“Did you drive this thing just to piss your dad off?” She asked when we were on the road. She looked highly amused.
“You know it.”
Anne rested her head against the cool glass of the window as we pulled onto I-70, and I tried to figure out how I was going to say all of the things that she needed to hear.
But I didn’t have to think very hard. When I glanced her way a few minutes later, she had fallen asleep.
She looked like a lost little angel – hitching a ride to anywhere. The highway lights twinkled on her bare shoulders and something inside of me ached to touch them.
6
Valerie
If I left now, I stood a chance. Randall had to be at the tavern until at least 2 a.m. Then he’d have the task of kicking out the stubborn drunks who always wanted “just one more”, on top of the mean drunks who didn’t give a flying fuck what time it was.
I was really counting on the mean drunks tonight.
I’d be long gone before 2 a.m., but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to get to my destination and settle in quietly before Randall even had a chance to hit the road looking for me.
And he would come looking for me.
The drive was three and a half hours. In that amount of time, I could make it to east Nashville. One of my old “foster-sisters”, Emily, had promised me a job at the fast-food place she managed, and she’d given me the names and rates of some nearby roadside motels.
It wasn’t a forever plan, but it was a plan. I could make it happen.
The only thing that was going to happen here was my accidental death when Randall broke the wrong bone, punctured the wrong organ, or just got mad enough to outright shoot me.
I couldn’t tell yet if he would ever truly, purposely kill me, but there was really only one way to find that out for sure. The knowledge would be useless when I was dead.
I knew his rage well enough at this point to fear that he might instead kill me “in the heat of passion”. That was what lawyers called it. The heat of fucking passion.
I’d had enough passion.
I’d go by my middle name. Anne Johnson would probably be able to stay pretty incognito until she figured out a better, more permanent plan. If I could save enough money for a passport and bus tickets, I was considering Canada.
I didn’t think Randall’s rage would have enough steam to send him over the border, and he’d never pull his shit together long enough to obtain his own passport.
When I got to Nashville, I planned to dye my hair and cut it short. Randall had threatened to kill me if I ever cut it at all. He said it was because it was “so goddamn beautiful”, but I thought it probably had more to do with the fact that it made the perfect handle when he wanted to hold me still and hurt me.
He often wanted to hurt me.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t allowed to work at the tavern like I had before moving in with him. He said I didn’t need the money. He’d take care of me. Instead, I’d been siphoning off a few dollars here, a few dollars there when he sent me out for groceries.
I’d kept the money in a box of tampons, rolled up inside a wrapper. It wasn’t fool proof by any means, but there was nowhere else to hide it. Randall kept his eye on everything.
A tampon box was about the only thing I could think of that he wouldn’t touch, and I wasn’t even 100% sure about that, either.
Randall had bought me a Toyota Camry that dated back to the late nineties, specifically so I could run errands and bring him lunch at work. I wasn’t actually allowed to go into the tavern anymore. I had to sit in the car until he showed.
He didn’t want me to have friends. Then I might tell someone the things he did to me, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. Everyone laughed at the fact that pay phones still existed, but they’d been my saving grace as far as getting in touch with Emily.
The car barely ran, but it ran. Randall had threatened to set it on fire at least fifty times in the last year. He never did though. Then he’d have to let me drive his fancy truck – the one that cost more than his trailer – or resort to getting groceries himself.
Neither of those two things were ever going to happen.
A check-out clerk had asked me once, in a very low whisper, if I was okay? Did I need any help? Was there anything she could do? She’d been probably about the age my mom would have been if she hadn’t died, but she cared ten thousand times more about my welfare than my mom ever had.
That particular day, one of my eyes had been nearly swollen shut. I’d smiled, laughed, and made some crack about my clumsiness. I knew she didn’t believe me. I also knew it didn’t matter.
If Randall found out I had talked to anyone about the abuse...
People didn’t get it. They didn’t understand why you wouldn’t talk to them, why you wouldn’t just leave, just get out – as though any abuser made that even remotely possible.
Every move of rebellion came with consequences that were impossible to understand unless you’d been abused yourself.
But I was getting out now. I was getting away, and I’d had to scheme and scam for well over six months just to have enough for gas and a room. I’d packed a few essentials into the trunk of the Camry, and that was that.
I was doing this.
What those helpful people needed to realize was that if I fucked up my escape in any way whatsoever, I would be dead – or wish that I was. Women didn’t leave for a reason.
I grabbed a bottled water from the fridge, picked my keys up off the kitchen counter, and promptly threw up in the sink.
I’d been throwing up for the last week. At first I’d thought I was sick, and then I’d realized it was just nerves.
But there was another possibility that I didn’t want to even think about.
“Just do it and get it over with.” I spoke the words to the lonely silence of the empty trailer.
There was a pregnancy test from the dollar store sitting in my purse. I’d thrown it in the cart yesterday when I did my last grocery run for Randall.
I had promised myself to take it before I left. It was information that I needed to know. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the results, but I could figure that out later. Somewhere else.
Somewhere safe.
I walked dutifully to the bathroom. This was the last time I would ever have to see this godforsaken room again.
That’s what I told myself while I waited patiently for my results.
Get the results and go. Just get the results and go.
Two blue lines.
I stopped breathing and frantically looked at the package, although I already knew exactly what two lines meant.
The world seemed to freeze then.
As much as I had assured myself that pregnant or not, I would still charge out that door and be fine, I hesitated.
A baby. I was going to have a baby. On my own.
I was going to raise a baby on my own while working for minimum wage and living in a shitty motel room.
Or I was going to make it to Nashville, have an abortion, and then see what my mental state was like afterwards – when it was too late to take it back.
This wasn’t a fair decision. It wasn’t.
I was used to being alone – hadn't I always been? And being with Randall had allowed me to experience the most severe form of “alone” imaginable.