White Offerings by Ann Roberts Page B

though.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Jane told me that the night before last Isabel called her six times to plan their date, but the sixth time was a hangup. What if that was a different person?”
    Biz drummed her fingers on the table and stared out into the restaurant. “Jane did tell me that she’s had several hangups in the last few weeks. She didn’t think anything of it, because she gets so many phone calls in a day, that there’s usually at least one.”
    Anxiety crept into her stomach and formed a knot. She was suddenly glad that Biz was working for Jane. When she looked up again, Biz was staring at her.
    “A kid gave it to me,” Biz said.
    “What?”
    “You asked me yesterday how I got my name. It was a kid who first called me Biz. My nickname is the reason I went into investigation.”
    “It sounds like there’s a story behind that.”
    “There is.”
    “I’d be interested to hear it.”
    Biz looked at her, as if debating whether to share. She wiped her mouth on her napkin and tossed it on the table. “After my mother threw me out, I came West to a warmer climate. I went to St. Louis and lived with my aunt and her third husband—a real winner. I spent as much time as I could away from the house, and I got a job working at a women’s shelter. These were women who had escaped their abusive husbands and were looking for work, making connections with friends or families, just trying to change their lives. Some only lasted a few weeks before they gave up and went back to the violent situation, and others were terrific success stories. One night this woman named Valerie appeared with her two kids, Frannie and Joey. Frannie was four and Joey was about two. The husband was horrible, and he’d done some vicious things to all three of them—I won’t go into it. They were there for about a week, and I got to know the kids rather well. Frannie was amazing and very bright. We used to play checkers, and she loved trying to say my name. I mean, for a four-year-old,
Elizabeth
is a lot of syllables, but she got it.”
    Ari smiled, but Biz’s face clouded and tears welled in her eyes.
    “One day I came to work and they were gone. The director said Valerie had gone back to her husband. I just had this horrible feeling, and I thought I was going to be sick. I worried about them for the next two weeks, having nightmares, praying they were all right and that they weren’t going to be a statistic. I kept going to the shelter to volunteer, hoping they would come back.”
    “Did they?”
    Biz nodded. “Yeah. Like so many women in abusive cycles, when they’d gone back, he was okay at first—feeling sorry, trying to make it right. Then he turned mean again one night after he got drunk, but this time, Valerie fought back. She’d been around these other women at the shelter, and she was starting to stand up for herself.” She paused and took a deep breath.
    Ari instinctively took Biz’s hand. “You don’t have to finish telling me this.”
    Biz turned to her and smiled. “No, I want to. When Valerie yelled at him to stop, it got her a punch in the face—hard. Two of her teeth came out. The kids started screaming, and Frannie was yelling at the dad, jumping on him. He went into this rage, grabbed a knife and cut off part of her tongue.”
    “Oh, God!”
    “It was horrible. The dad had enough sense to call nine-one-one, and of course, when the paramedics came, they called the police and the dad was taken away to jail. The next day when they were released from the hospital, they came back to the shelter. When Frannie saw me, she smiled and then she tried to say my name, but all that came out was Biz. She couldn’t make all the sounds anymore. She was so upset that she couldn’t say my name, but I told her it was okay. I liked Biz better, and from then on, I made everyone call me that for her. That’s when I decided I wanted to help women. If Valerie had been able to show the courts how abusive that asshole