HELPER12 by Jack Blaine (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📗

doorway carrying linens often enough, though there is no linen storage on the third floor, to know that nothing is happening between us.  Thomas is there to see Jobee.  Still, I wonder what Helper thinks I could do about it if the young man of the house wanted to rape me every day.  Nothing—that’s what.  She must know that, of course she does, yet she still carries on as though I could tell him to stop coming to my room.

Tonight I choose a yellow sweater to wear to dinner.  The color is one that Thomas mentioned once.  That looks pretty against your skin, he said, about a shirt I had on one day.  I went upstairs and held that shirt against all of the things hanging in the closet, and pulled all the ones that matched it out and hung them together.  I choose something from that group of clothes every three days, and wear it to dinner.  I pretend I don’t know I’m doing this.

“Hello.”  Thomas is waiting for us at the table.  I smile and settle Jobee in his high chair.  He reaches out for Thomas, grinning.

“Hello, little man.”  Thomas is careful not to use Jobee’s name when we are outside my room, but I notice he doesn’t use the name William, either.

Helper brings out our dinner, huffing a bit beneath her breath.

“Is everything all right, Helper?”  Thomas is extremely polite.

“Yes, sir.”  She eyes him, and stops her huffing.

“This looks absolutely delicious, Helper.”

She preens a bit, always pleased to be praised.

I can’t wait for her to leave.  When she finally does, I sigh.  Thomas laughs as he serves me my food.

“Is she that bad?”

“You know she hates me.”

“Well, she probably wishes things were the way they used to be here.  Greg could charm her in two seconds flat, and Mother and Father were happy.”  His expression takes on the shadow that always darkens it when he thinks of Gregory.

I’m silent.  I don’t know how to explain it well, but when Thomas is upset like this, I feel upset too.  It’s as though his hurt is my own.  I have begun to wonder if I would bleed, should he be cut.

I feel this same way about Jobee.  It’s stronger in a way, than the way I feel with Thomas.  Jobee can’t protect himself at all, and for him, all pain is still a surprise.  When I have to take his boggle toy away to get him dressed, he looks so shocked and injured that I want to fight whatever made him feel that way, even though it was me.  If he bumps his head, I feel it, and I’m not serene until he is soothed.

It’s strange.  We were taught in training how to care for our charges; what to look for that would indicate they are in pain, how to help them feel better, when to call the Doctor to the Ward to check on something that might be serious.  But we were never taught to care about them.  In fact, the opposite was instilled—I remember the Trainers saying that reserve was imperative, that we couldn’t do our best work if we were less than impartial.

“I’ve got something for you.”  Thomas’s voice brings me back to the evening, the table, the dinner.

“Is it the new boggle?”  I’ve seen the ads for a red and green boggle that Jobee would love.  Thomas often buys a new toy, and clears it with me to be sure it’s “proper” for Jobee’s current stage of development.  It’s sort of a joke between us, now that I’m reading the books we got about childhood development.

Thomas smiles, a slow, beautiful smile.  I wonder if he knows how he’s begun to affect me.  It’s different from the boys in the complex; they were just for scratching itches.  Kris and I used to find a couple of likely boys to grab a touch with whenever we felt the desire, but I never looked at them and thought they were beautiful.  I never followed the line of a boy’s brow with my eyes and wished I could trace it with my fingertips.  Sometimes, when I’m watching Thomas play with Jobee, I want to touch him so much that I have to hold my hands tight behind my back, clenched into fists.  It feels like they might float toward him all on their own if I don’t.

“No.  It’s not a new boggle.  But I can pick one up for him tomorrow.”

“What is it?”

“Look under your seat.”  Thomas grins.

I do look, and there is a sack under my chair.  Inside is a package.  It’s wrapped up in fancy paper with what looks like a real silk ribbon.  My eyes must get big, because Thomas is chuckling at me.

“Put it back, silly.  You’ll have to wait to open it until you’re back in your room.”

I hide it back underneath my chair, and we eat dinner as though everything is normal.

But everything is not normal.  Thomas has given me a gift.  A present, all for me, from him.  It doesn’t even matter to me what it is; I’ve never been given a gift by anyone.

Chapter Twenty One

I put the sack under my pillow when I get back upstairs.  I make myself wait until I’ve bathed Jobee and settled him in his crib for the night.  When he is sleeping soundly, I sit on the bed and slide the sack out from underneath the pillow.  I hold it for a minute, just like that, still hidden, before I take the present out of the sack.  It feels thin and hard, and there’s one spot where it’s lumpy along the end.   The paper is a luminescent gold color, and the ribbon is red.

I slip the ribbon off.  It’s so soft, and the depth of the color is wonderful.  I put it next to me on the bed.  Now the paper—I don’t want to tear it because it’s so beautiful.  I slide my finger underneath it and tease it open, so that