Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (30 page)

“So she made you leave? Zelda?”

Griselda nodded. “Yeah. Me or the baby.”

“And he chose the baby.”

“No,” she said, recalling his words,
I won’t lose you. I can’t.
“It was
my
choice. I decided to go. He begged me to stay, but I wouldn’t risk it. She was crazy, Maya. Ready to go to the clinic and take care of business. I didn’t want to be . . . I couldn’t bear it if I was . . .”

The events of the last two weeks, and today—and hell, yes, her entire life—overtook her suddenly, and her body was racked with sobs. She bent her head forward and cried loud and long, for herself, for Holden, for that baby whose mother considered killing it. She cried for second chances and lost chances and finding what you want and losing what you love. She cried for the unfairness of it and the frustration of it and the heartbreak of it. For his beautiful words and beautiful body and the way he called her angel and said he’d love her until the end of time. She cried. And she cried. Until finally there were no tears left in her body.

She didn’t know how long they’d been sitting in front of her apartment, but the engine was off and Maya sat still and sympathetic beside her in the dark, warm car. “Better?”

“No,” said Griselda. “Not yet.”

“So it’s over?” asked Maya.

“No. Yes.” She sobbed, shaking her head, bone weary, spent, and confused. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Maya took a deep breath and rubbed Griselda’s arm. “It’s late. Let’s get you inside, and I’ll make you a cup of tea and make sure Jonah doesn’t bother you. I’ll tell him me and Terrence are coming by to check on you later. He won’t mess with Ter.”

Griselda nodded, giving Maya a small smile. “What would I do without you?”

“We’re sisters, Griselda Schroeder,” she said, trying out Griselda’s full birth name for the first time. “You’ll never find out.”

Maya took Griselda’s spare key off her key chain and handed it to her, and they walked slowly up to the apartment door. The ground-floor apartment windows were dark, and the place had a quiet, unlived-in feeling that unnerved Griselda after more than two weeks away.

Griselda turned the key in the lock, pushing open the door, but it got stuck on something and wouldn’t open all the way. Flipping on the light switch to her right, she looked around the back of the door and realized that about two weeks of mail had been piled up under the mail slot. Magazines, catalogs, and bills. Lots of bills, most with the red word “overdue” stamped on the outside.

“He didn’t pay one bill,” said Griselda, fuming.

“You’re surprised?” asked Maya, squatting down to take a handful of mail and bring it to the kitchen counter.

Griselda followed her, finding filthy dishes in the sink covered with crusted food and flies buzzing around. It smelled like decay, and she realized that the garbage hadn’t been taken out in weeks. Walking through the living room, she immediately found that her TV, DVD player, and coffee table were gone. A lamp. A chair. Her futon sat dejectedly under the double windows that looked out at the parking area. On one remaining end table was a bottle half full of chaw spit, with a family of flies buzzing around it greedily. Her stomach lurched.

She made it to the bathroom in time to vomit in the toilet that smelled like a latrine. It had been used and left unflushed. She flushed it as she threw up, the smells making her stomach roll over again.

“Fuck me!” exclaimed Maya, peeking in the bathroom and covering her nose with her hand. “Is he a goddamn barn animal?”

Griselda stood up, careful to keep her nostrils closed as she breathed in, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Pretty close.”

She was scared to look in their bedroom, but it was the least trashed room of the small apartment. The bedsheets were crusted with some sort of food or vomit, and it smelled like old socks, but a small TV still sat on her dresser, and a quick check of the closet showed only Jonah’s things were missing.

“Maybe he moved out?” asked Maya.

“Sort of looks that way.”

“I’ll go clean up the kitchen and living room. You got the bathroom, okay?”

“Thanks, Maya.”

Maya headed out to the kitchen, muttering about “good-for-nothing jackasses,” and Griselda stripped her bed, balling up the dirty sheets and placing them in the bathroom hamper. She opened the bathroom window and took fresh sheets from under the sink back to her room. She made her bed, collected three empty beer bottles—one ringed with red lipstick—and collected the garbage, which had two used condoms among its contents. She greeted this revelation with zero emotion, except for a slight bit of pity for whomever was now saddled with Jonah, and gratitude that it wasn’t her.

By the time Griselda finished scrubbing the bathroom sink, toilet, and shower with bleach, Maya had finished the dishes—an amazing feat—scrubbed the kitchen counters, and had the living room in some semblance of order. The fly population diminished every time they opened the front door and took a plastic bag to the Dumpster. And finally, two hours after they’d arrived, her apartment was mostly back to normal.

“He took your TV,” said Maya.

“He can have it,” said Griselda quietly, remembering that she and Holden had gone two weeks without one and she’d liked the quiet and solitude. “I have the little one.”

Maya nodded. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m beat.”

“Can I make you some tea?”

Griselda shook her head. “I’m going to take a hot shower and go to bed.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Maya, opening her arms. “You’re so brave, Zelda. So fucking brave. Thank you for sharing the whole story with me.”

Tears ran down Griselda’s face as she hugged her friend back. “I’m grateful for you, Maya.”

“I’m grateful for you.” Maya gave Griselda a kiss on the cheek before pulling away. “Lock the windows and chain the door? Just in case?”

“I promise,” said Griselda, mustering a small smile.

“I’ll see you and Pru at the park tomorrow?”

“Or as soon as I go back to work.”

“And you’ll call me if you need me?”

“Always.”

Maya nodded and let herself out, and Griselda dutifully locked and chained the door shut before stripping off her clothes and taking a hot shower. She belatedly realized she’d left the clothes Holden bought her in Maya’s car, but she could get them tomorrow. For now, she just wanted sleep.

She wept in the shower, assaulted by sad and happy memories, her body aching for Holden’s arms around her, the touch of his gentle lips all over her body. She missed him with a fierceness that felt new and familiar at once, and though she tried to take comfort in the certainty of his love for her, her loneliness was almost unbearable.

She turned off the water and headed to bed, sliding between the clean sheets without drying off or dressing, and, thinking about Holden’s gray eyes and freckles, she cried herself to sleep.

The cellar door creaked open, and a strip of light grew brighter and longer as the sound of steel-toed boots scuffled at the top of the stairs, ready to descend. Cutter whined, but he wasn’t allowed downstairs. Six months ago he’d been a sweet puppy sitting on Griselda’s lap the day they’d been taken. Today he was as mean as his master, and his teeth were awful sharp.

Without making a sound, Griselda rolled off Holden’s bed to the floor, crawled to the paneled wall, pushed aside the loose panel without a peep, and returned to her room. She sat against the wall, holding her knees tightly to her chest, praying Holden would say the words without stuttering this time.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

She said the words in her head over and over again, enunciating the
th-
and seamlessly sliding to the
you
, as if by concentrating on them, Holden would say them smoothly, without stammering.

She heard muffled voices, but the sound of a tin bowl clattering across the floor, followed by Holden’s sudden cry, told her that her prayers had been in vain. She bent her head to her knees and covered it with her arms, but the blunt sound of palm smacking child still found its way to her ears, embedding itself in her brain.

Stop,
she thought.
Oh God, please make it stop!

She heard the Man yell, “And jus’ for that, she don’t get none either! Pray for yer souls! Pray all day that He, in His mercy, might remove the wickedness from yer hearts!”

As she lifted her head from her knees, she heard the boots scuffle across the floor, finally making their heavy, deliberate ascent up the stairs, and the blessed music of the lock and bolt clicking.

Griselda counted to ten, then slipped back through the panel. Holden lay on the floor, his nose and lip bleeding, his eyes unfocused as he stared at the ceiling.

“Holden?”

“H-h-hurts.”

“I know,” she said, scrambling over to him. She sat cross-legged beside him, pulling his head onto her lap. “He gets real mad when you stutter—um, stammer—Holden. You gotta try not to.”

Tears rolled down Holden’s cheeks as he looked up at Griselda, trying unsuccessfully to blink them away.

“N-n-nobody’s c-coming for us, Gris. N-n-nobody c-cares.”

She stroked his dirty hair away from his forehead. They were each given a cold basin of water and a bar of soap on Sunday mornings before the Man went to church. It didn’t get all the grime off, but by today—Saturday—they both smelled powerfully bad and itched something fierce. But the smell didn’t bother Griselda. In fact, she barely noticed it anymore. He was Holden. That meant he smelled sweeter than anyone else in the world because he
was
her whole world.

“
I
care,” she said. “I care about you, and you care about me. And no matter what, that’ll last forever.”

“F-forever’s a f-fantasy,” muttered Holden.

“No, it isn’t. Forever is the good stuff,” she said, running her fingers through his silky strands of greasy hair, like she’d seen mothers do in movies and on TV. She took the hem of her grubby yellow dress and dabbed his lip. “And you don’t know for sure. Maybe somebody will find us. Someday.”

“W-we don’t have anyone to look f-for us, Gris.” He crawled out of her lap to his cot and sat down on the filthy mattress. “C-can’t be f-found unless someone’s looking.”

She scooted across the floor to his cot, sitting on the floor beside his legs, leaning her head to the side to rest it on his thigh. She felt safer when they were touching.

“Then I’ll keep looking at you,” she said, twisting her neck to catch his eyes. “So you won’t feel so lost.”

He ran his hands through her hair, and she resettled herself on his thigh, letting her eyes drift closed.

I’ll keep looking for you.

I’ll always be looking for you.

And you’ll never feel lost.

Because you’ll never be lost.

And we’ll be together forever.

Forever, Holden.

Banging. Boots banging. Louder. Closer.

“Wake up, Gris,” said Holden, his voice full of panic. He was shaking her shoulders with both hands, and whispering louder than he should. “You gotta wake up!”

“Gris!” he screamed. “Wake up!”

***

Griselda bolted upright, disoriented, the banging from her dream louder, not softer, as her eyes opened. Her heart raced as she realized she was naked, and she stood up on shaky legs, feeling her way to her bureau and pulling out sweat pants and a T-shirt. The banging was real, but it wasn’t boots stomping or fists hammering a door. It was banging like a door on a chain being forced open over and over again. He’d unlocked the door but found the door chained closed, and it was only a matter of time until the chain snapped.

Jonah
, she thought with dread
. Jonah’s here.

Grappling against the bare surface of her bedside table, she realized that she didn’t have a cell phone charging there, as she used to. The only phone she had was a landline on the wall of the kitchen, beside the front door. Looking desperately at the trio of narrow windows in her bedroom, she considered whether or not she could wiggle out of one and decided she probably couldn’t. Still, it was worth a try.

She stepped over to the bedroom door, quietly closed it, and turned the lock, then raced to the windows, opening one, and pushing against the screen as the banging sound got faster and more insistent. That chain was not going to last much longer.

“Zelllllda!” he bellowed, slurring her name, menace thick in his voice. “You in there?”

She threw one leg out the window, bending it at the knee, straddling the windowsill. Her leg slipped through the opening to her thigh, but no matter how she shifted her hips, she couldn’t get them through. It just wasn’t wide enough.

“Open the door, Zelda!”

With one more bang, she heard the door crash open, swinging into the remaining end table beside the sofa, and Griselda pulled herself back out of the window, looking around the room for anything she could use as a weapon. Her eyes zeroed in on a pair of scissors on her desk, and she picked them up, standing on the other side of the bed, her eyes focused on the door.

The doorknob to her room rattled, and she tried to calm her breathing, but this was as crazy as she’d ever known Jonah, and her only hope was that one of her neighbors had heard the ruckus and already called the police.

He banged his shoulder into the door, and it shook but remained shut, and she was cautiously hopeful that it was stronger than she thought, until she heard his running footsteps, and suddenly the door flew open, and Jonah stumbled into the room.

Griselda’s entire body braced, her muscles taut and tense. Her only option was to lure him into the room and somehow get past him, into the hallway, through the living room, back out the broken front door. If she didn’t, she was trapped.

“So . . . slut,” he drawled, his eyes heavy from drinking and dark with fury as he put his hands on his hips. “You’re back.”

“I don’t want any trouble,” she said, adjusting and readjusting her sweaty fingers on the scissors she held by her side.

His eyes dropped to them, and he smirked before looking up at her. “And yet you’re holding a fucking weapon.”

“Please, Jonah,” she said, trying to stay calm. “Just go. Just—”

“I’m not going to fucking go, Zelda,” he said, taking a step toward her. “This is my fucking home, and you’re my fucking girlfriend. The question is . . .” He chuckled humorlessly. “Who exactly have you been fucking?”

“It’s not your home. Your name isn’t on the lease. This is
my
apartment. You’re . . . trespassing,” she said, forcing her voice not to waver.

“Trespassing,” he repeated, laughing softly for a few seconds and abruptly stopping. The color and expression drained from his face, and his eyes bored into hers. “You fucking cunt.”

Her eyes darted to the doorway, but Jonah had placed himself directly in front of it. The only way around him was to leap over the bed, but she’d lose too much time and he’d grab her. Should she scream? Should she just start screaming like a lunatic and hope her neighbors called the police? She listened carefully for the sound of sirens but heard none. Despite the racket he’d made breaking down her front door, it didn’t appear that anyone had called the cops.

“Jonah, I was kidnapped when I was a little girl,” she said quickly, looking up at him. “I was kidnapped and held captive for three years. And . . . that fighter? Seth? His real name is Holden. He was held captive with me. And . . .”

“Shut the fuck up,” said Jonah, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head. He froze when she didn’t say anything, and stared at her face. “What the
fuck
are you talking about?”

“It’s true. Take out your phone,” she said, still trying to breathe normally, though her eyes burned with tears and her heart raced with fear. “I mean it. Take out your phone and type in ‘Hansel and Gretel kidnapping West Virginia 2001,’ or you could type ‘Griselda and Holden abduction Charles Town 2001.’ It’ll come up. I promise.”

He took his phone out of his back pocket, still staring at her with menace. “Don’t fucking try anything.”

It took him a long time to type because his fingers were big and uncoordinated from the amount he’d had to drink. Finally his thumb slid down the screen, scanning an article, and after a few minutes he looked up at her.

“Fuck.” He stared at his phone and Griselda knew the picture he was looking at. It was the same one that had been on “Kidnapped” posters across West Virginia. It was the same one on Holden’s arm. “This is you.”

“Yeah.” She swallowed.

“You were kidnapped.”

“With him. I needed to talk to him.”

“Your foster brother.”

She nodded, and felt a little relieved as Jonah’s posture relaxed. Maybe he would leave now.

Jonah glanced back down at his phone and then back up at her, before shoving the phone back in his pocket. “Okay. Fine. So you caught up with your old foster brother. Now you’re fucking home. I forgive you. Let’s move the fuck on. I’m horny.”

“No,” she whispered.

His fingers moved to his belt buckle, and her stomach turned over as he opened the button of his jeans. “Get on your fucking knees and show me how much you missed me.”

“No.”

“What?” he asked, hands back on his hips, eyes narrowing.

“No. I’m not . . . It’s over, Jonah.”

“What the fuck does that mean? I didn’t say
shit
was over.”

“I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

“Why the fuck not?”

She swallowed, and somehow, some way, her fear receded. It ebbed away, and all that was left was anger. That same white-hot, seething anger that had made her head-butt him in West Virginia.

“
Why the fuck not?
” he demanded.

“Because you beat me and hit me and treat me mean. Because you don’t give a shit about who I am or what I want or where I’m going. Because I don’t have to put up with your shit anymore, Jonah. I survived three years in a cellar and ten years without Holden. I survived leaving.
Again!
And I
will
survive you, you sick, selfish fuck!”

“You’re gonna be sorry you said that,” said Jonah, turning the high school ring on his finger so the stone was facing his palm, then, rethinking it, he twisted it back outward again. “Say you’re sorry.”

“I’m not. Fuck. You.”

She raised the scissors and ran at him, screaming as loud as she could. The scissors sunk into the fleshy patch of skin under his collarbone, and when he was stunned and howling, Griselda pushed him out of her way, running out her bedroom door and into the hallway.

R-r-r-r-uuuuuun!

She heard it in her head as clear as day, as loud as if thirteen-year-old Holden was standing beside her.

But this time she didn’t escape.

This time the monster caught up with
her
.

Jonah’s hand bunched in her hair, snapping her neck back just as she reached the living room. She screamed again as he swept her legs out from under her and she landed on her stomach, the air knocked out of her lungs. Unable to breathe or move, she felt his steel-toed work boot slam into her side once, twice. The third time, she heard the cracking sound of her ribs breaking, and when she tried to take a breath and raise herself to her knees, a sharp, stabbing, unthinkable pain made her instantly freeze.

She moaned deep in her throat, trying to take another breath, stopped by the excruciating pain in her chest.

“
You like that, you fucking slut?” bellowed Jonah, his face a mask of rage.

Jonah reached down and grabbed a fistful of her hair, drawing back his fist and slamming it into her face.

Holden’s face was inches away, surrounded by a halo of warm light, staring at her from where she lay on her living room carpet. He reached out and ran his fingers through her hair, and his lips touched down on hers like the feathers of an angel’s wing.