Without Faith (17 page)

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Though the outside of the building had a modern edge to it due to the opaque glass windows and walls, the inside of it, at least the foyer anyway, had an old-fashioned feel. With the cushy upholstered couches, Tiffany chandeliers, and floral area rugs, I imagined that the lone elevator probably had velvet curtains on its wall, brass fixtures, and mirrored panels. The real plants that sat around the mahogany tables told me that someone took pride and care in the building, a far cry from the disaster that was the building where I rented office space.
One day, I will have an office in a building as nice as this one.
I smiled.

Suite 29.
I willed myself to stay focused, alert. The directory that hung on the wall next to the elevator did not showcase a suite with that number, but I noted that double digit offices were located in the basement.

Wasn't anything else to do but go down.

“This is foolishness,” I told myself as I skipped the elevator and headed for the stairwell, a pale green maze of pipes and cement. My heart was thumping so loudly, I felt like it would thump right out of my chest. Thankfully, the basement level, once I entered it, had the same comforting old style to it as the lobby did. I tried to relax, knowing full well that I would not be able to do so until I figured out what was going on, why I was there.

I stopped at an unmarked door between suites numbers 28 and 30 and gently rapped on it. When no one answered, I pushed it in. It gave easily and revealed a well-stocked supply closet.

“You came.” A woman's voice sounded from the shadows. A light bulb flickered on and I blinked to adjust my eyes to the sudden brilliance.

Silver again. Or at least this woman who claimed to be her.

She emerged from behind a tall stack of paper towel rolls.

“Umm, why are we inside of a—”

“Shhh.” She put a finger up to her plumped lips. “We need to talk in here.”

I had not noticed another door. She held it open and I could see a tiny office with a metal desk, a single chair, and a cheap floor lamp. A corkboard hung on the wall with several lists tacked to it, including what looked like a cleaning supply inventory and a “to-do” checklist.

“It's the safest place to talk,” she responded in reply to my obvious hesitation. I realized she was whispering. I shrugged my shoulders and followed her into the maintenance worker's office. She clicked off the light in the closet, turned on the floor lamp in the cramped workspace, and shut the door behind us.

The space was even tinier than it had looked from the other side of the door—and cold.

“Want an apple?” She held out a Red Delicious as she crunched into one herself. I noticed a paper bag on the floor filled with more fruit, water bottles, rice cakes, and a large French baguette.

“You're hiding again?” I tried to make sense of the scene before me as Silver plopped down onto the floor, sitting cross-legged on the linoleum.

She nodded.

“Whose office is this?”

She shrugged her shoulders and took another bite out of her apple.

“Why am I here?”

“Because I told him that I would only keep cooperating if he bought you here to talk with me.”

“Who is he?”

“Detective Fields.”

“He knows where you are?”

“Of course.” She took another bite. “He's protecting me.”

I cocked my head to the side, as if doing so would somehow make the jumble of details that had been collecting in my brain suddenly come together and make sense. “Protecting you from what?”

“I can't get into that right now. I just want to talk.”

“Talk about what? And why can't you get into it?” I rubbed my temples. “This is crazy. What is going on?”

She continued to blink innocently, her fake lashes really starting to get on my nerves.

“You have to tell me something,” I demanded.

She threw the apple core into a metal wastebasket, then, thinking better of it, took it out, wrapped it in a paper towel and put it back into her bag of food supplies.

There would be no trace of her once she was gone from this holding spot.

“Well?” I folded my arms.

Silver shut her eyes, laid her head back on the wall, and smiled. “When I was ten years old, I told my mother I was going to be an electrical engineer. I was in the math club at my elementary school and some lady who was an engineer came to our after school meeting to tell us we could be one too. I was sold. ” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Does that surprise you?”

I did not know where this was going, but I played along. “No. Most children have dreams about their future. In fact, I'd be concerned if you didn't.” When silence took over the room again, she looked a little irritated.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, what?”

“Aren't you going to ask what happened? How I went from dreaming about being an electrical engineer to becoming an adult entertainer?”

“Does it have anything to do with why we are sitting in a supply closet in an empty building on a Saturday afternoon?” I wasn't trying to be mean, but Leon was on his way, and I wanted to be out of there so I would not have to answer questions from him I could not answer.

But isn't that what he wanted? Answers?
I blinked out the memory of his pain and waited for Silver's response.

“It has everything to do with why we are here.”

“How so?” I demanded.

I could tell she was Jenellis's child. The moment she felt back in charge of the conversation, she relaxed again.

“My mother and her men.” Silver shook her head, grabbed a water bottle, and twisted the cap. “When I was eleven years old, my mother got married for the first time, unfortunately to a monster. Its name was Sheldon.”

“What did he do?”

“What didn't he do?” Silver shook her head again. “I watched that creature punch, slap, kick my mother, spit in her face. She did not know how to get away. She couldn't find a job that paid enough to support us on her own. Listen.” She stared at me. “I was a sweet, innocent little girl. I loved my stuffed animals and my bike. I went skating down Shake and Bake on Pennsylvania Avenue, and had dreams of being an electrical engineer. That monster Sheldon came in our lives and destroyed everything.” She was breathing hard, trying to catch her breath. “I saw my mother lying on the floor unconscious and him stepping over her like she was . . . was a bag of trash. Nothing. But . . . but she was my mother.” She looked up at me, a look of pleading in her eyes.

Pleading to be heard, to be understood.

“He was a monster. And he hurt your mother. And he hurt you.” I said what she could not.

Tears suddenly sprung onto her face. “My mother could not stop him from hurting her, or hurting me. That's what it seemed like, anyway. Nobody could stop him. I tried to tell my teachers, but all they could talk about was how my grades were slipping, how I had suddenly become too mouthy, too moody. I went from being the popular girl at school to being teased because I always seemed to smell. I couldn't stop wetting myself. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was taking baths three times a day to try to feel clean. All I wanted was to feel clean, but I never did, no matter how hard I tried.”

She was shaking. I sat down in the desk chair as she stayed huddled in the corner, her legs now drawn up to her chest, her head resting on her knees.

“By the time I was fifteen, I had become so numb to my life, I didn't even remember what a dream was. I had dropped out of school, had my first baby.” She smiled. “I named him Tracy. He looked exactly like Sheldon, a little monster.” Her smile dropped. “My mother made me give him up for adoption, although I was going to try to love him.” She touched the end of her hair, twirled a single curl of it as she momentarily disappeared into an unspoken memory. Then she came back.

“By the time I was eighteen, I had tried everything to just . . . just feel again. I was tired of being numb, of feeling dirty. I thought that if I took that job down on The Block, I'd be able to reclaim my body, because then I would be in charge of whatever happened to it, in charge of whatever a man did to it. I put my heart and soul into my work because I did not know what else a heart and soul could do if allowed to dream.”

She shook her head as new tears formed. “It didn't work. The girls where I worked were so competitive, so desperate for money, for whatever it was they were looking for, for whatever it was they were trying to prove, that I had to go further, do things that . . . you don't even want to imagine. I thought I could reclaim control, feel clean again, and all I felt was . . .” Her sentence faded away for a second time.

“I'm sorry.” She gave a nervous laugh. “You didn't ask to be part of any of this.” She looked at me, searching, I could tell, for a sign that it was okay for her to have shared all she had.

“Have you ever talked to anyone else about . . . all these things you've been through?”

“No.” She recoiled. “I guess that is why I insisted that you be allowed to come here. When you called Detective Fields, I told him that I would not cooperate any further unless and until you came.”

“Why me?”

“You're a therapist.” She chuckled before sobering suddenly. “And you trusted me. Yesterday. After all I had David put you through, you believed me.”

I didn't want to tell her that me not calling the police on her was more a function of my confusion and distraction than it was my belief in her, but I guess there was a purpose greater than my own shortcomings that was holding things together.

“I'm glad you have begun to share your story. There's nothing wrong with talking to a therapist or someone who can offer you a professional listening ear. Telling your story is important for your healing, and seeing a professional doesn't mean you're crazy.” I paused, stepping carefully before proceeding. “It simply means you are committed to being the best person God created you to be.”

“God!” She laughed. “People like you who have never had a bad day in your life are so quick to talk about God. If there really is a God, why did He let that monster destroy our lives?” She was laughing, but her anger was evident, raw, and real.

A million and one thoughts flashed through my mind as I considered how to answer her question. I decided on a raw, real response of my own.

“Silver, I have not had to go through anything like you have. I've had some hard days, some pain, some sorrow—nothing like what you are describing, but enough to make me ask questions similar to what you are asking now. I do not fully know or understand why terrible things happen. What I do know and firmly believe is that without faith, without believing that God is still in control somehow and cares, we would have no chance at healing, at wholeness. I don't have the answers, but He does. I think it's okay to ask Him your questions directly, and believe that He will answer you, if you truly seek Him to do so. If He's the all-powerful, almighty God that we want to believe Him to be, then He can handle our questions.”

Should I tell her that I have been having my own crises of faith as of late? Repeatedly?
As she stayed quiet, seemingly reflecting on what I had just said, verses from the Bible I remembered reading once came to mind. Well, paraphrases of verses as I could not remember the exact wording, or even scripture references. “Perfect love casts out fear” and “God is love.” Something like that.

“God is not afraid of us or what we can think to ask Him.” I told her in response to my own inner dilemmas.

Silver looked tired. Drained.

“How long do you have to stay here?” I asked, giving up on asking
why
she had to stay there. Seemed like all of my interactions with her were on a need-to-know basis, and I, apparently, did not need to know some things about her yet.

“Just until Detective Fields determines another safe house. The last one was compromised.”

“Oh, yes, that's right. Are David and his grandmother okay?” I could not give up on my search for answers.

“They're fine. Detective Fields was able to get me out of there the moment it appeared I was no longer safe. Fifteen minutes later their house was firebombed in a drive-by. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail through their front window. David carried Ms. Mona out their back door, or so I heard.”

“What put you in danger there?”

“Contacting you.”

“All right, I really need to understand better what is going on.”

“Trust me, you don't want to be involved any more than you already are. Hasn't this been enough trouble for you?

“I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I'm involved in. Police say you're kidnapped. You say you're not, that you're being protected. And your mother, as you call her, seems to think you are blackmailing her, and I still don't know what is so important about the number 1502. And what about Brayden? What's the deal with him?”

“Brayden is my mother's new man. What else can I say?” She looked away, smiled sadly, then blurted, “Thanks for coming.”

“Am I getting dismissed?”

“You have company.”

“Huh?” I stood up, and moved to the corner where she sat on the floor. I saw for the first time that a small collection of monitors were propped up against the desk where I had been sitting. Silent, grainy black-and-white images of the parking lot, front entrance, lobby, and elevator flickered directly in her line of sight.

Now it made sense why she had settled so comfortably on her spot on the floor.