The Halo Effect

43

He was coming. She could hear the footsteps. She knew that there would be thirteen of them and then he would be on the other side of the window, and that with him would come light.

What was worse? When he came to her or when he left her alone for hours in this darkness? She did not know how many hours passed, but she had tried to count the minutes before her mind drifted off into a horror fantasy about what was going to happen to her.

She knew something was eventually going to happen. He would not keep her here indefinitely. He couldn’t. Someone had to be looking for her. There were people who cared about her. She knew that, too. She counted them. She said their names over and over in her head in the hours that he left her inside this confessional. She would have prayed that they would come and get her, but she didn’t believe in prayer. There was no way any God would let her be locked up like this inside a holy place for so long.

She heard the door open.

“I’m back, back for you, back to help you,” he said. His voice was smooth, calm, soothing. Not to her, but in the abstract, she knew it was a soothing voice.

Was it better when he was away or when he was here?

She was confused. She had been here so long she didn’t know what she was supposed to think anymore. The things she craved were different from what she’d craved ten days ago. Or was it eleven? She wasn’t sure. Like the minutes, she’d lost track of the days.

Now she wanted ice water. Not the lukewarm water he left for her on the floor with the tall straw sticking out of it. He left two glasses every morning. One of water. One of some thick drink that he told her was full of nutrients. But she didn’t want liquids when he was gone because they would only make her go to the bathroom, and of all the terrible things about being in this terrible box, she could not stand the thought of soiling herself. He seemed almost disappointed when he came to see her in the middle of the day-around one o’clock, she’d guessed-and brought her the makeshift toilet and found that she had held her water.

She was too fastidious to do anything but starve herself during the day so that she would not have to go to the bathroom. At night she drank as much as he would give her and ate every bit of the solid food he offered. There was no problem eating at night. She knew that she would be able to go to the bathroom in the morning before he left-a real bathroom. He took her to the small white-tiled room with her eyes blindfolded, hands bound, but once she was there he unbound her hands, removed her blindfold and let her have the bathroom to herself for fifteen minutes.

During those hours while he was gone and she sat on the bench or stood against the wall and stared at the wire-mesh window that she could not see beyond, she craved peaches. Or sweet strawberries. She knew it was summer; she could imagine the fruit in the store, in the little wooden baskets, jewel-toned ruby raspberries. And she wanted ice. Cubes of ice to suck on and keep her lips wet, because they were parched. In the small, darkened closetlike space that was not made for a human being to live in, she tried to keep herself sane by picturing the manuscript pages of her book and rewriting them in her mind. To work on the words. But it was hard to concentrate. The cravings took over. What did sweet summer air actually smell like? How did a breeze feel?

The door opened and he came inside. The light was so strong it blinded her. He took the tape off her mouth. Her lips were torn by now and dry, and when she moved them, the pain was excruciating.

And then he was gone again, shutting the door behind him. She heard the sound of wood scraping wood and knew he was pulling the chair up to the door. He would now sit down on the other side of the mesh. Ready to listen to her sins. Ready to absolve her. And to torture her more.

“Have you thought about your sins?” he asked.

“I have.” She knew the drill by now, and it was far easier to go along with it than to try to be logical or outwit him or even make an attempt to figure out what was going on. She didn’t know. He was waiting for her to say something specific. But what? She might be able to figure it out if she wasn’t so confused.

“Tell me your sins,” he said.

She was Catholic and had grown up confessing. But that had been simple. She and her girlfriends used to get together right after confession and compare what they had offered up, what they had held back and what the priest had demanded of them in terms of penance. Usually Cleo got off the lightest. Not because she had done the least, but because she had lied the most. And she could lie now.

“I fornicated outside the sanctity of marriage.”

“And are you truly sorry for that?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that, my child?”

“Because I debased the sexual act.”

“And why is that?”

“Because the act of sex is reserved for marriage. And it has a purpose. Procreation.”

“Have you committed other sins?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Tell me.”

“I use birth control. I take money for having sex. I sleep with other women’s husbands.”

“How do you feel about these things?”

“I feel guilty. I am being punished. I know this is my punishment.”

She was an actress here. The way she was at work when she did the things her johns required of her and paid her so well for. She was gone, then. The person she was had absented herself from her body. Stepped away. Stood on the sidelines. And some other woman took her place and entered her body and her mind. This other woman, this actress, who had been born thirteen years earlier, when Cleo was fifteen, who had come into being to protect Cleo from her stepfather, had no fear. She just lied.

She lied about how good-looking men were. About how good they smelled. About how well built they were, how smart they were, how funny they were, what good, wonderful, great lovers they were, how well endowed they were, how big and thick they were and how fucking fabulous it felt when they entered her. The actress, she thought, who did not have a name because she had never stepped forward and claimed one of her own, was here with her now and saving her.

She was pushing forward, and Cleo was slipping backward. Soon she would be gone from this wooden cell that smelled of rich church incense and cedar. And when he left again, the actress would retreat, give Cleo space, let her breathe, and she wouldn’t have to remember any of what had happened tonight. The actress would shoulder that burden.

The actress was talking now. Speaking through Cleo’s mouth. Words that Cleo did not even understand.

“These are your sins and this will be your penance,” he said. “One day you will be so clean a halo will shine above your head. But for now, you are still dirty. You need to pray.”

Cleo didn’t hear anything after that.