The Complete Series

by Angela Scipioni

  “CBW hotline,” said a woman’s voice. “How may I help you?”

  Lily could hear the chatter of voices and the muffled ringing of telephones in the background, like when she called the AOL technical support line.

  “Hello? Are you alright?” said voice. “If you can’t talk, just go ahead and press any button on your phone, and we’ll send help.”

  “No! Oh - sorry,” said Lily. “I’m fine, I just, I mean, um, I was going to come to support group tonight, but your address isn’t on this brochure.”

  “May I have your first name?” the voice asked.

  Lily wanted to hang up. She didn’t want to tell a stranger her name - not this stranger who then might take it and place it there among the sad and beaten women in the brochure. If she gave them her name, she wouldn’t be able to get it back.

  “It doesn’t even have to be your real name, sweetie,” said the voice.

  “Lily,” said Lily. “My name is Lily.”

  “Thank you, Lily. I’m Sophie. I’m one of the counselors here at CBW. You’ve read our brochure, I take it?”

  “Yes. My mother gave it to me.”

  “You are welcome to join group at any time. The address isn’t printed on the brochure in order to protect our clients and our resident community. If you are certain you are going to attend this evening, I would be happy to tell you where we’re located.”

  They had her name, and now she would have their address. Seemed like a fair good faith exchange.

  “Yes, I’m certain,” she said, not sure at all.

  CBW was in a neglected section of downtown Rochester, the whole of which was itself old and rundown. The building was wedged between the Rochester Gas & Electric Company and the Eldorado Hotel in front of which a sandwich board sign proclaimed, “Rooms: $35.00/hour”. Lily circled the block three times, before finding an available parking meter.

  A sign posted next to the intercom outside the front door of CBW read, “Ring buzzer for admittance.” Lily pushed the small white button. A moment later, a gravely voice came over the speaker, delivered through cackling static.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here for the meeting?” Why did that come out like a question? Lily wondered.

  The door buzzed and clicked, and Lily pulled it open and stepped into the foyer. A stout woman with pock-marked skin, greasy black hair, and wearing a stained white polyester turtleneck emerged from behind a glass encased reception desk.

  “Right this way.” The woman hobbled over to the elevator. The tattered cuffs of her black chinos dragged on the floor, a chain of keys swayed and jingled at her hip. She selected a key, turned it in a lock next to the elevator buttons, then pushed the “up” arrow. The elevator whirred and bumped, abruptly arriving with a thud. The doors jerked open and the woman gestured for Lily to get inside.

  “Twelfth floor,” she croaked.

  Lily touched the button marked “12.” The woman hobbled away, the closing doors reducing her to a tiny sliver until they sealed shut and the car started up with a lurch, rumbling and moaning as it climbed toward its destination.

  “God,” said Lily out loud to herself. “I hope when the doors open again I don’t find myself in hell.” She quietly laughed in spite of her anxiety, glad to know she only had to come here this one time.

  Directly across from the elevator on the twelfth floor was a paper sign bearing a large red arrow and the word, “Group.” Lily walked in the direction indicated, discovering other signs along the way, each one taking her farther through a system of long narrow hallways marked by grungy carpeting and the faint stench of spoiled infant formula. She stopped and turned to look behind her, realizing she could not remember the direction from which she’d come. She continued down the hall a bit further, straining to discern the sound of voices which might indicate that she was getting closer. She turned right at the next sign, when a searing pain shot up through the center of her body, as though someone had shoved a sharp object into her rectum and up through her gut. She cried out, and immediately doubled over. She shuffled forward until she came upon a rest room, and tumbled inside. She kept trying to stand upright, but each time the pain yanked at her, forcing her back into a crouch. Her eyes watered and her breath quickened. She didn’t want to die in the bathroom at the battered women’s shelter.

  She made her way into a stall and sat on the toilet, hoping that what she was experiencing was a simple case of gas pains. But her body was unyielding, her gut clamped in rebellion against itself.

  “Attention residents,” announced a voice over a speaker in the ceiling. “Group starts in five minutes. Remember, children are not permitted into group. If you need child care, Michelle will be staffing the playroom until eight PM.”

  Relieved to hear that there were other people in the building besides her and the scary receptionist downstairs, Lily scrambled from the stall and washed her hands. She tried to check her hair and makeup, but she couldn’t stand up straight enough to see her face in the mirror. She shuffled out into the hallway, still bent and holding her side. To her right, she noticed a stream of women crossing the far end of the hall. To her left was the dark, fusty maze of corridor. The prospect of following the crowd seemed slightly less objectionable than returning to the toilet to writhe in solitary agony, or wandering through the halls for all of eternity. All she had to do was get to the meeting room and find her way to a chair.

  After a few steps, the pain began to loosen its grip on Lily’s gut. As she approached the room, she stopped to fish a compact from her purse and discovered that the barrette in her hair had become unclasped and was hanging for dear life by a strand of hair; her lipstick had faded, and her mascara had run. She plucked a used but dry crumpled tissue from her coat pocket, and, wetting the tissue with her saliva, she tried to wipe the smudged mascara from around her eyes as she walked.

  “Please sign in here.” A woman at the door held a clipboard and a pen out toward Lily and Lily scribbled her name on the line under someone named Kitten. She scanned the room, taking in the new faces, which mostly just looked back at her dolefully.

  “Lily,” said the woman, reading from the clipboard. “I think you and I spoke on the phone earlier.” Lily turned her attention to the woman, noticing her name tag. It read, “Hi! I’m Sophie.” She smiled warmly at Lily.

  “I’m surprised you remembered me,” said Lily. “You guys sounded pretty busy this morning when I called.”

  “Unfortunately, we’re always busy,” said Sophie. “But it’s not every day you get a call from someone with such a lovely name. It’s like Lily of the Valley.”

  Lily smiled. It had been ages since anyone had called her that. Sophie had a frail build and blond hair that fell to her waist. Her blue eyes were set off by her China-doll complexion. She seemed nice. Too bad Lily wouldn’t have the chance to get to know her better. Lily took a chair in the circle, relieved to sit, to at least be somewhere. The pain in her side settled into a dull throb.

  Sophie sat cross-legged on her chair, the folds of her patchwork skirt draped over her knees. “Good evening everyone,” she said with a smile. She had a slight overbite, with one of her front teeth slightly overlapping the other. It graced her with an endearing childlike quality and made it difficult for Lily tell how old she actually was. “Who would like to begin?”

  The women in the circle all looked around at each other, until finally a petite brunette timidly raised her hand halfway as if afraid Sophie might actually notice and so call on her.

  “Go ahead, Claire,” said Sophie. “You don’t need permission to speak here.”

  “I just wanted to say,” said Claire. “That I had two pieces of pepperoni pizza last night.”

  The circle erupted into applause and shouts of, “Way to go, Claire!” and “Woo-hoo!”

  “That’s wonderful progress, Claire,” said Sophie. “Why don’t you tell us why that’s a cause for celebration? We have a new member with us tonight - everyone say hello to Lily.
”

  “Hellos” tumbled across the room from all points in the circle.

  “I’m just visiting,” said Lily.

  “Me too,” said a large African American woman. “For the one-hundredth time.”

  The circle broke out into laughter.

  Sophie smiled gently, and said, “Now Kitten, do you remember our rule about the proper way to respond when someone shares?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Kitten. “Non-judgmentally. Sorry - what’s her name again?”

  “Ask her,” said Sophie.

  “What’s your name again?” said Kitten.

  “Lily.”

  “Sorry, Lily.”

  “‘S’OK.”

  “Cool.”

  “Claire,” said Sophie, “Can you tell Lily a bit about why eating two slices of pizza is such a big deal?”

  “I’m anorexic,” said Claire, folding her hands in her lap and looking down at them. “I stopped eating the day my husband mowed over my flower garden with his lawnmower and I’m trying to gain some weight so I can get well enough to get my kids back.”

  Lily wasn’t sure if a response was expected, and was grateful when someone else spoke.

  “Why they do that, Sophie?” asked the woman. “My ex made me throw all my poems into the fireplace - said he would throw my babies’ pi’tchers in there too if I didn’t do it. Why they do that?”

  “Why do you think they do that, Edie?” asked Sophie.

  “I dunno. Maybe ‘cuz they think everything belong to them and they kin do whatever they want with it.”

  “I think it’s because they want to break our spirit,” said Claire.

  “Tell us what you mean by that, Claire,” said Sophie.

  “It’s like with those wild horses in the cowboy movies, you know? They are so beautiful with their long necks and thick manes - with the way their muscles ripple when they run.... but all men want to do is break them, teach them how to obey. Pretty soon, they forget what it was like to run free, and they give up trying.”

  The circle grew silent. Kitten started to cry. Edie started to cry. Claire started to cry. Lily felt their sadness as it made its way toward her in waves; she felt the familiar sting in her throat, and she steeled herself against it until she realized that for the first time ever, there was no reason to fight the tears. Everyone was crying. And no one was paying any attention to her. She’d shown her face; her name was on the roster as a matter of record. She could even get up and leave, if she wanted to. Or, she could let go and grieve with them. Just for tonight.

  Lily listened as each woman told her own story of how her husband or boyfriend or girlfriend - or even mother, or son - had tried to break their spirit.

  When the sharing slowed and the room grew quiet, Lily said, “I used to have this tree...” She told the story of her tree and of Joe’s furious attempts to keep it from growing. She told them through unabashed tears about the men who roped and cut off the limbs, and about the man who ground the stump with brute force until it was nothing but a hole, just a place where something used to be.

  “And now,” said Lily, spitting her words out in between sobs. “My husband won’t let me and the boys stay in the house - he says if he can’t live there, no one can - and I don’t know what I’m going to do... where I’m going to go. I don’t have a job or any money. We have to put our stuff in a truck and drive away.”

  Lily looked at the women around her; their reddened saddened faces nodding in sympathy, crying in empathy. She watched and as they cried for her, she cried for them, too. Their common pain traveled full circle back to her, the pain in her side melting in the warmth of their understanding.

  “You’ve all been through so much,” said Sophie. “Yet you’re still here. You’re all still here. Your spirits might be bruised, but the fact that you are still going and still hoping, sometimes even laughing - that is proof that your spirits have not been broken.” Sophie glanced around at the faces in the circle. “Where are we?” she asked.

  In unison, the women answered, “We are in the presence of many strong and beautiful women.”

  Lily would have to remember that one. Maybe one day she would believe she was one of them.

  While Lily fished her car keys out of her purse, Sophie walked over and handed her a phone number scribbled on a piece of lavender note paper that had the word, “Choices” printed across the top in black block letters.

  “This is my direct number,” said Sophie. “When we spoke earlier I was staffing the hotline, but if you call my office and set up an appointment, I can see about helping you find work.”

  Sophie smiled her charming snaggletooth smile. “You did good by coming here, Lily. Don’t think about the entire journey right now.” She gestured to the note paper. “Just focus on taking the next step. And then the next. You’ll get there.”

  The following day, Lily called Sophie and made arrangements for job placement counseling. She would go in one more time, just to see about finding work.

  “First let me explain how this works,” said Sophie, setting a file box onto the table in front of Lily. “This box is filled with index cards and each one has a job description on it. Any of the jobs are yours for the taking, as long as I agree that it is a good fit for you. Choices acts as a kind of a temp agency. That way, you and women like you who are really in need of a job right away don’t have to go through the stress and expense of the whole interview process. But if you report for a job and it doesn’t work out, the employer can release you, no questions asked.”

  Lily lifted the lid of box. “I can have any of these jobs?”

  “As long as I’m willing to vouch for you,” said Sophie, “you can try any one of them. What kind of a job do you think you’d like to have?”

  “I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” said Lily, as she fanned through the cards. “I haven’t worked in a long time, and I don’t have any college.”

  “Well, what skills can you bring to a job?”

  “At my church I used to volunteer as office coordinator for the food cupboard - answering the phone, setting up deliveries, keeping records... that sort of thing.”

  “Sounds like an office job. Maybe an administrative assistant,” said Sophie. “See if you can spot something along those lines that captures your imagination.”

  After sorting through about a hundred entry level job listings, Lily pulled an index card from the box.

  “Sophie,” she said, holding up the card, “How about this one?”

  “Oh, The Fertig School... that’s an interesting choice.”

  “I just saw that it was a school, so maybe I won’t have to spend too much on day care, if they keep the same calendar as the public schools. I could start right after Christmas break. Why is it an interesting choice?”

  “The Fertig School enjoys a stellar reputation among the elite - it costs almost as much to send a child there for a year as it does for tuition at a local college.”

  “So it’s a school for rich kids?” Lily started to slip the card back into the deck among the others. “Probably not right for me after all.”

  Sophie reached over and snatched the card from Lily’s hand. “Nonsense!” she said. “It’s exactly right for you.”

  “Oh yes,” Lily rolled her eyes. “I’m sure I’ll fit right in.”

  “As long as you think you won’t, you won’t,” said Sophie. “Your assignment will be to go and work there until you don’t feel out of place anymore. Yes,” said Sophie, fanning her face with the card and winking at Lily. “This is perfect.”

  Lily had been dreading Christmas for weeks. She had managed to buy each of the boys a toy and a new pair of pajamas, but she had neither the money nor the energy to give them the kind of Christmas celebration to which they were accustomed. Nor did she have the strength to fight with Joe about who would “get” them for Christmas morning. She finally decided to order a pizza on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when she would present them with their gifts and then send the
m to Joe’s for an overnight and the Diotallevi Christmas that had been a part of their tradition. Lily didn’t even care if Joe considered it a victory. Even warring countries took a break from hate on Christmas. Her gift to everyone this year was one day of peace.

  Lily spent Christmas morning scanning the classified ads for a apartment or house to rent, trying to convince herself that it didn’t matter that she was alone on Christmas. After all, she could use the quiet time; she needed the rest. It was just another day. Next year would be different.

  The Fertig School was located in Rochester’s arts and cultural district - which was barely large enough to be referred to as a district – encompassing a ten-block area where the Memorial Art Gallery, the Museum & Science Center, the Strasenberg Planetarium, the George Eastman House, several historical churches for obscure religious communities, and a spattering of independently owned cafes and boutiques made their home. The area was bordered by the run-down neighborhoods of some of Rochester’s poorest residents, as though this city famous for its activists and pioneers wanted to force those who would aspire to the upper echelons to pass through the dregs, to remind them of their privilege, perhaps to humble them and elicit service. As Lily drove to her first day of work as the newest Fertig School “Director of First Impressions” (which, as far as Lily could tell, was a fancy name for a receptionist), she felt at home in neither extreme. She was grateful she did not live in one of the sad decrepit homes with broken plastic chairs tottering on frozen lawn-bare yards, but she was also nervous and worried about trying to fit into a world that would be better suited to Marguerite, or Iris, or someone more worldly than she - which would include just about everyone.