I lean forward, getting as close to their faces as I can. Watching Uncle Ty over the years has taught me a lot about how to rip someone apart with only your eyes. Don’t need to be in control to make them feel powerless. I switch my eyes between them, keep my lips nice and curled up, don’t let the remaining shiver from wet braids and those metal windows show anywhere but my hands, which are hidden beneath the table, forming claw marks all over my skin.
“And what story would that be?”
Jones and Harrison look at each other for the first time. His lips open. Hers seem to press even tighter together. He turns away first, lets his tongue roll just like I thought he would. He really isn’t too good at this bad-cop thing.
“We have reports of a possible incident involving you and some of our force.” I watch his tongue move up and down as he speaks, playing tag with the roof of his mouth.
I lean even closer to him so my face eclipses his vision. “Incident?”
“Involving possible sexual exploitation.”
Jones’s chair screeches backward and breaks the severity of the air between Harrison and me.
It all makes sense then. They brought the woman cop in to keep appearances up when they interviewed the girl they would later need to bury in some report.
Jones is pacing now, looking for a window in a windowless room. She spins back to me and her lips have gone wild, squirming in every direction. “All we need is you to tell us about how you sell yourself to men. One day maybe a man ran into you, you told him you were a couple years older, had sex, he found out later about your profession, your age. Maybe he didn’t know because you lied to him, like you always do, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but this some bullshit.” I claw so deep into my wrist, blood seeps out.
She keeps on talking, her voice receding into its natural groove. The way she speaks is rhythmic, penetrating every cavity of my body, and I almost feel like she won’t ever stop. Harrison’s face has faded into stone and I don’t know if he’s listening or not, but she is the one who fills up the room.
“Tell me.” She stops to breathe for a moment.
I don’t know what is worse: telling her what she wants to hear, even though I know it’s a crime, that they could lock me up if they wanted; or denying, which could make them even angrier, risk things I don’t even know I’m risking.
My upper lip is twitching now, like it can’t decide how to speak. “Won’t tell you shit.”
It begins again, a stampede of her voice and story after story and her words erupt in my head seconds later like they have been there for decades and pretty soon my water cup is empty and Harrison has left the room and Jones’s lips have cracked open but they don’t stop writhing and it has been hours since this metal building swallowed me.
She sits down on the edge of the table this time and I bring my hands out from under it to rest them on the cool metal. They are adorned in blood and crescent marks from where my nails have reminded me I’m still breathing.
“I hear you’ve got a cake at home. Bet you’re hungry.” Her tongue whips out her mouth so quick I almost miss it. “Tell me and I’ll walk you out.”
I can’t feel my mouth anymore. It’s gone numb with the rest of me and maybe my body has dried and maybe I’m still swimming and maybe I drowned in that shit pool. The only thing I’m sure of is that this woman’s smell has suffocated every inch of the air and I gotta get out of here. I speak. Don’t hear none of it, but I say what she says, repeat it, let it flood out like they say the truth does. Truth like water. Truth looks a whole lot different once the metal closes in.
Part of me is surprised when Jones opens the door for me and Harrison is standing outside the room, when she leaves and he takes me back to the elevator. We get off in the lobby and a woman in a purple suit is waiting. She stares at me longer than she should and then looks at Harrison. He mumbles a hello and glides past her. I follow him, her eyes still lingering on us all the way out the building.
On the short walk from the exit to the waiting police car, I hear the sound of megaphones, drums, and chants. A few blocks down the road, hundreds if not thousands of people march toward the building, their voices a thick chorus, a call-and-response with Freddie Gray’s name sharp in the center, and I watch Harrison’s head lower as we reach the car. I climb in the back and look out the window. I wonder if they’ll ever chant about the women too, and not just the ones murdered, but the particular brutality of a gun barrel to a head. The women with no edges laid, with matted hair and drooping eyes and no one filming to say it happened, only a mouth and some scars.