Blood and Bone(26)

We walk in the long dried grass, next to each other. He still seems  tense or angry at me for not remembering, and the closer to the house we  get, the worse it is.

When my hand brushes against his, I pull it back. "I swear to you, my father hurt the other kids. I remember it, sort of."

"It doesn't matter. I hate coming here, and I hate talking about this. I  had a chance to kill that filthy bastard, and I never took my chance.  Still pisses me off. Coming here makes me want to burn this dump to the  fucking ground so I don't have to see that look on your face ever  again."

"What look?"

He takes my hand in his and squeezes. "The one where I think for half a second you think maybe you deserved to be tortured."

His words burn inside me as we round the corner of the house to find the  front door is still hanging funny since Derek kicked it in. We push our  way in, stopping at the entryway. It smells the same and looks the  same, but the pictures are gone from the floor. My heart hurts and my  lungs don't feel like they fill with enough air, like I am starved of  essential things the moment we enter.

He walks to the kitchen, looking around, but as if I am attached to a  string that a puppet master controls, I walk to the back of the house.  Upon entering my bedroom again, I drop to my knees as though I am in a  trance. I crawl along the floor to the wall at the very far end of the  room and slide my hands along the edge of the wall, next to the  baseboards. I catch the jagged piece of wooden floorboard I am looking  for, sliding and lifting it, revealing a storage place in the floor.

I lean forward, a little scared of what's in there, only to find simple  things a child would have hidden. Inside the dusty, cobweb-ridden space  is a small brown box coated in enough dust that I actually believe I am  the first person to open this. Beneath the layer of dust and cobwebs, I  see there's a four-leaf clover pressed into the lid. I reach down,  noting the way my hands shake. It feels so heavy in my hands, regardless  of weighing almost nothing.

I lift it into my lap, sitting back on my butt and crossing my legs.

"What is it?"

"A box I made with my mom before she died. We pressed the four-leaf  clover and pasted it onto the lid with a gluey hodgepodge. I cried for  the clover. I said it was now trapped for life under the glue. It would  never again feel the wind on its leaves or the sun on its stem."
         

     



 
"Dramatic for a small kid. Ya have always seen the glass half empty,  though. What did your mum say to that?" He drops onto the floor next to  me with a thud. I jump from the sound, but my eyes won't leave the box.

"She said I should be happy for the clover because now it won't ever age  and it won't ever rot. We preserved it in the perfect condition, so it  will be lucky and beautiful forever. Always bringing me luck." Tears  fill my eyes as I hear her voice with my own.

"What's inside?"

I shake my head. "I don't know." How I can recall some things and not  others is driving me insane. Bravery fills me, forcing me to lift the  lid. What's inside is odd.

"A necklace Mom gave me when I was three. I took it off when she died  and kept it in the box like it was a treasure." I lift the small silver  chain and place it on the floor. "A rubber ball Leona gave me that my  father gave her. She said I could have it. He'd given her a pretty ring,  and she liked that better. He had never given me anything. I wasn't  even allowed to see inside the bin of the pretty clothes." It dawns on  me then that my father never touched me except obviously in violence. I  recall the meanness. But the bin of pretty clothes wasn't for me. Leona  wore them. So did Michelle, another girl who also babysat me. She was  fourteen, like Leona, when I was nine. I gulp away the horror inside me  as I grab the next item. "A fortune from a fortune cookie that says You  will find a way inside of-. I got it when my friend Nicole's family took  me out for Chinese food. I'd never had it before. They said I should  get a new one because it was unfinished, but I liked it the way it was.  It left possibility."

Maybe it's the discomfort of being where we are or the silence of the  still and haunted house. But he scoffs like we are joking about on the  grass, not looking through an old box of trinkets from when I lived with  my monster of a father.

When I lift the next item out, another tear drips down my cheek, leaving a streak. "A picture of me and my mom."

He takes it, inspecting it. "Ya look like her."

The very bottom of the box has a note. I lift it out, seeing instantly it's my handwriting. Come and find me, peeping Sam!

"What's that?"

I hand it to him, letting him try to decipher it. "I wrote that."

He nods. "I can see that. Why would ya, though?"

I shake my head. "I don't know." I lean forward, glancing into the hole again, certain there must be more.

"Well, that's fucking mysterious. Why is everything with ya a fucking  puzzle? Why didn't ya just write everything down before he fucking  erased your damned mind?"

"I think I must have known someone was watching me." A scowl builds on  my face. "And stop cussing so much. It makes me uncomfortable, how much  you swear."

His jaw drops. He shakes his head. "Well, now I've heard it all."

Ignoring him and drumming my fingers along the wooden floor, I think  about the sentence. "It could be an anagram. I mean, it's sort of random  to call me peeping Sam." But saying the phrase brings with it a memory,  exactly the way "plain Jane" did.

I close my eyes and suddenly it's all there, filling my brain.

I'm small, very small, maybe eight at most. I chase a bunny under the  house. Our house is on blocks like a trailer. Father's been digging a  basement. I creep under there, my fingers digging into the dank grass  and weeds.

A noise fills the air. The sound of a whimper. I follow it to the front  of the house where the steps are. There's a hole in the floor, a notch  out of the wood so small I haven't seen it from the inside of the house.  But here in the dark I can see light from inside the house shining down  into the mucky dead grass. I lift my face, up into the floorboards, no  longer interested in the bunny, and put my eye to the notch hole. Leona,  my babysitter, is in there. I can't see her face, but I know the sound  of her voice. She's making a funny sound, but whatever she's doing, I  can't see it. Father's back is to me. He's got something in his hands.  He mutters encouragements, repeating the word diddling like it means  something. He sounds different with her, like he likes her.

I gag, trying desperately to snap out of the memory, but this one has me and it's not letting go.

I watch my father's back, completely confused about what is happening.  They make sounds and do things I don't see. Clothes ruffle and bodies  shuffle, and the dark and light mix in the shadows and angles I can't  catch with my prying eyes. She gets up and walks to my bedroom. It's  then I catch a glimpse of the pretty clothes she has on. They're from  the bin I'm not allowed to touch.         

     



 

Hurrying back to the backyard, I catch a glimpse of her changing in my  bedroom from where I'm running through the field. He likes her better  than me. It's then I realize it.

From then on, when she or Michelle came over to babysit and I was sent  outside to play, I would hurry under the house. There in the dark I  would wait at the notch to watch the things they did for the camera. It  was like a train wreck; I couldn't look away. It made me feel funny. I  knew it was wrong, all of it.

The memory fades into the fog and mud in my head as I blink tears from my eyes. "I lied about my father."

He wraps himself around me, hugging me tightly to him. "No you didn't. He was a monster."

I nod. "He was, but he never molested me. He molested the girls who  babysat me." I am ashamed of myself. My body curls into his, desperate  to hide from the truth, but I know that's where the secrets are hidden.  They're buried in the places I am most ashamed to talk about or share.  When I told myself to go back, this is the place I meant. I take his  hand, pulling him to the living room where the notch in the floor still  sits in the corner. "He did it all here, in this living room. He paid  them to babysit, but he always stayed home. He paid them heaps of money  to star in the shows." My cheeks are bright red and my eyes are burning.  "I watched through this hole from under the house. I never told anyone  for a year. He did it all the time. The pictures and movies didn't show  faces clearly. No one could tell who the kid in the picture was, just  that it was a kid." I turn, looking at the fireplace. My feet move, even  though my brain is screaming for them to stop. I reach for the brick I  know will move, revealing the hiding place. When I pull it back, the  papers from the floor are stuffed in there. The papers Derek showed me  before. They have always been here. They never were in the folder or  found by the police. One picture grabs at me from the stack. It's a  girl's mouth with a cherry in it. A bitter smile owns my face as I  recall Michelle teaching me to do it when she babysat me. I want to  judge myself for the fact I'm ever so slightly excited that I didn't  learn the trick in a brothel somewhere.