Go Bag

By Verdell Walker

The night the woman with the bloody face pounded on their back door, rain slicking the porch boards, Angela was combing the wet tangles from Lottie’s hair.

Lottie flinched as Angela pulled the wide-toothed comb through her thick curls. "Ow!" she howled.

"Hold still, baby, so it won't hurt," Angela said patiently.

"I am holding still and it still hurts," Lottie protested.

"Charlotte, you are wiggling," Angela replied, placing gentle yet firm hands on her shoulders to steady her on the black-and-white tiles of the bathroom floor. "The more you move, the longer this will take—"

The booming on the back door cut her off. Three rapid knocks, then silence. Angela froze, comb suspended mid-air. Three more knocks reverberated.

"Stay here," Angela commanded.

"Maybe it's Daddy!" Lottie said excitedly. "He's back!"

"Your daddy is still in Baltimore on his business trip," Angela replied. "And he has a key."

Lottie’s excitement ebbed, leaving her cheeks hot. "Oh. That's right."

Naked and still damp from her bath, Lottie trailed after her mother, a plush white towel wrapped around her slender brown body. When Angela realized that she was behind her, she turned.

"I said stay put," Angela ordered again, in her Mom voice, the one that brooked no argument. "Go back into the bathroom and lock the door."

Sullenly, Lottie returned to the bathroom and did as she was told. She waited there for five minutes—which felt like five hours to her eight-year-old sense of time—before her mother returned, poking her head into the bathroom. She tossed one of Lottie’s dresses onto the lid of the toilet.

"Dry off and come to the kitchen," Angela said, her Mom voice still activated. "I need you to hold some things for me."

Lottie obeyed and ran to the kitchen, her wet curls dripping on the linoleum. The sight of the woman stopped her in her tracks.

The woman was young, younger than her mother, and her face was bruised. Bruises ran down her arms, fresh eggplant purple against her pale skin. One of her eyes was swollen nearly shut, and she held her left arm close to her body at an odd angle. She wore a dirty red tank top and jeans and was crying.

"Hello," Lottie said shyly, at a loss for anything else to say.

The woman swallowed. "Hello," she replied in a whisper.

Beside her, Angela was digging into the giant medical kit she kept under the kitchen sink. She tossed two washcloths to Lottie. "Wet those with hot water," she said.

Lottie obeyed, stealing glances at the hurt lady.

“My friend told me about you. She said…you help,” the woman said to Angela.

"I sure do," Angela answered. Her voice was calm, but her hands moved fast.

"What's your name?" Angela asked, not stopping her work. "You don't have to give me a last name if you don't want to."

"Eve."

"What happened, Eve?"

"My boyfriend. He found out I was pregnant," Eve explained. "I was trying to get rid of it, and he caught me."

Angela’s mouth tightened. "You were doing that yourself?"

Eve looked down at her right hand. "I didn’t know what else to do. With the laws, you can't go to a doctor."

Angela threw down a pair of scissors with more force than she intended. "Very true."

Lottie screwed up her nose, confused. "Boyfriends don’t hit girlfriends," she said sagely.

"Hush!" her mother snapped. "Go get some ice packs."

Chastised, Lottie went to retrieve them from the freezer. Eve’s scream brought her head around—Angela had reset her broken arm.

Lottie looked at her mother, shocked at this new version of the woman who made her pancakes and braided her hair.

Angela patted Eve on the back. "All done. Cops or no cops?"

"No cops," Eve replied through gritted teeth, her eyes leaking tears. "He’s one, and they’ll tell him."

Angela nodded. "Then I’ll get you to a safe house. You can stay there until you figure out what to do. I’ll go upstairs now and get you a go bag. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, snacks, a little money. Some other things too. Then I’ll drive you over."

Eve leaned back, exhausted. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Of course," Angela said gently.

Lottie crept over quietly and handed Eve the ice pack. Eve took it and laid it against her battered face gratefully.

Within the hour, Angela and Lottie had deposited Eve at a small, normal-looking house thirty minutes from where they lived. They watched her go inside beside an elderly white woman with silver hair and wooden jewelry. The woman waved at Angela, who waved back.

Lottie looked up at her mother, a thousand questions in her eyes.

Angela looked back at her. "I take care of other people, too."

Lottie opened her mouth. Closed it again. Finally she asked, "How?"

Angela pushed the car to start and pulled away from the curb. "I put them back together when they’re broken."

She glanced at Lottie in the rearview mirror. "And Lottie — you can’t tell anyone about this. Daddy knows, but don't say anything to your friends or anybody else. Some things are better kept quiet."

“Why?”

Angela sighed, heavy, like the old ladies in church. “Because it could make trouble for the women I help. And the folks who help me help them.”

Lottie frowned, chewing on the thought. “But helping people is good. Why would anybody get in trouble for that?”

“Because not everyone sees it that way, baby. Some folks don’t like it when you give others the kind of care they can’t—or won’t—give themselves.”

The turn signal clicked like a little metal bird tapping against glass as Angela swung the car left. “And the world doesn’t always punish the ones who do the hurting. Sometimes it punishes the ones who try to make it right.”

Lottie twisted her seat belt, the fabric slippery under her fingers, her mind buzzing. She didn’t fully understand, but it felt important, like stepping into a part of the world she hadn’t known existed. But one she did know for certain - she HATED bullies. She HATED people who hurt others, whether it was with fists or words. If her mom fought back against people like that, even if it was in secret, then it was clearly the kind of thing a person should do, no matter how scary it looked.

Lottie looked at her mother’s hands on the wheel. They were the same hands that wiped her tears, packed her lunches, tied her shoelaces when she was little. But now she saw her mother could do more. Hard things. Scary things. Brave things.

Her mother smiled at her in the rearview mirror, and for the first time, Lottie felt a little thrill — Mom could handle things she’d never imagined.

Maybe she could, too.

About The Author

Verdell Walker is a writer of speculative fiction from rural Georgia whose work is inspired by her heritage and her research. Her stories are published and forthcoming in Tractor Beam, Zooscape, and Reckoning, and her nonfiction writing has appeared in Bustle, Vox, Forge, and ZORA. She is a recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Diversity Grant, the Gotham Writers of Color Creative Writing Scholarship, and the John Lewis Writing Grant for Fiction. She is also a 2026 Periplus Collective fellow.

She can be found on:

Instagram: @verdellwalkerwrites Substack: @verdellwalker, as well as her book review podcast, “The Book Up”.

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