“I’m texting them. They can take their time. I wanted out of there, too.”
Rainy nodded. The cab was on a break, so Mac called an Uber, which arrived in less than two minutes. She caught a glimpse of the shop and the three of them standing inside as they drove past. Braithe was sitting in the chair again. Rainy strained her neck to see, but then they were gone as the car made a turn.
The rest of the group was back in the room just past three, tossed on their beds in loose-limbed, sweaty heaps. Rainy heard someone throwing up sometime during the early hours. She covered her ears with the pillow and drifted back to sleep, her head wobbly like the yolk of an egg.
She woke up at eight a.m. to a missed-call notification. Swearing, she tried calling the number back, but was met with a weird dial tone. She was about to text Grant when a chime told her that she had a message. Lying on her back, Rainy pressed the phone to her ear, her heart beating furiously at the sound of Grant’s voice. He sounded upbeat, but she could hear the exhaustion there, too. Stephen would tell him to rally, she thought, smiling, and he would. He was funny when he was tired, saying everything that came to his mind. She grabbed on to the sound of his voice, listening as he told her that they’d arrived safely and the day had gone amazingly well. She edged her way upright against the headboard and snaked her arm to the nightstand for the bottle of water. Where was her aspirin? Grant’s message wound down with, “I’ll try to call if I get a few minutes after lunch.” She had no idea what time that meant. She held the phone against her ear long after the message ended, feeling stupidly needy. Love was exhausting. It felt like a sore muscle…or a healing wound.
15
Then
Isolation wasn’t enough of a punishment for Taured: a bed, a blanket, food…those were all comforts of the flesh. To cultivate the change he wanted in a person, he needed them humiliated and afraid.
Bob and Marshall—trailed by Sara’s mother, Ama—led her into the room with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. The room smelled of urine and bleach and looked as bleak and yellowed as an old toilet seat. In the center of the room was a metal stool bolted to the floor. She sat down because she knew she was supposed to. Bob got on his knees to strap her ankles to the chair, avoiding eye contact even as she tried to catch his eye.
“Bob. My mama?” she pleaded, but his only response was a grunt as he stood up, work done, prisoner shackled.
A minute later, they both left, leaving her with Ama. She was a serious woman, a woman of conviction and discipline, as Taured so often praised her. Ama did not smile or meet Summer’s eyes. All the warmth from their previous encounters, like when Summer had eaten breakfast with them in the cafeteria, was gone. Ama stripped her of the blanket, leaving her naked on the stool.
She wanted to beg for the blanket, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
“Ama…” she said before the woman could leave. Her back was to the door, but she craned her neck all the way around to see the woman. Ama had stopped, but hadn’t turned around.
“Has he been in to see my mother?”
How many seconds ticked by as she waited for Ama’s response?
“No.”
And then she heard the door click shut, the lock grate into place. No one could hear her screams of protest.
She drifted in and out of sleep the first twenty-four hours, exhausted and in pain. When they let her out, there would be a celebration to welcome the renewed version of herself back into the group. She held on to that, tried to think of the party, the bacon sandwiches that sat on red-and-white paper, the table piled with pink frosted cakes and cookies, the way everyone in the compound would clap and smile as she walked into the room as she’d once clapped for others.
She’d known nothing then. She couldn’t believe she’d helped celebrate something so awful. After the feast, the women would take her to the communal bathroom, which would smell like eucalyptus and be filled with hot steam, and they’d let her shower for as long she liked. She’d be clean and have a full belly, and they’d put her in a white dress, brush her hair and then lead her to the chapel, humming in the creepy way they did sometimes, but it would be okay—because it was over.
She’d assisted at an “after” ceremony when she was thirteen: her mother’s. But all she’d seen of it was the celebration; she had no idea what her mother had gone through, the hours she’d spent behind the doors where she herself now sat imprisoned. Why hadn’t her mother told her? She’d let her daughter believe these things were good, let Taured tell her that they were. Summer screamed as loud as she could, straining against the ties that bound her; she screamed so loudly that her throat felt like it was on fire.