Gone Too Long

by Lori Roy

  “Hey,” the new man calls to me. “How old are you now?”

  “Almost fourteen,” I say. Christopher lets go of my neck, squirms until he’s sitting in my lap, and lets his legs dangle so his toes almost touch the ground. “In a few months, I’ll be fourteen.”

  The air is tightening between all of us, and I’m not sure why. I hug Christopher close and bury my nose in his hair. It smells of shampoo and of the peanut butter he likes to eat on his bananas. I close my eyes so I can pretend it’s just him and me out here, but he wiggles loose, lays his top half over one of my legs, and digs a hand into the soft dirt. He holds it up for me to see and then for the new man who is standing behind us to see.

  “Dirt,” Christopher says, or rather asks.

  “Yes, dirt,” I whisper.

  I’ve been telling Alison all about the outside in the year since she’s been here, not only because she asked but because it kept it real for me. And it’s just as I remembered. The pampas grass is tall and greening, and the light is bright, no feel of sunset in the air. I told Alison if we were good, he’d bring us outside again, and the day would come when I could run and be hidden by the tall clumps of grass. I told her about the pathway between the stalks being just big enough for me but too narrow for him. I would get far away and tell everyone about Alison and Christopher. I told her those things when I still thought she’d be Christopher’s mama. Now I couldn’t leave him, and she couldn’t be the one to run. Or maybe she could, but if she did run, I think she’d keep running and forget all about us and never tell anyone anything. One day, when Christopher is old enough to come with me, he and I together will be the ones to run.

  I pull Christopher back from where he’s doubled over my leg. The footsteps behind us make me turn. They’re sudden and kick up bits of gravel. The new man is running toward the grass, and Alison is gone. I didn’t hear her move from her spot, but she’s disappeared and now she’s hidden by the tall grass, slipping between the rows. I start to scramble backward but stop because Eddie is standing behind me. I knock up against his legs. They’re firm and don’t move.

  “Stay put,” he says, leaning this way and that to get a look at what’s going on. “Don’t concern you.”

  I hear it then, a scream. I press my hands over Christopher’s ears. His small fingers grab at my collar as he tries to pull himself closer. We tuck our heads together, and I wait for a second scream because hearing one is too much like Julie Anna’s one scream. One scream means it’s already over.

  Eddie’s legs ease away from the back of me. When I look up at him, the last of the sun catches me in the eye. In a few minutes, it’ll settle behind the house and we’ll be in its shadow. He shrugs.

  “Looks like I was wrong,” he says, taking in a deep breath through his nose and blowing it out his mouth so his lips flutter. “Girl had been fine if she’d have stayed put. Damn it all.”

  “What’s he done?” I say, not looking up at Eddie anymore but not looking out into the field either.

  “You never tried to run,” he says. “Always waited for it. But you never did.”

  I can’t let the fear get hold of me, not with Christopher right here in my arms. He’ll feel it if I give in, and it’ll do something terrible to him. This kind of fear has to leave a mark. Eddie had been watching me all those days when I thought he was watching his cigarette smoke or sitting in the patio chair and reading the newspaper or tipped back, a hat pulled over his eyes, making me think he was asleep. If I would have tried to run, I’d have been the one letting out a single scream. Just like Julie Anna. Just like Alison.

  “But why?” I ask. “Why now?”

  Eddie shrugs and tips his head toward the field where the man disappeared. “He seen me buying diapers. Didn’t like the idea of one of you down here. Sure didn’t like the idea of three.”

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “None of your damn business who he is. Just mind yourself.”

  I read all about the Klan in one of my history books. Eddie doesn’t know about the book, because if he did, I’m sure he’d take it away. I know about the robes and hoods they wear and the crosses they burn and all the people they hate, so many kinds for so many reasons. It makes me wonder who is left that they don’t hate. And I know about the many people they killed—shot, bombed, stabbed, hanged, and burned—and all the courts who let them go free. I know Eddie is one of them and that’s why he came for Julie Anna. This man, I’m certain, is one of them too. All he needs is a reason to hate Christopher and me and he’ll kill us like he has killed Alison.

  It’s a rustling first, dirt crunching, and then the new man walks out of the grass. He straightens his hat, and as he tucks in the back of his shirt, he stumbles. His chest is pumping up and down, and his eyes are rolling from Eddie to me and back again as if he’s dizzy.

  “God damn, Eddie,” he says. “What the hell do we do now?”

  Eddie says nothing, but he’s looking down on me and Christopher like he’s afraid for us and sorry for us all at the same time. With both arms wrapped around Christopher, I struggle to my feet. I have to do something, and I know what trying to run will get me.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I say to the new man. “You didn’t do nothing wrong. It was Alison’s fault. I told her to be good. Been telling her for a whole year. Not your fault she can’t listen.”

  The man is staring at me, the bill of his hat throwing a heavy shadow over his eyes. But even though I can’t see them very well, I can tell they’re locked on me now and not rolling from side to side anymore.

  “I told her to be good,” I say again, because the new man’s shoulders are softening as I talk and his breathing is slowing down. “It was her fault. Not yours. Not your fault. I know you’re just trying to keep us safe.”

  I’m making him believe he knows what he’s doing. Mama once told me that’s mostly what people want, men especially. Don’t matter if it’s true, just make them believe and they’ll be happy. Be a cactus inside but make them think you’re a rose.

  After a long silence between the three of us, the new man nods. With Eddie close behind, I hurry back inside and down into the basement. I look back once, and the new man is watching us. I know it, and so does Eddie. Christopher and I were moments away from ending up like Alison.

  Once Christopher falls asleep, which he does quickly because he’s exhausted by the outside, too exhausted even to notice Alison is no longer here in the basement, I work quickly to wash the sheets on the small bed and hang them to dry. Even though Alison mostly never talked, the basement is quieter without her and smaller somehow. I feel bad wanting to wash her away, but those used sheets are like having a dead body down here with us. When I’ve wrung out and smoothed the last sheet and clipped it tight to the line, I crawl back under the stairs where I know Christopher can’t see me and won’t hear me, and I cry and shake and scream into a pillow.

  The next Wednesday, the new man comes. He brings a pop-up crib. He sets it up, tells me to put Christopher in it. He sits on the stairs while I sing to Christopher and pat his back, and once he’s asleep, the new man leads me up the stairs, but instead of taking me outside, he takes me up another set of stairs. He keeps coming, every Wednesday, because he must figure fourteen is old enough. Over and over, I tell him thank you for taking such good care of us and for doing the right thing, and I think my being old enough is the only thing keeping us alive. Alison once told me that Eddie doing something bad didn’t make me bad. I think that goes for this new man too. Whatever I have to do, I can do. Because one day, Christopher will be old enough. We’ll get another chance, and when we do, we’ll run.

  Part IV

  Chapter 47

  BETH

  Before

  I have hated this room for four years, and yet there is a beauty I always look for when he brings me here. It’s the sunlight. The windows here aren’t boarded over—no need because they’re on the second story—and they’re dirty, so the late-day sunlight, as it st
reams through, is filtered and made soft. The air in here shimmers like no other air I’ve ever seen. Or can remember. When he fluffs the sheet and kicks off his boots, dust explodes into the air. And as it floats, it catches the light and each tiny speck throws a sparkle. Millions of tiny sparkles that surround me.

  This warm light also makes him sleep, and he won’t know it, but I’ve studied him every time he’s brought me here. I’ve watched him like Eddie watched me all those times he took me outside, just waiting for me to run so he could kill me like they killed Alison. Every Wednesday and Sunday, I’ve made notes about both men that I have hidden in the sofa lining. It’s not hate that’s driven me, because hate is easy and it’s weak. Watching the men gathered on the courthouse steps that long-ago Saturday morning, Mama said hate was all a weak man had and that weak men always fail. I’ve watched and planned, not to destroy them, because they’ll fail at their own hand, but to save us. For four years, I’ve been readying Christopher and me for the day we could run. And for four years, our lives have followed a routine, and in the routine we were safe. But yesterday, there was a shift. Just like the day Alison died. I felt it in the air that day, and I felt it yesterday. Even though Christopher isn’t yet old enough, our time had come. Today is the day we run.

  Eddie was the reason I first knew things had changed. He came on Friday, yesterday, and he never comes on Friday.

  “Daddy died,” he said, touching my cheek and then trailing his fingers down the thin silver chain that hung from my neck and then down to the blue stone. “Just like that. His heart. Mama’s the one with the bad heart. Go figure.”

  I sat on the floor at his feet while he sat in a chair at the table. I knew it made him feel powerful and smart to look down on me and stroke my hair, and I was strong enough to let him do both. I’ve learned over the years what Eddie needs, what both of them need, and I’ve given it to them. I nearly made mistakes in the beginning—my silly plan to trap him with a broken light bulb or to run away during one of our Sunday outings—but I’ve learned how to be smarter, because once Christopher came, I had to.

  “I ain’t hardly sorry he’s dead,” Eddie said, trailing his fingers through my hair. “It’s my time now, you know?”

  I nodded and smiled as if I were happy for him. Though Eddie never said much about it—some things were meant to be secret, he would say of his family and their business—I think his father was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. He was one of those men from the history books I read who wore robes and hoods, rode horseback, and carried torches. They were thick books, from high school or maybe even college, and Eddie didn’t know what all was written in the pages or I think he wouldn’t have brought them. It was always easier to think of those men trapped inside the pages of a book than walking among real people.

  “I’m proud of you,” I said, reaching out to touch his hand. “You deserve this.”

  “Where’s the boy?” Eddie said, keeping his eyes on me.

  At the sound of footsteps on a Friday, I’d sent Christopher under the stairs.

  “Boy, come on out,” Eddie shouted when I didn’t answer him.

  He smiled when Christopher first crawled out, but the smile quickly faded and he let out a long breath. Eddie didn’t pay Christopher much attention when he was a baby, but now they sometimes kick a ball together on Sundays and he’s started bringing Christopher books and treats like he did for me when I was first in the basement. I always thought it was safer to let Eddie think of Christopher as a son, but Eddie’s fading smile was another shift I couldn’t ignore. I saw the same look on Eddie’s face the day they killed Alison. He had looked at Christopher and me on that day, after he knew Alison was dead, let out that same long breath, and was figuring we had to die too.

  “Course,” he said, “my daddy dying means we’re going to have to sell. The land, the whole thing.”

  He said it as if I should understand. I kept on smiling and nodding because I can do that now. I can feel one thing on the inside—fear, disgust, anger—while showing something else on the outside. It’s how I’ve fooled them both all these years.

  “Of course,” I said as I brushed Christopher away, sending him back under the stairs. When he was gone, I reached for Eddie’s hands. “You can let us go,” I whispered. Though I never thought about the possibility of them having to sell, I knew immediately what it meant. “Drive us someplace far away. I don’t even care where. I’ll never tell. Couldn’t even if I wanted to. I don’t know your last name. Right? You’ve never told me. I don’t know what town this is. Eddie, please.”

  He didn’t bother with an answer before standing and leaving me, just shook his head. Even if I didn’t understand Eddie’s reasoning, I did understand in a way that hollowed out my stomach that Eddie’s daddy dying and him having to sell this place meant Christopher and I had to die too. And when the man who killed Alison came for me the next day—a Saturday when he’s always come on a Wednesday—I knew I was right.

  Sometimes, I fall asleep in the warm, shimmering light of the bedroom where he takes me, but not today. Instead, I listen and I watch. Eddie asked me once if I knew the name of the other fellow, the one who comes on Sundays. I lied and told him no, so he believes I don’t know his name either. When his breathing slows and lengthens, I roll my head to the side so I can see his face. The silver in the beard he has now sparkles where the sun falls across him. His eyes move from side to side beneath his lids and then stop. He’s drifted in the deepest sleep. I know about the different stages from my books. This is the stage I’ve waited for, the sleep that is hardest to wake from and that will leave him disoriented for a few moments. That’s all I will need. A few moments. A head start.

  Without moving my body, without even taking a breath that might cause the springs beneath me to creak, I move my head another few inches until I can see the rest of him. His body is still. His arms are crossed over his bare chest. The skin up to his elbows is dark and creased where the sun has beaten on it for years. His chest, where the sun rarely touches, is white and covered by black wiry hair. His thighs, too, are white. All the way down to his ankles. I watch his chest. It moves slowly up and down.

  First, I roll onto my side, my head still resting on the flat pillow, and with the open bedroom door in sight, I listen. His breathing is unchanged. He doesn’t move. Using only the muscles in my stomach, ones I’ve worked to strengthen every day by lying on my back and reaching for my toes until I could do it one hundred times without stopping, I lift myself into a sitting position. At the same time, I slide my feet over the side of the bed. I can’t help that my body has begun to shake. The room is suddenly cold. The tiny hairs on my arms are stiff. My heart beats faster. My chest lifts and lowers quicker with each breath. I close my eyes, inhale the musty air, and exhale slowly, silently, through my mouth. Straining against my own weight, I pull with my stomach and don’t let myself push off the bed with a hand or an elbow. A few more inches and I’m upright. I stretch until one toe touches the pine floor. When both feet rest on the warm wooden planks, I lean forward and stand.

  From the first time he brought me here, I have draped my clothes over the arm of the rocker that sits just inside the door. I didn’t think about it that first day but instead did it because Mama taught me clothes don’t belong on the floor. We pay good money for clothes and we don’t have much good money. That’s what she would say. Every Wednesday since, because it always happens on a Wednesday, I’ve done the same. While I didn’t do it that first day with thoughts of running away, I soon did. When eventually I ran, I would be escaping through the bedroom’s only door and I’d be able to grab my clothes, a thin cotton nightgown, on the way out.

  Touching the stone that hangs around my neck because it makes me think of Imogene, who is strong like the cactus Mama always said I should be, I take a step toward the rocker, not letting myself look down on my own body. I never look. My hip bones shouldn’t jut out in the way they do. My skin shouldn’t be so pale, almost gray. Though I work to s
tay strong—running stairs, touching my toes, drinking the milk he brings—my body still reminds me what it lacks. Sunlight and fresh air and a future. I pause with every step and count each floorboard. The third from the bed squeaks. And the fifth. I step over both, pausing to count the long planks again, and yet again, because I can’t make a mistake.

  At the open door, I use two fingers to grab hold of the thin cotton gown he started asking me to wear the second time he came to fetch me from the basement. It’s tight through the shoulders because I’ve grown since then. I’ll wait to slip it on until I reach the bottom of the stairs. But when I tug, a bit of the white lace catches on a rough spot in the rocker’s wooden back. I give another tug and it comes loose. The rocker rolls forward, a quarter inch maybe, and back. I don’t move. I close my eyes and listen. The rocker goes still again. It’s made no noise. He doesn’t stir.

  Three long steps that I take on my toes lead me from the bedroom to the top of the stairs. I start to reach for the railing as I’ve done every other time I’ve climbed down these stairs but pull back because I remember. The brass fittings that anchor the railing to the wall are loose. He mentions it almost every time he trails me up and down the stairs. Got to tighten that up, he’ll say, as if we’re a normal couple of people. Don’t want you taking a tumble. I’m good like that, he sometimes says. Good at taking care of things myself. But I think really he comes for me every week so he can fool himself into believing he’s better than he is.

  I hate that most, him talking as if I want to be here with him, but I let him do it. I force a smile when he says those things or when he calls me to sit next to him on the bed and pats my knee or kisses me on the cheek as if he’s a husband and I’m the wife. He likes me to hold his head in my lap and smooth his hair from his face as he tells me the good things he did that day. I tell him he did real good, not because he asks me to but because I know that’s what he needs. Thankfully he never much wants to talk with Christopher. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from saying the wrong thing if he did, wouldn’t be able to trap my tongue between my teeth like I sometimes do to stop myself from saying the things I shouldn’t say.