Page 28 of Freaks
This was hard for him. He spent so much time presenting a grave, stony, impenetrable front, occasionally diverting those around him with a level of sarcasm and dry humor that even I couldn’t match, that this kind of open communication was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I fuckingknewit was hard for him; his uneasiness was carved into the lines of his face and radiated off him like heat from a dying fire. Still, he continued with a dogged determination.
“I lost my faith so gradually that I hadn’t even noticed. People were relying on me at St. Luke’s to help them. I was supposed to be a solid foundation they could lean on in times of need, and I wasn’t. I couldn’t help them in the way they needed me to. I was lying to them. I still wanted to help, though. The path I chose to walk with Monica… it was the only way I knew how to do that. But I should have walked that path alone. I should have refused to let her tangle herself up in this fucking life. I thought it’d give her some kind of peace to know that the evil in the world was being dealt with, one way or the other, but she wasn’t strong enough. She never has been. I should have fuckingknownthat.
“I didn’t just let her down once, Sera. Every day I’ve permitted her to live this kind of life, I’ve been letting her down all over again.” He growled at the back of his throat, an angry frown forming two deep lines between his eyebrows. “I need to forgive her for what happened tonight, because it’s my fucking fault. I don’t expectyouto be able to. If I were you, I’d fucking hate her for what she did. So, I get it.”
I hadn’t allowed myself the time to think about Monica’s duplicity. Just as I’d screamed at her back in the crypts, she didn’t fucking know me. She didn’t know the first thing about me. Her actions hadn’t surprised me in the least. If I’d been in her position, left to my own devices, not knowing what was going on, worrying about the safety of someone I cared deeply about…would I have done the same thing? I couldn’t say for sure.
Part of me wanted to say no. I would have listened to Fix. I would have waited. I would have given the unknown woman in the file the benefit of the doubt before doing everything in my power to make sure she wound up dead.
But I was stronger than Monica. Whatever made one person more capable of handling traumatic experiences than another was a mystery to me, but obviously I was better equipped to handle my past than she was. She was as fragile as a butterfly with broken wings, extraordinarily afraid of the huge, terrifying world that surrounded her, with no way of dealing with her own vulnerability.
Well… she had one way of dealing with her vulnerabilities, and that was to lean on Fix. I’d threatened that crutch. I’d essentially taken it away from her, and that must have been petrifying for her.
The thing about anger was this: you could argue and reason with it all you liked, but it was like a drug coursing through your veins. It was almost impossible to relinquish. It made you feel righteous, and it made you feel strong, and at the end of the day there was nothing worse than feeling unjustified and weak instead.
I looked over my shoulder at the girl sleeping on the back seat, and I did my best to bundle up all of the fury and the resentment I felt toward her. When I turned back, I cautiously slid my hand onto Fix’s leg; beneath the material of his jeans, his muscled thigh tensed.
“My father sold me to his friends when I was fifteen. For two years, he let one of his friendsuse meas he saw fit. Sixsmith was in a lot of debt, and Sam, his friend, agreed to settle that debt by…byfuckingme twice a week.” I nearly choked on the words. They were like poison, bitter and terrible tasting on the end of my tongue. “Each time Sam fucked me, eighty-six dollars and seventy-three cents was deducted from the amount Sixsmith owed.”
I risked a sidelong look at Fix. He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was staring ahead out of the car, his jaw locked, his shoulders rigid, his back ramrod straight. His body was taut as a bowstring, drawn to the point of snapping.
“Sam wasn’t kind to me. He wasn’t…gentle.” God, this was so fucking hard to say. Fix hadn’t pushed for the information, not once. He’d made passing comments which had made it clear he knew something had happened to me when I was a kid, but he’d never tried to force the details out of me. His patience and his trust that I would tell him when I felt the time was right had been one of the very first things I’d loved about the man. I would keep my secrets inside me until the end of time if I waited for the right moment to share them with him, though, and I couldn’t keep on holding things back from him anymore. Not now.
“Things would get bad. And then they would get worse…and I did my best to keep myself together. Then, Sixsmith did something really fucking stupid. He hired someone to bet Sam for his business. Sam owned a bar in Montmorenci. Sixsmith tricked him in a game of poker, and he won the bar from him.”
I was shaking as I told the rest of the story. There was a wild animal inside me, trapped in a snare, trying to free itself from the inevitable, wrestling to run and hide itself from reliving that day in Sam’s apartment, when I’d taken hold of that piece of glass and I’d buried it into Sam’s flesh. That wild, scared animal was me. I wasn’t going to give into myself. I was going to grind the words out, and I was going to be rid of them once and for all, because once I’d said them, I knew I wasn’t going to have to clench them so tightly inside my chest anymore.
I parted with every last one of them, not sparing the details, and once it was over…I really did feelfree.
“If you can forgive Monica for selling you out, and for sellingmeout, then I can forgive her, too. It might not be easy, but I’ll do it, because I have a long-lasting relationship with hatred, and it’s eaten me alive for too long. I refuse to be a shelter to it anymore.”
He growled—a sound filled with pain, and regret, and an unquenchable need for violence. I twisted in my chair, digging my fingers into his leg. When he looked at me, his torment was so obvious and painful that it nearly broke me. I knew him well enough to know exactly what he was thinking: he hadn’t been there to protect me when I’d needed him. He hadn’t been able to swoop in and kill Sam for me, to save me the horror of having to protect myself. His self-recrimination was futile, and he must have known that. It didn’t stop him from feeling it all the same, however. It was just the type of person he was.
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Felix Marcosa,” I whispered. “And you didn’t know me back then. You can’t be responsible for every single wounded person’s pain. I didn’t tell you any of that to make you feel bad for me. I told you because you deserved to know, and because I…” How did I word what I needed to say? How did I give meaning to the thoughts and emotions that were cutting me to the quick? “Because I want you to know that I’m not like Monica. I walked the road to hell, and I lived there for a time, but I’m not going to be another broken girl you have to take care of. You’re a fixer. But you don’t need to fixme. I mean it, Felix. I already fixed myself a long time ago.”
TWELVE
FIX
An eight-year-old girl told me she was being molested once. I was tired as fuck and I was ready for the day to be over. The line for the confessional had felt like it would never end, and I’d been relieved when the short, narrow frame of the child had entered into the booth and sat herself down on the stool on the other side of the grill. Children were bad at confession as a rule. They didn’t like punishment, even if it was just a few Hail Mary’s and a promise never to sass their parents again; typically, they confessed a few arbitrary sins, and typically I let them off light, making the experience as short and sweet as possible. I was a terrifying authority figure to most kids. A direct line to God, who I knew seemed like a pretty fucking frightening overlord, ready to smite them for their crimes if they were disobedient. So, I was soft with them. Tried to relax them. Make them feel as comfortable as I could during a time that normally scared the shit out of them.
I’d spoken to the little girl before. She was a collector of shiny trinkets. Thief would have been the wrong word to describe her, though she frequently delved into women’s purses on the hunt for glossy lipsticks and compact mirrors, and had been known to relieve department stores of candy on the odd occasion when she thought she wasn’t being watched. She’d grown out of her compulsion for the most part, but there were still times when she took something she wasn’t supposed to, and I would gently chastise her and send her on her way.
On this particular Sunday, she’d sobbed quietly on the other side of the booth, holding back her hiccups and her misery, and told me that she was scared. She’d said she didn’t want her mother to hear her crying, because her daddy would punish her for it when she got home.
Her father was an upstanding member of the congregation. Directed the church choir. I’d gone for beers with him a couple of times after charity drives, when I’d needed to blow off a little steam. He was funny and down to earth, seemed like a real family guy, and I couldn’t imagine him punishing the girl for being upset. I asked her why she thought she’d get into trouble.
After a little coaxing, she’d begun to tell a disturbing story of abuse and assault that had me gripping the side of the booth until my fingernails had gouged deep holes in the wood. If she didn’t eat her food, he touched her between her legs. If she broke something in the house, he put his fingers inside her. If she made her mother angry, he made her open wide, and he put the thing between his legs inside her mouth until she couldn’t breathe and she was sick.
I’d erupted out of the confessional like a raging storm. My blood had boiled. My vision had swum, tinged crimson by my rage. The little girl’s father had already gone home ahead of his wife and child. Her mother had begged and pleaded with me not to call the police. She’d asked me to wait until she’d had chance to ask her husband about the little girl’s claims, and said she was sure her daughter was just confused and didn’t know what she was saying.
I’d considered holding back. For a split second, I’d thought about letting the girl’s mother handle the situation, but I saw how it was going to play out in my head. The guy would deny everything. He’d be disbelieving and hurt that the little girl would say such things. He’d make a show of trying to comfort the child and would ask her why she was so afraid of him. His wife would believe him—nine times out of ten, they always did, preferring to believe their kid was making shit up instead of wrapping their minds around the possibility that the man they married was capable of abusing their own child—and then the girl would pay. She’d be branded a liar.
Of course, there was a chance shewaslying. I hadn’t been about to check the girl’s body for signs of assault. But I also hadn’t been willing to risk the chance that she was telling the truth, and I was sending her back into a dangerous household. I wasn’t going to teach the child that speaking out led to angering the adults around her, and that her bravery would be rewarded with punishment. I wasn’t going to leave her fucking alone in her fear.
I’d called the cops. They’d arrested the guy, and when the little girl had undergone a medical exam, it turned out shehadbeen telling the truth. The guy had gone to prison, but every day after that I’d regretted my actions. Yeah, I’d done the right thing. The little girl was no longer being abused by a person who was supposed to be her most staunch defender against the worst kinds of evil that existed in the world. But I’d never been able to shake the feeling that I hadn’t done enough. I’d wanted to hurt the guy who’d ruined that little girl’s childhood. I’d wanted to break every single one of the fingers he'd used on her. I’d wanted to zip tie the bastard’s hands behind his back and cut off the dick he’d forced into her mouth. Slowly. As painfully as possible, while I’d made him watch.
I’d wanted to fucking kill him for what he’d done.
