The Girl Before (26 page)

I cough and wave the smoke away from my face. My skin feels dirty after only a few minutes in here. Glen clutches my hand and sends me a warning look. I try to breathe through my mouth, though that is not much better. The air is thick and rancid, and not only with smoke.

Papa leads the way down the hall. Some rooms have a red circle by them. Others are green. Papa knocks and opens the door to one of the green rooms.

“Kara?” Papa calls into the room. We follow him inside. The room is small, a double bed taking up most of the space. There is a tiny closet and a washbasin. Another door leads into a bathroom barely large enough for a toilet and a shower. A woman sits up in the bed, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Glen?” she asks, squinting. A smile works its way across her face.
“Ahh, Senior
and
Junior. Must be my lucky . . .” She trails off as she sees me. “And you are?”

“This is my daughter-in-law, Clara,” Papa says, gesturing toward me. “Glen's wife.”

Kara's lip curls. “Oh yes. The wife. Nice to meet you.”

“Clara,” Papa says. “Glen and I need to talk to Sonny for a moment. Why don't you stick around here while we take care of business?”

This trip is far less interesting than I had hoped. Still, with Papa and Glen leaving, maybe I can ask Kara some questions.

The men leave, and Kara crawls out of bed. She is completely nude and not ashamed. My face heats, and she grins. “Amazing. Girls around here don't blush. Do my boobs bother you?”

I don't answer, but she dons a robe anyway. I search for words. I feel awkward, but Kara is the picture of ease, as if she always has strange people in her room. And she does, I realize with a start. In fact, this is probably less weird, because I'm not trying to have sex with her.

“How long have you and Glen been married?” Kara asks, startling me.

“Um, a few months,” I say.

“How sweet.”

“How long have you been here?” I estimate her age to be about twenty-five.

“I came when I was sixteen,” she replies. “So about three years.”

My mouth drops open. “You're nineteen?” I ask before I can stop myself.

Kara is in the middle of lighting a cigarette, and stops to look at me. “Yeah. I guess. Why?”

I shake my head. “No reason. I thought you were at least . . . twenty.” I scramble to cover up my mistake.

Kara laughs. “Let's be real here, Clara. I look like shit. This job ages you pretty quick.”

“Then why do you do it?”

She stares at me in disbelief. “It's not like I chose it, bitch.”

I have offended her. I hold up my hands. “I'm sorry,” I say, and rack my brain for a new topic. There is something I want to know, but I am afraid to ask. Kara is watching me with a strange look on her face, so I plunge forward.

“Do you know a girl named Macy?” I ask. If Kara has been here for three years, she should know her. Maybe we can sneak over to her room and say hello.

Kara's face softens. “Yeah, I knew her.”

Wait. “You
knew
her? Did she leave?”

“She a friend of yours?”

“My best friend,” I say. “Until she messed up and got sent here. I haven't seen her since my wedding.”

A muscle ticks in Kara's jaw, and she takes a deep drag of her cigarette. “Shit, I hate to be the one who has to let you know.”

“Let me know what?”

Kara bites her lip, as if deciding how to word her response. “She . . . she ain't here no more. She . . . ahh . . . she got shipped outta here a couple months ago. Don't know where.”

My hand flies to my mouth. Macy is gone? How could that be? How could Glen have kept that from me? Because surely he knew. He is his dad's right-hand man now. He knows everything that goes on. A girl cannot be moved without his finding out.

“I'm sorry,” Kara says again. “She was real nice. Helped me out when I got in a bad spot.”

My hands are shaking, and I sit down on the edge of Kara's bed, forgetting my aversion to touching anything in this godforsaken building. The building Macy lived in for two years, just minutes from where I have been living my dream. It feels so empty now that I know she's not here. That the tenuous connection I felt has been leading to nothing
for months. Two months ago was just after the wedding. Did they send her away because she talked to me? Because I pressed for information? I feel myself losing it and I cannot get control. I have worked so hard on keeping myself composed, but knowing she is gone, knowing that dear piece of my childhood has been swept away, proves too much.

I am sobbing when Glen rushes back into the room. I hear him yelling, and I hear a smack and a thud as Kara falls to the ground under Papa's hand.

“Take her out the back door,” Papa hisses, and Glen sweeps me into his arms, putting a hand over my mouth to muffle the sobs.

When we are back in the car, Glen holds me in his lap, rocking me and whispering words of comfort. I know I will pay for this breakdown later, but for now, Glen cares for me and lets me cry. As I come down from my loss of control, I realize that while I have lost Macy, I have not lost all of my childhood. Glen is still here. Glen is my tether, keeping my heart and my soul close to his own.

Pam's words echo through my head as I stare at the cracked floor of my room. Connor brought me a letter from Passion this morning, but I have not read it. I clutch it to my chest, terrified that I will open it to find the same condemning words inside that have been bouncing through my skull since the last group. One of these days Passion is going to wake up, too, and realize that I could have saved her and chose not to.

Is she coming to the same realizations I have been? I always thought I was happy. I was living my dream with Glen and our daughters. And our daughters were happy, too. For the most part. Of course, the adjustment to living with us was always a little difficult, but I
loved each of them, and I believe they came to love me as well. Passion and I were especially close. She reminds me of Macy in so many ways, a little wild, unafraid, but also of myself, eager to please, quick to help. Is it possible that I was so caught up in trying to please Glen, trying to please Mama and Papa, even trying to please the numerous clients who were in and out of our lives in a flash, that I missed something? Missed that it wasn't right, that the girls weren't okay?

A tear rolls down my cheek. What kind of mother sells her daughters? It was how I'd always lived, how I believed I came to live with Mama and Papa. But when I look back now, there is a dark shadow over my entire life, as far back as I can remember. Playing with the girls, while Glen plotted to sell them to whoever gave him the best offer. I am starting to wonder if he ever cared about them the way he claimed. His eyes certainly never lit up the way they did when I told him about Nut.

When I really think about it, there were times when I knew things weren't right. When things felt a little off. An itch I couldn't quite scratch. But I trusted Glen more than I trusted myself. Each time I spoke up, talked back, I was taught that my thoughts and opinions were wrong, and I stopped believing any doubts that popped into my head.

Dr. Mulligan claims my family still wants to meet me. We talked about some of the things she could share with them, so they know the basics, but I'm not sure they fully understand. If they did, they wouldn't want to meet me. They wouldn't want me to taint their perfect lives. I imagine them living in sunshine, happy, smiling like in the pictures I was shown. I will bring nothing but darkness and heartache into their world.

I flop onto my back, letter still held over my heart, the springs on the bed squeaking in protest at the sudden movement. My family will be better off if we do not meet. I don't want them to know what I've done. It will be better if they just move on, and I can start fresh with my precious Nut. And maybe when Glen gets out, he can start fresh,
too. We can find a house far away, where no one knows us, and there is no “business.” Just us. Together. As we were always meant to be.

My daydreams lull me into a light sleep, and I wake when I hear the door creak open. I roll my head to the side to peek at the intruder.

“You have a visitor, Clara,” Jay says, poking his head into the room.

I groan. I don't think I have the patience to deal with Mama today. “Tell her I'm sick,” I say, and it's not entirely untrue. I have felt ill since Pam lobbed her verbal assault.

“Connor says you need to go.”

“Connor says,” I mimic, knowing I'm being difficult, but finding it hard to care. With a dramatic sigh, I heave myself into a sitting position. “Fine. Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”

Jay frowns, and I feel a small stab of guilt. He has been nothing but kind to me and doesn't deserve my mocking, but he's the only available target at the moment, and it feels good to release my anger at someone. I am being selfish again. Perhaps it's just who I am. Selfish.

“Let's get this over with,” I say, standing to follow Jay down the drab hallway to the visitor room. I brace myself, preparing to put on a happy face for Mama. I don't know how I am supposed to react to her now, so I decide to pretend nothing has changed.

Jay opens the door to the visitor room and I freeze. Tori leans on one of the tables, studying her nails. She looks up when Jay clears his throat. “You have fifteen minutes,” he says, pulling the door shut behind him.

Tori smiles and nods toward a table. “Care to sit?”

My feet carry me forward before my mind can catch up with the action. None of the girls from the group have visited me before. No one even really mentions the fact that I am being held here, that when the group disperses at the end of each hour, I head back into protective custody while they all head to their homes, their friends and family. I flush in embarrassment that Tori is seeing me like this, in this place, even though we are in the same building where we normally meet.

“How are you, Clara?” Tori asks when I finally slide into the chair across from her.

“Okay.”

Her brow wrinkles. “Let me try that again. How are you
really
?”

She's beginning to sound like Dr. Mulligan. “Do you really care?” I can hear the bitterness in my voice, again misdirected.

Leaning back in her chair, Tori crosses her arms. “Of course I care. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. I had to get special permission from that agent and your therapist. Would someone who doesn't care go to all that trouble?”

I cross my arms over my chest, mimicking her position, and study her. Her face remains open, honest, and I see a glimmer of concern in her eyes. She really is here to see how I'm doing. Something inside me cracks.

“Everyone hates me, don't they?” I place my elbows on the table and rest my face in my hands. “You're here to ask me not to return to the group? It's okay. I won't be back.”

“Oh, Clara.” Tori sighs. “That would be a mistake, not to come back. Don't let Pam's outburst keep you away.”

“She's right though, isn't she?” I don't know if Tori can understand my mumbling through my fingers. “I've done some terrible things.”

Cool palms grasp my wrists, pulling my hands away from my face. “Clara, look at me.” Tori's voice is firm, sharper than I have ever heard her speak. “Self-pity will get you nowhere. Blaming yourself for things you didn't do will get you nowhere. So snap the hell out of it and talk to me.”

I'm shocked. Tori is always so gentle and affirming in group. She has always let me take my time in things, but now she is demanding and almost harsh. And it's just what I need. This sort of interaction is familiar. I know how to respond to commands. I pull my hands away and sit up straighter in my chair.

“What do you want me to say?” I ask. “I look back at the last seventeen years and all the beautiful memories I thought I had are shadowed by what-ifs. What if I hadn't been taken? What if I had listened to that part of me that wondered if what we were doing was right?” My fingernails dig into my palms. “There was always a part of me that wondered. Not until later. And I told myself it was fine, that Glen was good and kind, and that he loved the girls as much as I did, so he wouldn't put them in a bad situation.”

Tori listens, her gaze never wavering from mine, steady and calm.

“As for his other . . . businesses, I always believed the women wanted to be there, or that they had done something that made them deserve that kind of life. Even when I lost my best friend . . . even when she was forced into that life, I still believed it was because she had committed an act awful enough to deserve it.”

The tears come. They drip down my cheeks and onto the table, and I make no move to wipe them away. Tori says nothing until the streams slow, and I use my shirt sleeve to dab my eyes.

“Why did you decide to share your story?” Tori asks at last.

I shrug. “Dr. Mulligan said I needed to. I wanted to cooperate so I can get out of here.”

“Bullshit.”

My eyes fly to hers, startled. “What?”

“You heard me. That answer is bullshit. You forget that I've been in your place. Obviously not exactly, but I had no intention of being part of a therapy group or talking to anyone about anything when I got out. I hated the word ‘victim.' But what I found out was that the best way to stop being called a victim was to stop acting like one and become a survivor instead. So, Clara, again, why did you want to share your story?”

The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. “I wanted
to know if everyone would think I was terrible. I wanted to know if my family, the one that I was born into, would think less of me if they found out what I did. I wanted someone to tell me, one way or the other, if I am a bad person.” I am breathing hard, my heart thumping with the exhilaration of being so honest with someone, with putting a name to all those feelings that I've been holding in.