When Smiles Fade (19 page)

They entered through the kitchen. To the right was a small stainless steel sink, smothered in grime. The faucet, suffering from a steady, nagging drip, was covered with mildew around the spout. To the left was a tiny stove that looked as though it belonged in a trailer home rather than in an apartment. Blackish-brown streaks ran down its sides from food that had once boiled over and never been cleaned. There were six cabinets with a few drawers along the longest wall, and the linoleum floor was two shades of brown, ugly and uglier. The white plastic tiles on the walls were yellowed and smeared with grease.

The open living room had unfinished wood flooring that had turned a dirty brown, and the white walls still sported scuff marks and crayon drawings from its previous tenants. The sole bedroom, with two windows, was situated in the corner of the apartment. The walls were orange and the wood floor had been painted black.

Emma thought the place was a complete dump. After they had finished looking it over, she asked, “How much is it?”

“It’s four-fifty a month. I will need a five-hundred-dollar deposit and the first month’s rent, if you want to take it today.”

Emma turned to Gracie and Brianna. “Are we good?”

Both girls nodded.

“Great,” Emma told the owner, “we’ll take it.”

She peeled off $950 from the wad of cash in her purse and handed it to him. From his back pocket, the owner pulled out a lease, which he had Emma fill in. She filled in the form, with mostly lies, signed it, and gave it back to him.

Handing her the keys, he said, “Make sure I get your rent check the first of every month. If you’re late, you’re out.”

As he closed the door behind him, Emma said, “And fuck you too! Asshole!” She turned to Brianna and Gracie, who were both looking around the apartment.

“Gotta run,” Katie said, leaning in to give Emma a hug before she left, “I’ll catch you later.”

The three girls walked from room to room, relishing all the space they now had to share. While the apartment was dark and depressing, in need of major repairs, they were all happy to have a place of their own. They had been living in the car for far too long.

“So,” Brianna said, egging on her friends, “we need to get some furniture and stuff. What do ya say we drive over to the Salvation Army and see if they have anything?”

“Definitely,” Emma said approvingly.

The girls made out well at the Salvation Army. They bought a used burgundy sofa that was in better condition than the one in the home Emma and Gracie had grown up in. They also bought a small television set, bath towels, and a mattress. When Gracie noticed the mattress in the far corner of the store she dragged Emma by the hand over to it. Lying on top, she beamed up at her sister. “Now this is what I’m talking about. Ahhhhh! I can see myself sleeping like a baby on this beauty.”

Emma laughed at her sister’s theatrical performance. She liked seeing Gracie so happy and was, for the first time, grateful that they had left Norristown to find their own way.

Before they left the store they scored various kitchen items and other essentials they needed. They drove to their apartment with enough things to get them started. It wasn’t much, but it was the most they had since they left their home on Chain Street.

The three girls spent the rest of the day setting up their new apartment. By eight o’clock that night, they were high on the thrill of having a place to live but exhausted from all the work they’d done that day. Gracie and Brianna slept on the bare mattress, covered with the blankets they had used in the car. Emma lay down on the floor next to them.

She lay awake, filled with pride that they had come this far. Embracing the moment, she allowed herself to release the hatred she had stored within, a hatred that had always simmered just beneath the surface. She was now free of the bitterness, free to be happy. She didn’t know that her newfound happiness would be so short lived.

A week later, when they were well settled into their apartment, Brianna broached the subject she had been meaning to discuss with Emma.

“Em, I want to talk to you,” she announced somberly, interrupting her friend who was reading in the living room.

Emma looked up from her book. “What’s up?”

“Em, now that you guys are all settled, I was thinking I would move back with my mom. I mean, I really want to finish high school, and this place is the perfect size for you and Gracie. It’s not that I don’t like living here with you, but I just can’t see any future for me. You know what I mean?”

Emma had been anticipating this moment and had promised herself that when it did arrive, she wouldn’t be selfish. “Come here, Bri,” she said gently, pulling her friend onto the sofa and wrapping her arms around her. “I hate that you’re leaving, but I get it. You’re a good friend. Not many people would have stayed this long and put up with so much bullshit and uncertainty as you have when they had a place of their own to go back to. Besides, it’s not like you’ll never come back here to spend time with us, right?”

Brianna was relieved that Emma respected her decision. “Of course I’ll be here all the time to see you guys!” she promised. “We’re best friends and we always will be.”

“So when are you going, Bri?”

“I was going to wait till morning so that I could tell Gracie myself. I don’t want her to think I’m running out on you guys, ya know?”

The two girls stayed up most of the night, talking. They laughed about their experiences over the previous months, mocking themselves for the dirt balls they had been when they went a week or longer without showering. They talked about their mutual hatred for Jake and gloated over his untimely death. Just before daybreak, they fell asleep on the sofa.

Hardly a couple of hours passed before Gracie came out of the bedroom, banging around in the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal for herself. When she finished her breakfast, she joined the two older girls who were now awake in the living room. Brianna explained that she was moving back home. Gracie dissolved in tears at the news and cried for a long time. She was sad to see her go and worried they wouldn’t see her ever again. With great effort, the two older girls managed to calm her down. Not long after, Brianna packed her clothes and drove back to Norristown.

The two sisters made dinner that night. As they were eating, Gracie asked, “Emma, am I going back to school at all? I’m just asking, because I really want to.”

Emma thought about it for a moment. “Of course you are, Gracie. We’re gonna get everything figured out.”

Later, after Gracie had gone to sleep, Emma thought about getting her into school. She knew exactly what she had to do to make that happen.

The next morning, she made the dreaded phone call to her mother. The girls had left home without any real identification and Emma had no option but to call Valerie and tell her that she needed Gracie’s ID so she could go back to school.

Valerie answered the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Emma. I need to get Gracie into school. I want you to put her birth certificate and immunization records in an envelope and leave it under the cushion on the front porch sofa tonight. Someone will pick it up.”

Valerie silently listened to her elder daughter. She knew from experience and from the reflection she saw every morning in the mirror of her disfigured face to what lengths Emma was capable of going to get what she needed.

“Emma,” she managed to say, struggling in vain to keep her voice from breaking, “you’ve ruined my life. You destroyed my face and now everyone is afraid to come near me. Men used to think I was beautiful. Now people can’t even look at me!”

“Good!” her daughter responded without a trace of remorse. “Now just do what I’ve told you. I’ll need my birth certificate too. Just make sure you have everything out there before you go to bed.”

“Aren’t you even a bit sorry for what you’ve done to me, Emma?” Valerie persisted. “You’ve lost all compassion.”

“You’re right!” Emma shot back. “Not only have I lost all my compassion, I’ve also lost my innocence and my virginity that
you
allowed my father to rob from me. So don’t give me any of your shit. If you had done something to protect us, things might have been very different today. Instead, you chose to beat us down just like
they
did. So now you can live with the consequences!”

Hearing the anger in her daughter’s voice escalate, Valerie grew increasingly fearful. She didn’t want to push her. Even though she played stupid all the time, she was secretly aware that she had participated in the brutal treatment of her two children by letting two men abuse them.

Realizing the girls were now older and could articulate enough to convince the police about their mother’s culpability in all that had happened to them, she backed off. She feared that if the matter became public, its aftermath would be enough to keep her in prison for a very long time. She now wished that Emma had never found Gracie buried in the basement; since Emma had found her, Valerie’s life had been ruined. Pepper was right after all, she should have aborted Gracie.

“Fine, Emma, the papers will be there,” she said, wishing she could slap the shit out of her daughter.

Emma hung up the phone without saying good-bye.

Gracie had been sitting by Emma all through her phone conversation with Valerie. Now she covered her older sister’s hand with her own. “I’m happy we don’t live with her anymore. When Jake was beating me that night, before he buried me in the basement, she stood and watched him from the doorway. I begged her to make him stop and she just told me if I weren’t such an annoying little bitch, Jake wouldn’t have to punish me. I wished so hard for you to come home, and when you didn’t, I wished that she was dead and Jake too. I hate her, Em,” she said softly, looking for reassurance from her older sibling. “You’re the one that has acted like my mom my whole life. We’ll be okay. We’ll always have each other, right?”

Emma scooped her up in her arms. “Of course we will. I’ll love you till the end,” she said warmly. “AND we’re gonna be better than okay. We’ll never have to deal with people hurting us again. Understand?”

Gracie nodded and relaxed in her sister’s embrace. She knew how lucky she was to have Emma. She would do anything to stay with her, even if it meant lying, cheating, or stealing.

They found comfort in each other’s embrace and felt fortunate, if for no other reason than to have been born sisters. They were encouraged at the new life they were beginning.

However, they were young, and while they were experts at dealing with what took place inside a home where evil dominated, they were naïve about the horrors outside of those walls of hell.

That night, Emma had Brianna pick up the papers that Valerie left on the front porch and deliver them to her in Ambler. Since she was scheduled for a shift at Double Visions the following night, Emma asked Brianna to come back again to the apartment to drive her to work.

“It’s just a temporary arrangement, Bri,” she explained, “until I can figure out how I’m going to get to work and back on my own. I’ll talk to Katie tomorrow and see if she knows someone that will sell me a car.”

“Who’s gonna sell you a car, Emma?” Brianna asked, half-laughing.

“I don’t know yet, but somebody will,” she said confidently. “And I’ll learn how to drive.”

It was not in Emma’s nature to worry about such minor details. Her primary concern was her sister’s safety and her ability to earn a living so that they could remain in their apartment.

The next morning, Emma went to see Katie about a car. As it turned out, her friend knew a guy who sold stolen cars and was confident about being able to help work out a deal. Later that afternoon, the two girls went to meet the man. Not long after, they left in an old Chevy Cavalier for which Emma had paid $500 and an extra $50 to get a new out-of-state license plate, which too had been stolen. The crooked salesman had assured her that the plate would kill any suspicion about the vehicle being a stolen one.

“Besides,” he pointed out, “the car won’t be registered in your name anyway.”

Katie drove the car and they chugged their way back to Railroad Avenue. By the time they got back to the apartment, it was almost dark. Gracie and Brianna came running out to see the car. It was a piece of shit, as cars went, but it would get Emma to work.

Brianna and Katie took turns teaching Emma how to drive, and a week later, she drove herself to Doubles for the first time. She left Gracie alone at home, sternly warning her never to open the door for anyone. She instructed her to call 911 if anything happened while she was at work.

It didn’t take Emma long to settle into her job as a stripper. She didn’t mind the work and she made a lot of money doing it. She had also become friends with Foster, the bartender she had met the first night at the go-go bar. Foster was almost six feet tall, had a stocky, muscular build, and wore his short brown hair spiked. He had a round, handsome face and his beard and mustache made him look older than his twenty-two years. He was friendly with everyone, but it was the way he cared about Emma that made him so special to her. At the end of her shift, she would sit at the bar and they would talk about their lives. Eventually she admitted to him that she had been beaten as a child. But that was as far as sharing secrets went. She neither revealed her age nor the fact that she had killed Pepper and Jake.