Even Better (Stripped 2.50)

Does anyone touch you? Where?

I answered all the questions as best I could, so I could go home. I liked it in Harmony Hills. Mama watches me. No one touches me, not ever.

They weren’t lies, not really. Most of the time I liked my life, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I knew the woman wasn’t really offering me one. And Mama did watch me most of the time, except when she was praying with Leader Allen. It took a long time, because her soul was so dark. At least, that’s what Leader Allen told me.

No one ever did touch me. The woman asked me that question a lot of times, using words in different ways so I would understand what she meant. Giving me a hug or giving me a bath didn’t count. The way Leader Allen put his hand on my head when he was testing my faith, that didn’t count either.

That was the day I learned that there was another kind of touch that might happen to me.

The next time I ever rode a car was a bus that took me from Harmony Hills to the farthest I could go. A city called Tanglewood.

“Come,” Ivan says, and I don’t hesitate. There’s nothing for me in the basement of his business. This is like the room from before, with no windows. No toys on the floor, but I understood them now for what they were. Distractions. A kind of test, like the files on his desk. And probably there was a camera somewhere in the room, watching me. Seeing if I passed.

I follow him up the stairs, my gaze trained on his shoes. They shine, even in the dim light, and they make a harsh sound with every step. My shoes are blackened and completely silent. I’m his shadow as he leads me out a back door into the night.

Luca follows us to the car and opens the door.

Both men watch me expectantly. When I don’t move, Ivan cocks his head. “In.”

In. Just that, a short command. “Where are you taking me?”

“Home,” he says.

That’s what the woman said too.

I don’t really believe him. She drove me back to Harmony Hills, and I know he isn’t taking me there. Even so, hearing the word soothes me. Home.

Because right now I don’t have anywhere to go.

I climb into the back of his car. From the outside it looks like a regular car, except maybe a little more shiny. A little more smooth. From the inside, it’s completely different. Nothing like the gray bus I came here on, with its plastic bucket seats and cracked window. It’s nothing like the car the woman with kind eyes drove either, where she buckled me into the back and gave me a juice box.

This car doesn’t even have seat belts, just incredibly soft seats. It’s like running my hands over a cloud, and I do it again and again until Ivan sits beside me. There are buttons built into the sides of the car and a little panel in front of us with a screen. And a dark glass wall separating the front and the back.

Luca sits in front, and then the car glides forward.

I’m quiet the rest of the trip. So is Ivan.

Maybe he’s thinking about work. But I know he’s thinking about me. I can feel his attention on me even though he faces the front. His profile looks stark and forbidding, shadows stretching over his face, not quite covering him. I try to shrink myself, to become invisible. I hold my body very still. It’s something I have a lot of practice with, like prayer.

Forgive me, for I have sinned…

* * *

We reach Ivan’s house too quickly. I’m not ready to face what will happen to me here. Not ready to face that I’ve ended up in this position, at another man’s mercy. Wasn’t I supposed to get free? Isn’t that why Mama risked everything?

Except a hundred dollars in cash and a brochure from the bus company didn’t get me very far.

Deep inside, where I don’t usually let myself feel, something sharp and hot burns. Frustration. Anger? Mama would know how to survive in the city. She had lived in one before she went to Harmony Hills. Why didn’t she teach me what I would need to know?

Why didn’t she tell me about men like Ivan?

It doesn’t matter now, because Luca opens the car door. I have no choice but to step outside and look up, up at the never-ending glass and concrete. It doesn’t look like a house. It looks like a sculpture.

It looks like a church.

“No calls tonight,” Ivan says, and Luca nods, wordless.

Luca holds the door open for Ivan and then myself. Lights are set in the wall, high up, so the whole room is bathed in a pale light when we first arrive. Ivan touches a switch, and they grow brighter.