Unspoken

She didn’t come home last night. So unlike her. We knew something was dreadfully wrong.

Did she visit that man she still couldn’t rid herself of? In a grime-filled hotel room, or maybe the local prison. Or maybe, in her courageous effort to remove him from her life, he chose to retaliate. Taken. Hidden. Maybe even beaten.

That’s how she first arrived at the shelter. Hair done, a slick pleather jacket, shiny hoop earings and oversized celebrity sunglasses. Once inside my office, she removed the dark shades, revealing an even darker black puffy circle around her left eye. Punched in the face. Never to go back. And I believed her.

Five months later she is missing and it just doesn’t add up. She was on a new path -I could see it in her eyes, in the way she prayed, in the way she took younger, more frightened women under her wing. Her wings, which were just beginning to stretch to their widest potential. Job training program, local news interview, no longer hiding behind a curtain of braids.

So, no, I didn’t think she would be the one to not come back. To be out, somewhere else with no word.

But then again, there have been so many women who, the moment their light begins to truly shine, they unplug the lamp and cancel the electricity, preferring the cold, damp cellar they are used to. “It’s familiar, it’s easy, and no one will bother me down here.” And if one is afraid of tripping up the stairs, one may convince herself that it is safest to live at the bottom level.

Hours passed and my hope began to betray me, and I too wondered if she had sunk underground. Others literally thought she was left dead somewhere. We heard from a friend of hers and rushed to the starling reality, “Is she alive?” Her friend denied knowing anything. Such loyalty. Such need to protect.

“She’s safe,” the friend finally admitted, whispering under her breath to the one person who could spread the news the fastest. At least she’s safe. Yet, when would we see her, and in what condition?

The day slipped into early evening, the sun casting an end-of-the-week glow on the desk plants, client files and bags of donations. One more week of shelter provided for fifteen women and twelve children. The question was whether one bed would remain vacant, waiting for a lost woman to return for rest, surely safer then where she laid last night.

I began to close up my office for the night, prepared to pass the uncertain news unto the evening shift. The day’s residency notes stated that at least she was safe. But just as I forfeited responsibility to the next in line, she came home.

She raced straight to her room, saying she would be down in a minute. She needed to gather herself, compose her disordered heart and think of what to say. And we could only guess, waiting for her to explain herself.

Moments later, she came into the office. I closed the door and invited her to sit on the most comfortable chair we could find. Another staff member knelt to the floor by her knees. I began in an adjacent chair but eventually lowered myself to the ground. It was time to hear her story.

“Start from the beginning,” we offered, her heaving tears rendering her speechless. She couldn’t. This large proud woman in her mid-thirties, who so often expressed such wisdom, such truth, could now only throw her head to the side in anguish.

“Were you hurt?” No, she declared, it was nothing like that. At least our worst fears were put to rest. But what then could bring this woman of strength and perseverance to a state of utter despair?

Her face was saturated with tears, the pitch of her voice unrecognizably strained and desperate. She heaved and turned, trying to avoid our questioning faces. She closed her eyes and another avalanche of tears was dispelled beneath her eyelids.

As I looked longingly into her drenched eyes, I noticed a small beauty mark below her left eye. I never noticed it before. It must’ve been covered by her woundedness that first time she entered the shelter doors. Yet what about the next five months? How could I not have noticed that feature.

Just like I had never observed her hands before, the length and texture of her fingers, covered in tough skin yet ending in delicate unpainted fingernails. I placed my own hands on her left knee, noticing for the first time the radius of her knee cap, wide enough to envelope my palm.

As she sat there searching for language, I noticed the spaces between her teeth, the roundness of her surrounding cheek bones. The characteristics that made her face so familiar to me these past several months, but which now were distorted with unintelligible pain.

When words finally found their source, she began to speak. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to worry you… I just couldn’t…” She said she was wandering the streets during the day, cars rushing by, leaving gusts of exhaust in their wake. And buses. Barreling vehicles, which, she admitted, she considered walking in front of. To end all this.

But she just as quickly knew her life was still worth living - even though in her mind she was less than complete, tainted, a woman in shame. “No,” we pleaded. “You are beautiful, and whole and loved.”

Yet how do you convince someone of her sheer G-d-given completeness when the past twenty-four hours included hearing the words, “You are HIV-positive.”

As her tears dried and her story ended, she sat exhausted and worn, and together we mourned.