“Don’t just stand there, girl. Place ain’t gonna clean itself.” With that, the woman turned and sashayed out to the living room.
This is a means to an end. That’s all this is, thought Uma. I’m big and strong and soon I’ll be brand-new. I’ll get through this.
For some reason, this time, she almost believed it.
Nothing Ms. Lloyd did at this point could burst the bubble of a good night’s sleep, she told herself. That, and the prospect of her first laser appointment in three days. Yes, darn it. Things were looking up.
She had a timeline now, and a haven away from this place. A self-defense class, a doctor to help her, and a strong man’s bed to sleep in.Yeah, right.Nix that last thought.
Oh, but Ms. Lloyd had made her point. Uma would be punished if she disobeyed. It took all day to clean the kitchen—a mess that had probably taken only a few minutes to make. As she worked, Uma tried to imagine Ms. Lloyd doing the damage, but she couldn’t quite picture it. Had it been done gleefully or in anger? Both images were creepy.
Something had to change.
* * *
The day passed painfully slowly, which had the dubious benefit of giving Uma time to think.
She thought of Ivan and his delightful strangeness. He appeared rough and mean, and if you didn’t scratch the surface, that was all you got. But given the opportunity to delve a tiny bit further, the man wasn’t an ogre at all. Far from it. He was… She wasn’t sure what he was.
Sweet?Not quite.Gentle?Almost. But there was too much underlying violence there for that to be right.Good?Was that it? Was he a good person? Maybe. Yeah, just maybe.
She also thought of her boss and how very messed up she was. It was all a play for power, Uma knew that. Every little thing the woman did at this point was a test, to see how far she could push her new employee. And that meant one thing: if Uma was to have any chance at surviving this long-term, she had to counter with a play of her own. At least until something better came along.
That night, after dinner, Ms. Lloyd roped Uma into washing her hair, although she was fully capable of doing it on her own.
Uma managed to fit a single wooden chair into the house’s only cramped bathroom, flush to the sink.
Rubbing the old woman’s head was an oddly intimate activity, considering. It also, she quickly learned, put her at a distinct physical advantage.
“How did you wash your hair before I got here?” she asked.
The older woman’s eyes were closed. She looked like she was enjoying this. A wisp of a memory floated to the surface—something Uma had heard about how spiders liked getting their bellies rubbed. Without her glasses, Ms. Lloyd looked young, naive. She looked like someone who needed protection. The way her hair flattened to her skull left her looking small, like one of those dogs that shrink to half their size once you get their fur wet.
“With great difficulty.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll bet you roped someone else in to doing it for you.”
“Now why would you say that?”
“I can’t imagine you doing something for yourself if you can get some sucker to take care of it.”
Ms. Lloyd cackled at that. “You saying you’re a sucker?”
“Absolutely.”
“What if I told you I had your boyfriend over here sudsing me up like this?”
The thought made Uma laugh. “You mean Ivan?”
“Oh, so it’sIvan, is it? Not Ive? You don’t like the way the rest of us say it? You just waltz into town, all secretive and big city, and use your hoity-toity voice to—”
Uma took a breath. She couldn’t do this anymore if she didn’t take a stand. Not another frickin’ second.
“Ms. Lloyd, I need you to listen to me.” Her hands stilled on the woman’s head. “I have regular doctor’s appointments. That’s why I came to Blackwood. If I can’t go to those, then I might as well go back to where I was before.”
“You want me to pay you to take off whenever you want?”
“No, I want you to pay me to do my job and let me leave your home when I need to.”
