CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Journey
I whirled, my heart in my throat, startled beyond comprehension at the woman standing there.
Memories flashed.
The hateful words.
The punches.
The starvation.
The camera.
“Spread your legs, Ticket. Be a good little girl.”
Bile rose in my throat, and I managed to swallow it back down.
Moving slowly, I inched to where Jasmine stood. Automatically, our fingers linked together.
Our mother’s lip curled up like she smelled something bad. “Told you something was wrong with her. I knew there was right away.”
More memories.
I remembered the day Jasmine was born. Like me, I never knew who her father was. There were so many men coming in and out of the places we lived, it could have been any of them. I remembered my mother screaming at her stomach, saying that the baby had “better be a girl this time.”
It had been a boy before that.
I didn’t remember the others.
She told me that girls paid better.
Her belly had grown and grown until, one day, water had splashed all over the floor.
“Help me, Ticket.”
It wasn’t the first time Mommy’d had a baby in her belly. It wasn’t the first time she asked me for help. Under her instruction, I’d gotten towels and filled a bowl with hot water. She had taken one of the towels between her teeth, and every time she screamed, she did so in a pillow. Then she opened her legs and the baby’s head, all gooey and wet, started coming out. It was gross, but also fascinating. She screamed a last time, and a baby… a real-life baby… came slithering out onto the bed.
“It’s a girl,” Mom laughed, falling back onto the pillow. “Thank whatever god exists, it’s a girl.”
When it was a boy, Mommy had cried and cried after he was born. But now, she seemed glad. She smiled as she tied some string around the long yucky looking cord still coming out of her, then took the scissors I gave her from my grasp.
She picked the crying baby up and looked over to where I’d moved back into the corner. “Look, Ticket. You’ve got a baby sist—” Mommy stopped smiling as she looked at the baby closer. Then everything changed. Her smile went away, and something scary took its place. “No.” It was a whisper at first. Then louder. “No.” Louder. “No! It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.”
She dropped the baby back on the bed and pushed her away with her foot. I raced forward to catch her before she fell off the bed.
Mom began to cry, saying things I couldn’t understand. I’d never seen my mother cry before. Then she fumbled for her special box. Holding the gooey baby close to my chest, I watched her shoot some drugs into her arm. That was when the crying stopped, and Mommy fell asleep.
“It’s okay, baby,” I told my crying sister, wrapping her in a blanket. In the kitchen, I found the formula and bottles Mom had bought on her last trip into town. I couldn’t read — I’d never gone to school — but I could see the pictures and figured out how to make a bottle. Then I’d sat with the baby in front of the TV, pushing one of my favorite movies at the time into the cassette player — “Aladdin.”
That was how Jasmine got her name. It could have been Belle from “Beauty and the Beast,” or it could have been any other princess from any number of other movies, but it had been “Aladdin” that day. And the next. And the next.
When I ran out of formula and diapers for the baby, I tried to wake Mom up, but she just smacked me away. I started giving Jasmine milk from the refrigerator, but she cried all the time, throwing it up. I knew how to open cans, so I mashed up my food until it was almost liquid and tried to feed her that. She would suck it off my finger but continued to cry.
When Mommy finally woke up, it took her a long time to get out of bed. Then she had to walk with her hand on the wall so she could go to the bathroom, and then screamed when the water wouldn’t come on. She was crying hard again, but she had those crazy eyes when she came back out. The eyes that scared me. The eyes that told me something bad was about to happen.
I got really afraid as she stood over me while I was holding Jasmine. I rocked and rocked, silently begging the baby not to cry.
She didn’t. She had cried herself to sleep, or maybe she was getting too hungry to cry anymore. I was hungry too cause I’d eaten all the ravioli before. But I didn’t cry. There were no tears left.
“It’s wrong,” she said, looking down at the baby, but I didn’t understand what was wrong about Jasmine. Except that she cried too much, she looked perfect to me.
“She needs food, Mommy.” It was the first words I’d said to my mother in weeks. I had learned not to speak until I was asked a question. I had learned to stay small. To never ask to go outside. To never ask for anything and do exactly what I was told the moment I was told to do it.
Mommy’s lips had curled up, just like they did when she was going to hit me. I’d braced myself for the blow, but it didn’t come. “Stay inside. Keep her quiet. Remember, there are monsters who will eat you if you go outside.”
Without another word, she left, locking the door. I waited for her to come back, but it got dark, then light again. Then dark, then light again. I’d opened up the last can of pears and given Jasmine the juice while I ate a little of the fruit, wondering what to do next.
When another day and night went by and Mom still hadn’t come, I got a knife from the kitchen drawer and began stabbing at the door. There wasn’t a lock on the inside. Only a key could open the door from either side, so I hacked at the lock until my hands had big blisters on them. It was light again by the time the door finally opened.
I’d been terrified of leaving, so afraid that Mommy would come back and see me, but I was even more terrified to stay. Jasmine wasn’t opening her eyes and she was breathing really fast, like I breathed when I was really scared.
Holding on to the wall, I’d taken my first step outside that I could ever remember. The only times I’d been allowed to be outside was when we moved from one place to another. And it had always been dark, and someone always carried me.
By the time I was only a few feet from the door, I was certain one of the monsters she always talked about was just around the corner. But I had to keep going. Had to get food for Jasmine. I didn’t want her to die.
Finding some trash cans, I opened one up. There were two bananas! They were mostly brown, but I didn’t care. Nothing had tasted as good as I gobbled one of them, saving the other for Jasmine. I began searching through the other cans, accidently turning one over and dumping everything out. There were some apples. Some cans that hadn’t been opened. A bag of bread with just a couple pieces inside, but I’d grabbed it too.
That was when a woman found me, and most everything was a blur after that. She caught me when I ran, holding me down while she called the police. She kept telling me that everything was going to be all right, but I hadn’t believed her. There were police officers and lots of other people who came to our house. Then we were taken to the hospital where I’d been poked with needles that hurt.
Then, we got to live with Mee-maw.
Right here in this apartment.
A place this haggard looking creature shouldn’t be.
“What do you want?”
She laughed. “Is that any way to talk to your mother?”
I lifted my chin. “You aren’t a mother. You’re a monster. And you need to leave.”
The woman who had given birth to me and Jaz reached into her pocket and pulled out a gun. Jasmine shuffled back, and I shuffled in front of her. But Rachel Walker didn’t lift it, just held it by her side. “Glad that I got your attention, you ungrateful little bitch. I’m here because you owe me and it’s time to pay.”
I stared at her, trying to comprehend.
“What are you talking about?”
The gun twitched at her side.
“They’re going to get me.” She began scratching at her arm. “I can’t let them get me. Where’s my mom? Is she dead? Slant Eyes said she was dead. She can’t be dead. She’s supposed to help me.”
As she ranted, I inched Jasmine closer to the bathroom, all while trying to understand why Rachel was here. Maybe this apartment was her last hope. Maybe she hadn’t even known we were here. She’d shown up, hoping her own mother would help her.
From what? Who?
“Get back here!” she yelled, waving the gun in my direction.
I froze. I needed to get her out of here. “Do you need money?”
She kept scratching. “Yeah. I’ve got to get out of here. They’re trying to find me.”
“I can give you money. We’ll go buy you a bus ticket. You can get away from them. Are you hungry?”
“Money. Ticket. Money. Ticket.” She grinned, and the evil came alive in her again. Her face changed as she laughed. “My ticket is buying me a ticket. Such a pretty little thing.”
I swallowed hard. “We need to go to the bank. Then we’ll go to the bus stop. You’ll be safe soon.”
“Tick-et. Tick-et. Tick-et.”
I remembered that look. “Touch yourself there and smile for the camera.”
Jasmine’s hand squeezed mine, and I knew I needed to get some semblance of control. “Are the bad people close?”
The wild look returned. “Yes. They want me. They want me dead.”
I made my eyes go wide, my voice urgent, trying to feed into her fear. “Then we need to hurry. We need to get you out of here.” I turned to Jaz. “You stay here.”
Jaz looked terrified, then that mulish expression took over. “No.”
I gritted my teeth. “Jaz, you have to stay. I won’t be gone long. You can track my phone and see where I am, remember?”
“No.”
Panic wanted to seize me, but I needed to stay clear. I turned to Rachel. “Let’s go. Let’s hurry.” When she didn’t move, I went to my bag and picked it up. Inside, my phone pinged, but I ignored it and got my keys. “Hurry. We need to go. Who are we running from?”
Maybe if I could make her talk, we had a chance.
“Cross. He’s bad. So bad.” Her hand came down on my wrist like a claw. “He’s going to get me.”
Bile rose in my throat. “We won’t let that happen. We’ll get you safe.” I took her hand. She was only bones and skin, and I could feel the veins move under my touch. I gagged as more memories flashed. “Let’s go.”
“Cross and Skull. They’ll kill me. After all this time, they’ll kill me.” She started to cry and her nails dug into my arm. “I did everything for them. The babies. I gave them all the babies. I was good to them.”
Pain punched into my gut. We needed to leave, but I had to know. “How many babies?”
“Twelve. No, thirteen. I think. I don’t know. But I was good to them and they turned on me.”
She wasn’t making sense, and as much as I wanted to know everything. As much as I wanted to know every detail of where she’d been these past eighteen years and why she thought of babies as currency… I needed her gone.
“My bank is just down the street.” I headed toward the door and she followed. Relief flooded through me. Then Jasmine came our way too. “Please, Jaz. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“No.”
Not knowing what else to do, I pushed Rachel through the door and closed it behind me. “We need to hurry,” I told her. “We need to get away from Cross and Skull.”
“They’ll kill me if they find me.”
We were down the first flight when I heard the door open. “We need to run then. Be quick.”
My heart was pounding so hard, I was surprised it didn’t explode. The door at the bottom of the steps opened, and Rachel had the presence of mind to tuck the gun in her pocket just before Charlie Jr. opened his door.
I had no time for this. Footsteps were coming from behind me. “Hurry.”
“What are you doing?”
Ignoring Charlie, I pulled Rachel through the door, practically dragging her down the outside steps.
Now that we were away, should I try to get the gun? Get to my phone and call for help? Just get the money and put her on the bus?
The sound of tires burning on our normally quiet street got my attention, as did the roar of an engine. I looked up and saw it. Black sedan. Dark windows. The back window was open, and a man looked at us.
Vaguely, I wondered if he was Cross or if he was Skull, but there was no time for more because the gun he was holding began to blast.
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
I didn’t know.
I’d never know because a bullet slammed into me like a train.
Jaz. Grant. Nash.
Pain on top of pain.
I loved them all.
But that didn’t matter anymore.