How many months later it was, when I was selected, I did not know. I had lost track of time. Days, months...it could have been a year. Time blended together, an endless sea of lessons. They taught us English, Thai. Taught us how to eat and drink with fine china, sitting at a table with tablecloths and silverware so elegant that they seemed to be made for a Queen. Of course, it was all pretend. The plates held tiny servings of rice and a vegetable curry they fed us, small portions so we would not gain weight. I was always hungry.
And then there were the other lessons. The ones I couldn’t think about without feeling the pain that made it difficult to sit. One of the other girls, Yamin, said we would be kept virgins, that there was a price for us. They did things to me, though. Everywhere else.
Lily was no longer herself. At night, when she would crawl back to her cot, huddled into a ball, I would climb into her bed, hold her tiny body close to mine. At first, she would cry. But after a long while, she no longer cried anymore.
I no longer cried anymore.
I wondered what hell could be worse than this.
The day Lily hung herself, I died inside.
It was after a particularly brutal lesson. I had held her, like always, my heart no longer torn in two each time I saw what had happened. I imagined that my heart had built up callouses now, that it was no longer vulnerable to seeing this type of suffering. I could barely feel pain anymore.
That was what I thought.
Until later.
I was the one who found her, hanging from a beam, the sheet she had used as a noose wrapped around her neck, her head slumped forward. The stool she had stood on wasn’t even kicked out from under her. She had no second thoughts, even at the end. She hadn’t even tried to stand on it, to save herself from death. She had only wanted to die.
I didn’t think my heart could break anymore. But that day, it did.
Everything around me shut down when I saw her. I was in a tunnel. I could only see her, straight in front of me.
Lifeless.
Broken.
I heard myself wail, then, this sound that rose up from the depths of my soul. I ran to her, my arms wrapped around her legs, trying to lift her up. Screaming.
I was pulled off her, ripped from her by the women who came running. The women who ran the place, who colluded with the men who stole away the most vulnerable parts of me.
They yelled at me in Thai, dragged me from her.
Left me wailing on the floor when they took her body away. I lay there, a broken heap.
What happened to me didn’t matter anymore.
Now I was dead inside.
“Would mom like this?” MacKenzie asked, her tiny hand in mine as we walked toward the church.
“I think she would, Mac,” I said. I assumed she would, but I didn't know, not really. We didn't attend church when we were together. Christenings and funerals, April would say. Births and deaths. April had been raised Catholic, but she stopped going when we got together.
Now, I was compelled to come here each week, drawn by the need to honor her in some way. MacKenzie and I didn't go to Mass - I still couldn’t bring myself to actually attend a service, not after what happened. God and I hadn’t exactly gotten on the same page when it came to April’s death. But I didn’t know how else to honor her. She was buried in California, yet I couldn’t bring myself to go back and see her, there in the ground. There was a finality about looking at her grave that I was unable to face.
So instead, MacKenzie and I went to the Catholic church every week to light a candle and say a prayer for her. At least, we went most weekends.
We didn't go last weekend, the weekend everything happened. When MacKenzie said she wanted to kill herself.
Standing in front of the altar inside the church, I touched the match to the votive candle. All of the candles in a row, flames flickering in the dimly lit church, stood for someone. They represented people with lives, loved ones, histories. I think that’s what kept bringing me back. It was oddly comforting, knowing that. Other people had lost, and still survived.
Or some profound shit like that.
MacKenzie squeezed my hand and looked up at me. “Do you think mom’s in heaven?”
“I know she is,” I said. After all the things I had done, I hoped there was a place for April in heaven. I hoped my karma hadn't rubbed off on her.
MacKenzie squeezed tight against my leg. “Can we watch some movies of her again, before I leave?”
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “Sure, baby.”
MacKenzie was only four when April was murdered, her life snuffed out by Mad Dog’s lackeys. My fucking so-called brothers. She watched the videos of her mom, looked at photos, but I didn’t know how much of April she remembered.
Me, on the other hand? I couldn’t forget my wife. Sometimes I smelled her when I entered a room, memories triggered by a scent that reminded me of the shampoo she used or the perfume she wore. I saw her when I closed my eyes, and when I woke in the middle of the night, I still reached for her automatically. I didn’t know when that would change.
It had been over two and a half years, and only now was it beginning to feel like I wasn’t completely raw.