A Place Beside the King Page 2

“I do.”

  She took his hand. “Ya know. After all of this. I’m just hoping for place beside the king.”

  McCoy turned to her. “Not yet,” he said. “Not yet.”

  She smiled and together they went, until they finally reached their destination.

  McCoy quietly walked up his porch steps and unlocked his front door. Annalisa stood behind him, her arms folded, attempting to hide from the wintry gust.

  “Try not to make any noise.” He opened the door. Standing with her arms folded, ready to erupt, was Susan.

  “Hi hun.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I was working late and—”

  She noticed Annalisa standing behind him. “Who the hell is this?”

  “This is Annalisa. She needs a place to stay for a few days.”

  “And you brought her here?”

  “Yes. I thought—she had nowhere else to go.”

  Susan looked at the girl. She noticed her ripped clothes and frail body and the several scars protruding from her pretty skin. “How old are you, child?”

  “I’m seventeen,” she said, all while refusing to look Susan in the eyes.

  She glared at McCoy and again turned to the girl. “No need to be afraid here, sweetie. You’re safe with us.”

  Annalisa looked up after those welcoming words.

  “Well, come on in,” said Susan. “Thomas, take her to living room. I’ll get her some pillows and blankets.”

  McCoy led her in. “Make yourself at home.”

  Susan returned with pillows and a blanket. “Are you hungry, dear?”

  “No ma’am. I just wanna sleep.”

  “Okay. C’mon, Thomas. Let her sleep.”

  And she did, dreaming of her boy for every moment.

  Hours passed. Susan and Thomas slept peacefully. But soon were awakened by a loud thump. Thomas jumped out of bed, grabbing his revolver from the nightstand. He raced downstairs. A light shone from the bathroom. He slowly pushed the door open with his foot.

  There, Annalisa lay on floor in a pool of blood, her wrist split in two. He ran to her and tied her wrist with his shirt to stop the blood. But it still spilled out, splashing every which way.

  “Susan, call an ambulance! Hurry! She’s dying! The girl’s dying!”

  Chapter Three

  The ambulance swerved in and out of traffic. McCoy and Susan sat in back, holding on to whatever they could as Annalisa lay on a stretcher, unconscious. Susan whispered a prayer for the young girl. And so did McCoy.

  Soon everything stopped. The back door to the ambulance opened in a flurry. Hospital personnel swooped in and pulled out the stretcher. It was hard to hear over the commotion. All that was known was that she lost a lot of blood.

  They exited the ambulance, following the doctors as they escorted the young girl. A trail of blood dripped from the stretcher, creating a maze from here to there. The doctors took her to a room where they weren’t allowed to follow.

  “Only hospital personnel at this point,” one of the doctors said. “We’ll take care of her.” They’re left to wait. Susan became teary-eyed and blue. McCoy comforted her and guided her to a chair.

  “Is there no one to love this child?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but if there isn’t then we need to be here for her. Imagine if it was our Joy? Wouldn’t you want someone to be there for her?”

  “I would.”

  “Then let her be ours.”

  “But she can’t really be.”

  “No. She can’t,” he said. “But what’s wrong with pretending?”

  Hours passed. Night became day and soon the doctor came back. “We were able to stop the bleeding, but the cut on her wrist is quite severe. So we’re going to keep her a few days, just for a precaution.”

  “And her baby?” asked Susan.

  “The baby will be fine.”

  “Can we see her?”

  “She’s asleep now. But you’re free to go in.”

  They walked into room and stood above her. Her entire forearm was covered in white tape and medical wrap. The room was completely cleared of any objects she might use to harm herself. Even the television was gone.

  The nurse checked if everything was all right. She had been told to do so every fifteen minutes.

  Susan checked her watch. It was 11:00 a.m. She reminded her husband about work.

  “I’m not certain I should go in,” he said.

  “Go ahead, hun. I’ll watch over her.”

  “You sure, Suzie?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  So he left. Over the next few hours, Susan stayed planted near Annalisa’s bedside, praying like never before. She asked God to save them both—her and the child. All the while, she thought of Joy. Her beautiful flower. She would have been Annalisa’s age today.

  Annalisa woke in the middle of the night, Susan’s arm wrapped around her like the very blanket that covered her. Her head nestled into the bed. She fell asleep right by her side.

  Annalisa wondered if she died and went to heaven. She attempted to lift her arm. The tape was heavy. It pained her to even move her fingers. A failed attempt to go out easy. Though that wasn’t her first time.

  Susan awoke moments later. “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel cold.”

  Susan quickly buzzed the nurse.

  Is everything okay?” asked the nurse.

  “She says she’s cold.”

  The nurse walked up to the young girl. “When was the last time you used?”

  “Used what?” asked Susan.

  “Her blood test just came back. We’ve discovered high traces of Diacetylmorphine in her body.”

  “Diacet— What?”

  “Heroine.”

  “Heroine?!”

  “Yes ma’am. The coldness she’s feeling could be her body’s reaction to not having the drug in her system. When people abuse addictive drugs like heroin, their body becomes dependent on it. And that dependence causes negative reaction like the one she’s experiencing now.”

  “How long will this go on?”

  “A week. Maybe two. It all depends on her.”

  “Thank you,” said Susan.

  As the nurse left, Susan, full of anger and guilt, stared gloomily at the young girl. Annalisa stared back.

  “Do you know what that could do to your child?”

  “I didn’t think it—”

  “It could kill him!”

  “It’s her.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a girl.”

  Susan looked away. Her grim stare melted and along came that sliding tear that she had been holding back all night. “You have a name picked out?”

  “I was thinking, Faith.”

  “Why Faith?”

  “Because she once saved my life.”

  Susan turned back. Annalisa’s face, blanketed with agony as she stared at the ivory colored ceiling. Her eyes quaked underneath their puffy lids as they closed. “What happened,” asked Susan.

  Annalisa explained.

  “That wasn’t the first time he hit me. It’s just the only time he ever got caught. About two months ago, he was on me again ’cause the money wasn’t coming in how he thought it should. He accused me of stealing from him.”

  “Where the fuck did you get those shoes?” he asked.

  “What shoes, Sweetz? I’ve had these for the longest!”

  He must’ve forgot that he gave them to me for my birthday two years before. He rushed toward me and popped me in my mouth. I started to cry, which made him angrier. He clenched my arm and dragged me out of our apartment as our son watched, as he usually did.

  “Don’t come back till you got $500,” he said.

  That wasn’t hard to do. The streets were filled with ballers and rich men, alike. A petty little light skinned girl like myself, had niggas waiting. I could make a $500 in an hour on a good night. I’ve done it before. But not by myself. Sweetz never let me out go by myself. He always
came with me or we had a place to go where he watched after me from close by. But that night I was on my own surrounded by gazing eyes that never spoke. They just stared.

  There’s rules to this game, you see. And I learned it from Sweetz from day one. He always told me to follow your guts, pay attention to the little things, and recognize when a nigga tryna play you.

  I became a master with it too. I could size up a nigga and tell if he’s gonna short me before he even opened his mouth. It was art and they all came to see me ’cause I was the best thing out there. So much so that the streets had a name for me. They called me Anna-licious.

  It was cold that night. I remember because that’s the one thing that changed it all. After a few hours out there, I had only made $200.

  I remember thinking of happy thoughts, pretending that when I came home, Sweetz would tell me some beautiful news like we had won the lottery or something, and all of our troubles would be over. We would move into some beautiful house, with this white picket fence, surrounded by nice white people. You know, the type they show on TV.

  But those were merely thoughts, nothing more. And soon I was interrupted by the high beams of a car that shined upon the very streets I walked on. It moved slow, but steady. I stood still, waiting till it reached me.

  It pulled closer, windows dark and up, barring me from looking through. But the smothering fragrance of that dope managed to find its way out.

  “I don’t do groups,” I said.

  That was a rule Sweetz taught me. Never get in a car with more than one person. But it was so cold that night. I just wanted to go back home. All I thought about was home.

  “Three hundred for an hour,” one said.

  I paused, trying to gauge their true intentions in a single moment. I couldn’t. They were all well-dressed white men and relatively put together. I got no sense of malice from them.

  “I wanna see it,” I said.

  “See what?”

  “I wanna see the money before I get in.”

  The driver dug into his pocket and pulled out three one-hundred dollar bills. “Is that good enough?”

  “Yeah. That’s enough.” I jumped in the backseat, thinking I would be only gone for an hour.

  I remember seeing this younger boy in the back seat. He seemed nervous. I attempted to calm him my placing my hands on his. He hands shook like fall leaves.

  “Is this your first time?” I asked.

  He looked away without answer. I called to his friends up front. “What’s the matter with mute boy?”

  They ignored me as well. The silence troubled me a bit. Most of the time, guys talked too much. But these guys, they had nothing. They just continued to drive, eyes locked on the road as if they weren’t anyone on the streets besides us. It was only us. The streetlights all blinked yellow as we whisked through them, breaking various speed limits here and there.

  A few minutes passed. We soon arrived at this at this old towering home, adjacent to an empty field. The neighborhood was somewhere I had never been. Autumn leaves jumped across the ground as the wind blew frantically.

  There was forth man, older. He stood on the steps of the house as we pulled in the driveway. He watched as we entered this gate leading to the back of the house. As I looked back, he closed the gate behind us.

  “Where are we, guys?”

  Still no response as we drove in. The car stopped. The two men in the front hurried out of the car. The young boy got out as well and walked around to my side. He opened the door.

  “Where is this place?”

  The boy looked at me with these dead eyes. You know, the kind you have when you’re about to do something crazy. “We’re in hell right now,” he said. “It’s best you get comfortable.”

  My eyes flew open. My hands raised in fear of what he was gonna do. “What are y—” Before I could finish my sentence, I had fallen forward, out of the car. Every blink of the eye seemed like a lifetime. My head spun in the dark.

  All I remember is wanting to scream, but couldn’t as hands seized my petite body, carrying me away to another place. A place I didn’t know.

  The Night

  I awoke sometime later in this sparsely lit room. I’m not sure how much time had passed between there and then. But the blood that ran down from my head onto my face told the story of how I fell unconscious.

  I tried to wipe it with my hands, but couldn’t. They had been tied to the side of the bed. I panicked. I moved left and right, trying to break myself free. But the rope was too strong, almost as if it was made to never break. “HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP! PLEASE HELP,” I called.

  Out of the dark, someone shouted to me. “Stop your noise! You’ll only make them angry.”

  “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  “Name is Berona. But people just call me Bee.”

  “Please…please. Let me go! I’ll do anything! Just let me go!”

  “I ain’t the one holding you, child.”

  “Well who is?”

  “I thought I knew. Now I’m not too sure what they are.”

  “Why did they put us here?”

  “Who knows why the devil do what he do?”

  It was hard breathe. The smell of urine consumed that place. My guess was, it was Bee. I bet they allowed her to lie there in her own waste for months at a time.

  “How long have you…have you been here?”

  “I’ve lost track of time. But I bore three children by them, since.”

  “Children?”

  “Mmm Hmm.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “The children.”

  She didn’t answer. She just turned away, looking at the opposite wall.

  I began to cry. And she provided no words of comfort to me. I guess there was no point.

  “There will be hell in the morning. Just try not to think too much of it,” she said.

  “What will they do to me?”

  “It doesn’t matter, child. Just pray they do enough. Then maybe you could leave this place and not linger long like me.”

  Day One

  The next morning there was a surge just as she warned. Two men rushed into the room where I slept. They used a steak knife to cut the rope on my arm and dragged me from the bed by both legs. My head thumped onto the hardwood floor, reviving the wound from before. I kicked and screamed as they pulled me, watching the red trail follow.

  Bee turned her head from me. My screeching didn’t seem to bother her none. It was like she was used to it. They had trained her to be that way.

  They dragged me inside an empty room, one like where I slept. But there was no bed, just a filthy pillow top mattress that looked as if had been used for things…unspeakable things. They stripped me of my clothes.

  I pleaded and begged.

  For every piece they pulled off of me, made me feel a little less alive. They rolled me on my stomach.

  “Girl ain’t no use in struggling,” one said.

  But I fought anyway. “Don’t ever die quietly, even if it was God’s word,” Sweetz would say.

  They pinned my arms down and opened my legs. I squirmed back and forth, closing my eyes as if it would make them stop. But they punched me repeatedly in stomach until I relented.

  I soon felt him in me. It was like someone had stuck a rigid comb inside of that small little place and had opened it into something it wasn’t supposed to be. And they jabbed it inside and out of me for their own pleasure.

  Before I knew it, I felt a wetness. I looked down to a sea of red. My consciousness faded in and out just like the night before.

  They continued to punch me. One screamed to me to stop bleeding. I wish I could’ve. Maybe they would have been less brutal.

  More and more, my eyes began to close. I was fading out.

  Then from nowhere, I threw up everything that was inside of me over that pillow top mattress.

  The two men didn’t take it too well. They punched me again and again. Harder and harder as the
y called me names that I never knew existed. They did this until they grew tired. The man on top of me was even more upset than the other. I guess the smell of it all affected his arousal.

  The other one laughed as the man on top tried to make it hard again. But he couldn’t. He grabbed my hair and offered me a stern warning before shoving me away.That was the last image I saw of him. I passed out once more. When I came to again, I was back in bed, secured with rope.

  Day Two

  The next day I was awake early. Bee and I talked all night, but about petty things. I guess that’s how she escaped it all. But the mood dimmed as the sun crept through those egg-colored blinds.

  I took slow breaths to calm myself. They’d be back. Bee said they would try to break me. Train me to become their very own personal slave. Something that she had already become.

  My palms were moist like the skies in spring. The rope burned against my already-bruised wrists from my endless fidgeting. I could feel them getting closer, tiptoeing on the cold floors, probably to catch me by surprise.

  The doorknob slowly twisted and soon opened. I closed my eyes, praying it would be quick.

  “Just think about rainbows, pretty rainbows,” Bee had said to me the night before. It’s because they came only after the rain.

  I felt the heat of someone’s body over me. A hand softly touched my knee and slowly crept up, closer and closer to my thighs. I whimpered.

  In my mind, I said over and over again, Rainbows! Rainbows! Rainbows!

  But the rain had just begun.

  My eyes became flooded by their own tears. So I opened them. It was the same young boy from the backseat.

  His hands froze as he stared at me. Eyes soft like he didn’t belong. He didn’t seem to have the same malice as the others. It caused me to wonder how he got here.

  His skin was bright yellow, the same as mine. Blue eyes and brown curly hair.

  “Don’t bitch out, boy,” a voice shouted from the other room.

  So his hands continued up that beaten path.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked him.

  He provided no words in return.

  His hands stopped at the tip of the wall, thrusting back and forth. But he didn’t enter. He just played on the surface. His touch was gentle and warm. There was a softness about him.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the worst one,” he said.

  From another room, one of the men shouted again, “I DON’T HEAR NO SCREAMING IN THERE, BOY!”

  His hand fidgeted like a frightened child. His cold words didn’t match his demeanor.