Wings of Glass

  He yanked the coffeepot off the burner and poured himself a cup. “It’s my first day back to work. What does it matter if I go in hungry?”

  Turning the stove off, I set the spatula on the counter beside my cup of tea and turned around. “What would you like?”

  “What I’d like is a woman who knows what it means to be a wife.”

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “Like Norma?”

  His face tightened into an angry ball. “So help me, if you start accusing me of that again—”

  A car horn sounded from the driveway, telling me Fatimah was there to pick me up. Trent stomped to the living room window and yanked back the curtain. “What’s loudmouth doing here?”

  I slipped my coat on and grabbed my purse off the counter. “I figured you’d be taking the car, so she’s going to start driving me.” It was only one more week till Fatimah’s baby was due, but at least for this week, I was looking forward to not being dependent on Trent for getting to work.

  “Tell your little friend I’ll take you to work.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “That would make you late.”

  He let go of the curtain and turned around. “You think you’re something special, prancing around in those houses all day, don’t you?”

  Yes, Manny, that’s exactly what I thought—fancy me with my fancy sponge scrubbing fancy toilets. Fatimah honked again. I glanced out the window at her. The exhaust from her tailpipe turned to crystals in the winter air. Through the windshield, she stared at the front door, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.

  I walked back to the kitchen and pulled my bagged lunch from the fridge. “I told you I’d quit when the baby comes. It’s only for one more month.”

  He grabbed his mug off the counter and gulped. “I said I’ll drive you.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but before I could get the first word out, he slapped it right off my lips. The sting of his hand against my cheek brought tears to my eyes. It was the first time he’d hit me since I became pregnant. The fact that it was also his first day back to work didn’t escape me.

  I set my purse on the counter and gave him a hurt look.

  He swiped spilled coffee from his hand. “Go waddle your fat self out there and tell her your husband will drive you.”

  Fatimah sat in her car with the window down, listening to some talk show. When she saw me, she grinned. “Hurry. I want to finish early today. Edgard has present for the baby.”

  When I walked over to the driver’s side window instead of the passenger side, her smile faded. “What is wrong, Peeny? Why do you not get in?” She looked at my empty hands. “Where is your bag?”

  I pulled my coat closed against the cold. “Trent wants to drive me to work today.”

  Under a furrowed brow, she eyed my cheek. “What is that?”

  I touched my face and flinched from the pain. If I’d realized he’d left a mark, I would have had an excuse ready. As it was, all that would roll off my tongue was the biggest cliché in the book. “I fell.”

  She white-knuckled the steering wheel. “That filthy—”

  “Stop,” I said. “There you go jumping to conclusions again.”

  Fire burned in her eyes. “You have a baby—his baby—in your womb, and he hits you? You make call to the police.”

  I put my finger over my lips so she would lower her voice. “He’s just stressed out. It’s his first day back to work. That’s all.”

  When she started to open the car door, I panicked. Between the murderous look on her face and Trent’s mood, I knew a confrontation between them would end with someone—most likely Fatimah or her baby—getting hurt. “What are you doing?” I shut the door before she could get out.

  She pointed at me through the open window. “No one is going to hurt my friend. I will tell him he is no man.”

  I turned back to see Trent standing in the window, holding back the curtain.

  I lowered my voice. “It’s not going to change anything.”

  She leaned toward the passenger door and unlocked it. “Get in. You stay with me and Edgard.”

  “Stop, Fatimah. I’m not leaving my husband.”

  Sunlight streamed in through the windshield and across her face. She was perspiring despite the weather. “You tell me why not?”

  “Because I made a covenant before God until death do us part.”

  She clicked her tongue. “And what of his treatment of you? Is he not required by God to take care of you? To love you as Christ loves the church. This is not love!”

  I glanced nervously back at the window, but Trent was gone. “You don’t know everything.”

  “I know he will kill you.” She chewed her top lip, looking at the house as if considering her options. Finally she said, “He hurts you because you permit him.”

  I frowned at her. “I don’t let him. He just does.”

  “When he hurts you, you do not leave. You do not call police. Why should he not hit you? You still cook him dinner and lie in his bed. This is permission.” She looked at me for the longest time. “Do you want change, Peeny?”

  “What kind of question is that? You know I do.”

  She nodded as if she knew as much. “Very good. Then change.”

  Her words made no sense to me then, Manny, but I realize now they were the key that could unlock everything. “Just go,” I said.

  With lips pressed tight, she rolled up her window. As her car tore out of the driveway and disappeared down the road, it felt like I was watching hope itself drive away.

  My head began to throb from confusion. I knew the world would tell me I should leave Trent, but a good Christian woman like Fatimah?

  Slowly, I walked up the stairs, ready to face your father again. He was now sitting at the table. The eggs were no longer in the pan, but there wasn’t a dirty dish in front of him, or anywhere else, which told me he’d probably thrown them away.

  He rattled the change in his pocket. “What was she hollering about out there?”

  “She was mad because I asked her to pick me up, then changed my mind.”

  “Too bad. So sad,” was his charming reply. He took a gulp of coffee from his mug. “You better get on those pancakes, or we’re both going to be late.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  FATIMAH DIDN’T SAY a word to me as we worked. She wouldn’t even acknowledge I was there until the drive home. My word, that woman could hold a grudge.

  “You missed my turn,” I said as we whizzed past the drugstore on the corner.

  Stone-faced, she stared ahead at the road. “I am not take you home.”

  “What?” Her words from earlier replayed in my mind. She wanted me to leave Trent. To live with her and Edgard. But we weren’t heading toward her apartment. Where, then?

  Sunlight stabbed through the windshield, nearly blinding me. Pulling the visor down, I shielded my face.

  Fatimah flipped on her blinker. “Callie Mae want to see us. This is where we go.”

  We turned from the one-lane road onto the highway, and I relaxed. Fatimah’s baby was due in a week, and mine soon after. I’d been wondering when Callie Mae was planning to discuss how she would handle our work schedules. Today must be the day. Trent wasn’t going to be home for a few hours, so I didn’t have to worry about him fussing about me being late.

  I stared at Fatimah’s profile, wishing she would at least look at me. “Where are we meeting her?”

  “Her house.”

  The car bumped and hummed along the road as I watched my breath turn to frost in the cold air. I reached over and turned on the heat.

  Fatimah glared down at my hand, then at me. “You are cold? I am burning alive.”

  I rubbed at the too-thin sleeves of my coat. “It’s like thirty degrees out. How can you be hot?” In my pregnancy, I hadn’t experienced any of the hot flashes Fatimah and other women complained about. With winter upon us, I would have welcomed a few.

  She didn’t answer, so I split the difference on the
dial. Heat streamed out of the dashboard vent and I held my hands over it to warm them. After a few minutes, we turned into a newer neighborhood lined with young, leafless trees and huge houses with almost nonexistent yards. Each house on the street was roughly the same size and shape, just a different facade.

  “Callie lives here?” I knew she had money. Her husband had been a successful attorney, so I wasn’t surprised she would live in an expensive house. I just expected one with a little charm to it.

  Fatimah didn’t answer. I knew her well enough by then to understand that her silent treatment would last only a few days, so I didn’t worry.

  We pulled into the driveway of a stately brick house outlined in rows of perfectly trimmed boxwoods. Together, Fatimah and I walked up the paved pathway. The door opened and Callie Mae stood there wearing a pair of jeans, a turtleneck sweater, and a somber expression. She waved us inside.

  As we entered the warmth of the foyer, I noticed an arched shelf built into the wall. On it stood a sculpture of a woman with butterfly wings fashioned from pink, purple, and blue stained glass. I stopped to admire it. Standing around six inches tall, her long, wavy hair covered her body like a mermaid’s. She reached her graceful fingertips heavenward with such a look of longing, I couldn’t help but feel it too. Her wings were spread and ready for flight, but a vine wound tightly around her ankles, binding her to the stone base.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Callie Mae said from behind me.

  The piece managed to both fascinate and disturb me, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  Callie Mae led us down a wide, white-tiled hallway that smelled vaguely of lemon. I looked back over my shoulder at the sculpture and listened to our footsteps echoing in the open space. I wondered what Callie Mae could possibly want with so much house. It seemed rude to ask, so as usual, I kept my questions to myself.

  Fatimah and I followed her to a room that had no television, just some leather furniture centered around a large fireplace. The walls were painted light gray, and the trim a darker shade of the same color. Fatimah plopped on the white sofa as though it were her own and plucked a dead leaf off a small bouquet of pink flowers resting in the center of a glass table.

  Callie Mae grabbed a remote off the stone mantel and pointed it at the fireplace. The logs glowed red as warmth emanated from them. I slipped off my jacket and laid it over the back of a chair. Above the mantel hung a large oil painting. I stared up at the field of painted wildflowers, imagining what it would be like to be among them. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten lost in it until Callie Mae startled me with a question.

  “You like art, don’t you, Penny?”

  Embarrassed, I averted my eyes from the painting. “I guess I do. I’ve never been around much of it.”

  While Fatimah and Callie Mae made chitchat, I snuck another glance at the painting. Layer upon layer of different colors made up the field and sky. It fascinated me that I could make out the swirls and feathering of the brushstrokes.

  “A friend of mine gave me that as a gift after Matthew passed away,” Callie Mae said.

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “It’s beautiful. I wish I had a friend like that.”

  She wore a curious smile as she motioned toward Fatimah with a nod. “You do.”

  When I looked at her, Fatimah was still wearing that same stony expression she had worn all day.

  “You did that?” I asked her.

  She leaned back against the couch cushions and shrugged like it was no big deal.

  My mouth gaped. “You never told me you could paint like that!” The truth was, she never told me she could paint at all. That woman was, and continues to be, full of surprises.

  She frowned at me. “I paint. So?”

  I laughed. “So, Rembrandt is cleaning houses for a living.”

  Gesturing toward the empty chair where I had laid my jacket, Callie Mae indicated I should sit. “It’s not easy to make a living in the arts.”

  “Have you tried?” I asked Fatimah.

  She gave me a dull look. “Of course I try. I sell paintings sometimes, but they are much work. I give more than two hundred hours for that one. No one wants to pay their worth unless you are famous or have died. I am alive and do not sell my paintings for nothing. I rather give to friends than cheap strangers.”

  Looking at her bulging belly and beautiful face, it was like I was seeing Fatimah for the first time. I had no idea she was that full of talent, and I was suddenly a little starstruck.

  “Can I get you a drink—water, tea, anything?” Callie Mae asked us.

  Fatimah shook her head.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  Callie Mae sat beside Fatimah on the couch and crossed her legs. “Okay, then, let’s get this over with. Fatimah is due next week, but we all know by looking at her the baby could drop out tomorrow.” She glanced at me. “Penny, hopefully you’ve got another month, but just in case, I don’t want to wait until the last minute to work out your maternity leave.”

  For the next few minutes we discussed what would happen once the babies came. Fatimah said she would not be back to work because it was her job to stay home with her child. Callie Mae didn’t seem at all surprised. “I figured as much, Fati. I think if y’all will be okay financially, you’re making a wise decision. They’re only young once. But don’t think for a hot second you’re going to get away from me that easy. I’ll be by once a week at least to check on you and . . . what is that baby’s name going to be?”

  Fatimah puckered her lips, looking perturbed by the question. “It is not for you to know.”

  Callie shook her head. “Fine. We’ll just call her Stubborn after her mother until we hear otherwise.” Turning to me, she asked, “And what do you want to do when Emmanuel comes, Penny?”

  Her understanding reaction to Fatimah gave me the courage to be honest too. “Trent wants me to quit working.”

  She and Fatimah shared another one of their private looks that always made me feel like a third wheel.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  I felt myself flush. Back then I wasn’t used to anyone asking what I wanted, including myself. “I like working. It’s nice getting out of the house and having my own money, but—”

  “But leaving your baby alone with your husband would be dangerous, true?” Fatimah said.

  The accusation in her voice put me on the defensive. “Don’t start with that again.”

  Callie Mae’s once-sympathetic eyes took on the same hardness as Fatimah’s. I rightly suspected then that I wasn’t there just to talk about maternity leave.

  “She has a point,” she said.

  My hands had become so swollen I’d begun to wear my wedding band on a cord of leather around my neck. I ran the ring up and down the cord nervously. “What are you talking about?”

  Callie Mae sat forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I think you know.”

  “I already told Fatimah he doesn’t beat me.”

  Callie Mae glanced at the bruise Trent had left on my cheek that morning. “Let me guess—you walked into a door.” It was the first time I’d ever heard her speak with sarcasm toward me.

  I covered my cheek as if I could hide what they’d already seen.

  “You lie to protect him,” Fatimah exclaimed with more emotion than I’d seen all day.

  I don’t know if it was the heat from the fireplace, my hormones, or the adrenaline coursing through my veins, but suddenly the heat was unbearable. I grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair and laid it across my lap, intending to leave the first chance I got. “Why are you two attacking me?”

  Callie Mae sighed. “We’re not attacking you. This is what they call an intervention.”

  I’d watched enough television to know what an intervention was, and I didn’t exactly fit the profile. “I’m not addicted to anything.”

  “Yes, you are,” Callie Mae said. “You’re addicted to an abusive man.”

  I felt my throat c
losing in. “I told you he doesn’t—”

  “I know what you told us, but that handprint on your face makes it hard for us to believe you.”

  I would have jumped up in protest, but I was too big to do anything but slowly push myself to a standing position. I was prepared to walk home if I had to. Trent didn’t want me to have the job anyway, and he was expecting me to quit when you came, so leaving a month early wasn’t going to matter much one way or the other. I didn’t have to take this.

  “Do not leave, Peeny,” Fatimah said. Her pleading eyes stopped me in my tracks.

  Unsure, I looked toward the hallway, then back at her.

  “Just you listen to her. Please,” she said.

  Slowly, I lowered myself back into the chair, cringing as your weight settled on my bladder. The house was silent except for the ticking of the brass timepiece on the mantel. After what seemed like forever, Callie Mae finally spoke. “The butterfly sculpture in the foyer—I would like you to have it, Penny.”

  “I can’t take—”

  “I bought it for my daughter, Sara. Fatimah got to meet her, but you never will, this side of heaven.”

  “She was beautiful,” Fatimah whispered, looking at her socked foot, “like an angel.”

  Confusion clouded my mind. I hadn’t known Callie Mae had lost a daughter. She never once mentioned it.

  She pressed her lips together as her eyes glistened. “She’s right. She was beautiful. She was so beautiful. But she married a man with a bent for violence. She wouldn’t admit he beat her, but I could see it in her eyes. I’d been around enough battered women to recognize the pattern. He took her away from us, isolated her, and eventually brainwashed her against us. For three long years I didn’t get so much as a phone call.”

  Thinking of my own mother, I wrung my hands and swallowed back the guilt. It dawned on me then that Trent had done the same thing to me. First he had a problem with my family, then with the church. The only things he didn’t have a problem with me spending time with were him and the vacuum cleaner.