Pray for the Girl

by Joseph Souza

  “Unfortunately, there weren’t many customers willing to try my food.”

  “My daughter’s a lot like her grandfather. He’s hard to get along with and a bit of a bully in the kitchen. But I got the sense, talking to him, that he was excited to have you on board.”

  “Excited to have me? It felt like he thoroughly enjoyed watching me fail.”

  “There’s something about my father I should tell you, Lucy. He’s got a number of serious health issues. I doubt that he’ll be able to work there much longer.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary disease. Last year he had a mild heart attack, and the doctors warned him to slow down or else he could really hurt himself. He can’t go on working seven days a week, ten-hour days, but he refuses to sell the place, assuming he could even find a buyer. And he’s so hard to please that he can’t keep a line cook for more than a few months at a time before they quit on him.”

  “Which is why he needs to mellow out.”

  “That’s why he asked for your help. Otherwise he would have never let you in his kitchen.”

  “He certainly has a funny way of showing his gratitude.”

  “My father’s in a difficult position. The economy here is terrible with the mills closing, and the diner’s reputation has taken a big hit in the last few years. The last thing he wants to do is shut The Galaxy down.”

  “But The Galaxy’s an institution here. He can’t just let it close.”

  “Do you really care if it goes under? You’ll be heading back to Manhattan anyway.”

  “I do care. That diner means a lot to me and the people in this town.”

  “Have patience with him, then. Once he sees that you know how to cook, he might start to trust you. Turning that place around won’t happen overnight.”

  “The Galaxy needs way more help than I can give it.”

  “Don’t give up on him. You might be surprised at what you can accomplish there.”

  I close my eyes and all I can see is the image of that girl, buried up to her chest and pleading for mercy as the stones rain down on her. As much as I try, I can’t vanquish this gory image from my mind’s eye. Will it trigger the voices in my head tonight and prevent me from sleeping? At least Nadia’s body feels warm and comforting against mine, but I know she can’t stay forever.

  Rest will not come easy, but rest I must get. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow I will track down Nasreen and persuade her to meet with me in an out-of-the-way place. Then, I hope, she’ll tell me all she knows about her dead cousin and the people in her community who might be capable of committing such a hideous crime.

  13

  NADIA IS GONE WHEN I WAKE UP. I SLEPT SO HARD, I NEVER EVEN NOTICED her leaving. It’s amazing she still cares for me after all these years. We were two gawky teens who thought we were in love, trying desperately to keep it a secret from those around us. I can still see the young coltish girl in her today. She’d just immigrated to Fawn Grove from Greece when I first laid eyes on her in the fourth grade. Her English was stilted and broken but improved greatly with each passing day. At barely over five feet, I’d yet to hit my growth spurt and feared I might never do so. We made an unlikely pair: the Greek and the geek.

  I stare at myself in the mirror. Part of me sees a stunning beauty who on the outside appears confident and sassy. A woman who could get most any man in town if she wanted. But hidden beneath the surface is shame and guilt. There’s a deep sense of remorse in there too. My eyes see a completely different person at times. I’m getting closer to my ideal, but I’m broken in so many ways that at times it’s disheartening, still lost in something I can’t quite understand. I see someone looking for meaning and purpose in her life.

  There’s a text message on my phone. It’s from Dalton. Nasreen didn’t show up for work yesterday. He’d asked around, but no one admitted to knowing where she lived. People clammed up at the sight of him. It worries me that she’s gone missing. My intuition tells me that the girl may be in trouble because of my meddling.

  I cruise past The Galaxy and see a familiar sight—a near-empty parking lot. Although this sad state of affairs seems the norm, seeing it over and over saddens me. I have no intention of going inside this morning, although a part of me wants to shake the shit out of Yanni and tell him to wake up before it’s too late. Fix this place before it disappears forever. I’d tell him to go home and get some rest, look after your health, and let me take care of the cooking. Given time and buckets of money, I know I could win over the hungry souls in this town. Educate them. Refine their primitive palates. Deep down, they must be yearning for something better than this crap.

  The fresh wound on my thigh stings when I move. It doesn’t deter me from carrying the boning knife wherever I go. I need to protect myself in case there’s a threat against my life. Someone in this town wants to keep me from looking into the death of that poor girl, and I refuse to back down. Unfortunately for them, they have no idea what kind of girl I am. They have no idea what shit I’ve been through as a combat medic and the debilitating pain I’ve endured. That threat on my windshield only serves to embolden me.

  I glance at the clock on the dashboard and see that it’s just past nine A.M.

  Who in this town would send me such a nasty threat? Could the crescent and star, and the word infidel, have been added to throw me off the scent? Then again, maybe not. Maybe someone in the Afghani community really had seen me talking to Nasreen and decided to warn me off.

  Nadia is the only person other than Wendy and Russ who knows the real me. I’m a stranger in my own town, a pretty face from the past that no one recognizes. People I once knew and grew up with now look past me as if I’m a ghost.

  I park in the business district of Fawn Grove with its weathered brick buildings and postindustrial ambience. A guardrail is down so that a train can clack its way through the center of town. More than a few of the stores are deserted, graffiti scrawled over the facades. Nostalgia isn’t pretty at times, and yet here and there I see nuggets of my past still standing. A reminder of better times when this place was booming and everyone put on a happy face. There’s a small, cramped bookstore that’s been here since my youth. Bud Whipple’s Guitars is still in operation across the street, its windows displaying used Stratocasters and dented old acoustics. Next to Whipple’s is Bernie’s Deli. Young’s Joke Shop is no longer there, which makes me sad. There’s the doleful brick pub still in operation. In its heyday, mill workers flooded into Sully’s after their shift finished. It has a long, narrow bar that is devoid of light, and one can stand in the middle of the pub and practically touch both of its sticky walls.

  Decay has set in, and once that happens it’s hard to stop. You can see it in the hardened faces of the juvenile delinquents who skip school to roam these depressing streets. The boys walk with that ape gait, arms hanging and trying to impress the mousy-looking, pink-haired girls they’ll one day impregnate. Many depend on welfare, and drug use is rampant, from what I’ve heard. The older ones barely remember the happier days and know that the kind of affluence their parents once enjoyed will never again return to this town. The younger generation yearns to leave the only place they’ve ever known.

  I remember a time when Fawn Grove was a bustling and vital town. The mill’s smokestacks were billowing twenty-four seven. It was near the end of an era of prosperity, and the signs of recession were apparent for all to see. People had good jobs and plenty of cash in their pockets. They say money can’t buy happiness, but walking through this run-down section of town, I know that happiness is hard to come by without it.

  A cheery coffee shop appears out of nowhere like a beacon of light in the darkness. It resembles any of the hipster coffee shops one might find in the East Village, and its presence brings a smile to my face. Posters line the bottom half of the window advertising local theater shows, concerts, and various community events. One poster is for a protest rally called Love Over Hate. It advert
ises a march to be held in support of the immigrants.

  It’s clearly the nicest shop in town. I press my face up against the cold window and see a group of deaf students sitting at a table and conversing in ASL. Stepping back, I stare at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling-window. I see a woman hiding behind overpriced sunglasses, dressed in skinny jeans and bundled in a double-breasted pea jacket that’s cinched at the waist. How nice this reflected woman would look if she had a plaid scarf to wrap around her neck.

  It takes me a few seconds to notice the two women working behind the counter. Pam Price and Jenny Christian. I remember attending Fawn Grove High with them. We’d not been friends, but we knew each other from growing up all those years in the same town. How long has it been since I’ve seen these two girls? I go inside and sit at the bar, admiring what they’ve done to the place. If my memory serves me, this used to be a women’s shoe store. In the back of the shop sits an elevated stage for musicians and performers. A whir fills the room and, to my delight, I know immediately what it is. They’re roasting coffee beans.

  “Hi,” Pam says cheerfully. “Anything look good to you?”

  “How about an Americano?”

  “Good choice.” She smiles at me, a high-wattage version of the one she used to flash in high school. “You passing through town, hon?”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  “You look familiar to me for some reason. Do I know you from somewhere?”

  “Been to Manhattan in the last fifteen years?”

  “Don’t I wish? I’ve always wanted to go there and see one of those Broadway shows.” She laughs. “I rarely get to leave Fawn Grove these days because of family and work.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Pretty slow, but we just opened a year ago. A coffee shop like ours takes time to grow in a town like Fawn Grove. Thank God for Dunham College. The students there keep us afloat.”

  “Educating people to appreciate good coffee takes time.”

  “Especially when you live in a depressed town like this and the coffee is more expensive than Dunkin’s,” she says, gesturing with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “I think it’s so cool that you roast your own beans.”

  “Thanks, hon. Don’t hear that very often. Let me go make you that drink.”

  She fills the portafilter with finely ground espresso, levels it off, then screws it back into the machine. Pam’s hair is shorter and spikier than I remember, but other than carrying a few extra pounds, she looks the same as before. She ran with a group of theater kids who put on the school’s musicals and acted in the annual drama production. They were an extremely tight clique and quite active in all the school’s activities. I remember Pam singing the lead one year in Mary Poppins and how everyone brought her long-stem roses after the show. At the time, she was the closest thing there was in this town to a Broadway star.

  She places the mug down on the bar and stares at me.

  “Sure I don’t know you?”

  “Not that I know of.” I shrug, wishing I didn’t have to lie.

  “So what do you think of our little town?”

  “It’s changed quite a bit since the last time I was here.”

  “You’ve been to Fawn Grove before?”

  “A long time ago when I was visiting family.” I sip the drink and am surprised how good it is. Light-years better than what The Galaxy serves. “Wow! This is an exceptional cup of coffee.”

  “Thank you so much.” Her smile lights up her face as it did when she was singing onstage back in high school. “That’s quite a compliment coming from a bona fide New Yorker.”

  “You from here?”

  “Born and raised.” She wipes down the spotless granite countertop. “Most of my family worked in the paper mill when the mills were going gangbusters.”

  “Not so much anymore?”

  “They’re down to a bare-bones crew. I’m surprised they lasted this long, producing only one product.”

  “Catch-and-release papers.”

  “Wow! You know a lot more about our little town than I thought.”

  “One of my relatives used to work there.” I sip my Americano and glance around the place. “I don’t remember there being this many immigrants.”

  She rolls her eyes. “They started moving in a few years ago, thanks to Catholic charities. It’s been a hard transition for everyone in town.”

  “Are you referring to the murder of that girl?”

  “No. Well, yes, but that’s a terrible tragedy in its own right. The immigrants’ arrival here has created lots of other social problems.”

  “Like what?”

  She leans over the bar and whispers, “I try to be tolerant, I really do. But as a mother of three girls, it scares me to death to think what kind of society they’ll grow up in if these immigrants ever outnumber us. Whether they’ll be forced to wear head scarves and be submissive to men.”

  “Is that realistic?”

  “They tried to get a mosque built in town, which I’m totally okay with, but they wanted to get rid of every restaurant and bar within a thousand feet of it. I’m all for live and let live, but that’s not tolerance in my book.”

  I sip my coffee and try to empathize.

  “The rumor around town is that she was stoned to death.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “It’s what I heard, but it could be just a rumor. I did some research on the Internet and learned that they stone girls in their own country as punishment.”

  “I saw the sign in your window.”

  “What sign?”

  “The one advertising a rally in support of the immigrants.”

  “We let all the community groups put signs on our window. Most come from the students at Dunham, seeing as how they’re our biggest customers. I think they see themselves as an oppressed people just like the Afghanis.”

  “Don’t all college kids these days think of themselves as oppressed?” I laugh.

  “I think with them it’s a deaf thing,” she says. “Honestly, it’s not like I’m unsympathetic to the immigrants’ cause. We’re all immigrants in one form or another, and I know for a fact that many of them are good people who are happy to be here. Fawn Grove really is a nice place to live and raise a family.”

  “If you can find work.”

  “True. Many people these days have to get by on government assistance and the local food bank.”

  “I can’t tell you how excited I was to come back and see this town again.”

  “Excited to see Fawn Grove? Now that’s something you don’t hear every day.” She laughs. “But I’m glad you think so highly of our shop.”

  “This is one of best cups of coffee I’ve had in a while,” I say.

  “Awww! You’re such a sweetheart.” She reaches out and pats my hand, and the sensation of being touched momentarily repulses me.

  “Do any of the immigrants come here?”

  She laughs. “Oh, no. They stay to themselves and shop in their own stores. We don’t see a dime of their money, and that’s fine by me.”

  “So why do you think the girl was killed?”

  “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, right?”

  “If you had to make an educated guess?”

  “I don’t know much about their culture, but some people are saying she dishonored herself, whatever that means.” She leans down and whispers, “Look, my business partner would freak if she heard me talking about this. We’ve known each other since kindergarten, but she’s one of those bleeding hearts who wants to see the good in everyone. I’m a decent person, but I’m also a realist. Do you really think I want to see my girls wearing a hijab?”

  “Of course not.”

  “My gut is telling me that one of their own killed that poor girl. A radical,” she says. “I’m a Christian who believes in forgiveness, so punishing a kid like that is a foreign concept to me. Personally, I hope they find the bastard and kill him.”
r />   “Has there been a lot of tension in town because of it?”

  “It’s torn us apart like nothing else. It’s caused a lot of pain and suffering among the townspeople who for years have been suffering economic hardship. There’ve been protests and angry town hall meetings. Neighbors have stopped talking to one another over the issue. Some people have even stopped going to Mass because the Catholic Church dumped them here and made the town pay for their well-being. There’s even been a few fights.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “One day a small group of men marched through town, chanting in their language and making outrageous demands.”

  “What kind of demands?”

  “Not totally sure, because no one couldn’t understand them. The newspaper reported the next day that they wanted more welfare benefits and better living conditions,” she says. “Sorry, but I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Lucy Abbott. And yours?”

  “Pam Dooley,” she says, giving away the fact that she’d married Easy Ed Dooley, star lineman for the football team and genuinely good guy. It surprises me that of all the guys she could have married, she ended up with the jock. “Are you married, Lucy? Have kids?”

  I laugh. “Heavens, no.”

  “More time and money for yourself then?” She laughs and pats my hand. “Maybe someday, right?”

  “If I ever meet the right one.”

  “I’ve been married fourteen years now, right out of high school.”

  “What’s your husband do?”

  “Ed works at the mill. It’s a good job, but I don’t know how much longer it’s going to stay open. They’ve been threatening to close that place for years.”

  “What will you do if that happens?”

  “We try not to think about it. Can’t live off what I make in the shop right now. I hope things will pick up once people try our coffee.” A customer approaches the counter. “Have to run. Nice talking to you, Lucy. If you need anything else, just give a holler.”

  “Will do.”

  I take my mug over to a table and stare out the window, enjoying one of the best cups of coffee I’ve had since moving here. My perception of Pam Price has changed after our brief conversation, and I now feel for her. People grow up and change, mostly for the better, but not always. I wonder if her theater clique was a by-product of growing up in Fawn Grove and trying to rise above being a mill town girl.