Page 7 of In My Blood
“Bailey!” There went the yelling again. I put my head down and tried to get out of my head. This little walk down memory lane wasn’t helping me. I told myself again to just be grateful for what we had. I’d sleep safely on the sofa in our apartment that night, and that was a lot after so many nights before of sleeping rough, in terrifying, unsafe places. If I had to live this stressful, monotonous life to keep that safe place to sleep, then it was worth it.
It was dark and bitterly cold when I finished my shift and made my way out to the street. I had my pay packet in hand. It was a measly amount for the work I did, but we were technically illegal workers and we had no rights. I had to accept the pathetic wage because my options were limited, very limited.
It was at least enough to get some pills for my Mum. We’d run out the morning before and I had paid the price for that when I got home from my shift at the club late the previous night, to be greeted by an empty vodka bottle flying at me. I’d been exhausted and didn’t see it coming, so I didn’t have time to duck, and it had caught my shoulder, bouncing off of me with impact, then smashing against the hard wood floor. My shoulder had been black and blue when I woke that morning and it ached badly all day. Luckily, I wasn’t working at the club that night or I’d have had to cover it with makeup, since my uniform at the club left little to the imagination.
I pulled my thin and threadbare coat tighter around my already shivering body and started to speedwalk down the quiet street in the commercial area the factory was housed in. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was snowing and that meant I was going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new coat and boots. The ones I bought from the thrift store the year before wouldn’t last another winter. They’d both been pretty heavily worn when I bought them, but I’d had little money at the time, and this time would be no different.
Shaking off the depressing thought I pulled up my hood and lowered my head, walking into the wild wind. I had to meet Justin, the dealer I used, outside the club that I worked at, in thirty minutes, and I had a long walk ahead of me. After that I needed to buy groceries – though that was an optimistic term for what I could actually buy. My shopping usually consistedof cereal my Mum could prepare when I wasn’t around, milk, ramen, – which was almost my entire diet – and liquor. Mainly liquor for my Mum.
“You’re late,” Justin snapped as I raced past the club and found him waiting beside his truck in the almost empty parking lot.
“Barely,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. I was like two minutes late. Justin was an arsehole and I hated dealing with him, but it wasn’t like I could just Google another local drug dealer. He was about a decade older than me, I guessed. He was tall and thin, with dirty blonde hair that needed a decent cut and many, many washes. He always wore loose jeans that hung down his backside and an array of oversized and grubby looking hooded sweaters. Today his sweater was pale blue and at least three sizes too big for his skinny frame. “Have you got them. It’s fucking freezing out here. I’m not hanging around!” I snapped.
“I’ve already been hanging around for ten minutes, waiting for your late ass!” he bit back as he stepped towards me. I knew he was trying to intimidate me, but I had seen and faced way scarier men than Justin in my life.
“Just give me the fucking pills, Justin!” I ground out. I was exhausted, freezing my arse off, and not in the mood to deal with him.
“Here. You got the money or you want my discount?” he asked as he handed me a bag filled with little white pills. I slid them into my pocket, confident no one could see us where we stood. The club had cameras in the parking lot, but we weren’t in the line of them. “ Little short on cash this month, huh sexy?” Justin taunted when I didn’t instantly reply to his question.
The truth was I had been hoping he wouldn’t ask if I wanted discount, because I knew I would be tempted to take it, even though I shouldn’t. I’d told myself I wouldn’t. Never again. But I needed a coat and boots, and I could buy more food if I didn’t spend as much on the pills. It was so cold and I would need to heat the apartment for my Mum all winter, since she often forgot to put a jumper on, or even get dressed out of her nightshirt, most days. Chicago winters were freezing, literally, and my Mum would just let herself sit and get hypothermia if I didn’t leave heat on in our apartment all day– which was expensive.
I needed every cent I could hold on to and it wouldn’t be the first time I took the discount, not by a long way, but I’d forced myself to turn down the offer for the last few months, trying to tell myself I had to maintain my dignity. But when it came to a choice between dignity, or freezing and starving, I chose to let dignity go, just as I had time and again in recent years.
“How much?” I asked as I looked up at him.
“We’ll call it three for the pills with the discount, like usual,” he replied. I took a shallow, panicked breath, and closed my eyes for a second to steel myself, then I nodded. It would be over in minutes, because it always was with Justin, and I’d have enough extra cash for what I needed. It wasn’t even that big of a choice, given the circumstances.
I handed him the cash he wanted, needing to be able to flee when this was all over.
“Good,” he nodded as he checked the cash, then slipped it into his jeans pocket. “Let’s go.”
I wasn’t breathing as he led the way to the back of his truck and opened the rear door. I didn’t say anything. I don’t think Icould have if I tried anyway. Instead I slipped down the leggings I was wearing, leaving my coat, which came down to mid-thigh, covering me for the moment.
“Bend over,” Justin said and I could hear the sound of him loosening his belt buckle, then the zip of his jeans. He slid his hands up the back of my bare thighs, his touch making every muscle in my body tense in revulsion. Tears filled my eyes as he slid his hands over the fabric of my thong, then squeezed both of my butt cheeks. “This body,” he breathed heavily. “You know I’d take care of what you need if you just stop fighting me, Cara.”
I hated when he said my name. He’d tried to ask me out a ton of times. He wanted me to be his, and he told me he’d support me and make sure my Mum had the pills she needed if I accepted his offer.
I hated that I had actually considered it, but I had, more than once. The man repulsed me, but how much worse could life with him be? He seemed to earn a decent living dealing drugs. He drove a nice car. Maybe I could clean him up a bit, and he wouldn’t gross me out so much? At least I wouldn’t have to work myself to death, day in and day out.
At least he’d pretend to care about me. I needed that more than any of the other stuff. I just needed someone. I was so tired of being alone and afraid. I had been that way since I was eight years old and it was destroying me piece by piece. I didn’t know how much longer I could go on as I was. Just to have someone hold me, care about me – even if it wasn’t real – I needed that. I had learned how to survive without help, but that didn’t mean I was good at it, and it sure as hell didn’t mean it was what I wanted.
“Just get on with it. Have you got a condom?” I demanded instead, refusing to show my weakness, fighting hard to cover the waver in my words and the tears trickling down my cheeks.
“Don’t worry. Always wrap it up,” he told me. I listened closely as he ripped open a wrapper, then I glanced over my shoulder to make sure he had the condom on, but as he lined himself up with my centre, I looked away and pressed my head to my hands where they rested on the back seat of his truck.
I tried not to cry out in pain when he pushed into me, but I wasn’t ready, or in any way turned on, and it felt like he tore me in two when he pushed into me. Thankfully, he was little more than what the strippers at work called a ‘one pump chump’ and it was over quickly, but I could feel where there would be finger marks on my shoulders and hips where he’d held me as he brutally pumped in and out of me.
I know he was talking to me as I scrambled back a step from the truck and wrenched up my leggings, but I didn’t hear the words. They sounded tinny and hollow in my head and I couldn’t focus on anything but getting away from him.
All I know is that he was laughing loudly as I finally got my coat wrapped tightly around me and started running. The pills were safely in my pocket and I had cash for what was important. I hated what I had done, or allowed Justin to do to me, but I had needed that cash. It wasn’t like he had taken anything from me that I hadn’t already lost or had ripped away anyway.
I swiped angrily at the tears running down my cheeks as I hit the busy street out front and got lost in the crowd. There was no use crying or mourning for things I never had and could never get back. This was my life. I was alive. My Mum was alive. Right nowI could think little past keeping it that way. It took everything I had left inside of my hollow body to do just that.
The walk back to our run down, crumbling apartment building went by in a blur of me beating myself up for giving in. I was angry with myself for putting value on things like a warm coat and boots that didn’t leak water inside of them in the snow, over my own body, but when it came down to it, those things mattered. Me not catching my death in the cold, so that I could continue to get to work each and every day, mattered. My body was just a tool at that point, or at least that was the way I needed to think of it, because I didn’t have time to fall apart.
I stopped outside the door of our apartment on the second floor and took a calming breath. I was pretty sure my Mum would be ready to leap at me or at least throw something when I opened the door, since she had been without pills or booze all day. I needed to be ready. It was made worse by the fact I hadn’t stopped at the store as I planned to, so I had no vodka to appease her, but I needed to shower before I went anywhere else. I’d deal with numbing my Mum with the pills I had, then I’d shower and get the groceries later. A plan. That was what I needed to get me through the next hours and over the freak out I was having in my head.
I put the key in the door and opened it cautiously. I was going to peek through the small gap to see where my Mum was in the room, but then I realised the lights weren’t on, which was never a good sign. My Mum would often sit in pitch darkness, hiding in a corner, or in her wardrobe when she had decided something suspect had happened that meant Marcello had found her. It was definitely going to be a longer night than I thought if my Mum was trapped in one of her episodes.
