I clench the steering wheel, weaving between cars and staring ahead. “It’s what you wanted. You’re going to get a look into my past.”
An orderly meets us out front and swipes his card, hurrying us inside. I tried to talk Brianne into staying in the car, but I knew she’d refuse, so she runs barefoot behind me, having left her heels in the car. We’re ushered up the stairs and around the corner to the double doors leading into the cafeteria. I immediately catch a glimpse of my sister in the corner with a plastic butter knife to her throat while she throws chairs at anyone who gets too close. She’s screaming something incoherent and her face is so red it’s nearly purple.
I slam through the doors, pushing past the mental patients who are either calmly eating ignoring the chaos or huddled in the corners of the room. Someone tries to restrain me and I slap his arm away, pushing forward until I catch Sarah’s eye.
I start to hum the lullaby. Our lullaby
The deep tune resonates from my chest and affects her immediately. She drops the chair, staring at me, plastic knife still pressed to her throat. Brianne slowly comes to a stop as I step closer and closer to Sarah, still humming.
When I’m close enough to touch her, I pull her into a hug, humming and easing her to her knees as I crouch beside her, carefully removing the knife from her hand. I run my fingers through her hair, rocking her as I hum like I used to when we were kids. When we were prisoners and we didn’t have anything but each other. I close my eyes and go back to that time, back to when we lived every day in fear of not knowing if there would be food, water, or even sunlight. When sometimes even death seemed so close and alluring that we might have welcomed it with open arms.
I only stop when I feel a soft hand press against my shoulder. I look up to see Brianne. She’s making a face I can’t read, but she hugs me and Sarah tightly.
I’m about to warn her not to touch my sister, because Sarah doesn’t let anyone but me touch her. Except Sarah is still. She only looks up at Brianne curiously and back to me.
I realize the orderlies are relaxing and starting to disperse. A woman starts to come toward us, but I wave her off. “Let us,” I say. “We’ll get her in bed.”
We walk back to her room, passing through the now silent cafeteria while Brianne keeps a hand on Sarah’s back and I have an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. I’m still in awe that Sarah is letting Brianne touch her, and when we get back to Sarah’s room, I’m even more surprised when my sister doesn’t immediately retreat to her comfort zone by the window. She instead turns to face me. “Who is she?” asks Sarah.
I frown. My sister rarely ever initiates conversations anymore. “This is Brianne,” I say slowly. “She’s very special to me.”
“She’s pretty,” says Sarah offhandedly before she moves to her spot by the window and sits, staring out over the grass and trees.
Brianne gives me a questioning look and I shake my head slightly, signaling for her to stay where she is.
“Do you need anything?” I ask. I could ask her what happened back there, but I already know. It’s the same thing that got her sent before a judge and ordered to live here. It’s the same type of episode she’s been having for years now. She forgets she’s not back there in that room. She thinks she’s finally got a chance to escape or end her own life and she takes it. I’ve always been the only one who can bring her back from that place, which is partly why I’ve had to make sure she’s nearby at all times. I have special permission from the judge to have her flown outside the state or even outside the country if I have to travel for business, so we’re never more than thirty minutes apart.
“Quiet,” she says. “I need quiet.”
I move to where she sits and tuck her hair behind her ear, kneeling. “Just remember I’m here. Okay? If it ever gets to be too much or too scary, I’ll always be here, Sarah. All you need to do is have them call for me. You don’t have to let it go that far.”
She says nothing, but I see tears well in her eyes.
I kiss her on the top of the head and straighten, breathing out a long sigh. “Let’s go,” I say to Brianne, who looks incredibly confused.
“You said I was going to learn about your past,” says Brianne once we’re back in the car. “I don’t feel like I really understand what just happened, though.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I say after a moment.
“Okay…” says Brianne a little nervously.
“I’ll tell you what that was about if you promise to seriously look at the contract tonight and give me an answer in the morning. One way or another.”
She picks at the hem of her dress for a long time, until I think she might not respond at all. “Okay. Deal.”
“I’ve never told anyone about this. Frankly, I don’t know why I feel like I can tell you. But I do.”
She puts a hand on my thigh, squeezing slightly. “You don’t have to tell me if you aren’t comfortable.”
“No. If you’re going to become my submissive, you deserve to know.” I close my eyes, gathering the willpower to start telling my story. She waits patiently until I speak. “Sarah and I were foster kids. Our parents died a couple years after Sarah was born, so bounced from foster home to foster home for as long as I could remember. Usually we lived with at least a dozen other kids. We could’ve been adopted a few times, but we refused to be separated. The foster homes would get fed up with us because no one wanted to take us both, and they’d find reasons to move us to new homes.
“It went on that way for years. Dirty beds, barely enough food, and a long line of foster parents who always seemed to find reasons to hate every last kid in their care.
“So when a single businessman in his forties finally agreed to adopt both of us, we didn’t care about anything else. It was a way out. We were finally going to get into a real home and stop being forced to move every few months. It seemed like a dream come true.
“At first it was. He’d take us to school, buy us gifts, though most of them were for Sarah. He wanted to spend time with us and take us places. But I started noticing something was off. It was in the way he looked at my sister. The way he’d find reasons to put his hands on her in seemingly innocent ways. None of it was.
“Once I realized what was really going on, I confronted him. I told him we were going to be gone in the morning and if he ever thought about coming after us, I’d fucking kill him.”
“Oh my God,” says Brianne. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen,” I say. “I went toward our room to get Sarah and tell her to pack her things. But he hit me with something in the back of the head. I still don’t know what it was, but it knocked me unconscious before I even hit the floor.
“When I woke up…” I shake my head, feeling my face contort in anger and desperation to remember it. “We were trapped. He had apparently gone and knocked Sarah out right after me. The window was boarded up. He removed the doorknob and put a lock on the outside with a latch only he could get to. Four walls, no blankets, no pillows. That was it. Just me, Sarah, and the clothes on our backs.
“He’d usually slide food and water under the door, but not enough for both of us. We were always hungry and always thirsty. I think maybe he was hoping I’d give Sarah my share and just die. That way he wouldn’t have to do it himself. I probably would’ve too, but Sarah wouldn’t eat or drink unless I did.