Ciarra hated herself for the wounds that yet again distorted Aston’s face. But her guilt wouldn’t allow her to extend herself so far as to coddle him. Instead she stared out the window at the city passing by. The humbling darkness of her existence, which was hardly an existence, tumbled her with its claws. The company she kept had proven itself to be a synagogue of hell. She would take to her grave the way she judged herself for it, the way she blamed herself for having been so stupid and desperate to have fallen for it all in the first place. But she was stuck now. As far as she could tell, she had not only sold her body to meet their basic needs, she had sold her soul, too. Now her life was a blasphemy against those who had wished for her to do well. And now, the only thing strong enough to drown the shame she felt was cocaine.
One of the other girls at the cathouse would watch Aston while Ciarra worked in another room. She hated when circumstances forced her to do that. She could never relax when he was out of her sight at a place where the dangers of the game were always lurking.
Aria couldn’t take it anymore. No one knew better than she did that the system was broken. She wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But a broken system seemed better than the neglect and violence of the hands currently in charge of raising Aston. She found herself between a rock and a hard place, but had to make a decision.
She had been in the system herself long enough to know the protocol. The fire of being fed up with watching Aston being bruised and battered and left alone, on top of the fury of seeing Ciarra high, like her own mother had been so many times, launched Aria into motion. She crossed the city blocks swiftly, to the first place she knew of with a pay phone. It took her a few minutes to find enough willing people to give her the spare change to make a call.
“Hi, I’m calling to make a report,” she said, waiting for the woman on the other end to indicate she was ready to take notes. “It’s a little boy, about five years old. His mother is an addict. She’s keeping him in an abandoned parking lot. He gets beaten pretty regularly and also left by himself when she goes out to prostitute. I don’t know if he’s being fed. He got beaten up pretty bad today and I think someone should go get him.”
Hearing her own voice, Aria could hardly believe what she was doing. Some part inside her was bellowing that she was making a serious mistake. But the part of her that was louder was the part that had dialed the number to the Department of Children and Family Services. Though the woman on the phone pressured Aria to reveal her identity, Aria refused and insisted on reporting anonymously. She gave her Ciarra’s and Aston’s names and explained their whereabouts, only hanging up once she was certain that someone could find them.
On top of the guilt that Aria felt for reporting them, she felt guilty that she had revealed the whereabouts of the car lot. Though fairly certain that the police would escort a social worker there – someone who would only be concerned with the welfare of the child – she had no way of knowing if she had just put herself and everyone else there out of the closest place any of them had to a home. But Aston was a child. It was a risk she had to take. Though Aria already knew all too well the agony that Aston was about to face, she knew she could not live with herself for standing by and watching.
Knowing that the authorities would have to decide whether her report indicated child abuse before initiating an investigation, Aria walked back to the lot to wait for Omkar to show up after his classes were over for the day. The words she had spoken into the phone were a eulogy of her innocence and youth. Aria played through possible scenarios of the cops showing up to look for Aston. She practiced how to go undetected and escape in each one of them.
The atmosphere when she got back to the lot was a warring absence. Despite the loss of her youth, her decision had left her like a child standing alone in the desert. She had sucked the stone of humanity’s indifference as dry as she could. Now there was nothing more to do but wait … Wait for the priest that followed the beast of mankind’s cruelty, looking to clean up after him.
Doubt whispered that her life was a room full of errors; that the proud pyramid of her virtue would fall. But it was a call she had already made.
CHAPTER 26
Omkar ran the smooth tips of his fingers over the cuts on Aria’s face and, reclining the driver’s side seat, held her against him. The air conditioner of the car blew an unnatural wintergreen chill across their faces.
Both of them said very little. Aria didn’t tell him the full story about the incident outside the Home Depot, or her time in the Mexican store. Nor did she tell him about reporting Ciarra and Aston. Instead, she simply told him, “Some people out here are kinda territorial. If you go too close to their things, they chase you.” She explained away the injuries adorning her face as resulting from a fall, so she could put it behind them. She wanted to soak in every last drop of the peace that his closeness granted her before he left. They would sit in the parked car like this and talk or not talk for as
