Big Swiss(21)
When the school year ended, Greta was returned to Los Angeles and passed off to Uncle Derek, who lived in a modest ranch house in Inglewood. Derek was quiet and conservative. He’d met his wife at church. Her name was Petra.
Petra was a curvy chatterbox from Croatia, only ten years older than Greta and unemployed, so they were alone together in the house all day. After showering, Petra would wander into the den with a hair dryer, stand naked in the harsh sunlight, unashamed of her rolls and folds, and blow-dry her massive bush, which put Greta in hysterics. At fourteen, Greta was sexually precocious but otherwise weirdly na?ve. Petra seemed… not stupid, exactly, but superstitious. Greta would often walk by the master bedroom and see Petra on the bed, naked from the waist down, her shapely legs resting against the wall.
“You didn’t heard us?” Petra would say in her adorable accent. “I took love from your uncle before. It was very special feeling. I wished for more. I wanted baby before one years.”
Poor Petra couldn’t seem to get pregnant. That’s why her legs were elevated, to encourage the sperm to swim in the right direction. At least she had Greta, who was still technically a child even though she felt forty-five. Since almost everything Petra uttered was in the past tense, Greta felt like they’d lived together for years and were constantly reminiscing. Greta’s tactic was to play dumb—or young, rather—so that Petra might keep her forever. She asked as many stupid questions as possible and pretended not to know how to use basic appliances.
“What you is doing?” Petra said, shaking her head. “I will learn you to cook coffee, and I have informations for dishwasher.” She seemed defeated. “I think I turn on cigarette again.”
Cigarettes were something you turned off and on, like television. Over the next few weeks, it became clear that Petra wanted Greta to be older, not younger. She taught Greta interesting Croatian insults like “pi?ka ti materina” (your mother’s vagina) and “idi u tri pi?ke materine” (go into your mother’s vagina three times). She gave Greta adult gifts: miracle bras, thongs, makeup, hair dye.
“Your eyes was brown,” Petra explained. “So you wear blue shadow. But my eyes was blue, so I wear brown.”
On Saturdays, they visited bridal shops all over Los Angeles. Petra would tell the salespeople that Greta was engaged, which they couldn’t have really believed, but she’d browbeat them into bringing out the gowns. With her new burgundy hair and blue eyeshadow, Greta looked like a mail-order bride from Lithuania. One of the salespeople, an older man wearing a suit, took Greta aside and asked if she wanted him to call the police. He seemed certain that Petra was a trafficker, that Greta was about to be sold into sex slavery.
“She’s my aunt,” Greta said, and laughed. “She’s from Croatia.”
“Listen to your gut,” the man said ominously. “If it doesn’t feel right, don’t be afraid to tell someone. Go to a neighbor’s house. Where do you live?”
“Inglewood,” Greta said.
“Call 911,” he said.
Other than on Sundays, which Petra and Derek spent at the swap meet alone, and Greta’s daily walk to the store, she and Petra spent nearly every minute together. They watched soaps, ate ice cream from the same bowl, sometimes held hands.
“You have fourteen years?” Petra asked one day.
Greta nodded.
“You were virgin, right?”
Greta knew what Petra meant but was unsure what Petra wanted to hear. Tentatively, she said yes, she were virgin but had been to third base. Petra seemed intrigued. Were Greta bleeding? Greta nodded. Were she masturbating? Greta said sure. How? Greta described her technique, leaving out the part about imagining Petra naked with the UPS guy.
It was all a setup, unfortunately. Now, instead of bridal shops, Petra was dragging Greta to a megachurch and begging her to “find Lord,” as if He were in the crowd somewhere, or hiding under a folding chair. As it turned out, everyone at the church knew who Greta was, because there was this whole other life Petra had been hiding, and they were all waiting for Greta to be saved. Now Petra warned Greta about hell every five minutes. Greta had never thought of hell as a real place, but according to Petra, you showed up as yourself, a human being with thoughts and feelings, and Satan performed elaborate CIA interrogation techniques on you. Noise torture, bone breaking, force-feeding, enemas, and don’t forget about the lake of fire, and the river made of molten lava, and the thirst, the horrible, horrible thirst.
It was easy to see now that she was being manipulated, but at the time she felt—well, tortured. At night, she began covering the gap under the door with a blanket, like she had as a child. It didn’t seem like enough, though, so she often moved a few pieces of furniture against the door, just as she had back home, in the months leading up to her mother’s suicide.
But Petra knew all about Greta’s blanket and barricade. “When you accept Jesus for your personal savior, you never need blanket again,” Petra promised. “The Lord was your blanket.”
By the time Aunt Deb came to visit at the end of July, Greta was attending church twice a week and praying with her hands in the air. Aunt Deb pulled Greta aside and asked what the hell was going on, and why was she so happy?
“I’ve been saved,” Greta whispered. “I’m born again.”
“No, you’re not,” Deb said, and laughed. “Go pack your bags and get in the car. Now.”