I look at Gus, but he’s scared stiff. I got to be the one to do it ’cause Gus is frozen in fear. He can’t move.
“Four,” she says, and before I know it, the lady’s counting down faster than I can get my spoon back in the toilet, get the lid quietly on and push my sleepy legs up off the floor and run.
I’m not dumb. I know how many seconds it is till she reaches one, and it’s not many. I remember how to count and do math, ’cause my minute math worksheets are one of them things that I do in my head when I’m bored to death. I know that the lady will be at one in no time flat.
“Three,” she’s saying. I ain’t ever gonna get there in time. My hands and legs are shaking. My heartbeat is thumping loud. I catch a glimpse of Gus out of the corner of my eye as I go running by. He’s sitting on the floor with his legs pulled into him, scared as heck, wanting to cry.
The lady reaches one right around the same time my feet hit the bottom step. She’s up there at the top of them steps, looking down at me. I got to squint my eyes to see her because my eyes ain’t used to the light. She’s standing up there holding her nasty meal in the dog dish.
I hear her ugly laugh when she gets to one. She’s delighted in having me run scared.
“You ain’t hungry?” she asks, standing smugly at the top of them steps, like a know-it-all. She don’t wait for an answer. Before I can get a word out, she asks, “You think I got all day to sit around here and wait for you to come get your food?”
“No, ma’am,” I say, my lips quivering.
“No, ma’am, what?” she asks sharply.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think you got all day to sit around and wait for me to come get my food,” I say, the words rattling in my throat.
“You ain’t hungry?” she asks, and I got to think a minute about what the right answer is. I am hungry. I’m just not hungry for her food. But if I tell her that, she’ll be angry ’cause she went to the trouble of making me food.
“I am hungry, ma’am.”
That lady tells me, “It would be good for you to show some gratitude from time to time. I ain’t gotta feed you, you know? I could just leave you here to starve to death.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” I say. My eyes stare hard at the floor so I don’t have to see her ugly face.
She asks me, “What were you doing down here that it took you so long to come?” I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she knows something she shouldn’t. My stomach churns, thinking maybe she knows I’ve been up to no good. I feel myself stiffen there at the bottom of the steps. But my spoon is tucked away inside the toilet where she won’t ever find it. My spoon is safe and because of that so am I, for the time.
I lie and say, “I was sleeping.”
“What’s that you say?” she snaps, suddenly madder than she was before. Up there at the top of the steps, her face turns beet red.
I realize my mistake too late.
“I was sleeping, ma’am,” I tell her. I ain’t ever supposed to say anything without saying ma’am at the end. I’m supposed to show some respect for all that she does for me, otherwise I get punished.
The lady’s quiet for a long while. She’s just looking at me, staring. I don’t like the quiet because when she’s quiet, she scares me most of all.
“Looks like someone ain’t gonna eat tonight, after all,” she says, and then she mutters under her breath, “Ungrateful bitch.”
She turns away from me and takes her slop with her. At the top of them steps, she slams the door closed and turns the lock. I step backward and drop down from the wooden step to the concrete floor, thinking that if that’s the worst she’s got for me—taking away Gus’s and my dinner—then I got off pretty easy this time.
But I’m no dope. I know that’s too good to be true.
* * *
That lady hasn’t fed us since that day I forgot to say ma’am, not that I want to eat her nasty food. But just because I don’t want to, doesn’t mean that I’m not hungry. It doesn’t mean that I don’t need to eat. I don’t know how much time has passed since that day she tried to feed us last. It feels like weeks.
At first I was hungry as could be. But then, strange enough, that feeling of being hungry went away, only to be replaced with something else. Something worse. For the first couple of days, all I thought about was food, until I was sure I could smell and taste the foods I was thinking about. Now I don’t think about it much anymore. Now I just think about what it will be like to starve to death. I wonder if I’ll just go ahead and die in my sleep, or if I’ll know the moment I stop breathing and my heart stops beating ’cause I’ll be gasping for air or something.
The lady hasn’t brought us nothing to drink, either. I’m thirsty as all get-out. Gus and I went without water long enough that we got to drinking that dank water in the back of the toilet tank because it was all that we got. We’ve been taking baby sips only, not knowing if or when it will run out. We don’t ever drink nearly enough to quench our thirst. We’re still thirsty as heck.
I’m not the only one around here who’s hungry. Gus is hungry, too. I hear his tummy grumbling, but Gus don’t say nothing about being hungry, though we both know it’s my fault he is.
Gus is sleeping now. I’m trying to sleep. But I got too much on my mind to sleep. Now that the lady’s starving us to death, I know we got to get out of here if we don’t want to die. We got to take the next chance we get to run, if we ever get another chance. I been doing my calisthenics. It ain’t easy because after all this time not eating, I’m weak as can be. My legs don’t work right, and if I’m gonna stand a chance of running away from here, I got to get them ready. I’ve been spending my time jogging in place, leaning down to touch my toes, marching laps around Gus and my dungeon while he watches on, asks what I’m doing, begs me to stop. Gus don’t like the idea of us running away ’cause he’s scared as heck we’re gonna get caught.
I shrugged when he said that, and said, “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. But how do we know if we don’t try?” I told him that when I go, he’s got to make sure he’s right behind me. He can’t drag his feet ’cause we’re better off dead than getting caught.
I sit now with my spoon in my lap. I keep it close. It’s not a spear. I don’t think it’ll ever be a spear, but it’s mangled enough that it’s got a chiseled point and could stun someone, if not kill. Stunning someone might be as good as it gets, but it’s better than nothing.
* * *
All of a sudden, the door creaks open. I hold my breath. It ain’t the lady coming. It’s the man. I can tell by the sound of his footsteps, though he’s trying to be quiet, which tells me the lady is somewhere up there, too, but she don’t know he’s coming down to see Gus and me.