Say Goodbye

FIVE

MY OLDER BROTHER USED TO TELL ME, “DO AS I SAY, OR THE Burgerman will get you!”

“There is no such thing as a Burgerman,” I would shout back.

“Sure there is. He’s big, seven feet tall, dressed all in black. He enters the rooms of all the naughty boys in the middle of the night, snatching them out of bed and taking them off to his factory, where he grinds them into burgers and sells the meat to grocery stores. All the cheap stuff that’s turned brown in the meat market? That’s naughty-boy burgers. You can ask anyone.”

I didn’t believe him until one night I woke up, and the Burgerman was standing at the foot of my bed.

“Shhhh,” he said. “Don’t say a word, and maybe I’ll let your family live.”

I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I just stared at this large hulking form, nearly seven feet tall, all in black. I couldn’t believe my brother had been right. Then I started to shake, and my heart started to pound, and I think I wet the bed.

“Move!” the Burgerman demanded harshly. “You wanna save your family, boy, then get your scrawny ass outta bed.”

But I couldn’t move. I could only shiver uncontrollably.

He tossed back the covers. He grabbed my arm and yanked me to the floor, his fingers digging into my upper arm. He twisted my shoulder and it hurt.

My legs followed him on their own, I swear that’s how it happened, because surely there was no way I wanted to go with a man like him.

In the hallway, he paused as if to get his bearings. I could see the cracked door of my brother’s room, just two feet away. I could hear the sound of my father snoring one room beyond that.

Scream, I thought. This is it. Do something.

In the dark, I could feel the Burgerman appraising me. He didn’t seem panicked or even alarmed.

Instead, he smiled, a flash of white in the dark.

“See, boy. See how much they care about you? I’m about to ruin your goddamn life, and your family can’t even be bothered to wake up for the event. Remember this, boy. You mean nothing to them. As of this moment, they no longer exist.

“You belong to me.”

He took away my clothes. Tossed me facedown on the bed. I fought as much as a nine-year-old boy can fight, my face pressed into the mattress, my lungs screaming for air. I thought he would kill me. Maybe I prayed he would once he was done.

But he rolled over. Smoked a cigarette.

I didn’t know what to do, lying facedown, wetness everywhere.

I fell asleep.

He woke me up, beat me, yelled at me until I did what he wanted me to do. Afterward, more cigarettes and then it all started again.

I lost track of time. I lived in a hazy, naked state, my insides too hot, my outside too cold. He wouldn’t allow me to even have a blanket.

Sometimes he brought me food. Burgers, pizza. First time I ate, I threw up. He laughed and told me I’d get used to it. Then he handed me a spoon, pointed to the pile, and said if I wanted to eat again, I’d better get busy.

On and on and on. Life with the Burgerman, grinding the naughty boy into dust.

One day, he opened the door of the hotel room. The sunlight blinded me. I had to shield my eyes. The air smelled like rain and, unconsciously, I drew in a deep breath. The rain was the first thing I tasted that wasn’t like ashes on my tongue.

Burgerman laughed. “See, boy, even after all that, you still want to live. Guess you must have liked it some after all.”

He tossed me clothes. Not my old ones, but new ones he’d purchased somewhere. Barked at me to get dressed. “Goddammit, show some pride, boy, and stop running around so naked. What’re you trying to do, tempt me again?”

I scrambled to get dressed, but wasn’t fast enough.

This time when he heaved off, he grunted, “See, boy, told you you liked it.”

He drove me to another hotel. He wore a suit. I was in a stiff, navy blue sweat suit, two sizes too big. I felt thin and small and ghostlike. I must have looked like a refugee from a foreign war, exhausted, glassy-eyed, hollow.

The receptionist regarded me with concern.

Burgerman leaned close. “I’m with Social Services,” he confided in a low voice. “Just removed the boy from his family. Hard, hard case. The stuff his parents did…He’s had a rough start, but God willing, I’ll take him to a good home now and his real life will begin.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” the girl said.

Then, out of nowhere, I screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed, told the world of my horror in each heart-stopping wail. I felt as if my lungs were going to burst out of my chest, my head explode with the terrible pressure.

“Told you his parents were monsters,” Burgerman said.

“Oh, you poor thing,” the girl said again.

Eventually he took me to a small apartment. There was a phone, but it only worked with a credit card. The outside door he rigged with a key in, key out lock, with him palming the only key.

At least he finally left me alone, sometimes for hours at a time. I would watch Bugs Bunny until I started to hate the rascally rabbit, so I turned off the TV and watched nothing at all. Just stared at the dingy gray wall. Stared and stared and stared and felt myself grow very tiny.

That was the first time I noticed a spider. I caught it. Put it in a cup, watched its desperate scramble to escape.

I guess the Burgerman was right in the end.

I must have liked it after all.