Heaven Is High by Kate Wilhelm

her briefcase for her camera.
    Binnie returned with her hair brushed, her face washed, and without a trace of tears. She had put on lipstick. She looked ready to do battle, ready to swim to shore again.

6
    Barbara did not linger at Frank’s house any longer than good manners and her conscience demanded that night. She wanted to get home in time to call Bailey and to read Binnie’s notes. As soon as she arrived, she checked her windows and the back door. Bailey had installed new locks, and he had left a small piece of Scotch tape on each of the old sash windows. If the window had been raised, the tape would reveal it.
    Developing paranoia? she asked silently, and her answer was swift: You bet I am. All the tape was intact. It was not yet ten and she placed her call to Bailey.
    He grumbled when she asked him to come around as early as he could. “Barbara, give me a break. Stuff takes just a little bit of time, you know.”
    â€œI have a roll of film I want developed and prints made as soon as possible. Your guy can do it. One-day service, same-day service, in fact.”
    â€œJeez,” he said. “Nine o’clock.”
    She made a pot of coffee and took a cup to her office to read Binnie’s notes, more a journal than just notes, but in no particular order, no chronological order. She had written about various incidents and memories as they occurred to her or when Martin asked questions. As Barbara read, her stomach twisted and her head began to ache. Over and over, she stood, walked from her office to pace the cramped rooms, and returned, resumed.
    What was portrayed in the pages was a life of degradation, humiliation, deprivation, pain, and fear. It was also the story of an intelligent woman with formidable courage and determination to save her daughter.
    For several minutes after turning the last page over Barbara sat with her eyes closed, trying to banish the images that had forced their way into her head. She didn’t blame Martin. Death would be better than such a life.
    Finally she turned on her computer and began to write a narrative, a chronological reordering of the jumbled account.
    The pirates had sailed the freighter around Jamaica to an isolated stretch of the coast, where they anchored the ship offshore and began to unload crates into several small boats that went ashore. They were at it when there was gunfire ashore. Domonic and another man, Louis, pushed Shala into a small boat and headed out to sea with her. They ended up in Haiti.
    There was a shack, one big room with a kitchen at one end, a bedroom, and another closetlike room that had shelves as if at one time it had been a pantry. Shala and Binnie were to inhabit that room until Shala’s death. The two men often fought and at some point the fight got violent and afterward Louis was gone. Shala had not known if he had been killed or if he ran away.
    Domonic was obsessed with newspapers for weeks, until there was an article in an English-language paper that he made Shala read to him. The pirates had been ambushed onshore that night, and they had all been killed. Seven tons of marijuana had been seized by the government. No mention was made of Domonic and Louis, or of Shala. It was assumed that everyone aboard the freighter before the attack had been murdered. Soon after the article appeared, Domonic made Shala write to her father and plead for her rescue. When the man sent by her father denounced her, Domonic beat her severely.
    The other newspapers were in Spanish, The Caribbean News and Island News. The English-language one had come from Jamaica.
    Domonic began to exploit Shala, charging men to have sex with her in his bed. She had become a domestic and sexual slave. One of the men gave her a little extra money each time, and she hoarded her coins until, when Binnie was about three, she took her stash of money to a nun and begged her to buy a book of ASL. Few nuns would even talk to her, but treated her as a dirty,