Tattered & Torn

by Carol Dean Jones

  “Sure, that’s fine, and you don’t need to call Sophie. I’ll be seeing her this afternoon, and I’ll let her know. For that matter, I’ll be telling Caitlyn too, because I need to call her for pet sitting.”

  “So that just leaves Frank?”

  “Right. I just have the three on my list. Frank will call his friend Sasha. He told me that he only wanted to call one person so he’d be sure to do it right.”

  “He’s an incredible young man,” Ruth responded.

  “He sure is. He’s comfortable with who he is and knows his limitations, yet he’s always eager to give something new a try. He’s an inspiration to us all.”

  “So,” Ruth said, concluding the conversation rather abruptly when the doorbell jiggled in the background, “Good luck with your Louisiana project, and take some time for fun while you’re there.”

  “We intend to,” Sarah responded.

  As Sarah hung up, she grabbed a glass of iced tea and sat back down to call Sophie. “Sophie, I have so much to tell you. Can you come over and help me make a list of what to take to New Orleans?” Sarah was grinning as she said it.

  “New Orleans? You’re going to New Orleans? Why? No, don’t answer that -- I’ll be right over.”

  Chapter 16

  When they picked up Maud on Monday morning, they found her to be somewhere between excited and terrified. They again reassured her about the flight and the hearing. “If God had meant for me to fly…” she began but didn’t finish.

  “We’ll be just fine. It’s just like riding a bus,” Charles assured her.

  “A bus up in the clouds?” she responded sarcastically. “I don’t think so.”

  But once they got seated on the plane, she began to settle down. Charles and Sarah each held one of her hands as the aircraft took off, and once they were in the air she reluctantly announced, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

  “Would you like to take a look out the window?” Sarah offered, having taken the window seat so Maud could feel even more protected with Charles on her other side.

  “Absolutely not,” she announced emphatically. “You might get me up here, but you sure won’t get me to look down!”

  When the flight attendant came by offering beverages, Maud ordered a cup of tea and was amazed when Sarah pulled out the tray for her. When the attendant returned with Maud’s tea and a packet of cookies, she smiled, and Sarah could see her beginning to relax.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Maud muttered aloud to herself. “Not so bad at all.”

  Maud drank her tea, and the three sat quietly for a while. Suddenly Maud spoke up saying, “I sure hope I don’t see that hateful man.”

  “Jamal?” Charles asked.

  “Of course, Jamal. I don’t know if I can control my temper around him.”

  “You won’t see him. He’s not a part of this hearing,” Charles assured her.

  “So how are they going to put him in prison if he isn’t even there?”

  “It isn’t actually a trial, Maud. The Grand Jury just meets with the prosecutor and his witnesses and they hear all the evidence. Then they decide if there’s enough evidence for the case to go to trial.”

  “So why am I here?” Maud demanded. “I already know he should go to prison.”

  “You are here so that you can tell the Grand Jury about your daughter. It will help the prosecutor prove what kind of man he is.”

  “Hmm. Well as long as he ends up in prison, I don’t much care how it happens. He shouldn’t be out there enjoying life with my girl in her grave.”

  Sarah felt a shiver down her spine as she thought what it must be like to have that thought about one’s own child. She reached over and patted Maud’s hand which was no longer trembling, as it had been when they led her onto the plane.

  Wanting to change the subject, she asked Maud about her relationship with Bertha. “You two have been friends for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “You bet we have. We went to grade school together seventy-some years go. We were living out in the country about ten miles outside of Middletown. Papa had a dairy farm, but he never did very well. When I was twelve, we moved on over to Hamilton, and he worked in the glass factory until he retired.

  “That’s still there, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. “I think they have tours.”

  “I heard it was. Ma and I moved back to Middletown after he died and I met Harold and married him. Our only child, Clarissa, was born in 1955 and died in 1984. She had a short life, poor baby, and not a very good life after she met that man.”

  “Tell me more about you and Bertha. You got together again after you moved back here?”

  “Oh, we kept in touch. She even came to visit us in Hamilton a couple of times. Her folks were pretty well off. Anyway, we stayed friends over the years. I guess I told you that she came to live with me after her husband died. She was pretty broken up and ended up staying on with Clarissa and me for a few years.”

  “It’s very special to have a life-long friend,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, we had our ups and downs, that’s for sure. Mostly over Clarissa. Bertha never understood the girl like I did. She believed all those lies about drugs and stuff, but she was right there for me when my girl was buried and then again when I had to live in that homeless place.”

  “What was that like?” Sarah asked.

  “Horrible! The worst was having to be outside all day. They push you out early in the morning, and you couldn’t come back until evening. Then you had to stand in line to get into the place at night and stand in line again for a shower. I was nearly eighty years old, but that didn’t get me any special treatment. Lots of the men were that old.”

  “How did you get your meals?”

  “They served breakfast up the street at the soup kitchen and gave you a bag lunch for later. I usually saved mine for dinner so I could get in line early at the shelter.”

  “What did you do during the day?” Sarah asked, trying to imagine the life Maud was living.

  “I usually walked over to the park so I could sit.”

  “But then Bertha came for you?”

  “Oh, you can’t imagine how happy I was to look up one morning and see Bertha talking to the manager. I saw him point at me, and she rushed over, looking more determined than I had ever seen her look. We hugged and suddenly she said, ‘get your stuff, and let’s get out of this place.’ Been with her ever since.”

  About that time the plane hit some turbulence, and Maud grabbed Sarah with one hand and Charles with the other. “It’s okay,” Charles assured her. “Just a little bump.”

  “A bump in the sky?” Maud exclaimed. “Sky’s aren’t supposed to be bumpy.”

  Charles explained about the wind and talked about aerodynamics until Maud’s eyes glazed over. “Well, it’s stopped now,” she said emphatically, implying that he should do the same.

  The landing went smoothly with Maud hanging on to her two protectors until they were safely in the cab and headed toward the hotel where they had booked two rooms for the night.

  * * *

  It was only nine o’clock that night when Sarah’s cell phone rang. She grabbed it quickly, hoping not to awaken her roommate. Sarah and Charles had decided to ask Maud if she would like for Sarah to stay with her for the night. When they took her to her room earlier, she had looked hesitant to go in, and Sarah realized she was probably worried about being alone. Unfortunately for Sarah, Maud went to bed at eight o’clock, long before Sarah’s usual bedtime.

  She whispered her hello but noticed that Maud had opened her eyes. “I’m going to step next door and talk to my daughter,” she said to Maud, who nodded her agreement and snuggled down deeper under the covers. She wasn’t accustomed to air conditioning and had asked for an extra blanket.

  “Sorry, Martha,” Sarah whispered into the phone as she slipped down the hall to their room.

  “What’s going on?”

  Sarah caught her daughter up on the happenings since arriving in New Orleans includin
g why she was whispering. She was now in the room with Charles where she could speak freely since he was wide awake and reading a detective novel.

  “I’m glad things are working out there,” Martha was saying. “I was worried about you getting that woman onto the plane. Anyway, I’m calling to give you some incredible news. Tim has a job!”

  “Really? Where?” Sarah asked, assuming it was probably with the fire chief but, since they hadn’t heard anything since they met with Deegan, she wasn’t sure what had happened with that.

  “He was offered a part-time job at the firehouse. He met the fire chief the day he went out there to help Charles, and when he called Tim last week, it was quite a shock.” Apparently, Sarah thought, the fire chief didn’t tell Timothy about Charles intervening on his behalf. She knew Charles would be glad. He had told Sarah that Timothy would feel better thinking he got the job totally on his own.

  “I’m so glad, Martha. I know this is a relief to you.”

  “It is, and with it being only part time, Tim will be able to continue with his classes and with coaching the senior ball team.” Timothy had organized and was coaching a softball team at Cunningham Village, which had led to several other senior communities doing the same thing, and they now traveled between communities, competing, and calling themselves the Elder League.

  “Tell him how excited we are for him…for both of you, actually. Does this mean I can take the tags off the dress?” she teased.

  “Mom, I wasn’t serious about that.”

  “I know.”

  Chapter 17

  The Bailiff called Maud and held the door open for her to enter the courtroom.

  “Aren’t you folks coming in with me?” she asked, turning to her friends with a pleading look.

  “No,” Charles responded. “We aren’t allowed to be in the room, but we’ll be right here waiting when you come out. Just remember what we talked about. Answer the questions the best you can.”

  Maud entered the room on the arm of the Bailiff, who towered over the small, frail woman. She had reached for his arm when she felt her legs become weak as she entered the room. A crowd of people was sitting in what she assumed to be the jurors’ seats since there was a short wall in front of them just like on television. But there were far more than she expected, probably about twice as many. There was no one in the spectator seats, and she wondered why Sarah and Charles couldn’t have come in.

  The Bailiff led her to a seat facing the jurors and the prosecutor greeted her and thanked her for coming. She had met him when they arrived at the courthouse earlier that day. He then introduced her to the Grand Jury and asked her if she knew why she had been invited to testify.

  “To tell you about Jamal Davis killing my girl, Clarissa.”

  “His first wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell us about that, Ms. Templeton. Just take your time,” he added gently. “Did you see him kill her?” He already knew that she hadn’t witnessed it, but wanted to get that issue out of the way from the beginning.

  “I didn’t see it, but I know it happened as sure as we’re all sitting here. She’d come to see me, and she’d be all beaten up. Sometimes she had black eyes and sometimes she was covered with bruises. Once she was wearing a sling, and I’d always ask her what happened.”

  “Did she tell you?”

  “Not the truth. She’d make excuses for him. She’d say she tripped, or she bumped into things. When he broke her jaw, she said she slipped and fell against the washing machine. But I always knew the truth, and I knew my daughter was terrified of that beast.”

  “Did you ever see him hit her?”

  “No sir. He always acted polite around me. He didn’t want me to know what was going on.”

  “Did your daughter ever tell you he was hurting her?”

  “No, like I said, she protected him. I guess she loved him. I don’t know why, but once when I took her to the hospital with a broken arm, the doctors asked her lots of questions. They suspected she’d been beaten, and they asked me too, but Clarissa looked at me with this pleading look, and I just shook my head. Maybe I could have saved my girl if only…” she stopped talking, remembering what Charles had said. Just answer the questions, nothing more.

  “Did you ever talk to the police about your suspicions?”

  “I surely did, but only after she was gone,” she said fighting tears. “I told them he had killed her, but they didn’t believe me.”

  “Did they say why they didn’t believe you?”

  “Oh, Jamal he was a slick one. He could con anybody, and he sure had those cops conned into believing that my girl was a drug addict. They said she died of an overdose, but I know he gave it to her.”

  “You know that he gave her the overdose?” the prosecutor asked. She hadn’t mentioned this in their interview, and he only hoped she had the right answer. He tried never to ask a question when he didn’t already know the answer. He was aware that what she had to say wouldn’t convict Davis, but she was doing a good job of letting the jurors know what kind of man he probably was. Her story was the typical story of an abuser. Since she hadn’t answered, he repeated his question, “Do you know that he administered the fatal dose of drugs?”

  “Do I know he did that? I absolutely know that as well as I know my own name. He killed my girl, and if they say it was an overdose of drugs that killed her, then he gave her the overdose.”

  “But did you see him do it?” he asked, hopefully.

  “Of course not. He’s not that stupid. But he did it. I know that.” The prosecutor sighed imperceptibly.

  Once she was excused, she joined her friends in the hallway and sat down with a deep sigh. “Was it hard?” Sarah asked.

  “It was hard to go back and think about those days, but it wasn’t hard to answer the questions. I couldn’t prove Jamal killed my girl, but he’s not on trial for that anyway. But I sure let them know what kind of man he is.” Charles was glad to know that she had a clear understanding of the hearing and the part she had played. If the man is convicted, she’ll know she helped.

  “Aunt Bessie!” Maud cried suddenly. “Over here.” She painfully lifted herself off the hard bench and walked toward a very old woman who was crossing the room on a walker with a man holding her arm that didn’t look much younger.

  “Maud, my dear. It’s so good to see you,” the woman said in a raspy voice. “Gilbert tried to get me to use my wheelchair, but I wanted to meet you standing on my own two feet,” she said proudly. The two women hugged and began chattering while Charles and Gilbert shook hands and helped the two women to the two upholstered chairs on the opposite side of the room.

  “We’ll let you two women visit while Gilbert and I make some plans.”

  * * *

  “What shall we do first?” Charles asked after Gilbert drove off with Bessie and Maud in the back seat, both talking at once.

  “I think we should grab a taxi and go back to our room to freshen up. Then I’d like to put on comfortable shoes and walk around the French Quarter. I’ve wanted to do that for years and never expected to have the chance. Maybe we could watch for an interesting place to have a light lunch.”

  “Why light?” Charles asked. “Are you intending to keep me on that outrageous diet while we’re here?”

  “I think with all the seafood and vegetables they feature here, you won’t have a problem, but I said ‘light’ because I was hoping we could go really fancy at dinnertime.”

  “Sounds excellent,” he responded.

  A short time later, Charles and Sarah were walking toward the river reading the menus displayed in the many restaurants along the way. Their hotel room overlooked the Mississippi, and they decided they’d surely find restaurants nearby. In fact, they found that almost every other store front was a restaurant. “Look,” Charles called to her as he read the menu on the window of a small neighborhood grill. “They have catfish.”

  “And I should want catfish?” she responded.

&nbs
p; “It’s tradition,” he replied. “Let’s eat here.”

  From the outside, the restaurant looked very casual, and they were surprised to find it more elegant on the inside. They were led to a table on the second floor and offered a seat at the window overlooking the Mississippi. Intending to have a light lunch, they ordered the crawfish dip as an appetizer and decided to split the lunch special. Charles added a carafe of white wine.

  When their meal arrived, a seafood stew, Sarah sighed with pleasure. “This is beautiful,” she exclaimed, and the waitress smiled.

  “I love serving it,” she responded. “Folks are always surprised at the variety of things in our stew.”

  “I didn’t read the details on the menu. What’s in it besides the shrimp and oysters?”

  “It has Gulf shrimp, oysters, mussels, pieces of halibut, and crawfish tails. Then for vegetables, it has potatoes, green and red peppers, onions, tomatoes, and of course mirlitons.”

  “Mirlitons?” Charles asked.

  “Sure, it’s the unofficial squash of New Orleans, but I think it’s actually a gourd. It’s a Louisiana favorite. We even have a festival in the fall celebrating it -- the Bywater Mirliton Festival. We grow them in our backyards, and we fry them, stuff them with shrimp, and even pickle them. Like I said, it’s a favorite down here. I hope you like it.”

  As she talked, she was scooping out an even amount of everything to a second bowl since the couple had said they wanted to split the stew. Once she finished, she excused herself to get their bread. Suddenly Sarah remembered and exclaimed, “You didn’t get your catfish.”

  “I’m saving that for dinner.”

  After lunch, they picked up a walking tour guide for the French Quarter and visited some of the sites listed and just admired the architecture of others. They went inside the 1850 House, which depicted middle-class life during the period, including furniture, art, and domestic items. “I assume the residents were rather prosperous,” Sarah whispered to Charles. A staff member heard her and said that 1850 was a prosperous period in New Orleans, and particularly in the French Quarter.