The Last Jeskey - Chapter 15

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 15

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Freaky

 

Dave had only gone out the door a few moments before when I heard all kinds of commotion out in the front yard.  I was still on my hands and knees with my face plastered in that bowl of dog food when I heard it.  It was enough of a distraction that I had to get up and see what was going on.  By the time I got there, I saw a cop car turning around and spinning its wheels in the dirt before it sped off.  I was guessing the cop was trying to catch up with Dave.  There was another car in the yard too though, and after a moment, I saw Natalie get out of it.

Once the cop car had disappeared, Natalie walked up to me on the porch.  I was surprised when she reached out and hugged me.  “How are you Freaky?” she asked.

“Fine,” I told her.

She looked at me and stared at my face.  “What’s all over your face?”

“Dog food.  I was eating breakfast.”

“Dog food!”

“I’m gonna get punished,” I told her.  “The dog food is the least of my worries.”

“The least?”

“Yeah.  Whenever I get punished I get put on dog food for a long time.  It’s the other stuff they think up to do to me that really worries me.  But it’s okay.  I deserve it.”

“Deserve it?  Freak, nobody deserves to eat dog food.  That’s barbaric!  It’s disgusting.”

I didn’t know what barber something was.  I shrugged.  “I’m used to it.  I wind up eating it a lot.  Some kinds that they get me are better than others though.”

“I’m sure they are,” she replied.

I led the way into the house.  I watched as she seemed to look all around.  “You wouldn’t believe the mess the cops made of this place yesterday,” I told her.  “It was awful.  Everything was thrown all over the place.  It took me a long time to get it all back the way it belongs.  And they did it in every room!  Now I know why everyone hates the cops so much.  How can you stand living with one?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” she replied.  “But I love it too.  I love him.”

I shrugged, not knowing what she meant by that.  “I need to finish my breakfast,” I told her.  “If the guys don’t find my bowl empty, they’ll kill me.  And I don’t need to make them any madder than they already are.”

“Your bowl?” she asked as I headed for the corner of the kitchen.  I got back down on my hands and knees and took another mouthful of the dog food that Dave had poured for me that morning.

“No!” Natalie yelled.  “Don’t do that!”

I pulled my head up, chewing the dry food bits.

“Oh Freaky,” she said, sounding like she was disappointed or something.  “Stop that.”

I finished chewing and swallowed.  “Why?  I need to finish, or they’ll punish me for it.  Like I said, I’m already worried about what they’re going to do to me.”

“You mean other than making you eat dog food?  What do they do to you?”

“Lots of different things,” I told her.  “The last time they took me out into the woods, took my clothes off me and hung me upside down by my ankles.  Then they whipped me real bad, then left me there like that for a few days.  Natalie, there’s bears, and lions, and tigers out in those woods, they could have eaten me!”

She seemed to go from one shocked look to another.  “Tigers?”

“Yes!”

She shook her head.  “That does it!” she declared angrily.  “Stand up,” she said.  “I’m taking you out of here for your own good.”

“Out of here?  Away from the farm?  No!” I screamed.  “Not again!”

“Freaky, you can’t stay here!”

“Yes I can!”

“Freaky, this is not a life.  It’s a death sentence.”

“I haven’t died yet.”

“Freaky, no matter what you think, I’m not giving you a choice.  I found you a place in a women’s shelter.  It’s only temporary, but until we can work out something better for you it’ll have to do.”

“I don’t know what that is and I don’t care.  I’m staying right here where I know what everything is and how it works.”

“And that Freaky, is a major part of your problem.”

“What problem?”

“You’re living in a horrible situation, and you don’t even know it.”

“What’s horrible about it?  I like it.  I know it.”

“Dog food?  Really?”

Maybe she had a point, but really….  “I deserve it.”

“Deserve it?  Hell no!”

“I talked to a cop!” I argued.  “Lots of cops.”

“So what?  You’re supposed to do that.”

“That’s not what I was told.  And yesterday, Will, your cop husband, told me that Dave wanted me to show him where his hiding places were, and Dave didn’t tell him to do that at all!  I shouldn’t have been talking to him in the first place, or anyone else that he brought with him.  I probably shouldn’t have talked to you either.  You’re married to him.”

“Freaky, I spent a good part of the last few days trying to help you.  That’s what I’m still trying to do.”

“I know that’s what you were trying to do, but it was all just too much.  I was so lost and confused that day.  I was so scared.  All day long I just wanted to go home, and I had to wait till yesterday to finally get here.  I don’t want to go through that again.  I don’t want to leave!”

“Freaky, I hate to tell you this, but one way or another, you’re going.”

“No!” I shouted.

I watched as she turned away from me and pulled her cellphone out of her purse.  She called someone, but whoever it was didn’t answer.  She tried another number.  “Hi, this is Natalie, the sheriff’s wife.  …  Yes, I’m fine.  …  Have you heard from the sheriff in the last few minutes?  He went off chasing Dave Jeskey and he’s not answering his phone right now.  …  Yeah, I’ve kind of got a problem.  I’m at the Jeskey place and he was going to help me drag Freaky out of here.  She’s not exactly wanting to go, and I need a bit of help.  …  Yeah, that would be great, and maybe Amanda would be the best person to help.  Thanks.”  She ended her call and turned back to me.  “Amanda, your new cop friend, will be here in a little bit.  Pack a bag if you’ve got anything to pack.”

“Pack what?” I replied before walking away, fuming.

I didn’t want to go anywhere!  I went into the living room, wrapped my hair around me, and sat in one of the chairs, hugging my hair.  I had been so lost when they had taken me away before.  Nothing had made sense.  Now they wanted to do it again.  Natalie sat in another chair across from me.

“How long will I have to be gone this time?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she told me.  “Possibly, hopefully, forever.”

Natalie thought I was going to die if I stayed here.  I knew I was going to die if I left.

Amanda showed up eventually and between the two of them, like it or not, they forced me into the back of that police car Amanda had arrived in.  They left Natalie’s car at the house, and I had no choice at all but to sit there and watch as the only world I knew faded out of sight.

I had no idea where we were going.  Natalie had said a shelter, but what did that mean?  Shelter was someplace you went to get out of the rain.  Was this another house?  Wherever it was, I hoped it wasn’t full of more cops like that one place had been.  Don’t talk to cops.  And now I was riding in another cop car.  I’d get hung upside down, buried alive, roasted over a fire, and probably be eating dog food for the rest of my life!

It seemed like we were in that car forever.  But Amanda finally pulled up in front of another weird looking place.  It was amazing how many different weird looking places there were.  Since I was so far from home and had no idea how I was going to get back there again, I got out of the car when they told me to, and I didn’t put up any kind of fuss at all when they made me go into that building with them.  As we went inside, I noticed two women back a ways from the door, staring at me.  One of them was what the guys had called black.  The other white.  The one who was black looked like she was standing there with her mouth wide open.  Why?

There was another door inside that was open and they led me through it into a small room.  There was a woman there sitting behind one of those weird tables that had lots of paper and stuff on it.

“Hi Jess,” Natalie said as we walked in.

The woman was…weird.  I hadn’t met many women in my life, and had only talked to some of them in the last few days, but somehow I knew that this woman was old.  Her hair was all grey and curly.

“This is Freaky?” the woman asked.

Natalie turned to me and said, “Freaky, say hello to Jessica Kriss.  She runs this place.”

I searched for a reason not to talk to her at all, but in that situation, I quickly decided that it wasn’t going to hurt…too much…I hoped.  “Hi,” I said tentatively.

“Hi Freaky,” she replied with a smile.  “I hope your stay here won’t be too bad at all.”

“I want to go home,” I told her.

She shook her head.  “From what Natalie there has told me, I think home is the last place you want to be.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Even after the way you’ve been treated?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  I know what everything is there.  I know how it all works.  I can’t figure anything out when I’m not there.”  She didn’t seem too happy with my answer, but it was all true.  I just wanted to go home.

“Let’s hope you decide differently after a few days.”

She grabbed some papers on her table and a pen, like she was going to write something.  “Okay,” she said.  “I hear your name is actually Freak, but you like to be called Freaky.”  She wrote something on the paper.

“You can write!” I exclaimed.  “But…you’re a woman.”

“Of course I can write,” she replied.  “What does being a woman have to do with it?”

“Girls don’t need to know anything about reading or writing things.  That’s all men’s business!”

“Who told you that?” she asked as if she was surprised.

“Who?  Bo, Steve, Ben…all the guys.  If something needs to be read, that’s their business and they read it for me.”

“So you can’t read or write…at all?” she said.

“Of course not.  I’m a girl.  A good girl!”

“I can see that,” she muttered.  She looked back down at the paper and asked, “What’s your last name?”

Huh?  “Freak,” I said.  “My name is Freak.”

“Yes,” she replied.  “But what’s your last name?”

I looked at Natalie, confused.  “I don’t understand.”

“Freaky,” Natalie said.  “All the guys had two names.  A first name and a last name.  Like Bo Jeskey, or Steve Jeskey.  How about you?”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly understanding.  “I don’t know.”

“Are you a Jeskey?”

“I don’t know.  I’m just Freak…or…yeah, I do kind of like Freaky.  Don’t tell Dave or Gary that!”

“It’s okay Freaky,” Natalie told me.  She looked at the old woman.  “Can we just skip a last name?”

The woman nodded, then turned the paper around and pushed it toward Natalie.  It still bothered me to see her writing something, but Natalie seemed to do lots of things that women shouldn’t.

“I guess there’s no chance of getting you to sign your name,” the old woman asked me as she pulled the paper away.

“Sign…”  I looked to Natalie.  “Don’t worry about it,” she told me.

“I don’t understand anything out here,” I replied, totally frustrated.  “I just want to go home where I don’t have to worry about it.”

“Sorry Freaky,” she said.  “We can’t.  Not with the conditions you were living under.”

“Conditions?”  But she didn’t answer.

“What else can’t she do?” the old woman asked.

“As far as I can tell, an entire world of things,” Natalie told her.  “Too many things.  And it all seems to be things that she has no concept of at all, no matter how basic they are.”

I got the impression that the old woman wasn’t happy.

“We’ll leave her in your care then Jess,” Natalie told the old woman.  “And good luck.”

“Yeah,” the old woman replied.  “She’s certainly not the first woman to come here who can’t read.  Not by a long shot.  But something tells me I’m going to need that luck with her.”

Natalie hugged me briefly, then said, “You need to stay here now Freaky.  Whether you think so or not, it’s for your own good.”

I didn’t see it that way at all.  Natalie and Amanda walked out.  Now what was I supposed to do?

The old woman got up from her chair.  “Come on Freaky, let me introduce you to a few of the women.  They can probably show you around better than me.”

She led the way out of that little room, and I followed her.  I didn’t think I had much of a choice.

There was another door ahead of us, and she walked right towards it.  I could hear strange sounds coming from inside that room.  Sounds I couldn’t understand.  She led me through into that other room.  It was a big room.  But it was those sounds that had caught my attention, so I didn’t pay much attention to the room itself.

“Are those…kids?” I asked staring at the three tiny people running around some colorful stuff in the room.  And then there was the other sound I had never heard before.  “Is that…a baby person?” I asked, staring in disbelief at what a woman there was holding in her arms.

“What do you mean?  Of course it’s a baby,” the old woman replied.

“I’ve never seen a baby person before, or kids either.  But…”  I looked at her.  “I think I was a kid once, but it was a long time ago.”

She was staring at me funny.  “Freaky, I can guarantee that you were a kid once.”

“Why is the baby making so much noise?” I asked.  “It…bothers me.”

“He’s crying,” the old woman told me as she headed in that direction.  “Babies tend to do that.”  She kept heading toward that woman with the…baby.  “Aw,” the old woman said.  “Let me take him for a minute.  Poor little thing.”  She took the baby and seemed to hold it in her arms very carefully.  I heard her talking to it, but the baby didn’t answer.  She just seemed to keep talking to it and bouncing it around in her arms a bit.  And then the baby stopped crying.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it!” the woman who had been holding the baby before told her.  “I…can’t!”

“You can!” the old woman told her.  “You’re not doing a bad job at all Bess.  Just keep trying.”  She handed the baby back to the woman.  I noticed that the three…kids…in the room didn’t even bother looking to see what was going on.  They just kept doing whatever they had been doing with that colorful stuff in that part of the room.

“Ladies,” the old woman said loudly so that everyone in the room could hear.  “This here is Freaky.  Please make her feel welcome, and please give her the quick rundown on this place.  She’s…naive about a lot of things.  Too many things.”

That black woman stood up from one of the seats in the room.  “I got her Miss Kriss.  I’ll be glad to show her.”

“Thanks Shantel,” the old woman replied.  “I’ll leave her in your care then.”  She turned to me and put her hand on my arm.  “Try to enjoy yourself as best you can, okay?”

I said nothing.  She walked off and that black woman was quickly right there next to me.

“Hey,” the woman said.  “I’m Shantel.  Did she say your name is Freaky?”

I looked her in the face.  Why did she seem so excited?  “It’s actually Freak…I think, but don’t tell Gary or Dave but I do kind of like Freaky.”

“Cool,” Shantel replied.  “And I don’t have a clue who Gary and Dave are, so don’t worry about it.”

Another woman was suddenly there with us.  The same white woman I had seen earlier.  “I’m Lisa,” the new woman said.  “Welcome.”

I wasn’t sure what welcome meant, but I figured that it was something that wasn’t exactly bad.  I ignored it and finally looked around the room.  It was big.  And it was nice.  Real nice.  I noticed something that surprised me and I walked over to it.  “Is this one of those…T…Fee things?” I asked.

“T…what?” Shantel said.

“T…Fee,” I repeated.  “You know, kind of like a cellphone.”

“It’s TV honey,” Shantel replied.  “Please don’t tell me you ‘ve never see a TV before.”

“I saw one a few nights ago, when I was at the cop’s house.  You can’t talk to the people you see in there though.  He said they’re not real.”

“Uh…no, they’re not,” Shantel replied.  “Honey Pie, what the hell kind of place did you come from?”

“The farm of course.  Where else?”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but maybe it’s close enough,” she replied.

“Freaky,” Lisa said.  “Can I…would you mind if…I touch your hair?”

I was surprised.  “My hair?  Why would I mind?” I asked.

Lisa and Shantel both began grabbing lengths of my hair and looking at it closely.  “I wanted to get my hands on your hair the moment I saw you,” Shantel said.  “It’s incredible!  How do you manage with it?”

I shrugged.  “How else should it be?  I don’t know why all women don’t have hair like mine.”

“Honey Pie, if we did, we’d never be able to do anything.”

“I have no problem.  I can cook and clean just fine.  And when we have pigs or chickens, I can take care of them too.”

“Amazing!” Lisa said.

“Come on,” Shantel said.  “Let me show you around.  In case you haven’t figured it out, this here is the common room where we can all get together.  She looked over at the kids playing.  Sometimes when there’s a lot of kids, it can get a bit noisy, but usually they’re more quiet than the ones we’ve got now.  I think the mothers of those three are taking a shower right now.  The kids though seem to be just fine playing with the toys for a bit.”

Toys.  I wasn’t sure what that was.  Maybe those colorful things they were…playing…with.

Shantel and Lisa led me out of that…common room.

“It’s amazing the way your hair drags on the floor behind you,” Lisa noted.

I shrugged.  “It didn’t used to before Natalie washed it, and that other woman untangled it.”

“Untangled it?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah.  Stopped it from being so jumbled up and took all the knots out of it.”

“You mean you don’t brush it much?” Shantel asked.

“Brush it?” I said.  “The only brush I have is for when I do laundry.  Why would I need a brush for my hair?”

Shantel stopped where she was and looked at me.  “No hair brush, and T…Fee, I think you said.  Honey, most of us here have come from literal hell.  I’m wondering what kind of hell you just left.”

“What do you mean by hell?” I asked.

“A bad place.  A real bad place, where they treat you like shit!”

“I lived on a farm,” I told them.  “And I took care of five guys, and they took care of me.”

“Yeah,” Shantel said, “but how exactly did they take care of you?  Come on, let’s find you a bed.”

“What do I need a bed for?  I’m a girl.  Girls don’t sleep in beds.”