Stacking in Rivertown (5 page)

We’d read about Africa and its borderlines that week. Rwanda. Zaire. Funny-sounding names. I raised my hand.

“What about the birds, Miss Summers, ma’am?”

Miss Summers in her pretty cotton print dress looked stumped. “The birds?”

“They have good birds there, don’t they, ma’am?”

Now she was getting that twitchy way like I’d said something stupid. A few kids giggled. I marked them. I’d beat the shit out of them later.

“Big birds with green and blue wings, ma’am?”

I was thinking about the magazine I found in one of the Dumpsters where Mama looked for her groceries. On the front it said: “Africa, Land of Wonders.” I took it home, angling for extra credit.

“We’re not talking about the birds,” Miss Summers said. “We’re talking about Zaire.”

“The birds are more interesting, ma’am.”

She sent me to the back to sit in the corner. So there I was next to the imbecile. I have no idea what his name was. Miss Summers forgot about me, so I stared at him.

He’s a bird from Africa, I thought. Look at that nose and the way he curves over his wing. No wonder. Somebody made a mistake and he got dumped in the whole wrong country. Somebody should take him home.

I knew that I would take him there if I knew the way. It would be so good to go home.

That’s when ice-cold water starts peeling off my skin. I must have fallen asleep. It’s a high-pressure spray. I try to turn away in the cage, but another spray hits me from the other side. Now I’m freezing.

I hear them leave.

They come back every so often and spray me again. I never get any sleep.

After seven or eight doses of this, the two boys drag me out. They put me on my knees with my wrists still cuffed behind to my ankles, and then buckle a collar around my neck, hooking it somewhere above.

That’s a nasty position. You lose all the feeling in your legs and arms, and it hurts like hell. They wind something else around my neck, leaving the grip dangling down my back. I know what it is. It has
BETH
written on the handle. Ben is playing me ripe. They spray me with water again and leave. I wait, shivering.

That’s when the ghosts come like they’d never been gone. In the basement, when you get the ghosts, Ben knows that you’re almost ready. And now the ghosts whisper all around me. I feel their breath against my face. As I watch their twisting shapes forming behind the tape on my eyes, I miss the fact that Ben has come into the room.

“You thought you’d take your time,” he says. “I’ve got five years stored up for you.”

His hand rests on my head, then slides down and lifts my chin. Ben’s other hand reaches behind my head and loosens the gag.

“You’re not going to make it home until Monday morning,” he says. “I’ll put the phone up to your ear and you tell that to Jeremy.”

“Fuck, Ben,” I say as soon as the gag is out.

He slaps me.

I hear him dialing. The phone is against my head.

“Hello.”

Jeremy’s so cheerful to answer the phone, as though it’s always good news. I never answer the phone unless I have to.

“It’s me, Jeremy. Something more has come up. I won’t make it in until Monday sometime.”

“Are you sick, sweetie? You sound sick.”

No, just fucking scared shitless.

“Doing these talk things gets on my nerves,” I say. “I’ll be glad to get home.” If I ever get home. That’s a big if.

“You’re so sensitive, honey. You need to get a thicker skin.”

Thinking about Ben’s whip around my neck, I say, “I’ll work on it. See you Monday.”

Ben takes the phone away. “Are you thirsty?”

I nod my head. He holds a bottle to my mouth and I drink. Gatorade. Ben swears by its beneficial properties. He always hands it out after the plays.

I hear the empty bottle hit the floor behind me. Then I feel him unwind the whip.

In my book, there’s nothing worse than being whipped bound and blind. I know how to fake the punches, how to drop. I know how to play the men so they don’t hurt me too much. But when you’re bound, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a whip but take every stitch. And Ben is a mean whipper. To him, it’s all about business.

He whips me front and back. I lose count after sixteen. When he’s done, he says, “You’re back home, Beth. You’re back with your family.”

That’s when I pass out.

The first time I saw Violet, she was in the basement on the mattress, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. He started us all that way. Kat was gone by then, and I was the only girl Ben had.

Toni, Matt, and I worked Violet good. We made over her. We kissed. We stroked. We said, count your breaths one to five. It looked to me that Ben had been especially rough with her.

I remember her lips, so talented eventually, but then, so guiltless, so chaste. I tasted them over and over.

Violet’s breasts were small. She always looked to be about thirteen. While she was bound down there, I cleaned her, fondled her, and fed her. I held her and whispered strange songs to her that I made up about water moving and the river.

When the ghosts got me, they whispered. For Violet, they screamed. I worried over her and found myself waiting for Ben to say, go down to Violet now. She’s ready again.

She didn’t speak a word for a month after we brought her up, and early on, she began to creep onto my mattress after the plays and curl up next to me.

Our sleeping arrangements were slim. We each had a mattress with sheets and blankets. And we all slept in the same room. Ben didn’t mind if we screwed and moved around one to the other. He encouraged it. But he didn’t like it if any two started pairing off. That was reason for a whipping. So I tried to keep Violet off me for her sake. She was a persistent little animal. That’s what she was like then, a rabbit or a puppy. So I’d sing to her and she’d go to sleep.

This time, Ben didn’t interfere. He used it on me, knowing I was getting attached to her. He’d even let me out to take Buster for a walk on my own sometimes. He knew I’d come back, that I wouldn’t leave Violet alone with him.

In the plays, if Ben wanted to get me worked up good and pushing on the straps, all he had to do was to start whipping Violet.

Ben made her go in the box more than any of the rest of us, and he made her beg for her food. He’d sit in the big recliner with her plate on his lap. She’d have to plead for each bite.

I couldn’t stand to watch it.

In that long weekend I was spending with Ben, I remembered more and more about Violet. I thought I heard her voice among the ghosts. But I couldn’t remember what she looked like. I did remember her lips, her breasts, and how silent she was then.

When I wake up, I’m in warm water. My eyes are still taped, but my arms and legs are free. A boy is behind me in the tub, leaning me back against him, my head on his shoulder. They make over me, cleaning the welts, washing me.

You got the ghosts? A girl asks.

Yes, I say.

He said you would. He said they come back on you fast.

What day is it? I say.

Saturday.

Still Saturday? I thought I was dead. I thought I was gone past Saturday, past Monday, past all the days passing.

Shh, one of them says. Shh.

The welts burn.

You got a play coming, says the girl. They’ll be here for you soon.

I can’t, I say.

Shh. Shh.

They feed me then, a bowl of mashed potatoes. Ben remembered. It was all I could ever eat after a really hard play.

Now a gag is pushed in my mouth.

They lift me out of the tub and dry me, then tie my hands in front. They put a collar on and lead me out with a leash. I’m taken into a room where my favorite couple is waiting.

“Poor dear,” the obnoxious woman says, running her hands over the welts. If I had a gun, I’d shoot her.

“We must move on,” Ben says. “She has another appointment after you.”

I’m convinced Ben is trying to murder me with sex.

They fit me into another contraption, this time with me hanging upside down. In the middle of the play, the goofy guy says to me, “Nasty little scar.”

Funny, the things you notice at times like these.

Appendectomy, I’d say politely if my mouth were free.

I’m hearing more than the ghosts now. I’m hearing Kat. She’s talking to someone about a knifing. A deep cut. I’m on a gurney, not strapped to it (a new experience), but I can’t move.

The lovely couple wind down their activities on me.

Why don’t you keep her, they say after they’re done. We’d come once a week. It’s not that far.

She’s got a husband, says Ben. The police, you know.

Too bad. They sigh. Too bad.

They should both have lobotomies.

Ben ushers them out and leaves me upside down. The ghosts move in. The lights come and go. They spike.

That’s the way I stay for a long time. When they come to get me out, I can’t walk, so they drag me back to the dog cage.

Ben has never done me this hard.

He wakes me up at some point and takes my arm. He wraps a rubber tourniquet around, patting up a vein. I hear him flip a syringe. I feel the stick. The smack speeds into me.

I’m off in la-la land.

Rivertown was our own fairyland. It had grave markers of all shapes and sizes, and buildings with columns and odd creatures carved inside. In Rivertown, we had a whole world of characters, of angels and sad women holding folds of their clothing, of men on horses, a soldier clutching a flag. On either side of the entrance to one building there were two little gnomes, and some guy named Gilbert put in a statue of his dog.

Jeremy would have approved.

Yes, the wealthy of our fair town lavished money on their sorry deaths.

In an old, forgotten corner back near a grove of mimosa, we found a statue of a little girl. She was the only one smiling in the whole place. Beloved daughter, the plaque said.

Mandy and me called them our people, and got to dressing them up if we found an old cast-off jacket or dress in one of our Dumpster runs. Mandy stole Miss Summers’ hat. We put it on the head of a very sad woman looking to the side.

Somebody was always coming and taking off our little additions to the cemetery. Dishonoring the dead, they said. Defacing the tombs.

The tooms, Mandy said.

On May Day, we stole the ribbon off the pole, winding it all over the people of our special town. Our people were pleased. They almost looked to be smiling, even the sad lady whose face was turned to the side. She had been even sadder since they took back her hat.

After that, sadness reigned. Mandy got appendicitis. About two years later, our two-room burned down. Mama forgot and left the hot plate on was my guess. Vin got me out. Mama never woke up.

Daddy was dead drunk out behind the live oak. Vin and me sat alone and watched the place go down to ashes. Nobody came. We found Daddy the next morning.

I’ll never forget his face when he stood looking at that pile of ash. It pretty much broke him, and he kept drinking from then on. Vin and I slept by the river while it was still warm, then we moved to Rivertown. After that, I can’t remember too well except that Vin left. If we did happen to run across one another someplace, it was like we were embarrassed. I got to sleeping under an overhang of one of the little houses between two columns.

I found myself bringing back extra groceries from the Dumpsters and leaving a bag at the feet of one of the gnomes. It looked like Mama, so short and fat. And I dressed the little girl. I kept her in hats. I hung buttercup bracelets around her neck.

My memories of the next few years are like the fog that hangs thick on the river below Rivertown during the winter rains. But I do recall hitching rides on highways and riding in big trucks. I got turned around sometimes, but always in my head I had a dream of a home. I was looking for a better life.

As I come back from the beauty of smack into ugliness, somebody is saying my name. I’m lying on my back on a cool floor, my head propped on a pillow. The tape is still on my eyes. My hands are still tied in front. The junk has my skin twitching like the gnats are doing me in.

Beth, Ben says. He strokes my cheek and opens my mouth, squirting in some Gatorade. I choke, swallow.

Enough Ben, I say. You win.

Poor Beth. He squirts in more Gatorade. I missed you so much. After you were gone, things weren’t the same.

You knew where I was. You could have gotten me.

I waited for you. I knew you’d call. You can’t live without me, Beth. I know you the best.

Yes, I say. Yes. What about Violet? When did she go?

A long time ago. Don’t worry about Violet. She’s happy now.

Stacked in Rivertown, I think. High and low.

Ben kisses me. He feels my throat, my breasts.

The boys come and help me up. They shower me, then lead me through hallways and down stairs. They sit me in a car. The door shuts and the car starts moving.