Look Closer

My phone rings, a FaceTime call from the M&Ms—Mariah and Macy, my sister’s girls. I step through the automated doors and narrowly avoid a gurney on its way in, a woman grimacing but stoically silent as paramedics wheel her by.

I throw in my AirPods and answer the call. Both girls are on—Macy, age ten, and Mariah, age thirteen-going-on-nineteen. They both take after their mother, my sister, Monica, beautiful just like she was, those almond-shaped eyes and the lustrous hair, traits that somehow avoided me. I used to joke that Monica and I must have had different fathers, which in hindsight might not have been a joke.

“Hi, monkeys!” I try to be cheerful. I don’t do cheerful well.

“Hey, Vicky,” they say in unison, the faces huddled together to see me. “Calling you back,” says Mariah. “We were at the pool when you called. Dad said we had to finish piano before we could call.”

Makes sense because we sometimes spend a long time together on the phone. That won’t happen now, with the call I must make on Brandi Stratton, curtain six.

I called the girls earlier today just to check on them. I wasn’t sure if they realized what today was, the anniversary of their mother’s death. Everyone remembers birthdays. People don’t focus as much on days of death. I do. I will sometimes forget my sister’s birthday. I will never forget the day she died.

But it seems to have escaped my nieces’ notice. To them, today was just another July day at the pool with their nanny and their friends. So I’m sure as hell not going to remind them. They seem to be doing better now. Macy, the younger one, not as well as her older sister, but they both seem to be living pretty normal and happy lives. At least that’s how it seems, with most of my contact recently by FaceTime. And even in person, you can only penetrate the adolescent psyche so far.

“I’m working,” I say, “so I’ll probably have to call you tomorrow. Macy, you should be in bed anyway, shouldn’t you?”

“Um, it’s summer?”

I walk back into the emergency area. The administrator nods to me. “Gotta run, princesses. Talk tomorrow? I love you, monkeys!”

“Curtain six,” the administrator reminds me. “You know the way?”

I definitely know the way.

The administrator pops the doors, and I wind my way through to curtain six, with the familiar cocktail of smells—disinfectant, body odor, alcohol. A man moaning in one curtain, another shouting out, belligerent and drunk.

A police officer, a young woman, stands outside the curtain. “Social services?”

“Right. Safe Haven. Officer Gilford?”

“That’s me.” The officer nods toward a quieter spot, a nook around the bend of the corner, and I follow. “Her husband did a pretty good number on her. Beat her with a frying pan. Apparently, he wasn’t impressed with the dinner she made. He didn’t even wait for the pan to cool down. Then he went old-school and just used his fists.”

I break eye contact. “But she’s not pressing charges.”

“Nope, she sure isn’t.” The officer tries to remain clinical, but there’s only so much disgust and disappointment you can hide, no matter how much you see this stuff.

“And there’s a daughter?”

“Yeah, cute little girl named Ashley. Age four.”

That’s what my intake record says, too. “And the asshole’s name is . . . Steven?”

“Steven Stratton, yep.”

I push through the curtain. The mother, Brandi, age twenty-two, sits on the hospital bed, her little girl, Ashley, asleep in her lap. The little one, thank God, appears untouched. Brandi’s right eye is swollen shut. The left side of her face is heavily bandaged. Her right forearm is wrapped—a burn, according to the intake sheet, when she tried to deflect the frying pan.

Brandi looks me over, fixes on my credentials.

“Hi, Brandi,” I say quietly, though I doubt the girl will awaken. “I’m Vicky, with Safe Haven. You want a place to stay tonight?”

“I can’t . . .” She looks away, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with her free hand.

She can’t go back there. She can’t go back tonight. She can’t go back ever.

But almost all of them do. He’ll apologize. He’ll shower her with affection. He’ll make her laugh and feel loved. She’ll blame herself. And she’ll consider her lack of other options. Rinse and repeat.

“It’s your decision, Brandi. Our facility isn’t much. You’d have to share a room, and our A/C sucks, so it’s just fans. But it’s quiet and it’s safe. We have locks and a security guard. Maybe . . . maybe you and Ashley deserve a quiet, peaceful night’s sleep?”

Maybe you’ll come to our facility and let me convince you to leave that abusive creep you call a husband? We can do so much for them if they let us. They can stay with us for up to two weeks. We can get them counseling. We can find them a pro bono lawyer to get restraining orders and file divorce papers. We can find them alternative housing.

But they have to say yes. They have to learn to fight for themselves.

6

Friday, July 15, 2022