5

“Piggy, piggy, you’re a pig, pig, pig.” Ms. Lloyd snorted in Uma’s face, proving yet again that she wasn’t so much an old hag as a twelve-year-old. Especially when it came to playing games. The Black Widow did not like to lose.

“Why am I only a pig when I’m winning?” Uma asked.

“Because I’m your boss.” The woman managed to sound simultaneously reasonable and demented. “When I win, you’re just a dumb-ass.”

Uma threw down her last card, again victorious.

“Oh hell. Another hundred for me.”

Playing for stakes had been Ms. Lloyd’s idea, but playing for time off was Uma’s. “That’s two half days off,” she said as nonchalantly as she could. Best not to get her boss worked up. The woman was a sore, sore loser, and Uma really needed time away if she ever wanted to get inside that clinic—her whole reason for being here.

“Oh, no, you little cheater. I want a rematch.” The woman was insatiable. It made sense. What the hell else did she have to look forward to? They played again and again, but Uma still finished a couple days up. Ms. Lloyd was not happy.

After lunch, Uma waited until the older woman had settled in front of the TV before springing it on her. “Can I get you anything from town?”

“You’re not going anywhere, missy.”

“If you’ll recall, I earned a full day away from here.”

“You can’t just—”

“I’m cashing in a half day as of right now.”

“You can’t go. The grout needs cleaning.”

“The grout? Are you kidding me?”

“Don’t sass me, missy. That tub’s been—”

“The grout’ll hold another twenty-four hours, Ms. Lloyd. I’m going.”

“No, you—”

“Care to join me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Irma. What would I do out there?” Indeed. What could a person possibly need outside these four walls? “Well, just know, if you’re too late, you’re not getting in here.”

“What’s too late?”

“This door doesn’t open after dark. Ever.”

A long look confirmed that Ms. Lloyd was serious.

Great, she thought while driving to the skin clinic. As if this outing weren’t nerve-wracking enough, she had the threat of being locked out hanging over her head.

When she entered Clear Skin Blackwood, the waiting room was empty. It was comfortable, an oasis done in tones of blue and green. Calming colors. The decor was doctor’s office chic, the receptionist friendly and eager to help.

“Hi there. Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat, unexpectedly emotional now that she had reached her final destination. “I mean, I called, and I was told I didn’t need to make an appointment. You, or someone, said I should walk in. I heard Dr. Hadley on the radio. Her interview about the free care for people who’ve suffered from…” Uma didn’t even know how to describe what had been done to her. She’d only ever spoken of it in euphemisms. She’d never said it aloud. Not to anyone. “I called, and you confirmed that you’d see me. Or someone did. Said I could come in and ask for, um, Dr. Hadley. That she would help me.”

“Oh. Oh, of course.” The receptionist’s eyes got huge. They clearly didn’t get a lot of people like Uma in here. “Please, have a seat, ma’am. I’ll go speak with the doctor. I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you.”

Uma sat, overwhelmed by exhaustion. She’d made it to the end of her voyage. Then why did this feel like the beginning? She waited, at once too tired and too jacked up to distract herself with a magazine. Ma’am, she thought. She called me ma’am. It made her feel old.

The receptionist returned to the sitting room. She looked flustered, excited curiosity brightening her eyes. Mixed with pity, maybe? Am I the reason she looks so keyed up? The thought made Uma feel like a freak.

“Here you are, ma’am.” She pressed a warm cup into Uma’s hand. “Ginger tea. It’s what we drink here.”

Here? Like in the offices? Or like in Blackwood?

The receptionist hesitated for a moment, fiddling with magazines and flapping around, looking like she wanted to sit down, maybe have a chat.

“Hear about the cold snap down from the north?” the receptionist asked.

“Uh, no,” Uma said, and with no more conversation forthcoming, the woman headed back to her cubby, disappearing behind the desk. While she waited, Uma imagined eyes on her, the woman wondering.

A couple of people entered, signed in, were called to the back. About fifty times, she thought about leaving, and fifty times, she talked herself down. This was it, why she’d risked coming back to Virginia, so close to Joey, why she’d agreed to wait hand and foot on Ms. Lloyd.

After an anxious half hour in the waiting room, watching the sun set outside, the inner door opened, and a woman in scrubs came out. She glanced around before her eyes settled on Uma.

“Would you like to come on back?”

She concentrated on the woman’s narrow back and dark hair as they walked. Self-imposed tunnel vision.

So much hinged on this visit, possibly on this initial conversation. Again, she felt the urge to leave, to rush back to Ms. Lloyd’s and hide. Never come back.

Too late for that. She followed the woman’s scrub-clad form into the back, adrenaline making her buzzy and strange. Scared of what they’d say but floating on a weak surge of hope. If this worked, Uma might become a normal person again. She couldn’t imagine the possibility.

“Come on in and have a seat, Miss…” The woman looked at Uma expectantly.

“Smith,” she lied.

The woman’s nod confirmed she’d accept whatever she was told. There was no appointment on the books, and they’d ask few questions. Curiosity, but no pressure. These women, this place, they were trying to help people like Uma. She hated that she needed their help.

“I’m Purnima.”

Sanskrit name, Uma thought, unsurprised. The woman was beautiful, gentle looking. She’d known a Purnima growing up—a good friend of her mother’s once upon a time. What had become of her?

“The doctor will be right in,” she said. “Can I get you anything while you wait?”

Uma shook her head and tried to smile.

Another short wait. Uma tried to distract herself by studying the room. In a half-assed effort at camouflaging the medical feel, the walls showed photos of the earth from space. There was a basket of sunblock samples, and she was tempted to take one, even though she couldn’t imagine baring herself enough to need it. She couldn’t even look at herself. How could she possibly ask anyone else to do so?

Oh, shut up.

She grabbed a couple anyway. Might as well protect her face. It was her only remaining commodity, after all.

On the wall behind her was a poster comparing different types of melanoma. Uma turned away from that. No need to see more blemishes.

The door opened after a brisk knock, showing a woman much younger than she’d imagined. Too young to be the doctor, surely. Uma had to reevaluate the mental image the doctor’s voice had conjured on the radio the week before. She’d pictured a wise, older woman, not someone close to her own age.

Sunny and blond. She didn’t look like her story. This woman looked too innocent, too wholesome to have been hurt, marked, branded like cattle.

Panic streaked a cold swathe through Uma. Was it all a complex lie? A ploy to get women like her in here and then back to where they belonged? Back to the men who’d abused them?

Dr. Hadley must have seen something in her face, because she waited before speaking. She seemed to understand that Uma required time to evaluate, adapt, and adjust—or whatever the hell other touchy-feely shit she’d need to do to get through this. Did they teach people in med school how to deal with cases like her? The ones who were so fucked up they were more like stray cats than humans? Desperately in need of help, but no damn good at accepting it?

The doctor sat and put down her pen and pad, pausing briefly before pulling off her lab coat, unbuttoning her cuff, and rolling up her sleeve.

“Mine was right here,” she said, jumping right into it. “You can see a tiny bit of scarring, but it’s pretty much gone.” She watched Uma closely. “I had another that I won’t show you, but it’s even better than this. On my belly. I can wear a bikini now. Not that I do, but…” She smiled gently. Her skin looked immaculate. White and beautiful, with the faintest shadow of some ugly memory she’d chosen to erase. “You’re breathing a bit fast. Do you need a paper bag?”

Uma shook her head.

“More tea?”

She hesitated and then nodded. Maybe a moment alone would help.

The doctor got up and left the room, reappearing moments later with two mugs. Real ceramic this time instead of the flimsy paper the receptionist had used. Uma’s had a stick figure doing a happy dance, with the words I pooped today scrawled across it. She let out a huff of laughter.

Dr. Hadley smiled, showing perfect white teeth, and then cut to the chase. “Want to tell me about it? Or show me? We can talk as little or as much as you like.”

Uma started breathing fast again. Embarrassed, but incapable of tamping down the panic. One hand flew to her mouth, and she bit down, vaguely aware of how crazy it must look.

“Or you can take my card and call me when you’re ready.”

Uma nodded. The doctor mirrored the movement and sipped calmly at her tea. Some part of Uma’s brain—the part that could think clearly through the panic—wondered if this woman had already been a doctor when it had happened to her, or maybe she’d become a dermatologist because of it.

“I…” Uma’s lungs struggled to suck in a thin stream of air, two, three. She shut her eyes. “I can’t even look at myself. In a mirror. Or…definitely not in person. I’m disgusting,” she finished on a whisper.

With an effort, she pried her eyes open, enough to see a bit of blue peeping out from under her massive watch. Turning away, she pulled the watch off and held her wrist up to the doctor. Baring four ugly block letters: MINE.

Uma didn’t look—couldn’t. She knew what was there, knew how stark it appeared against her pallor. Dark, violent streaks embedded into her. One word of many.

Every time she caught a glimpse, she relived that specific moment, that particular punishing hour. A piece of her past stolen, along with her body.

For Uma, more than most, her skin held her history. A part of it she would never be allowed to forget. Other scars faded, but not these—they were a constant reminder of how messed up her life was.

She heard her breath shaking as if from far off. Then there was the other woman’s hand cool and firm against her skin. Compassionate but still assessing.

Strange how her brain flew to the last person who’d touched that skin. The neighbor. Ivan. Uma liked the name Ivan for him. Ive seemed too…incomplete, like an unfinished thought. And he was the opposite of that—the man seemed so utterly whole.

Dr. Hadley’s touch was soft and comforting but lacked the calming power of Ivan’s bigger, rougher hand. For the briefest of moments, she wondered how it would feel to bare her skin to that enormous, frightening-looking monster. Get him to hold her, maybe let her disappear into the steady beating of his heart, the way she lost herself in his nighttime percussion.

Would her body shock him?

No.

He looked like nothing would surprise him. A supremely comforting thought.

The doctor ran her fingers over the letters, stroked them with none of the clinical coldness Uma had expected from this encounter.

“We can do this,” she said, placing Uma’s hand back gently in her lap. “Any others?”

Uma swallowed with a wet click, accompanied by the loud crinkle of paper on the examination table beneath her. The sound was jarring in the silence.

With clammy hands, Uma grabbed at her sleeve.

“Would you like a gown?”

“No.”

If the doctor left the room to get a gown, Uma would lose every last shred of courage she’d built up. It was now or never. She dragged the thick cotton sleeves up to reveal both arms. The breath the doctor sucked in could be felt more than heard.

Oh God. I can’t do this, Uma thought, flinching away, focusing on the ceiling, the floor, the earth poster on the wall—anywhere but at the mess of jagged lines her body had become.

“May I?”

“Okay,” whispered Uma.

Dr. Hadley’s fingers trailed over nearly every inch of Uma’s arms, mapping the pain scrawled there. The woman exuded empathy, a gentle balm, as she catalogued the wrongs done. “This looks fairly recent.”

Uma nodded slightly, swallowed hard on the emotion filling up her throat, and responded, “Six months.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. They were all done on the same night. Except for one.”

For all that time, Uma had avoided them. Months without seeing herself. Months of denial. They looked new in this blinding, white light. Raw. She was nothing but a gaping wound. Her skin festered out in the open.

“Oh no—” She gagged and lurched off the table. A trash can was pressed into her hands, and that day’s green bean casserole made a painful reappearance, scraping against her throat, pushing tears out through her eyes. Funny that the only time she’d managed to cry during the six worst months of her life, it wasn’t even real tears.

The hand on her back was soft and smooth. It tightened on her shoulder, then disappeared before reappearing with a box of tissues.

“I’m so sorry,” Uma managed to say through lips that were stiff with embarrassment.

“Don’t be. Please.” Dr. Hadley’s warm, solid hand held her naked arm—the ugliest skin the woman had probably ever seen. “Please.”

Uma looked in her eyes and cringed at the sheen of tears there. She can cry for me. So why can’t I?

“Have you reported this? Called the police?”

“No. I can’t.” It came out louder than intended.

Rather than argue, Dr. Hadley nodded, then took back the trash can. “Can I put this outside?”

“Thanks.” The moment was mortifying on so many levels.

“Do you have a safe place to stay?”

Uma nodded.

“Are there more?”

“Yes.” She swallowed again. “Yes. A couple more. My belly, my legs, and my…” She waved her hand in front of her chest vaguely, too ashamed to admit to what hid under her bra.

“It’s going to be a long process. Newer tattoos can be a bit more intensive. But we’ll take care of you.”

She nodded, again overwhelmed at the emotion piercing through the embarrassment.

“We’ll need several sessions. Lots of factors are involved, such as how old they are and the color of the ink. Because most of them are new…” She looked a question at Uma, who pointed at her upper back.

“The professional one on my back is older.”

“Okay. Well, this is going to take months. Can you do that? Do you have a place to stay for the next few months?”

Months. Months hiding out with Ms. Lloyd, enduring her quirks, her bitchiness. “I—Yes… Yes.”

At Uma’s expression, the other woman hurried on. “The treatment is no charge. We’ll take care of you. Could you maybe come evenings? Weekends?”

“Yes. Whenever you can fit me in.”

The doctor pulled down Uma’s sleeves so Uma didn’t have to. Would she ever be able to face her own body?

“And I don’t have money now, but I’d like to pay for—”

“Please don’t worry about that. I am so sorry this happened to you.” Dr. Hadley took Uma’s cold hand in her warm one. Like a lump on the hard vinyl of the examination table, Uma sat, shoulders bowed beneath the weighty legacy of all that ink.

But she’d bared herself to this woman, if only partially, and damn it, she’d survived. To have that person be sympathetic to her plight, to understand at least some of what she’d suffered, without pitying her… It was deeply comforting. She shut her eyes and imagined tears rolling down her face, sobs filling the void.

“I’m glad to meet you, Miss Smith.”

“It’s Uma. Uma Crane.”

“I’m glad you came to us, Uma. I’m George. We’re going to take good care of you here.”

Uma believed her. This woman would take care of her skin, of that she had no doubt.

It was the rest that she worried about—the small, shriveled heart of her, deep down inside. Because that, she knew, was what she’d become. Just a shriveled little raisin of a heart. Despite this woman’s kindness and the relief her promises of help brought, at her very core, Uma suspected that the pain would never really go away.

* * *

Night had fallen, and the lights were on at the place next door when Uma emerged, still shaky, from the doctor’s office.

Great. Unless she’d been bluffing, Ms. Lloyd wouldn’t let her back into the house. She must have been kidding, though, right?

Uma took a couple of steps along the sidewalk, dazed and a little lost. What would she do if her boss didn’t let her back in?

Sleep in my car.

It wouldn’t be the first time—and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Resigned to the idea, Uma moved forward, only to encounter the door to the martial arts place, propped open in invitation.

Should she do it?

Yes, she thought. Do it.

The idea appealed. It would be something to help distract from the pain of digging up all the horror of her life. Something to make her forget it all before facing the long, dark hours of night—whether in a tiny room or a car. She’d just endured one of the hardest hours of her life. She could do this. She could do anything.

This is it. Do it.

Uma walked inside, greeted by a gust of warm, gym-tainted air. It was a universal scent. She’d never been to a gym that didn’t smell of rubber, socks, and sweat. There was no camouflaging it.

The woman at the front desk looked familiar, although Uma couldn’t imagine where she’d seen her, having been in town less than a week.

“You here for the self-defense class?”

“Um, just to get some information, please.”

“You’re in luck! Come on in and take a class with us. I teach it. I’m Jessie.”

“I can’t do it today.” What she really meant was I can’t afford it, but she wasn’t about to admit to that.

“First session’s free. Come on, try it out. Starts in”—Jessie glanced at the clock on the wall behind her, and Uma’s eye noticed her earring, a small, tasteful diamond—“about fifteen minutes.”

Uma’s hand went automatically to her own naked lobe, and she thought of everything she’d left behind: my entire life. As far as possessions were concerned, Uma was only a few garments from being naked. She’d arrived in Blackwood devoid of possessions. Like being reborn. She almost liked that thought.

“I don’t have workout clothes.”

“You can wear what you’ve got on. Next time, if you decide to come back, maybe some yoga pants and a T-shirt, but you’re fine for tonight.”

“Do you have a brochure or something? I’ve really got to go.”

The woman handed her a card, and Uma left.

Minutes later, she stood on Ms. Lloyd’s front porch, pounding on the door, with cold feet and a strong sense of déjà vu. A glance at her watch told her it was after six. Definitely past dinnertime, according to her boss’s rigid schedule, and the woman had left the porch light off. A sure sign of the kind of night Uma was in for.

“Go away!” the voice called through the door.

“It’s cold out here, Ms. Lloyd.”

“Yeah, well, you should have thought of that before you went gallivanting off and left me here to fend for myself, shouldn’t you?”

“Please let me in.”

“You can come back tomorrow.”

“I’ve got no place to sleep.”

“That’s not my problem.”

Uma dropped her head to the door. “Please. It’s freezing out here!”

“You wanted the evening off—well, you got the whole night. You should feel lucky. It’ll give you something to think about next time you try to skip out on your job.”

“Would you mind throwing me my things? Please?” A perfectly good jacket hung in Uma’s closet.

“Nuh-uh. How else can I guarantee that you won’t go running off on me? No. You can get your stuff in the morning. Now git!”

Through the door, Uma listened to the thump thump of her cane as the woman shuffled away, followed by the exuberant trumpet call of the evening news. Should she continue knocking, just to drive her crazy? Probably not. She wouldn’t put it past Ms. Lloyd to call the cops on her.

When did it get so cold? she wondered, shivering as she turned to eye the darkness beyond, hating to leave the porch and the slight shelter it provided. Her thoughts landed, for a millisecond, on the house next door, where she imagined Ive having dinner with his wife and kid, but even from here, she could see it was dark.

Not that she would have had the courage to knock anyway.