Sweet Violet and a Time for Love (5 page)

“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?”

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.

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.

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.”

“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 from 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.

“So you are going to listen to your husband for once?” He winked. I rolled my eyes. “Hey,” he called to me just before I shut the door. “You did good yesterday. It will all be over soon.”

I smiled back at him and then shut the door behind me, listened to the click as it locked shut, leaned against it, and stared at myself in the lighted mirror that hung over the sink.

Forty years old and I still had it.

My hair was crafted in an elaborate updo that took advantage of my natural curls, the occasional strands of gray blending in with the highlights of auburn and light brown, my new experimental look.

My eyebrows were arched at a perfect angle that highlighted my almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones. Though my stomach poked out due to my pregnancy, my arms and legs still held true to the fit frame I'd worked myself into over the past year.

A lot can happen in a year, a truth that my swollen belly now testified. This time last year I was trapped in a dead-end relationship. I was angry, bitter, and hurt. Missing Leon. Now I was married to the one man I knew loved me for sure, and I was nearly eight months pregnant with his baby.

I looked at my stomach, and though the silvery stretch marks had seemed to multiply across my abdomen overnight like a crude spider web, I promised to love and appreciate each thread.

These marks showed growth in ways that superseded my vocabulary.

And to think I had been initially afraid to tell Leon about our child.
Our child.
The words brought fear, excitement, anxiety, joy all in one nauseating second. I thought about the day I told him that I was pregnant. That day had held all those feelings and some bonus feelings too.

Confusion. Dread.

I'd learned a long time ago to trust my gut. And my gut that day, in addition to being worn out and weary from first-trimester nausea, told me that there was more to Marta Jefferson's tragic murder than the yellow police tape and the crowd of grieving women convening for Sunday chapel service.

A lot can happen in a short amount of time.

The black suit. I held it out in front of me, sighed, and put it on.

A year ago, I would have never imagined that I'd be married, pregnant.

And on the witness stand for a trial I hadn't seen coming.

“Sienna? You done in there?” Leon's voice and knock on the bathroom door hurried me along. Even outside of my dreams, it seemed like I found myself rehashing and replaying many different memories from the past few months as I prepared for the court case.

“I'm coming,” I answered, adding one last coat of wine-colored lipstick to my bottom lip. The black suit I wore looked tidy, efficient, and all business. Even my pregnancy looked official. I rubbed my belly, smiled at the kick that was almost eight months strong. Leon had been right. I should have listened to him yesterday and worn this black suit then instead of the bright yellow ditty that had me looking like a pregnant bumblebee.

“Look at my wife.” Leon nodded as I stepped out of the bathroom. His chin rested between his thumb and index fingers as his lips curled up into a delicious smile. “Mmmmm. I've never seen a forty-year-old pregnant lady look as good as you.”

“We should be packing for our anniversary trip, not dealing with this madness.”

“It's okay, baby. We're together and your testimony should be finished today.” He smiled and I smiled back, but we both knew that was wishful thinking at best. Seemed like my every word was the heartbeat of the case, for both the prosecutor and the defense teams. No way would I be cleared to leave anytime soon.

“I'm sorry, Leon. I should have listened to you and never gotten involved.”

“The past is the past and the present is the present. We'll get through today and we'll get to our trip.” He turned from me, looked out a window to the street eight stories below. I wished that I could see his face, read his features. I heard his words, but I could not make out the tone underneath them.

“Hopefully this case won't drag along any longer than necessary and mess with our flight plans. Dr. Baronsen promised to give me a note allowing me to fly as long as I'm not nine months.” I realized that I had turned away as well. “Again, I'm sorry. I should have left it alone.”

He left the window and began heading toward the door for the trip across the street. I could already see the growing swarm of journalists and onlookers crowding around the courthouse.

“Leon?” I didn't bother to hide the angst from my voice. “I'm not convinced that Sweet Violet had nothing to do with the murders. You still don't think I should tell anyone about her?”

“Sienna.” He'd stopped walking. His back was to me. “Please, for once, listen to me. Leave it alone. That homeless woman has nothing to do with anything. You've done all you can for her. Now, for your sanity, for me, for us, please leave Sweet Violet alone and out of all this.” He turned to face me and I saw the strain in his eyes. “Just stick to your testimony, which is the truth about what you know for sure, and this whole thing will be over soon. Please, I'm asking as your husband. I'm asking as your friend.”

I gave a slow nod, stepped toward him, toward his outstretched hands. I let myself fall into his embrace.

“You smell good, baby,” I murmured as I pressed my face, my nose into his shoulder. Dressed in an olive green suit and smelling like spice and body wash, I wanted him to know that I had no problems leaning on his shoulder, that I needed him, respected his thoughts, feelings, and, that, like him, I didn't want to delay the current drama by introducing the unknown variables of Sweet Violet. I didn't even know where she was.

Sugar. That's what was missing from his scent.

He hadn't been at his bakery in three weeks, ever since the media firestorm went truly frenetic with the start of the case.

And it was all my fault.

“Thank you for your support with all of this, Leon,” was the only thing I could say.

“Of course, Sienna. Of course.” He patted my arms and stepped away. “We need to go before that prosecutor, Alisa Billy, calls up here for you, right? Before Alisa the Billy Goat Gruff starts lighting up your cell phone. She's worse than that nurse at Metro Community, KeeKee.”

KeeKee. Metro Community. The night when it all began. Why had I agreed to carry that pager?

“Let's go, Leon. I'm ready.” I let his arms drop off of me then I picked up my briefcase filled with notes I didn't need and marched to the door. I needed this day, this trial, and this craziness to be over.

Just as I reached for the door handle, a knock sounded, sending me back two steps. Did someone know I was here? I gasped, knowing that housekeeping and room service usually announced themselves along with a knock, just for this reason.

Leon, in one motion, ran to the door ahead of me, set me behind him, and peered out the peephole, a hand reaching under his suit jacket.

Was he carrying a gun?

That realization startled me more than the knock at the door. If the biggest threat was the media, why would he be carrying a gun?

Leon stepped away from the peephole and looked at me, biting his lower lip. He unlocked the door, turned the handle, pulled it open, and stepped away.

“Mom.”

“Roman.”

We spoke simultaneously and then said nothing at all.

“I'm going to head down now and let Alisa Billy know you'll be down in a little while.” Leon left, closing the door behind him.

My husband, my advisor, my protector, and self-proclaimed bodyguard. Even he had enough sense to leave the two of us alone.

As I stared into my son's narrowing eyes, and felt my own eyes narrowing back at him, I knew that we were going to need more than a few moments just to get past hello.

Roman, my Roman. Before there was Leon or social work degrees or anything else, there had just been me and Roman, clinging to each other, surviving pain and devastation from his absent father, confiding, plotting, planning, arguing, and forgiving. We'd had our ups and downs over the twenty-one years of his life. He'd run away once; twice if you counted his decision to go to college on the West Coast to form a relationship with my first husband's “other” family, against my initial wishes.

But we'd made it through all of these storms together, stronger, closer.

Now as we stood facing each other, I knew both of us wondered how we would get past the chasm that had formed over his winter break. It was now spring and we still hadn't mapped a bridge.

Over what was supposed to be Christmas dinner, Leon and I had shared our news of the upcoming birth with him. Roman, for his part, had broken news to us that shattered every perception I had of him; that made me question if he'd gotten a single message I'd tried to instill in him when I labored in the trenches as a single mother; that made me question his sanity.