Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (14 page)

“No,” I replied.  “I should do this alone.”

“Okay, babe.  I’ll be right here.  You just holler if you need me, and I’ll be right there.”  He turned off his bike, and propped it up on the kickstand.

I nodded gratefully, my feet carrying me down the cracked sidewalk that led to the front porch.  A small driveway lined the yard to my left, and two cars were parked in it.  One was covered in rust, its hood up, the right passenger side tire missing, a couple of bricks holding it up under the wheel.  A huge empty field of overgrown, dead weeds was on the other side of the driveway. To my right stood another rundown house, and another one after that, all forming a sad line of forgotten dreams.

I turned back, looking back at Ryder one last time. He nodded, smiling to me encouragingly. I couldn’t have been more thankful for him.

Another deep breath and a few more steps and I was standing in front of the porch steps.  The air conditioning was on full-blast, just like in my dream.  The same river of water was pouring out of it.  The porch was littered with trash. Soggy phone books.  Beer cans, coke bottles, an old clothes basket. Two black garbage bags filled with something that was leaking a gooey brown liquid out of the bottom.  It smelled awful.

I thought about turning back.  But I had no choice.  I had no other leads.  I had to go through with it.  I had to at least knock.

I went up the three steps, facing the door.  With a shaking fist, I banged on the screen door.  It swayed back and forth, barely hanging on one hinge, squeaking loudly. My heart raced, the blood thumping in my ears as it pounded through my veins.

I waited.

Nothing. Nothing but the sound of that damned air conditioner.  It was so fucking loud.  I raked my hands through my hair.  They were clammy, sweaty.  I couldn’t stop shaking.

Maybe there wasn’t anyone home.

I began to feel the first twinges of relief. 

The door opened.

And as soon as I saw her face, I knew who it was. 

My mother.

“Oh, my god!” she squealed, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s you! It’s really you! Oh, honey, come in! Come in!”

I let her guide me through the door, going against every instinct that was screaming inside of me to run the other way. Overwhelmed with confusion, I desperately tried to think clearly.   Dozens of flashes of quick memories exploded in my head, but nothing stuck.  It was like an old television set that needed the antennae adjusted.  Spinning, my childhood memories bombarded me.

And none of it was good.  I was dumbfounded.

I walked through the door and stopped, my eyes darting around, trying to adjust to the darkness of the house.  It was filled with…stuff.  I couldn’t really tell what, but there were things everywhere.  Stuffed in every tiny corner, every surface covered with clutter.  The smell of dog-shit hit me first, then the sickly sweet smell of rotting trash.

I looked at this woman in front of me and felt absolutely nothing for her.  She was shorter than me, old, so old, and her eyes and mouth were sunken in as only age, or bad drugs, can do.

“Oh, baby. Why are you here?”  Her voice was laced with an annoyingly high twang.  “It’s been so long, my god!  I haven't talked to you in over five years, well, my lord, it must have been twice that since I've seen you.”

I let her ramble on, trying to take it all in.  Trying to stop the spinning wheel of memories in my head and catch just one to focus on.

“Where’s Dad?”  The only words I could form.

She looked confused, and she started shaking her head.

“Well, what’s that, now?  Sweetie, now, c’mon baby, you know your Dad died ten years ago. That was the last time I saw you.  At his funeral.  Well, I’ll be…”

I couldn’t catch my breath.  My hand flew to my chest as I tried to focus, to just breath.

“Dead…” I repeated. My intuition kicked into overdrive and everything in my soul told me to leave.  But I kept looking around, and the wheel slowed and I started to catch glimpses of scenes in my head.

“Honey, are you okay?” she was looking at me like I was crazy.  But suddenly, I knew.  I was the only sane one.

I was young again.  Running around the house.  And there was my sister.  I had a sister!  But she was on the ground, right there near where my mother was standing now.  She was screaming, as her clothes were being ripped off by two boys, our brothers, who were towering over her as she kicked at them.

I blinked, and my gaze traveled down the hallway, knowing exactly what was there.

She was still talking but I couldn’t hear her words anymore.  I walked past her, my body seeming to have a mind of its own as it carried me to the end of the hallway, to the door I knew I would find.  My door.

My bedroom.

I opened it, and the filth was overwhelming, it was just as cluttered as the rest of the house.  Everything was different as I stood here looking at it, but in my mind, it was twenty years ago.

I was running inside, throwing my tiny little kid body on my bed and giggling.  But then someone else entered, one of the boys that was ripping off my sister’s clothes in the other room, my brother.  He closed the door behind him as he began to unbuckle his belt buckle.
 

I blinked again, and the memory flashed.

It was pitch black, and I was under the covers, but I wasn’t alone. He had come to my bed again, and he wouldn’t stop touching me. The bedroom door opened, the light from the hallway cracking through the darkness.  My mother stood there in the doorway, her silhouette contrasted against the light, reminding me of the picture of Jesus she had over the dining room table.  She walked over to me.  To us.  She went to pull the covers up over my body, but she stopped.  She pulled my white cotton panties back up. Kissed us both goodnight.  And left me there. Without a word.  I watched her walk out of the room.

I shook my head, bewildered.

“I was only six years old, he was sixteen…” I murmured, feeling my blood turn cold with disgust.

“I have to get out of here,” I said to the empty room.  I turned to run away, quickly walking back down the short hallway, away from the memories.  The woman was still talking, the shrill twang of her voice cutting right through me.

As I rounded the corner, I saw him.

This was my brother.  One of them. 

But he wasn’t a boy anymore.  He was a man now. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” 

His voice was smeared with hatred, the words slithering out of his mouth.  He was clearly not happy to see me.

I began backing out of the house, running into a table and knocking it over, its contents spilling to the floor around my feet.

“This was a mistake,” I mumbled, stumbling backwards, as the woman stood between us, yelling at the man to shut up.  “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Damn right, you shouldn’t have come, you fucking bitch!  I spent ten years behind bars because of your lies!”

“Shut up!” the woman yelled again, beginning to cry.

“You shut up!” he said to her, towering menacingly over her.  My eyes darted from one to the other, and saw everything.

It was pathetic.  Sad.  All these years, and she was still under his thumb.  The mother who would do anything for her son.  The mother who would let him destroy her life, and everyone else’s lives, even her other children, while she did nothing but stand by and cower to his every demand.

I shook my head, reaching the front door and barreling through it.  She reached out, trying to grab my arm to stop me, but I shrugged her off.

“Please don’t go, baby, please! I haven’t seen you in so long!” She was crying harder now.  But again, I didn’t care.  I had absolutely no feelings towards her at all.

I knew everything I needed to know.

Most importantly, I remembered why I left. 

And now, with all my might, I wished I hadn’t fucking remembered any of this.

I ran back to Ryder’s bike, and I was thankful to see he had already started it up.  He handed me my helmet, and I put it on quickly while he questioned me.

“You okay?”

“No.  Get me the fuck out of here.  Fast.”

“You got it, babe.  Hold on tight.”

We roared off away from the house and I did just as he said, as tightly as I could with my trembling hands, and I cried all the way back to the clubhouse.

My heart broke with disappointment.  There were no happy memories to remember.  Except the ones with my Dad, and he was dead.

Now I knew all this awful bullshit, and I still didn’t know where the fuck I belonged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ryder

She looked like she had seen a ghost when she ran out of that house.  I had heard a man yelling, and I was just about to hop off the bike when she ran out the door.  Instead, I started it and handed her helmet to her.

When we got back to the clubhouse, she told me everything.  It took all my willpower not to climb back on my bike right then and take care of that ‘family’ of hers.  I made a mental note of where they lived.  So much time had passed, a few more days wouldn’t hurt.

Right now, Sam needed my full attention. We lay on my bed, her head resting on my chest as tears streamed down her face.  I let her talk, not saying a word, just gently stroking her hair, and drawing on more and more inner strength with every word that spilled out of her mouth.

She had had it bad.  The youngest of four children, she was born to a promiscuous, young mother and a hard-working father who had aspirations of being a country singer.  Married at fourteen, her mother was pregnant at sixteen, and the three kids after that just tied her down even more.  She found fun wherever she could, and that usually meant between the legs of a new cowboy every week.

If it weren’t for Sam’s semi-responsible father, they wouldn’t have eaten. Left to fend for themselves, the kids learned how to survive by watching the adults around them. 

Her two older brothers turned into two evil predators. The only available prey was Sam and her sister.  

When her sister ran away when she turned fourteen, getting married just like her mother, Sam was nine, and she was left to fend them off all alone. The torture doubled for her.

Sam escaped when she was eighteen.  And a year later she turned them in.  They got a sentence of ten years each. Her mother stood by them the whole time, and she herself got no jail time at all.

“Babe, I am so fucking sorry that happened to you,” I whispered, pulling her closer into my chest.  I wanted to erase everything from her memory now.  She had worked so hard to remember something, and she had been so goddamned brave to go there, and to be faced with that kind of shit?  Fuck that.

“Thank you,” she whispered. 

“So, tell me this,” I said.  “What’s your name?”

“Oh,” she said, as if she had thought about it for the first time herself.  “Grace.  Grace Faith Taylor.”

“Grace, huh?  I like that.” 

“I like Sam better. Grace doesn’t feel right,” she said, shaking her head.  Her eyes were haunted, and it killed me to see her look so disturbed.

“Sam it is then,” I said, kissing her forehead.

“So, what then?” I asked. She had been telling me the whole story for an hour now, and I wanted to know the rest.  We still hadn’t touched on why she was in the woods that night.

“Good question,” she said.  I felt her body tense up, and I looked down at her.  

“What do you mean?” 

“I can’t remember anything after the trial.  Nothing else is coming back.  I still don’t know the most important part.  I know where I came from.  But where do I belong?”

***

“I researched everything.  I got quite a bit of information,” Riot said, later that night.  Sam had fallen asleep crying in my arms.  

I was determined to help her as much as I could.  We had enough information now to figure out who she was, so I untangled myself from her and sought out Riot.  I told him everything I knew.

As soon as he Googled her name, everything she told me came up.  News articles, booking records, interviews.  Grace Taylor had been one brave teenager.  She was nineteen when she faced her abusers in court.  The fact that she was hoping to send her two brothers to prison was perfect material for the slimy journalists that did their best to print every disgusting detail.