The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [91]
“Forget about Sophie for right now,” she said, leaning toward Marti from the sofa. “Tell me about you. Tell me what it was like for you at Chowchilla. How you got out. Tell me everything.”
Marti raised her head again, wiping her face with her hands. Her cigarette had burned down to the filter, and she looked around for a place to stub it out. Zoe handed her one of the Kmart bowls from the shelf near the door.
“It was so bad, Mom,” Marti said. “Worse than you can imagine. The food was gross, but that was the least of it. The other women…” She shook her head. “They’re real criminals. I got thrown in with honest to goodness murderers. And, of course, I’d say I was innocent, that I hadn’t done anything, that I was railroaded somehow, and they’d mock me and…” Marti looked out the window, and for a moment, seemed to lose her train of thought. “The lights were on, twenty-four-seven. Do you know how crazy that can make you? The noise…it echoed, all the time. A couple of women killed themselves while I was there, and believe me, I thought about it, too.”
“Oh, Marti.”
“They raped me,” she said. “Every single night, and—”
“Who raped you?” Zoe asked, horrified.
“The guards.” Marti looked at her, then lowered her eyes. “And there was nothing you could do about it. It’s all a big game there. Everyone knows it’s going on, and everyone’s got a part in it. The prisoners are treated like shit. Like they’re not even human. Like they’re just put there for the guards’ entertainment.”
“Marti, I’m so sorry,” Zoe said. “Come here and sit next to me.” She patted the seat of the sofa next to her.
Marti left her chair and sat down next to her, and Zoe put her arm around her, kissed her temple. It felt alien to touch her daughter that way. There had never been much physical affection between them. But she was determined to change that, and she was relieved that Marti seemed to accept the gesture, that she actually seemed to want it.
“I wish I could have prevented you from having to go there,” Zoe said. “I felt so helpless.”
“It was even worse for me ’cause I’m your daughter,” Marti continued, her voice thick. “Like, somehow it made them more important to be able to say they fucked Zoe’s daughter.”
Zoe winced. “Oh, my darling,” she said. “Being my daughter has always been a burden for you. I know that, and I’m sorry.”
“Angelo was no better than the rest of them,” Marti said. “I picked him because I knew he was the type to take a bribe, which meant he was an asshole to begin with. He made me have sex with him every single night we were on the road, Mom. Two or three times a night.”
Zoe’s fantasy of the companionable, cooperative warden-prisoner relationship evaporated.
“And he was slimy and disgusting. I’d have to go in the bathroom and puke afterward. Now all I want to do is take a long bath.” She glanced around the room. “I suppose there’s no tub here, huh?”
Zoe smoothed a stray strand of her daughter’s hair back from her forehead. “Just an outhouse,” she said, “but we have a pump. I can heat you some water if you’d like to—”
“No!” Marti stood up and walked to the open front door to look into the clearing. “No more fires, for heaven’s sake. And we have to figure out what we’ll do if anyone shows up here. We need a plan.”
“First, let’s clear things up about Sophie,” Zoe said. “We can’t keep her here, Marti. Think about it. Her family must know she’s missing, so there are probably people searching for her, too. The sooner we get her up to the road and on her way, the better off we’ll be.”
“Mom!” Marti spun around to look at her. “She’s gonna tell!”
“I don’t think she will. I’ll talk to her about it some more while we’re walking. She’s a nice little girl. She just wants to go home. I think she’d keep any secret I asked her to.”
“Then you’re crazy,” she said.
“Listen to me, Mart,” Zoe said. “She’s sick. I don’t know how sick, but she has something wrong with her kidneys. She even has a catheter