Inside the Beauty

by Joan Fennell Carringer

  ∞ NINE ∞

  THE RINGING OF HER PHONE awakened her early the next morning. She answered sleepily. “Hello? Yes, this is Sharris Cord. Mr. Bryan. How are you, sir?” A long pause as she listened. “Yes, I understand, but we’d be glad to work with you on the price……I see. Okay. Thank you for calling.”

  A cancellation. The first thought that came to her was what Jackie had said, that her business could be affected if it became known she was becoming close to Crew. She shook her head. They’d had cancellations before. People took out ads and then changed their minds. That was all there was to it. Crew had nothing to do with it.

  She may as well get up. She needed to get working on the Johnson ad she’d started on a couple days ago.

  She took a quick shower and got dressed. No need to be particular since she wouldn’t be seeing anybody but Judy that day. Unless Crew came by. Would he? Maybe she could spruce up a little bit.

  She couldn’t stop the smile that immediately came to her lips. His being there yesterday, exactly when she needed him, had to have been coincidental, but just the same, it had happened. She had the feeling that he’d always come to her, if it were at all possible, at any time of the day or night, if he thought she might be in trouble, scared or lonely. She couldn’t think of any other man she’d ever felt so secure with. Not only that, he made her happy. She thought of how he’d pretended he was going to eat her shoulder and laughed. She could remember almost everything they’d talked about. She could see the twinkling laughter in his eyes when he was joking. Then there was the seriousness when he was worried about something.

  The phone rang again just as she took her first sip of coffee. Another cancellation.

  Her disappointment and concern were overridden when she unexpectedly remembered how she’d felt when she was entering the house yesterday. She was sure somebody was watching her. Her whole insides had started tingling, and that didn’t happen for no reason. Her first thought was to call Crew and ask him to come back, but she knew she couldn’t. It was sheer luck that he’d come after the scare on the highway. She couldn’t expect him to come running every time she got a weird feeling.

  Had someone been watching her? Could it be the same person that was driving the SUV? No. It had pulled off about five miles before she got home and she hadn’t seen it again.

  Judy entered the kitchen. “You’re up early. Was the coffee ready or did you have to start it?”

  She was relieved for a diversion from her thoughts. “It was all ready and it’s perfect. How are you this morning?”

  “Ready and raring to start the day. My heart’s a little sad, though.”

  Sharris’ eyes narrowed quizzically. “Is something wrong?” Judy was almost always upbeat and rarely complained about anything.

  “Crew will be leaving soon. His being here so long has been so wonderful and I just hate the thoughts of him going away again.”

  “But he won’t be far, and he’s promised to come home any chance he gets. It’s not like when he was overseas and couldn’t come. He’ll have a lot more freedom now.”

  Judy poured a cup of coffee, sat down at the table and cupped her hands around it. “You like him, don’t you?”

  Sharris smiled. “How could anyone not like him? He has so much life and joy in him. He’s fun, but he can also be serious.”

  “He went through so much before we got him. Has he told you anything about it?”

  “A little. I could tell it was hard for him and I didn’t prod him for any more information than he volunteered on his own.”

  “He was eight years old when we found him huddled behind the dumpster one night. It was real late, almost midnight, and we’d been too busy to haul off the trash until then. It wasn’t that busyness that made us wait, though. God knew we had to be there at that time, to find him.”

  Crew hadn’t mentioned any of that. Sharris listened intently.

  “He was trying to hide when he saw our car lights coming, and we probably wouldn’t have known he was there if we hadn’t heard him crying. Then when we tried to talk to him, he acted like he was embarrassed. I think he thought he was too big to cry.” Judy raised her eyes. “We’re never too big to cry, Sharris.”

  “You say he was only eight?”

  “With big welts all over his body. Those days were filled with so much heartache. We took him home, not worrying about the possibility of getting in trouble over it, and doctored him. He was two years younger than our Jess and we couldn’t bear the thoughts of sending him back to abusive parents.”

  “Did you call the law?”

  “Honey, we knew the first thing they would’ve done was get in touch with his parents. Who knows what they would’ve told them? They may have tried to say we were the ones who hurt him. I mean, they were white. We were black. Who would they believe, them or us? Crew was such a scrawny little thing, he may have been afraid to tell the truth.”

  As Judy went to on tell of all the things they’d had to go through - how they’d fostered him off and on, then had to send him back home, then fostered him again - and how it took four long years before they were granted legal custody, Sharris was absorbing every word that was being said.

  “Did he tell you he has a brother?”

  Sharris nodded.

  “Crew worried about Tom. Tom was older and able to stand up to his father, so he didn’t get beat up the way Crew did, but still Crew was concerned about him. He missed him, but he never saw him again after that last day in court. His brother told him they would never speak to him again if he – if he told the judge he preferred living with black people over his own flesh and blood.”

  He’d hadn’t mentioned that to her. It deepened the pain Judy’s words had already created in her heart.

  “Then, all of a sudden, his parents and his brother were all dead, killed in an automobile accident. Crew didn’t even know until they’d been buried for two months. That was when his aunt called him. Sharris?”

  She waited, meeting Judy’s dark eyes.

  “He’s a good boy, and we did what we thought was best for him. But sometimes I wonder if it would’ve been better if he’d been raised by a white family.”

  “No one could’ve loved him like you did, no matter what color they were.”

  “But it was hard for him. He said it never bothered him to tell people that we were his parents, but I saw the pain in his eyes when he suddenly lost friends for no apparent reason. Sometimes, I’d hear people calling him vulgar names and making racial slurs. A few times, he came home all scraped up from fighting. The worst was when he got his nose broken.”

  When he was with Jackie.

  “He never did tell us what really happened, not even when he had to spend time in the hospital with a fractured shoulder, as well as the broken nose.” She paused, then continued. “Did you know he liked Jackie Carter at one time?”

  She nodded. “Jackie mentioned it.”

  “I think she was with him that night, but he never would verify it. I don’t think he started the fight, as he claimed he had. I always wondered if she knew what happened. She never came around after that. I’ve wondered about it. I can’t help thinking she was either scared to or else her parents might have found out Jimmy and I were black and wouldn’t let her.”

  In defense of Jackie’s family, she wanted to tell Judy the truth, but knew she couldn’t. If it ever came out, it would have to be from either Crew or Jackie.

  Judy looked directly into Sharris’ eyes. “The world is strange,” she said then. “It’s always been perfectly all right, even downright wonderful, when a white family wanted to adopt a child of another race, even one from another country. But it’s always been different if black people chose to care for a white child.” After a long pause, Judy continued. “I couldn’t love him more if he was my own son. And I love you like a daughter. I don’t want either one of you to be hurt because of what Jimmy and I did all those years ago. We thought it was the right thing at the time, but…..”


  She could hold her silence no longer. “It was the right thing. There may never have been another white family who would’ve taken him in and loved him the way you did. Love has no favorite color, and neither does God, because God is love.”

  Judy smiled. “I thought I was imagining it, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “What?”

  “That you’re already in love with him.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m very fond of him and he feels the same way about me, but neither of us wants the responsibilities and commitments that come with anything more than that. We wholeheartedly agree on that.”

  Judy sipped her coffee, but never lost her smile. “Whole heartedly?”

  “Yes.”

  For a long moment, Judy said nothing more. Then she finally stood up. “I’m feeling hungry now. What about you?”

  The conversation was over. The ringing of her phone proved it. When she looked to see the number of another customer on the caller ID, she almost panicked. Surely, it wasn’t another cancellation.

  She hung up smiling. It wasn’t a cancellation but a referral instead. She was to meet a new prospective client that afternoon.

  Thank goodness!

  ∞ TEN ∞

  SHE TRIED to keep her mind off Crew but he was in every thought that came to her. When she tried to concentrate on the new ad she was working on, she remembered the times he’d sat close beside her in her office, watching and giving her pointers. She recalled the words of Judy, how she’d found him as a little eight year old boy, crying behind the dumpsters, with welts all over his body. Pain shot through her, and she forced the ugly vision of her mind to go away by searching for something happy to replace it with. The day at the pool was the first thing that came to her. They’d had such a good time, swimming, laughing, sitting in the lounge chairs and talking. But what she recalled the most was when he hugged her so unexpectedly. Then, just yesterday, she was wanting him to kiss her when he was getting ready to leave.

  There had never been a man she couldn’t get out of her mind. She’d dated ones that looked like movie stars that she couldn’t wait to get away from. In all truth, Crew was probably the least handsome of any of the ones she’d gone with and he was a lot shorter. She always preferred tall men because she enjoyed the sensation of feeling small and feminine beside them. There wasn’t much difference at all in height between her and Crew.

  She’d never known a man she fully trusted the way she did him. Well, maybe Donovan but for some reason, she wasn’t attracted to him as any more than a friend. She felt guilty for the few times she’d agreed to go out with him, especially after his feelings for her became transparent. She had no desire to hurt him by leading him on. If only he’d take an interest in Jackie.

  Jackie. How deep had her crush been on Crew all those years ago? Did she still have feelings for him but was afraid to admit it, even to herself? Was that the real reason she’d said all the things she had, not because she was concerned for Sharris but because she was jealous?

  Sharris sighed. Jackie was her best friend. She shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts about her.

  It was probably a good thing Crew would be leaving soon. None of what she’d been thinking had anything to do with the fact that she still didn’t want a man in her life. Not even him.

  So, why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? Why was she wanting, even at that moment, to call him and talk to him or open the door and see him standing there? Why was she wondering what it would be like to have him hold her in his arms – really hold her?

  “Stop it!” she said aloud. “If you keep this up, you’ll be letting yourself in for a great big heartache. Look at how many of your friends are already divorced and miserable.” Her heart retaliated by reminding her how happy and in love her two sisters were in their marriages. She sighed, praying nothing would change for them when the newness wore off. Marna had been married two years, Taryn, just one.

  She walked across the floor and stopped by the window. Heavy, dark clouds were quickly forming in the sky that had been so bright and brilliantly blue just a little bit ago. Wasn’t that how love was - bright and shiny in the beginning but often ending with ugly dark pain, followed by large tear drops? She wanted no part of it. Once Crew was gone, she’d be able to get him out of her mind and everything would be the same as it was before.

  All the ramblings of her mind halted abruptly when she thought she caught sight of some kind of movement behind the shed at the far end of the yard. With wide eyes, she watched. Would it happen again or had she imagined it?

  It seemed like she stood there, not moving a muscle, for hours, although it was in reality only a few minutes. Nothing else happened. She must have been seeing things. Maybe it was the wind. Looking at the trees, she didn’t see a single branch stirring. The wind wasn’t blowing.

  She walked away from the window. Was she suddenly turning paranoid? Memories of all her fears, after the explosion that had killed her parents and injured her sister so badly, resurfaced. She and Taryn had both gone through therapy when neither of them could conquer the panic attacks afterward. Marna – oh, poor Marna! Even as she healed physically from the severity of her burns, she still had to go through therapy later on. Not only did she suffer pain, she was filled with guilt because she had survived and both her parents hadn’t.

  No one should have to go through something like that. Sharris tried not to blame God. Just the same, she couldn’t let go of the thought that He could’ve prevented it from happening. It had been God, however, who had finally given her a perfect peace such as she could never have imagined. When the therapy hadn’t worked, she’d finally turned to Him. She remembered that night she’d knelt at the altar and given Him all her fears. She remembered Pastor Tom kneeling there with her. It was just her and him – and God. She remembered how he’d cried out on her behalf, how the two of them had stayed there like that for at least an hour before she felt the calmness suddenly wash over her. It was the most wonderful feeling she’d ever had in her life. It was if she’d suddenly been filled up with a bottle of bleach that had cleansed every part of her body and dissolved all her pain, worry and heartache into nothingness.

  Both Marna and Taryn had found their own peace weeks before she did. They weren’t afraid to turn it over to the Lord, they told her, but she was reluctant to believe she’d ever be free of her pain, no matter what she did. After praying with Pastor Tom, she couldn’t help wondering why she’d waited so long.

  The ringing of her phone was so sudden and unexpected that she jumped, immediately coming out of her reverie. When she saw Marna’s name on the ID, she couldn’t help but smile. It was just what she needed at the moment. To have a long talk with her sister.

  ▬ ▬ ▬

  CREW sat in the recliner in Jess’s living room, staring at the TV but having no idea what was on it. Even the noise and fast action movie didn’t cover the thoughts racing through his mind. One thought, especially - that he was falling in love with Sharris.

  He didn’t want to fall in love. He used to think it was because of what happened that night with Jackie, that he was afraid he’d bring danger to anyone he might start to care deeply about. It was several years before that fear faded. He was now a grown man and certain he could handle any situation that might arise.

  There was only one thing he wasn’t sure about. One thing that haunted him, even after all these years. What if he had a child and then suddenly turned abusive like his biological father had been? What if the problems of life made him so angry that he started beating his wife, as his mother had been beaten?

  Thoughts of his mother brought pain. He had gotten away from the situation, thanks to Judy and Jimmy, but what about her? Had she gotten any peace before she died? He’d never seen her again after the judge granted guardianship to Judy and Jimmy. Even though it had been fifteen years ago, he still remembered the way she’d looked at him as they left the courtroom that day. For a long time afterward, he’d thought it
was hatred he had seen in her eyes, but then he started wondering if it had been love instead. Had she been relieved that he was getting a chance to find happiness?

  Guilt began to build in his heart. If he’d stayed, could he have helped protect her? Tom tried. He was ten years older than Crew and still living at home. Even though his brother never came right out and said it, Crew knew he stayed to take care of their mother. But Crew had ran away, shirking any responsibility. He told himself he was just a child. There was nothing he could’ve done. A lot of times he was the reason his father beat his mother, because of an argument they were having over something he’d done. It was probably better that he was gone.

  It still hurt, remembering Tom telling him he would never speak to him again as long as he lived if he chose the black family over his own. They were the most painful words he’d ever heard.

  He planned to find his mother and brother again when he was old enough. He wondered if it had gotten any better for his mother when he was no longer there. Had Tom found happiness? Had his father ever changed? Now, they were all dead and he would never know.

  How much of his father’s bad blood had he inherited?

  He finally stood up and walked across the room. It had been a long time since his mind had dwelled on those thoughts. He needed a release from them. To keep thinking as he was would surely make Satan smile and he had no intention of ever being the instigator of that.

  He was glad he would be returning to base soon. The best thing he’d done, after giving his heart to the Lord, was join the Army. It made a man out of him. Not only that, he became good friends with the chaplain at his first duty station and learned, from him, how to truly pray with all his heart and believe and trust that God heard. It was the chaplain who listened to him tell of his abused childhood, who mentored him and guided him - who told him the Lord would be with him for always and forever, no matter where he was, that nothing on heaven or on earth could separate him from the depth of His love.