Saul looks asleep on the floor. Sara stole the large yellow blanket from the desk of the church secretary, Sister Coates. Sister Coates kept it on hand as she always got “god-awful cold” in the building. Sara covered Saul, and she did so delicately. Crimson calmly soaks the wool shroud, a macabre sunset. She hates herself, for keeping some tattered remains of love for someone who did what he did to her. She still somehow loved the man who lied and beat and stole and raped and was her father.
A voice from behind shakily says, “Tell me this is how you found him, Sara.”
“You know I can’t do that Violet.”
“What happened?”
Sara turns around and faces her friend. “He tried to kill me. He knew I was leaving. I found his money in the desk. I took it. He owed me that much, I guess.”
The envelope almost bursting with cash, smeared with blood, is now clutched in Sara’s hand. Violet shakes her head. “I knew something was wrong. You both didn’t show up, and I knew I had to come back, but...”
Sara walks to the bookshelf across from the desk, a few feet away from King Saul’s body; she opens a small wooden box and pulls out a small bottle of whiskey and takes two strong sips.
Wide-eyed sitting on the floor, Naomi repeats the same thing: “What could I do?”
Violet closes her eyes, trying to remove what she’s seen, praying perhaps when she opens them, it’ll be a bad dream. But when Violet opens her eyes again, King Saul is still dead, Naomi remains on the floor clutching a bloody piece of glass, and Sara stands before her in a blue dress slightly torn at the shoulder. There are scrapes on her arms, knees, marks on her throat and a small bottle of whiskey in her hand.
There is a line Violet crosses in her mind and heart, one presenting options, ugly choices. It might be over soon. Their lives, the circumstances planned and unplanned, light and shadow, leave them stifled and still in a dim church office. Yes, there is a line Violet must cross, and on the road of her mind much of what she picks up along the way are Old Testament stories, times when vengeance was warranted, justified and even celebrated.
Naomi did what needed to be done. King Saul was a bad man and bad men deserve what they get, even if it’s death on a dirty floor. It was right and it is well with God. Violet knows this. That man was already in Hell. Violet knows this, too.
Crouching down to Naomi who gently rocks herself still asking that one question, Violet brushes hair away from her light yellow, angular face. She removes the wine-stained shard of glass, fiercely gripped in delicate hands.
“Did anyone see you and Sara come here?”
Words sound far away to Naomi. There are things still frozen in her mind. Shock clings to her, sweaty clothes on a muggy summer day. Only the whoosh of blood cycling through her trembling frame signals she still exists in the land of the living.
She still exists. King Saul does not.
“No,” Sara finally answers from behind her. “I don’t think so.”
With everything quiet, Violet further clears the fog in her mind and reasons it’s important to take care of things step by step, contain one crisis at a time. If she didn’t keep moving, she’d surely stop and collapse on the floor, joining Naomi, both of them held captive by inaction.
“Put that bottle back and help me,” she orders Sara.
Sara returns the bottle to the wooden box but remains in front of the bookshelf.
Violet removes the blanket. Blood, an unholy glue, initially resistant to Violet’s pull, finally loosens its grip. A few stray fibers cling to the wound.
Sara just watches. Offers no help. Cries no tears. Her eyes vacantly follow movement.
Naomi still rocks to and fro.
Violet continues to pray and acts fast.
The scene will be more convincing as a robbery so she’ll make it look like that as much as she can. She takes a few bills from the envelope and scatters them around the body.
She removes Saul’s wallet from his back pocket, a subtle lump of black leather embossed with his initials, taking the $42 and stuffing it in her bra. He has his rings, including a plain gold ring on his left pinkie finger and the one with diamonds on his right pinkie finger. She confiscates those as well, placing them in her pocket. They’ll fetch a few more dollars to help Sara on her journey to Tennessee. Plenty of shops in the city are willing to take jewelry with blood on it. They’ll wipe it off and sell it just the same.
As best as she can, Violet rubs fingerprints from the glass that killed Saul and gathers it up along with the blanket to take with her to discard in a dumpster a few blocks away.
“Get Naomi,” Violet orders Sara.
Violet looks on the street from the window. People linger in front of the building so they’ll escape out the back.
“We’re gonna take you home, Naomi, and you’re gonna go to sleep because this is a bad dream. Nothing but a bad dream,” says Violet.
Naomi leaves the office and waits for Sara and Violet in Sister Coates’s chair.
Sara closes the door after her. “She’s not strong like we are,” says Sara.
“Strong? You went to get a doll. She saved your ass and you want to talk about strength now?”
“I’m just saying she’s gonna break. Tell someone. Then it’s all done. It’s over.”
“All you had to do was follow directions! We should already be at the train station.”
Sara’s eyes even in the dim light grow darker, her lips curl. She looks like Saul. The streetlights bounce shapes and shadows, ghostly witnesses to fresh secrets.
“I needed to get Louisa. It’s the only thing I have left from her.”
“This ring was your mom’s.” Violet pulls the cheap wedding band from her pocket. “You didn’t even flinch when I took it.”
“What would I want it for? He gave it to her and it kept her chained to him. She gave Louisa to me. She was mine!”
“You almost died to get a damn doll! Naomi almost died to save you!”
“Y’all got involved. I didn’t ask for your help. You see me like some charity case. You always need to be the hero. The good girl. You need someone to save all the damn time! You need to feel like you Jesus or some shit.”
Violet’s head cocks to her left much as it did before she was about to say something she’d later regret. Her lips hot and ready to burn.
“No. I’m not Jesus. I’m the one who is keeping a bitch like you from going to jail with a bastard in your belly. I’m the one who can tell you the truth. And I can tell you this—without Naomi doing what she did, you’d be dead. And yeah, we’d be sad. But we’d eventually move on with our lives just the same, and you’d be in the ground. So yeah, I’m Jesus, fine. Act like you don’t want my help and find yourself in Hell just the same.”
“Fuck you!” shouts Sara, reaching for Violet’s neck much the same as Saul did to her earlier. The angry tangling of limbs, muffled yelps. The girls tussle on in anger and fear, all the hidden competitions and jealousies on display, the abundance of emotion without an easy release.
Each girl loses momentum and breath, hate drains from their limbs and fingers. They’re left sore and scratched and winded. Nothing has been alleviated, nothing has been gained, but with the broken love left between them, Violet and Sara trudge out of the office and gather Naomi. They leave my halls with a bloody blanket, a blade of glass and a new burden to shoulder.
More than hate binds them now. Secrets and blood can fortify the shakiest of bonds.
Forever and to the end.