Local Woman Missing

by Mary Kubica

  I’m not alone down here, not since Gus came. It makes it better, knowing I’m not ever alone and that someone is here to bear witness to all the things the lady does to me. It’s usually the lady doing the hurting, ’cause she don’t got an ounce of goodness in her. The man has maybe an ounce ’cause sometimes when the lady ain’t home he’ll bring down a special treat, like a hard candy or something. Gus and I are always grateful, but in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder why he’s being kind.

  I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how long they’ve been keeping me here.

  All the time I’m cold. But the lady upstairs couldn’t give two hoots about that. I told her once that I was cold and she got angry, called me things like ornery and ingrate, words that I didn’t know what they mean.

  She calls me many things. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my name was just as easily Retard or Dipshit as it is Delilah.

  Come get your dinner, Dipshit.

  Stop your whining, you little retard.

  The man went and brought me a blanket. He let me sleep with it one night but then he went and took it away again so that the lady didn’t find out what he’d done.

  I don’t know the difference between daytime and nighttime anymore. Long ago, light meant day and dark meant night, but not down here it don’t. Now it’s just all dark all the time. I sleep as much as I can because what else is there to do with my time than talk to Gus and play chicken with the walls? Sometimes I can’t even talk to Gus ’cause that lady gets mad at us. She screams down the stairs at me to stop my yammering before she shuts me up for good. Gus only ever whispers ’cause he’s scared of getting in trouble. Gus is a fraidy-cat, not that I can blame him. Gus is the good one. I’m the one who’s bad. I’m the one always getting into trouble.

  I tried to keep track of how many days I’d been down here. But there was no way of doing that seeing as I couldn’t tell my daytimes from my nights. I gave that up long ago.

  The sounds upstairs are my best measure of time. The man and the lady are loud now, trash talk mostly ’cause they ain’t ever nice to each other. I like it better when they’re loud, ’cause when they’re quarreling with each other, then nobody’s paying any attention to Gus and me. It’s when they’re quiet that I’m scared most of all.

  I set the dog bowl aside. I did the best that I could. If I try and eat any more I will vomit. I offer some more to Gus but he says no. I’m not sure how Gus has made it this long on account of how little he eats. I never get a good look at him in the darkness, but I imagine he’s all skin and bones. I’ve caught glimpses of him when the door opens upstairs and we get a quick scrap of light. He’s got brown hair. He’s taller than me. I think he’d have a nice smile but Gus probably don’t ever smile. Neither do I.

  The spoon chimes against the bowl. I reach down and take ahold of it in my hand. For whatever reason, I get to thinking of the way that lady comes downstairs sometimes. I don’t like that none. She only comes when she’s hopping mad and looking for someone to take her anger out on.

  Gus must hear the jingle of the spoon. He asks what I’m doing with it. Sometimes I think Gus can read my mind.

  “I’m keeping it,” I say.

  Gus tells me that a round spoon isn’t going to do nothing to hurt no one, if that’s what I’ve got my mind set on, which it is.

  “You’re just gonna get yourself in trouble for not giving the lady back her spoon,” he says. I can’t ever see the expression on his face, but I imagine he’s worrying about what I’m gonna do. Gus always worries.

  I tell him, “If I can figure out a way to make it sharp, it’ll hurt.”

  I’m banking on that lady being so soft in the head she’ll forget all about the spoon when she comes to get her bowl. I put the rest of the mush down the toilet so she don’t get angry and call us names for not finishing her food that she made. I put the empty bowl at the top of them steps and start thinking on how I’m going to make this round spoon sharp as a spear.

  * * *

  There ain’t much to work with in this place where they’ve got us kept. The man and the lady don’t give Gus and me no stuff. We’ve got no clothes other than the ones we’re wearing, no blankets, no pillows, no nothing. The only thing we have aside from the floor and the walls is each other and that icky toilet on the other end of the pitch-black room.

  It’s only after I try to sharpen my spoon on the walls and the floor that I decide to give the toilet a go.

  I don’t know a thing about toilets other than that’s where I do my business and that ours has never once been cleaned. The darkness is a blessing when it comes down to the toilet ’cause I don’t want to see the inside of it, not after all this time that we’ve been crapping in there and no one’s been cleaning it. The foul smell alone is enough to make me gag.

  “Where you going?” Gus asks as I take my spoon to the toilet. Gus and I have a way of knowing what the other is doing without ever really seeing what the other is doing. That comes from living down here long enough and getting to know each other’s habits.

  “You’ll see,” I tell him. Gus and I speak in whispers. I’m pretty sure the man and the lady who live upstairs aren’t home right now ’cause I heard the doors opening and closing not too long ago. I heard their loud footsteps go suddenly quiet. There’s no one up there talking now, no one screaming, no noise from the TV.

  But I can’t be sure. ’Cause if they are here, I don’t want them listening in on Gus and me and knowing what I’m doing with my filched spoon. I’d get a whipping if they did—or worse. I ain’t ever tried to run away before or make myself a weapon, but common sense says that’s gotta be a worse punishment than not finishing the lady’s nasty dinner or telling her I’m cold.

  I let my hands float over the toilet awhile. I feel it up for a sharp spot. But the toilet is smooth as a baby’s bottom. I almost give up, not thinking I’m going to find a spot to sharpen my spoon here. It’s all one part, except for the top of it, the lid, which I discover by accident comes off. I hoist it up in my arms. It’s heavier than I thought it’d be, all dead weight. I almost drop it.

  “What’s the matter?” Gus asks, panicked over some noise I make. I think that Gus is younger than me, on account of how chicken he is, even if he is taller. But anyone can be a chicken, no matter what their age or size.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I tell him, not wanting to think what would have happened if I did drop the lid. I set it gently upside down on the floor. I tell Gus, “Don’t worry about it. Ain’t nothing the matter. Everything’s fine.”

  Gus is a worrywart. I wonder if he’s always been that way or if the man and the lady have done that to him. I wonder what kind of boy Gus was before he got here. The kind who climbed trees and caught frogs and played ghosts in the graveyard at night, or the kind who read books and was afraid of the dark. We tried talking about it once, but then I got sad and wound up telling Gus I didn’t want to talk about it no more. ’Cause most of my earliest memories have that man and that lady in them, and in them, they’re doing wicked things to me, things that I don’t like.

  That man and the lady saved the newspaper from when I went missing. The lady read those stories out loud to me, telling me what happened to my momma, showing me pictures of my daddy standing in front of our big, blue house, crying. She told me how the police was looking for me. But then, soon after, she rubbed it in and gloated, saying that the police weren’t looking for me no more. She told me then that I was old news and that they got away with taking a kid that wasn’t theirs.

  “Stealing kids,” she said, “is the easiest thing in the world.”

  I go back to investigating the toilet. I discover that that tank is full of nasty water, which I mistakenly plunge my whole arm into, right up to the elbow. I cringe and shake it dry, not knowing if it’s pee or what. Then I get down on the ground and run my fingers along the inside of that t
oilet tank lid.

  The inside is much different than the whole rest of the toilet. It’s gritty and coarse, not the same baby’s bottom smooth. My fingers come across a jagged ridge on the inside of it, like a lip. That jagged ridge might just do the trick.

  Gus is worried sick that whatever I’m planning won’t end well. I’ve tried for a long time to make him see we ain’t got no other options if we ever want to get out of this place. But that there’s the problem with Gus. He’d just as soon stay here than risk getting caught trying to leave.

  I run the edge of the spoon back and forth on that ridge. I get my knuckles caught on it time and again, and feel them getting scraped up. It burns like heck, but I keep at it. It takes a long while, but eventually the ridge of the toilet tank lid begins to mangle the spoon. Not spear-sharp, but uneven, the kind that promises to get sharp the longer I work with it.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that,” Gus says.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “They’ll kill you.”

  I run my finger along that botched edge, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while.

  “Not if I kill them first,” I tell Gus back.

  * * *

  I ain’t ever thought about hurting or killing a person before. That’s not my way. I don’t got a mean bone in my body, or at least I don’t think I did before coming to this place. But being locked in the dark does bad things to a person’s mind. It changes them. Turns them into something new. I’m not the same person I was before that man and that lady stole me.

  If it wasn’t for Gus, I wouldn’t have survived so long in this place. Gus is the best thing that happened to me.

  I don’t know for certain when Gus arrived. All I know is that he showed up out of the blue one time when I was dead asleep. I went to sleep and when I woke up, he was there, crying in the corner, worse off than me.

  That man and that lady, he told me, had opened up the basement door, shoved him down them steps, locked up behind him. Gus was twelve at the time. Only God knows if he’s still twelve.

  What Gus told me when he stopped his crying was that they used that big red Clifford dog of theirs to cajole him into their car, just like fishing bait. Poor Gus liked dogs. And he couldn’t help himself when the lady smiled kindly at him and asked if he wanted to pet her dog, which was sticking its big red head out of the car window.

  Gus had been at the playground that day, playing ball with himself when they stole him. Shooting hoops. There wasn’t anyone around to see them go. His ball got left behind. I wondered why Gus was playing ball alone, and if that meant he didn’t have any friends, but I never asked him. Things like that don’t matter anymore, anyway, ’cause now he’s got me.

  * * *

  Day and night, I continue to work on my spoon. I don’t know how long I’ve been going at it, but I’ve whittled it down enough that I’ve gotten myself a point. It ain’t the best point ever. It’s jagged and uneven, but at the top of that spoon, the metal thins to a sharp tip. When I stab it into my finger it hurts. I’m too chicken to stab it hard enough to make it bleed, but before too long I’m gonna have to. I’ve got to test it. I’ve got to know if it works.

  I lost track of how long I’ve been carving this dang thing. Long enough that my hand’s tired as all get-out. Gus offered to do it for me, but I said no ’cause I didn’t want him getting in trouble. I know he doesn’t want to help ’cause he’s scared half to death of what I’m doing. He was just trying to be nice, but if someone’s gonna take the fall for this spoon, it’s me.

  I hide that spoon when I ain’t working on it. I hide it inside the toilet tank, put the lid back on and cover it up.

  But it’s not hidden now ’cause now I’m working on it, even though the man and the lady are right upstairs. I ain’t got no other choice if we’re ever gonna get out of here. I’ve got the lid off the toilet. I’m going at it full tilt with my spoon when I hear the lady declare to the man that she’s got to feed us. There ain’t no warning then because the door yanks suddenly open, and there it is again, that thin scrap of light that hurts my eyes.

  All at once that lady’s at the top of them steps. “Come get your dinner,” she says, and I don’t make a move to go ’cause usually when she says it like that, she just sets the dog bowl there at the top of them steps and leaves it for us. But not tonight. Because tonight, when we don’t come, she says, “How many times have I told you before that I ain’t your dang waitress and this ain’t no dang restaurant? You better get your ass up here and get your dinner in five seconds or else. Five,” she barks out, keeping count.

  I look at Gus, but he’s scared stiff. I got to be the one to do it ’cause Gus is frozen in fear. He can’t move.

  “Four,” she says, and before I know it, the lady’s counting down faster than I can get my spoon back in the toilet, get the lid quietly on and push my sleepy legs up off the floor and run.

  I’m not dumb. I know how many seconds it is till she reaches one, and it’s not many. I remember how to count and do math, ’cause my minute math worksheets are one of them things that I do in my head when I’m bored to death. I know that the lady will be at one in no time flat.

  “Three,” she’s saying. I ain’t ever gonna get there in time. My hands and legs are shaking. My heartbeat is thumping loud. I catch a glimpse of Gus out of the corner of my eye as I go running by. He’s sitting on the floor with his legs pulled into him, scared as heck, wanting to cry.

  The lady reaches one right around the same time my feet hit the bottom step. She’s up there at the top of them steps, looking down at me. I got to squint my eyes to see her because my eyes ain’t used to the light. She’s standing up there holding her nasty meal in the dog dish.

  I hear her ugly laugh when she gets to one. She’s delighted in having me run scared.

  “You ain’t hungry?” she asks, standing smugly at the top of them steps, like a know-it-all. She don’t wait for an answer. Before I can get a word out, she asks, “You think I got all day to sit around here and wait for you to come get your food?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say, my lips quivering.

  “No, ma’am, what?” she asks sharply.

  “No, ma’am, I don’t think you got all day to sit around and wait for me to come get my food,” I say, the words rattling in my throat.

  “You ain’t hungry?” she asks, and I got to think a minute about what the right answer is. I am hungry. I’m just not hungry for her food. But if I tell her that, she’ll be angry ’cause she went to the trouble of making me food.

  “I am hungry, ma’am.”

  That lady tells me, “It would be good for you to show some gratitude from time to time. I ain’t gotta feed you, you know? I could just leave you here to starve to death.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I say. My eyes stare hard at the floor so I don’t have to see her ugly face.

  She asks me, “What were you doing down here that it took you so long to come?” I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she knows something she shouldn’t. My stomach churns, thinking maybe she knows I’ve been up to no good. I feel myself stiffen there at the bottom of the steps. But my spoon is tucked away inside the toilet where she won’t ever find it. My spoon is safe and because of that so am I, for the time.

  I lie and say, “I was sleeping.”

  “What’s that you say?” she snaps, suddenly madder than she was before. Up there at the top of the steps, her face turns beet red.

  I realize my mistake too late.

  “I was sleeping, ma’am,” I tell her. I ain’t ever supposed to say anything without saying ma’am at the end. I’m supposed to show some respect for all that she does for me, otherwise I get punished.

  The lady’s quiet for a long while. She’s just looking at me, staring. I don’t like the quiet because when she’s quiet, she scares me most of all.

  “Looks lik
e someone ain’t gonna eat tonight, after all,” she says, and then she mutters under her breath, “Ungrateful bitch.”

  She turns away from me and takes her slop with her. At the top of them steps, she slams the door closed and turns the lock. I step backward and drop down from the wooden step to the concrete floor, thinking that if that’s the worst she’s got for me—taking away Gus’s and my dinner—then I got off pretty easy this time.

  But I’m no dope. I know that’s too good to be true.

  * * *

  That lady hasn’t fed us since that day I forgot to say ma’am, not that I want to eat her nasty food. But just because I don’t want to, doesn’t mean that I’m not hungry. It doesn’t mean that I don’t need to eat. I don’t know how much time has passed since that day she tried to feed us last. It feels like weeks.

  At first I was hungry as could be. But then, strange enough, that feeling of being hungry went away, only to be replaced with something else. Something worse. For the first couple of days, all I thought about was food, until I was sure I could smell and taste the foods I was thinking about. Now I don’t think about it much anymore. Now I just think about what it will be like to starve to death. I wonder if I’ll just go ahead and die in my sleep, or if I’ll know the moment I stop breathing and my heart stops beating ’cause I’ll be gasping for air or something.

  The lady hasn’t brought us nothing to drink, either. I’m thirsty as all get-out. Gus and I went without water long enough that we got to drinking that dank water in the back of the toilet tank because it was all that we got. We’ve been taking baby sips only, not knowing if or when it will run out. We don’t ever drink nearly enough to quench our thirst. We’re still thirsty as heck.

  I’m not the only one around here who’s hungry. Gus is hungry, too. I hear his tummy grumbling, but Gus don’t say nothing about being hungry, though we both know it’s my fault he is.