Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

‘Are you okay?’

After a while Beatrice nods. ‘Yeah.’

Too bad, Maggie thinks, hating the thought.

Then Beatrice walks to the shattered plate and bends down and sweeps the shards of glass into the dust pan. She dumps the contents of the pan into the plastic bag she brought with her, sweeps the floor once more, dumps the pan once more, ties off the bag, and stands.

She did not notice that a large piece of the plate was missing.

‘You need to be careful about walking barefooted over here.’

‘Maybe I could get some shoes.’

‘What for?’

‘So I don’t cut my foot.’

‘Henry says no shoes.’

‘Okay.’

Beatrice stares at her a blank moment, then frowns. ‘Did he hurt you bad yesterday?’

Maggie rubs at the thin scabs that have wrapped themselves around her wrists. They’re only about the width of a man’s pinky finger, but the wounds are deep, and tender purple bruises surround them. She thinks of the slaps across the face and tongues the split in her lip. She remembers the punch to the gut, the air rushing out of her, the feeling of drowning. And the fear: this time she might really die.

She nods.

‘I’m sorry,’ Beatrice says. ‘I don’t like it when he does that.’

‘He’s never going to stop.’

‘He don’t mean to hurt you. He’s just got a temper.’

‘He might kill me.’

‘He wouldn’t do nothing like that.’ She purses her lips a moment, thinking. ‘Not on purpose.’

‘He might on accident.’

Beatrice exhales through her nostrils but says nothing.

‘You could. . you could let me go.’

‘Sarah, you know we can’t do that.’

‘He couldn’t hurt me if you let me go. I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. I wouldn’t tell anyone where I’d been.’

‘You don’t understand the world yet. It’s meaner out there than Henry could ever be, I promise you that. I know it.’

‘But I don’t want you to keep me here.’

‘Oh, Sarah. How many times do we have to have this conversation?’

Maggie looks down at her lap, at her hands clasped there, at the brown scabs wrapped around her wrists just below them.

‘Sarah?’

‘Not too many more, I guess,’ she says without looking up.

‘Good. And don’t worry about the plate. I won’t tell Henry you broke it. It’ll be our secret.’

Beatrice makes her way up the stairs and they protest under her weight.

Fall down and die, just fall down and die.

Beatrice reaches the top of the stairs. The overhead light goes out. A moment later the door closes, cutting off the light from the kitchen, and the deadbolt slides home.

After a while Maggie’s eyes adjust to the darkness. She sits doing nothing for some time.

Then she gets to her feet and walks to the back of the stairs and looks into the shadows beneath the bottom step. She wants to hold the shard of plate again. Her stomach feels tight at the thought of reaching into the shadows. She can see one corner of it. She reaches down and quickly puts her hand upon it and slides it out of the shadows. Nothing grabs her wrist or brushes against the back of her hand or nibbles at her fingertips. She picks up the shard of plate. She holds it in her fist and imagines burying it in Beatrice’s arm or leg or neck. It makes her sick to think about. It makes her sick, but she’ll do it. Maybe not in the neck. She knows there are important arteries there and a person can die. She doesn’t want to kill Beatrice. She just wants her hurt bad enough that she can’t chase after her when she runs. If Beatrice were to die on her own Maggie would not shed a tear, but she cannot kill the woman. But stabbing her in the arm or the leg, causing enough pain that she couldn’t chase Maggie up the stairs and out the front door, so she couldn’t get upstairs and call Henry on the telephone, Maggie could do that. If it meant getting away she could do that.

She puts her thumb against the tip of the shard. It is very sharp, as is the inside edge. Too sharp to simply hold and attack with. She would cut her own hand to pieces. And she doesn’t want to have to get too close to use it. She needs to make a handle.

She scans the basement’s dark corners for something to use. There’s her mattress piled with blankets, the cardboard box in which she keeps her few dresses and some books that Donald snuck down here for her (she has read them all at least three times), the sink at which she washes herself, the toilet plunger on the floor beside it for when it gets clogged, the boxes of Christmas ornaments and rags and dirty magazines and cowboy novels. She has read all of the cowboy novels, she likes that the good guy always wins, and flipped through the magazines. The magazines sometimes have good things to read between the dirty pictures.

She walks to the sink and picks up the toilet plunger and tries to pull out the handle. That doesn’t work, it won’t budge, so she tries to unscrew it, first one way, then the other, and that does work. After four counter-clockwise turns the handle is free of the black rubber suction cup. Hopefully the sink doesn’t get clogged between now and her escape. If it does Henry will notice that the handle is missing and know she’s up to something. He’ll suspect it, anyway, and that will be enough. He’ll be mad. He’ll stand looking at her as his face goes red and his hands open and close, open and close, open and close. His nostrils will flare in his diseased nose. He’ll reach into his pocket and pull out a roll of those things he eats and thumb one into his mouth and chew. He’ll ask her what she’s up to and no matter what she says he will call her a liar. Finally, once he’s worked himself up enough, he’ll come after her. She’ll run, but he will catch up. He’ll knock her down and kick her in the gut. All the air will rush out of her. She’ll look up at his red face, and then he’ll kick again. Darkness will come then. When she wakes up she will be hanging from the punishment hook. Her wrists will be bleeding. He will have found her weapon and he will walk toward her with it in his hand. He’ll grin as he walks toward her. There will be no humor in his grin.

One two three four five six seven eight. She used to try counting down, so she could deal with large numbers right away, numbers that filled her head, but counting down made her feel that when she was finished something terrible would happen. Five. . four. . three. . two. .

She opens a box of rags and pulls out a yellowed and torn T-shirt. It smells like Henry, a peculiar combination of garlic and sweat and beer and bleach. Just the stink of him causes her chest to go tight, makes it difficult to draw in breath. Her mouth is dry.

With some effort she manages to tear the shirt into strips. She has to use her teeth to get the strips started, and it hurts her teeth and gums, and the cloth comes away from her mouth pink with blood and saliva, but once she gets the shreds started the fabric rips easily. After she has several strips of fabric ready she uses them to tie the shard of plate to the toilet plunger handle. She has to tie several knots and wrap one of the strips tightly around the handle just beneath the blade, putting an X around its base, to keep it from sliding down, but once she’s done with it the blade is in place securely and hardly wiggles at all. She’s pretty sure the glass would break before it came loose from the handle.

Now: how will she do this?

She closes her eyes and tries to picture it happening. She imagines several scenarios. In all of them there is blood.

After a few minutes she opens her eyes. Tomorrow night after Henry has left for work she will wait under the stairs for Beatrice to bring down her dinner. Henry will have been gone at least an hour by then. There will be a much better chance of things going her way if he is miles and miles away. She will wait under the stairs for Beatrice with the home-made knife in her hand. If Donald comes over to eat as he sometimes does, rather than simply picking up a plate to take back to his mobile home parked behind the house, she will wait till the night after tomorrow. But if things are as they usually are, if she and Beatrice are home alone tomorrow night, she will wait under the stairs with the home-made knife in her hand and when Beatrice walks down them she will thrust the blade between the steps. She will slice Beatrice’s ankles. Beatrice will fall down the stairs. She will scream but the walls are concrete: no one will hear. She will scream and fall down the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs she will hit her head on the concrete floor. She will be knocked unconscious. Then Maggie will simply run up the stairs and out the front door. She will run through the woods to the street. She will run down the street to the phone. She will call her daddy and her daddy will come and pick her up and take her home. He will let her sleep in his arms. She will be safe.