Free Sentinel of Heaven by Mera Trishos Lee Page B

with
them, who had fled at sixteen for parts unknown.  She'd changed a lot in the
intervening years, she told Leo.
    But Chester
recognized, and Chester remembered.  He had a shock of short brown hair and
thought wife-beaters and torn khakis were the height of haute couture.  He
couldn't keep other jobs beyond a week or two.  More often than not he smelled
of two-buck-chuck and the blunts he bummed off his friends.
    And he didn't
mind that Moira's back and leg were all fucked up.  He'd told her that in so
many words, more than once – in a way that suggested the less running a woman
could do, the better.
    Chester was a
man that would gladly torment and misuse anyone he considered weaker than
himself.  On the town totem pole there was probably only one adult woman that
fit that description.
    She'd
tolerated the filthy talk, for the most part acting like she didn't even hear
it.  It prompted him to try random gestures in front of her face as if he were
speaking in sign language.
    Then he
started getting handsy.
    Leo's expression
at this point was certainly a picture; possibly painted by Francisco Goya, late
in life.
    She had dodged
him as best she could.  She changed her habits and her timing, always trying to
wind up with Jeanine there instead, who for the most part ignored her and
chewed bubble gum while flipping through the tabloids.
    One time and
one time only, she tried to complain to Jeanine.
    “I know, doll –
and I
am
sorry,” the older woman had responded dryly.  “I've had
problems with him harassin' the girls before; the younger ones, and the little Mexicans
we get come through sometimes.  I've told him that shit could get him put in
the state penn and then he'd get to see how it felt for someone to go pawin' at
him
.
    “And generally
he's about as useless a short streak of diarrhea as I've ever seen.  I know it
and I won't argue that a lick.  But, doll... he's my sister's boy, her only. 
She's spoilt him for anything but someone has to keep his sorry ass off the
streets and I'm the only one that can manage it.  You gotta understand that,
right?”
    Sure Moira
did.  Some families actually took care of each other, whether or not the
parties involved deserved it.  So she continued to dodge him, to block him with
her laundry bags, to hustle and shuffle and stay out of his reach.
    About six
months ago Chester worked up the resolve to get that pinch he'd never been
brave enough to go for in the high school hallway.  To his great misfortune he
caught her in a rare moment of distraction, measuring out fabric softener for
her load of nicer work blouses.  For the first second or so that she felt his
creeping fingers in the cleft of her ass, his rank breath on the back of her
head, she’d actually frozen in shock.
    Then she spun
away on her good leg and lashed out reflexively with her cane, her good sturdy
white ash; baseball bats are often made of the same wood.  It had taken him
across the cheek and nose, brushing him off her like a fly.
    He crashed to
the floor onto the seat of his stained old khaki's, completely disoriented. 
She had stood over him then, still brandishing her stick and quivering in
suppressed rage.
    “I've got to
tolerate your filthy mouth because I've no other choice,” she ground out, “but
so help me God if you
ever
lay a hand on me again I will beat you
senseless with this cane and I won't stop until your head is pink mush, you
hear me, you low-life disgusting bastard?!” 
    His jaw had
been slack with shock beneath his bleeding nose.
    “Answer me!”
she screamed, raising her stick higher.
    “Okay!  Okay!”
he squealed and flinched back against the machines. 
    She’d limped
out without thinking, leaving all her clothes behind, shaking with a mix of
righteous anger and terror.
    That night as
she sat in her little house, sick with apprehension wondering how she'd get her
things out of his clutches, Jeanine called her cell-phone.
    “You come by
tomorrow,” said the