Freedom's Child (16 page)

My name is Freedom and I’m eight hours out of Painter, in the darkest part before the dawn. I think I’ve passed Hell’s Canyon back at the Oregon-Idaho border, so that would make this Snake River Plain, Idaho, I suppose. Unless I went south, then I’m somewhere in the Great Basin like the Sierras, maybe Nevada or Utah, as long as I avoid Death Valley, Christ Almighty. Eight hours of riding this bike and I have no more sensation in my clit from the vibrations. My knuckles are frozen stiff. My legs feel like a wishbone being pulled at either side. Between the tears and the wind, my eyeballs feel like they’ve been removed, dipped in salt, and put back in my sockets. I’m thirstier than I’ve ever known, to the point where I’m weak and my tongue’s stuck to the roof of my mouth. Perhaps I should have planned this better, because I haven’t seen a single sign of life in four hours, since the general store and gas station, if you call that toothless redneck drinking Mylanta a sign of life, I’m not sure. I pass the signs too fast to know where I’m going. I can’t turn around, there’s nothing to turn back to. Just rocks and cacti, cacti and rocks. And Rebekah isn’t there.

The open road gives you ample opportunity to think; in fact, the road forces reflection on a man…or woman, in my case. And it’s
a terrifying thing, my thoughts. With each thought, each idea, each regret that makes my blood curdle, I accelerate. I race fast enough on the motorcycle so my demons can’t catch me, but they always seem just a step ahead of the game, always there to entertain my sin.

I stop the bike at the top of this hill, one of about a thousand hills I’ve rolled over so far. I light a smoke to curb the hunger and crack my back and neck to relieve some of the stiffness. I’m still, unfathomable darkness, nothing but black against black. But up ahead in the not-too-far distance is a lightning storm, a dangerous place to be in the desert. It’s as if I’m standing in nothingness, something I imagine before life and after death. And if God exists, this was what it was before he created the Earth and life. Black. Nothing. And I try to wrap my head around the concept of no time, no feelings to feel, just nothing. It’s a mind-boggling thing if you have the desire to imagine it. And rides like this through nothing make you try to grasp just that concept.

At the bottom of the hills, clouds flicker with purple and white and orange electricity that rips through the sky. The distant growls of the storm sound like something biblical. But where else can I go? What else can I do? I’m not going to make it out here alone in the desert for much longer. And it’s a risk, but it’s a risk I’m just going to have to take, because on the other side, the daughter I’ve never known is waiting to be found. On the other side is freedom from the authorities who are surely looking for me. On the other side is survival. I race down the straight-and-narrow roads. I try to get these fucking demons off my goddamn back. I try to survive.

I’m a liar if I say I’m not terrified. The closer I get to the electric storm, the faster it seems to move my way, and before I know it, I’m in the thick of it, the belly of the monster. I count.
One. Two. Five. Holy shit
. And I scream as I watch the bolts strike just a few feet from me. I keep screaming, but don’t panic.
Just get through this, and everything else will be smooth sailing from here on out. Do this for Rebekah. Do this for your sins, for your mistakes. Do this because you deserve this fear after
all the awful things you’ve done with your life, Freedom
. Each bolt lights up the Earth around me brighter than the sun, and it’s blinding. The purple flashes of land around me make me feel like I have new eyes, like those of an animal that can see everything. In this way, I can see the horizons of the desert in the middle of the night, in the middle of the nothingness. Like I’m seeing this world in a way that no man’s allowed to. Forty strikes per minute. I am going to die.

The thunder is deafening and I wonder if my eardrums are ruptured because I can’t hear myself scream anymore. The electricity runs through my spine, through my blood, and suddenly, I am unstoppable. Insatiable. Immortal. I crouch down on the bike and go faster and faster. I am the lightning. And then….

My bike stalls in the middle of the electrical storm. I’m a dead woman.

I try to restart the bike; I beg it like it can hear me to turn back on. I begin to roar something violent, something vicious. In the middle of the desert, where no one can hear me, I scream and scream. My heart breaks. Because I can’t do one fucking thing for the daughter I’ll never know. As I scream, I see a yellow, dim light about a half-mile into the barren plains. I turn my bike so it faces the house and wave my hand in front of the headlight. In turn, someone in the house flicks the porch light on and off. And with what little energy I have left in me, I leave the bike and try to run across the desert.

I seem to be in rhythm with the lightning all around me, this song and dance. I run blindly; blindness in the dark when the lightning settles, blindness in the brilliance of light when it crashes into the soft and dry dirt that I jog on. I have an idea that hell might be above us after all. But there’s no telling what I’m running into here. For all I know, I could be running to the home of Leatherface, who wants to make wind chimes out of my severed limbs and eat my skin with his oatmeal.

And then lightning comes up from the ground.

I’ve been shot in the leg. I fall to the dirt in unimaginable pain.

I don’t know if I’ve been followed, maybe the Feds or State Police or the Delaneys. I don’t know if I’ve been shot by the person who owns this home in the desert. I don’t know if I’m going to make it out of here alive. I can’t stand. I turn around and start to crawl back, but what the hell is there to crawl back to? I summon everything in me to use my arms to pull my legs behind me back toward the road. I grunt and cry with each inch, each haul of my body. It starts to downpour. I fall on my back with my mouth open to drink. I’m desperate and dying of thirst. And then I’m shot again in the arm, through Mattley’s jacket that he gave me. “Stop, please,” I yell.

When the lightning strikes, I catch a glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye. Someone walks toward me. But as I try to continue to crawl, I can’t breathe. My heart races. It feels like something in me has exploded and my blood cells are made of fire and razor blades, trying to rip through my skin and out of my body. I can feel my throat close up. Everything gets blurry and I can’t move a damn muscle.

The figure stands over me, but my brain isn’t working right. I can’t make sense out of anything. I’m delirious, confused. Through the lightning, I see a man. He looks down at me, a sideways look. He shakes something over my head, but I can’t see what. “Hy-ya, Hy-ya,” he barks, but his voice is soft and smooth. “Hy-ya, Hy-ya,” he almost sings. In his other hand, a lantern that squeaks, yellow light painting the right side of my body.

“Please,” I try to tell him, but I don’t think the words ever make it from my mouth. “Don’t kill me.” I can’t move one damn muscle, no matter how hard I try. Not one fucking finger. I’m paralyzed. “Help me,” I try to plead. He says something, but I can’t understand. It’s a language I’ve never heard. It’s not English, it’s not Spanish, it’s not anything I can figure out.

The man takes my ankle and starts to drag me toward his house. I wheeze to breathe, my back scrapes against the dirt while I still try
to get the rainwater in my mouth, but I can’t even open it all the way. The man’s slow in his steps and there’s quite a way to go. I fear I’ll be dead by the time I reach the house, and perhaps this is a good thing.

I start to panic. While my insides thrash in me because I can’t breathe, I only show so much of this on the outside. I feel the man drop my leg, here, in the middle of the desert. Is he abandoning me? Is he going to shoot me in the head and leave me for the birds? He kneels down beside me. With the lightning, I can see two long, silver braids.

He takes off my jacket. He’s going to rob me.

He takes of my pants. He’s going to rape me.

He rattles an object over my head again. He waves it over my body as he speaks some lyrical language, like he’s singing a soft lullaby as I lie here dying. This man is fucking insane. The glint of a knife that he pulls from his side catches the lightning, catches my eye. He slices my leg with the blade, the pain making the muscles in my neck constrict even more. I find myself praying to a god I hardly believe in. He lifts my leg close to his mouth. I think he’s drinking my blood. I want to beg him to stop, to not do this. But I am powerless. I am more dead than alive. I am defeated.

I’m so sorry that I couldn’t save you, Rebekah
, I think to myself as I fade out of consciousness.
I’m so sorry for everything I did and didn’t do
.

Rays of sunshine warm the large bedroom full of handmade quilts and lace doilies. The smell of banana bread fills the house, a reminder to any southerner of their childhood. In the corner of the room, Carol Paul sits in a rocking chair, waiting for Michelle Campbell to wake up. She hums “God Bless America” as she double-knits a pink cap for the new baby. She thinks,
It’s almost hard to remember when Magdalene was this small
. She checks the clock on the shelf so that she’s not late for Virgil’s dumplings and fresh-squeezed lemonade after he returns from the grounds with some of the other guys who are cleaning up what the storm left behind.

Michelle stirs in her sleep, heavy-eyed and heart racing. The light that turns the room of the Pauls’ home into gold seems to make Michelle nauseated. The shadows stretch farther across the room with the passing of the afternoon. Her throat and chest burn like fire and her vision is blurry. Carol rises from the rocking chair and takes the ceramic bowl from the side of the bed, where Michelle vomits. Carol rests the bowl on her lap and holds her hair up. “Let it out, there you go.”

“How long will this last?” Michelle cries.

“Not long now,” says Carol in her most comforting tone as she
inspects the Cesarean incision right above her pubic bone. “This is common after childbirth. Especially a rough one, like you had.”

“Every time I throw up, it feels like the wound’s opening back up.”

“It’s not, but it’ll be sore for a bit. It’s healing nicely.”

“Can I see my baby now?”

“Let her sleep.” Carol helps Michelle back to the pillows. “It’s been a long few days for her too.”

“Her name is Rebekah.” Michelle’s words are tired and faint.

“What’s that you say?”

“I want to name her Rebekah,” Michelle pants. “Rebekah was my best friend.”

Carol says nothing about it. She tucks the blankets around Michelle’s sides. “I’m going to go and make you soup. You need the strength.”

“Please, no,” she tries to protest. “I can’t even think about food right now, Sister Carol.” But Carol leaves anyway.

As Michelle hears her footsteps go out to the kitchen and the fresh breeze that carries from the window, young Magdalene sneaks into the bedroom, talkative, as she always has been, just looking for a friend. She jumps up to the foot of the bed, her legs dangling off the edge.

“Theresa sure is pretty, Sister Michelle.” Magdalene practices the cat’s cradle with a black piece of string tangled around her fingers. “She looks like a porcelain doll, only a real porcelain doll, ya know?”

“Theresa?” but she’s almost too weak to speak.

Magdalene glows. “Your new baby, you goose!”

Tears of frustration and confusion escape her eyes and trickle down to her temples. “Her name is Rebekah.”

“Like my big sister?!” But Magdalene doesn’t see her distress.

Michelle starts to sob. “I just want to go home.”

“You don’t have to cry, your home’s just out the window here.” Magdalene zips to the window and opens the lace curtains. “See? I can see it from here. Just lift your head!” She becomes disappointed
when she sees that Michelle won’t even try to look up. “Are you sick or something, Sister Michelle?”

“Magdalene, now, what did Mommy say about bothering Sister Michelle?” Carol says as she returns.

“Sorry, Ma,” she offers. “I was just going to show her my cat’s cradle.”

“Maybe later, dear.” Carol brings a tray with soup and water on it. “You can help me feed the baby in a few minutes. I’ll be right out.”

Magdalene starts to leave but stops at the door. “Can I lay hands on Sister Michelle and say a prayer for her first, Mommy?”

“A quick one, but then you have to leave.”

“Very quick, I promise.” Magdalene runs up to the side of Michelle and places both hands on the top of her sweaty head.

“Dear Jesus, I say a special prayer for Sister Michelle during these trials from Satan. Please help her to feel better so I can show her the cat’s cradle and so she can see her baby again. And make sure she eats all her soup so she doesn’t go hungry. In Jesus’s name, Amen.” She starts to run off, but halfway to the door she turns around and resumes her praying position. “Also, Jesus. Please bring my sister, Rebekah, back home because I miss her very, very much.”

Carol walks over and quietly shuts the door behind Magdalene. She looks at Michelle once more. “Now we’re going to eat as much of this soup as we can so we can get you better, right?”

But Michelle doesn’t answer.

Carol goes to her and checks her pulse through her neck. It’s faint. She’s more dead than alive. She looks at her medical bag; she contemplates helping Michelle. Instead, Carol goes back to humming her hymn. And waits for her to die.