Changing

Chapter 14

“My mother” pain flickered across her face but was gone before I could read it and I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t just imagined it. 

“She was a maid.” Her lips smashed together into a strait line. “Mr. Buchcowski.” she hissed the word, “let her stay in one of the guest rooms there.”  

“I don’t have many memories of being out of the cage, just some vague fleeting images of me and my mother, and sometimes the woods that surrounded the place. I don’t think I ever been any place else.

“Mr. Buchcowski was always mean to my mother. He would hit her, for stupid reasons that had nothing to do with her. If his experiment didn’t work out he would take his anger out on her and…sometimes me. 

“I was scared to death of him…when I would hear him coming down the hall I would hide under the bed. 

“One day he found me there, he was more angry than ever. ‘look what you’ve done,’ he had yelled at my mother, ‘you stupid shit, you’ve made her afraid of me? Her own father!’”

Without meaning to, I gasped. 

Mr. Buchcowski’s her father…

Bonnie turned her head my way and gave me a wry smile. It was not a happy one. 

“Yeah you heard right he’s my Father.” Her lips contorted around the word. 

“That day he beat me and beat me with his belt all the while yelling, ‘I’ll teach you! You will not be afraid of me! Not if I can help it!’ He thrash me until I was bleeding and my throat was horse from screaming. 

“That was the day my mom decided that it was enough. She was not going to stay there any longer, she wasn’t going to wait until he killed us both. She packed two backpacks with clothes and food, and that night we escaped into the forest. But because I was small and hurt my mom had to carry both bags and sometimes even me. So it was my fault that he found us just two days after we had left.” her voice became a whisper towards the end and I had to lean forward to hear.

“He built the cage after that to make sure that we could not flee to the forest again. That day while he drove us back to the lab, he cursed at my mother for trying to take me. I didn’t understand then what he was saying but now I know that I am his property. He made my Mom sign some document saying that I was his. Before I was ever born. Apparently I was one of his experiments gone wrong, or so he thought at the time.” she grimaced.  

“My mom argued with him saying that she signed the paper while not understanding what it meant. She was crying, I remember that. She never cried before, not even when he beat her and beat her and wouldn’t stop. This was alarming to me, and I was terrified. What could possibly make my mom so scared? I didn’t want to know. 

“He laughed at her saying it was not his fault, that she hadn’t understood, she had already signed the paper and there was nothing she or anyone could do about it. 

“You see my mom she wasn’t from here, Mr. Buchcowski had brought her here from South America. She had loved him with all her heart at the time, she told me, and would have done anything for him. 

“When she got pregnant with me, Mr. Buchcowski told her to sign a paper. She understood English then, but was still having problems reading it. ‘What is paper for?’ she asked him, ‘it will keep our child safe.’ he told her. And she believed him. 

“Only when he started doing experiments on her did she begin to doubt what he had said. He would weekly take her and stab needles into her belly that would pass the embryo sack and would inject whatever he wanted to me.