Page 39 of Scotch: Unraveled

This day just keeps getting worse. I can’t have Mollie and Macie around guns and meth—or whatever nasty thing they’re cooking. Before I reach them, I come upon another door and behind is where I finally hear the baby whimpers I’ve been longing to hear. But this door won’t open like mine did.

I shove on the door with my shoulder and frantically wiggle the knob to no avail. “Hey, sweetie,” I quietly call through the door. “I’m here. I’m coming.” Then I push harder, the panic beginning to raise because I’m so close and they need me. They need me. The door feels cheap and hollow like the other, but the lock and the frame surrounding the lock isn’t.Dammit.

Only one idea comes to me and it’s not one I relish, but my girls need care. They need formula and diaper changes. Shoving back the panic, I limp my way across the main floor, stopping intermittently to catch my breath and to fight back the pain in order to continue on, eventually making it to the garish orange lights and the three men busily making illegal drugs.

I count to three and then clear my throat. All eyes look to me. I hold my hand up. “Please… the babies. They need formula and diapers. I don’t care what you do to me, so long as you let me take care of them. And Brighton, please. She’s innocent. Don’t hurt her…” I swallow hard and cough.

Two of the men wearing cuts that readHordemove toward me. One of them unbuckles his belt. Okay. I resign myself to the fact that he’s looking to violate me. I refuse to flinch or cower, hoping that they see with me not fighting, that I’m a woman of my word and that they’ll let me take care of the girls. However, right before he reaches me, another man, the scary dude who attacked us at Brighton’s house, walks in from outside—I know it’s outside because the daylight floods in when the door opens—and stops him.

“The fuck you doin’?” he asks the guy who had his button popped, too.

“She said she’d do whatever we want if we let her take care of the kids. She’s hot and I’m horny.”

“Touch her, I chop your dick off, shove it down your throat, and beat you ’til you shit it out again. We got whores at the club. She don’t get touched. Scud’s orders.” Then he walks over to me. The soles of his boots clomp loudly on the thick cement floor until he reaches me. “Ain’t no place for you,” he says, grabbing a fistful of hair at the back of my head to pull me back toward the room with the babies. He walks so fast that it forces me to walk on my bad leg.

When we reach the door, he fishes out keys from his pocket, unlocks the door, and shoves me inside. I fall to the ground and make the mistake of using both my arms to brace my fall, which jams my already broken wrist, causing a whole lot of dry heaving on my part.

“I’ll be back with shit for the brats. Give me shit, they all die.”

“I won’t give you shit; I promise.”

Once he’s slammed the door and I hear the lock, I use my one okay hand and one okay leg to drag myself over to the babies sitting in their carriers on the floor. “Macie.” I singsong her name softly. She’s the closest to me. “Hey, sweetheart. I’m here.” Then I continue to drag myself until situated between the two girls. I bend in to kiss the tops of both their heads. “I can’t pick you up… sorry.” I keep on sweetly. “But I love you and I’m gonna take care of you.”

The tears breach the levies of my eyes, rolling down my cheeks. I still don’t know where Brighton is or what they’ve done to her. The thought makes me sick. Since every second stuck in this place feels like a millennium, there’s no way for me to know how much time passes before he shows back up with a couple of grocery bags. One has a box of diapers and the other has two new bottles, dry formula, and a gallon of water. Not ideal. I couldn’t chance wasting the water to wash out the bottles, which means they’ll just have to take their meals as is. It totally grosses me out, but what can I do?

Everything has to be held with my thighs because of my injured hand. Opening the can, which includes popping and peeling off the aluminum top, fishing out the scoop—my hand shakes as I try to dump a scoop into each bottle—then peeling off the plastic cap to the water. The full gallon is too heavy and I end up spilling water on my skirt. Screwing the caps on. Shaking the bottles. All of it done one-handed. I unsnap Macie’s onesie first and do my best to change her diaper, but having been in the same one all night, she has angry red splotches all over her baby girl parts. Mollie is less red but still she has splotches, too. Instead, I let them air out while I hand them off their bottles, using a rolled-up disposable diaper to prop them up for each girl. Thirsty myself, I take a swig of their water and then move to rest my back against the hard metal wall.

The girls get my soft rendition of “You Are My Sunshine.” They love that song. I try to get into it for them, but the whole time, all I can think is,Please, Rory. Please find us.

Eventually, the sound of whimpers resonates outside the door and when it swings open, Brighton stands next to another man I don’t know. On the side of her face where that devil-man punched her is blue and purple, and there’s some swelling. Her lip is scabbed over from the cut and, of course, her hair is disheveled and there’s a rip at the neck of her T-shirt she wore last night as part of her pajamas, as if someone grabbed it and pulled or dragged her from her house, most likely.

She’s visibly shaken and injured, but not cradling or favoring any arm, leg or ribs. Mostly she just looks scared. He holds her by her long hair, shoving her inside. She stumbles, landing on her hands and knees with watery eyes, yet she doesn’t cry out. My best friend is strong.

“Up, bitch!” he calls over to us. I don’t know who he’s talking to until he says again, “I saidupunless you want me to tear up her sweet pussy.”

I struggle to stand.

“No,” Brighton breathes softly, shaking her head. But I have no choice. I promised that I’d do whatever they wanted in return for not hurting her or the babies.

“I have to,” I say to her, looking her directly in the eyes, hoping that she sees everything I can’t express out loud. “Help me up…Please.”

She nods once and pushes up off the ground to help me stand by wrapping her arms around me under my armpits. There’s no missing my limp, clearly now darkly bruised, broken wrist.

Up, I put my weight on my okay leg. “Take care of the girls,” I say, then turn away, limping toward the door with my lame leg dragging behind me again.

I’m in pain. I’m a mess. Still, I straighten my shoulders as much as possible and lift my head despite how badly it hurts to do it. He shoves me without regard to my injuries and I stumble but manage to stay standing.

“Over there.” He points to the lab area. I nod and walk. He steers me to a metal table, the kind they used in my college science classes. It holds a hotplate and an old frying pan coated in a white film. There are blocks of white powder and chemicals on the table. Instead of asking, he shoves me down onto a stool. “Cook the coke with the cleaner,” he orders.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Crack.”

Crack? I didn’t know people still used that. Obviously, the meth-or-whatever-it-is-production far surpasses the crack production, but I follow his directions. I’ll do anything they ask to keep Brighton and the girls safe. I can’t do it one-handed, but there are a couple of kitchen towels on the table. One of them I loosely roll up and tie around my wrist. It’s not ideal, but at least with the break somewhat immobilized, I can do the work. The second towel I tie around my nose and mouth as a sort of filter because I don’t think it safe to be breathing it all in.

Bikers show up checking on our progress, though there’s one man who’s clearly in charge. Average height, has a slight beer belly but looks like someone stomped on his face and it never recovered. Maybe I’m bias because he’s keeping us here and I hate him on principle. He paces around the lab with hard footfalls and his arms crossed over his chest, an always-present reminder of what’s at risk if I don’t comply—not that I could ever forget. They don’t let me up for hours, not even to use the bathroom. No one offers me a sip to drink or a bite to eat. The pain in my head starts to make my vision blur; still, I keep my head down and try to blink away the dizziness, never stopping production or uttering a peep of complaint.

Finally, when I think that I’m about ready to pass out from pain, hunger, exhaustion, dehydration, and the fumes, the man whom the others address as the infamous “Scud,” the man in charge, stops by my table. “Did good today. Got a cot and some soup for you.”

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