Sweet Violet and a Time for Love

by Leslie J. Sherrod

  The woman drew in a deep breath as the crowd who had once surrounded us had now all disappeared into the doorway of the house next door to the shelter.

  “Sister Marta dead and I don’t know no Frankie Jean. I gotta get to service now. I ain’t losing my bed for missing church.” Whatever flighty nervousness had been on the woman’s face seconds earlier had dissipated into a steely sorrow. She turned and scooted away from me.

  “Dead?” The word fell off my lips and landed in the quiet hush around me. I looked back at the cordoned-off door two doors down, noticed for the first time the ANBH EMPLOYEE ENTRANCE sign. Sighed. Pushed back the heave that wanted to run right through me. A belch came out instead. “What happened?” I whispered loud enough for no one to hear.

  Something was not right. I felt it. I’d just spoken to Sister Marta a few hours ago. Dropped that woman, Frankie Jean, off right after. And now... “Dead?” I asked again, this time the word was louder. A police officer who’d happened to step out from the yellow tape glanced at me before joining another group of investigators with their hands in pockets, small talk, slight chuckles, and occasional solemn faces to respect the mood of the mourners.

  “Sixty-seven-year-old Marta Jefferson had been a staff member at A New Beginning House for about forty years.” A woman in a black suit spoke solemnly into a large padded microphone steps away, a camera aimed at her face. “Ms. Jefferson was leaving through the employee entrance early this morning when she was tragically gunned down. Police believe it was a robbery as her wallet and cell phone are both missing. There are no witnesses, no suspects, and no other leads, though authorities want to interview a group of juveniles who were believed to be in the area at the time of the incident. That’s all the information we have for now. This is Laila Kennedy reporting live in East Baltimore. Back to you in the studio, Steve.” The reporter stepped away from the camera and put on another coat of berry-colored lip gloss.

  Now what? My heart broke that the sweet shelter worker had lost her life to senseless violence. My stomach twisted in nauseating agony. And my hand still clutched Frankie Jean’s bag of dirty clothes.

  A robbery? Juveniles? My heart pounded heavy within me, but I knew there was nothing else that I could do. God, help her family. I looked at the steady stream of women entering the building, knowing that this group, unrelated by blood but connected by the streets, was part of the family who would be grieving for a while.

  The bag of dirty clothes.

  I looked at it hanging from my hands, knowing there was nothing else for me to do with it but leave it by the door. Sister Agnes, the stern-looking worker who had spoken with me moments earlier, was under the impression that nobody by the name of Frankie Jean was a “guest” at the shelter. I decided to leave the bag by the doorway, in case she was around nonetheless. I was in the process of dropping the bag by the metal gate when a sharp whisper caught my ear.

  “Psst. You the lady asking about Frankie Jean?”

  The voice came from behind, so I turned around to see who it was.

  Chapter 8

  “Psst. You the woman looking for Frankie Jean?” the voice repeated. I jumped as fingers briefly touched my shoulder. I’d just opened my fingers to let go of the bag of clothes when the voice came from behind.

  Or so I’d thought.

  “Over here.” The whisper had a harshness to it that made me wonder if I really wanted to find who it belonged to. The crowd of women who’d surrounded the crime scene just moments earlier had completely dissipated and, I realized, everyone who wasn’t part of the investigative team or media stood on the outskirts. The detectives had let the women hang around, I assumed, in a smart effort to keep such a transient group within arm’s reach for questioning. They were all inside the shelter’s chapel for service.

  So who had touched me?

  No one stood behind me.

  All that was near me was the metal gated door to my left, the yellow police tape in front of me, the street to my right. Nothing behind me. Nothing else.

  Wait; there was a short row of bushes next to the gated entrance. “Bushes” was probably too proper of a word for the wild vegetation that grew next to the shelter. Weeds, uncut grass, tossed paper plates, beer cans, and a single flower all cluttered the space by the entryway.

  The flower caught my eye, a deep purple bloom, out of place for the winter season, as if someone had come across it in another place, another time, and planted it there as one last chance of beautifying the landscape that was littered with broken glass, cigarette butts, and overgrowth.

  The flower had my attention, but then something else grabbed it. Movement in the bushes. Is that a face?

  As if on cue, a pair of eyes blinked at me. I jumped back, startled, turned toward the street, ready to run if I had to.

  “No!” the voice whispered after me. “Please don’t leave!”

  I looked back, seeing now two hands held up as if in surrender. A torso, legs emerged from the thick evergreen, weeds, trash.

  “Don’t tell them I’m here. I don’t want to have to go to service. Too sad.”

  A young woman, maybe a girl, really, stood not far from me.

  Dark hair wisped down her back in loose ringlets from underneath a faded green knit cap. A gray T-shirt clung to her bony frame. Bony except for the blooming orb of her abdomen. Holes peeked from her black jeans. A frayed blue blanket hung around her shoulders. I’d never seen her before, didn’t know her, and wasn’t sure that I wanted to. A wild look peered from her eyes.

  A wild look and desperation.

  I turned to walk away, to get away, but the social worker in me knew better. A young woman on the streets, a pregnant young woman especially, was too vulnerable for me to ignore. I stopped and she began walking toward me. As she neared, I was surprised that despite her ragged appearance, she smelled of peaches. Peaches and cinnamon. I recognized the scent. Roman had given me a gift basket with a lotion, shower gel, and body spray with the same fragrance years before.

  The torn, worn clothes spoke to a life lost on the streets.

  The scent was a clear whiff of pride in the brokenness.

  “You have my attention,” I said in a whisper equal to hers. Though nobody seemed to notice us, or even be in earshot of us, I felt it important to echo the volume she’d initiated, to stay in her comfort zone.

  She had wild eyes.

  “Why did you call after me?” I asked.

  The young girl continued walking toward me and was now almost beside me. She didn’t answer, but instead kept walking and passed right by me, her eyes fixated on an unknown in front of her.

  “Hey!” I called after her, no longer whispering. “Why did you call me?” I took two steps to catch up with her. The blanket she kept over her shoulders was wrapped tight around her arms.

  “Wait!” I called again, not sure why I was intent on getting this girl to talk to me. Clearly she wasn’t all there. I guess it was her pregnant stomach that had piqued my determination. “You asked me a question back there.” We were nearing the end of the block. My car was the other direction. “Who are you?”

  “Get away,” she hissed, her head snapping back over her shoulders as she growled at me.

  “Huh?”

  “I said get away. You ain’t who I thought you was.”

  “You asked me about Frankie Jean.”

  “I ain’t ask you nothing.” Her eyes darted back and forth as we crossed an intersection.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Do you know where she is?” The girl glared at me and then picked up her pace as we made it to the other side of the street. Several vacant homes lined this block, windows broken, doorways covered by thin sheets of raw lumber. A curtain hung from an upstairs window of one of them, I noticed. Odd detail, odd timing.

  “Is she in there?” I pointed.

  “No!” The girl nearly hit my hand. “Don’t do that. Don’t point.”

  “She’s in there, isn’t she?”

&n
bsp; The girl stopped in her tracks and turned to face me. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

  “I know that you stay at the shelter.”

  “No, I absolutely do not. Not anymore. This is my home.” She grinned and waved toward the vacant home with the curtain in the upstairs window. She smiled as if she were pointing to a dream home on the HGTV channel. “This is my abandominium, as my boyfriend likes to call it.”

  “Oh, that’s . . . unique. Nice.” I nodded and played along with her show of pride. The girl had to have some serious mental issues I decided.

  “You know good and well this ain’t nice.”

  Okay, maybe she wasn’t mental. Just not in a good place in life. We both stopped smiling.

  “I wasn’t saying . . . Never mind.” I sighed. “Does Frankie Jean live there with you and your boyfriend?”

  The girl glared at me, so much so that I took a couple of steps back.

  “I don’t know no Frankie Jean,” she whispered, “and you don’t either. Not if you know what’s good for you.” She turned toward the home, nearly ran toward it. I noticed a basement window facing the street that had no lumber over it.

  The entrance.

  “What’s your name?” I called out to the girl as she bent down. I wondered how she would get all of her arms and legs and swollen belly through such a small hole. She stood back up and looked at me.

  “My name is Amber.” Her eyes bore into mine as if she was searching, searching. The blanket around her shoulders loosened. There was something on her arm, I noticed. It had been hidden by the frayed blue threads that fought to keep her warm.

  I didn’t know what she had on her arm. And, I had no good reason for following her. She didn’t seem to be looking for help or services. Leon would absolutely go crazy if he knew that I’d done this.

  “Take care of yourself, Amber.” I turned to leave, took a few steps.

  “Wait!” A whine broke through her voice. I turned around to see that she was taking off of her arm whatever it was that had been hidden by the blanket. “If you see her again, can you give this back to her? Tell her I kept it safe just like she asked.”

  A black handbag.

  I recognized it from a distant memory.

  My wedding day, the woman tapping on the glass. Sweet Violet, or whatever her name was, had that same bag hanging from her arms.

  I didn’t want to touch it, but the girl, Amber, held it out to me. I opened the plastic bag of dirty clothes, the housecoat and slippers, and let the girl drop it in.

  “Thank you.”

  Before I could fully understand or make sense of how she did it, she disappeared into the hole in the basement window.

  “All I wanted to do was give this woman back her things.” I shook my head as I turned back toward my parked car, now two blocks away. In the moments that I had followed the young girl, the street had become abuzz with new activity. The coroner had just arrived and the body of Ms. Marta was being wheeled away. The body bag on the gurney had brought the gawkers back out in full force, I realized as I pushed my way through the crowd that had seemed to grow in seconds.

  Where were all these people before? And you mean to tell me that there wasn’t a single witness to the crime?

  I passed a trashcan on my way to my car, and I set the bag of belongings on top. But that black handbag, and Amber’s wild eyes, and desperate plea, and promise to keep it safe . . .

  “What am I doing?” I sighed at myself as I picked the bag back up and headed to my car. Too much activity was happening in and around the shelter. I’d come back another day to return it. I’d worked with enough homeless people to know that even the most meager and humble of belongings could be all that matters in the world.

  Sweet Violet, or whoever she was, would be back, I was certain. She’d wanted Amber to safeguard her purse, so she’d be back.

  I started my car, aware that my stomach had settled down for the first time all day.

  Spoke too soon.

  As I looked around my car for a bag, a cup, a container, anything I could use as an emergency bucket if need be, something else caught my eye.

  The young man I’d first talked to when I came upon the scene.

  He was walking the opposite direction away from the crowd, a cigarette still hanging from his lips. I watched as he walked up to a black sedan car, opened the back door, slowly slipped on a black jacket, and thrust a black baseball cap low over his ears, covering his eyes. He walked around to the driver side door.

  The entire scene looked familiar.

  I thought about the man I’d seen in the emergency room, who’d left before checking in, who’d gone out of sight before I could point him out to anyone else. I thought about the dark car I’d seen about a block away from the shelter when I’d dropped off Frankie Jean, as Sister Marta had called her, in front of the shelter early that morning.

  My gut told me that the young boy I’d talked to, the male in the corner of the ED, the driver of the car, were one and the same. My gut told me this and my gut was rarely wrong.

  A million and ten questions jammed my mind as my gut also told me to hurry up and get the heck out of there and never return.

  Except that I still had that woman’s belongings.

  I groaned as I started my car and finally headed back home. Leon wasn’t going to like any of this.

  My gut was rarely wrong.

  Chapter 9

  “You can tell a lot about a person by their liquor. What they drink, who they drink it with, when they drink it, if they even drink at all. Says a lot. What you can’t always tell is the why. Why would anyone want to throw some burning liquid down their throats just to stumble around like a rag doll or laugh out loud like a fool? I never did understand that.”

  She leaned in close to me, her hot, rank breath dizzying as we sat together on a bench in the War Memorial Plaza, the expansive grassy area in front of city hall. “As for me, I only drink on two occasions. To toast life. And to mark death. You, of all people, should appreciate the spirituality of my chosen drinking times.” She chuckled at my raised eye. “Didn’t Jesus have a sip a wine ’fore he went on out to die? Here, I got some Old Grand-Dad. I’ll drink. You pray.”

  She took out a small bottle of bourbon whiskey. I sat there, stunned, confused. And, as always, confounded by what she said and concerned about what would come next. “Oh, don’t get upset none, sugar.” She opened the flask and poured it out on the ground, letting the brown liquid trickle over a small patch of dead grass.

  “Some people get drunk off of liquor. I only get drunk off of love. That’s more dangerous, you know. Loving a man can leave you tipsy, walking around like a ragged fool, tripping over your own feet, landing in your own vomit. You’re left with the aftertaste of tears once he’s gone and have nothing to show for your high but an empty, empty bottle.” She looked at the bottle in her hand, turned it right side up. She held it up to one eye, examining the remaining drops of whiskey running down the sides of the flask. “Bet you don’t know nothing about that kind of intoxication, sugar.” She burst into laughter, and then quieted into a bitter silence. “Bet you don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Sienna, wake up. You’re due back in court in an hour.” His lips nudged my earlobe; his hands ran over my full belly. A kick responded to his touch.

  The dreams.

  Seemed like all the events of the past seven months replayed over and over again in my dreams, interrupting my sleep now that the court case had finally begun.

  You’re due. Leon’s words hung heavy in my ears. I felt my eyelids flutter against his warm cheek. His toenails accidentally scraped my ankle as he swung his legs out of the bed.

  “Is it really seven already? Why are you waking me up so early? I can get ready in fifteen minutes,” I groaned, though I counted it a blessing that my husband was allowed to be my alarm clock. The state’s attorney willingly agreed to let Leon stay with me in my hotel room by the courthouse. The room was for my protection fr
om the media madhouse and Leon was my protector, in more ways than one.

  “She shouldn’t be by herself this late in the pregnancy. She’s almost into her third trimester and the events of the past few months have been strain enough without her having to worry about staying alone in a barely secured room,” he argued when the state’s attorney’s office agreed to the room. The room across the street from the courthouse was not just for convenience.

  The circus over the last few months had been real, cameras flashing nearly everywhere I went.

  With the court case finally starting, the invasion had become even more out of control. I couldn’t wait for another story to take over the news circuit. The triple murder trial, the gory details that accompanied it, and my role as a witness had headlined the local news for weeks.

  “Roman said he’ll be in town today.” Leon stood in front of the dresser mirror, his hand smoothing over his bald head. I could tell he was debating whether to take out his razor. His quick glance at the wall clock told me he was deciding whether he had time.

  The little details of being married, the observations, the unspoken routines . . . I never imagined falling in love with the boring nuances.

  “Roman called you?” I sat up in the bed, my body afloat in a sea of white, down-filled pillows. As my brain tried to catch up, my heart sank to a lower depth. Roman. I thought of my last real conversation with him and squeezed my eyes shut to keep a tear from falling out of them.

  “He would have been here yesterday for the first day of your testimony, he said.” Leon’s eyes never left the mirror as he now rubbed the slight stubble on his neck. “But he promised that he’ll be here this morning.”

  “Did he say anything else about . . .” My words trailed off and Leon’s eyes locked with mine in the mirror, his hand frozen on his neck, behind his ear. I looked away first.

  “Alisa wants to meet you in the lobby right at eight.” Leon began fussing over his facial and head hair again. “She wants to go over your testimony again.”

  “I’m going with the black suit this time.” I gave him a half smile as I headed to the bathroom to begin getting ready.