I let my hands float over the toilet awhile. I feel it up for a sharp spot. But the toilet is smooth as a baby’s bottom. I almost give up, not thinking I’m going to find a spot to sharpen my spoon here. It’s all one part, except for the top of it, the lid, which I discover by accident comes off. I hoist it up in my arms. It’s heavier than I thought it’d be, all dead weight. I almost drop it.
“What’s the matter?” Gus asks, panicked over some noise I make. I think that Gus is younger than me, on account of how chicken he is, even if he is taller. But anyone can be a chicken, no matter what their age or size.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell him, not wanting to think what would have happened if I did drop the lid. I set it gently upside down on the floor. I tell Gus, “Don’t worry about it. Ain’t nothing the matter. Everything’s fine.”
Gus is a worrywart. I wonder if he’s always been that way or if the man and the lady have done that to him. I wonder what kind of boy Gus was before he got here. The kind who climbed trees and caught frogs and played ghosts in the graveyard at night, or the kind who read books and was afraid of the dark. We tried talking about it once, but then I got sad and wound up telling Gus I didn’t want to talk about it no more. ’Cause most of my earliest memories have that man and that lady in them, and in them, they’re doing wicked things to me, things that I don’t like.
That man and the lady saved the newspaper from when I went missing. The lady read those stories out loud to me, telling me what happened to my momma, showing me pictures of my daddy standing in front of our big, blue house, crying. She told me how the police was looking for me. But then, soon after, she rubbed it in and gloated, saying that the police weren’t looking for me no more. She told me then that I was old news and that they got away with taking a kid that wasn’t theirs.
“Stealing kids,” she said, “is the easiest thing in the world.”
I go back to investigating the toilet. I discover that that tank is full of nasty water, which I mistakenly plunge my whole arm into, right up to the elbow. I cringe and shake it dry, not knowing if it’s pee or what. Then I get down on the ground and run my fingers along the inside of that toilet tank lid.
The inside is much different than the whole rest of the toilet. It’s gritty and coarse, not the same baby’s bottom smooth. My fingers come across a jagged ridge on the inside of it, like a lip. That jagged ridge might just do the trick.
Gus is worried sick that whatever I’m planning won’t end well. I’ve tried for a long time to make him see we ain’t got no other options if we ever want to get out of this place. But that there’s the problem with Gus. He’d just as soon stay here than risk getting caught trying to leave.
I run the edge of the spoon back and forth on that ridge. I get my knuckles caught on it time and again, and feel them getting scraped up. It burns like heck, but I keep at it. It takes a long while, but eventually the ridge of the toilet tank lid begins to mangle the spoon. Not spear-sharp, but uneven, the kind that promises to get sharp the longer I work with it.
“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Gus says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“They’ll kill you.”
I run my finger along that botched edge, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while.
“Not if I kill them first,” I tell Gus back.
* * *
I ain’t ever thought about hurting or killing a person before. That’s not my way. I don’t got a mean bone in my body, or at least I don’t think I did before coming to this place. But being locked in the dark does bad things to a person’s mind. It changes them. Turns them into something new. I’m not the same person I was before that man and that lady stole me.
If it wasn’t for Gus, I wouldn’t have survived so long in this place. Gus is the best thing that happened to me.
I don’t know for certain when Gus arrived. All I know is that he showed up out of the blue one time when I was dead asleep. I went to sleep and when I woke up, he was there, crying in the corner, worse off than me.
That man and that lady, he told me, had opened up the basement door, shoved him down them steps, locked up behind him. Gus was twelve at the time. Only God knows if he’s still twelve.
What Gus told me when he stopped his crying was that they used that big red Clifford dog of theirs to cajole him into their car, just like fishing bait. Poor Gus liked dogs. And he couldn’t help himself when the lady smiled kindly at him and asked if he wanted to pet her dog, which was sticking its big red head out of the car window.
Gus had been at the playground that day, playing ball with himself when they stole him. Shooting hoops. There wasn’t anyone around to see them go. His ball got left behind. I wondered why Gus was playing ball alone, and if that meant he didn’t have any friends, but I never asked him. Things like that don’t matter anymore, anyway, ’cause now he’s got me.
* * *
Day and night, I continue to work on my spoon. I don’t know how long I’ve been going at it, but I’ve whittled it down enough that I’ve gotten myself a point. It ain’t the best point ever. It’s jagged and uneven, but at the top of that spoon, the metal thins to a sharp tip. When I stab it into my finger it hurts. I’m too chicken to stab it hard enough to make it bleed, but before too long I’m gonna have to. I’ve got to test it. I’ve got to know if it works.
I lost track of how long I’ve been carving this dang thing. Long enough that my hand’s tired as all get-out. Gus offered to do it for me, but I said no ’cause I didn’t want him getting in trouble. I know he doesn’t want to help ’cause he’s scared half to death of what I’m doing. He was just trying to be nice, but if someone’s gonna take the fall for this spoon, it’s me.
I hide that spoon when I ain’t working on it. I hide it inside the toilet tank, put the lid back on and cover it up.
But it’s not hidden now ’cause now I’m working on it, even though the man and the lady are right upstairs. I ain’t got no other choice if we’re ever gonna get out of here. I’ve got the lid off the toilet. I’m going at it full tilt with my spoon when I hear the lady declare to the man that she’s got to feed us. There ain’t no warning then because the door yanks suddenly open, and there it is again, that thin scrap of light that hurts my eyes.
All at once that lady’s at the top of them steps. “Come get your dinner,” she says, and I don’t make a move to go ’cause usually when she says it like that, she just sets the dog bowl there at the top of them steps and leaves it for us. But not tonight. Because tonight, when we don’t come, she says, “How many times have I told you before that I ain’t your dang waitress and this ain’t no dang restaurant? You better get your ass up here and get your dinner in five seconds or else. Five,” she barks out, keeping count.