“Ready to go?” Liam asks as he does a final inspection of the bathroom.
“Yes.” I watch him, holding my breath. No matter how long we’ve worked together, this part makes me nervous.
I always want to do my best.
He claps me on the back. “Looks good. Let’s get out of here, I’m starved.”
Relief swamps me, and I realize how hungry I am.
Things are different. I’ve felt it change over the last several weeks.
He’s distracted. Lost in thought. Stressed. Spends a lot of time on the computer. Like right now.
I sit in my corner and watch. The computer is off-limits for me. Password protected. But occasionally he leaves without closing the lid and my curiosity gets the better of me so I look. I never did figure out how to get past the password, but I’ll watch him type and scroll for hours, jealous of all the information to read. I almost threw up the first time I touched the keyboard, terrified it was a trap.
He likes to set traps for me.
The cupboards with the food are locked, but he can’t lock the refrigerator. Instead, he ordered me not to touch anything.
The first time I snuck some of the milk, he left me in the box for three days. I denied it, but he said he had been watching. I knew that wasn’t possible. He’d been away from the property. The next time he left, I examined the refrigerator door and saw a half-inch-long hair stuck in the closed door.
It took me weeks to risk opening the door. During that time, I saw the hair was always replaced. But often in a different spot. So I opened the door, drank some milk, added water to the milk carton in case he’d marked the level, and replaced the tiny hair.
I was nauseated all night, expecting him to accuse me of opening the fridge. I never know what the punishments will entail. Sometimes he takes away all my clothes. Sometimes he ties me to a tree for a day or two without food. I always want more food than he gives me. He makes fun of my bony legs and ribs, then says my body doesn’t require much food since I’m so thin. He says he can’t give me more because I’ll get fat.
No one wants to be fat.
I only got to wear shoes when I started accompanying him on the electrical jobs. At home he knows I can’t escape into the woods very far without shoes. They are locked in the cupboards with the food. I always walk carefully outside. The area around the house is covered with small sharp rocks and tree roots.
Most of the time he just gives me chores for punishment. Cleaning. Weeding. Chopping wood. We don’t have a fireplace; he sells the wood. He doesn’t let me wear clothes for the chores. He says I’ll get them dirty or make them stink. One time I hit my foot with the axe. I knew I should have stopped before that. I was tired and not seeing straight. I remember staring as blood gushed from my foot. The next thing I knew he was standing over me. I was flat on my back and soaking wet. He’d dumped a bucket of water on me to wake me up and to wash the foot. He yelled at me for being a stupid idiot, and that I deserved the injury for being careless. I couldn’t walk for a few days, and he was angry, saying I made extra work for him. He ripped up one of my shirts to wrap the foot and pointed out that now I only had one shirt left, so I best take good care of it.
My work shirt doesn’t count. I only get to wear it for jobs.
It’s not really a house that we live in. He once said it had been a portable office at a jobsite. The one bedroom is his. I sleep under the table when he doesn’t put me in the box. I feel very lucky on the nights I get to sleep inside. I don’t worry about cold or bugs. Or that he might forget me.
I wonder what would happen if he dies while I’m in the box.
Once I beat my hands bloody inside the box when that thought occurred. I had to get out. I couldn’t breathe. I shook and screamed to get out.
No one came.
Books are my rewards. Sometimes he visits the library and checks out books. The ones he gets for me are always kid books, but I read them over and over. Sometimes there are longer ones with actual chapters and the characters go on adventures. He likes super-thick books for himself. Books about the lives of people who lived long ago or mystery books with police and crimes.
I know this because I read all his books too. I have a spot under the table where I can hide one to read at night. He always borrows many books at a time, so he doesn’t notice when I take one from the bottom of the stack. I know I’m risking a beating, but I can’t stop.
Several months ago I stopped swallowing my pills. He’s always told me I’d die without them. When I stopped them before, I got very sick. And as soon as I took them again, I got better. So I believed him. Every night he gives me the pill and then asks me to open my mouth and stick out my tongue, so he can see that I swallowed it.