BILLIONAIRE (Part 5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.  This was the most personal and exposed conversation I had ever had with anyone – bar none – about my past.  I knew without asking that it was equally groundbreaking for Alexander.  Right here, out in the open, in a lavender-walled room in the Louvre, of all places.  I spoke quietly and Alexander leaned closer.  “There were men that visited my mother,” I began.  “She was pretty, even then.  Even when it got bad.  She was lonely.  Even as a child of nine or ten I was barely ever home.  Already I was determined to do well in school and – like you – dig my way out of that … life.  Already I knew that graduating with good grades was my ticket, if only I could achieve it.  I wasn’t sure I could.  I had to work so hard.  It didn’t come easily at first.  I had to teach myself.  I practically lived at school and in the bookstores and libraries.  Sometimes, when I got a little older, I would take a bus to Charlottesville to the university there.  I sat in the classrooms when they were empty.  I touched the books, I don’t know, … like I wanted to absorb what was in them through osmosis or something.  The students were everything I aspired to be, with their cars and their backpacks, their shiny hair and their laughter.  That’s what I wanted.  A future.  A fun, bright, happy future.  I could almost feel like I was a part of it when I was around them.  But then I’d have to go home again.”
    This next part was harder to talk about, but I kept going.  I could feel the therapeutic purge of emotion even before I spoke.  “There was one man in particular who spent time with my mother.  He lived with us for almost a year.  When I was thirteen.”  My voice had grown raspy and Alexander’s face showed the beginnings of anger.  He was anticipating what I was about to say.  I liked that anger there.  I imagined I could use it to fend off the anxiety, as a shield where before there’d been nothing.  No protection.  No hope of escape.  I kept the description simple but the husked edge to my voice hinted at the depth of my buried sorrow.  “He used to come into my room.  He would … touch me.  He would make me touch him.  He never took it … all the way.  He never took my virginity, but he did … other things.  Lots of things.  All the time.  Every night.  My mother was so out of it.  So unaware.  He used all that complacency and all that grief to his full advantage.”  I paused and Alexander let me.  He waited for me to continue, which I did.  “It was relentless.  And it made me feel so dirty.  Every night after my mother had passed out he would come to me.  He didn’t physically beat me but the pain of it all was … just so awful.  The hole grew bigger.  Darker and deeper.”
    Alexander reached for my hand and held it.  “Jesus, Lila.  You didn’t tell anyone?  You didn’t tell your mother?”
    “I thought about it.  I thought about telling her.  But he could read that.  He threatened to kill her.  He could tell I was getting close.  So he killed my pet rabbit.  As a warning.  I was devastated.  I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I finally ran away.  I lived under a bridge for a while.  I slept in a barn.  I hid in the library and got locked in for the night.  I loved the sound of that lock clicking into place.  It meant no one could get me.  No one could get in.  I slept in a chicken coop, once.  But I always went to school, if I could.  I kept my hiding places close enough to get there.  No matter what.  My teachers noticed, eventually, and I was returned home.  By then he was gone.  The police realized the squalor of our living conditions.  My mother was put into a rehab facility, but she never got better.  She died when I was a sophomore in college. I was placed in foster care, with a single woman who was kind enough but distant.  She needed the money.  I was grateful for the roof over my head.  The