sank into it. It flowed sweetly over her, like a baptism, cleansing her of Ricky’s touch, his smell. His hate.
She rested her head against the cool porcelain and closed her eyes.
As if from outside her body, hovering above, she saw herself. Her body folded into the tub, scrunched down so she would be submerged, her skin so white it blended with the tub, the shock of red hair around her face, floating around her shoulders. The bruises. The blood that leaked from her and into the water, muddying it.
They would be back.
She wanted to cry, to howl with rage and pain, yet she had no tears, couldn’t muster emotion enough for rage. She felt…a numbness. A nothingness. A weird kind of void that was at once a sweet relief and completely terrifying.
As the water became almost too cool to bear, she opened her eyes and sat up. Carefully, she soaped her thighs, her bruised womanhood, washing away dirt and blood. She winced as she moved her hands over herself, knowing from experience that physical bruises healed. And that invisible ones did not.
There was blood underneath her fingernails, Tommy’s from when she’d scratched him, and she dug her nails into the soap, moving them back and forth on the slippery bar, not stopping until they were clear. Clean and free of him. She soaped her hair next, scrubbing it, rinsing it. Scrubbing again.
The water turned dark and ugly. Her stomach heaved, but she choked the sickness back. She drained the tub, then sat naked in the empty bath, her arms closed around herself, teeth chattering.
Thoughts raced dizzily, crazily through her head, like the twisted path of a roller coaster.
I won’t tell, Becky Lynn… You must promise me that if those boys do anything to you, you will come to me…
What did you hope to accomplish by telling Miss Opal… Who did you think was going to believe that we’d touch you… Our parents laughed…
Lying whore… Get out of my sight…
Don’t do this, Mama…I need you… Mama, please help me…
I’ll make sure Tommy and Buddy get their turn…
Tears choked her, and Becky Lynn gasped to breathe. She brought her hands to her face and sobbed, pressing her hands against her mouth to muffle the sound, wishing that, somehow, holding back the sounds of her pain would erase it.
After a time, the violence of her sobs lessened, then ceased altogether, until the only sound she had energy enough to make was a broken mewl of despair. Soon, even that became impossible and she rocked, her arms curved tightly around herself.
Reaching up, she turned the faucets on full blast, half expecting her father to burst into the bathroom and rage at her for wasting water. Even as she waited, clean water slipped over her again, inch by comforting inch. The water warmed her, bringing her senses back to life. She rested her cheek against her drawn-up knees, her mother’s words from what seemed like a lifetime ago, nudging into her consciousness.
You’re special, Becky Lynn. You could move away from Bend, make something of yourself.
She squeezed her eyes shut, pain ripping through her. Nothing could be special here. Not in this house. Not in Bend.
Tonight her mother had set her free.
She had to take care of herself, no one else would. And as much as she loved her mother, she couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her from the fate she had resigned herself to.
Becky Lynn leaned her head against the tub-back and pictured the places in her magazines, clean and lovely, populated by beautiful smiling people. She pictured the brilliant sun and the warm breeze, imagining both against her skin. It never rained in those places. There wasn’t any dirt, nor the lingering smell of sweat and rotting fields. In the places of her magazines, boys didn’t hurt girls just because they were ugly and poor.
She would go there, to California; she would start a new life.
Becky Lynn pulled the stopper from the drain and stood. Shivering, she dried herself, then wrapped the threadbare towel around her. She went to the bathroom door and cracked it open. The house slept. In the next room, her father snored.
Even though he was impossible to wake out of his drunken slumber, Becky Lynn tiptoed across the hallway and into her room. She dressed quickly and quietly, then threw her remaining clothes into a duffel bag, her few knickknacks and toiletries, she retrieved her toothbrush, the shampoo and toothpaste. She’d saved everything she’d made at the Cut ‘n Curl over the past couple of years, everything left over after her father had taken his share, and hidden it under a loose floorboard. Careful not to make a sound, she retrieved and counted it, then stuffed it into her jeans pocket.
Nearly two hundred dollars. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
She hesitated outside her parents’ door, then crept into their room. Her father’s slacks lay in a heap on the floor. She picked them up and searched one pocket, then the other. Her fingers closed over a couple crumpled bills. Hands shaking, she pulled them out. Twenties? Where had he gotten this money? she wondered. She didn’t care, he would only waste it on drink.
She took the money, keeping one twenty and putting the other into her mother’s secret grocery stash on her way out of the house.
At the front door, she stopped and turned back, taking one last look at the place she had called home for nearly seventeen years. She had called it home, but it had never been one. She had never been safe here, had never been loved.
She would never be trapped again.
As she slipped through the door, she thought she heard the sound of weeping—her mother’s weeping. Becky Lynn paused, her chest tightening. “Mama,” she whispered, taking an involuntary step back inside.
The smell of whiskey filled her head, a sense of smothering gray with it. She shook her head and her senses cleared, a familiar picture filling her head. Of blue skies and palm trees, of brilliant sun and smiling faces. Becky Lynn squared her shoulders. She couldn’t help her mother, couldn’t save her, no matter how much she wanted to.
The time had come to save herself.
Hiking her duffel bag higher on her shoulder, Becky Lynn turned her back on the house and life she had always known, and stepped out into the cold, black night.
7
Los Angeles, California
1972
The way eight-year-old Jack Gallagher figured it, women were about the best things in the whole world. He loved the way they smelled, sweet like flowers, fresh like sunshine. He loved the way they felt, soft and warm and smooth; he loved their curves, their pillows of perfumed flesh, loved the way they spoke to him, in voices that were gentle and mostly lilting.
Jack’s earliest remembrances were not of his mother, his crib or toys, but of the changing parade of girl-models who had cuddled and stroked him, the girls who had given him kisses and candy, who had wiped his baby tears and brought him gifts.
Many a time as an infant and toddler he had nestled his face into a pair of smooth, soft breasts, and basked in the pure joy of it. His mother, the most wonderful
