When I was in that gray space nothing could reach me. It wasn’tthat I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me. I still felt everything, heard everything, endured everything, but it was as if it was happening to someone else, as if it couldn’t quite touch me, or whatever made me, me.
So when Dreyven and Ricky would take me to a hotel to meet a “friend”… when they made me pose for pictures no child should have to see, let alone be in… whenever the pain became too much, physical or mental, I went to that gray place, and, somehow, I managed to survive.
I’d lived with Ricky for five or six years, I think… I wasn’t sure exactly how long, since I didn’t really know when I had shown up on his doorstep. Birthdays had died along with Mom, and my running days were over. I knew the consequences now of running, and I was too afraid.
I didn’t know if I would have ever had the nerve to try to escape again if it hadn’t been for Zem. Ricky showed up with her late one night, his beefy fingers tight around her skinny little arm.
I’d been asleep when he’d gotten home, locked inside the closet that was my room. I had just turned eighteen, but I had no ID, no birth certificate or social security card, and hadn’t even been to school since fifth grade.
I heard Ricky fumbling with the lock and the sounds of a young child sobbing as he cursed, then threw open the door to my “room”. Ricky hadn’t changed much in the last few years, except to get fatter, and meaner. For all the money he made on his stable, I never knew where it ended up going, because other than our apartment I never saw him spend any of it.
“Shut her up, or I’ll fuck you both up,” he yelled, almost tossing the young child at me, slamming the door to my “room” and clicking the lock back into place. The single bulb swung wildly from the ceiling, its light casting moving shadows across the face of the girl in front of me.
She was a gorgeous little mixed-race girl, with startling blue eyes in skin so black it was almost blue. She huddled in a dirty dress, her arms wrapped around something that looked like a stuffed animal.My heart felt like it stopped when I saw her. She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, and if she was in Ricky’s hands, I knew what he intended to do with her.
She looked at me, tears running down her face, a bruise already purpling her right cheek.
When I started to reach for her, she shied back, terrified, and began screaming again.
“Shhh!” I whispered urgently. Ricky wasn’t joking. If she kept this up, he and Dreyven would punish both of us. Her tears continued, so I did the only thing I could think of. I started telling her one of the stories my mom and I had made up when I was little. We’d often told each other fantastical stories. We’d never had a TV, so imagination was all I ever had. The story was of a little boy and a little girl who found themselves trapped in a magical forest made of stone, imprisoned by the evil ogre and his minions. Slowly, she began to relax, eventually sitting in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest.
“Is he big?” she whispered.
“Who?” I responded, trying not to draw attention to the fact that she was talking.
“The ogre, silly,” she said. “What did he look like?”
“Well, there’s two of them, you see. Once of them is short and fat, with four arms, three legs and…” I paused to see if she would help me tell the story.
“Four arms, three legs and…six butts!” she whisper-squealed. I shushed her, trying to get her to keep voice down, but her laughter was infectious and we both started giggling.
“What are their names?” she whispered, her voice thick with the tears she’d shed just a few minutes before.
“I dunno. I haven’t given them names yet,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Zem,” she said, straightening her dress and trying to sit up straight, extending her tiny hand out to me. “Zemphirina Misty Graham, I’m very-happy-to-meet-you,” she said, the words running together in practiced politeness.
“Zem, huh?” I said, smiling at her manners and insistence of herfull name. I solemnly took her small hand in my own and shook it. “I’m Mason Cameron Malone, Zem. I’m very pleased to meet you, too. Now, who’s this?” I asked, pointing to the much-bedraggled stuffed animal she held in her hands as if it was a lifeline.
“That’s Wolfie. My grandma gave him to me before I was born.”
We huddled on the thin mattress, and I got her to tell me more about her life. She told me her mom had been sick for a long time, that she’d died, but that her grandma lived in Solon Springs – someplace called Howling Wolf. She remembered the name, because her mom had often told her about how her grandma had given Wolfie to her mom when she was a little girl.
I looked at the dirty stuffed animal and wasn’t sure if it was really a wolf, or some other creature, but I wasn’t about to disabuse her of the notion. We talked about Wolfie for a long time: what he ate, what he drank, what he did for fun. I quietly comforted her until she fell asleep, her head on my shoulder, leaving me to ponder my next move.
My growth spurt had hit late. It had only been in the last year or two that I realized how much I was growing. I was almost as tall as Dreyven, and a lot taller than Ricky.
Ricky had started making noises that he was having a harder time finding me clients willing to pay what they had when I was younger. He started sending me out to work the streets when I was fifteen or so. I’d stay out for days to try and get the money I knew he’d want in order to avoid a beating from him or Dreyven.
Dreyven loved taking videos of those he controlled. He’d taken videos of me when I’d been “broken in” as he liked to put it. He kept some of the videos in the house and had made me watch them from time to time. They were horrible, showing this frightened young kid being hurt in so many different ways.
Dreyven had a very particular clientele. Every now and again, he would send a prostitute out who never came back. He and Ricky would joke about what happened to them, but it was clear someone hired them to provide people no one would miss.
I knew the time would come when I would be worth less alive than dead. So I started hiding money. Every stolen dollar bill, spare dime,every dirty penny I found on the street. I knew I’d need money to get away from Ricky. I thought I had maybe enough for a bus ticket out of here, but probably only one.
I’d known that if I wanted to live, I’d have to run, but Zem’s presence sped up my timetable. If she was here, he didn’t need me anymore, and I knew what that meant. I was almost ambivalent. What did it matter if I lived or not? Nobody cared about me, nobody wanted me.
Ricky certainly wouldn’t kill Zem, she was his new meal ticket. But as I stood at the locked door of my closet, thinking about leaving, my fingers on the doorknob, I saw her eyes open, her face solemn, not judging.
