The next evening, I was outside, meditating about my next move, and soaked from the heavy rain even though I was sitting beneath the overhanging roof of the building. Farther down the musty alley, Lia skipped through muddy puddles in her bare feet, giggling happily as the sunset smiled in her pure love of life. Every once in awhile, she'd call out for me to join her, but I would merely raise my hand in protest and shake my head. But my denial didn't seem to faze her happiness for she'd continue to chatter to her imaginary friends and giggle like there was absolutely nothing wrong with her abused childhood in one of the worst neighborhoods that ever existed.

I slid my fingers through my slick hair and wondered if I should start heading into Upper Manhattan for possible people to recruit. Maybe the rich had more faith than the poor did, I mused, and was ready to stand up, when a voice from behind turned my head around.

"May I sit with you?"

Looking upward, I found Jada, Lia's older sister, bending down and clutching her son, Taji to her chest. He gurgled in her arms and thrashed chubby little legs, happy with the warmth of his mother.

"Sure," I grunted.

"Thanks," she replied and slowly eased herself down onto the crumbling cement, heedless of how the mud clung to her worn jeans. "They don't like Taji up there... he cries too much for them."

"Babies do cry."

She pressed her lips together, wondering if I was safe or not-apparently remembering the incident where I had threatened to gut her out-then she asked, "You don't mind if I feed him-do you? I'll keep him quiet."

"What? Feed him?" Then, glancing over at her and seeing her pleading eyes, I shrugged, "Yeah, it doesn't bother me. Better to keep the kid happy than hungry."

Jada smiled faintly as she lifted up a corner of her starched shirt. "Thank you," she responded, and led Taji's bobbing head to a full nipple that he attacked greedily, sucking away in happiness. Gently, the shirt floated back down onto the baby's head as fat raindrops darkened the cloth and saturated her hair. After a moment of silence, she turned to me. "I'm sorry if I interrupted your thoughts...If I go back up there...the men...well," she lamented, "they like to pretend to be Taji, to be perfectly blunt."

I nodded mechanically in understanding, and, not facing her, I remarked to the wall across the alley, "Your English is very good. How come it wasn't that good when you were delivering him?"

"Momma doesn't think girls should be educated." She shrugged aimlessly, causing Taji to give an irritated squeak of protest in the back of his full mouth; Jada, though, ignored him and continued to talk. "Old country thoughts, so I try to act like she wants me to."

"You went to school?"

"No, I read...a lot."

"How?"

"Went down to the local library when Momma was at work and taught myself how to read...how to write...how to be something other than a simple street-rat. I read almost every single book there; the war novels never interested me much, though. Too violent...Besides, I see enough violence every day of my life; I don't think I need to see anymore." She laughed bitterly, a hoarse sarcastic laugh of a person who has been hurt all their life and has finally realized that they will never escape the pain. "After all, libraries couldn't deny a whore. Everyone else could, but libraries didn't."

Unsure of how to respond, I kept my mouth shut, and watched Lia whirling in the raindrops, throwing her head back and catching the only pure water she had ever been given on her pale pink tongue. She giggled, clapping her hands together in glee, and called over to Jada and me. "Ben! Come! Join me! Dance in rain! Jada! Taji like?" But, she didn't bother to wait for our sluggish replies and instead carried on with her riding of pink ponies in a land where mystical unicorns performed pirouettes on the rainbow.

Next to me, Jada sighed heavily, exhausted with the care of a young baby and switched Taji to her other breast which was heavy with milk. She leaned back against the side of the building, gently patting his cotton wrapped butt. Peering up at the sky through the pitted roof, the rain fell down her face, cascading in rivulets and plastering her dark black hair around her face so that only her intense eyes-much like Lia's-remained untouched by the water.

"I didn't mean that last part," she stumbled nervously, licking her wet lips. "I'm not a whore...or whatever you want to call me...I know you think I am..."

"Perhaps," I admitted curtly, debating about whether or not to leave her. After all, I absolutely had to find someone to give their human flesh for the Blue Lady, yet Jada intrigued me enough to stay and ask, "So, whatever happened to the payment your Mom promised me for Taji's birth?"


"Payment?"

"Yeah, the one she kept on insisting on."

"There is no payment."

"What?"

"There is no payment. Momma lied. She just wanted your help because she noticed how intelligent you are and figured that you'd help Taji to survive because-" Jada didn't finish. "Well, she just wanted your help."

"How'd she know I was intelligent?"

Jada laughed quietly, cradling her son's head in fine fingers beneath her shirt. In another environment her beauty would have rivaled that of the greatest supermodels ever to exist. "You carry guns with you, and you pray. Stupid people don't carry guns. And stupid people definitely don't pray."

"I wouldn't exactly call it praying..." I objected, wondering when "Momma Prune" had noticed me bent over the windowsill, cursing and hissing at the Blue Lady on the many nights I was pushed to the edge of cracking into a sniveling mess of tears and flesh.

"Momma does."

"I figured that."

Again, another awkward pause followed during which she pried Taji away from her chest and gently began to bounce him over her shoulder to ease the gas out of his tiny stomach. Wispy blonde hair curled over his smooth head and tiny fingers clawed at Jada's own raven dark hair.

"So, is that really your father's kid?" I finally asked, pushing forward with the question I had wanted to ask since Lia had screamed it at delivery.

Jada froze and pressed her lips together so tightly that they turned white around the edges. Taji, giving an angry squawk, forced her back to reality so she would continue to bounce him, but her eyes glared fiercely ahead, unrelenting to burn a hole through the opposite alley wall.

"I don't believe that's any of your business," she hissed.

"Look, I was just askin-"

"I know what you were just asking!" she growled, whipping her head around to face me. "I know-all right? I know. What does it mean to you? What?"

"If Lia's a liar or not." Then, lowering my voice, I added, "and to know how much I have to protect Lia from him."

"Protect? Lia?"

"She asked me to. He doesn't seem to be much of the fatherly type of guy."

"No. He's not." And before I could speak, she added solemnly, unable to lie directly to my face, "But, if you really must know. Yes, Taji is my father's son."

"Couldn't you stop him?" I asked incredulously, appalled that she could be so stupid to allow something as drastic as a pregnancy to happen to her.

Cocking her head, she grabbed my eyes and questioned, "How old do I look to you?"

"What?"

"How old?"

I eyed her over, noticing the faint wrinkles around her eyes, how loose skin hanged sloppily around her tanned wrists, the dark circles, and gaunt ankles poking out beneath grimy jeans. "Twenty-six? Maybe twenty-three?"

Jada chuckled briefly out of pure insanity that the slums had given her, before looking back up to my eyes. "Try nineteen. So, how exactly is a simple...stupid...teenager supposed to defend herself against a forty-some man who is taller than you are-making him probably..." she paused and eyed me up and down, trying to estimate my height in comparison, "probably six foot five, and is a bear of a man of three hundred pounds pure muscle.

"Then again," she shrugged, "it's not like you would know anything about that kind of stuff anyhow. Being afraid and trapped, that is. I bet you've had anything you've ever wanted in life. You've probably had a good home, warm food, people to love you, and money to spend. You're not abused or misused." She shook her head, bending down to ease sleeping Taji into a cradle of her arms. "You're not your father's sex slave."

Shocked, I turned to look at her, silently weeping against Taji's little body, and for the first time since I had arrived, I began to think more about just how badly these people were suffering, while I reigned above them, oblivious to their pain. Ignoring the impatience of the Blue Lady, I peered closely at Jada, trying to determine exactly what she was alluding to. "What did you say?" I questioned.

"You heard me," she whispered, brushing a piece of wet hair out of her eyes, only to have it fall right back in her face. "I know you heard me...But that doesn't matter because George will leave me alone now because he got himself a son."

"George?"

"My father...Taji's father..."

"Oh."

"But like I said, I'm safe now. There's finally a son for him to be happy with."

"Finally?" I echoed. "You mean there's been others?"

She nodded blankly, and a little whimper of acknowledgement escaped from the back of her throat. Despite her pain, though, she concealed her sorrow wonderfully, not allowing a single tear to escape from her eyes.

"Did they live?"

"Some did."

Swallowing to moisten my dangerously dry throat, I pushed myself to ask, "And what happened to them?" It was the question she had apparently been waiting for. The question that would reveal everything she had ever known. And, of course, I, the misfit of the world and Manticore, had asked it.

Turning to look at me, her poignant eyes glistened with tears in the fading sunset, blocked by hidden misery and ugly truths. In the distance, storm clouds rolled, warning of the storm that would soon arrive. "Look there, Ben," she said, "and you tell me what happened." Then, as she looked away, I followed her eyes to the dancing figure of Lia, ignorant to her sister's terrible agony.

"Lia?" I gasped, more horrified than I had been in a long time. "Lia? She's your-" And, even though I had sneered at serial killers, whispered to a fanciful figurine, and spat at the government, I couldn't say the truth I had just discovered of a woman whose only fault in life was that she had been born in the slums of New York City.

As if she were ready to vomit from her answer, Jada weakly replied, "Yes," and gazed outward at the giggling little girl. "You can say it, Ben. She is my daughter. The only one that survived. The only one out of many miscarriages...but she survived." Painfully, a single salty tear trickled down her dirty face and dribbled down over her chin, as she whispered, "My daughter actually survived..."