“No...he’s been watching me, I guess. For all I know he can hear us now, but I don’t fucking care. He knew everything about me. He said I owed him.”
“Owed him? Why?”
“He refused to tell me.”
“He was probably bullshitting you to fuck with your head.”
“No, I think there was something.”
“So you just went along repaying him for something you didn’t know you owed?”
I can’t help but feel judged by that question.
“What choice did I have? The debt didn’t even matter. The reason didn’t matter. He had my computer activity and video of me fucking him while he wore a mask and held a knife to my throat. He was going to post it everywhere, telling people I hired men to rape me. He told me he would send it to every possible employer, put it on the internet. Send it to friends and whatever distant family I have. He was going to ruin my life. He wasn’t asking to collect, he was telling me he would.”
And I know how fucked up I am when despite the sick story I am reciting, I worry I am painting Tax in a bad light.
“What could have possibly lead to this? For someone to come after you?”
“I don’t know! You know me, I mind my own business. I am almost bordering on boring. My dad was a cop, but we grew up in a boring town. No big drug busts or anything.”
“I’m still not buying this. I think he lied about your owing him something, like some psychological thing. So the grand reopening, were you under duress? Oh, god. How could I have not noticed?”
“No, I wasn’t.” I say, looking up at her with remorseful eyes, apologizing for my own depravity.
“I’m confused.”
“I wanted him there.”
“You mean, you wanted to be with him? The relationship was real?”
I fight so hard to keep from losing it again. “Tiff, I feel like such an idiot, but...”
“You’re really in love with him?”
Again I buckle over. I am so good at controlling my emotions. When my mother was dying, I walked around with a smile, trying to make sure everyone else felt okay around me. But Tax rips me right open.
Tiff sits down next to me, stroking my back. “It’s okay, Mia. You know, this happens...when people are forced...”
“I don’t have fucking Stockholm syndrome. I made a choice.” I confess to Tiff the words I hadn’t even yet confessed to myself. “I allowed myself to fall in love with a bad person. I think he’s dangerous. I don’t mean he’s going to hurt me. But, I think he’s wrapped up in bad things. That’s why it’s important you stay out of this. And he started saying things about protecting me. And there’s a part of me that keeps hoping he left because he thought he was doing the right thing. And then there’s another part of me that is screaming at myself, telling me I am an idiot for thinking he even cares if I am alive.”
“All this time you’ve been dealing with this alone?” Tiff asks.
“I was ashamed. I know what I have been doing is reckless, but being with Tax, when it’s good, it’s like nothing else. Hell, even when it’s bad, it’s good. He knows how to be that guy I need in a good way, and a bad way.”
“Rex...” Tiff whispers aloud.
“He said Rex cares about you. He considers you a real friend.”
“But?”
“He was planted in our lives to watch me.”
Tiff riffles her fingers through her green streaks. “This is fucking nuts! So why did he leave you, really?”
“I still don’t know. But he did. And I am going to find out why he really came after me.”
14 Years Earlier
Me and Jude are splitting a couple of cans of pork and beans for dinner. Soon, I’ll be heading out to meet Mia. I usually scarf down whatever is available for dinner, be it plenty or next to nothing, but tonight I can barely sit still in my seat as I push the beans around my plate.
“What’s crawled up your butt?” Jude asks. She’s already finished her food. For a tiny thing she can eat. She barely breaks 85 pounds, that girl.
“Nothing,” I say. I usually tell Jude everything, but she knows I like Mia, and she already teases me about her incessantly.
“Liar! I can read your mind, Sil! We’re twins!” she says, scooping up a spoon of my beans.
“Hey!” I say, striking her spoon with mine. The beans survive and make it to her mouth.
“Tell me!” she whines in an annoying voice that she knows I’ll do anything to shut up. The truth is, I kind of do want to tell my sister. She’s my only friend. She tells me about her crushes, which tend to change weekly, but I think she’s due to be on the listening end. Poor thing, always stuck in the friend zone because she’s so underdeveloped. We both are. I don’t have any facial hair yet, my limbs are just bone and skin. Pops says we are late bloomers, that he didn’t fill out until he was nineteen or twenty, then he got muscular, his beard came in, his jawline changed. It’s a James trait: we develop late, but when we do, we blow up. At least that’s what I am hoping.
“Come on Sil!”
“Fine,” I say, sliding Mia’s note over to her. “I gave Mia a note, and she put this in my locker.”
I watch Jude’s dark eyes intently scan the note, widening with each line they read.
She looks up, her mouth forming a big “O.” “Sil! Oh my god. She likes yooooou!” Jude starts jumping up and down in her chair.
“Okay, relax. You’re making me nervous,” I say, but a smile has already made a home on my face.
“When are you leaving?”
“In a couple minutes.”
“Dad’s not home for you to use the truck.”
“That’s why I’m leaving now, so I have extra time to bike.”
Just then the sound of dad’s pickup truck rolling along the dried leaves and twigs alerts us to his arrival. Shit. Usually when he’s late from work, he’ll stay out all night drinking, come home when we’re in bed, and pass out. If he gets in earlier than that, and he’s hammered, it means he is going to make our lives a living hell.
The bright light of his pickup floods our double wide and then shuts off. Both Jude and I have learned to listen to the cadence of his steps and his breathing, sometimes accompanied by incoherent mumbling, so we can gauge if it’s sober dad (rare), tipsy dad (less rare), or hammered dad (very common). The sound of his dragging feet, repetitive clearing of his throat, and his murmurs to himself as he trips over his feet let me know this will not be a rare night.
Jude and I roll our eyes at each other. My stomach goes queasy. When you have a violent drunk for a parent, you pray that they’ll just pass out, or maybe one day they won’t come home plastered, but you always get that sinking feeling. You know you will be a human punching bag. Sometimes it’s fists, sometimes it’s words, but you feel like someone waiting in a pit for a lion to be unleashed.
I throw some beans on Jude’s plate. The key is to keep your eyes down, let him scream, let him bash you. Fighting back only gives him what he wants, then the fists fly. You just have to take it. With food on our plates, it gives us something to look at.
We both slowly pick at our beans.
“Where the fuck—beans? That’s what you fuckin’ made?” he asks in a slur.
“That’s all there was, dad.” He loves to complain about the meager fixings at meal time, though he hardly gets groceries and doesn’t give us any money.
“Are you being a smartass?” he asks, threateningly glaring at me. His feet are wide beneath him with his hips jutted forward so he won’t topple over.
“I can serve you, dad,” Jude says, to get the attention off of me.
“No...I got it. No one here has to lift a finger for me! I just do everything. I pay the bills, I work. But you both look at me like I’m a nobody...you ungrateful little shits.”
He grabs the pan and Jude’s spoon off of her plate and starts scooping up beans. About 80 percent successfully reach their target.
He opens the fridge. “Where’s the fucki
n’ beer?”
“You drank it all.” I say, as nonconfrontationally as possible.
“No there was beer here!” He whips around. “You drink it Sil?”
“No, pops.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
I know it’s hard for him to believe, since though the fridge doesn’t have much food, it always has beer. But he drank it all yesterday.
“Fuck it,” he says, slamming the fridge door closed with his foot.
As inconspicuously as possible, I take the plates to the sink.
Dad gets close to me, so close he could sniff me. “Why do you gotta go all dressin’ like a fucking freak?”
I look straight ahead. It’s best not to challenge. He whacks me upside the head. “Answer me, you stubborn prick.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
One day, I’ll be big and muscular like him, and I will whoop his ass. I’ll shove a can of cold pork and beans in his mouth and watch him gag.
I turn around and slide past Jude, noticing too late that the fucking note is on the table. I go for it, trying to slide it in my pocket before he spots it.
“What’s that you tryin’ to hide?’ He asks, in a slurred voice.
“Nothing.”
“You keep lying, boy. I’m getting sick of it. Hand it over.”
“No.”
He marches over, snatching it out of my hands. “Give that shit to me!”
He looks it over slowly, trying to comprehend the words in his drunken haze. “So you think you’re going out tonight? On a school night?”
Not once has this man ever cared about my education.
“Just for a little while.”
He looks me up and down with so much disdain. People say my mother was a good woman, but I have a hard time believing a good woman would have had children with such a piece of shit.
“You gotta clean the shed tonight. I’ve been telling you to do that all week.”
“You’ve never mentioned it before.”
“Don’t fucking call me a liar.”
“It’s okay,” Jude says, standing. She’s been a spectator up until this point. Usually I get the brunt of the bullying, because I am the boy and I guess he likes to challenge me more. “I can clean the shed. Just let him go.”
“So what? Now you think you call the shots under my roof?”
“She didn’t mean it that way.”
The clock winds down. It’s already 7:55, I needed fifteen minutes to bike there.
“Now you both clean the shed. I want to be able to eat off the floor of that fuggin’ thing.”
It’s at that moment I realize how cruel and hateful a man he is. It’s one thing to dislike your kids enough to not want to provide or nurture, but to see one has a chance at happiness elsewhere and ruin it just for the sake of it, that’s pure hatred for your own flesh and blood.
“No,” I say. It’s a word that does not get thrown at dad without something getting thrown back.
He throws the empty pot into the sink. The spoon rattles as it swirls, metal grating against metal, then quiet.
“Fuck you say?” he asks, coming closer to me.
“I’m going out tonight. I’ll be back home at a reasonable time.”
“You are going to clean the shed tonight.” He takes the crumpled note from Mia, opens it up, and rips it in half, letting it fall to the floor.
There is tense silence as fear and anger wrestle inside of me, each trying to win access to my next words.
“Sil...maybe we could clean it fast...” Jude’s tiny soft voice reasons with me from somewhere I can’t see. She doesn’t want to see me get hurt. Whenever dad beats one of us, it’s like he’s doing it to both of us.
Pops steps closer, and in his snarl, there are pieces of bean stuck to his teeth and sauce sloppily encircling his mouth. It’s then I realize that for all the loudness, anger, and power he exerts over us, he is a joke. He is a bitter, pathetic joke of a man. A man who feels helpless in life, angry over things he couldn’t control, probably gets shit on at work, and he exerts his dominance over the only two people in his life who have no choice but to take it: his own children.
“No.” I say, my voice a little firmer this time.
His eyes flinch in disbelief, maybe panic. Things are different today: he might be losing control, even over us.
“Get your ass in the shed!” he says, grabbing the back of my neck and thrusting me towards the door.
“No. I’m going out. I’ll clean the shed this weekend.” No one is stopping me from seeing Mia today.
I can’t see Jude, but I can feel her fear. It travels like an aroma, wafting in the air.
And then he slaps me. Hard. So hard it nearly knocks me off my feet. But I right myself and stare at him. He can’t hurt me anymore. I might not be as big, or strong, but I’m not a child anymore.
“No.”
He does it again, even harder this time.
“Stop!” Jude cries. I can hear her crying to herself, mumbling incoherent sounds.
Next is a punch, and it sends me to the ground. I open my eyes just in time to helplessly watch dad rear his leg for a kick.
“No!” Jude’s little body sails over to him, her tiny frame throwing off a man who outweighs her by 150 pounds. My dad takes a few steps back, but regains his balance, and throws Jude like she weighs nothing. Her tiny body slams against the edge of the table and she cries out as she falls, clutching her side.
Jude’s moment of bravery gives me time to get to my feet, and just as my defiance boosted her bravery, hers does the same for me. If my 80-something pound sister can confront dad, then so can I.
Coming to my feet, in a crouching stance, I tackle my father to the floor. “Leave her alone!” I say. “Leave us alone! You asshole!”
His drunkenness allows for a moment of reprieve, but he’s a large man, with the muscles of someone who has labored his entire life. He lifts me off of him and rolls over me. He punches me once, then wraps his hands around my throat, cutting my air supply. I clench his wrists and scratch, but his eyes are vacant. It’s drunken rage: all animal, no humanity.
And then, relief. I look up and see small arms wrapping around dad’s head.
“Dammit Jude, you little bitch!” He stands up with her on his back and slams against the wall, but she holds on. My little doll of a sister has become a fierce bobcat. But he’ll break her. He could kill her so easily in a momentary lapse of judgment. He slams again and she lets go, sliding down to the floor, gasping for wind.
He turns to her, and I know he has to be stopped. Now. Jude and I have arrived at a point of no return. If we don’t stop him, he’ll kill one of us tonight.
I grab the closest thing, the pot I made the beans in tonight, and I swing. He stops, standing erect. I swing again, harder. He looks at me in complete shock, a slit opens up on his cheek bone and then it starts pouring dark blood. He falls to his knees.
“Sil!” Jude says, encouraging me to hit him again. I do one more time, and he falls to the floor.
“Shit. I think I killed him,” I say under my breath.
Jude stumbles to her knees and hesitantly leans in close. “He’s breathing. I just think you knocked him out. You know he’s going to kill us. We have to run away.”
I grab his pickup keys. “Get your book bag and pack your stuff.”
The clock reads 8:09.
I run to my room and grab my essentials. Then I go into my dad’s room and look for his money stash. I find it in a coffee can, tucked into a drawer, and pull out a wad of twenties. I take one last look at my dad, his chest rises and falls. Good, I’m not a murderer.
Within minutes we are running out to the pickup. We throw our bags in the bed and hop in.
“What are we going to do?” Jude asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, bumping along the dark isolated dirt road that leads away from our home.
“You’re still gonna meet Mia, right? That’s why we did this. So you wouldn’t miss it. Yo
u can’t miss it.”
“Yeah, I’m seeing her tonight. He’s not winning. What time is it?”
“8:17...”
“Shit!” I say, jamming the gas harder, making the old truck jitter along the rocks and uneven terrain. “We should be there in five minutes.”
“She’ll be there,” Jude assures me.
“You okay?” I ask, giving Jude a succession of quick glances while trying to keep my eyes on the dark road.
“Yeah,” she pulls up her shirt and winces at a welt on her ribcage where she hit the table. “It’s fine, just a bruise. What about you? He hit you so hard.”
I touch my face. That’s when I realize I look like I’d just been through a battle. It’ll freak Mia out. “Shit,” I say, looking at the blood I’ve wiped off my face.
“I got it,” Jude says, pulling out stuff from her bag. “I thought ahead.” She grabs a rag from the back of the cab and pours the rubbing alcohol she took from the house. “It’s gonna hurt.”
“Just do it,” I say.
She cleans my face as I hiss at the fire in each cut.
“So much better. Swollen cheek, but not as bad as I thought.”
We pull into the clearing that leads to the abandoned lake house, a popular spot for high school parties and gatherings. It’s quiet, being a school night. I pull up to the only other car. Both Mia and I usually walk to school, so I don’t recall what her car looks like, but this has to be it.
“Just stay here, okay?”
“Good luck,” Jude says with a smile. I kiss her on her forehead and she smiles. “Love you, wombmate.”
“Love you too,” I say.
I close the door to the truck and look around for a sign from Mia in the quiet night. The lake flickers with the reflection of the moon, crickets chirp, the occasional owl calls, but there’s no sign of her. Did she leave? Am I too late?
I hear a rustling in the bushes close by. “Hello?” I call out.
“Psssst.”
“Mia?”
I follow the sounds, past trees and fallen branches, to another clearing. Beer cans and bottles litter the floor, dozens of them. The scent of it in the air is fresh.
Debt Page 24