Heartless (32 page)

Her eyes filled with tears. Her mouth fell open and her hand dropped to the table beside me. Her knees buckled. She stumbled, and my father’s face appeared beside hers. He caught her, and they both disappeared from my field of view for a moment before they reappeared, together.

My mother inhaled, and it sounded like her throat had closed. And then she wailed. It was primal, and shrill. It was inhuman. I died in that moment, for at least the third time. No child should ever see her mother’s grief over her own death. It should be against God’s laws.

It was certainly against mine, and the seed of fury became as strong and as thick as a tree trunk, deep within my core.

My father had to see for himself, and even as he held her tight, he moved closer to me. He, too, searched, and he, too, found. He turned white.

But then something in his demeanor changed. He brushed a fingertip against my temple, and I heard him wipe his hand on his pants. While he stared, a corner of his mouth turned up, and he winked.

He knows. He knows I’m awake. I don’t know how he knows, but he does.

But my mother didn’t.

“What did you do to my baby?” my mother shrieked. “What did you do? You’re all monsters! Monsters!”

My peripheral vision was improving. My parents stepped away from me as my father held my mother around the waist. She flailed and punched outward with her arms and legs, ripping through the air, trying to tear someone apart, someone who remained tantalizingly out of her reach, and out of my line of sight. Her arm hit the lamp that hung over my head, and it swung in a violent, dangerous arc on its thin chain, spotlighting my parents’ struggle with a slowed down strobe effect.

“Knock it off,” Strong said, his voice sharp and cold. He stood nearby, just outside the boundaries of their dance. “Listen. This can all be a bad dream. All you need to do is give us what we need, and we’ll send you all on your merry way. ”

Don’t believe him! He’s lying!
I screamed silently. The light above me continued to swing. Left, right…left, right… I wanted it to stop. It made my head spin again.

Beside me, my parents were suddenly still. My father panted, his breathing ragged and labored. But my mother was calm.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. Her voice was dangerous, like the time she caught me writing dates on my hand the morning before a history exam.

“B
ut it’s allowed,” I said. “The exam’s open book.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said
.

And for the next two weeks, I’d spent two hours every day bent over my thick history textbook, my mother watching carefully as I committed full chapters to memory. I never cheated on a history test again. My mother hated liars.

S
he stood, suddenly statuesque and graceful, beside my father. Her hand pressed against his stomach, holding him still beside her. “I don’t believe any of you are capable of reversing this…this…this
this!
My Jo is gone. There’s nothing in there, behind her eyes. She is
gone.
And we will give you nothing.”

And she, my elegant, well-mannered, well-groomed mother, reared her head back and spat a wad of phlegm across the room. I heard it splatter. I heard Strong shout, a choked, gagging sound that turned the remnants of my stomach.

A strong, massive hand reached into my line of sight and grabbed my mother’s arm. Strong. He yanked her from my father’s grip.

He shouted, “Vera! No! Stop!”

I heard grunts, the dull thuds of punches landing, and the crunch of bones breaking. Inside, I cheered for my father, and hoped he came out on top.

“You’ll pay for that,” Strong cried out, spitting what I hoped was blood onto the floor. From somewhere nearby, Martha cackled. She was enjoying this.

“Don’t you
ever
lay a hand on my wife again,” my father responded. “Or you’ll get even worse than that.”

My father came back into view, shaking his bloodied hand right above my face.

That’s just like him, taking credit when it’s due.
My head shook, almost of its own volition, in near-amusement, until he pulled my mother close beside him.

An angry handprint raised red and ugly across her cheek. Her typically immaculate makeup ran in dark smudges beneath her tear-reddened eyes. Her hair was disheveled, pulled out in clumps from her signature up-do. My father wanted me to see her.

He wanted me good and angry. He knew how much stronger I was when I was angry. Always had been, always would be.

I
was seven, in the first grade at Hawthorne Elementary, and my mother was out of town for the week. My father had been called in to see the principal after a playground fight landed Nicky R. in the nurse’s office with a broken nose.

We sat in a booth at a Friendly’s restaurant. I expected a punishment, not ice cream, but was smart enough to eat my sundae in fearful silence while my father apprised me.

Finally, he spoke. “What happened?”

There was no sense in beating around the bush. Even at seven, I could see that.

I sighed. “He looked up my skirt. Pulled it up in front of all the other kids. They all saw my underwear.”

“So you punched him?”

I took a bite of Rocky Road, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of frozen marshmallow before I spoke.

“Uh-huh. I didn’t think I’d actually hit him, but I guess I was stronger than I thought.”

“Huh,” he said, and he took a long pull from his root beer float. “Well, I don’t want to fault you for being stronger than you thought.” Sip. “Actually, I’d rather like to encourage you to stand up for yourself, especially against boys.” Sip. “I won’t tell your mother about this. Not this time. Don’t let your fighting become a habit, Rocky, but don’t let anyone push you around either, okay?”

We finished eating our ice cream with the camaraderie of co-conspirators. I always felt like I gained his respect that afternoon.

I
t was growing harder to remain still, but I needed to. I knew that. If I could be still for long enough, amass enough strength from the electrical current flowing into me, I’d be able to fight.

The rage within me took root, and continued to grow. At the sight of my mother’s battered face, I clenched my fists. I didn’t mean to, and tried to stop myself, but it happened. I moved.

Strong saw.

“She’s awake!” he said. “She moved!”

With that, he yanked out the cord from the ground, and the hum of electricity that gave me strength was cut off. It felt weird to be without it; within a heartbeat, I felt its absence like a knife in the gut.

I doubted that I had much more than an hour’s worth of power, but no one needed to know that. Nor did anyone need to know I somehow felt stronger than a circus muscle man.

Not, at least, until I was sure of it.

T
hey moved me to a chair, propping me up like a quadriplegic. Sondra and Martha both wore surgical masks as they carried me between them. I played weak, lifting neither head nor foot nor remaining pinkie finger.

In part, it was to try to dupe them into believing I
was
still weak, that I couldn’t put up a fight even if I wanted to.

Another part of me, though? It just wanted to be a pain in the ass. I wanted to make them work for their paychecks.

The paycheck I planned to ensure would never come. At least, not from
my
family’s bank accounts.

Once I was seated, my parents knelt in front of me.

“Hey, Champ,” my father said. It was an old nickname, given to me when I was eight years old and won the championship race in the backstroke at summer camp. “You’ve certainly gotten yourself into a pickle this time, haven’t you?” He looked around. Strong and Sondra were engaged in some deep conversation, each whispering and flailing about dramatically. They weren’t paying any attention to us. Martha was nowhere to be seen.

My father lowered his voice a few decibels. “Can you speak?”

I didn’t move.

“I understand if you don’t want to right now.” He was whispering by then. “Blink once for yes, twice for no. I mean, if you can blink at all.”

Instead, I winked. He smiled, and raised his fist in a silent cheer.

My mother gasped, and Strong and Sondra turned abruptly toward us. “What?” said Sondra. “What is it?”

“It’s…it’s just…” my mother stammered, searching for the right words. She found them. “I touched her. I touched her knee. And her skin, it’s like powder. It flaked away where my fingers hit, and it startled me.”

“Yes, dear,” said Sondra, all sweetness and honey. “That’s because your daughter
ran away.
Had she behaved herself, she’d be in much better shape still. She’d be
finished
and beautiful and complete. Instead, she’s what you see before you: a tragic work in progress. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

Sondra and Strong turned back to their conversation, but my father had other plans.

“If you’ll excuse
me
,” he said, sarcasm ruining his attempt at politeness, “I have a request you may wish to consider if you expect any future cooperation from my wife and me. You don’t have children, I can tell. But this is my child, and I think I’m within my rights, whatever they may be within this dungeon, to request a blanket. I have no desire to be forced to view my teenage daughter without clothes. I don’t care that the circumstances here are a bit…” He trailed off, and then gestured toward the electrodes and scars across my chest and stomach, that stood out like homing beacons against the shriveled, sinewy gray of my skin. “…gruesome.”

Strong shrugged. “She still out?”

My father nodded. “Like a light, from what I can tell.”

“Then I guess it wouldn’t hurt. Sondra, go get them a blanket. Tell Martha she’s still unresponsive. And, oh, yeah, I guess, bring in the others. It’s probably time we all have a little chat.”

Annoyance flashed across Sondra’s face, but a furtive smile from Strong restored her obvious adoration for him. “Shall I include Eli? Is it time?”

“Yes. I want them all here.” A slow, careful grin spread across his face. His nose was crooked, and smeared under with blood, but somehow that only added to his handsomeness. His evil, maniacal handsomeness.

“I’ll need your help with him. He’s feisty, and you’re so much stronger than me.” She batted her eyelashes, a professorial damsel in distress.

“Fine.” He turned to my parents and me. “You two, come here first. I can’t have you wandering off.”

My father shrugged, then he and my mother stood and walked over to Strong, playing the part of ideal prisoners. They allowed him to bind their wrists behind their backs with duct tape, though my mother winced when he wrapped hers.

“Not so tight,” she said, trying to pull away.

Based on the look on my father’s face, Strong had been smart to bind him up first. For some reason, though, my mother looked slightly victorious as Strong and Sondra left the room.

My parents turned and pounced.

“Jo, is that really you in there?” my mother said, sprinting in her high-heeled pumps to kneel in front of me.

“Can you talk?” My father spoke over her, his voice booming in the cavernous room.

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t know how much time I have. Can one of you drag me to the wall and plug me in? I don’t want them to know I can move.”

My father moved easily, with a fluidity that belied his bindings. He pressed his back to my chair and slid me easily toward the wall, and then, with his hands still bound, found the cord that we’d rigged up days before, and plugged it into a normal wall socket.

I was glad to have the hum of electricity flowing through me again, although it was much fainter than it had been when I was recharging on the table.

With that settled, I turned to my mother. I had so much to tell her, it all bubbled out in one vacant breath. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. This is all my fault. I was stupid. I tried to walk home in the middle of the night and they got me. I was mad at Eli, and he’ll tell you he made me go, but I could have stayed. Whatever you do, don’t blame Eli, okay? He feels bad enough as it is. But I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, I promise you.”

Tears filled my mother’s eyes, but her jaw was resolute. She elbowed my knee, her attempt at a comforting pat while her hands were bound. “No, sweetheart. This isn’t the time for that. This isn’t your fault, and it isn’t Eli’s. These are terrible people, and they’ve done something terrible to you. Why didn’t you go to the police when you escaped? Or call us right away? We could have helped.”

My voice was broken, and it came out as little more than a sandpaper-whisper. “I know. But by the time I woke up, this was already done. I was already embalmed. There wasn’t an easy way to turn back. So Lucy and I, we tried to fix it ourselves. To fix me.” I shrugged, and happily noticed my shoulders didn’t crackle quite like they had before. My skin was less flaky, too, more supple. They really
had
fixed me while I slept. But that didn’t matter. I continued. “Besides, we thought Strong
was
a cop, that we had the police on our side.”