“Why do you want Mistie in here?” asked the teacher.
“I’ll show you when I’m good and ready. Kid, now!”
“Mistie, don’t come in!” said the teacher.
Tony snatched the knife and drew an inch-long slice across the teacher’s stomach. The skin parted smartly. Tony’s seventh grade art teacher Ms. Black once said Tony could even draw a straight line; well, this one was pretty damn straight. The teacher gasped but didn’t cry out. Blood welled, then spilled down to the woman’s crotch in the wake of the sheen of shower water. There may have even been tears welling in the woman’s eyes, but tears and shower water pretty much matched.
“Kid! In here now!” shouted Tony.
“Mistie, no!” said the teacher.
Tony cut her again, a straight line under the first. A pair of red lips now, drooling. “Shut up, bitch. Mistie!”
The woman sounded like a snake now, hissing. “No, Mistie!”
“What’s wrong with you?” snarled Tony. “What’s fucked up your brain while I was gone?”
The teacher tipped her head slowly. “Truth?”
“What?”
“Or dare?”
“Truth? I’m gonna show you truth!” Tony knocked down the toilet lid and sat on it, leaned back and opened her legs. Like those fuckers did, goddamn them, I’d kill ‘em, fuckin’ kill ‘em! “Wanna see some truth? Watch me!”
Tony turned the knife about, and jammed the handle end into her vagina. Her insides exploded, hot and angry. She scraped with the rough steel against the soft tissue walls, digging, tearing to clean away all traces of the rape. Electrical agony inside, sending her heels into the wet floor and her spine arching against the porcelain toilet lid. Dig it out! Dig it out!
Tony turned the knife handle to get a better angle. She dug the space of her womb, her sex, her hands realizing now the urgency of the actions and refusing to let her instincts against destruction to stop them. “I’ll never be a mother!” she snarled, spittle flying. “I never want nothin’ to go here, nothin’ to grow here, fuck it all, it’s weak, it stinks! That’s the truth!”
In the corner of her vision, the teacher staring, her chin resting on the inside of her raised forearm. The stomach streaked red now like the lipstick on Whitey’s sweaty face.
She dug. “Mothers are worthless! My fucking Mam on her sofa, drinking bug-sprayed beer ‘cause she’s too lazy to get her own! Baby Doll’s mom, who hasn’t even put out a report her daughter is missing! Her real mother’s the T.V., you know that? The damn television, you see how she loves that thing? And you, a fucking teacher and mother, you think that’s something great, huh?”
The fireworks in her abdomen, red-hot, white-hot, blue-hot, like moonlight setting fire throughout the gulf of her bones.
“You say you got a kid, a what, daughter, son? Neither, both? What?”
Tears on her face now. Fuck tears, I hate tears, pussy tears! I don’t cry!
“Fuck you, fuck me, fuck ‘em all!”
The knife fell from her hand, clattered on the tile. Tony folded up and over herself, grabbing behind her knees and pushing against the pain. Breathing through locked jaws, she said, “Done now. Done.” Blood was warm between her thighs, black-red, rivulets carving down her legs in patterns Ms. Black would have thought expressive.
The bathroom tilted, and Tony went with it. Ride it out, ride it, squeeze it out, let it run.
Cramps, then, hard and insistent, nothing like the cramps she had with her period. She growled, hating the cramps, hating what she had there inside her, hoping it was cleaned out enough now to leave her the hell alone.
The teacher, “What happened while you were gone?”
“Fuck you.”
“Somebody pissed you off, didn’t they? What a constructive way to deal with your anger. I’m impressed.”
“Fuck you!”
Tony sat until the cramps subsided, and the blood had slowed and stopped. Lifting her head from her knees, the room spun, leveled out. She took a breath, and another.
In the bedroom, I Love Lucy had begun. And Lucy, as Tony could have predicted, was whining.
42
It took the whole of I Love Lucy and half of Gomer Pyle before the girl forced herself up from the toilet and pulled her jeans back on. She was hurt. She was bleeding.
Big deal. Kate was hurt and bleeding, too, though hers had nearly stopped.
And all Kate could think was Now, what, bitch?
The girl stumbled three times, trying to put her second leg into the jeans. She leaned against the wall, sucking air through her teeth, her short dark hair glistening with sweat.
Fall against the toilet lid. Crack your skull open. That’ll do it! Bash your own brains out, come on.
With the fourth attempt the leg went in. Unrolling the toilet paper, she tore off a huge wad and jammed it down into her pants crotch, then hobbled out to the bedroom at a tilt. There was the sound of the channel being changed to the evening news.
Bitch.
The girl came back into the bathroom, spit blood into the toilet.
Yeah, now what? Adrenaline or something else with sharp, biting edges was coursing her blood. Her eyes fluttered shut, then open. The bathroom reeled when they were closed, spun when they were open. Not a hell of a big choice there. It felt as if someone had sanded the enamel off the tips of her teeth. She wanted to bite something.
The girl cut the Kate’s towel restraints loose with her knife, then she brought the knife came close to Kate’s eyes. Kate kept her mouth shut though her teeth were on edge, ready to strike.
“Get dressed,” said the girl. “Then come out.”
Kate said nothing. She worked the soaked terry cloth off her wrists and massaged them. Her arm muscles jumped. Her shoulders were stiff and did not come down easily. They complained as she made them obey.
She waited until the girl left before stepping out of the tub. Her clothes, scattered near the trashcan, were soaked. Fuck it, she just couldn’t keep dry clothes on this trip. She grabbed a bath towel instead, and wrapped herself in it, folding it across her chest and tucking the edge securely. She draped the wet clothes over the shower rod. There was nothing in the bathroom she could put into her jeans pocket to use to kill the girl. Soap, a tiny bottle of shampoo and conditioner. A little shower cap, packaged in a little shiny box. A fresh shiver coursed her body.
That’s all right, I’ll find something soon. She was caught in a brief and vicious wave of shivers and thought, I’ll never be warm again. I’ll stay cold.
But that’s okay. It’s good to be cold.
The little bitch.
She went into the bedroom.
The girl was standing at a tilt near the door, her fingers clutching the edge of the blue drape. She was likely cramping. Kate wondered how damaged she was. She hoped it was a lot. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to go any farther. “Where are your fucking clothes?” the girl said.
“Wet.”
“Sit down.”
Kate sat beside Mistie. Mistie was tied with pillowcases at her wrists and ankles. The child stared at the blank television screen as if by sheer will she could bring the show back on. The bedspread was crumpled where the girl had flopped back and forth. One pillowcase-less pillow was on the floor.