Still, what if it was only the simple fact he couldn’t read?
She was a damn librarian. Words were her life. How could she let something go that might be easy to fix? That she might have the capability of fixing?
A guttural noise had her heart skipping a beat and she realized he’d turned his head and was staring at her staring at him.
Damn.
He probably thought she wanted to quench her thirst by lapping at him like a cougar at a watering hole on a sweltering hot day.
Maybe that was true.
No maybe about it.
She always prided herself for her common sense. Something she passed onto her girls. But right now? She was questioning not only her common sense but her sanity. Because she’d lost her marbles, quite clearly.
She needed to find a container, collect her marbles, put a tight lid on it and shove it deep into a closet. Then close that door, lock it and move across the country.
That was what she needed to do.
Of course, that wasn’t what she did.
Julian didn’t know what was going on. They wouldn’t let him talk to his mommy and they wouldn’t let her talk to him. He asked for his mommy so many times they got angry and covered his mouth again.
He needed to ask her what was happening. Why they were in this big room in this big house. Why they were surrounded by men Julian didn’t know. They weren’t family. They weren’t friends.
Strangers.
Stranger danger.
Why three ladies stood at the front of the room in a row, including his mommy...
He was at the back of the room and she probably couldn’t see him there. She was awake again but wouldn’t stop crying. He was crying just like his mommy, but no tears were coming out anymore.
Julian sucked a breath through his nose because his mouth was full of a dry, yucky rag. But it didn’t stop the hiccup-sob coming from his belly and getting caught in his mouth where it couldn’t escape. When his whole body jerked from it, the fingers on his shoulder dug deeper.
The man holding onto him was squeezing Julian’s shoulder so tightly it hurt. When he tried to hit the man earlier, to get him to let go, the man again got angry and put something on his wrists that pinched his skin.
Mommy had once told him that bad people went to jail when he saw something like this on TV. Was he going to jail?
What did he do bad?
Was it the same thing he did that made his daddy leave?
Did he make the same mistake again?
Or did his mommy do something bad this time? Was that why she was standing up there with those other ladies? Because they were going to be punished?
He didn’t want to see his mommy get punished. Maybe they could punish him instead and leave his mommy alone.
He looked up at the man who wouldn’t let him move. The dark hair, shaggy like a dog’s, the black scary eyes, the long nose. He was staring toward the front of the room.
He hated that man. He’d never forget his face.
Too many men were in that room to remember them all, but he wanted to.
Whatever they were doing was wrong. He just knew it. They were the ones who needed to be punished. Not him, not his mommy.
Suddenly, the room became quiet. He could see one of the ladies’ head a bit better when she had stepped on a stool or something.
She looked scared. She was crying, too.
She had a rag in her mouth like he did. Why didn’t she remove it? Were her hands tied, too? He couldn’t see if that was true because he was too small and too many big men blocked his view.
He rose on his tiptoes to see if he could see any better. As soon as he did, the hand holding onto him shoved him back down.
“Don’t move. Don’t do anything. Just stand there. If you fight, you’ll never see your mother again. I already told you that. Don’t you want to see your mom again?”
Julian nodded. Yes! Yes, I want my mommy!
“Just be patient and you’ll see her again soon.”
He didn’t believe this man. He was a big, fat liar.
But Julian wanted to be with his mommy no matter what, so maybe this time the man wasn’t lying.
Lies were bad. Mommy said so. Maybe his mommy told the man to stop lying.
The room became louder when two other men began to cut off the clothes of the lady who could be seen above the crowd. One man had a knife and one a pair of big scissors. Things his mommy never let Julian play with. She said they could be dangerous and he could get hurt.
They cut away the lady’s clothing and soon she was in only her underwear. And then, not even that. From where he stood, he could see she was now naked like when he took a bath.
Were they going to make her take a bath? Or a shower like his mommy did?
Julian didn’t think she wanted to take a bath. She looked even more scared now. Her eyes, which had been wide, were now squeezed shut as they forced her to turn around in a circle, lifted her hair and let some of the other men touch her.
The room got even louder with what they were saying about her. How pretty she was. How young she was. About her private parts.
Some comments weren’t very nice at all.
They were also touching her everywhere. Why were they doing that? Were they hurting her?
Soon the man standing next to the lady stopped the rest of the men from doing their “inspection,” as he called it, and told everyone to step back and get ready to “bid.”
Julian had no idea what any of that meant.
But he knew it wasn’t good.
This was very bad.
He needed to escape the man who was holding him and get to his mommy and help her get away from the man holding her.
His mommy’s eyes were moving back and forth. She was probably looking for him, but he couldn’t call out to her or lift his hand to wave at her. He couldn’t do anything so she’d see him.
He needed to get closer.
He tried to pull away from the painful hold, but the scary-looking man forced him back to his side.
“What did I tell you, brat? You want your mommy to get hurt because you’re being a bad boy?”
No, he didn’t want his mommy hurt.
He wanted to go home.
He wanted to go home with his mommy.
Why weren’t they going home?
Why was he being forced to stand there?
Why was his mommy being forced to stand on the other side of the room?
The man next to the platform began to yell out for “bids.”
The shouts of numbers came from men around the room. So quickly, that Julian couldn’t keep up. All the big numbers began to blur in his head and he wobbled on his feet.
He hadn’t eaten anything since those licks of his ice cream cone, the one he dropped in the parking lot at the mall.
His tummy now hurt. He needed a cup of water or juice because the rag made his tongue feel like he ate sand. He didn’t feel so good, either.
Whenever his tummy hurt his mommy helped him by rubbing it. She also gave him ginger ale.
He needed to pee really, really bad, too. He didn’t want to do it in his pants since he wasn’t a baby. It had been a long time since he’d peed his pants and his mommy said she was proud of him.
He liked to make his mommy happy. When she was happy, he got things like ice cream or cookies. Or sometimes cake. Like for his birthday.
His tummy growled and it hurt.
He didn’t know how long he stood there. He didn’t know when the lady on the stool, or whatever she was standing on, disappeared and the next one took her place. That one took a lot longer and looked a lot younger than his mommy and the other lady.