Chapter One
2327 Words
EIGHT YEARS AGO
COLD.
The chill crept into my bones before I was fully awake. I shifted across our bare apartment floor, searching for warmth, then dragged my threadbare quilt to my chin. My socked feet rubbed together beneath it. Mama had forgotten to pay the bills.
Again. The radiator was useless even when it worked, and January had brought Dallas one of its cruelest winters.
The question burning through my head was much simpler..Would I eat today?
A police siren wailed beyond our window. I barely paid attention. Sirens were part of life in Ratcliffe Heights, a forgotten Dallas corner crowded with industrial yards, pawnshops, strip clubs, and methadone clinics.
Factory chimneys pumped smoke into the sky, leaving a gray haze that seemed to settle over everything. The air tasted like rust and hopelessness. At ten, I already knew that smell.
Most of my life happened inside Beckham House, a tired old building from the 1930s that had been divided into apartments. Time and neglect had stripped away whatever charm it once possessed. A liquor store occupied one end of the block; a row of overflowing dumpsters sat at the other, where teenagers smoked pot, argued, and got up to things I was smart enough not to ask about.
The one good thing about Beckham House was its owner, Lilith Beckham. She was an older woman with a gentle voice and a ballet studio on the ground floor. I spent hours watching through its glass wall, my nose practically flattened against it, as Lilith taught little girls to dance. Their pink tights and neat buns made them look like living dolls.
Ratcliffe Heights wasn't a place for the careless. People vanished and turned up dead often enough that even children learned to watch their backs.
Most victims were addicts or women who worked the streets, people everyone else seemed willing to forget. But danger didn't check your age before choosing you. Even a ten-year-old could become someone's target. I carried a steak knife whenever I left home, along with a sock stuffed with rocks.
The public library was my favorite place after Lilith's studio. I disappeared between the shelves for hours, wandering through stories as if they opened doors to other lives.
Sometimes, when the librarians at the circulation desk weren't watching, I'd peel the magnetic strip from a book's inside flap and slip the book beneath my coat.
Stealing candy from the neighborhood gas station was harder, and I happened to be very good at that.
Books about courageous women fascinated me, especially one about Joan of Arc. I loved that a peasant girl had led an army and dared to change the world. When I reached the part where her own country betrayed her and she was burned at the stake, I cried until my face hurt. She was only nineteen, yet she had given her life for what she believed in and for the people she wanted to protect.
My mama was no Joan of Arc.
Most days, she seemed to resent having me around. In October, she'd taken away the one place that made me feel like I had a future: school.
“Life can teach you more than books, Dahlia,” she'd said one morning as I struggled into my city-issued uniform.
My navy skirt and white shirt were dirty because she hadn't washed them, but I pulled them on anyway. I should have been at the bus stop, waiting for the ride to Oakfield Elementary. Instead, we'd slept late again. It was only thirty-six days into the school year, and I'd already missed eleven.
My stomach sank. School meant hot lunches, friends, and hours when I didn't have to worry about Mama. I'd been chosen for the gifted program, and even the chess club had invited me to join. I loved learning. School was my possible way out.
“But I want to go,” I protested. “And it's against the law to keep a kid out of school.”
Mama sat at her battered dresser, dabbing makeup over the bruises on her face. She barely looked at me. “The school doesn't even know where we live. Besides, aren't you smart enough to teach yourself?”
She rose and crossed to the closet, choosing shiny pants and a halter top. “I finished high school, and look where it got me. Nothing but a whiny kid and bills I can't pay.”
That was the last morning I went to school. Days became weeks, then three months. I stopped asking, but never stopped wishing.
Now my stomach growled, dragging me back to the present. I hadn't eaten since yesterday's can of fruit cocktail. I imagined waffles dripping with butter and syrup, topped with strawberries and whipped cream. My stomach twisted. Daydreaming wouldn't fill it, though, and I already knew our cupboards were empty.
Then music drifted up through the floorboards.
A smile crept over my face. lilith was beginning her Saturday morning ballet class downstairs. I pressed my ear to the hardwood, listening for her melodic instructions.
I pictured her in a flowing skirt and ribboned shoes, gliding across the floor like a fairy princess. Maybe she was Odette from Swan Lake, graceful beneath the lights.
The little girls would be in their black leotards and pale pink tights, spinning across the polished wooden floor like ballerinas inside a music box.
Beautiful.
Ballet wasn't for girls like me, of course.
Lessons cost fifty dollars a month, according to the sign on the studio door. I'd tried saving every coin I could find, but hunger always won.
Sooner or later, I'd spend my little collection on snacks from the vending machines downstairs. Saving for a dream was hard when hunger demanded something immediate.
The loneliness was worse than hunger some days. When it threatened to swallow me whole, I'd sneak into the empty studio and turn on the music at its lowest volume.
Then I'd dance alone, copying the movements I'd watched through the glass. I imagined satin shoes, a beautiful costume, and someone seeing something worth believing in.
Someday, I'd take real lessons.
Someday, I'd leave Ratcliffe Heights.
The music stopped, and reality returned with it. I should check on Mama. I'd gone to sleep around midnight, and she still hadn't come home. Nearly two days had passed since I'd last seen her. It wasn't even the longest she'd left me alone.
Being trapped with me made her restless. On bad days, she'd pace with tight shoulders and wild eyes, as though she wanted to hit something. I learned to disappear before her temper found me. I'd hide in Lilith's studio until I heard Mama's footsteps pound down the stairs and the front door slam behind her.
Sometimes she returned with a roll of cash. I never asked how she'd earned it; the thought made my skin prickle. I wasn't stupid. She climbed into strange men's cars, men whose names she didn't tell me, and did things I was too young to understand fully but old enough to dread.
“I'm alone,” I announced to the shabby apartment after checking every room.
I settled at the kitchen table with the quilt wrapped around my shoulders and bounced my legs to keep warm.
Mama would come back soon, I told myself. Maybe she'd have money, and maybe we'd go to Lulu's Diner for a hamburger.
They claimed to serve Dallas's biggest burger. I imagined the juicy meat, the fresh tomato, and the sharp bite of a pickle. My mouth watered.
I prayed she'd come home before my father did.
He usually appeared when Mama stayed away too long. Otherwise, he rarely bothered to see me. He was handsome, with black hair, blue eyes, and a convincing smile from a distance. Mama called his perfect teeth veneers. But even when he smiled, his face stayed hard as granite, and something in me tightened whenever I saw him.
He haunted my nightmares. In them, he hid beneath my bed, stretched out on the hard floor, waiting for me to fall asleep. Then he'd shoot out from the darkness, clamp his hands around my throat, and drag me under.
I hugged the quilt closer and stared at the apartment door, listening for footsteps in the hall.
I couldn't decide which frightened me more...That Mama wouldn't come home, or that she would bring him with her.
He’d do me what he did to Mama.
Mama hated most things, but she loved to fight with him. Or perhaps she just liked his attention, no matter what form it came in.
He doesn’t love us were her words when I asked why he didn’t live with us. When he did come to the apartment, they’d go in the bedroom and not come out for a long time.
I’d watch television while her bed banged the wall to a rhythm I hated. Later they’d come out, gentler versions of themselves. But it never lasted.
Mama would pull out the vodka and start drinking, and he’d slap her around. He’d curse and rail, calling her a lazy, no-good chuchka derganaya who deserved nothing.
Never one to be defenseless, mama would scream and fight back, her fists beating at his barrel chest in vain. Most times, a black eye decorated her face after one of his visits, but he wouldn’t leave unmarked. Angry claw marks were his usual battle scars although once she’d hit him with a kitchen chair and broken one of his ribs.
I’d hide in the closet and listen to the sounds of fists meeting skin. It doesn’t make a lot of noise like you'd think..still I should have covered my ears, but I couldn’t, just as I never turned off the horror movies I watched late at night.
I called myself a coward for not helping her.
Why couldn’t I be more like Joan of Arc?
I’m no good for anything.
One particularly bad day last year—because mama had been gone for three days straight—my father had walked in the apartment with his key, his hands full of market bags. His keen eyes had watched me as I stared at the sack, the possibility of nourishment keeping me in the room with him, fear not allowing me to get too close.
He’d never hurt me with his meaty hands like he did mama, but there’s always a first time.
On this day, he’d scooted my chess set to the side of the kitchen table, put down the bags and straightened to face me. He talked to Lilith sometimes, so maybe she’d told him mama was gone. Maybe he knew where mama was. I don’t know. Yet, he always knew when I was at a breaking point although I’m not sure why he cared.
Perhaps it was guilt because I was a mistake, an unplanned pregnancy like they taught us in fifth grade health class.
We’d faced-off like gunslingers that day, our identical blue eyes never wavering from the other. He’d studied me like I was an odd insect, and I returned the favor, my heart flying in my chest.
We stood there nearly five minutes, assessing each other. I know because the clock hung on the wall right behind him. He looked at my faded jeans and T-shirt.
I shot daggers at his finely-creased pants and silk shirt.
Worlds apart yet connected by blood.
Stuck in our frozen tableau, I recognized we were a lot alike and not just in looks. Both of us were survivors.
He’d crawled out of the mud and made something of himself. I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth, but someday I would leave this awful place.
But what if I didn’t?
“She’s not here,” I’d said, trying to make my voice big.
He pushed one of the sacks toward me.
I shook my head and backed away.
“Don’t be like your stupid matshuka. Eat,” he demanded, his ringed fingers pointing at the table with emphasis. A man used to having his orders followed immediately.
My body roared with need, but I shook my head again, this time harder, the oily strands slapping me in the face.
Like a junkyard dog, I trusted no one.
He chuckled, making me shiver. “Ah, a girl with backbone. I it,” he said in his lilting accent.
Just leave. Let me eat.
Finally, he turned to go but spun back around, making me jump. His eyebrow lifted. “You can come with me if you want?”
Chills raced down my spine. He’d never once offered to take me with him.
Not one time. I swallowed, sensing.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD