Chapter 8 Chapter VII

At four o'clock in the morning, Kelly sat in a chair, staring blankly out of the window, her mind spinning rapidly.Marshals...we have to talk...Eiffel Tower...suicide, note...Marc is dead...Mark is dead...Mark is dead.The words become an elegy, beating with Kelly's pulse. She saw Mark's body roll down, roll, roll...she reached out and caught him just before he hit the pavement.Did you die because of me?What did I do?Is it because I didn't do something?Did I say something?Did I say nothing?I fell asleep when you left, darling, and I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, to kiss you, to tell you how much I love you.I need you.I can't live without you, Kelly thought.Help me, Mark.Save me—save me like you always do...

She fell into the mud of the past, thinking back to the time before meeting Mark, the terrible past. Kelly was born in Philadelphia, the illegitimate son of Ethel Hackworth, a Negro maid who worked for the city's most prominent white family.The father of the family is a judge.Ethel was seventeen and beautiful, and Peter, the blond Turner of twenty, had taken a fancy to her.He seduces her, and a month later Ethel finds out that she is pregnant. When she told Peter he said, "That's--great," and ran into his father's study to tell him the bad news. Judge Turner called Ethel into his study the next morning: "I don't want a bitch working in this house. You're fired."

Penniless, illiterate, and unskilled, Ethel worked as a cleaning lady in a factory, working day and night to support her newborn daughter.Five years later, Ethel used the money she had saved to buy a dilapidated wooden house and opened a small hotel exclusively for men.Ethel divided the rooms into a living room, a dining room, four bedrooms, and a long, narrow storage room where Kelly slept. A string of men have been in and out of it ever since. "They're your uncles," Ethel told her, "don't bother them." Kelly was so happy she had such a big family, it wasn't until she was older that she understood they were all strangers.

When Kelly was eight years old, she was sleeping in a small dark room one night when she was awakened by a rough whisper: "Hush! Be quiet." Kelly felt her pajamas pull up, and before she could fight, one of her "uncles" climbed on top of her and put his hand over her mouth.Kelly could feel him pulling her legs apart.She tried to struggle, but he held her down.She was full of severe pain.He is brutal and merciless.She screamed silently, lest she faint.She is trapped in the scary dark room. Finally, after what seemed like a full century, she felt him convulse and withdraw.

He said in a low voice, "I'm leaving. If you tell your mother, I'll come back and kill her." He was gone in an instant. The next week was almost impossible to get through.She suffered from great pain all the time, but she tried her best to heal and finally the pain subsided.She wanted to tell her mother what happened, but she didn't dare.If you tell your mother, I'll come back and kill her. It only lasted a few minutes, but those minutes changed Kelly's life.She went from a young girl who dreamed of marrying and having children to someone who felt deeply tarnished and humiliated.She decided never to let a man touch her again.In addition, another change occurred in Kelly.

From that night on, she began to be afraid of the dark.