I open my mouth to deny Dario stole anyone but me. I should defend my husband, who was as horrible to me as he was a savior to others like me. But I snap my lips closed and get to work. The pocket is stretched between my hands so tightly I could rip it in two.
I put it down and start with a running stitch to repair the front of the shirt. It will never be the same. There will always be a scar in the chest. I do my best anyway, keeping it neat and tying a clean knot at the end. The best work I can do. Dario deserves it.
The thread snippers are with the other sharp things, in a little tin manufactured to sell mint drops. When I pick them up, there are single-edge straight razors underneath. They open seams made with thicker thread.
In crueler, more violent hands, they can slice through skin. They’re seam-openers but also bloodletters. I take one with the snippers and lay the blade next to the paper clip, imagining their usefulness in a room without tools.
Do I dare?
Grandma gets called away. You wouldn’t know it by looking at our fast hands and bent necks, but as soon as she’s out, the entire room exhales.
“We’re glad you’re back.” Amara presses out a seam at the ironing board. “We were getting used to you being gone.”
“Speak for yourself,” Denise says around the pins pressed between her lips.
“I didn’t say I was happy about it.” Amara clicks for steam. The iron hisses.
“How do we know he was the one who took the rest of them?” Ginny blurts. “If she didn’t see them?”
“Peter said so,” Lili insists then turns to me. “When he stole you, your father said that same man took some of the others who’ve gone missing. That he’d run off with so many of us, and he was taking you to go with them. I believe him. You should too, Amara. He wasn’t a liar.”
Lili is wedded to a good man, which makes her think the system works. If she can have a happy marriage, anyone can. Any wife who can’t make her husband happy is responsible for her own misfortune.
When I lived here, I didn’t think the way she did, but I didn’t fight her logic hard enough.
The temptation to tell her that her mother’s closed-casket funeral was an utter sham because she was one of those women flits through my mind like a butterfly with razor-sharp wings. Finding out your mother didn’t die but left you, it’s not a cut I’m willing to make.
“I did meet another Colonia woman outside.” I look up from my open hem.
All eyes are on me. They’re living in a mirror world I used to fit into. Dario forced me to choose between a free life with him and a free life without. He taught me how to drive a car, how to talk to men without fear, how to use a cell phone.
Fingertip on the table, I tap out the shape of his number.
“She could do anything she wanted.” Subtly, I make the shape again with a crisscross of lines… like embroidery. I could thread the lines between the numbers and I’d know exactly what to dial. “She had her own apartment.” An arrow at the beginning and a French knot at the end. “Her own money. She took the subway places.”
They all speak at once. I barely hear them, because the phone keypad appears before my eyes with the tiny letters at the bottom of each button.
“But the men…”
“Outsiders…”
“Did they use her…”
“They’re animals…”
Only Denise doesn’t engage in the mythology that Colonia men are any better than outsiders.
“Good riddance,” Lili insists, silencing the others. “It can’t be that great if you escaped.”
Escaped? Is that what they’re saying about me? It’s completely false. The rest of the girls are the ones who escaped. They live on a tropical island. They have jobs and phones and freedom. I’m the one who’s trapped.
“She was rescued,” Amara snaps as if the idea of me doing something myself is ridiculous.
Ginny’s eyes go wide as she asks me about the mythology of my rescue. “Sergio Agosti said he had to shoot Lucari four times just to get him down.”
The story is so clean and clear it’s no wonder it has spread like an infection. Sergio beat Dario and rescued me. Sergio’s the hero. Dario’s conquered.
I open the pocket hem, wondering how much hidden embroidery I can fit in there. One word per shape.
“Imagine being married to that,” Ginny adds, sounding a little impressed.
“I’m sure Massimo will annul that for you.” Lili faces me. “I’m sure he’ll set you free of that monster.”
I clear the terror from my throat. If the marriage is annulled, they’re free to kill Dario.
Again, I make a monumental physical effort to keep the truth behind my lips, thinking nothing, feeling less. I’m a hollow shell with the picture of a phone keypad painted inside me.
They wouldn’t understand what Dario’s done for me. I’d be a filthy traitor. I’d end up powerless, hollowed, sent away, unable to help myself, much less the man I love.
None of that will matter if I can’t control myself. It’s imperative to our survival that I present the most beautiful thing in my life as if it’s ugly.
Will he open the pocket? Will he know what he’s looking at if he does? I have to make sure he sees the message I’m leaving for him.
I bend the paper clip straight. He’ll notice a pocket hem stiffened with a thing hidden where it doesn’t belong.
I protect what I value.
Lacing my needle with the blood-colored thread, I decide the price of my freedom.
“I hope they just kill him.”
CHAPTER 9
SARAH
After I fix the pocket, tucking the embroidered code and paper clip into the hem, I stop by the kitchen. The pot of lentils sits quietly on the back burner. I open it as if I want to take a whiff of the unsalted stew, then I drop the razor into it. It floats. I push it down, lick my finger, and replace the lid.
Done. Next, I take Dario’s shirt to the laundry. The bloodstains will never come out completely, but I know what’s expected of me—the whole job. That done, I go back up the stairs and cross through a demolished brick wall that connects the church and rectory.
Was the carpet always this stained? Did the cracks in the plaster always look like a forest in winter? It’s filthy and run down. I used to think this was the most beautiful place in the world.
A bulky man sits by the door to the street, feet propped up against the opposite wall, playing a plastic sliding number game. From under a protruding brow, his little brown eyes look up when I pass. I know him. I realize I know everyone, and everyone knows me.
“Good day, Lenny.”
“’day Miss… sorry. Ma’am.” The black box attached to his belt squawks. “Can I get someone to bring you someplace?” His meaty hands fold around the game, and he takes his feet off the wall. It’s streaked with scuff marks. The keypad set by the door is ringed with lighter plaster where the wall was repaired after installation, but never painted.
I always thought the man stationed here protected an entrance, but he’s protecting an exit. He’s not here to keep outsiders outside. He’s here to keep us in.