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"Ren got the snot beat out of her day after day. I sat at my bench in the back and listened through the wall, wincing and flinching every time I heard the sick crunch of fist or foot to face, or the *whoosh* of her air being knocked out of her, or the coarse laughter of the other boys. Some nights she got sick after, hiding behind the woodshed and upchucking whatever was left of the day's gruel, but she never let him see. Like even that was something she wasn't going to let him have for free. Other nights she just slept. If it was me, I think I'd have huddled up with my back to the room and my face in a corner, trying to block out the world. Not Ren. Ren slept with her back all the way up against that wall, and one hand under her pillow where she kept a small knife she'd stolen from the kitchen. "And she never cried out. Not once, not that I ever heard, and I heard plenty. "Waste of salt," she told me, when I asked about it. "Nobody's ever cried their way out of a beating. You've been here long enough to know tears don't block punches." "She never yielded either. I watched Ters stand a boy over her with his fist raised, waiting on the one word that would end it, and she'd spit blood in the dirt and look up at him like she was calculating how many times she could wrap his intestines around his throat. "Ters noticed. Noticing was the whole job, finding the exact seam where a kid split so he could pack the crack full of whatever he needed there instead. With the others that crack showed pretty fast, but with Ren he pressed and pressed and got back nothing but bruises and that same flat stare. It interested him. Not in the way a person interests a person, more the way a lock that won't pick interests a thief. None of us were ever children to him, we were all just problems to solve. "He told her once, standing over her while she pushed herself up off the dirt for what must've been the hundredth time, that she could go on bleeding for him until she learned to duck. All matter-of-fact-like, and whether she lived long enough to learn it was her problem to solve, not his. "She did get better at ducking after that. Shaved off half a second or so. The sounds through the wall started coming shorter and further apart, until some nights there was nothing to count at all. Wasn't the lesson he thought he was teaching, I don't think. Closer to this: nobody was ever going to stop it for her. So she'd get good at stopping it herself. Strange thing was, she didn't hit them back. I'd see her watching the other rounds with narrowed eyes and tiny twitches, and sometimes I'd spot her practicing movements in the dark behind the woodshed, but she never once hit back. Looking back now, and knowing more of who she is, I think I get it. Ren doesn't show her hand until she's good and ready - until it's already too late for you. "Whatever. I got sent off to Nagnang before I found out what work he finally built her for. Ters didn't explain. He never explained anything, to any of us. Guess you don't explain yourself to a knife, you just use it, yeah? One morning he told me to gather what was mine and go. Gave me an address and a name, and 50 coins to get there, and I went. I looked back once, from the gate. Ren was in the yard again, watching a boy circle her with that same waiting patience she'd worn the first day I met her. "I think of her sometimes. Wonder whether she ever started to hit them back. Wonder whether there was ever a version of her that got to be warm, somewhere down the line, before Ters's place. I never found out. Some things you don't get to. You just carry the not-knowing with you. Guess that's life, huh?" | |