cringed. The girl was dirty, wretched, ignorant. What would the admissions director at Columbia, or the head of human resources at Vesuvius say, if they knew that Audrey Lucas came from this?
Betty looked up from the floor and bared her cigarette-stained teeth. “Who are you?”
“Momma? It’s me,” the girl said. Her voice cracked. She wiped her eyes, then took a breath to stifle the sobs. The cuts in the floor were sloppy, irregular angles that made the white tile stickers jagged, and Audrey felt a sudden fury, that Betty Lucas had allowed her daughter to dress in rags while she’d always made sure to buy her own clothes new.
Betty shoved the knife into another chunk of floor. It sounded like slashing a tire, the way the air whooshes as it rushes out. “See what you made me do?” she asked. Her manic words came fast: “Seewhatyoumademedo!!!!”
“There are doctors. There’s medicine you can take,” the girl said. Only, she was so frightened, defeated, that she whispered, and Betty didn’t hear.
When she’d dug deep enough, Betty dropped the knife and tore open the subfloor with her hands. The dirt underneath came out in blood-mud fistfuls. She threw it against the girl’s legs, where it splatted. “IseeyouwatchingmeYoucan’thaveher!” she shouted into the hole.
“Momma, stop it!” the girl cried.
“You hear them?” Betty asked. “They climb through holes, Lamb. That’s how they get inside us. We’ve got to kill them. You’d do murder for me, wouldn’t you?”
Scritch-scratch! The man scraped the door, and in the dark down below, the audience murmured.
The girl patted her thighs. Once. Twice. Grown Audrey, watching from the table, did the same: pat! pat!
Suddenly, Betty jerked to her feet. She teetered for a moment, like the unbalance in her mind had also unbalanced her body. Then she charged. Fast as lightning, she spun the girl into a half nelson, and wedged the knife against her throat. “Who are you really?” she asked. “And what have you done with my daughter?”
The girl didn’t struggle. Instead, she mirrored grown Audrey and tried to make herself small.
This had happened before. It had already happened. And yet tears came to Audrey’s eyes. Why didn’t the girl run? Why didn’t she scream? Didn’t she want to live?
Betty drew a light line along the girl’s neck with the knife. Blood beaded against her pale skin like tiny red pearls. The girl bit her lip, squeezed her hands into fists, closed her eyes as if counting backward, but never once budged, or even whimpered.
Audrey flinched. She knew what would happen next. She remembered. Betty would see the blood, and regret. She’d let Audrey go, and a little while after that, she’d run out the door, and ashamed, stayed AWOL, living in bars and with strange men for six weeks. The cut would heal in less than a day, and the on-duty cop who showed up on a noise complaint would look her up and down, then snicker, and tell her that with a mother like Betty, she ought to wear turtlenecks.
But none of that was so terrible. People survived worse. No, the terrible part was the lesson Hinton taught her that she’d forgotten until now. Always, before Hinton, Betty’s red ants had raged outward, at boyfriends and bosses and imaginary conspiracies. But this time, they’d attacked Audrey, and she’d finally understood that the pact they’d made long ago had been a lie. There was no one Betty loved, not even her daughter, and that second-grade photo of her favorite little girl had met the bottom of a garbage can long ago.
Betty’s grip on the knife loosened. The girl’s chest heaved. Blood gathered along the neck of the T-shirt under her coveralls. The effect was a macabre red-and-white carnation.
Poor girl, Audrey thought. Time slowed. Audrey unfolded her legs and arms and sat straight in her chair. Sat larger. She wanted to be a good influence. Wanted the girl to glimpse the possibility of a better future.
The girl peered at her from the corner of her eyes, and Audrey thought they saw each other. Had somehow reached out across the void that divided past and present.
The girl nodded very slightly, as if to say, Yes, I see you. I know you, too. Something inside Audrey cracked open. A wall she hadn’t guessed existed. She remembered being that girl. The pain, the shame, the bravery of every tiny revolt against Betty, that had been so hard to commit. Those revolts had laid the groundwork for all the other battles she would fight