Shattered by Donna Ball Page B

occurred to her that she could pick up a telephone and someone would come to help. Before that day it hadn't been possible, and how could she imagine what wasn't possible? Perhaps, early on, she had fantasized about freedom, about home, about escape, but those days were so very long ago, the possibility so dim and remote, that she could barely remember wanting it. Now, all of a sudden, the possibility of freedom was in her hands—she understood its potential, and she wanted it with such a blind obsessive intensity that she could barely breathe.
    She did not figure out how to put a call through that first time.
    How many days passed between his visits she had no way of telling, but on his third visit after she had discovered the telephone he brought lumber and tools and worked outside. But he left his briefcase in the boat. Two visits after that, he left the briefcase in the building with her. When she was alone, it took her a long time to work up the courage to open it, to take out the telephone. She hid it until he was asleep.
    That time she noticed the “Send” button. And when the call went through, when the voice answered, it was as though something broke inside her and all kinds of memories came flooding through: memories too fast and full and furious to even be captured or understood, as though a door had opened on a galaxy faraway where another girl lived another life at twice the speed of light. And then she couldn't do anything but cry. Then, just when she thought she could remember what to say, could make the words that she needed come out of her mouth, he made a sound as though waking. She panicked, and she turned the phone off and put it away, but he hadn't been waking up after all.
    She sank to the floor, hugging her knees and shaking hard, and she didn't think she would ever be brave enough to use the phone again.
    What was strange, though, was that after that first time, after hearing that voice once, a lot of things began to become clear to her. She felt smarter. She even, in some ways, felt stronger. Sometimes she even started to make plans, but it was hard to hold on to more than one thought at a time, and when he was with her, all her thoughts went away and the world became small again.
    Then she went outside again. She saw the house and she held on to that picture and it gave her the courage to take the telephone again, and push the buttons. And this time she knew what she wanted to say.
    But ever since then she had been afraid, terribly afraid. She was afraid the machine that had recorded her voice would be used against her somehow, that he would find out, that she would be punished. Then she was afraid that no one would ever hear her plea, that the machine had swallowed it up, that no one cared and she had gone through all of this, taken such terrible chances for nothing. It was hard to think when she was afraid, impossible to remember. And the thing she was most afraid of was that she had forgotten something—something very important.
    She didn't feel strong anymore. She didn't feel smart.
    It was when she felt small and confused and helpless like this that she missed Tanya the most. Tanya was never afraid. She always knew what to do. She had taken care of them all. But Tanya was faraway now, her voice very small in the dark, and she could not help.
    But there was the telephone. And he never bothered to hide his briefcase from her. That fact, in some strange inexplicable way, made her unafraid of him.
    When she heard him coming, black despair did not fill her chest the way it usually did. Now she thought of the telephone, and her heart speeded, and it was easy to pretend.
    When he saw her, he would smile. “Hello, precious. Would you like to play a game?”
    She would smile back. “Yes. I'd like that.”
    And then he would kneel down and open his arms to her, and he would leave his briefcase on the floor.
    He would leave his briefcase on the floor.
    ~
     

Chapter Ten
    G uy, along with everyone in