When she called him a crazy son of a bitch, a fucking coward, he set aside his own bowl of stew. His coiled fist broke her nose before he left her weeping in her own blood.
The first time he raped her she fought like a mad thing. Though he beat and choked the fight out of her, she fought, screamed, begged against every rape, day after day until the days blurred together.
One of those days he brought her a slice of fried ham cut up into bite-size pieces, a heap of mashed potatoes with red gravy, a scoop of mushy peas, and a biscuit. He even provided a red checkered napkin folded into a triangle, shocking her speechless.
“It’s our Christmas dinner,” he told her as he settled to eat his own meal on the steps. “I want to see you eat with appreciation what I went to some trouble to make.”
“Christmas.” Everything inside her flooded and trembled. “It’s Christmas?”
“I don’t hold with all that gift-giving nonsense or the fancy trees and whatnot. It’s a day to celebrate Jesus’ birth. So a good meal’s enough for that. You eat.”
“It’s Christmas. Please, please, God, please, let me go. I want to go home. I want my ma. I want—”
“You shut your mouth on your wants.” He snapped it out and her head jerked back as if from a blow. “I get up from here before I finish this meal, you’ll be sorry. You mind me and eat what I give you.”
She used her spoon, managing to shovel up some ham and chew it even though her jaw still ached from the beating he’d given her a few days before.
“I’m so much trouble to you.” Over a month, she thought. She’d been in this hole in the ground with this maniac over a month. “Wouldn’t you rather have someone—a helpmate like the Bible says—who could take care of you? Cook for you?”
“You’ll learn,” he said, eating with a deceptive calm and patience she’d already learned to fear.
“But … I can cook. I’m a pretty good cook. If you let me go upstairs, I could cook for you.”
“Something wrong with that meal you’re eating?”
“Oh, no.” She ate some of the gluey potatoes. “I can tell you went to a lot of trouble to make it. But I could take on that trouble, do the cooking and cleaning, be a real helpmate.”
“I look stupid to you, Esther?”
She’d stopped shouting her name was Alice weeks before.
“No, Sir! Of course not.”
“You think I’m so stupid, so weak to the seduction of a woman, I don’t know you’d try to take off if you go up those stairs?”
His mouth twisted. His eyes went to that terrible dark.
“Maybe you’d try shoving a kitchen knife in my gullet first.”
“I’d never—”
“Shut your lying mouth. I’m not going to punish you as you deserve for saying I’m stupid because it’s the birth of Baby Jesus. Don’t try my patience on that.”
When she subsided and ate in silence, he nodded. “You’ll learn. And when I deem you’ve learned enough and good enough, I might let you upstairs. But for now you got all you need down here.”
“Could I ask you for something, please?”
“You can ask. Don’t mean you’ll get.”
“If I could have the gloves and another pair of the socks that were in my pack. It’s just my hands and feet get cold. I’m afraid I’ll get sick. If I caught a chill, I’d be more trouble to you than I already am.”
He gave her a long, silent study. “I might consider that.”
“Thank you.” The words wanted to stick in her throat like the food, but she forced them out. “Thank you, Sir.”
“I might consider it,” he repeated, “if you show me the proper respect. Get on your feet.”
She set the paper plate on the table by the bed, rose.
“You take off your clothes and lie down on that bed I gave you. I’m going to take what’s mine by right, and this time you don’t fight me.”
She thought of the chilblains on her hands and feet, the constant cold. He’d rape her regardless. What point was there getting beat up on top of it?
She took off her sweatshirt, the shirt she wore under it. Her heart was too dry for tears now as she took off the socks she’d all but worn out from pacing the concrete floor. She tugged her jeans down, stepped out of the left leg, shoved the rest down to the where the shackle clamped her ankle.
She lay down on the cot, waited for him to strip, waited for him to lay his weight on her, to shove himself inside her, to pant and grunt, grunt and pant.
She thought that was the moment that broke her, when she submitted to rape for a pair of socks.
But when she thought back on that night, after she knew the year had turned, as she bent over the toilet sick and dizzy every morning for a full week, she knew it hadn’t been that moment.
Her breaking point was the moment she knew she carried his child.
She feared telling him; feared not telling him. She thought of suicide, for surely that was the most humane choice for herself and what he’d planted in her.
But she lacked the spine and the means.
Maybe he’d do it for her, Alice thought as she huddled on the cot. When he found out she was pregnant, he’d just beat her to death. And it would be over.
She thought of her mother, her sister, her grandparents, her uncles and aunts and cousins. She thought of the ranch, how it would look like a postcard in the January snow.
They wouldn’t look for her, she reminded herself. She’d locked that door herself, burned that bridge, cut that line.
And they’d never find her in this rat hole.
She wished she could tell them she was sorry she’d lit out the way she had. So angry, so full of herself that she hadn’t cared about how they’d feel. Hadn’t believed they’d care.
She wished she could tell them she’d been coming home.
When she heard the door open, heard the boot steps, she shuddered. Not in fear as much as resignation.
“Get your lazy ass out of that bed and eat.”
“I’m sick.”
“You’ll be more’n sick you don’t do as I say.”
“I need a doctor.”
He grabbed her by the hair, yanked her up. Screaming, she covered her face. “Please, please. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.”
The grip on her hair tightened as he jerked her face up. “Don’t you try any of your whore tricks on me.”
“I’m pregnant.” She said it calmly now, sure she was facing death. Struggling to be ready for it. “I’ve been sick every morning for six straight days. I haven’t had my period since right after you brought me here. I missed in December, now I’m coming up on when I’m due for January. I lost track of the time until you said it was Christmas. I’m pregnant.”
When he released her hair, she sank back down on the bed.
“Then I’m right pleased.”
“You—what?”
“Something wrong with your hearing, Esther? I’m pleased.”
She stared at him, then just shut her eyes. “You wanted to get me pregnant.”
“We are to go forth and multiply. It’s your purpose on this earth to bear children.”