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Authors: Drusilla Campbell

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BOOK: Little Girl Gone
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In the end an arrangement was made with Kay-Kay’s family, and her mother and Peter left for Sacramento. Madora thought her mother was relieved to get the parting over with. Over spring break Madora took a Greyhound bus to Sacramento, but the visit didn’t go well. Peter was pleasant, and his house, while not a mansion, was definitely an improvement over the apartment in Yuma. Madora did not feel safe away from Willis, and she worried about him because two weeks earlier something had occurred between him and another Marine, a woman, and now he was in trouble. He had not been forthcoming with details, but from what Madora gathered, he had tried to help this woman and she misunderstood. She had accused him of hitting on her. Out of nowhere, two other complainants had appeared,
ganging up on him. He was going to have to leave the Corps he loved so much; and lacking an honorable discharge, it would be hard for him to get into medical school.

In May he was discharged and couldn’t stand being in Yuma another minute. It was a bad-luck town, he said. Terrified of being abandoned, Madora said good-bye to high school six weeks before graduation.

They had spent most of the next year traveling through the West, settling in some places for a few weeks and then moving on. Madora turned eighteen in Susanville and when Willis made love to her for the first time, she felt not simply virginal, but prized. Anticipating life from what she’d seen in movies and on television, she expected passion every night after that, but soon realized that Willis was not much interested in sex; and he became offended if she brought the subject up. Better to say nothing, she decided. When he did make love to her she searched her memory afterwards for what she had done to make it happen and cultivated that behavior: compliant, responsible, just sassy enough to make him smile.

They rarely disagreed; Madora made sure of that. Disputes between them stirred to life demons that frightened her, for though her father had been gone many years, she still remembered the arguments between him and her mother and the pall his inky silences cast over their lives. Whether it was true or because Willis had put the idea in her mind, she believed her mother could have saved him if she’d been more understanding.

Outside Arroyo in Southern California, they found the house on Red Rock Road, and Willis said it was perfect.

“Kinda lonely,” Madora said. “I like the canyon, though.”

“Sure you do,” he said. “We don’t want to be around too many people, do we? I’m like your dad. I like the desert.”

For the next three years Willis worked odd jobs and Madora waited tables at a diner next door to the Indian casino ten miles up Interstate 8. She loved the work and was good at it. Between them, they made enough money to get by. Willis attended night classes that he said insulted his training as a Marine Corps medic, but he became a licensed home health care provider and soon had a full schedule of private clients. A few days a week he worked at Shady Hills. Wherever he worked, he was popular with his clients. Often he came home with cash bonuses, a bundle of fives and ones, once a jar of coins; occasionally the very old men and women gave him personal gifts, some quite valuable.

Madora asked Willis if they could get married and he told her that would happen when he became a doctor.

“I want you to be proud of me,” he said.

One day Madora’s 1982 Honda Civic stopped dead and refused to start again. Willis looked at the engine and decided that this was a good time for her to quit working at the diner. A few weeks later he brought Linda home and locked her in the Great Dane trailer.

Chapter 9

A
few days after giving birth, Linda lay in bed wearing a red terry-cloth shift and watching a tape on the old VCR Willis had brought from the home of a private client.

“He’s an old guy and doesn’t watch movies anymore.”

Willis had reattached her leash, a wire rope with one end padlocked around her right ankle and the other hooked to an eyebolt set high up in a corner of the trailer. She could move around the trailer far enough to reach the water, the toilet, the table; and her wrists were bound in front of her with plastic cuffs, which gave her limited use of her hands but not enough to do more than relieve herself or get a drink from the bottle Madora refilled every morning.

Madora had been up since just after dawn, busy with chores, and Linda’s slovenly ways made her impatient.

“Willis says you have to move around some.”

“Tell Willis to go fuck himself.”

“You better not let him hear you talk like that. He doesn’t like it when girls swear.”

“What’s he going to do? Lock me up?” Linda barked a laugh and looked back at the movie. It was one of those with shooting and car chases that Madora did not care for.

“Stand up, Linda. I can’t wash you—”

“Don’t put your hands on me!”

“If you’re not clean you might get an infection.”
And it would serve you right,
Madora thought and immediately heard Willis’s voice in her head telling her to be patient.

“You like this part, don’t you?” Linda’s punky face pinched toward the center. “You and your boyfriend—you’re both perverts.”

Madora yanked the plug to the VCR. “Stand up.”

If they had been in school together, Madora would have been afraid of Linda. Her personality swung between extremes of violent and docile, and from day to day, morning to evening, Madora didn’t know which would dominate. She was smart-ass angry now, but by this afternoon she could be placidly agreeable, begging Madora to play gin rummy with her to pass the time.

During the first days in the trailer, more than five months ago, Linda’s tantrums had been fierce. She screamed and sobbed and pleaded to be set free, becoming silent only when she grew too hoarse to speak. Willis had rewarded her improved disposition with a better mattress and a longer leash; eventually he brought a proper bed into the trailer. Over the months he had acknowledged her cooperation with an iPod loaded with music, the VCR, and occasional rides in the car, and he had made the trailer
homey with books and magazines and a circle of carpet. If she turned on him, swearing and casting accusations, he took back the VCR or the iPod. Once he took the bed away and made her sleep on the floor. Rewards, punishments, consequences: with these Willis had trained Linda to be cooperative.

Today was the first bad day in a long time.

“What did you do with my baby?”

“He went to a good home.” The now familiar warmth spread beneath Madora’s rib cage as if her heart were melting. “You’ve got a lot to be grateful for.”

“Omigod, you’re kidding me. You are so fucking stupid. I’m a prisoner, Madora, a goddamn prisoner.” She held up her cuffed wrists as if to prove it. “And you want me to be grateful? Cut me out of these. Tell me where my baby is. You can’t just steal a baby. There’s laws against that.”

“You ought to be thanking God that Willis saved you.”
And thank me too. I’m the one who makes your meals and empties your toilet.
“He gave you a place to live and got a good home for your baby. Without him you’d be dead or a drug addict—”

Linda screamed at her to shut up. She struggled to her feet and stepped toward the table, looked around and grabbed a coffee mug, and with her cuffed hands swept it off the table in Madora’s direction. It broke in half.

Madora said what she knew Willis would: “You break stuff, you won’t get any more for a while.”

Linda screamed more and louder, but at the end of Red
Rock Road there was no one to hear her as Madora closed and padlocked the door.

She returned to the trailer an hour later. Linda was at the table, turning the pages of an old
InStyle
magazine. Her tantrum appeared to have blown over.

“So when do you think he’ll let me go? Now that the baby’s born there’s no reason for me to stay. Right? Madora, are you listening to me?”

“It’s not safe on the streets.”

“He said he’d give me money for a fresh start.”

Madora had heard nothing about money.

“He promised.”

“A girl alone is like a rabbit.”

“What do you mean, a rabbit?”

“I saved one from a hawk.”

“You are weird, Madora.” Linda shook her head. “How can you stand it when he touches you, knowing what a creep he is?”

“You don’t know anything about Willis.”

“I know you’re almost as much a prisoner as me.”

Madora swept the shadowed corners of the trailer.

“When was the last time you ever left this place?”

The dust seeped up from between the trailer’s plank flooring, a never-ending supply. Lizards found their way into the trailer and couldn’t get out.

“What if I want to go back to my folks? He’s gotta let me do that, right?”

“Ask him.”

“I did. Last night. All he’d say was I should relax. He said I’m not ready yet.”

“Willis knows best.”

“Jesus, forget about the rabbit. You sound like a parrot.” Linda leaned forward. Her small mouth twisted, and she held out her hand as if she had something grasped between her fingers, “Madora want a cracker?”

Madora pretended not to hear.

“You’re like a little puppet, aren’t you, Madora, doing everything Willis wants you to?”

She was not a parrot or a puppet. “I was like you. I was wild too.”

“So you know how I feel? Right? You could get me out of here right now, Madora. I’d get as far away from Arroyo as I could and I’d never tell anyone. Cross my heart.”

“Willis saved me, Linda. And he wants to save you too. It doesn’t seem like it now, I know, but—”

“I would absolutely not go to the police.” She tried to cross her heart with her bound hands. “And if I did? What would I tell them? I don’t even know where the hell we are.” Speaking in a dry tone as though disinterested, Linda laid out a reasonable argument. “I never hear any traffic, not trucks or nothing. But there’s gotta be a big road somewhere, so just put a bag on my head and walk me there. I could never find my way back to this place in a million years. Why would I want to?” Tears came into her eyes. “I swear on my baby’s life, Madora. I won’t go to the cops.”

Later, Madora sat on her boulder and Foo nosed around
after ground squirrels. She thought of policemen poking into every corner of the property, using a crowbar to open locked doors and closets, checking for fingerprints and DNA. Madora knew nothing about forensics, but she suspected that she might break her back scrubbing the trailer and still not eliminate evidence that Linda had lived there.

Foo barked and ran a few yards down the trail and then back to sit by Madora, trembling. Barked and ran again. Came back. In the dirt by the turnaround Madora saw a mountain bicycle on its side, its wheels spinning.

“Hey!” she yelled, jumping up. “Hey, I see your bike!”

Madora ran down the trail and when she was near the bike a skinny boy stood up from behind a tumble of boulders a few yards away. He was medium height and his hair was as yellow as margarine.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” She huffed a little from exertion. “You were watching me.”

“It’s a public road. I could lie down and take a nap here if I wanted to.”

“You try and you’ll be sorry.”

The boy crouched and gave Foo’s head a rough pat, pulled his floppy ears, and then ran his hand down the puppy’s muscular shoulders. “This is a great-looking dog. Purebred. See this big chest he’s got?”

“You better be careful,” Madora said. “He’s a pit bull. If I was you I’d get outta here.”

The kid laughed.

“You know a guy drives a big black SUV?”

“What about him?”

“Is this his dog?”

“What’re you asking me for? It’s none of your business.”

“If the dog died, it’d be my business.”

“What do you mean? He’s not gonna die.”

“The guy that drives the SUV? He was at my aunt’s house and left him in the car with all the windows rolled up. He coulda died from heat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re gonna have to be careful how you raise him.” The boy went on talking about Foo as if Madora hadn’t spoken. “I read this thing online about those pit bulls who got rescued from dog fighting? You remember that? Well, some of them had to be put down because they were ruined.”

“He’s mine. No one’s gonna fight him.”

“All I’m saying is, you don’t want to bend this little guy the wrong way.”

“I’m not going to bend him at all.”

“He sure is sweet.” Foo lay on his back with his four short legs in the air, wriggling with pleasure as the boy scratched his stomach. “I’ll buy him from you.”

Madora stared at him, incredulous. “Money?”

“Sure. How much do you want for him?”

She had no idea how to respond. She did not want to sell Foo, but she had never considered that he might be worth something to anyone but her.

“Get out of here. He’s my dog. Come here, Foo.” The dog
jumped up obediently, came to her, and sat on her foot. “See? He does what I tell him. You’re lucky I don’t sic him on you.”

The boy looked surprised. For the first time he seemed to understand that Madora was trying to frighten him away. He paused a minute as if taking in details of the situation. He still did not appear to be afraid.

“Can I have a drink of water first?”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“I ditched. I ditch every day. I wanted to see whose dog this is.” Foo walked over and licked his face.

Madora felt a little jealous.

“What’s his name?”

“Foo.”

“Cool name. Like phooey.” The boy roughed Foo’s head. “Phooey Louie.”

Madora remembered Linda screaming in the trailer only a few hours earlier.

“You shouldn’t be hangin’ around here. Folks up the canyon like being private.”

“Can’t I have a drink?”

“No.”

“Just outta your hose. I don’t want to go in your house or anything.”

He looked at the house and Madora saw it as it was. In places the coat of green paint Willis had put down years earlier had weathered through to the gray boards and the trim that had been so crisp and neat when fresh had peeled under the fierce sun.

“I don’t want to steal anything.”

BOOK: Little Girl Gone
13.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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