Page 8 of Pieces of Ash
“Little whores who flaunt their bodies should be treated like the sluts they are!” he said, reaching for his belt buckle. “You have to pay for your sins!”
Coming around the desk, he advanced on us, his face dark red with fury as he jerked his belt from the loops of his trousers with a whipping sound.
My mother yanked me behind her back, blocking my body with hers. “No! No! She’s only thirteen! She’s just a kid! Do it to me! Whatever you want to do to Ash, do it to me!I’ma bad example!Iwill pay! Please!”
He paused in front of my mother, his belt doubled into a loop, fisted in his hand. “You? You’ll fucking pay?”
Her breathing was loud and shallow as I rested my cheek on her back, my arms clasped tightly around her waist.
“Mosy,” she begged, “she is still pure. I promise you. She’s pure. She is. She’s pure as snow.” Reaching for my hands, she’d loosened them so she could step toward my stepfather without me. “ButI’mnot pure. Not at all. I’m…bad. I’m…dirty.” Her breath hitched as she stepped closer to him, one hand appearing behind her back to shoo me from the room. I backed up to the door, watching her, listening to her words and trying to process them, though I didn’t understand what was happening. “Take it out on me. I deserve it. I—Iwantit.”
“Yes,” he said, his dead eyes scanning her body as he nodded slowly. “Yes, you want it, you twisted fucking slut.”
“Do it to me,” she whispered, her voice low and thin, but tinged with relief.
Then, over her shoulder, she made eye contact with me. And for the rest of my life, I would remember the dread in her blue eyes. They weren’t vulnerable anymore. They weren’t wistful. They were barely hanging on. She didn’t try to smile for me. In fact, her lips barely moved as she mouthed, “Get out.”
“Yes,” said Mosier, adjusting the belt in his hands as he looked over my mother’s shoulder at me. “Leave,cenusa. Christ will forgive you.”
I didn’t need to understand the inscription on the plaque over the fireplace to finish the rest of his thought…butIwill never forget.
I walked out of that study and closed the door behind me.
My mother’s screams lasted for hours into the night.
The next day I was sent for early enrollment at the Blessed Virgin Academy.
My bedroomin Mosier’s house has never really felt like my own space. It has just been a place to stay when I returned home from school for two months over the summer and for a few days at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.
School is where I feel most comfortable, surrounded by the nuns and laywomen who teach us and live among us, and Father Joseph, who has been my spiritual guide and confessor since I first arrived at the Blessed Virgin Academy after the swimming pool debacle. He is the father I never had, and I long to see him now that Tigín is gone—to ask for his guidance and prayers for my future. At dinner, I will ask Mosier if I can return to school tomorrow.
I sit on the edge of the twin bed in my room, which is covered with a pink and white toile comforter and has gauzy pink curtains tied back on either side of the headboard. It is a room fit for a princess, with white faux-fur carpeting, an overstuffed love seat in front of the white-tiled fireplace, and a shiny silver and crystal chandelier overhead. I loved it when I first arrived in Scarsdale but quickly grew to hate it. It’s too much. Too fussy. Too ornate. Too expensive. How does one earn a room that costs as much as this one does?
I remember the business card Gus gave me, and now I withdraw it, examining it carefully and committing the information to memory. I’m good at memorizing things. I always have been.
La Belle Époque Galerie ~ 5900 Shelburne Road ~ Shelburne, VT ~ 05482
Augustus Egér and Jock Souris, Owners
Jock. Hmm. I wonder who Jock is. Someone special or just a business partner?
And Shelburne.Where is Shelburne, Vermont?I wonder.
Right now, it doesn’t matter. Wherever it is, it’s the only place on earth where I have a friend.
I repeat the information over and over again inside my head, then flip over the card, grateful when it all comes seamlessly back to me. I rip the card into tiny shreds and throw the pieces into the white wicker trash can next to the powder-pink bedside table.
And not a moment too soon.
Knock, knock.
A crisp double knock. It’s Mosier.
I haven’t had time to process the way my stepfather touched me at the reading of my mother’s will, but I feel jumpy and scared when I think about it. The way Mosier looks at me—the way he touched me today—it feels wrong.Allwrong.
Knock, knock.
Louder now. More insistent.
