"Erica"

     "I don't know what to do."  Erica whispered as tears streamed down her face.  Dr. Swanzy took a tissue from the pocket of her white hospital coat and offered it to Erica.  Erica took the tissue from Dr. Swanzy and blew her nose, her eyes swimming around the room, avoiding Dr. Swanzy's silent gaze.  "I don't know what to do!"  "What do you want to do, Erica?" Dr. Swanzy softly asked, her face still and emotionless, waiting.   Her eyes held Erica's face, waiting, until Erica's eyes met hers.  Her eyes asked the question again.  They held Erica's, as if the answer to her question would speak from Erica's tears.
     Erica's eyes looked away from Dr. Swanzy, unable to answer, but her voice met the challenge in a barely audible whisper.  "This baby is number nine.  I was pregnant when I married Pedro.  Fifteen years old!  Fifteen!  I had to get married.  My parents were so disappointed in me.  They had big dreams for me...big dreams.  I was Daddy's smart little girl, who was supposed to be the first in my family to go to college.  I broke his heart when I got pregnant.  I broke his dreams."  Erica tried to swallow her father's disappointment, and then she cleared her throat.  "I have been pregnant most of my life.  The babies kept coming and coming.  Pedro....he...I never felt like I owned my body.  It was his, and not mine."  Erica closed her eyes, tears seeping through red rimmed lids.  "I didn't mean for it to happen!  This baby.  I...I....misplaced my pills.  I couldn't find them."  Erica eyes opened, pain filled, but now there was a silent awareness in them.  A dark epiphany.  "Maybe he hid them?  He hid them!"  Erica's voice became edged with anger and she threw the tear soaked crumpled tissue towards the end of the hospital bed.  "He...he, uh ...he forced me...I mean I didn't want to.... and I tried to get him to stop!"  Erica hands clenched the sheet covering her bruises.  "I told him I had missed some pills, but he wouldn't stop!  He wouldn't stop!"  The words pushed themselves out of Erica's mouth, bruising her lips as they fought their way into the air. 
     Erica stared into Dr. Swanzy's darkening eyes and her voice began to rise.  "I was going to get rid of it.  I was going to get a...an...I was going to kill it!!!  Kill him inside of me, for forcing me!  But then, I heard a baby crying.  This child in me was crying...and I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find it!  And then I saw...I saw an Angel!!!"  Erica sat up in the bed, her face pleading for belief.  "I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but I did hear a baby, this baby, crying...like it was begging for it's life.  I was walking home from this Book Woman Club meeting, and I heard it crying!  No one else could hear it!  ... And then God sent the Angel!  It was a sign, don't you see?  A sign from God for me not to kill my baby!"  Erica wrapped her arms protectively around her belly, her face sweaty and pale.  Tears continued to pour from her eyes. 
     Dr. Swanzy waited; waited while the flood of tears and words ebbed.  Waited while she tried to make sense of what Erica had just told her.  "I'm not sure what to say about this...this angel."  Dr. Swanzy's voice was slow and calm.  "We will need to talk about...it...about, "The Angel"." Dr. Swanzy paused, her face neutral.  Then, again, she asked her question.  "What do you want to do, Erica?  Shall I call the police, or will you call them?"  "The police?  No!  No!  I don't want to call the police!  He's my husband, the father of my....my children!  Where would I go?  Where would we live?  I have no money of my own!  Please..."  Erica swung her pale legs over the side of the bed, her tears suddenly dry.  She desperately grabbed Dr. Swanzy's arm.  "Please....no police!"  "And so you will stay in this situation?  This marriage where you are beaten?"  Dr.  Swanzy winced as Erica's grip tightened on her arm.  "Does he beat the children?" Erica shook her head vehemently and exclaimed, "No! He has never touched my kids!  I would never allow that!"  "But he has beat you with this child inside of you." Dr. Swanzy quietly said.  She waited several moments while she watched her words sink into Erica's salt-encrusted eyes.  "Is this what you want for this new life inside of you?  Is this what you want your children to continue to witness...the abuse of their mother?"  Dr. Swanzy's hand mirrored Erica's hand, gently holding Erica's arm, as their eyes held each others.  "Is this what you want for the rest of your life?  You know...you know that he will end up killing you, don't you?"  Dr. Swanzy's voice was soft, tripping on the edge of pleading.
     "I know he will.  I know that he will kill me, tonight...for being late!"  Tears again threatened the edges of Erica's eyes and she blinked them back.  She began to chew on the inside of her cheek; vicious bites that basted her saliva with blood.  "He will kill me!", she whispered.  "Then you will not go back there."  Dr. Swanzy's hand moved from Erica's arm, and she released her arm from Erica's grip.  She grasped Erica's soft hands in her strong ones.  "I can't just walk away from my children.  I can't leave them with him.  Even if I could leave, I have nowhere else to go.  I have...I have no-one." Erica's whisper became frantic, as she leaned in close to Dr. Swanzy's ear.  She leaned in as if Pedro could hear her through the walls of the hospital;  as if he could hear her from all the way across town.  "No one will take in me and eight children!  No one!  And Pedro...Pedro won't let me just walk in and take the children!  I won't leave without my children!  I won't."  Erica leaned in, her lips were almost on Dr. Swanzy's ear, her hot breath tickling Dr. Swanzy's ear as  Erica continued to whisper.  "My husband is a very dangerous man.  He has killed before."  Dr. Swanzy stared at their hands as Erica's grip on her hands became painful.  "If I run...if I try to leave with my children, Pedro will hunt me down no matter where I go.  He will kill me and anyone who helps me!"
     The sudden knock at the door brought a scream of raw terror to Erica's lips!  Dr. Swanzy's cry of pain joined Erica's scream, a call and response to Erica's overwhelming fear, as she disengaged her hands from Erica's unbearably painful grip and lifted her hand to defend her throbbing ear drum.  "Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!!!"  Their cries resounded in eerie discord, as the knocking became urgent pounding.  "Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!!!"
  

  

"Georgia"

"What were you thinking?  Georgia confronted Dee-Dee in the car on the drive home from the Book Woman Club meeting.  "I was the only "non-person-of-color" in the room!"  Georgia made quote marks in the air with her index and middle fingers of both hands.  "Did you see that young woman, Kadi-jah was it, glaring at me and rolling her eyes?  I felt like I was wearing a KKK robe, the way she kept staring at me!"  Dee-Dee laughed.  "Oh, come on Georgia!  It wasn't that bad!"  "Oh - it wasn't that bad!"  Georgia imitated  Dee-Dee's voice.  "I fit in like a vegetarian at a slaughter house!"  "Embrace the experience, girl!  It will be better next time!"  Dee-Dee laughed.  "Embrace the experience?, Georgia screeched.  "Next time?  I'm not going to any more of those meetings!  I know when I'm not wanted!"

Dee-Dee's face became serious, a frown flashing on and off of her face as car headlights illuminated the change in her mood.  "First time in the minority, huh?  And you want to run!  Wish it was so easy for me!  Just run out of this color every time I am in an uncomfortable situation!  Well, life doesn't work like that for us, Georgia...for people of African decent in this country.  Uncomfortable situations make up our lives - everyday!  Welcome to my world!"  "I know that Dee-Dee...I'm not trying to run.  It's just that no one wanted me there.  I don't want to be one of those white people invading African-American private situations like I own the world.  I hear African-Americans talking about how we whites feel like everything belongs to us."  "I invited you, Georgia.  You are my friend, and I asked you to come with me."  "Dee-Dee, I don't want to be some part of a crusade that you have going on."  Dee-Dee 's head snapped around to look at Georgia.  "A part of a crusade?  You are not part of some crusade Georgia!"  Dee-Dee put her eyes back on the road, and parked in front of the Starbucks in armory square.   "Come on, admit it Dee-Dee.  Your inviting me to the Book Woman Club was a deliberate act to mess with those women!  You knew how they would react!" "Well, maybe I did, but so what!  You had a right to be there!  Maybe they need to integrate their exclusive Black Club.  Maybe you need to step out of your lily-white comfort zone for once in your safe life!" 

Georgia was silent as she and Dee-Dee got out of the car and walked into Starbucks.  The silence continued and grew as they each got their orders and went to the counter to adjust hot cups of coffee with sugar and cream.  They found a table next to the door.  Georgia stared at her pale white hands as they warmed themselves on the coffee cup.  Dee-Dee didn't say anything as she took a sip of her coffee and silently looked at the top of the table.

Georgia had never, ever been the only white person at any event in all of her life.  Dee-Dee's admonishment, "Maybe you need to step out of your lily white comfort zone!" echoed through her head.  She had never felt so uncomfortable in her skin before.  She and Dee-Dee had been friends since high school.  Dee-Dee had been one of just a few black students.  At dances, bowling, marching band, girl scouts, church - everywhere they had hung-out together, Dee-Dee had been the only black person. The only African-American.  Georgia had never even thought about how it must have felt for Dee-Dee all of those years in school.  They had gone their separate ways in College and found each other again when both of them returned to Syracuse in their adulthood.  Their friendship had picked up where it left off, like no time had past.  But everything seemed like it was always about color now.  Dee-Dee would suck her teeth, complain about things that had happened to her at work or at the supermarket, saying it was because she was black.  Georgia thought about how Dee-Dee said white people thought she was white when they talked to her on the phone.  She was the Director of Education for the local Historical Association and when she would go to do history talks in rural towns and villages, Dee-Dee would tell Georgia how rooms would go silent when she walked in the door.  She would be the only black person in the room and mouths would drop to the floor.  One woman even said out-loud, apparently before she had time to think, "Oh, I thought you were white!"  Or Dee-Dee would tell Georgia how she would ask to see some jewelry in a case at a store in Carousel Mall and the sales woman would say, "Oh, that's very expensive!"  Like Dee-Dee couldn't afford it because of her brown skin!  Georgia thought about the Book Woman Club Meeting.  She took a sip of coffee, now growing cold in the silence of she and Dee-Dee's together-separateness at the Starbucks table.  "Yes", Georgia thought, "She had gotten quite an eye opening welcome to Dee-Dee's world!"