Chapter 3

Danni tells her sad tale, and Andy discovers who she was meant to be.
Thanksgiving was finally here, and we had a feast; canned ham, instant potatoes, canned green beans and corn, stuffing, rolls with butter, milk, peach pie, and vanilla ice cream for dessert
. After eating and cleaning up, we sat around on the two-bag bed, waiting for Danni to speak. The wind was blowing hard outside, and even with the hotel curtains blocking the airflow from the living room and the floor sealed by cardboard, we could still feel a bone-chilling draft.

Danni addressed us, “I know we probably have our doubts, but we have every right to be thankful. So, Mark, are you better or worse today versus any time in the last three years?”

He looked at Sissy first and then at the rest of us, “Better, never better than now.”

“Andy, what about you?”

“Since my mother died, this is the best family a girl could hope for; I’m happy.”

“And Alex, Sissy, and I have to agree we are much better than when we lived at home; right Alex, Sissy?”

“Oh yea, mom,” Sissy said as she nursed Abby. Alex shook his head and yawned, “Uh Huh.”

“Sissy, put Alex and Abby down in your sleeping bag because It’s time for me to tell our story.”

When Sissy returned, Danni had us all stand and form a circle with our arms.

“A year ago, we lived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with my husband Scott, who is Sissy, and Alex’s father. We married young after Sissy was born a week after I turned sixteen. We were happy and in love, although he always tried to get me to loosen up, as he called it, to dress more daring, what I would call slutty. He always touched me in public, on awkward spots of my body, and I let him. I thought that was what love was.”

“We were happy until three months before Sissy was going to graduate from high school. Everything changed when he was fired for the sexual harassment of a young secretary. He claimed his boss set him up so she could give his job to a woman. One of his friends told me that Scott was trying to get the girl to go out with him because she looked like me when I was young.

He became bitter and angry, began drinking excessively, and became verbally abusive. At first, he would just yell at me, blaming me for his misfortune because I was a woman. All too soon, the abuse became physical, starting with shoves and slaps then changed to spankings and beatings with a belt while making me beg for them after he made up things I did to deserve them.”

Sissy’s eyes were fixed upon Mark’s face, with an expression of sorrow, perhaps because she hadn’t told him much about her previous life.

“At that point, before his treatment of me escalated, he would lock the kids in Alex’s room after dinner and turned the TV volume up. Then he made me strip and stand in the center of the living room while he circling around me, hitting me with his belt and calling me names like bitch, slut, cunt, whore, and worse. I should have taken the kids and run because I knew he would get worse, but I made excuses for his behavior.”

She stopped for a minute to take a few deep breaths. “Then the real beatings started, with a fist, a wet towel, or an extension cord with the plugs cut off. That’s what made the scars on my back. Scott always stuck a dish towel between my teeth and tied it behind my head, so my screams were muffled. At first, Scott tried not to bruise or mark me where it could be seen at my job, but that didn’t last long. Soon I had black eyes and bruises, and cuts on my back and legs. That’s when I had to quit before my bosses called the police. Now we had no income, and he stopped filing for unemployment. We were going to be evicted by our mortgage company, so he began making videotapes of me to sell at a bookstore. He made me masturbate for the camera, with a blackboard next to it and lines of dialogue written on it for me to say. Then he began forcing me to do disgusting sex acts with BDSM toys from the store he sold the VHS tapes to.”

I clutched Danni’s left hand and kissed the palm before placing it over my heart.

“He began locking me in Sissy’s room after dinner two nights a week in March. I was so relieved to be left alone I never let myself think about what he was doing. The fact that I was locked in Sissy’s room should have been my first clue. I should have put rat poison in his dinner, but I was too afraid.”

I wrapped my arms around her, and I could feel her pain as if it was happening to me. “Danni, my darling, let it out; I’ve got you.”

“He called me that word, whore, over and over; that was his favorite name for me while he hurt me. When the kids got home from school, he would lock them in Alex’s room until the next morning. I would feed them dinner in there and stay as long as I could before he started screaming for me to get him a beer. The brutal attacks that he taped were happening three times a week, and he was still locking me up alone two nights a week. The other two nights were the worst; Scott held me close to him on the sofa and wrapped his arms around me while we watched TV. Every time he wanted a beer, he’d get up and take me with him to the kitchen. Sometimes he’d get a beer, and then we’d walk back and sit on the couch. Sometimes he would open the knife drawer and examine the sharpness of the blades while staring at me, with those cold, black, lifeless eyes he had.”

Her voice was getting softer, and she was staring blankly over my shoulder at the wall. I kissed her neck under her ear, and she shivered before coming out of her trance.

“In April, Scott began talking crazy, going on and on about what took place at his friends’ private parties. Then that bastard told me if he wasn’t afraid of losing his maid, he’d take me to one of these parties. I knew we had to get out of there as soon as we could escape.

He even talked about taking Sissy to one of these parties to pull a train. Neither of us knew what he was talking about.

After another week had passed by, he snapped and dragged me by my hair to lock me up when Sissy brained him with a frying pan. She was screaming, ‘No more, Daddy, you’ll never hurt us again. I hate you!’ I stopped her from hitting him again because he was unconscious on the floor, bleeding into an expanding puddle. Then Sissy told me he threatened to sell Alex to a creepy co-worker and threatened her. When I asked her why he threatened her, she told me what happened on the days I was locked up. I grabbed a knife, but my kids kept me from stabbing him. We tied him up with a clothesline before I patched his head and then left him in Alex’s room.”

Danni had a wry smile on her face like she imagined what he looked like tied up and out cold. Focusing back on my face, Danni went on, “Then we loaded up anything in the car we could sell or use; pots and pans, glasses, and dinnerware. We packed up all of our clothes and blankets and took all the money he hid in the house before leaving him tied up and locked in the apartment, with his videotapes stacked next to his head. I waited until we hit Omaha before calling the Sioux Falls Police Department from a payphone, explaining what happened before hanging up.”

She looked at me and said, “I don’t know or care what happened to him. Does that make me evil?”

“Not one little bit.”

“I remembered this house; it was my grandmother’s, and she left it to me when she passed away five years ago. So I drove here from Omaha, and we found Mark living here. He helped us bring everything in, and then we dumped the car on the other side of town. He asked if he could stay and be the man in the house, and I said yes.”

Mark smiled and said, “I was happy to have company, very adorable company at that,” and he blushed.

“In the middle of June, during a Saturday bath day, Sissy was starting to show, and my heart broke. I started crying because I knew now what Sissy told me the night we ran away was true. I prayed she wasn’t with child..., he hurt my baby, and damn it, I knew.”

Danni stopped talking, and Sissy hugged her Momma tight, whispering words I couldn’t pick up.

Sissy took over the tale of horror, “I never told her the details, but I was so scared, and I won’t tell now, just that he was having sex with me. He threatened to kill my mom if I opened my mouth. He said if he got me pregnant, he’d sell the baby. I’m sorry my baby died, but I’m not sorry his baby did.”

Danni had composed herself and finished telling their brutal story, “Last summer, when the dumpster diving was lean, we hauled most of our possessions to pawn shops and sold them to buy food, and when we had nothing else to sell, I sold my body to men for money to feed my kids. I’m not proud of what I did, but I’d do anything for my kids, all of you. One of the men I had sex with asked me if I wanted to make $1,000 pulling a train? When I asked ‘what’s that,’ he told me, and I threw up. He felt so bad he gave me an extra twenty. And that brings us up to finding Andy in a dumpster.”

We had a group hug, and I told them, “Abby and I are so much better off than our first day on the street, huddling in a dumpster, hoping to freeze to death.”

I took Abby and changed her, and as I went back to our sleeping bag, Sissy came up to me. “I’ll take her tonight; mom asked if Mark and I could sleep with Alex and Abby. Is that all right?”

“Oh, okay.”

I walked around the stove, the light from the fire illuminating the kitchen, where Danni was lying naked waiting for me. I undressed and lay on top of her like before, and I kissed her softly and slowly at first, the intensity of our lovemaking gradually increasing. My tongue probed her mouth, and soon I was sliding my thigh over her pussy and clit while kissing her lips in between trips to suck her nipples. She came hard, and I continued doing everything Danni had shown me before, like sliding down and licking her clit, making her moan and quiver. Danni came screaming into my mouth as she held my head in place with her hand, and I came myself, without being touched. As we were coming down and beginning to breathe normally, I rolled us over again, and Danni got off and spun around, placing her pussy in front of my mouth. This was something new, so I remained silent while she pulled the slipping bag back over us and zipped it up part of the way. Then Danni began talking in the voice that always calmed me down.

“Andy, my love, don’t be afraid. This is something a man and a woman and even two women can do for each other called sixty-nine. I’m going to lick your clit and put my tongue in your pussy, and that will feel even better than my thigh rubbing against you. And if you feel comfortable, you can do the same to me. It’s called oral sex and is also known as foreplay. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Are you nervous or scared?”

“Not anymore with you here. Are you going to begin now?”

Danni purred, and I felt something touching me down there, touching my clit, and the tingles went straight to my head, and I moaned. “Oh, Danni, that feels soooo good.”

My hands went around her back, just above her butt cheeks and my fingers fit together as I lifted my head, getting my first up-close look of a woman’s pussy, oh my, and her butt hole. My thoughts were interrupted when she pulled my legs up in a V, with my feet flat on the sleeping bag bottom and my knees spread wide apart, and something went into my pussy. It must have been a finger because my clit was still being licked.

It was now or never, so I closed my eyes and leaned forward, pushing my tongue into her pussy. An electric shock went through my body, from my pussy to my tongue and I knew what was happening was something beautiful and good. I stopped thinking, and all I heard were muffled moans and whimpers and long-drawn-out cries of pleasure, and I realized then some of them were mine.

“Oh my, feels good, Danni, good, don’t stop, please make me come, Danni!”

My butt raised from the floor, I pushed my pussy against her mouth, and I plastered my mouth against her pussy as I screamed out my orgasm. I kept sucking and licking, and I heard Danni responding to my oral ministrations.

“Andy. Oh, Andy, love me so good, noon Yesss, COMING.”

My mouth overflowed with a liquid her pussy produced, and it excited me, so I kept licking, pushing my tongue as deep as I could, and when my tongue grazed the top of her vagina, she thrust her pussy against my mouth and came again, and again.

I heard my name called out, and someone was shaking me, and I heard my name again, louder.

“ANDY! Please stop, I can’t take any more; stop licking me, Andy, please, baby.”

I finally understood what the words she was saying meant, and I laid my head back on the thick bag, relaxing from all the new sensations I had experienced for the first time. I opened my eyes when Danni got off my body and watched as she rotated and crawled up my body until I was looking up into Danni’s eyes, three inches from mine, and I think I smiled, but I’m sure I said, “Wow.”

Danni rolled over next to me and said, “So, I guess you liked that?”

I giggled, smiled, and said, “We can do that again, right?”

Danni laughed and, this time, buried her head in my shoulder, “You’d better believe it.”

The next day was Friday, so I took Alex out at 1:00 and headed to the Security 1^st Bank. We had on our new coats and boots with our new gloves, and we sat and waited on the side of the bank. We made about $20 waiting for the lady, but I didn’t relax; instead, I kept looking around me at the roads and parking lot, looking for trouble. When I spotted a red Cadillac pulling into the lot in front of the bank, I saw the lady who gave me $80 behind the wheel. Everything seemed okay, so I walked toward her, with Alex clutching my arm, as she stepped out of her car.

“Hello, young lady. You two look nice and warm in those new coats.”

“We are, thank you.”

“Can I buy you dinner? I have a proposal I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Proposal for me?”

“And the rest of your homeless group. Wouldn’t you like to get out of the cold and have someone take care of you?” With a smile on her face, she moved right in front of me, caressing my hair, and I started to relax until I saw a shadow on her car’s windshield coming up from behind me. I glanced behind me, and a woman was closing in on me. I picked Alex up with my right arm, shoved the lady away with my left, and started to run towards the Hy-Vee store across the street.

As I was running away, I heard her scolding somebody, “I didn’t signal you to come up, and now you scared her off.”

I didn’t hear any more as I went through the stores’ side door, walked quickly to the other side, and went out an emergency exit on the other side, setting off the alarm.

I continued running, using the store behind me as cover, and ran north. After crossing another road leading into a subdivision of single-family homes, I put Alex down. We continued walking north until we reached a fast food store, and since we were both tired and cold, we went in and got some hot chocolate. While we rested and drank our hot chocolate, I looked around to see if anyone was following us before we left.

We crossed 84^th Street and cut across a field to David Murdock Trail, the two-lane road leading to the creek. We followed the path through the weeds to the bridge and home.

“Well, how did it go?”

“It was hinky. We need to stay hidden if we go down there.” And I told them what had happened. “I don’t know what they were after, but I was so scared I peed myself as I was running.”

When we crawled into our bag, I started to shake and held Danni tight with my arms.

“I felt trapped, and I started to remember New Year’s Eve and being held down. But I remembered I had Alex to protect, and that was it. I wasn’t scared anymore, just pissed off.” Danni rubbed my head, and I fell asleep.

On Monday, November 30^th, while we were over at Walmart, I called my dad’s company. I had called many times before, but I always had to leave a message because he was always in a meeting. His secretary, Mona, seemed to be friends with Cheri. This time a woman I knew, Adele Norman, answered his phone. After mom died, she helped me get dad a doctor to treat him for depression.

“Mr. Bell’s office, Mrs. Norman speaking. How may I help you?”

“Adele? It’s Andy. What happened to Mona?”

“Shit, Andy, I can’t talk now. Cheri’s in with your father. Call me back in fifteen minutes. I have to go.”

I hung up and checked my watch. Sixteen minutes later, I called again. After one ring, “Hello, Andy.”

“Adele, hello.”

“Honey, are you okay? Where are you?”

“Abby and I are okay. We’re living with a woman with two kids and a teenage boy in a house where we are warm, and we find plenty of food thrown away. This woman’s daughter had a stillborn baby a few days before they took us in, so Abby has four boobs to feed on. She’s happy and gaining weight. I’m in the Lincoln area now, north of his company building. Is my dad still acting a little weird?”

“Oh, honey, you named your baby Abby?”

“Abbigail Alice Chambers.”

“Your mothers’ name, my, my. Does he know?”

“I left him a note, but knowing him, he showed the bitch before he read it.”

“Well, he acts weird when he gets here, and after going to lunch with Cheri, he is sleepy. I think she is drugging him. As for Miss Mona, she got caught by Mr. Redmond, night security, taking pictures of files that held diagrams of all our patents, after hours. She’s awaiting trial. Before we get too far along, you can call me between 1:15 and 1:30. Do you have something to write with?”

“No.”

“Call me tomorrow and have paper and a pen. Somebody is coming. Bye.”

The next morning after eating, Danni and Mark went dumpster diving while Sissy and I fed Abby and changed her before Mark walked me to Walmart. We left at 1:05, and I questioned him about his love life.

“So, Mark, are you and Sissy together now?”

“Oh, well, I guess.” He was cute when he got embarrassed.

“So that’s why you’re hiding on the other side of the stove.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you taking precautions against, you know, pregnancy?”

“I got some condoms at the Bloodmobile.”

“So, what attracted you to Sissy?”

“She’s nice, um she’s pretty, um I don’t know, Andy.”

“I’ll bet it’s because she’s got big boobs, she kisses great, she likes sex, and she loves sex with you.”

“Well, yes, I guess.”

“Mark, it’s all right. You, me, and Sissy are all still young adults. We all had to grow up early because of a crappy home. Abby’s daddy, who I thought was my forever love, has disappeared, but we’re still young. Try talking to her. Tell her your dreams, tell her that you love her, tell her you’re happy. Tell her you and I talked, and we are like a sister and brother now.”

“Okay, Andy, but it’s time to call.”

I dialed her number. “Mr. Bell’s office, Mrs. Norman speaking. How may I help you?”

She knew it was me; why the formal greeting? I answered in a fake English accent, “Good afternoon Mrs. Norman. Did you get the package I sent from Seattle Billing Company, Inc.?”