Genevieve

I am eight years old and in the white-brown bathroom of the corner store on west one-forty-second street, watching Mama as she crouches in the corner near the toilet and lights her pipe with tremble-thin fingers. It is eleven o’clock and I am wearing socks but no shoes and jean overalls from the Goodwill on fifth avenue and I have been wearing these for as long as I can remember. My nose is running. After several moments Mama stands and as she turns toward me with shaking hands I see red, puckered scabs on paper-white skin, cracked lips and burnt-black fingers, and I will not know what any of this means until she dies two weeks later in an alleyway on fifth avenue and the police come to collect the body. My beautiful, sweet girl, she says, and when she smiles her teeth are like coal stones but to me they are porcelain, fine china.

I am eleven years old and in the baby-blue living room of Mr. and Mrs. Piper’s home, beside a girl in white with hair like silk and eyes likes knives. Her name is Gina, they say, and she looks like what Mama used to look like; beautiful, deadly, with baby pink lips and a smile like broken glass, and when she takes my hand she leans in close and whispers Don’t let Mr. Piper come near you, he’s not nice to little girls like you and I, he doesn’t stop when I say no. We flee in the night like sparrows and by morning we are in Manhattan, caught doe-eyed in the rumbling bustle of car engines and shoes on cement. He’s a crook, foster parents are all fucking crooks, Gina grumbles, her hand clutching mine as we weave through the cracked sidewalks and hot city steam. Fuck him. Fuck all of them. We’re on our own now. I’ve known what it’s like, Genevieve, moving from home to home, and it’s not the life you want, I promise you that. Her eyes dart through the crowds like poison arrows, searching for the man with the scabbed fingers, the man my mother had named before she fell to the floor. You said your mother’s friend would be there, right? Yes, I’m sure. And we can trust him? I don’t know. ... Do you know anything about him? No... She said his name was Ernest Benucci, that’s all… She said he’d help me, if I needed him to. She said he was the only friend she had.

His name is Ernest Benucci, and he looks how God might look, with piercing dark eyes and a fresh suit. He is waiting for us beneath the dim, yellow lamplight on Madison Avenue, and he has rings on his fingers, glossy gold rings that almost completely conceal the cracked scabs, the knuckles worn raw from beating against flesh. He knows me as soon as he sees me, in the way my hands shake at my sides, and he smiles - giant, wet teeth - but makes no move to touch me or Gina. He knows better. Instead he says, in a light voice, It’s good to see you, Genevieve, and then, I’ve been expecting you for quite some time. His face is dark, shadowed beneath the fluorescent light, but there’s a kindness in his eyes that I know and instinctively cling to. I assume you’re here because you have nowhere else to go. He looks how God might look, with broad, sloping shoulders and hair like tar. I can give you a home, He looks how God might look; the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit... I can give you anything you’ll ever need, and in return, you’ll work for me, and you’ll help me when help is needed. He looks how God might look, or maybe the Devil. Is that understood?

Yes, Mr. Benucci.

He smiles again - giant, wet teeth. Call me Daddy.



“Genevieve, wake up. Wake up. It isn’t real.”

My eyes flash open, wide, as I suck in a panicked breath. My face is wet and cold and at once I realize I am sobbing, gasping for air, my body curled into a tight ball, my tears staining the pillow and bedspread and plastering my hair to my cheeks.

“Wake up, Genevieve.”

Holden hovers above me, worry etched into the fine lines of his face, and before he can utter another word my arms are around his neck and I am pulling him to me, burying my face in his neck like a small child.

“Hold me, please,” I choke, squeezing my eyes shut, my mind clouded by images of street gutters and syringes and cracked, bloody mouths. The things Daddy made me do, made both of us do.... We were children, for God’s sake, too fragile for men’s hands, and oh God they were so old, so awful…

“Shhh. Shhh. You’re okay. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.”

Holden wraps his arms around my waist and obediently pulls me into him, pressing his lips against my hair as I sob and writhe.

... And there was broken glass, glittering broken glass, cracked teeth and blood-bruised knees, knees... The things Daddy made me do, oh God help me... Dogs barking in the darkness...