Let the Tornado Come: A Memoir (20 page)

For a few seconds, I don’t know what to say. I can’t go back to Bader’s because they’ll find me there, and I don’t know where I was last night except that it was someplace far, farther than I’ve ever been, and for the first time I don’t see a way forward, but more than anything, I don’t want to go back. I don’t know how to say any of this to Sergio, so instead I run my hand through my hair. “I was kind of hoping I could hang out here for a little while, with you, but now you’re leaving, so—”

Sergio puts his hand on my shoulder. “Say no more. You’ll stay here while I’m gone, yes?”

It’s as if he knows. I feel like Willy Wonka must have felt in that strange room of halves, when Charlie gives back his everlasting gobstopper.
So shines a good deed in a weary world,
says Willy Wonka, smiling down at the candy. I hug Sergio, and then he and his suitcase are gone.

I take the longest shower of my life. I can’t get clean enough. Then I raid Sergio’s kitchen, all the while wondering if Duwahi and Karen have figured out that I’ve ditched them. On the coffee table, a half-smoked joint rests against the rim of a green glass ashtray. I light it, and as I get stoned, the people on the television become hilarious. I laugh until my stomach hurts and wonder when everybody got to be so funny. But the more stoned I get, the less funny things become. I start noticing things I didn’t notice before—creaks in the walls, loud footsteps just over my head in the apartment above, darkness licking the windows and closing me in. Suddenly it’s as if I can feel all the evil in the world surrounding me, and I have the distinct sense that something terrible is about to happen. I can’t bear the thought of being alone any longer, but without my list of phone numbers, the only person I can think to call is my friend Cindy. Though I haven’t spoken to her in ages, when she answers the phone it’s as if no time has passed at all. I want to thank her a million times, just for being there on the other end. And when she agrees to catch a cab and come over, I know that everything is going to be okay.

When she knocks on the door, I leap up in a rush to open it. But after years of watching my mother check the peephole every time someone knocked, I don’t think to do it. And then it’s too late. I see everything at once: the glint of the knife blade, Karen’s face, Duwahi’s rage. He presses the cold metal to my throat, and Karen runs to the back to see if anyone is there. “It’s empty,” she calls, while Duwahi pushes the blade harder against my neck. “If you make a sound, you won’t be as lucky as Bader was,” he says, pressing his mouth against my head as he speaks. Karen grabs a bag from the kitchen and starts dumping things
into it, and they are Sergio’s things,
nice
Sergio, and Duwahi will probably kill me and Sergio will live the rest of his life thinking that I stole from him.

How could I have been so stupid? How could I not have realized I’d written Sergio’s address on my phone list?

They push me into the car. Duwahi is yelling, “You fucking bitch! You left us waiting there all day!”

“You’re a fucking liar, too,” Karen seethes. “We were at Bader’s today, and you know who else was there? The police, that’s who. Your name’s not Roxanne, is it,
Rita
? You’re a fourteen-fucking-year-old runaway.”

“Please,” I say, wishing, for the first time, that the police had found me.

“Shut the fuck up,” Duwahi says.

The rest of the drive is silent. I pray for a car crash.

When we get to Karen’s apartment, she runs in and out, loading the trunk with stuff. Duwahi stays in the car with me and hits me in the face. “If you ever try to leave us again, I’ll kill you. I’ll slit your throat and throw you in the Dumpster.” His hands won’t stop hitting my face.

“I won’t, I promise, I won’t.”

“I’ll kill you,” he keeps saying.

“I’m sorry,” I keep answering.

After Karen loads the car, they drive me to a motel in Virginia Beach. I sleep across the backseat and wake up confused, thinking I’m in the backseat of my mother’s car. When I close my eyes again, I pretend that I am, that my sister is beside me, that we’re still looking for something.

In the motel room, they keep me stoned and stripped down to my bra and underwear. At night, I have to have sex with them. “Put your fingers inside her,” Duwahi orders me. “More. Harder.” I hate having to touch her.

They make me sleep between them so I won’t try to run in the night. I think of Dawn, my childhood best friend, and how one night
we slept in a sleeping bag together on the floor.
Will you be my best friend forever?
I’d asked her. Her skin was warm, and she smelled like popcorn. “Of course,” she’d said.
Of course
, I whisper to myself.
Of course.
I feel Karen turn her head toward me in the dark. “Whatever the fuck you’re saying, shut up.” But she can’t stop me from remembering, which is what I do, and how I finally fall asleep.

T
he sound was like a car crash, a seizing metallic thud. Claret had just kicked a hole in the wall, the final sharp kick out from behind after several other kicks. Gerta was riding him, and each time she dug her spur into his right side, he launched his foot back. “You’re not getting your way with me,” Gerta warned, with a quick boot on the right. “You’ll fucking turn on the forehand.” She kicked, and he kicked, and I watched, stuck.

Though I had found a horse I loved, I soon learned that the ride with Claret, like most things in life, wasn’t going to be easy. Besides his erratic behavior on the trail, Claret had begun acting out indoors during his work with Gerta, who suddenly wouldn’t take no for an answer. And sometimes, that was Claret’s answer. I was surprised by this rigidness in Gerta because when I’d had lessons with her on the mare I rode before Claret, she’d been patient and forgiving. But now, as she became increasingly demanding of Claret, he became increasingly rebellious,
which he expressed at first by refusal, then by swishing his tail and backing up, and ultimately by bucking and kicking holes in the walls. Sometimes I had the sense he wasn’t ready to do the exercises she was asking him to do, and when I suggested this, she dismissed me. “All I’m asking is for him to turn on the forehand. He can do that.”

Whether he could or couldn’t, he wouldn’t, and that was the problem. He’d say no, and she’d kick him or smack him with the whip, and he’d kick out in an even louder no, and she’d smack him harder, and the two of them would escalate, and eventually he’d give in. Then it would be my turn to ride him, and when I was on him, he rarely kicked or bucked, and Gerta would say, “That’s because you don’t ask anything of him. You have to get angry. You never get angry.” And I’d say, “But I’m not angry,” and she’d say that Claret didn’t respect me and would never respect me if I didn’t get angry. So I’d ride him passionately but not angrily, and after my ride, I’d stand with him in his stall and look up into his eyes and stroke his long neck. Sometimes he’d nuzzle my belly or my neck or the top of my head, and I’d swoon a little, and I’d think
Okay, we’re going to be okay.

But I was worried. Why wasn’t Claret happy? Was it true that he was refusing to do something that was easy for him to do? And if so, wasn’t that his right? Should he be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do? Was it true that Claret didn’t respect me?

I began to think so. After a few months, I could no longer catch Claret when it was time to bring him in. Happily holding out his halter, I’d enter his paddock, and he’d walk over to me. But as soon as I’d reach to put the halter on him, he’d step away. I’d try again, and he’d step away again, over and over until I was near tears. If horses could laugh, I was sure he’d be clutching his belly and trying to catch his breath.

One day after a protracted episode in the paddock, Gerta was standing by the crossties as I brought him into the barn. “You’re late,” she admonished. I explained that it had taken me a while to get his halter on. “That’s because he doesn’t respect you,” she reminded me. Then I tacked him up, and the two of them fought again.

Through all of this, I was still learning. I was learning where Claret’s favorite places were to be scratched—his shoulders, alongside his withers, in the creases between his front legs and belly—and what his favorite cookies were—pressed molasses with a peppermint on top. I was learning how to keep him balanced when we turned a corner and how to keep him going in the canter. And I was learning basic things, like how to put his blanket on, how to best clean his bridle, how to apply liniment to his back after a ride. But no matter what I learned, Gerta’s words haunted me. Was I so inept at horsemanship that I couldn’t gain the basic respect of a horse I so dearly loved?

Again, all signs pointed to yes. There was the day Claret stepped on my foot, and stood there, on my toes, until I cried out and smacked him to get off. (A horse knows when a fly lands on his back, so he surely knows when he’s stepping on your foot.) There was the day he bit my arm, just a little bit of skin between his front teeth, hard enough to leave a bruise. There was the day I tried to ride him outside and he backed me into my own car. And then there was the day, after following him all around the paddock before I could catch him, that he spooked as I led him back to the barn, then yanked away from me and got loose. I yelled for Gerta to come help me, and she grabbed him and led him in easily.

“Are you angry now?” she asked.

After that, they fought through another ride, and he kicked another hole in the wall, and I got another bill for it. And the answer was yes, I was starting to get angry.

On what would be another day of recent days that I drove home in tears, I played back the last few months in my mind. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where things had gone wrong, only that they were undeniably going wrong, and getting worse. I chalked some of that up to my inexperience with horses, but there was no doubt that the more Gerta fought with Claret, the worse things got. It seemed then that I had only one choice left: to move Claret to another barn. I had no idea how I would manage him on my own—I didn’t know a lot of things, but one thing being a runaway taught me is how to leave a place. And I knew as
certainly as I knew anything that things would keep getting worse if we stayed there.

I found a beautiful and quiet barn about twenty minutes from my house—acres of farmland and paddocks sprawling next to a tranquil pond—and I gave Gerta thirty days’ notice, and I gave the new barn owner a deposit, and when she asked who my trainer was, I told her I was taking a break from having a trainer for a while. Then I came back to Gerta’s barn and told Claret. “I’m sorry that you don’t like it here,” I said, “but don’t worry—I’m going to move you to a new barn. It’s got lots of grass and a pond.” He nuzzled into my neck then, and I closed my eyes and breathed him.

A
few days go by, and Duwahi brings a guy back to the motel from the naval base. By now a lot of the swelling on my face has gone down, but I still have a black eye and my left ear is bruised purple and my bottom lip is scabbed and swollen. The young man looks so fresh in his crisp white suit and white cap, with his pink cheeks. He fumbles awkwardly with his pants. My pants are already off.

I fantasize about telling him to call for help, call the police, do
anything
—but I don’t dare. I know they are waiting outside. I know what they are capable of.

“This is my first time, you know, paying,” he tells me. It’s as if he hasn’t noticed the marks on my face. “Because it’s not like I
have
to pay or anything.” He steps in front of me, and I give him what he wants.

People don’t care about other people. This is the hardest lesson I never fully learn.

D
uwahi and Karen are talking about moving me, prostituting me across the country while scouting for other girls along the way. But they aren’t finished with the naval base yet, and who knows how long that will take. Each time they try making plans, they can never agree on where we should go. Karen wants to go south first, get a tan in Florida and a cowgirl hat in Texas, but Duwahi wants to go to Chicago. They speak as if I’m not there, which is fine by me. But the more they talk, the more tense things become. And the more tense things become, the more I have to have sex with them.

“I know you like fucking her better,” Karen huffs. “You think I didn’t have a tight little pussy when I was fourteen?”

Duwahi reaches for her shoulder, but she pushes his hand off. “I don’t like her better. I like you.”

She pushes her hands into his chest. “You’re a liar and a bastard! And how come you get to hold all the money?”

“You want to split the money? We’ll split it. Just calm down, okay?”

“No, I’m not going to calm down. You’re a liar, and you know what else? You’re a lame fuck! A lame fuck and a stupid fucking Arab!”

In a flash he knocks her down, and the two of them start rolling on the floor.

I look at the door. The chain is hooked, the dead bolt locked. A lamp crashes down. I look back at the door. At the chain. At the dead bolt. Duwahi and Karen are rolling and flailing and punching. Karen is screaming. Duwahi is grunting. The lampshade comes off. I look at the door.

I run.

I swipe the chain and turn the lock and tear the door open, and then I am running and screaming outside in the live air, passing door after door as fast and loud as my body will go. I keep looking behind me, and for a second I see Duwahi pop out, still naked, then dart back
in. I don’t stop running and screaming. A man steps out of his motel room. I am wearing nothing but underwear and knee-highs. He is holding the door open. I run into his room and lock his door and close his shades. He is frozen, eyeing me up and down. “Never in my wildest dreams,” he keeps saying, slowly shaking his head.

“Please,” I say, “you have to be quiet. You don’t understand. If they find me, they’ll kill me.”

“Who?” he wants to know, and I say, “Please don’t speak, don’t say anything,” and so quietly he brings me a T-shirt, and I put it on.

I don’t know why, but I want to call my mother. The operator puts the collect call through, and when my mother answers, I have never felt so relieved to hear her voice.

“Mom, it’s me!”

“Where are you?”

I hold the phone with both hands, shaking. “I’m okay, Mom. I’m okay. I got away.”

“Got away from what?”

“These people. They kidnapped me, but I got away. Can I come home now? I just want to come home.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“And you’ll let me come home?”

“Rita, you know you can’t.”

I stand for a minute in this oversize T-shirt in this strange man’s room in this seedy motel in this place called Virginia Beach, where I have never seen the beach, and I let my mother’s words sink in, really sink in. My mother is not mine. Her love is not mine. Her home is not mine. I hang up the phone.

And, thanks to the bored motel operator who was eavesdropping on my call, the police show up. I surrender, and they retrieve my clothes and purse from the motel room, where they place both Duwahi and Karen under arrest.

The last time I see them is under the blaring lights of the police station: Karen is led in first, with Duwahi behind her. They are handcuffed.
Karen has an open cut across her nose. Duwahi’s left eye is swollen. Though they walk right past me, neither of them looks at me. I’m sitting at a police officer’s desk, eating a muffin that he gave me. Later that night, the same officer takes me to a shelter, where from my room I can hear the women huddled together on the porch, speaking in hushed tones about me and my bruises and the story on the news. I pull the blanket over my head, and for a minute, I hear them faintly—that old sound, that familiar herd, the horses.

B
ack at Montrose, I turn fifteen as quietly as I turned fourteen. I feel the dark mornings grow cooler, then cold. From behind the bars I watch the leaves turn and fall, then scatter across the grass. When Duwahi and Karen’s court date comes, I fly back with my mother to Virginia Beach and sit outside the courtroom waiting to testify, but they plea-bargain, so I never get called. Karen gets probation, and Duwahi gets deported back to Kuwait. But even with him gone, I still have nightmares of him finding me, folding me up, breaking my bones.

Meanwhile, in these cold stone buildings, the rumors haven’t stopped—the ones about the ghost of a girl who never made it out. Even though this time the prisoners are different, the rumor has stayed the same.