Without Faith Page 5

  I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes shut while another piece of my stomach collapsed into the acid pit.

  “Sienna, it will be okay.” Leon’s fingertips brushed over the back of my hand. “I’m sure Roman will show up real soon. He’s a good kid.”

  We were all crowded in my parents’ Randallstown basement: Leon, Yvette, my parents, and a woman named Sadie Spriggs, the self-appointed church comforter who showed up at all homes of the newly departed and recently ill with a box of tissues, a hymn book, and a tambourine.

  Her presence was not comforting to me at all.

  And not just because she was studying me and Leon with her mouth moving and no words coming out.

  “I have some friends on the force who may have some helpful connections if it comes down to it.” Leon’s voice was a whisper, for Yvette’s benefit I knew. He glanced uneasily at my sister, who was staring angrily at us. Good thing he was not in uniform. Then again, the way she was glaring at us, maybe he needed to be.

  Yvette, her son, and their bad history with police.

  And her son was with mine.

  I swallowed hard as the acid in my stomach seemed to be turning into a hot, roiling boil.

  “If you want connections, why not talk to Brother Tyson? Doesn’t he still work for channel 55?” Sadie Spriggs’s suggestion surprised me. Aside from the fact that I thought she was sitting out of earshot from us, I was not sure how I felt about her offering advice. Prayers, hymns—those I was used to hearing come from the elder, turban-wearing church mother; but suggestions and directions seemed out of the normal realm of her ministry scope. Besides, a media spectacle didn’t seem like what was needed.

  My sister, for obvious reasons, immediately agreed with my unexpressed thought.

  “The media?” Yvette gasped. “No, we don’t need any extra attention right now. Let’s just wait until the boys finish their fun and then they’ll call home.”

  Mother Sadie had her left eye squinted and her mouth was moving silently again as she looked back and forth between me and Yvette.

  “Okay, I’m going back upstairs.” I stood up, ready to get away from all of it, all of them.

  The lion’s head ring.

  I sat back down, knowing that I was going to have to figure out a way to get that ring out of my father’s safe before he started rummaging through it as a heroic gesture. I say gesture because everyone in the room knew that Alvin Davis wasn’t selling any of his beloved baseball cards or other prized possessions, didn’t matter what kind of trouble his grandsons were in.

  “Sienna,” Leon began, his hand, I suddenly noticed, locked over mine. “I think, I think—” His cell phone interrupted him with a soft wind-chime ring. I didn’t recognize the ringtone. I’d been around him long enough to know the falling-rain ring had been his late grandmother who raised him; the bullhorn was his current supervisor; the drumroll was his best friend, Benny. And I had managed to squeeze out of him that a robin sang when I called.

  But wind chimes? I had no idea.

  “I . . . I have to go. I’m sorry.” Leon glanced at the screen of his phone and mumbled something else, but I could not make it out. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled again, shutting the ring off without answering. “I’ll check in with you soon. Keep me posted.”

  He was leaving so quickly, I was halfway up the basement steps behind him before I realized that I was following him out. “Leon, wait.”

  “I really need to go.”

  Is he trying not to look at me?

  “I know. I only wanted to thank you. For everything.” We were standing on my parents’ front steps, right under the porch light where a circus of moths was circulating. Leon stopped and turned around to face me.

  “You know I am here for you.” He spoke soft and low. I had to move closer to hear him.

  Any thoughts I’d had about him trying to avoid eye contact with me were dissipated as his eyes pierced mine. We were inches apart, the closest I could ever remember being to him. And the longest we’d ever been that close.

  “Roman will be okay.” His voice could have been fingers massaging my neck, loosening the knots and kinks that were tightening it. That’s how warm and amazing and comforting the sound of his voice was to me at that moment. He took a step closer to me, as if there really was more room to fill between us. His face was now inches from mine, our eyes still locked, the smell of his cologne intoxicating.

  I became aware of the rise and fall of my chest, the breaths I was taking, the quickening pace of my heart.

  This feeling.

  So foreign and yet so familiar.

  RiChard.

  A literal pain flashed through me from the base of my skull to the tops of my knees. My eyes dropped. I backed away.

  “I need to go back inside.” I studied the words on my parents’ welcome mat. ENTER WITH LOVE. EXIT WITH C ARE. “That’s kind of a weird welcome mat message.” I chuckled.

  Leon was not laughing. In fact, he wasn’t even standing where he had been. I watched him look up at the unusually bright moon before the wind-chime ring of his cell phone interrupted whatever thought he was having, whatever moment I was trying to avoid.

  “I have to go. Call me if you hear anything.”

  Down the steps. Car door slam. Engine roaring. Gone.

  I had not felt that emotionally and physically close to a man like that for sixteen years. And RiChard found a way to ruin it for me.

  Now it was just me, the bright moon, the flutter of moths overhead, and the lingering scent of Leon’s cologne.

  What is wrong with me?

  I didn’t have time to answer that question. I had my son to think about. My son and that lion’s head ring I wanted to recover before it was discovered.

  “Good, you’re back.” Sadie Spriggs nodded as I descended into the basement once more. “I told you he still worked for channel 55.” She was pointing to the television that someone had turned on in my absence. The eleven o’clock news was on.

  “Yes.” I nodded back. “I knew that Brother Tyson . . .” The rest of the sentence became lodged in my throat as I tried to make sense out of what was flashing on the television screen.

  Oh my, Jesus, what is going on? I prayed in horror, not believing my eyes.

  Chapter 9

  Brother Lazarus Tyson, or Laz as we called him, had been a news anchor for channel 55 for several years. A graduate of Morehouse College, he had previously worked for networks in Atlanta, then in Houston, and, right before returning to Baltimore, New Orleans. His brave, risky coverage and on-air political rants during Hurricane Katrina had earned him the nickname “Brass Laz.” The rants had also marked him as a potential troublemaker for news stations. With no other networks across the nation willing to take a chance with his unscripted and unapologetic live commentaries, he’d been forced to accept the only job opened to him, back in the newsroom of the Baltimore-based network where he had interned as a teen.

  He was a mystery at our church. The heavily opinionated and brazen journalist barely said a word to anyone on Sundays. Sitting in the back row, he came late and left early, usually walking right out the door after walking around the sanctuary to drop his customary fifty dollar bill in the offering plate each service.

  But all of that was irrelevant to me at the moment.

  “Turn that up,” I demanded as I marched over to the flat-screen TV my father had hung over his overly used wet bar.

  “This is Lazarus Tyson reporting live from the Baltimore City Police headquarters. Back to you in the studio, John.”

  “Wait a minute, what . . . what did he say about the girl whose picture was just up on the screen?”

  My parents and Yvette were arguing about some money she owed them. Sister Spriggs was rocking back and forth in her chair, humming, watching them all go at it.

  No one even heard my question, so I was certain they had not been paying attention to the news story that had gone off seconds earlier. I picked up the remote, wondering if my father had
paid the extra money with his cable subscription to have the ability to rewind and record.

  He had.

  I pressed the rewind button to see the entire clip of Laz’s story.

  “Police are asking your help tonight with the reported kidnapping of a young woman in the neighborhood of Fells Point.” Laz spoke somberly into the live camera shot, his signature brown trench coat whipping in the nighttime breeze, his brown fedora barely holding on to the side of his head. I held my breath, waiting for the snapshot that had grabbed my attention moments earlier to flash on the screen again.

  “Witnesses describe a horrifying scene of an African American woman who looked to be in her early to mid-twenties come screaming out of an alley, begging and pleading for help,” Laz continued. “She appeared to be bleeding and residents of this quiet neighborhood immediately contacted police, who are reporting that at least ten 911 phone calls were made from community members between 9:06 p.m. and 9:08 p.m. However, by the time police arrived at 9:10 p.m., there were no signs of her.

  “At least two witnesses are reporting that immediately after she came running out of the alley, a dark-colored minivan came from behind her, nearly hitting her. A passenger exited the van, grabbed her, and threw her into the back of it, at which time the van sped away. Police at this time do not have a name or any other information about the victim, and are also not clear on the make and model of the vehicle. All that has been released is this still from a security camera that caught a few seconds of the victim when she was within its view.”

  I held my breath and pressed the pause button as a grainy photo filled the screen. The long weave, overdone boob job, and deep cocoa brown skin left no question. It was her.

  Silver.

  The woman who’d been on The Soul Mate Show locking lips with Brayden/Kwan/whatever his name was.

  I shut my eyes, rubbed my forehead. Too much was happening for a Thursday night. When I opened my eyes, I pressed play and watched as the camera zoomed in on the photo, close enough to see the genuine fear filling Silver’s eyes, the slight parting of her lips in terror and the butterfly tattoo on her neck.

  Wait a minute.

  A butterfly tattoo on her neck?

  I pressed pause again. I did not remember the woman on The Soul Mate Show having any tattoos, especially one as large and elaborate as the still showed. I had been tired last night when I watched the episode of the local dating show, but for as much as I studied the overdone fakeness of Silver, I think I would have noticed a large butterfly on the side of her neck.

  That can’t be Silver.

  A part of me felt relieved, though I wasn’t sure why. A woman was still in danger.

  But I had no other responsibility toward her than to pray. I mean, what else could I do for a stranger?

  I pressed play and let the story finish playing. Laz reappeared on the screen. “Despite the additional tax and community dollars going toward keeping this trendy, upscale neighborhood near the Inner Harbor safe—money, I must add, that has not been equally invested in other areas that experience far higher crime rates and need more of a police presence—a young woman has gone missing violently and against her will. Police are asking that if you have any information at all that can help either identify this young woman or provide information about the crime committed against her, to immediately contact Metro Crime Stoppers. Tips can be submitted anonymously. This is Lazarus Tyson reporting live from the Baltimore City Police headquarters. Back to you in the studio, John.”

  I sat dazed, and, yes, confused, as the news turned to a story about a controversial new home development in an agricultural zone.

  “Is everything okay, Sister St. James?”

  Sadie Spriggs was staring at me, her mouth uncharacteristically still. I had not noticed that she’d stopped humming. Her alto voice had been a comforting white noise against the backdrop of my mother’s stern demands and my sister’s nonstop accusations. My father had retreated from the fight. I had not noticed him leaving the room.

  The safe.

  He kept it in the basement. I prayed a silent prayer for the unidentified woman kidnapped in Fells Point, and then prayed that my father hadn’t rummaged through his safe where his most prized, smaller sports treasures were kept. Along with the lion’s head ring I hid.

  “I’m okay. I’m just . . .” Really, what was I supposed to say?

  “Father!” Sadie’s sudden shout startled me. Her eyelids fluttered shut and she raised a hand in the air. “Help this family during this difficult time, Lord Jesus. Bring the baby boys back home safe. Comfort the mothers, calm the grandmother, bring healing and peace that only you can bring to all these burdened relationships. In Jesus the Christ’s name I pray, Ayyyy-man.”

  And then the tambourine began to rattle and the hums from a few minutes ago turned into full-blown singing. My mother and Yvette had no choice but to shut up under the metallic pounding, foot-stomping, whimpers, and shouting of the ancient woman. Honestly, I think they stopped fighting for the simple fact that they couldn’t hear each other’s yells over the spirit-filled commotion.

  I realized then that Sadie Spriggs clearly understood her function and role in family catastrophes—and she lived up to them well.

  Heavy footsteps in the kitchen told me that my father had retired upstairs for the night. From the impromptu prayer service initiated by Mother Sadie and the unfinished argument left to simmer between my mother and Yvette, I knew I had time to fish for the ring in the safe later. I’d come back tomorrow when the basement should be empty and I would not have to provide any explanations to anyone about anything.

  “Hold to His hands, to God’s unchanging hands.” Sadie’s tambourine was in full-fledged Sunday morning mode as she belted out the hymn. Her eyes were closed and tears streamed down her face. When she opened them again, she nodded at me. I smiled and nodded back, accepting her unspoken directive of dismissal.

  She had work to do with my mom and sister, and her tambourine was only warming up.

  I stood and made my escape.

  Yvette glared at me as I dashed up the steps, leaving behind her and my mother for what promised to be a near all-night music and prayer affair.

  There was never any stopping Mother Sadie once the Spirit moved her to action.

  I had my own deliverance to work through.

  Chapter 10

  Roman was five years old the day I put every single picture I had of RiChard through a shredder. My son had just received another package from his absent father and was running through our old rancher wearing the Bolivian ceremonial mask that was his newest treasure from the man who traveled the world to save it, but never came home to see us.

  Ever.

  I remember the day vividly. I had turned in a paper for a sociology class, taken an economic exam for which I didn’t have time to study, and used the last cent of my student loans for the semester buying a hot dog, baked beans, and potato salad dinner for Roman.

  After losing my full scholarship to chase RiChard’s dreams around the globe, and returning with nothing to show for our “love” but a bulging belly with a baby kicking inside, I was determined to finish the college education I had abandoned at age eighteen. Of course, doing so as a single mother, with my own mother willing to see me fall flat on my face only to prove her point, made college enrollment and completion difficult. It took me years of taking classes and working, full time, part time, and alternating between both times to first get my bachelor’s and then my master’s degrees. Ava Diggs was my sole cheerleader and the only reason I did not quit during the final stretch of grad school.

  But on that day, the day Roman was having his own Carnival festival in my living room and my shredder was on full blast, I was nowhere near my master’s degree. I was only about halfway through my undergraduate journey, facing foreclosure for the second time, counting nickels and quarters to fill my gas tank, and living off of ramen noodles and celery sticks so that my son could have three balanced meals a day.
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  And the man who fathered Roman but never held him, who had never sent a dollar bill to support him, who had never asked for a photo, or mentioned plans to come see him during his sporadic calls, was the parent that Roman was praising as he jumped around the room.

  “Look what my daddy got me!” he shrieked over and over, as if the handcrafted mask were food, water, shelter, and sustenance—the things I was providing—no, sacrificing for—to ensure his health and well-being. “Look what my daddy got me!”

  I felt sick to my stomach hearing Roman’s cheers and gleeful shouts, knowing that I was going to have to dip into his Christmas present fund to pay the gas and electric bills. I felt sicker still when I recalled that the Christmas fund had already been depleted the month before to keep our water from being shut off.

  I could not stop Roman’s cheers. Despite my nausea, I could not turn my five-year-old son against his father. So I did what I could do. I erased every picture, letter, memento of RiChard from my presence by letting my shredder devour each one to pieces.

  But my son’s cheers did not stop until two years ago.

  The arrival of the lion’s head ring had changed everything. Even, especially, the way Roman thought of his father. Roman did not know the full story behind the prized jewelry piece. All he knew was that his father was not there for him, and, I guess, that was enough.

  Why had I even thought I would go to sleep? It was four o’clock in the morning and any rest I’d had came in fitful tosses and turns. I’d sleep a little and then start dreaming about Roman, then wake up and start worrying about him. Or I’d sleep a little and then that terrified girl who looked like Silver would haunt my dreams. Like a blender set on grate, my thoughts and dreams were whirling around in uneven pieces, and thinking about old photos that were no longer in my possession did not help.

  The grainy photo on the news had shown a woman with a butterfly tattoo; however, Silver did not have one. Or maybe she used makeup to cover it up depending on what kind of first impression she was trying to make on that dating show.