Page 110 of Things We Do in the Dark
Bad things happened in the dark.
Her uncle stared at her with whiskey-glazed eyes. Joey blinked, then blinked again. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe her testimony at the trial had brought up some terrible memories.
She felt his hand on her thigh.
“Joelle,” he breathed. The smell of whiskey on his breath was pungent.
Across the room, she could hear the boys snoring in their bunks. She could hear the frogs and smell the swampy damp of the pond below. She could hear the rustle of the wind in the trees outside. She could hear Tito Micky’s slight wheeze.
This was not a dream. This was real, and she could feel her body stiffening from the fear that was beginning to suffocate her. In her mind, she screamed at herself,Don’t freeze! Say something! Turn the light on!Light vaporized monsters the way water dissolved the Wicked Witch of the West.
But the lamp was too far away, and when she tried to reach for it, her body wouldn’t comply. She no longer had the instincts other people had. Her fight-or-flight response had been stolen from her a long time ago. She was frozen.
The only thing she could do was not behere.
“Joelle,” Tito Micky said again, and she felt his hand move an inch higher.
She closed her eyes and listened to the frogs, willing herself to drift away. She pictured the little green choir director, and imagined she was down at the pond for the live performance. Finally, blessedly, she began to float out of her body and out the window, where she hovered on the other side of the glass, peeking in at the girl on the bed with the monster looming over her.
It’s okay. It will be over soon. Just don’t look. Just don’t feel.
The frog conductor morphed into aLooney Tunescartoon she used to love. A man happened to discover a frog that could sing and dance, and because the frog had a lovely, showtune voice, the man stole him and tried to get him to perform at a concert in front of a huge audience for money. But when the curtain opened, the frog just sat there onstage, and croaked. It always made her laugh.
She imagined herself as the man.
“Sing,” she said, and for her, the frog finally complied.
Hello, my baby, hello, my honey, hello, my ragtime gaaaal
Send me a kiss by wire
Baby, my heart’s on fire
If you refuse me, honey, you’ll lose me
Then you’ll be left alone
Oh baby, telephone, and tell me I’m your owwwwwn
“Joelle,” Tito Micky breathed again.
The sound of her name thrust her back to the present, and she was angry, because it was hard to transport herself somewhere else if someone wasspeakingto her. She mentally shut her ears; she could not listen, because listening made it real. She squeezed her eyelids tighter; she could not see, because seeing it made it real.
She willed herself back down to the pond. The frogs would sing her through this. The only thing she needed to do was breathe—inhale, exhale—but it was hard because her stomach was clenched like she was doing sit-ups.
Five more, Joey, she could hear Ruby say, and she flew to her mother, relieved to see her, if only for this one time. Ruby was lying on an exercise mat and a calisthenics tape was playing in the VCR. She was doing sit-ups, and so Joey was doing sit-ups, too, because she liked to do everything her mother did. Joey was seven.Boys like flat stomachs, Ruby said.I blame you for every single one of these stretch marks.
Someone coughed, and she was back in the bedroom again with the monster. She wanted to thrash, scream, and wake the house up, anything to make him stop.
But she couldn’t. Tita Flora would never believe her, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be Tito Micky leaving the house. He was her husband, the boys’ father, and they were a family, and Tita Flora would not break up her own family. Joey, on the other hand, was an inherited nuisance, the daughter of her murderer sister, the unwanted niece she was paid to care for.
And where would she go anyway? To a foster home full of strangers where there was another Tito Micky?
Because there was always another Tito Micky.
She heard another sound, a bad sound, and this time, she opened her eyes. She didn’t mean to, but now she was looking at Tito Micky, and he was looking at her. It occurred to her then that he was interpreting her stillness aspermission.
But not saying no was not the same thing as saying yes.
