The Safe Room

by B. A. Shapiro

  October 12, 1868

  Silas came to me in a dream last night, and I now have no doubt that he is a different man from the one I knew. He is changed, bitter and unforgiving, and the harsh set of his face frightened me in a manner Silas never could have done while he was alive. He demanded to know where his brothers were, and I only wished I had good news to share, but I did not. Though the Vigilance Committee still searches, there has been no word, and Clara Garrison informed me just yesterday that she fears there never shall be. I could not tell Silas this, so I said nothing.

  Silas misinterpreted my silence. “You are filling my tunnel,” he thundered, “and you must stop immediately! You are replacing the dirt in the day while I sleep, undoing what I do every night! You wish to keep my brothers enslaved!”

  “Oh no, my darling,” I cried. “I would never do such a thing.”

  “Why should I believe the words of a white woman, when I see the truth of your acts before my eyes?”

  “But I am not a white woman,” I protested. “I’m your wife, Sarah, Ulysses’—Levi’s—mother. All I’ve ever wanted is for your brothers to reach Canada. That, and for you to be with me.”

  He said nothing, but I could see from the cold gleam in his eyes that the man standing before me did not believe my words, that he saw only the color of my skin, not the color of my heart.

  October 15, 1868

  Silas came again last night, and the depth of his wrath knows no bounds. He smashed his heavy shovel into my chiffonier with such force that the rocker sitting next to it pitched and rolled. His face was mottled with fury as he shouted of his brothers, swearing that anyone—man or woman, black or white—who stood in the way of their freedom would die at his hand. He raged on about dirt and women filling his tunnel and other things I could not understand.

  He did not appear to see me, and for that I was grateful. Although I am certain that the dear man I married would never lash out in hatred, never hurt a living creature without a prevailing reason, this man is vengeful and beyond compassion. I know not what this man will do.

  My heart is broken, for now I am certain my husband is not at peace and never shall be. My dearest Silas is as enslaved in death as he was in life.

  Perhaps more so.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  When I woke up in the morning, Michael was gone, but he had left a note on the pillow. “Didn’t want to wake you. Did some clean-up downstairs and now off to the hospital. Will be back later to finish the tunnel and do anything else you’d like me to do.” I smiled. I could think of a few things I’d like him to do. I reached my arms over my head in the self-satisfied stretch of an overfed cat basking in the sun, focused on the sensual ache of my muscles, on the gentle throbbing between my legs, on how good Michael had made me feel, would make me feel again and again …

  Then I remembered my dream.

  The man had arrived in the night, lost and lonely and confused; he left steely-eyed with anger and vengeance. He had arrived looking for Sarah; he left knowing he would never find her.

  I reached for the phone and dialed Beth’s number. “How are you feeling?” I asked when she said hello.

  “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  I didn’t want to talk about being scared. “You haven’t told me how you are.”

  She sighed in resignation. “I’m fine. It doesn’t even hurt much, and I slept great for a change—the upside of this thing’s the good meds.”

  “I didn’t sleep all that well—I had a weird dream.”

  There was a long silence. “About the ghost?”

  I rolled onto my back and stared at the crack on the ceiling. “He was young, good-looking, and he was searching for Sarah. He couldn’t find her. He was confused. He didn’t know where he was.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lee, are you trying to tell me that some nice, little lost boy tried to kill me with a kitchen knife? Don’t forget I’m sitting here with twenty-seven stitches in my arm.”

  “He wasn’t so nice by the end of the dream—when I pretty much told him he was dead.”

  “He didn’t know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So you are scared?”

  I still didn’t want to think about how scared I was or wasn’t, so I changed the subject to a topic I knew Beth would find irresistible. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Do you think you should get out of there?”

  “I’m on my way to work.”

  “Do you want to come here when you’re done?”

  “I’ve got to finish the tunnel.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Lee.”

  “I promised Michael.”

  There was a long pause. “Is that the something you have to tell me?” Beth asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  “He spent the night?”

  “He spent the night.”

  “You must be feeling good,” she said with a leer in her voice. It was nice to know that no matter what happened, Beth would always be Beth.

  “Much better,” I had to admit.

  “So he’s meeting you there when you get done with work? He’s going to finish the tunnel?”

  “Maybe. Probably later. After dinner. I want to take it slow.”

  “You’re not going to go into the cellar alone.” It was a command.

  “The cement guy’s coming first thing tomorrow morning—it’s got to get done.”

  “Why can’t you wait for Michael? Why can’t he just do it himself?”

  “His mother just had open-heart surgery, Beth. I think he’s a little busy today.”

  “Well, then why can’t he do it when he comes over later?”

  “I don’t know for sure that he is coming over. It depends on his mother.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s under control.”

  She told me Russ had been by earlier to pick up her car—which was a good thing, as I had forgotten it was parked behind mine—then queried me on exactly how long I would be at work and how long I anticipated being home before Michael came over. I told her to take it easy and hung up.

  I showered, dressed and ate breakfast. But before I left for SafeHaven, I went into the cellar. I tried not to think about what I was doing, or what my actions might imply about my beliefs, as I lay the tattered charm bag on the ground at the mouth of the tunnel. Maybe if he found it there, he wouldn’t be as angry. Or better yet, maybe he’d go away.

  There was an aura of festivity at SafeHaven when I arrived. Saturdays are visiting days for the juniors and seniors, and a swarm of small children raced through the narrow hallway. Their mothers sat in the front parlor, smiling indulgently. When you only see your child for a few hours a week, you’re loath to discipline them. This was the good and bad news for these children, who lived with grandparents and aunts and in foster homes, whose past, present and future were embedded in shaky ground. I watched them with a twinge of sadness. They appeared so normal, so carefree, like any bunch of kids that you’d see at any middle-class daycare center.

  I looked around for Trina, but didn’t see her. Saturday mornings were difficult for her under the best of circumstances—she grieved for her lost little girl more than she ever let on—but today, with her restriction and impending expulsion, was sure to be her own personal hell. If Kiah decided to kick Trina out of the program, she was going straight to prison. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. I climbed the back stairs to the second floor landing and called out to her, but there was no answer, so I went on up to my office.

  What a dump, as they say in the movies. Or, more correctly, what a disaster. In the week and a half since Gram had died, the mail and the memos and the faxes and the telephone messages had piled up. Not to mention the emails that were sure to be cluttering up my own little niche of cyberspace. I was determined to keep my mind away
from Harden House and all it conjured; I was determined to stay focused on what was before me. As I looked at the piles leaking into each other—leaking onto the floor in one case—I figured if there ever was a task capable of holding ghosts at bay, this was it. But I needed to see Trina before I got started. I wanted to make sure she was okay and commiserate with her about the police’s stupidity. If Dannow was talking about a 10,000 dollar retainer for me—and it was clear I wasn’t really a suspect—I couldn’t imagine what Trina’s situation would be if the police started taking this more seriously. Poison and broken stairs and missing bracelets. Shit.

  I went back down the stairs to check the dorm room. Only seniors were allowed in the dorm during the day, and although I suspected Trina had lost this privilege, I couldn’t imagine where else she might be. But the dorm room was hushed, completely still, all the blankets pulled taut around their thin mattresses, neat hospital corners trying to initiate neat lives. If not for the personal mementos displayed on the night tables, it could have been an army barracks. Basic training for life.

  I walked through the narrow pathway between the double row of cots to the window that faced the street and thought about the women I knew who had slept in these beds: Jenna, Deborah, Anthia, Holly, Sarita, Melanie, Carmen, Willow, Blondell, Gwen, Freddie, Susan, so many others. What had become of them once they returned to the street? I’d heard Freddie was assistant manager at the Burger King on Columbus Ave., that Willow was staying clean but having trouble getting her sons back from DES, that Anthia was using again, as was Holly, and that Susan had gone to live with her mother in Seattle. There had been no word on the others.

  “All you need is love,” was written in tiny block letters under the window ledge. Was that all they needed? I didn’t think so. With or without love, most of those women could probably be found right where they had begun, doing what they had been doing, pretty much unaffected by their time in this room. To live in poverty is to live on the edge: trying to survive the dreariness, to make sense out of the chaos, to stay alive. I understood all too well why the women went back to drugs: it was a way to navigate through their world, perhaps not the safest or the wisest choice, but a valid choice nonetheless. I wondered if it was going to be Trina’s choice, which made me wonder if I was getting worn down by the hopelessness of cycles, burning out. No, I reminded myself, Trina still had a chance. The cycle didn’t win every time. Jenna and Deborah and Sarita were probably doing just fine.

  Only one night table was completely bare, and I knew it was Trina’s. She had once told me she hated all those Virgin Marys and stuffed animals and rosary beads. “I’ve only got me to count on,” she had said. Probably a better bet than love.

  I sat down on her bed and tried to imagine what it was like to be Trina, what she went through every day just to survive. But I knew it was impossible for me to truly understand: I checked the Boston Globe Metro/Region section every morning to make sure no one I knew from SafeHaven had been killed or hurt or arrested while I was safely asleep in Lexington. Trina didn’t need to read the paper; this was where she lived.

  I looked down and saw something sticking off the bottom shelf of her night table. It was a book. Jackie By Fosie. One of the books Gram had given her. Who would’ve thought this was the kind of book Trina would like? I recognized that my surprise was a confirmation of my previous thoughts: what did I really know of Trina? What the Boston Globe told me? The small glimpses Trina had allowed?

  I picked up the book. A hard cover, fairly new, still carrying that spicy, slightly funky bookstore smell. It looked cheerful, sort of silly, fun. Trina reading a light book just for the joy of reading. A sign of hope. I opened the book absently, then froze. A rough cavity had been gouged from the pages, about an inch and a half square. Inside the cavity, carefully coiled within the small square, was Gram’s emerald-and-diamond bracelet.

  “What are you doing in here?” Trina demanded. She was standing in the doorway, glaring at me.

  I jerked my head up as her words cracked the silence, and for a moment, I felt guilty, as if it was I who had been caught red-handed, then I just felt sad. I scooped the bracelet out of the book and stared at it twinkling in my palm. I held it out toward her.

  “You have no right to mess with my things.”

  “What’s this doing here?” I asked, my voice surprisingly calm.

  “I’m not throwing down for this.” Trina marched into the dorm and stood at the foot of the cot, her jaw jutting forward in anger. “I didn’t steal it.”

  I felt a flicker of hope. Perhaps there was another explanation. “Then how did it get in your book?”

  She crossed her arms and pursed her lips together. “I don’t know.”

  I thought about Lionnel being arrested for fencing stolen goods, about Trina getting caught trying to pass him something from the window, and my hope dimmed. I waited.

  “Well,” she said, back-stepping a bit, “I know how it got in the book—I put it there—but I don’t know how I got it in the first place.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, but I was afraid I did.

  “Please, you have to believe me,” she begged, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “It’s not what you think.”

  I wanted to believe her, to believe my friend, the woman I had defended to Kiah and Blais, the woman who had commiserated with me yesterday about handsome men, but who had assured me—and correctly so—that Michael was an exception. And part of me did believe her, but another part held Gram’s bracelet. It was difficult to deny the weight of the evidence in ray hand.

  She stared at my hand. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Trina. I honestly don’t know.” I could almost hear my illusions—delusions?—shattering around me.

  “I’ll go to prison if you tell.”

  I looked at the young woman standing before me: such potential, such waste. Kiah always said Gram and I were too trusting, and it appeared that, once again, Kiah was right.

  “Please, I can’t go to prison, and I can’t crawl the street.”

  “Did Gram know?”

  “I told you, I didn’t steal the bracelet. Clara didn’t know anything—there was nothing to know.”

  I couldn’t believe Trina was standing in front of me, denying that which was so patently obvious to us both. How stupid did she think I was? “Did you do anything to her?”

  “Do anything to her?” Trina repeated, clearly confused by the question, then her eyes turned icy cold. “Oh, I catch it now. You want to know if I did anything to Clara. You want to know if I killed your grandmother.” Then she began to laugh, a harsh, bitter laugh filled with self-righteous indignation. “Always the same,” she said. “You’re all the fucking same.”

  This was getting beyond believable. “Don’t give me that sanctimonious shit about how hard it is to be black,” I cried. “I gave you—we all gave you—every chance, every break, because you’re black.” I raised the fist that held the bracelet and was astonished to find myself shaking it at her. “It was in your book, Trina, on your night table, so don’t give me any crap about how this is about race.”

  Trina wasn’t laughing anymore. Her mouth was set in a thin line of fury and her eyes blazed with such fierceness that it crossed my mind she might actually pose a physical threat. “It’s always about race.”

  “Well, I’m not buying it.” I stood up and brushed past her. “You’re trying to guilt-trip the wrong person.” I walked out of the dorm, up the stairs and into my office.

  I shut the door and jammed my chair under the knob. Then I picked up the phone and called the Lexington police.

  Trina knew from experience that it didn’t take long to get funky in the hold, and she could smell herself turning already. This shit was coming down the same way it had come down with Hendrika. Yeah, she had done wrong then, lots and lots wrong, plenty she wished she could take back and do over again, and she had done some wrong now. But neither time did she do what they were accusing h
er of doing.

  And just like with Hendrika, the man was gonna hang it on her all the same. She knew there was no point in telling him her story or trying to buck him in any manner ’cause he was gonna win in the end. He always won in the end.

  She was done, done with the changes, done with the plans. She was done with it all. All’s that ever happened when she made plans was that she got herself disappointed.

  No plans. No disappointments. She was done.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Once again, I left SafeHaven without cleaning my desk. Although there was nothing forcing me out the door, I knew I was going to be useless after watching Trina handcuffed and put in a cruiser. Kiah assured me I had done the right thing. She hugged me and told me that no matter how hard you try, some people just can’t be helped. But it didn’t make me feel any better. I was a squealer. A snitch. A shit.

  I reminded myself that Trina had lied to me, stolen from Gram, and tried to hide her guilt by raising the false specter of racism, but she was my friend—had been my friend—and I felt bad about turning the final screw in her coffin. Although I also recognized that it was Trina, not me, who had turned all the others. The facts were the facts, and no matter how much I detested them, they were impossible to refute. How could I have misread her so completely? How could I have been so blatantly and startlingly wrong about her?

  As I drove through Lexington Center, a headache furiously pounded behind my eyes. The bright spring day was a piercing contrast to the darkness that filled my soul, and the intense sunlight made my headache worse. The short drive from the Common to Harden House seemed to take forever, as if the pain in my head was consigning me to slow motion. I also had the nagging suspicion that there was no aspirin in the cabinet at home, that I had finished a bottle the day after the funeral and written it down on a list somewhere. Of late, I hadn’t been attentive to the details of ordinary life.

  At first, I was relieved to see Beth’s Rover in the driveway. She was sure to have aspirin in her purse, and I needed someone to talk to. But then I realized that my discovery proved Beth had been right about Trina: it verified her distrust and racism, snickered at my knee-jerk liberal assumptions. My heart sank. There was no way I could avoid telling her, and Beth’s smug satisfaction at her vindication was not going to be pretty to watch.