Page 36 of The Quiet Tenant

After, you run through the usual drill: you lie down near the bed, settle for the night. He grabs your arm and handcuffs you to the frame. A couple of tugs on the chain, and he’s out.

You wait for him to have gone to bed, too. For his footsteps down the hallway, for his bedroom door snapping shut. And then you wait some more. Finally, when you know you’re as safe as you’re ever going to be, you wiggle a foot under the bed.

Nothing. You turn your head, squint. You’d need a flashlight. You’d need to not be handcuffed to the bed. You shift your position, angle your hips one way, then another. You put pressure on your rotator cuff. Your body aches and pulls and bends itself into unnatural angles. Finally, you feel it.

You push it toward you with your heel. Move it with your toes. You work silently, take breaks to listen for a stir in his bedroom. The house stays quiet. Finally, your fingers close around it.

You wait for your eyes to absorb the darkness some more. Focus your gaze, implore the pale squares of moonlight around the blackout shades to do their job. Between your fingers: plastic wrappers, whatlooks like bright green and blue, a geometric pattern. Something pliable, soft, almost bouncy. The outline of a logo you used to see every month.

Sanitary pads. Three, four of them, held together by a rubber band.

At the back of the stack, a piece of paper. Thankfully, she wrote in large, round letters, using a purple marker. You decipher the words one by one. “Hope these help. Let me know if you need more. Cecilia.”

She heard. She listened. After dinner, tonight—after she left the table in a huff—she went and took some from her personal stash. She wrote the note, slid the package under your door. Her father must have told her to stay away from your room, but she didn’t care. She knows he hasn’t gone to the store yet. She knows you need help. She decided she had your back. She chose you over him.

You press the pads against your chest. You won’t use them. Can’t. He would notice, demand to know where they’re from. You will keep lining your underwear with toilet paper until he caves—if he caves—and returns from the store with the cheapest box of tampons.

For now, you feel the pads rise and fall with your rib cage. Someone cares. Someone heard you needed something and went out of their way to give it to you. You bask in that feeling, your first true kindness in five years.

And then—you freeze. Your fingers clutch the plastic wrappers. The cameras. The fucking cameras. The ones he said were everywhere—in this room, at the front door.You have to believe what he said.I’m watching. I’ll always be watching.

You haven’t done anything wrong, you tell yourself. But it won’t matter. It never does.

There are only bad choices. Leaving the pads out is the worst of all. Then, he would see them for sure. If you hide them, you enter the world of maybe. Maybe he won’t watch the video. Maybe he won’t find out. Maybe you and Cecilia will get away with it all.

Your books are stacked close to the bed. You reach for the thickItpaperback. Tuck the pads between two chapters. You slip the note in a different book, your beat-up copy ofA Tree Grows in Brooklyn.Best to scatter the evidence. The pads would anger him, but the note—hecouldn’t handle it. His daughter, going behind his back. It would be the end of you. The end of everything.

You do not fall asleep. Not for a while.

You are buzzing with anticipation, overwhelmed with a realization.

I was helping a friend.

That’s what he told her.

A friend. A man in society, bonding with others. Holding other people’s hearts close to his own.

People say friendship but they mean love. It’s all love at the end of the day.

And now, for the first time in years, you know how that feels, too. You know without a doubt. Someone has your back. Someone likes you.

CHAPTER 22

Number three

He was going to be a father. Very soon.

After he found out, at the very beginning of the pregnancy, he stopped drinking.

Cold turkey, he said. Can’t walk around getting sloppy. Can’t risk saying too much. Not ever, but especially not with a kid in the picture.

Boy or girl, I asked.

Girl, he said.

I thought: One day she’ll be my age.

What if I can’t do it? he said.

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