By Belle Monroe
For most of my life my favorite color was purple. Anything that was similar or even adjacent to it, was what I gravitated towards. When I was 9 years old, in PE. class, I met the person who would change how I felt about purple for the rest of my life. Her name was Shara.
She was adorable, with the remnants of what we call baby fat, with rich brown skin and a head full of hair that her amazing mom combed beautifully in a million Rudy Huxtable plaits. She was sweet and a little shy, with an infectious smile that held a hint of a dimple. I, accompanied by two of my friends, decided to make a beeline for her. She needed to be our friend. There was no other way around it. I’ve never been accused of shyness and childhood was certainly not an exception. Sauntering over to her, I asked was she gonna play with us or was she gonna be stuck up? I would imagine that since we were all in Mrs. Cobb’s 3rd grade class together, and she, feeling very cornered and slightly outnumbered, decided to join us. From then on, the Playground 4 were a crew and totally inseparable for the rest of our formative years. Right away, Shara and I bonded over childish little girl things such as Skittles, music and most importantly, our favorite color, which was purple.
I was enamored with her. She was kind, helpful and great at math. Her house was the best house for sleepovers, and there always seemed to be an endless supply of Little Debbie cakes. I was sold then and there. She was really into beauty and at the age of 10 or 11, got a nail kit. We would often play nail shop on the red carpeted floor of her home. She listened to me go on and on about the career I was going to have as a lawyer and a Laker girl. I am neither. I was going to have a white mansion like I had seen on Clueless, with a convertible in the driveway. My home was even going to have a housekeeper, who, because I had watched a lot of Designing Women, her name would be Consuela. For some reason I always assumed every rich person had a Consuela. We should definitely unpack why I thought that was actually a thing, but I digress. Pretending to be grown women in the shop, she would often interrupt my delusional fantasy life tales with an occasional “I’m going to push your cuticles back.” Or “you really need to stop biting your nails.” She later became a cosmetologist. There was always this motherly and nurturing side to her, that I never possessed. It drove me nuts; her willingness to always let new people into our friend group. No matter the slight or trifle, there was never really an explosion with her, just the silent treatment and a glacial stare until she grew tired of being pissed at you. She had this amazing capacity for forgiveness, that I’ve seen very little of throughout my life. It was her blessing and her curse.
She always seemed to be in a hurry to grow up, and was the first in our group to do a lot of things. She was the first to have a boyfriend, and from him on down, her taste in men was always questionable. She always believed the best in people, even when there was no cause for it. We grew up from little girls to teenagers, and after high school I moved away from our tiny Alabama town. We would talk and see each other when I came home for my infrequent visits. I regret that now. One of the many things, that in hindsight I realize should have been handled differently. She was the first of us to get married. He was a gregarious, often loquacious man, who held a certain phony veneer of charm I suppose. I told myself that if she was happy, I was going to mind my own business and be happy for my sister. Throughout her marriage, as life and children happened, there were times when she drifted away from our friend group. There was a sense that he wanted it that way, and since I was living across the country I had no rhyme or reason to object. I was living my own life. There were cracks in the marriage and I knew that she was unhappy more often than not but I figured when she got tired enough of him she would leave. I didn’t have the time or inclination to worry about things happening in a town I didn’t live in, with grown people I barely saw. Again it wasn’t my business.
On January 12th, 2019, I received an early morning call from a friend. He said softly but definitively that “Shara had been found dead”. The statement was so jarring I repeated it, because surely there had been a mistake. I hung up and attempted to process what had been told to me. Moments later, I received a call from a friend who had been a part of the Playground 4. She told me once again that “Shara was dead.” I was later told that she had been designated by Shara’s mom to do so. She didn’t want me to find out from social media or from a random person. It will forever be special to me that at the hospital, after getting the worst news of her life, she loved the little girl who had once played nail shop at her house enough to not have Facebook tell me that her child, her first born, was dead. I asked her how it happened, and she told me that Shara had been killed by her husband. He strangled her to death. A small part of me knew already. A wave of anguish and devastation swept over me. On the days leading up to the funeral, I told myself that when I saw her, I would make peace with her death. I told myself that if I got through the next few days, I would be fine. I told myself a lot of things, that as it turns out, weren’t true.
A week later, after a hellish solo 13 hour drive, I saw her in a casket. She was dressed in purple, aubergine in fact. Her once rich brown skin was now shades darker, from the trauma and embalming. The smile that was usually combined with a laughter so contagious you couldn’t help but catch it, was not there. Instead, there was a woman I didn’t recognize in an aubergine suit, laying front and center in a funeral home. The playground 4 were together again, but this is not a reunion I ever wanted to have. What the hell are we doing here? I thought. I went along with the motions of the viewing and funeral. I remember the small talk and the pleasant but fake smiles. It’s a specialty of mine, using humor and smiling to cope. I wanted out of the brand new tweed dress, and out of this godforsaken town. I needed to put this entire chapter and place out of my life for good. This whole thing felt like a bad stage play. It’s not real I told myself. The sun was shining brightly as we were walking from the Baptist sanctuary to the burial site. One of our childhood friends, with gentle reverence asked, “Do you remember when we held our Girl Scout meetings here?” I did, and for a moment my heart felt like it had stopped beating. This isn’t a stage play, it’s real. We gathered around her now closed coffin, decorated with a spray of flowers. There was the familiar burial prayer and just like that it was over. She was over.
I didn’t fellowship or repast with my old friends and former classmates. After the agonizing car ride, viewing of the body and now funeral, my tolerance level for trauma had reached its crescendo. Pulling into my mothers yard, I sat in my car after the funeral. I turned to my mother, who had loved Shara too, and asked “is she really gone? Did we really just leave Shara’s funeral?” Never much for words she looked at me and softly said “yes”.
The next day I would be leaving to return home to my life. A life that no longer had Shara in it. That night, I replayed the scenes of the day in a continuous loop. Leaving a restaurant after having a much needed drink with a friend, I was alone in my car. Driving to my mother’s in pitch darkness, I finally let out what had been bottled up for a week. I let out a guttural scream. The flood gates had been opened and I could no longer perform the – I’m okay, this too shall pass show. I was fresh the hell out of fake smiles and contained dignified mourning. I was grieving the little girl I had known and loved, the teenager who drove me around the homecoming parade in her Camry. The woman whose baby showers I didn’t attend. The phone calls I didn’t make and the group chats that I left. It was my business. She was my business.
I want to tell you that my heart is healed. I want to tell you that when I see people post purple domestic violence heart emojis in her memory, that I don’t want to jump out of my skin. I want to tell you that I’m a great aunt to her kids. I want you to think that I don’t purposely skip over Skittles when I see them. I want you to believe that I was a good friend, but the truth is, I’m not in the business of lying. It’s my blessing and curse. The truth is when I see purple, I see her. Purple is how she came into my life and in purple is how she left it.
A few weeks ago my boss asked my favorite color, and for an instant, as I had done my entire life, I almost said purple. Pushing it out my head, I replied “pink”. The gift that was made for me was a framed photo with words that my coworkers used to describe me, all in a pretty pink color. It sits at my office desk. The framed gesture, done in sweetness and generosity, is another glaring reminder of a lie I told to someone else, and even to myself.
I often joke about the things I’ll unpack later. The love that I have for her is packed somewhere. It has no where to go, so it’s just harbored grief in a trunk that I’ve hid in the attic of my brain. I can’t afford to unpack it. I wouldn’t survive it if I did. You see, the way I survive is that in my mind, she’s 9 and 18. She’s not married to that man. She’s not being abused. She’s not 33 in an aubergine suit. She’s free. One day I’ll learn to let her go and just maybe, I’ll learn to love purple again.
Dedicated to Shara on her 36th birthday and to little girls everywhere who love purple.
