CITY OF SLAVES

The Lion Inside Her
[excerpt]

The door opened. Cherise sat on the knife, not wanting to face screams and reprimands by the adults of this house. Maybe they had surveillance cameras, like in the hospital, and they would drug her as punishment.
But her visitor was only a little boy. He maneuvered his wheelchair through the doorway with difficulty. The screen door banged shut. Cherise glared at him.
"I'm your suicide watch," said the boy.
She looked down and saw blood trickling off her arm. It dripped spots onto her baggy sweatpants.
She stood to get away from whatever questions he might ask. Maybe she'd walk into the woods and finish killing herself there. Let bears and coyotes scavenge her corpse.
"Everyone says you're mute," said the boy. "But I know you can speak."
Someone had mentioned a child genius living in this house. Judging by the arrogant way he spoke, Cherise guessed this was him.
"Everyone assumes you're traumatized into muteness," he said. "But I see the truth. You can recover. You can speak, but you don't, because you're afraid of what you'll say."
Cherise stared at him. No one had ever articulated her problem quite like this.
The boy studied her with the unabashed interest of any child, but somehow, he looked too old, too knowing. He must be toying with her. He was reeling her in, and then he'd slap her with a joke, or a harsh insult.
"I would never toy with someone like you," said the boy.
She stood for a minute, unsure if a trick was being played on her, or if the boy was genuinely sympathetic. Blood tickled her wrist. Lightning strobed behind the ragged silhouette of the forest.
He flipped open a small notebook on his lap, tore out a sheet, and began to fold it. "I'm Thomas Hill," he said. "The child genius, though you already know that. You're less blind than other people. There's nothing wrong with you at all, other than a speech phobia. That's no big deal. You'd be surprised at how many seemingly ordinary people suffer from phobias and deeply buried psychoses. A good ninety-five percent of the population. And you have far more reason for yours than most people do." He fluffed the paper, sculpting it. "Your mother punished you every time you spoke. For most of your life, you couldn't speak without suffering for it."
Cherise had never considered her problem in this light. The comprehension made her gasp. Tears came to her eyes.
Yes, her mother hated complaining. Cherise felt the pain of thirst and hunger, smelled the dirty gag in her mouth, heard flies buzzing around the trailer. Glitzy, the baby, her sister, had died crying.
"You associate speaking with pain," said Thomas. "It's so ingrained, even knowing the cause won't help much. But time will help. You don't have to be mute forever."
Heart thudding, Cherise opened her mouth. Her throat thickened with terror. Words stuck there, aching. Thomas was wrong. She couldn't speak.
"We're having a conversation right now," said Thomas.
She looked at him in suspicion. He continued to fold the paper. Crickets chirped blithely on, unaware that a miracle was taking place on the porch.
When she spoke to him in her mind, it felt strangely natural, as if this was a way that everyone communicated.
Why don't you let me to kill myself? she asked.
He answered as if she'd spoken out loud. "I don't want to see a mind like yours go to waste."
Even while Cherise marveled at the fact that this strange boy could read minds, she understood that he must be speaking out of pity. Her life was worthless. She was tainted, defective as a person, weak. He probably helped suicidal losers all the time.
"No." Thomas faced her with a pained expression. "You're among the strongest people I've ever met. Cherise, you survived. . . . I know what your mother did to you. All my life, it's been easy for me to see reasons behind what people do, but there's a darkness in some people that I can't fathom. Some minds hold horrors that can make me vomit. Or weep." He made the latter sound worse. "Your parents' behavior went beyond their addictions, and their own pasts, especially in your mother's case. And you're still able to find beauty in the world. You're stronger than they were."
Cherise's mother was in prison. Her minimum parole would come in ten years. Even so, a fresh wave of hatred swept through Cherise. She did this to me. She made me mute and pathetic. She killed my baby sister. I hate her, hate her, hate her.
Cherise clenched and twisted her bloody wrist. The pain was nothing compared to the agony of hatred inside her. If she'd seen her mother's face at that moment, she would have ripped it to shreds.
"I'd do the same," said Thomas. "It's not your fault. You've earned that anger. You're not tainted or defective."
He handed her the paper. It was transformed into a perfect origami lion.
"For you. Squeeze his mane--here and here--and he'll roar."
She tried it. The lion silently roared.
"There's a lion inside you," said Thomas sadly. "Your words have the potential to work miracles. You will be able to speak. And when you rip your mother's grip off your throat, everyone will listen."