Olivia

Olivia

I keep trying to record my thoughts but the whine is so loud. It has become a scream. My head feels like it will split. I can’t, I just can’t.

Oooeeeeeooo, metal dragging on metal, torture to my poor brain, my soft ears, my delicate bones … It’s a hammer of sound in my skull. So when the voice starts speaking, running underneath it, I don’t hear at first.

‘Olivia,’ says the voice. ‘Olivia.’ It’s no louder than a butterfly’s wing. Oooooeeeeeooo.

Hello?I ease out from under the couch. Where are you? I ask, which is just as useless as me talking to the TV, I guess, because it’s definitely a ted saying my name, and they don’t understand.

‘Olivia, in here.’

My heart is beating really loudly. I am on the edge of something. If I do this I can never give back the knowledge. Part of me wants to get back under the couch and forget about it. But I can’t. That wouldn’t be right.

I recognise the voice and where it’s coming from. I have never hoped harder to be wrong.

I go to my crate, in the kitchen. It’s not a crate of course, I just call it that. It’s one of those old chest freezers. I like to sleep in it – the dark, the quiet. But sometimes Ted piles stuff on top of it. Weights. Like now.

I put my ear close. The whine is high like a lady singing opera. But I can still hear her voice, underneath it.

‘Hello?’ she says, tearful, a bare whisper. ‘Olivia?’ The words are faint, she sounds weak and sad, but there is no mistake. I picture her curled up in the dark, in there. I can hear her wet breathing.

‘He’s mad that I made a bad dinner,’ Lauren says, her voice coming eerie through the air holes. ‘So mad. The only time I remember him being this angry was after that time at the mall …’ She’s doing that slight, involuntary gasping that happens when people are tired out from crying.

My mind won’t work properly, it races like that mouse in the walls. My fur stands up in quills.

Calm down, Olivia, I tell myself. So she got herself locked in the freezer somehow. Careless kid …

‘I didn’t lock myself in,’ Lauren says.

I leap a little in the air. You can hear me? I ask. You understand cat? Oh my LORD!

‘Listen. Ted shut me in …’

What a silly accident, I say, relieved. I bet he’ll feel terrible when he realises … OK. Easy! I’ll go wake Ted, and he can let you out.

‘No, please don’t wake him.’ Her voice is like a scream, if a scream could also be a whisper. It’s horrible. It has little bloody flip-flops and scrawls saying help in it. I feel cold marching up my tail, into my spine. Lauren gives a series of hard little gasps like she’s trying to get herself together.

You can’t stay in there for ever, Lauren, I say, reasonable. That’s my place. It’s a little selfish of you, actually. Anyway, your mom will come looking for you, or the school … Is it a school you go to? Sorry, I forget.

‘No, Olivia,’ she whispers. ‘Think. Please.’ I look at the freezer, its size. I look at the air holes Ted pierced in the lid for me. Or were they for me? I feel the answer ebbing through the thick metal door, the rubber seal. The knowledge twists through my organs, flesh and bones.

You don’t go anywhere, when you go away, I say. You stay right here.

‘When you can’t get in, that means I’m here,’ she says. ‘We take turns, I guess.’

I think of it: Lauren lying quiet in the dark, listening as Ted and I go about our business. I haven’t seen you for over a month, I say.

‘Has it been that long? Time drifts here in the dark, it’s hard to tell whether you are dead or not. I wondered. But then I heard you through the wall, and I thought, no, not yet …’

Oh, I say. Oh, oh.

‘I’ve been trying to speak to you,’ she says. ‘Had to find a time when he didn’t stop my mouth too tight, when he was asleep and the music wasn’t too loud. I wrote notes. I slipped them into his pocket, his pants, anywhere I could reach … You didn’t find them I guess but he didn’t either so that’s good. Lucky he’s so drunk, always.’

I row uselessly and turn in circles. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry …

She sighs and I hear the wet catch in her breath. ‘You’re always sorry,’ she says, sounding more like her old self. ‘Always trying to make him feel better.’

Oh, how could he?I say. To lock up his own daughter like this …

She gives a tired little laugh. ‘Grow up, Olivia. I’m not his daughter.’

But you call him Dad.

‘He calls me kitten when I’m good – does that mean I’m a cat?’

I shudder and my tail lashes. He calls me kitten, I say.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘There have been lots of kittens over the years.’

I think back to the night Ted found me, a kit in the woods, the night when the cord bound us together. His cuffs covered in fresh mud. The elusive scent in the back of the car, as if the seat had just been vacated. Soft fabric, yellow with blue butterflies. He wrapped me in a child’s blanket. I guess maybe I should have wondered what was he doing at night in the woods, with mud on his cuffs and a child’s blanket.

I ask, How long have you been here?

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Since I was little.’

All this time, I say. It’s like looking in a mirror, to find it’s really a door. I could really hurt Ted, I could. Oh Lord, I whisper, how awful.

‘You don’t know what awful is.’ Lauren takes a deep breath. ‘I’ll tell this once and then never again.’

‘Once upon a time I lived with my family. I don’t recall that too well. It was long ago and I was little. I don’t remember much about the day he took me, except that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I think my mom used to say that, but I’m not sure. Lauren’s not my real name. I don’t remember that either.

‘I do remember when he brought me here. I liked the house, it was dusty and dirty, and Mom never let me play in the dirt. I liked the peepholes in the plywood; I thought they were like portholes in a ship. I said so, and he told me I was very smart. He told me his name was Ted and that he was taking care of me while my parents were out. I didn’t think anything was wrong. Why would I? It had happened before, me being left with people, neighbours and such. My parents went to a lot of parties. My mother always used to come into my room to kiss me goodnight, before she left for the evening. I remember her scent. Geraniums. I used to call them “germamiums”. God, I was so dumb when I was little. I guess that’s how I ended up here. What was I talking about?’

You were telling me about the day Ted ... took ... you, I say. Each word feels like a little piece of gravel on my tongue.

‘Yeah,’ says Lauren. ‘I was so hot, that day, my bathing suit or underwear or whatever itched. I complained to Ted, said I was boiling. Maybe that was what gave him the idea. He told me there was ice cream in the freezer in the kitchen, and that I could go and get it. The kitchen was a mess, a pile of unwashed plates in the sink, old takeout food piled high on the counters. I liked it, it seemed like he wasn’t a regular grown-up.

‘It was in the corner, a big chest freezer with a padlock on it. I’d seen ones like it in garages and basements. Never in a kitchen before, though. The padlock was undone so I lifted the lid. I was expecting a rush of freezing air on my face, but it didn’t come. Then I saw the freezer was unplugged at the wall. I felt hands under my arms and I was flying up and over down into the freezer, onto the soft blankets. I had my own blanket with me too. He let me keep that. It’s yellow with blue butterflies. Soft. The butterflies are faded now. I still wasn’t afraid, even though it smelled like old chicken inside there. But then the lid came down and I was alone. There were stars in the black, like stab wounds in the sky. It was the air holes he had pierced in the lid. I shouted for the man to let me out.

‘“You’re safe, now,” he said. “This is for your own good.”

‘I remembered his name, and I knew that names were real important to grown-ups, so I tried to say, “Please, let me out, Ted.” But I had trouble saying my ‘d’s, back then. So it came out “Teb”. And when he wouldn’t let me out I thought that was why – I got his name wrong, and that made him mad. It took me a while to figure out that he would never let me go, no matter how I said it.

‘At first, for a long time, I lived in the box. He trickled water through the holes and I opened my mouth and drank it. He gave me pieces of candy the same way. Sometimes cookies or a chicken finger. He played the music really loud, all day and all night. The sad woman who sings. I thought that maybe I was in the hell they used to warn us about, at Sunday school. But hell was supposed to be full of fire, and it was very wet and cold, where I was, cold to the bone. After a while I didn’t notice any of it any more, not even the smell. Time stopped being a line and flattened out.

‘I had to learn a new language, for my body and my mind. The language of the box. It meant instead of walking, I just moved my feet an inch or two. That was a journey. Instead of jumping up and down or dancing, which I had once liked to do, I clenched and unclenched my fists. Sometimes I bit my cheek, to taste blood. I pretended it was food.

‘If I made noise or kicked at the sides of the box, boiling water came through the holes. I couldn’t see, but I knew the burns were bad, because of the way my skin came off. Kind of like snakeskin. It smelled bad and I wanted to die with how bad it hurt.

‘One day the music stopped. Above me, there was an explosion of light. I had to keep my eyes closed, it was too bright, I had been in the dark for too long. I heard him say, “Let’s get you clean.”

‘He lifted me out of the box. I cried because I thought there would be more boiling water, but it was cool, from the faucet. I think he bathed me standing in the sink. Afterwards he put something soothing on my burns and covered them with gauze.

‘“I put boards up over the windows for you,” he said. “It’s dim in here. You can try opening your eyes.”

‘I did – just a crack at first, and then a squint. The house was dim and huge. Everything juddered and shook. My eyes had forgotten how to see distances, because I had been in the box for so long.

‘He gave me a sandwich – ham, cheese and tomato. It was the first vegetable I had eaten in weeks and my body lit up with it. I used to push the tomato round my plate, before, in my old life. Makes me laugh, now. While I ate he cleaned up the box and put new blankets in there. I shivered at that – I wanted to scream. It meant I was going back in. The second I finished my sandwich, he put the music back on. That woman. How I hate her.

‘“Get in,” he said. I shook my head. “I made it all nice for you. Get in.” When I wouldn’t he poured something from a gallon jug into the bottom of the box. It had a sour smell that made my throat tingle. “The blankets are all soaking wet now,” he said. “What a waste of my time.” Then he picked me up, put me back in the box and closed the lid. I’ll never forget the sound of the padlock closing, right next to my ear. Snick, like a blade through an apple.

‘The bottom of the freezer was filled with vinegar. It was like fire on my burned skin. The fumes caught in my throat and made my eyes water. He poured more hot water in through the air holes. That was bad, it seemed like the air had turned to acid.

‘“When the music plays, you get in and stay there, quiet,” he said. “No dilly-dallying. No argument. Every moment it plays, you stay inside, being quiet and good.”

‘I don’t know how many times we went through it. I was slow to learn, I guess. In the end it wasn’t so much that I gave in. It was like, my body just started obeying him. Now I can’t get out of here when the music is on, no matter how much I want to. If the house was on fire, I couldn’t do it.

‘I can take more than the others, so I’ve lasted longer than usual,’ Lauren says. For a moment her voice has an edge of pride. ‘Ted says it’s because of my psychological issues. But it’s not enough to survive. I want to live. I’m going to get out and you’re going to help me.’

My brain reels with everything she’s telling me. I try to focus. Of course I’ll help, I say. We’ll get you out.

‘Well, we have to try,’ she says. She sounds so adult and exhausted. It makes it all real. I feel it in my tail, the horror.

Up in the bedroom, Ted groans. His head must be very sore. The bed creaks as he turns over. His feet hit the floor with a thump. I hear him shuffling, bare feet on tile. The shower comes on.

‘Olivia,’ he calls, thick. ‘Kitten.’ The music grows louder.

‘You have to go to him,’ Lauren says. ‘You have to act normal.’ I hear a very small sound that could be a sob. She tries really hard not to let it out.

I pad upstairs and into the bathroom. Steam wreathes, water beats the tile. Some cats don’t like water, I know, but I’ve always loved it here. The interesting scents, the steam that frames the air in delicate wisps, the taste of warm drips from the tap.

Ted stands under the running water, hair flat and shining like a seal. Water strikes him in metal darts. He is in his undershirt and underwear, as always. Wet fabric is gathered in translucent rucks over him like an ill-fitting second skin. His body never sees the light. The scars show through in ridges. Drunkenness comes off him in waves, I can almost see it, mingling with the steam.

I search and search for a sign, some indication of the great change that has taken place between us. But he seems just as usual, like he gets when he goes back into the past and gets stuck.

‘Teddy went to the lake with Mommy and Daddy,’ he says, resting his forehead against the wall. His voice is small and far away. ‘And the Coca-Cola was cold and freezy in the glass. The ice made music on the rim. And Daddy said, “Drink it all up, Teddy, it’s good for you.”’

He turns off the shower, groaning as if it is a painful act. He goes into the bedroom. I follow, watching as closely as if I had never met him before. Maybe I haven’t. He bends his head and his back heaves. I think he’s crying.

Now it’s my job to purr and wind myself around him and nudge him with my head until he laughs. But now the walls seem to hum and buckle. Bad things scuttle through my mind and everywhere. Hatred for him washes over me so strongly that I become a tall arch and my fur stands up in quills. I wish the cord had bound me to anyone except him.

Why are you doing this to Lauren?I ask, wondering if he’ll reply. There isn’t a good answer, and I can’t stand to think about the bad ones.

But I have to be normal. I have to try. I purr and nudge my head into his hand. Each place our flesh meets is cold. He turns the music up loud.

So, this is why the lord asked me to stay here, that day when I almost escaped. I thought it was to help Ted, but it was for Lauren.