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She was no good to Reginald anymore. At least not at the price he wanted. Nobody was going to believe Debbie was a virgin, not after giving birth. She was damaged goods. She would be thrown away just like any other piece of property that was no longer useful. Debbie knew how Reginald threw girls away. He didn’t just beat them as they ran out the door.
They wound up dead. He never thought twice about it. She hadn’t seen it happen, but she didn’t have to. Debbie knew.
So, again Debbie ran. She ran as fast and far as she could, landing in St. Isidore. It was a little city where there were no Reginald Sheets, where the men in town drove to the big city to get what they wanted, so that no one at home would ever know what they needed.
As far as she was concerned it was like walking into a Norman Rockwell painting, if he had painted the inside of a $120 a week motel room on a good week, a bus station when money ran tight.
Still Debbie felt like she had a new chance to make the fairy tales in her dreams come true.
Almost.
At least Debbie felt safe for the first eleven years. She found a couple of part-time jobs. One was working in a deli inside a department store, the other was for a cleaning company.
Twelve hours a day, six days a week, she was working. When Debbie wasn’t working, she was praying. She prayed the buses would be running on time so she could connect without standing too long in the hot sun, a pouring rain or a driving snow storm.
She prayed to be able to have enough money to buy food. She prayed not to fall asleep on the job.
She prayed for the baby she carried.
She lived for its hope.
If she punched in late, Debbie’s pay got docked. If she called in sick, no pay at all. No health care. No benefits of any kind. But there was also no Reginald. Those days were over.
Never again will I make that mistake, she told herself.
Debbie had her baby in the hospital. Free care, welfare. The doctors and nurses let her know it every time they looked down on Debbie.
Debbie was back in her motel-room home as fast as the hospital’s computer keyboard operators, working-poor themselves, could process her out. Still she survived. Debbie had to live. She had her baby. Something — no — someone to live for.
Her baby girl became Debbie’s life.
They had breakfast together, rode the bus to the free daycare center together, spent nights cleaning office buildings together. Brianna and Debbie, Debbie and Brianna, were together. They were a family, a real family.
There was always a little money for Thanksgiving dinner at the Big Boy restaurant or maybe the Ponderosa buffet. There was Christmas. Debbie would starve herself the last week of November and the first two weeks of December to make sure that Brianna had presents. A doll. A dress. A book. Never as much as Debbie wanted to give her, but more than Brianna expected.
She was just a kid. What did she know?
If there was anything more important than making sure Brianna had a decent Christmas it was making sure she was in school. Debbie was the first in line to get Brianna into kindergarten. Free breakfast. Free lunch. A warm, safe place to play for a couple of hours after school.
Brianna fit right into school. She did more than just make friends. Brianna was a magnet for the other kids. Her teachers told Debbie that Bree, as her friends were starting to call her, was a natural-born leader.
Debbie was starting to seriously dream about what her little girl would be like when she grew up. Debbie wanted Bree to do everything she would never be able to do and have the life she always wanted. It was a new fairy tale. A fairy tale that was making her happier than any other.
She’ll be the first one in this little family to graduate high school, Debbie told herself while she cleaned the first in a long line of filthy urinals. And she will never have to clean an office or work for minimum wage. My baby is going to have a life she thought, punctuating each word with a hard scrub on the yellow urinals as the stink of cleaning solvent drove a spike from nostril to brain and a tear to her eye.