An Order of Coffee and Tears (10 page)

“Gabby, do I look
that
different? I mean, I’ve got some make-up on, and had my hair done. I wanted to stop in and see you guys,” Suzette’s voice sang out in a surprise. And, as I looked at my friend, I found my eyes wandering to study different places. You know the ones. The place where there was a deep cut on her lip. And the place above her cheek that swelled and had blackened her eye. But they were clear. In fact, there was nothing there at all. Even the flower-petal bruises on her arm had disappeared. Like the winter storm, they were just a memory.

I’d seen enough by now to know that the bruises and the cuts healed, but the damage done was deeper. It was rooted in a place that make-up and heels and a nice dress couldn’t cover up. Suzette was my friend, though, and I was happy that she was happy. She was beautiful; a stunner, as Ms. Potts said a few more times.

“Oh my gosh, Suzette, you look amazing! We almost didn’t recognize you walking in here and looking like that. Did we?” I complimented, and turned to Clark and Mr. Thurmon. They continued to stand statuesque, their mouths agape, and shaking an agreeable
no
to my question. I looked for the drool to slip from their mouths, but it didn’t.

“Okay, boys, you can close your yaps, now.”

Mr. Thurmon blinked a comical flurry of his eyes, and giggled. “You look very beautiful. Special occasion?” he asked.

“We’re going to a dinner party – a celebration. And then later, I have some news. It’s a surprise for him,” she gleamed. “He is going to be so happy!”

Suzette twirled around for the men, smiling with an elegance that was so very fitting for her. There was a glow and confidence that made me happy to see it. She deserved a night to be a queen, a night to be waited and doted on. I was happy for her. We all were.

Suzette was back in the diner later that evening. I’d hoped I wouldn’t see her again. Not tonight, anyway. I think we all hoped we wouldn’t see her again. I’d hoped that the night she told us about would be hers. A fresh memory, a good memory. A memory that she could draw on when she needed to smile. That is what I had hoped for her. But that wasn’t what happened.

When Suzette entered the diner that evening, her hair was a twisted mess. Some of it had been pulled and ripped out. Just above her left ear, a large patch of her hair was missing. The color of her scalp stood out bright against the red of her hair, and was covered with dots of blood that had bubbled and dried. She repeatedly tried to cover her exposed head with some of her longer hair, but, after a minute, it would fall back into place.

The cloudy pearls that draped across her neckline were gone. The elegance and beauty of Suzette’s dress was lost. The ripped and torn green fabric from below her neck line hinted to us the dress’ secrets of what had happened. From the top of her shoulder and down her left arm, a long patch of her skin was scraped away. Some of her skin remained torn open and bleeding. Blood traveled down, and dripped from her elbow, leaving crimson spots around her feet. It was a huge rash of scratches. Tiny stones sat embedded in her skin, with blood pushing around them. Some of the torn skin was beginning to weep a clear wetness, and scab over.

Suzette wasn’t crying, or telling us that it was her fault. Suzette didn’t say much of anything, at all. I think it was the silence that scared me. We’d seen her beaten before, far worse than this, in fact. But always, she talked to us, and let us talk to her. Her hand trembled, and her fingers felt like ice. It was cold outside, and she had nothing on but her ruined evening gown. I wondered how far she’d walked. She was just a pale version of the beautiful magazine cover that’d earlier come in to say hello. Her lips were a gray shade of blue, and it was then that I noticed how pale she actually was. While her skin was fair, Suzette looked pallid, almost ashen, with an empty stare in her eyes.

“Suzette, girl… can you tell us what happened to you?” Ms. Potts asked in a concerned voice. With a small towel and clean water, I started to wash the blood and what I thought might be road gravel from her shoulder.

“Suzette, are you hurt anywhere else?” Ms. Potts asked again, sounding like one of those shows on television with the emergency room doctors asking twenty questions. “Girl’s hurtin´ the way no woman should hurt,” Ms. Potts mumbled as she worked her way around Suzette.

When Suzette lifted her chin to look at us, a broken, thin voice escaped her lips, “I think my baby is dead,” was all she said, and then moved her eyes in a blank stare to the floor,

Both Ms. Potts and I looked down. We didn’t see anything, except the blood from her arm. When Ms. Potts pulled up on Suzette’s emerald green dress, we saw that Suzette was standing in a tiny puddle of blood. Thin lines of bright red cut through the white of her long legs. A new line of blood ran from the insides of her thigh, and then covered the gemstones of her right shoe. Another line formed, and ran past my fingers. It covered the top of her other shoe, washing out more of the gemstones with her blood. We wasted no time. I yelled to Clark to call for an ambulance. Suzette saw the blood, too, and began to tremble all over. From her head to legs, she shook, and grabbed at her middle.

“Girl’s in shock,” Ms. Potts said as we took hold of Suzette’s arms, expecting her to faint. But she didn’t.

“My baby,” she murmured, and then began to scream. She continued to scream until the ambulance arrived. By then, Suzette lost any of the remaining strength she’d used to get to Angela’s Diner, and collapsed.

A day later, we learned through some of our regulars that the official report from the hospital named a Suzette Wilkerson as having sustained injury after falling down a set of steps. Of her injuries, none were life-threatening. In addition, Suzette Wilkerson suffered a miscarriage; she was three months pregnant.

Ms. Potts and I looked at each other, and considered what the report said. Could she have fallen? Certainly a fall down some steps could cause a miscarriage. But, if she had fallen, then why did she come to the diner? Why didn’t her husband rush her to the hospital? And her hair, what had happened to her hair? The debate lasted just a minute. We looked at each other. Although we didn’t know exactly (we’d learn that later), we knew her injuries were by the hand of her husband.

We didn’t see Suzette again for almost a month. By then, she was well enough to stop in for coffee. A few injuries remained, some puffiness and scratches and bruises, but nothing we weren’t already familiar with. She pulled and pinned her hair over to one side in way that anyone who didn’t see her that night wouldn’t know that she was hiding a shallow patch of new hair trying to grow in. All of us greeted her at the door. Even Clark came around front and gave her a peck on the cheek, and a big hug. The three of us stood there with Suzette, and we circled around the same comments about leaving him that had been said a hundred times before. Suzette started nodding her head. She nodded, and then said
I know, I know,
at least a half dozen times. As we continued to spout more of the same, she finally hollered a stern
I know,
and then followed it with a quick smile. She was ready.

Unlike other times, she didn’t defend her husband. She didn’t stick up for him, or justify what he’d done. If anything, she sounded cold, maybe callous. She was different. It was easy to understand why. Who wouldn’t understand that? She was different because the life she was carrying inside her for more than three months was gone. A new kind of pain was in her eyes. It was loss. She made a decision that night. She was ready.

It was a fairy-tale evening. We were witnesses to the start of it, and to the end of it. Suzette and husband were the handsome couple at the party. It was a high-society invitation-only gathering of some of Philadelphia’s most influential people. Suzette’s husband, Jim, had been made partner at his law firm earlier that week. This was a celebration for him.

The celebration with her husband felt fresh and new, like it had when they first met. Jim was a gentleman, attentive, touchy, and loving. He wanted to dance with his wife, and he told her how much he loved to hold her. The evening took Suzette back to when the two of them were first falling in love; when it was simple and easy, and when a kiss from him carried her heart for the evening, and sometimes into the next day. He showed a side of him that she remembered falling in love with. They were twenty stories up in the sky, looking out across the Philadelphia skyline, when he held her and told her he loved her. She wanted to get him home and into bed to make love to him all night, the way they used to.

Driving home, she’d saved the biggest news of the evening for her husband. She waited until they were alone, when it could be more intimate, and so that they could remember the moment for the rest of their lives. They were driving down Frankford Avenue, and had just crossed over Pennypack Park. Suzette unbuckled her seat belt, leaned over the car’s center console, and whispered in his ear that she loved him. When he smiled, she leaned in closer, and pressed her lips against him with a kiss. She whispered that he was going to be a father. His smile disappeared. His expression went flat, and then his face erupted. He shoved the car’s brake pedal to the floor, throwing Suzette into the dashboard, and the windshield, which spidered a web of cracks that stretched and bulged.

Dazed, Suzette pushed and pulled her body down, and fell back into the passenger seat. Her ears were ringing, and her vision blurred. She could make out her husband’s voice, and his screaming amidst the low hum stinging inside her head. He was screaming that she’d done this on purpose, that she’d gotten pregnant just when she knew he’d been made partner. But, of course, none of this was true. Suzette couldn’t have known about his promotion – not three months ago.

“When he took hold of my hair, and pulled, I knew.”

“Knew what?” Ms. Potts asked.

“I knew it was over. I knew that I had to leave him. He pulled my head down, and punched, and kicked me!” she hollered, as tears filled her eyes and ran down her face. “I mean, who does that? Who punches their pregnant wife?” She’d told us almost everything, but reliving it was a lot for anyone. All of us stayed huddled at the counter as Suzette recounted what happened that night. Even Clark joined to listen.”

“Ma-Ma’am, your hus-husband, he know where you are?”

Suzette shook her head. She wiped at a tear in her eye, and shook her head again. “He thinks I am visiting my family out west. I told him that I needed time, and that I’d call when I call. He was so mad, he’s still mad, and trying to blame me…” she stopped as an errant sob caught her breath.

“I wish I could smoke in here,” she revealed, and laughed. “Boy, that’d set him off.” Suzette then became very still, and narrowed her eyes. “Do you
know
what he did? That
son-of-a-bitch
, do you?” she spat out. “When I saw my hair in his hand, I knew he was going to hurt me some more. He was going to hurt my baby.
Our
baby. I knew it, and I knew I had to run. When he wasn’t looking, just for a second, I threw a punch and landed my hand on his face as best I could. I’m not strong, but I caught him off guard. I pulled up on the car’s door handle, but it was locked. I bloodied his nose. I bloodied it good, and thought that maybe it was broken. And then he got so loud, he was screaming at me, and spitting blood from his lips. When I got the door unlocked, I pushed and got the door open, and then got my feet under me, and… and he hit the gas. My hand was still on the door! The car pulled me straight up into the air,” her voice faded, and sounded breathy. Ms. Potts motioned for some water, and I eagerly set up a glass in front of Suzette.

After she sipped at the glass, she nodded, and then continued, “And you want to know what I thought about when my body was flying through the air? I remember this as clear as this glass of water in my hands. I thought about having a husband that I’d give my life for, and for our new baby that I was carrying inside of me. I thought that our child was going to solve us, cure us, and finally make us whole. But, you know what? You can’t cure a man like that. You can’t cure someone who’s broken deep down. That’s what I thought about while I was flying through the air,” she stopped and thumbed the glass of water, pushing the sweat that beaded up on the outside.

“I landed so hard on my shoulder… so hard. And my baby,” she paused, and reached down with her hand over her belly. “My baby landed so hard, too. I can still smell the tires, the burning rubber. He was racing away like a
fucking
coward,” she stopped talking, then and sat there with the glass of water, as we did our best to console her. When we tried to offer some words to her, or food, or anything, Suzette waved them off, and only asked if she could sit with us for a while. She stayed with us the rest of our shift.

9

Now that I’d come to believe Jarod Patreu was interested in me, Thursdays had changed entirely. First, I found that I was going to the restroom and looking in the mirror a lot. Second, I caught myself sneaking peaks at my reflection in one of the toasters. The bent metal of the toaster played back a funny, warped face, smiling with huge eyes, a pinched nose, and monster lips. I blinked, and the face winked at me. I giggled at the image; it was comical, and I needed the laugh. And third, I was nervous. For the last year, I worked in the diner with Jarod, but didn’t see him: not like a girl would look at a boy. Apparently, he did see me, and my heart swelled at the thought as my palms went clammy.

Could I be with a boy? Should I? I couldn’t help but wonder if my new fondness for Jarod was genuine, or if it was because Ms. Potts put the idea in my head. Ideas can sit and fester, and turn into something entirely new and different. I could be annoyed or mad at her, but I wasn’t. I found that I liked to think my affection for Jarod was
more
about me than anything else.