Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

When he paced around, ranting about a character or plot twist, he was so articulate and passionate I’d get caught up in it and reveal more thoughts of my own. He encouraged me to explain and defend my opinions but never flipped out, even when I contradicted him, and over time I began to relax during our literary debates. Of course, when reading time ended, so did the only moments I didn’t dread, the only activity I enjoyed, the only thing I did that made me feel like a human being, like myself.

Every night I lay in bed imagining The Freak’s sperm crawling up inside me and willing my eggs to hide. Since I’d been on the pill when he took me, I hoped my body was messed up and I’d be rescued before I could get pregnant. But I also thought I’d get my period right after the first missed pill, and that didn’t happen until about a week after he was finally able to rape me.

One morning we were in the shower, doing the routine, me facing the wall as he stood behind me washing my legs, up and down and between them. Then he stopped abruptly. When I turned around, he was just standing there looking at the cloth. There was blood on it, and when I looked down at myself, I saw blood on my inner thigh. His jaw clenched and his face reddened. I knew that look.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t know.” I cringed against the wall.

He threw the cloth at me, got out of the shower, and stood silent on the bath mat, glaring at my crotch. The curtain was half open and water dripped onto the floor. I thought for sure he’d flip out over that, but he reached back in, moved the showerhead so the water hit me, and turned the tap to cold—I mean suck-the-wind-out-of-you cold.

“Wash yourself off.”

I tried not to scream, the water was so cold. He picked up the cloth from the shower floor and threw it at me.

“I told you to wash yourself off.”

When I thought I was done, with the cloth in hand, I said, “What do you want me to do with this?”

He motioned for me to give it to him, examined it, and handed it back.

“Do it again.”

When there was nothing left on the cloth, and I was practically blue, he let me get out.

“Don’t move,” he said. I wondered if my shivers counted as movement. The Freak left the room for a couple of minutes and came back with a scrap of material.

“Use this.” He threw it at me.

I said, “Do you have any tampons or anything?”

He put his face close to mine and slowly said, “A real woman would be pregnant by now.” I didn’t know what to say, and his voice rose. “What have you done?”

“There’s no way I could—”

“If you don’t do your job, I’ll find someone who will.”

While he watched, I got dressed and put the stupid rag in my underwear. My fingers were so numb I couldn’t get the row of buttons done up on the dress, and as I fumbled with them, he shook his head and said, “You’re pathetic.”

My period went on for six days, and every morning he waited outside my cold shower until I handed him the cloth with no blood on it. The entire bathtub had to be wiped down with cleaning fluid before he’d have his shower. He made me put the used rags in a bag, which he took outside and told me he burned. We skipped bath time too, which was fine by me—it was six days he didn’t lay a hand on me.

During the afternoons he made me study books on how to get pregnant. I still remember the title of one, The Fastest Way to Get Pregnant Naturally. Yeah, that was The Freak, because, you know, abducting a woman, locking her in a cabin, and raping her is real natural.

As soon as I stopped bleeding, he was trying to knock me up again. I prayed my body would know his sperm was sick and reject it, or all the stress and fear would make it hard for me to conceive. No such luck.

About three weeks later, I knew my period was due and hoped every twinge in my belly was cramps. Every time I went to the bathroom, I prayed to see blood in my underwear. After four weeks, I knew. Judging by my little wall calendar, I figured I’d gotten pregnant around the middle of September, about two weeks after my period ended.

I hoped to hide it from The Freak, but one morning I woke to the sensation of his hand caressing my belly.

“I know you’re awake. You don’t have to get up right away today.” He nuzzled my shoulder. “Look at me, Annie.” I turned to face him. “Good morning,” he said with a smile, then looked down at his hand on my belly.

“My mother, Juliet, the woman who raised me, wasn’t my biological mother, she adopted me when I was five. The whore who gave birth to me was supposedly too young to raise a child.” His voice was tight. “She wasn’t too young to spread her legs for whoever my father was.” He shook his head and in a softer voice said, “But then Juliet changed my life. She lost her own son when he was only a year and still nursing. She had so much love to give…. It was she who taught me family is everything. And you, Annie, losing half your family so soon, I know you’ve always wanted one of your own—I’m glad I’m the man you chose.”

Chose? Not quite how I’d put it. Even before The Freak abducted me, I wasn’t sure how I felt about having kids. I’d been pretty happy living the in de pen dent career woman’s life and I never was the type to walk into a roomful of kids and go, “Wow, I gotta get me one of these.” But here I was, knocked up, brewing some demon child. And here he was, talking about his mother, giving me a chance to get inside his head and learn more about him. Part of me was scared to rock the boat, but I had to think long-term gain.

“You said her name was Juliet. Did your mom pass away?”

The smile left his face. He rolled over and stared up at the ceiling.

“She was taken from me when I was just eighteen.” I waited for him to elaborate, but he looked lost in thought.

I said, “She sounds like she was someone very special. It’s nice you were so close. My mom never abandoned me, like your real one did, but the doctors kept giving her drugs after the accident, so she was pretty messed up. I had to go live with my uncle and aunt for a while. I know what it feels like to be alone.”

His eyes flicked to me, then away. “What was it like, living with these relatives? Were they kind to you?”

I did some therapy in my twenties to deal with my feelings about the accident and to work through my issues with Mom—fat lot of good that did me—but no matter how many times I told the story, it never got easier. I hadn’t even discussed those feelings with Luke.

“My aunt is my mom’s sister, they’re always trying to one-up each other, but she was nice enough, I guess. My cousins were older and pretty much ignored me. But I didn’t care.”

“Didn’t you? I bet you cared a lot.” There was no mockery in his voice. “Wasn’t there any other family you could stay with?”

“Dad’s family is all dead and Mom just has her sister.” She actually had an older stepbrother too, but he was in jail for robbery and Mom sure as hell didn’t consider him family. “It was hard, but now that I’m older I try to understand what my mom must have been going through. Back then, people didn’t go to counseling or grief support groups. The doctors gave out pills.”

“She sent you away.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” But I remembered my cousins’ whispers and the way my uncle and aunt would stop talking when I came into the room. If Mom was a blurred version of herself, my aunt was hard edges and crisp lines on the same canvas. Both were blond and small-framed, all the women in my family are blond except me, but Aunt Val’s lips were just a little thinner, her nose longer, and her eyes narrower. And where Mom was all emotion, good or bad, Aunt Val was calm, cool, collected. Not a lot of comforting hugs there.