by Lynne Hinton
“I rest my case.”
“Well, even if I wasn’t going to try to find a companion for myself, somebody I could really love, I don’t think that means I should settle for somebody I would never pick, somebody I don’t love.”
“George loved Roxie. You loved Roxie, and Roxie loved both of you. I think that’s enough of a foundation for a marriage right there. The love you shared for the same woman makes you somehow connected. So why not renew the friendship you had at one time with George and find out why Roxie loved him? Maybe you’ll find something there that gives you a little bit of joy. At the very least, you’d feel closer to the one woman you have loved. And after all, she would want you to have her stuff.” Beatrice took a sip of her tea and pointed again to the sugar.
Jessie reached over and took out three packets. She shook her head again as she handed them to Beatrice. “I don’t agree with you, Beatrice. Louise deserves to have real love in her life as much as anyone. I don’t think she should settle for anything less in a relationship. This just doesn’t seem right.”
“I don’t disagree with you, Jessie,” Beatrice noted, pouring the sugar into her glass of iced tea. “But Louise isn’t ever going to pursue someone to love. So why not take the full benefits that you and I get in our marriages from somebody who has pursued her?” She looked over at Louise. “You can’t tell me that you haven’t really considered this. Otherwise you would have sent George packing as soon as he asked and you’d be laughing about this whole thing instead of telling us about it as if you’re looking for an answer.” She took a sip. “So tell Jessie the truth. You have really thought about it, haven’t you?”
Jessie looked at Louise and waited for an answer but Louise simply hesitated and, shaking her head, just glanced away.
Party Mix
½ pound salted Spanish peanuts
½ pound salted nuts
3¾ cups slim pretzels
3 cups bite-size shredded wheat squares
5½ cups doughnut-shaped oat cereal
4 cups bite-size rice cereal squares
½ pound butter, melted
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1½ teaspoons garlic salt
1½ teaspoons salt
Combine peanuts, nuts, pretzels, and cereals in a large roaster. Add melted butter, Worcester-shire sauce, garlic salt, and salt. Mix together thoroughly. Bake at 250 degrees for 2 hours, stirring gently with a wooden spoon every 15 minutes. Store in sealed, air-tight jars. Makes 4 quarts.
—Charlotte Stewart
Chapter Six
The phone call from Officer Donovan Sanchez to St. Mary’s women’s shelter was not a social call. Maria answered the phone and immediately transferred it to Charlotte. Just by the tone of his voice, by the way he asked to speak to the executive director, Maria could tell this was entirely business. She didn’t know for sure what the Gallup Police Department was doing calling the shelter but she had her ideas, and she knew it wasn’t about a police officer asking someone to go out on a date. She got up from her desk to listen because she knew arrangements were going to need to be made for another battered woman being referred to the shelter.
“Charlotte Stewart speaking.” Charlotte was working at her desk, trying to finish the end-of-the-month reports. They were due in a couple of days and she was pushing to meet the deadline.
“It’s Donovan,” and he paused for only a second. “We have a victim here at the station. She’s pretty messed up but she won’t go to the hospital. You got room?”
“Of course,” Charlotte answered, surprised to hear from Donovan and with such a professional request. It wasn’t unusual to hear from the Gallup police, but generally one of the female officers assigned to follow up domestic abuse cases called. She had never dealt with Donovan professionally but she was glad to hear his voice even if it was business. “And I’ll contact our on-call nurse to see if she can come by to check her out,” she added.
“You going to be there in an hour?” he asked.
Charlotte saw the clock. It was almost five P.M. “Yeah, I’ll probably be here all night,” she replied. “Are you bringing her?”
“I am now,” he responded.
Charlotte couldn’t help herself, even with the news of another battered woman coming to the shelter; she smiled. Officer Sanchez was definitely making an impact on her. “Then I’ll see you soon.”
“Yep, I need to fill out some reports and assign another officer to go and pick up the husband, the perpetrator,” he added, “but we should be there in about an hour.”
“We’ll be ready,” Charlotte noted, and then asked, “What’s her name?”
“Carla Fairhope,” he replied.
Charlotte waited for a second, thinking that the name sounded vaguely familiar.
“Carla Sanchez Fairhope,” he added, and Charlotte sat up in her chair.
There was a pause in the conversation.
“It’s my ex-wife.”
Charlotte was at a loss for words. She looked up and saw Maria was standing in the doorway. She wasn’t sure how much the other woman had heard.
“I’ll explain when I get there,” he said, his voice softer than before.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Thanks,” Donovan said, and hung up the phone.
“Señor ten piedad!” Maria was making the sign of the cross. She put down her hands and waited for instructions.
“We have another resident coming. Donovan—” She stopped. “Officer Sanchez,” Charlotte said, opting for a more professional tone, “will be bringing her in about an hour. He said that she was in pretty bad shape but that she won’t go to the hospital. So call Laurie and ask if she can come over to check her out.”
Maria nodded and turned around to go and make the call to one of the nurses who volunteered her services to the shelter.
“Wait, Maria, there’s something else.” Charlotte stopped her.
Maria turned back to face Charlotte. She waited for the additional instructions. She wondered if there were children coming as well and whether they had room for a family.
“It’s somebody you know,” Charlotte said.
Maria crossed herself again and braced herself for the news.
“It’s Carla Fairhope,” she announced. “Carla Sanchez Fairhope.”
Maria shook her head as if she was unsure of the name, and then she immediately recognized it.
“Is this going to be okay for you?” Charlotte asked. She knew that Maria knew the family but she wasn’t really sure how close they were.
Maria was still surprised by the news. She shook her head. “I don’t know the Fairhopes,” she said. “I know Isabella and Daniel. I don’t know Daniel’s family.”
Charlotte nodded. She thought she remembered the line of family members that Maria had mentioned a week or so earlier but she wasn’t sure. She also understood that Maria knew a number of the clients who came to St. Mary’s, so that really wasn’t the main issue. She was concerned mostly because they both now understood that this was Charlotte’s new boyfriend’s ex-wife.
Charlotte never worried about the issue of confidentiality with her number one volunteer. Maria had never divulged names of clients or ever spoken to anyone about who was staying at St. Mary’s. She understood that not only were the identities of the residents not to be shared, but neither was the location of the shelter. Maria never even told anybody that she volunteered there. So Charlotte wasn’t concerned about Maria telling anyone that Carla Fairhope was checking in, but she did think that Maria needed to know who was coming and to decide whether she wanted to be there when Carla arrived.
“I have no business in your relationships. A woman has been beaten, and she needs shelter and care and protection. That is all I intend to provide her when she comes.” Maria appeared very serious.
Charlotte nodded in return and Maria left to make the necessary calls. Charlotte made her way to the bedrooms in the back of the house. Two of the residents
were busy cleaning.
“We have somebody else joining us,” Charlotte reported.
The two women turned to Charlotte.
Iris, an older woman, still recovering from the bruises she received two weeks earlier from her grandson, shook her head. “Jesus Almighty, how many of us are there out there?” she asked.
“More than you’ll ever hear about,” Darlene replied. She was younger than Iris, about forty, and had just escaped from her second abusive marriage. She had been at the shelter for six months and was still trying to find a new place to live.
“Can you help me make the spare bed in your room, Iris?” Charlotte asked. It was unusual for the shelter since they were almost always full to capacity, but on that particular day they actually had an available bed. Earlier that week, they had enjoyed a good-bye party for a previous resident named Lois and her two children. Lois was one of the lucky ones and could stay in the area. Her abusive boyfriend had been sentenced to a number of years in prison, and Lois had found a job at the casino in Sky City and a place to live just on the outskirts of the pueblo.
Iris had been in the room by herself only a couple of nights but she, like all of the other residents, knew resources at St. Mary’s were to be shared. There were always more women in need than there was space, but the residents, glad to be safe, never complained.
“There are still two drawers empty too,” Iris said. “And if she needs more, I can move my stuff under the bed.”
“I don’t think our newest resident has much stuff,” Charlotte responded. “She’s coming from the police station, and the officer said she was pretty messed up.” Charlotte sighed. “So she probably just ran for her life, and you know what that means.”
“She ain’t got nothing but the clothes on her back,” Darlene answered.
Charlotte nodded, and Iris shook her head, making a kind of tsk tsk tsk sound.
“I just can’t believe that this kind of thing happens like it does. My husband never laid a hand on me, not in forty-three years of marriage, and I will never understand what happened to my grandson that made him snap like he did.” Iris reached up and touched the bruise that was still visible above her eye. She had required twelve stitches to sew up the gash that had been the result of being hit by a baseball bat. Her grandson was twenty, still living at home, and had been charged with assault and battery and drug possession. She was brought to St. Mary’s because her daughter and son-in-law said that they couldn’t keep her and their other two children. She had nowhere else to go when she was released from the hospital. Charlotte was trying to help Iris find suitable housing at a retirement home, but she wanted to get the older woman healed up before moving her into her own apartment.
“Your grandson was on crack,” Darlene noted, remembering her housemate’s story when she arrived. “Drugs will make a person violent and crazy.” She shook her head. “I should know because I been on both ends of that kind of violence.” Darlene was a recovering addict. She had been in and out of group homes, halfway houses, and women’s shelters since she left home at sixteen. But she was proud of herself because she celebrated ten years of sobriety and being clean. She and her second husband had quit drugs at the same time, and she always thought his violent streak had to do with his use of cocaine. She almost died the last time he threw her down the stairs at the apartment where they lived, and after that last time, she finally quit making excuses for him and moved into the shelter.
“Well, let’s try and get this bed made, and, Iris, the nurse is coming to have a look at our newest guest, so you may need to let them have the room until after dinner. And then she may need a little time alone.” Charlotte glanced at her watch. She was trying to remember what else she needed to do before Carla’s arrival.
“We’ll take care of it, Sister Charlotte. You go do your executive director work. We’ll make the bed and clean up a little in that room.” Darlene winked and nodded.
Most of the women called Charlotte “Sister Charlotte” because the majority of them had never met a woman minister, and it was just easier to identify her as a nun. Charlotte never corrected them because she actually enjoyed being called “Sister.” It made her feel connected to the women as more than just an executive director or social worker. It made her feel like family.
“Thanks, Darlene,” Charlotte responded. She turned and walked back to her office. She wanted to make sure that Maria had gotten hold of the nurse and that she was going to be able to stop by.
Maria met her in the doorway to the office. “Laurie said she can be here in an hour,” she reported.
“Great,” Charlotte said. She moved over to her desk and sat down.
“Did he tell you who she was?” Maria asked.
Charlotte nodded. She knew that Maria was asking about Donovan and referring to the relationship between him and the victim, not just the woman’s name. “He told me she was his ex-wife,” she replied.
“Is he in any danger?” Maria asked.
Charlotte looked up at the volunteer. She hadn’t even considered that. Surely, she thought, the abuser knew his wife’s ex-husband. He probably even had guessed that he would be the person she ran to. What if he went looking for Donovan before the police could pick him up? she wondered. “I don’t know,” she answered. “He was sending another officer to make the arrest.”
Maria paused. “He’s bringing her here then?” she asked.
Charlotte nodded.
“You need me to do anything else before they come?” she asked.
Charlotte considered the question. “We’ll probably need some medical supplies. Can you get the first aid kit from the storage room? The big one,” she added, “the one with the large bandages. And we should probably get towels and some of the old sheets to put over the bed linens.”
“We don’t know what kind of injuries she has?” Maria asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “Donovan just said that she was pretty messed up and that she should go to the hospital.”
Maria considered this information. “I’ll get the Ace bandages from the laundry room.” She had just washed a large stack of them earlier in the day. The shelter went through lots of Ace bandages. There were always sprains and broken bones healing at St. Mary’s. “How about dinner for the others?” she asked.
“It’s Iris’s turn to cook and the groceries were picked up yesterday, so she’ll take care of that after she and Darlene have cleaned up,” Charlotte replied. “Oh, I knew I needed to be somewhere.” She shook her head, recalling a previously arranged engagement.
“What?” Maria asked.
“I need to get Martha and Denise from the bus depot.” She remembered that two of the residents were waiting to be picked up after their day of work, and then she was supposed to pick up Martha’s two children from a day care center not too far away from the depot. She glanced at her watch. She had been planning to pick them up, get the children, and then stop by a local parish to get supplies they had collected during the holidays. She had been trying to get there to pick the supplies up for weeks and just hadn’t found the opportunity. She had forgotten until just at that moment that she had made arrangements to pick things up that evening.
Maria seemed to read Charlotte’s mind. “I can get Gilbert to go to that church,” she noted. “He knows exactly where it is and he has a truck,” she volunteered. “And I’ll go get the girls.” Charlotte smiled. “You are the best!”
“Can I wait at least to see how you look at each other when he gets here with his ex-wife?” Maria asked.
Charlotte laughed. “No, because Martha and Denise will freeze out there waiting for you if you do.”
Maria nodded. “Yes, it’s true. It is cold out there. I will leave now to collect them.”
Charlotte was actually glad that Maria wasn’t going to be around when Donovan showed up. She knew it was going to be awkward. Here was her date bringing his ex-wife to the battered women’s shelter where she worked. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but she would
rather face it alone than have her friend watching his every move and then making judgments about what she thought she was seeing.
“This may be a sign,” Maria said as she gathered her coat and gloves and looked around for the keys to the van.
“What kind of sign?” Charlotte asked, seeing the keys on the edge of her desk. She picked them up and was getting ready to toss them to Maria.
“The kind that says, Peligro! Ese hombre no es para ti!”
Charlotte shook her head and pitched the keys to Maria. She was able to translate this because she had heard it from her friend a hundred times. It was the same thing Maria told every woman to say to herself once she was discharged from St. Mary’s and was thinking about dating again too soon. She had told Lois this only a few days earlier.
“Danger ahead! That man is not for you!”
Cheese Pennies
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
1 stick margarine
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1¼ teaspoons red pepper
Cream cheese and margarine. Mix flour, salt, and pepper. Add to cheese and mix well. Roll in sticks. Wrap in waxed paper. Chill 30 minutes. Slice thin. Bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Place on crackers.
—Iris T.
Chapter Seven
Charlotte was in the kitchen, helping Iris toss a salad, when Donovan arrived with Carla. She saw the headlights of the patrol car as they pulled into the driveway. She put down the knife she was using to slice tomatoes and wiped her hands on the front of her pants. “Can you finish fixing supper?” she asked Iris.
“Of course,” Iris replied. “You go on and conduct your business, Sister Charlotte.”
Charlotte smiled. “Maria will be back soon with Martha and Denise and the children. So you all go ahead and eat. Don’t wait for us. I sort of doubt our new resident will be dining with us anyway.”
