The tears had indeed made John worse. The second time, was, unbelievably, even worse than the first. Afterwards I lay in a tear stained heap on the cold cement floor of the back basement room. Benny stuck his head in the door and exclaimed at the dime sized drops of blood on the floor. He came across the room at a trot, his eyes big with concern. After a quick scan of my face, he scanned my body. “Where?” I moaned with humiliation but didn’t answer him. I was too embarrassed. He checked for himself and stood up with a grim face. His voice was clipped when he told me to go across to the back of the room and take a shower. I eyed him fearfully and hurried to obey. The back shower was kind of scary. It wobbled and had no support. The floor was stained . But, the water was hot and there was good shampoo and conditioner in there. I was more or less happily scrubbing away when the door across the room opened. The girl Benny had been beating the night before walked across the room towards me. I felt shy being naked in front of her, but I made no ridiculous movements to cover up. Instead I asked if she needed me. She said that she was there to show me my room. Since I figured that beat the hell out of staying in the basement, I hurried up and rinsed my hair. She handed me a couple of towels and I wrapped up my hair and dried off as quickly as I could, finally wiggling back into the nightie half wet. When I followed her out of the back basement room, only Ricky and a couple of girls were in the main rec room.
