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CHAPTER TWO
REN
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2000
I’D KNOWN I might face death if I ran.
If not from a bullet, then starvation or exposure.
That was why I’d waited far longer than I should have. Why I’d lost weight that I needed and strength I couldn’t afford to lose. I’d been sold to the Mclarys two winters ago, and I should’ve been smarter.
I should’ve run the night they filled my mother’s fist with cash, stuffed me in a urine-soaked car, then shoved me in the barn with the rest of their kiddie prisoners and introduced me to my education the very next day.
The night I was sold was hazy, thanks to a strong cuff to the head when I’d dared to cry, and these days, I couldn’t remember my mother, which was fine because I never knew my father, either.
I only knew that we’d been made to call Mr. and Mrs Mclary Ma and Pop.
I’d obeyed out loud, but in my head, they were always the hated Mclarys. Just as hated as their blood relative currently foiling my escape plan.
I glowered at the baby girl, adding another level of intensity, doing my best to work up enough rage to kill her and be done with it.
Just like I didn’t know my father, I didn’t know how she’d ended up in my backpack. Had she crawled in by herself? Had another kid put her there? Had her mother even placed her inside for some reason?
The bag wasn’t mine. The scuffed-up thing belonged to Mr. Mclary who filled it with booze and thick sandwiches when it was harvesting time. It sat bold and dusty by the door, hanging out with its friends the musty jackets, broken umbrellas, and well-worn boots.
I scratched my head for the hundredth time, trying to figure out the riddle of why my carefully plotted escape had somehow ended up with an unwanted passenger.
A passenger that couldn’t walk or talk or even eat on her own.
Tears pricked at my scratchy eyes.
I should be miles away by now, but I still hadn’t solved this problem. I still didn’t know how I could run quietly and hide secretly with a baby who would, at any moment, start screaming.
Just because she’d been deathly quiet and serious since I’d found her didn’t mean she wouldn’t expose me and get me killed.
I cocked my head, studying her closer, hating her pink clean skin and glossy golden curls. Her cheeks were round and eyes bright. She was a mockery to every kid in the barn with sunken faces and withered bodies that looked like trees poisoned by petrol.
She was lucky. She’d been cared for. She’d slept in a bed with blankets and teddy bears and hugs.
My fists curled, reminding me all over again of my one missing finger on my left hand.
Would they miss her?
Would they search for her?
Would they even care?
I’d lived my life with one existence: where parents were cruel and beat their children, branded them with hot cattle irons, and fed them by trough and pail.
Up until a year ago, I’d believed that was how all kids were treated. That we were all vermin only fit to toil—Mrs Mclary’s words every night as we crawled exhausted into our mismatch of cots and pallets.
It wasn’t until the night Mr. Mclary cut off my pinkie for stealing some freshly baked apple pie that I saw a different story.
I’d tempted fate by sneaking back into the farmhouse—which was the very reason I had nine digits and not ten anymore. After passing out and coming to from the pain, I’d exhausted my search for a cleanish rag to replace the blood-soaked undershirt around my severed finger, and decided the farmhouse would have a tea towel I could borrow.
It was that or drip blood everywhere.
Mrs Mclary was screaming like a shot rabbit somewhere upstairs. She’d been as fat as a sow for months and I guessed her time to give birth had finally come. I’d seen enough animals and the grossness of new life to tune her out as I tiptoed toward the kitchen.
Only, in the raucous of babies arriving, someone had left the TV on and I became spellbound by its magic.
Moving pictures and colours and sounds. I’d seen the thing on before but had been chased out with a broom and starved with no di
That night, though, I morphed into the shadows, holding my throbbing stump of a finger, and watched a show where the kids laughed and hugged their parents. Where healthy di
Mr. Mclary constantly told us that we were the lucky ones. That the girls he dragged by their ponytails into the farmhouse after Mrs Mclary had gone to bed were the chosen angels bestowed an important job.
I never found out what that job was, but the girls all returned white as milk and shaking like baby lambs on a frosty morning.
In fact, having my finger cut off was my worst and best memory.
Having him grab my hand and snip off my pinkie with his fence cutters as if it was nothing more than a stray piece of wire had made me buckle and vomit in agony. The fever, thirst, and throb while watching that TV show had stolen my wits.
I was beyond stupid to stay inside the home where the devil lived.
But when he’d found me passed out from infection and blood loss in his sitting room the next morning, he’d taken me to the doctor.
On the ride over—in a truck filled with sloshing diesel for his tractor—he’d yelled at me not to die. That I still had a few years of use left and he’d paid too much to let me quit yet.
When we’d arrived at the hospital, he’d stuck his reeking face in mine and hissed at me not to say anything. My role was to be stupid—a mute. If I didn’t, he’d kill me, the doctor, and anyone else who helped me.
I’d obeyed and learned what kindness was that day.
The tale spun to the medical team was my clumsy ass had severed it with a columbine blade while cutting hay. My dirty face and knobby knees were used as Mclary’s evidence that I was a reckless, unruly child, and thanks to his reputation around town for being a good farmer, civil neighbour, and regular churchgoer, no one questioned him.
No one asked me how badly his lies stunk.
The infection was bad, according to the nurse, and after shivering on her table with teeth chattering and stomach heaving, she’d sewn me up, pricked me with an injection, and given me a look that made me want to spill everything.
I’d bit my lip, fear stronger than I’d ever felt welling in my chest.
I wanted to tell her.
I wanted so, so much to tell her.
But I kept my mouth shut and continued living Mclary’s lie.
In return, she’d told me I was so brave, kissed my forehead, and gave me a bag of jelly beans, a sticker with a gold star, and a little teddy bear that said Get Well Soon.
I’d hugged that bear harder than I’d hugged anything as I reluctantly climbed into the fumy truck and buckled in to return to hell.
The moment we were away from view, Mclary snatched the bear and jelly beans from my hands and tossed them from the moving vehicle.
I knew better than to cry.
He could take my teddy and candy, but he couldn’t take the kind smiles from the nurse or the gentle tutting of the doctor as they’d made my finger all better.
Not that I had a finger anymore, just a useless stump that itched sometimes and drove me mad.