“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie,” her daddy used to sing. “That’s amore!”
He’d sing it loud and goofy, dance her around. Mommy used to roll her eyes, but in that funny, happy way she did when Daddy was being silly. When Mommy was really mad at him, her face went very still, and she got very quiet. Penny pushed the thought of them away. She didn’t like to think about her mom and dad, and how angry they must be with her. She hadn’t listened; she’d broken the rules. They didn’t love her anymore because she’d been bad. That’s what Momma had told her. Even though it didn’t seem right, she thought it must be true because no one ever came to get her.
Don’t go. Not yet.
The whispering was loud tonight. When she first heard it, she thought it was just the wind in the leaves. But night after night as she listened, she realized that it was voices, a million voices saying she didn’t know what. She listened now, with the moon shining through that gap, falling on the dirty floor. Her blanket was itchy. Her back screamed from the lashes of the belt she’d received from Poppa. She’d stopped crying, though.
*
The day after the clean man came, Momma and Poppa took the truck into town. Momma was wearing her uniform, the yellow-and-white dress and shoes that looked like sneakers but weren’t. She went into town dressed like that a few days a week.
Or had it been longer ago that they’d left? Two days? Three? Penny was wobbly with hunger; she was being punished and hadn’t been fed. Still, as soon as she was sure they were gone, she managed to get down on the floor and work on the circle. It was screwed hard into the ground, but she kept trying to unscrew it. She imagined that it was loosening a little. The shackle on her ankle was so tight that it rubbed the skin raw until it was bleeding. She’d tried to slide her foot out, but she couldn’t.
A little while after she heard them pull down the drive, Bobo came into her barn room. She hadn’t heard him and didn’t see him until he cleared his throat, startling her.
“That won’t come loose.”
“It might.” If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough at it, you can usually get it. That’s what her daddy had always told her.
Bobo didn’t hurt her like Poppa did; he didn’t do the same kind of horrible, not understandable things. But he did hurt her. Once he slapped her so hard across the face that she saw stars. Once he took Baby, who was her only thing, the one thing she held and told her secret thoughts, the one thing she cuddled at night. He ripped Baby’s arm off, held her over Poppa’s fire pit. But when she’d cried, Bobo gave Baby and her arm back. He even returned the next day and sewed Baby’s arm back on.
She didn’t understand Bobo, who was tall like a man but spoke like a boy, who was pale, with straw hair and misty blue, blue eyes that sometimes looked sweet and sad, but more often just empty, blank like Baby’s button eyes.
He walked up closer, held up a shiny silver key. Then he leaned down and unlocked her ankle.
She sat, rubbing her ankle, which was black under the broken skin. Her foot was swollen, an odd grayish blue color and painful to the touch.
“Come on,” he said, stepping to the door. She got up and limped after him.
Bobo walked up the porch of the big house and in through the front door. It was the first time she’d been unchained since the clean man came, and she thought hard about running. There was a moment when Bobo was in the house, and she was still outside about to step in.
Is it time now? she asked the voice.
But there was no answer.
From where she stood, she could see the rocky road down which the truck had driven. She saw the tracks etched there in the soft dirt. How far could she get before he caught her? Could she hide herself in the woods and then sneak away?
But then she thought about how big Bobo was and how fast, and she imagined Poppa’s weight on top of her pressing all the breath out of her body, and the belt on her flesh. And she was so hungry and thirsty. Maybe Bobo was going to give her something to eat. And she didn’t have any shoes. Poppa took the boots he’d given her. And her ankle hurt so bad. So she followed Bobo inside.
Bobo was smiling at her, a strange, not nice smile from the top of the stairs.
She was surprised to see what a pretty house it was and how clean. She thought it would be like a horror movie house with cobwebs and locked doors, creaking floorboards. She thought it would be filled with dark corners and mysterious passageways leading to ugly hidden rooms. But it was bright, free from dust with old but nice furniture—dark woods, flower prints, sparkly lampshades.