One Prayer Away (10 page)

“I hope you're right,” Mitchell whispered as he redirected his thoughts and picked up another folder from his stack. “I hope you're right.”

Nine

T
en years ago, when Beverly accepted the position of a therapist and counselor at the Houston Center for Women, she'd thought that she was just taking on a job that would fulfill her desire to help women who had been made to suffer the abuse of domestic violence. But since the destruction of her own marriage, she'd begun to see her appointment at the center as more.

Aside from the comfortable office that she occupied every day to serve those in need of mental and emotional therapy, the HCW also included a one-hundred-bed shelter where survivors of domestic violence, women and children, could live until they felt safe enough to start new, independent lives for themselves. Even with her conventional education, Beverly had, in her mind, thought of abuse as something of a more physical nature. Most of the women she saw on a daily basis had been sexually abused or, like Virtue, physically harmed at the hands of the men they once shared their lives with. But now Beverly saw abuse as much, much more.

Having had her whole world come to a crashing halt without her even seeing the brakes that would bring it there, Beverly now understood a different level of violence. For her, it seemed even deeper than emotional abuse because that was something that she was trained to know how to deal with. What Lester had done to her was so much crueler as far as Beverly was concerned. She masked her hurt well; but every now and then, like today, the heat of the invisible mask smothered her, and she had to remove it to show her true emotions. Wiping a lone tear from her cheek, Beverly took a sip from her cup of water that was left over from the lunch she'd finished nearly three hours earlier. It was room temperature, just the way she liked it.

In truth, days like this one, when she felt the full brunt of Lester's cruelty, were few and far between. But every year, at least once a year, she cried. When she thought of the evil intent behind Renee's words yesterday, a part of Beverly wished that she'd have allowed Virtue to give the girl the tongue lashing that she deserved. Beverly's education had taught her that lashing out wasn't the way to deal with these sorts of things. But appropriate or not, knowing that Renee had been hurt in some small way for the callous things she said would have certainly satisfied Beverly's human side—the side of her that grew up in the rough neighborhoods of Miami, where people like Renee were often dealt with harshly.

Prayer had indeed been the lifeline that saved Beverly from what could easily have been a total meltdown after her husband of thirty-one years left. Another tear dropped from her eyes and landed on the calendar that covered much of her desk. Today would have been their thirty-fourth anniversary, the third one that had come and gone since Lester abandoned her for a girl almost half his age. It was only on their anniversary date that Beverly cried, but unlike the early days of her ordeal, she no longer saw her tears as weakness, but as a symbol of strength. In spite of
the hurt and shame of it all, she had risen victoriously and had proven to herself as well as anyone else who doubted her ability to live independently, that she could.

Beverly often admitted to patients in her sessions that being alone was one of her greatest fears. She'd gone from depending on her parents to depending on her husband. Before Lester's desertion, Beverly had never lived alone and had never had to solely sustain herself. For the first few weeks, she'd fretted about the little things: how she would be able to pay her mortgage; how she'd function, no longer having a man to depend upon for the feeling of safety during the night hours; who would keep the car serviced and the lawn manicured? Many responsibilities that she'd never had to worry about were thrown at her all at once.

In that moment of her life, Beverly found herself understanding why many of the battered women she saw made the dangerous choice to go back to their abusers. Fear controlled them and made them believe that they
needed
these men in their lives in order to survive. Most times, it was the men who had convinced them that they were nothing without them. And in the end, no matter what Beverly told them in their conferences with her, the women chose to go back. Fear was such a controlling factor, and when Beverly finally came to the understanding that what she was feeling was fear, she was able to face it, make her prayers specific, and trust God for the strength she needed.

She hadn't seen Lester in almost three years, and the river of love that she used to have for him had turned into a cesspool a long time ago. Still, sometimes she reflected on the hurt that his downright disrespect of her had caused. When Beverly wept now, she felt as though she was not only crying for herself, but for Virtue and all eighty-eight of the women and children who currently occupied the beds at HCW. Degreed education had made Beverly
qualified to tell the women at the shelter how to go on, but divine experience had made her worthy of
showing
them.

Using a soft handkerchief, she dabbed at each eye, careful not to smudge the foundation that she'd so carefully applied that morning. Her crying cycle had ended, and Beverly found reprieve in knowing that it would be at least another year before she'd have to do it again. It would be another hour before her last client for the day would arrive, so she settled back in her chair and took advantage of the free time that she had by sorting through the mail that had been placed in her box earlier in the afternoon. None of it was urgent; it was mostly sales flyers and other advertisements. Beverly opened an envelope from Black Expressions Book Club and began flipping through the pages of their most recent catalog, searching for a book that might catch her eye. When her office closed over the approaching Christmas holiday, she'd need something to read while she sat snuggled in her favorite blanket near her fireplace.

With both her parents deceased, and since she and Lester never had any children or grandchildren, Christmas had never been a big day of celebration in Beverly's house. She usually cooked a hearty meal and she and Lester had eaten together just before going to the church to help deliver meals to the area shelters that needed them the most. When Lester first left, Beverly thought that Christmas would become a holiday that she'd be forced to spend alone, but God had brought Virtue into her life and changed all of that.

Sometimes it seemed beyond coincidence that the young, broken woman was sent to her for mending. So much about Virtue reminded Beverly of herself. It was more than the fact that they'd both endured broken marriages. Like Beverly, Virtue had gotten married during the Christmas season. Both of them had endured tragedy in their lives that forced them to face the truth about family
members and close friends. Secretly, Beverly had always wanted to be a dancer, but she'd never had the courage to try. The hips that her mother had given her were not made for dancing.

When she really thought about it, Beverly sometimes cringed at the remembrance of how, not too far in the distant past, she'd watched Dondra lead the praise dancers during worship services and been astonished. Like Virtue, Dondra's technique was masterful. But unlike Virtue, her praise was
not
genuine.

Beverly's eyes continued to search through the Black Expressions catalog, but her thoughts remained on her friend. Virtue often said that Beverly had saved her life, but sometimes Beverly thought that it was the other way around. Although she had released her anger over the situation of Lester and Dondra, Beverly hadn't quite let go of the pain. Seeing Virtue's hurt somehow made Beverly forget her own. On a daily basis she would see several ladies who still carried emotional and physical scars that their abusers had initiated, but seeing Virtue's affected Beverly differently. In an instant, Virtue became the daughter that she'd never had. She not only wanted to educate her she wanted to protect and nurture her.

Oddly though, as dear as she had come to see Virtue, Beverly could never find it within herself to be angry toward the man who had inflicted pain on her and caused the scar on her head that Virtue often spoke of. There was something about him—this man she'd never met—that made Beverly pity him and pray for him. Somehow, though Beverly never voiced it, she couldn't quite categorize Mitchell with the other abusers that she heard about during sessions with the women who shared the details of their lives with her. Almost all of the men she'd been told about constantly used their victims as punching bags or for sexual gratification. Their stories didn't match the ones she'd heard from Virtue.

Then again, perhaps Beverly's lenience toward Mitchell was because she could still see the emotional attachment that Virtue had for him. She didn't want to love him, but Beverly knew that she did. And Virtue's wasn't the addictive, misguided love that Beverly often saw in the women she counseled. Those women were lost without their abusers, and Beverly had seen them crawl back to unchanged men more times than she cared to acknowledge.

Virtue's love was different. She had freed herself from Mitchell, gotten her total life together, and had had more than one opportunity to move on in other relationships. Yet she remained single, refusing to acknowledge her love for her ex-husband, but also refusing to allow her suppressed feelings to force her to make the wrong choice. As confusing as it might be to those who had not studied the nature of the abuser and the abused, to Beverly it was clear and commendable.

A knock on the door snapped her from her place of deep thought. Beverly looked at the watch on her wrist. Her appointment was more than half an hour early. Taking a moment to clear the scattered mail from her desk, Beverly stood as she normally did before giving permission for entrance.

“Come in.” The door opened, and she was surprised at whom she saw. “Well, hello,” Beverly said as she walked around her desk to greet Virtue. “I wasn't expecting you today. Is everything all right?”

As she stepped closer, Beverly noted the redness of Virtue's eyes, and she instantly knew that something was wrong. She didn't reply, and Beverly felt Virtue melt in her arms as they embraced as though the hug was what she needed more than anything. Understanding the silent plea for support, Beverly tightened her grip and didn't press for an answer. Instead she allowed Virtue's quiet tears to fall undisturbed on the silk fabric of her suit jacket.

“He knows where I am.”

The words were muffled because her face was pressed against Beverly's shoulder, but she understood every word that Virtue had said. Pulling away so that she could have eye-to-eye contact with her, Beverly searched Virtue's face, not really knowing what it was she was looking for.

“
Who
knows where you are?” she asked as if she didn't know the answer.

“Mitchell.”

“How do you know?”

“He left a message on the machine in my office at church.”

“Saying what?” Beverly probed.

“That he desperately needed to speak with me face-to-face.” Virtue freed herself from Beverly's hold, sank onto a nearby chair, and pulled sheets of tissue from a box that sat on the table beside her. “He didn't say much else. Just that it was important. He kept saying that he understood if I didn't trust him, and he said that I could bring as many people with me as I wanted to if I feel I need protection.”

Beverly smoothed her hands over her head to make sure that none of the hairs in her neatly styled bun had been misplaced during her embrace with Virtue. Taking several steps backward, she turned and walked the distance to her office window and stared out. A million thoughts were racing through her head all at the same time. In a normal session, according to what she'd been told about the abuser, she would advise her client not to meet with him. Beverly had read too many case studies in which the abuser would beg the victim to come back to him, only to abuse her again. Sometimes the abuse worsened. Sometimes it turned deadly.