Dinner goes on without incident. Tonight it’s a little shredded piece of chicken. I think I can taste some salt in it, too. Julia sits in a chair across from us, holding a plate of chicken herself and eating while watching us. Dinner is the meal we tend to not get to ourselves, so it’s usually in silence. None of us wants to talk in front of Julia. We get a brief chance when she puts her plate down finally and leaves the room.
“I’m not sure we can take this much longer…” says Brian.
“Brian…” says Anna. We’ve all heard this before from him.
“I mean it. She’s torturing us. What she did to Gina today…”
“There’s nothing we can do,” says Anna.
“Well, I’m starting to think it’s not WORTH it anymore! When she turns 18 and she’s done with high school…”
“Brian, stop.”
“No! We have to think about this logically. I mean, I like my life. But it’s not WORTH it to sit here waiting. We step an inch out of line and she practically beats us up. You remember Jim. If we ever do anything like that, that’s going to be us. And when she’s done with us? Who’s to say she won’t have a final hurrah and just torture us for hours and hours to end it all!”
“Brian, you gotta stop this…” I say.
“Shut up, Jack. You’re just a kid. Damn it, you’re just a kid. You can’t know about this stuff.”
“Yes I do. I’ve been here for two years.”
“No, you don’t. Now, I don’t wanna be the one that says this, but we gotta start thinking… I mean, I don’t want to say it, but c’mon… maybe, you know, if there’s an opportunity, we should just…”
“Brian, you’re done,” says Anna with a great deal of finality.
“I’m just saying…”
“Not now…” says Anna.
“Look, all I’m saying is, I’m not going to sit around WAITING for Julia to use me as a piece of chewing gum,” he ends. We all have to quiet down because Julia is back with a salad bowl full of warm water and a bar of soap.
Bath time.
“All right everybody, you know how it goes. C’mon. Off,” she says, setting the bowl and bar down on the kitchen desk. We all obediently begin stripping down to our skivvies. Julia allows us to wear underwear to retain a little dignity amongst one another. After we’ve stripped (and find ourselves in the cold open air) Julia lowers her hand. We all huddle together on it and she slowly lifts us up to the of the bowl and lowers us slowly like an elevator into the warm water until we are able to tread water ourselves. She then begins chipping soap bar pieces off small enough for us to use and sprinkling them into the water. We take about fifteen minutes of treading and washing. It honestly gets sort of tiring because we have to stay afloat while getting everything clean, leaving the surface of the water with a lot of bubble residue. Then, individually, Julia plucks us out gently between four of her fingers from the legs and lays us out on a hand towel to dry ourselves. She has swept up our dirty clothes and brought us newly cleaned ones. I pick up a shirt, underwear, and jeans and put them on after realizing they are meant for me, as well as a matching set of cleaned pajamas.
“You all can change when you get back in your rooms, okay? Now let’s get some sleep.” From the table, she carries each of the others back to a kneeling position, chats with them, then lowers them back into the house from the cup; the reverse process of the morning. I’m last, of course.
I almost find myself grateful for her to grip me up into the air in her warm fingers. It was starting to get pretty icy. I’m not the smallest of us, but I’m nearly the lightest. I really have lost a lot of weight lately, so it’s become tougher for me to retain heat. Her palm and finger flesh is smooshed out against my skin, and again I’m dangerously close to be comforted by the heat and near safety I have come to feel.
Scary.
She slowly goes to a kneeling position. She does the light squeeze thing as usual. “Jack… you’re… you’re cold… are you feeling okay?” she says. I nod, and without my consent my teeth chatter. She purses her lips and makes a tsk noise at me. “I don’t think so. Here, let’s warm you up a little more before bed…” she says, gripping me tighter. I am raised to her mouth and she opens it, exhaling very slowly. The heat from her breath feels great, and I get a little chill down my spine. Goose bumps. I’m warming up a little. She continues squeezing me, breathing out clouds of hot breath. The smell of partially liquefied chicken and salt in her throat isn’t terribly appetizing, but it’s worth it for the warmth.
“You don’t feel much warmer. I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re doing it like this tomorrow. Okay, how about this; I’ll just hold you in the water and you can do it really quickly so you can get warmer a little sooner,” she says. She cups her hand and lets me fall to the center, balling up, and she closes her fingers around me in a very light fist, leaving enough room for me to sit. Then, through the opening of her thumb and forefinger, she begins to blow more warm air in, venting it in like a heater. I finally begin to regulate my temperature. After a couple minutes of this, she opens her hand flat so I can stand up.
“Better?” she says smiling, almost with a small chuckle; she ends the word with a final puff of hot air on me which almost makes me lose my balance. With her other hand, she takes me up in one final light squeeze and places me back in the cup held by her other hand at that point. “Good night, little one. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says smiling and lowering me in. I walk down the hall to my room and change into the clean pajamas, leaving the clean clothes for morning. I lay back in the matchbox, chilled and exhausted, still having the familiar feeling of Julia’s hand pressing every square inch of my nearly naked body, radiating heat.
I go to sleep with this image swimming uncomfortably in my dreams.