Page 12 of Beautiful Savage
My hand shakes as I set down the coffee cup. The small victory of making him react tastes like danger. I press my hand to my sternum, trying to slow my racing heart. I don't know the rules. Don't know if that tone is allowed, if punishment comes later, if I've crossed some invisible line.
This is Thursday morning, and nothing has gone the way I expected.
I've been here for three days, and he hasn't looked at my face.
Not since the electric contact across the living room in my cottage when I first laid eyes on him. Since, then, nothing. Not those first two nights when I ran through every protocol I knew.Not during the silent food deliveries. His eyes slide past me like I'm furniture, landing on walls, windows, anything but my face.
Every tool I've developed for being looked at, my years of ballet training, working on posture, poise, and presence, are useless against a man who refuses to look.
Through the window, I can see glimpses of a garden two stories below. Bougainvillea spilling over a wall, a stone bench, the edge of what might be a citrus tree. Beautiful, tended with obvious care. Someone loves that garden.
My father would love that garden.
Two hours pass. He's back at the desk with his files, and I pretend to read on the bed while actually studying him. The tilt of his head when he concentrates. The way his pencil moves in precise annotations. The Saint Michael on his forearm catching morning light, sword raised, wings spread. A warrior saint on the arm of a man who could snap my neck without effort.
Something catches my eye on his desk. A watercolor painting, face down in the corner. Just the edge visible, but I can see pink bleeding into the paper, the buckle of watercolor paper that's gotten wet. My chest tightens. But I can't see enough to know, and I won't ask. Won't give him the satisfaction of knowing I'm curious about anything in his world.
The silence between us has texture now, weighted with all the things we're not saying.
"The garden." I break the silence, gesturing toward the window. "Downstairs. Whose is it?"
"Building's." He doesn't look up from his files.
"Who tends it?"
The pencil stops moving. A pause that stretches too long before he answers. "Staff. Various staff."
The lie sits between us like a third presence. I make a small sound in my throat. Not quite a laugh, not quite a scoff. Just a single note that says: I know you're lying.
I return to my book, but my mind keeps circling. In my head, I'm composing what I'd say if I were brave enough:Various staff don't make gardens look like that. That's the work of someone who cares.
The almost-smile doesn't quite reach my face. When did I start narrating my kidnapping in my own head? When did the terror ease enough to let wit creep back in?
The bathroom tiles are cold under my feet, grounding me in the endless present of this captivity. Ten minutes of small rituals. Washing my face, brushing my teeth again, the activities that fill captive hours. My reflection looks hollow-eyed, hair escaping the loose bun that Miss Macie would be shocked at. I avoid looking too directly at the woman I'm becoming.
When I emerge, I stop short.
On the kitchen counter: paint tubes, brushes, a sponge, clean rags, a plastic palette. My breath catches, heart racing. Liquitex Heavy Body. The label might as well be my childhood name. Thirty years of Papa's paintings made with exactly this brand. My hand knows the weight of these tubes before I pick them up.
Anger flares hot in my chest. He's been studying Papa. Either his work or his studio. Somehow he knows the brand, knows what it would mean to me. Extracting details, providing for needs I haven't voiced. Everything but actually looking at me.
The apartment door opens and closes. He's gone again.
I glance up and see something else new—a floor-to-ceiling dancer's mirror on a stand. I will be able to check my poses in front of my reflection, to make sure my lift doesn't drop.
But first, the paints. I stand at the counter, holding the magenta tube. Papa's favorite pink. My hand closes around it, my body a step ahead of me. I won't paint anything he can take. Won't give him something to hang or confiscate or study.
But I need to paint something. The urge is older than this captivity, older than my fear, older than almost anything except dance.
I turn my left hand palm up, then over. The back of my hand. The only surface in this apartment that's mine.
I gather supplies and bring them to the desk: three pinks, green, black, the smallest brush. That watercolor on his desk taunts me from its face-down position, but I focus on my own work. I sit on the side opposite his papers, claiming my own space at his desk.
On the palette, I mix the pinks until they match my memory: Maman's heritage roses in late spring. The ones Papa still tends every year, pruning them with religious devotion though she's been gone nineteen years. The ones she planted the year before she died, when I was six and she was already getting thin but still laughed when dirt got under her fingernails.
The rose takes shape on the back of my left hand. Small, palm-sized, below the knuckles. Cabbage-shaped petals in three shades of pink, one dark green leaf pointing toward my wrist. My mother's flower.
I haven't painted since I was seven. The rose is primitive. Petals too uniform, one shade slightly muddy. But it's mine. On my skin. In this apartment where I'm held captive. A small defiance, a tiny claim to who I was before this room. Something to bring me closer to my father.
