I entertained the thought of calling my family and letting them know what was going on with Victor. My father was in international law enforcement. Surely, he’d know what to do. Maybe we could all go into witness protection or something.
But almost as soon as the ideas occurred to me, I decided against them. Even if I could get a message to my father before Victor could call his cartel contact, we’d have to stay in hiding for the rest of our lives. And there was no guarantee we’d be safe.
I trusted Victor to keep his promise to let me go and leave my family alone at the end of ten years. I also trusted him to hunt us down like dogs and slaughter us if I tried to escape.
“I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want to humiliate you the way your father did me. I want you to lose everything.”
I set the phone aside without calling anyone. New Victor wanted to punish me. And letting him was the only way to keep my family safe. I’d just have to bear whatever he had in store for me next.
I braced the entire day for whatever that was, but Victor never showed up.
And the next afternoon, Yaron left some mail on the front porch’s table. Two large envelopes, both addressed to me. One was from a pharmaceutical company. It contained a year’s supply of birth control pills. I recalled Victor’s caveat about me getting pregnant and vowed to take my pill on the regular to ensure nothing else would chain me to that monster beyond these ten years.
The second envelope was from an international bank that had been gobbling up smaller banks since the beginning of the most recent recession. Inside I found a bank card with Dawn Kingston-Zhang written across the front, along with some checkbooks that bore an address I didn’t recognize.
Elite college graduate here, but it took me a few frowning moments and another trip outside to solve the mini-mystery. Yep. The slat of wood next to the front door bore the same address number as on the one written across my new checks.
More whoas. I had no idea you could open a bank account without an in-person visit. Much less for someone else, who never agreed to change her name. The list of questions for Victor was piling up. But he was a no-show on May 27th, as well as May 28th.
The following week a cleaning lady showed up, a stern Polish woman who announced, “Sonia speak no English!” when I tried to introduce myself. Sonia spent the entire day deep-cleaning the house from top to bottom. And the only other words she spoke to me were “See you next week!” when she bustled out the door with her huge plastic tote filled with cleaning supplies.
I bought my own bottle of Windex after that, just so I’d never have to live through the embarrassment of having an unsmiling Polish woman wipe my sex handprints off the mirror next time.
But Victor didn’t show up that week either, or the week after that. Before I knew it, June had come and gone without a peep from the man who was now insisting on calling himself my owner. Cultural sensitivity didn’t seem to be a thing in New Victor’s world. Actually, sensitivity of any kind didn’t seem to be a thing in New Victor’s world.
By July, I’d run out of On Demand episodes of Rap Star Wives to watch and had acquired a pretty impressive day drinking habit. I had to do something other than sitting around waiting for Victor to show up. So instead of cracking open another bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, I looked up an address on the iPhone Victor had given me and grabbed my Mount Holyoke tote.
“Where are you going?” Yaron asked, jumping out of the car when I came charging out of the house.
“To the library,” I answered, hitting the gate’s inside button. “It’s within walking, so I don’t need a ride.”
“But—” Yaron started to say after me.
“Back in an hour or two!” I called out before he could finish his protest. And I waved over my shoulder as I slipped out of the gate.
Just as I hoped, Yaron didn’t follow me. If the house was my cage, that meant Rhode Island was my prison yard. I could go wherever I liked, and that was something. It had to be if I was going to survive these ten years without going insane.
I signed up for a card at the library and checked out a bunch of books with names like “Anyone Can Cook” and “Cooking For Dummies” and “Dinners For Beginners.” And for the next couple of months, with the help of library books and foodie blogs, I taught myself to cook something other than Korean food made for a family of four.
I got pretty good at it, too. By August, I leveled up to cookbooks with words like “Cuisine” and “Gourmet” in the title. I also began developing instincts the same as my mom and no longer had to do things like measure ingredients or consult a recipe book every time I wanted to make Yaron and me dinner.
Yaron, I’d found out, after a little bit of prying, was from the Philippines. And when I made chicken adobo for him, he’d told me it was better than his girlfriend’s. He also liked all the recipes I tried from the library book Gourmet Cooking for Two.
He was stationed at the carport, so I fell into the habit of bringing him a plate every night. Yaron appreciated all the meals I made for him, and he insisted my pork bulgogi made him want to fly to Texas and thank my mom personally for passing down the recipe.
I preened under the compliments. Maybe Victor would have been impressed with the kind of dinner I could make if he showed up. But he didn’t.
And suddenly, summer was nearly over.
“Are you sure you don’t have time for a visit?” Lena asked during a catch-up phone call in late August. “It doesn’t have to be for a whole weekend. Maybe just one night? How about this Friday? I could come to you.”
“Ugh, I wish!” I answered while massaging a mix of salt, pepper, olive oil, and lapsang souchong tea leaves into the last of the summer lamb I’d gotten from Whole Foods a few days ago. “But this internship is non-stop. And we’ve got back-to-back deliveries scheduled on Friday. There’s just no way to make this weekend work.”
I hated lying to my best friend, but I couldn’t tell her the whole truth. That I was currently in a weird prison wife situation with some Chinese mafia boss in Rhode Island, not in New York where she and the rest of my family assumed I was. This was already a big enough mess without getting my best friend involved.
Still, it felt way too symbolic when I moved to the sink to wash the mess of blood and spices off my hands.
“That’s too bad,” Lena said, her voice even sadder than the last few times I turned down her offers to come to visit me in New York. “I’m not sure when I’m going to get the chance to see you again.”
God, how upset would she be if she knew I was really in Providence, less than an hour’s drive from where she was currently enjoying the best summer of her life.
I took a swig of the glass of Cabernet the internet had assured me would pair well with the lamb dish I was making, then hedged, “Maybe in the fall. I might be able to get a couple of days off then.”
If Victor ever shows up and gives me permission to go to Boston, I silently added, taking another big gulp of my pre-dinner glass of wine. I’d already tried asking Yaron if I could leave Rhode Island to visit my best friend. He was usually pretty easygoing with me, especially after I started cooking us dinner every night. But that request clamped him right on up.