Rust & Stardust Page 9

  She could hear their whispers, felt them slither.

  Sally.

  Stranger.

  Fresh out of prison. Vile things, with children.

  Rapist.

  Rapist.

  Rapist.

  Reaching out to grab the end of a pew, she knew she couldn’t continue in this nightmarish procession of shame, God be damned, and so she stopped and turned before moving, as quickly as her failing knees would allow, toward the open doors that spilled out onto Market Street, followed by the horrified gaze of the congregation, hearing the venomous hiss in her ears all the way home.

  SALLY

  After Mr. Warner fell asleep at night in that attic room, her body aching, her heart aching from what he’d done to her, Sally didn’t dare move. He was a light sleeper, and once when she’d gotten up to put her nightclothes back on, his arm had shot out and grabbed her by the throat. The next day, his fingers had left faint blue prints on her skin. So she lay as still as she could. Sometimes, she was too afraid to breathe even, and so she held her breath, her vision filling with stars.

  Two weeks they’d been in Baltimore. Two long weeks, the sweltering August days melting one into the other. Mr. Warner had gotten a job at a garage down the street, so he was at work from nine until five most days. Sammy worked graveyard at the Coca-Cola bottling plant, which meant he was gone all night and asleep downstairs all day. Until school started in September, Mr. Warner said she had to stay in the room while he was at work.

  “School?” she’d asked. “I’m going to school here?” She thought of Mrs. Appleton, the scent of chalk, the playground. Those girls. How had the whole summer passed already? At home, summer felt like a tiny eternity, days as long as seasons. Every sunlit hour swollen.

  “Well, we gotta keep up appearances. Unless you want to add truancy to your rap sheet.”

  In Atlantic City, at least she’d been able to go outside. Mr. Warner had taken her everywhere with him, during the day anyway. But now that he had a job, he had no choice but to keep her locked up while he was working. At least he didn’t tie her up anymore. After breakfast, he made her use the bathroom before ushering her back upstairs. He’d leave her with a loaf of bread, a can of salty sardines, and sometimes an apple. He’d fill two water glasses, but the one time she drank them, she’d had to use the bathroom so badly she’d practically wet herself waiting for him to come home. And so despite the unbearable heat and the thirst that came with it, she didn’t drink a drop of water until he returned and unlocked the door each night. There was no key to this door, and so instead he used a coin, wedged into the door frame. She’d heard it clatter to the floor and marveled that a single copper coin, like the ones those girls put in their loafers, could be the one thing between her and her freedom.

  She tried several times to see if she could get the door to open, waiting until after Mr. Warner had been gone an hour or more. Just in case he came back. But the door wouldn’t budge. She worried that the racket would wake Sammy up; he was friendly enough, but she also knew that he was Mr. Warner’s friend first and foremost, and if he caught her trying to sneak out, he would be sure to keep her from walking out the front door.

  The attic window offered no chance of escape, either; even if it weren’t painted shut, she’d fall to her death from that height. And so she spent most of her time locked in that room escaping into the books she pilfered from Sammy’s shelves downstairs. All day long, she’d lose herself inside the covers of the battered paperbacks with titles like Special Detective and Mania for Murder. There were other books, too, but they made her face burn with shame, the women on their covers wearing only lingerie and lipstick. Ladies in Hades, Bury Me Deep, and Sex before Six. The one time she’d dared to peek inside one of these stories, she’d felt sick: the characters doing the things Mr. Warner did to her, dirty awful things. It felt like somebody had written down her worst secrets; she’d wanted to tear the pages up. After that she’d made sure to only choose the books with detectives or pirates on the covers.

  Because he worked the graveyard shift, by the time Mr. Warner came home at night, Sammy would just be getting up. Most nights, Sally was charged with cooking supper for all three of them. Mr. Warner had told her it was part of earning their keep. She didn’t know how to make much besides hamburgers and fried eggs, but nobody seemed to mind. At least it got her out of that room, if only for a while. After the dishes were cleared, Sammy and Mr. Warner might play a hand or two of cards while she washed the dishes, and then Sammy would put on his uniform and get ready for work. Though, no matter what they’d had for supper, she’d feel it turning in her stomach. Because once Sammy left, she and Mr. Warner were alone.

  He never used the gun again to threaten her. He didn’t have to. Though she knew exactly where he kept it. She also knew what was coming, and it paralyzed her. She couldn’t have fought back if she wanted to. Her limbs were useless. Even her voice caught inside her throat. And so instead of fighting, she slipped away. Just like she did when she was reading those detective stories. She disappeared. Vanished into her imagination.

  Sometimes, she conjured her stepfather playing “Take the A Train” on his trumpet while her mother washed the dishes, pretending not to listen, but her hips swinging just a little beneath her aproned skirt. This was a rare vivid memory of him, as clear as a bright star in a dark sky. Sometimes, she dreamed herself into her bedroom, when Susan still lived at home, and recalled the simple happiness of the sound of rain on the roof and the way Susan sighed in her sleep. But mostly, she thought of her mother, tried to imagine what she was doing at home. In that narrow bed in the darkest part of the night, she pictured Ella hunched over the sewing machine, face illuminated by the weak glow of her desk lamp. She saw her hands, the swollen knuckles and wrists as they pushed and pulled the endless yardage of fabric. Oddly, though, she realized she had no idea what it was that she had been sewing. Clothing? Bedding? Parachutes? Sally had never seen any finished project, no product, only process. An infinity of dark gray cloth, the expanse of her whole life. She thought that when she finally got home, she’d ask her what it was that she’d been making. She might offer to help her. How difficult could it be? She vowed she’d be less troublesome; she’d be helpful. A better daughter. A good girl.

  It was her mother she continued to summon, when he finally left her alone at night. The only thing that could comfort her as her body stung. She closed her eyes and dreamed her mother’s wrist against her forehead when she was sick. Transformed the thin blanket on the bed into her mother’s worn housedresses. She ran her fingers along the edge of the coverlet, conjuring the hems of her mother’s skirts. She clenched her legs together and wished herself into her mother’s dreams. She recited the address of Sammy’s house, dreaming the numbers out the open window into the air, wishing them onto the backs of the stars. Sending these imaginary missives home.

  She read a book once about pigeons that carried messages, traveling to the recipients bearing news of war, news of disaster. As the pigeons congregated outside the attic window, she wondered if they might carry a message from her, alerting her mother of this disaster. Homing, that was what they were called. Home, home, home, she thought, the words pounding in time to the throbbing between her eyes, between her legs. She needed to figure out a way to get home.

  Tonight, she lay on her back wide awake, his arm slung over her like something dead. She started to roll over, to face the wall, slowly, slowly, but the moment he felt her moving, his arm turned to lead across her chest, pinning her down again. She could hardly breathe.

  There was a boy in her grade back in Camden who got polio and was in an iron lung. The whole class had gone to the hospital to visit him; they’d lined up like they were at a zoo exhibit. He was smiling and happy to see his friends. The nurse had hung pictures of his mother above him, to comfort him, Sally imagined. As they each walked past, he said hello and thank you for coming. The boys in the class asked the nurse if they could crawl inside one of the empty l
ungs to see what it was like. The girls had covered their mouths with their hands in a sort of giddy horror, leaning into each other and whispering. Sally, however, had lingered, watching as the contraption breathed for him. She tried to imagine what it would be like to be stuck inside a machine, one you were depending on for your life.

  “How long do you gotta be in there?” she’d whispered to him when it was her turn to say hello. But he’d only shaken his head. She’d looked at the photo of his mother hanging above him and felt her heart break. “Are you ever gonna get to go home?”

  ELLA

  It had been nearly two months since Sally left. For Ella, each day was identical, excruciatingly so, to the previous one. Calls to and from the detectives. Checking the mail for a letter, for some clue. Staring at the phone. At the door. And underneath it all was the undercurrent of pain, though Ella could hardly tell anymore if the ache was inside or outside her heart. Susan was nearing the end of her pregnancy; her skin was taut, her ankles thick. She wasn’t able to help much at the greenhouse, so while Al worked, she stayed with Ella at the house. Waiting for news. They were both irritable, prickly. Nerves raw and ragged.

  “The weather’s turning,” Ella said, massaging her throbbing knee as she bent down to get a pie pan from the cupboard. “I can feel it.”

  The summer heat actually alleviated some of her pain, made it sufferable, even as the sticky humidity was not. She felt the onset of fall in her bones. The threat of fall resided in her marrow. She knew Susan felt it, too. The baby was due soon. Things were coming to an end. Summer would be over. But this morning as Ella moved slowly around her home, she wished it to stay. It was illogical, of course, but she thought that as long as the seasons didn’t shift, if she could hold off autumn, then Sally would be safe. But as soon as the air crackled cold, as soon as she felt the biting chill as she pulled the covers off in the morning, it would mean that the world was moving on without her.

  “Mama, it’s been three weeks already, since you heard from Sally,” Susan said as if she were reading Ella’s thoughts. “Are the police only looking in Baltimore still? The FBI? What did that detective say last?” She was standing at the counter rolling out a thin sheet of dough. She could barely reach the rolling pin, her belly setting her back at least a foot from the counter.

  Ella nodded. “The government men are looking other places, too.”

  The county detective had assured her that since the FBI was involved now, it was only a matter of time before they found Sally. But she didn’t buy it; there hadn’t been a single article in the papers after that big one at the beginning of August. As much as she’d hated the reporters and their hungry questions, she felt abandoned now. Forgotten.

  “I’m sure he’ll be sending her back home soon,” Ella said, nodding. “Before school starts.” As if, indeed, this had simply been a vacation.

  Ella heard Susan sigh, exasperated, as she worked the pin across the dough the way that Ella had shown her when she was still just a girl. She hadn’t taught Sally how to make a piecrust yet. She hadn’t taught her how to make a good vegetable stock or how to darn a pair of socks. She was still a child; there were so many things she had yet to learn.

  Ella looked out the kitchen window at the backyard. It was overgrown. The swing set was partially obscured by the tall grass. Soon, though, the lawn would be covered with dead leaves and, eventually, snow. Ella used to send Sally out there to play; she loved that she could do her kitchen chores and still see Sally from here. In the summer, she’d watch as she played alone in the backyard, talking to herself, making up games. It embarrassed Ella at first, as if she were witnessing something private. But after a while it didn’t seem so strange at all anymore. She felt grateful that Sally could entertain herself, that she had such a vivid imagination. How could she interrupt that innocent reverie with meat loaf recipes and methods for getting stains out of yellowed collars?

  She watched as the piecrust stuck to the wooden pin.

  “Al’s got a friend from Baltimore, you know,” Susan said.

  “Here, let me do that,” Ella admonished, and grabbed the roller from her. “You need more flour.”

  “He’s been talking about heading down there. Maybe bring a photo of Sally? Ask around to see if anybody’s seen her?”

  Ella closed her eyes, and thought of that awful photo of Sally on the swing. Felt her heart begin to bottom out. She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter until her fingers ached, her wrists throbbed, until the pain in her body overwhelmed the pain in her chest.

  “Mama?” Susan said, and took the pin back, rolling it furiously across the dough. “God, somebody’s got to do something.”

  SALLY

  “Here?” Sally asked meekly as they stood on the street staring at the Woolworth’s sign, so similar to the one back at Camden where this all started, and he pushed her gently through the door.

  As they walked down the aisle of school supplies, she felt sick. Her gut was gripped by pain so intense she started to double over. He held on to her elbow tightly. She thought that even if she collapsed, she wouldn’t fall, he was holding on to her so forcefully.

  They were buying items for school. That morning, he’d taken her to the Catholic school on Greenmount Avenue, just around the corner from Sammy’s. The school year was starting up in just a week. He’d told her to keep her mouth shut. Let him do the talking.

  “I’m Episcopalian,” she’d said softly, shaking her head.

  “I don’t care if you’re a kike,” Mr. Warner had shot back. “You follow my lead.”

  He told the secretary at the desk that his name was Fogg, and that she was his daughter, Florence. That her poor mother, bless her soul, was dead. That she was to be in the sixth grade.

  Now, with his free hand, he put the items into their basket: pencils, erasers, a small cardboard box to keep them in. When they arrived at the counter where the black-and-white composition notebooks were, her stomach cramped again, and she gasped with pain.

  “Well, looky here!” he said, sneering in that way he had that made her shoulders tremble. “I seem to recall you have a preference for this kind of notebook, eh, Florence?”

  She took a series of shallow breaths, willing the pain away.

  “You want to pay for this one? Or would ya rather steal it?” He chuckled, gripping the notebook tightly in his hand, waiting for her to answer.

  “Pay for it, sir,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded, tears filling her eyes.

  “Well, that’s a good thing. Because from my experience, it’s the repeat offenders who wind up getting sent up the river. You could even get the electric chair if you get caught stealing again. Just like they’re gonna do to that nigger lady and her boys down in Georgia. You heard about that?”

  Sally shook her head. She didn’t know what an electric chair was, but it sounded terrifying. Pain shot through her abdomen again, and she grabbed her stomach.

  Mr. Warner threw the composition notebook into the basket and yanked her arm. She concentrated on the muscles down there, clenching them as tightly as she could.

  “The school’s got a uniform, but you’ll be needing some socks and new underclothes,” he said, and she felt sweat start to bead on her forehead. She caught her reflection in a mirror as they walked to the clothing department, and she barely recognized herself. She looked ghostlike, pale. Sickly. Would her mother even know her now?

  When they got to the counter with their things, she couldn’t stand it anymore. It felt like the time she’d gotten the stomach flu when she was nine. The cramping was unbearable. She needed to find a restroom. The lady at the counter was pretty, with rosy cheeks and shiny blond hair held away from her face with a rhinestone barrette in the shape of a peacock. Purple and green glass feathers.

  “I need to use the powder room,” she whispered.

  The lady at the register looked at her and smiled. “It’s right down past the lunch counter, sweetheart.”

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nbsp; Sally looked up at Mr. Warner, pleading with him to let her go without saying a word. Back at the house he walked her to the powder room and stood outside the door. In case she tried to squeeze through that tiny window overlooking the backyard, she supposed. She’d thought about it, of course, but even if she got outside, where could she go? She couldn’t go home; Mr. Warner told her that the FBI would take her mother away if they found out she was hiding her. That there were laws against harboring a fugitive. She could barely go to the bathroom sometimes, knowing he was there on the other side, waiting. Listening to her.

  “We’re heading home in just a minute. Can’t it wait?” Mr. Warner smiled at her and at the lady at the counter.

  Sally shook her head. “I’m feelin’ sick,” she said.

  “Oh,” the saleslady said. “Please go then.”

  Mr. Warner didn’t let go of her arm, his fingers still pressing deep into her flesh.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, and pushed the items on the counter toward the woman. Sally looked at the marbled composition book and blinked as her eyes filled with tears. “Always complaining, this one. Probably just nervous about startin’ school.”

  But despite his smile, the shop girl looked at him sternly, as if he were the child, and walked out from behind the counter.

  “Follow me, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll show you the way.”

  And reluctantly, Mr. Warner released her arm.

  As they walked down the aisle, Sally felt her head pounding with possibility. She could tell this lady (with her high heels and pink powdered cheeks). She could tell her her real name, that this man, this FBI man, was keeping her, doing terrible things to her in that attic room. She could barely think about it without feeling dizzy. As she followed the lady to the restroom door, staring at the backs of her heels (there was a small run in her stocking, a scuff), she thought maybe, if she could convince her to come with her into the restroom, she could tell her what was happening. That she might take pity on her. But as they approached the door and the woman turned to her, Sally’s stomach cramped so hard, she started to see stars.