have to leave us? Didn’t she know that we would find her?”
Remo moved closer. “The man who took her away told her he had killed us both. I don’t think she wanted to live without us, Luce.”
By two a.m., they were all exhausted. Remo went to his room to get some sleep. Ebby lay down next to Lucy in her bed and they slept in each other’s arms. In the morning, when they appeared in the kitchen, an invisible shroud of gloom seemed to have descended on them. The apartment seemed a vast, empty vacuum, devoid of life. All that could fill it were mere memories—of the woman who had changed their lives.
