Authors: Ardella Garland
My voice track came in over the picture: “Butter stole the show at the Sunday school program last year.”
Then cut to a wide shot of the Stewart family watching the home video in their living room today.
“The Stewart family is crying, not because the speech itself is so emotional but because for the first time they are watching it without Butter. Butter, you see, is missing.”
A sound bite of Kelly popped up as she wiped away tears. “I don’t know where she is but all I want is Butter to be back home, where she b’long.”
Cut to video of the certificates on the wall. “Butter is a good student who has won these awards for academics and perfect attendance.”
Cut to a montage of photos of Butter at school and in the family’s backyard during a picnic.
“Family members say Butter is a smart little girl who would never cause trouble for anyone.”
A sound bite from Miss Mabel: “Butter is as sweet as can be. And she don’t bother nobody and shouldn’t no one wanna hurt her.”
Video of Butter playing outside by the fire hydrant.
“Friends and neighbors say they last saw Butter playing outside yesterday evening.”
The tape froze on a tight shot of Butter smiling and it flew up in the corner revealing a blue full-screen background with the heading,
MISSING GIRL
.
“Butter is four feet tall and weighs sixty pounds.”
The information rippled out in white type against the blue background.
“She is light complexioned with brown eyes and brown hair worn in tiny braids. Butter was last seen wearing a pink and white cotton dress.”
Cut to a sound bite of Trip in which I asked him, “Are you worried about Butter?”
“Yeah, Butter don’t know how ta look after herself on the street like me.”
Cut to a slow push shot into the chalk message on the sidewalk,
Butter Where Are U?
Trip’s voice comes up sound full under the picture: “Butter, we miss you. Come home.”
Dump tape. Come back to me live at the scene.
“Police have the description of Butter and squad cars in the area are on the lookout for her during their regular patrols. Meanwhile, the family here will wait, wonder, and hope that Butter will soon be back with them safe and sound. I’m Georgia Barnett, live at Fiftieth and South Hedge, back to you in the studio.”
That was the hardest live shot I’d ever done. After seeing all the pictures, talking to the family, and watching the home video of Butter, I was moved. Now I know her by heart.
T
he shrill ring of the phone filled my apartment.
Can a sister get some Z’s?
I’ve only been in bed for a couple of hours! The phone rang again. That’s when I got scared and mad: scared because anytime the phone rings in the middle of the night it’s some serious drama—and mad because the caller was about to drag me dead into it.
“You want her?” the caller asked.
Because the voice was foreign to me, the immune system my body has developed against danger immediately detected trouble.
You want her?
The meaning of the words scrambled inside my head, which felt heavy on my shoulders. My mind and my body were like a couple dancing off beat. I struggled to get myself together. I tried to focus my burning eyes directly on the clock as I turned it around on my nightstand but I couldn’t see a thing.
“Hey, ain’t this the TV lady?” the voice questioned in a low hint above a whisper.
“Yes, this is Georgia Barnett. Who is this?” My mind was starting to clear somewhat.
“You want Butter or not?” the voice asked again. It was male, deep, and gruff.
“Yes! Yes!” I said, sitting up, cradling the phone tightly against my ear. “Where is she?”
“Two G’s and I’ll tell you where.”
“Two thousand dollars?”
“Fuck it then!”
“Wait!! When? How?”
“Right now.”
“Now?”
Where was I going to get two thousand dollars from now? I asked him this in a calm voice because I did not want to make this guy mad and have him hang up on me. Also, I needed to stall. If I could get him to give me a few hours I could call the police, call Doug, and we could plan this thing out. “I can’t get it right now, but later this morning when the banks open I can have it—”
“I ain’t stupid! Now, if you wanna know where Butter at, take your ass to one of them cash stations. TV lady like you oughta have plenty of bank!”
He seemed insulted and turned that insult into volume as he shouted the words at me. This guy was no dummy. And I got the feeling that I was making him a dash p-o’ed.
“I have a cash station card but the max out is five hundred dollars in a twenty-four-hour period.”
“Five hun’ed ain’t shit. I want a grand, ain’t takin’ less than a grand.”
I had some emergency money in my secret stash. I wasn’t going to argue another second. “How can I get it to you?”
“Meet me. Where you live?”
Yeah, right, I’m Boo-Boo the Fool; like I was going to tell him my address. “South Shore,” I answered.
“Meet me in a half hour, you with this ain’t you?”
“Yes, just don’t hurt Butter, okay? Where is she?” I began rattling off questions, forcing him to talk longer so that I could tape his voice into my memory. It would be the only thing I would have to recognize him by. I checked my clock. It read 4:00
A
.
M
.
“She aw’ight! Meet me in half an hour—”
“I need at least an hour … to get dressed, to get the money … to drive where I need to go.”
I heard him using his breath to give hard punctuation to a string of dirty words.
He needed a mother like mine; she would truly do something about that nasty mouth of his.
“Slow-ass females! Okay. One hour from now. Bring the money in a brown paper bag to Sixty-second and Calumet. There’s a railroad yard under the tracks. Go to the middle where there’s a stack of red bricks. You can pull back the fence, it’s cut right there, squeeze on through and wait by the third pole. And no five-oh. Five-oh roll up, I roll out.”
“Okay, but how will I know you?”
He had already hung up.
I slammed the phone down, jumped out of bed, went to my dresser, and grabbed Doug’s card. I came back to the phone and quickly dialed his number. It rang and rang.
C’mon, Doug, wake up!
Then the answering machine picked up and Barry White’s sensual “Your Sweetness Is My Weakness” began playing in the background. Doug’s voice said, “You’ve got the right number at the wrong time but at the sound of the beep, tell me everything …”
Doug had a little mack daddy thing happening on his answering machine and I hesitated. Where is he? Out with a girlfriend? Maybe she’s there now and Doug’s not picking up?
I heard the beep.
“Ummm,” I said, “Doug, this is Georgia. I need your help. I got a call from some guy who says he knows where Butter is. He wants me to meet him at Sixty-second and Calumet, at a rail yard there in an hour and he said no police. I’m afraid to trust anyone else—”
The answering machine clicked off.
I slammed down the receiver, then started to dial the police, but I heard the mysterious voice in my head:
Five-oh roll up, I roll out
. So I hung up the phone. I didn’t want to gamble on just any cop. If they made a mistake, Butter might end up dead. Time was ticking away.
A memory flashed through my mind, a memory from long ago. Once, when I had been walking home with my best friend in high school, a man had jumped out from behind a garbage can and grabbed her. I had simply frozen. If a car hadn’t scared him off, there’s no telling what might have happened.
Fear had made me helpless and angry. From that day on, I promised myself that I’d never back away from trouble, that I’d always fight it. That’s the kind of situation I was finding myself in now.
It was dangerous but I had to go by myself and hope Doug would make it there in time to help me. I started to get dressed, grabbing first my jeans, then a T-shirt. I slipped on one shoe and hopped around looking for the other. I found my pager and clipped it onto my belt.
I have a two-bedroom apartment in South Shore, overlooking Lake Michigan and the South Shore Country Club where there are a lot of activities for African Americans. Golfing. Tennis. Plays. Concerts. Poetry readings. Things like that. Usually I glance out of the window and the ornate building will look like a huge boat floating on the lake’s waters. When I ran out of my bedroom and through my living room after the call, I could barely make out the outline of the building, let alone the subtle movement of the waves. It was lead black outside and not a star sparkling.
I started playing over the pictures of Butter in my head. The school photos, the home video, and her voice saying, “I have a dream today …”
Kidnapped.
The idea grew in my mind like a tornado building at yard’s edge, splintering fences and trees that were supposed to protect my innermost property from harm. I had spent most of the night tossing and turning because I was worrying about Butter, a little girl alone among strangers who meant her no good. For hours, several questions had whirled around inside of my head.
Where was Butter? Were they treating her well? Was she crying? Where was she sleeping tonight? How fast could we find her and get her back home?
I took the elevator eight floors down and walked out the front door. The pyramid-shaped wall clock in the lobby said 4:15
A
.
M
.I cleared the revolving door and went to my designated parking spot at the rear of the building. I got in my car—a BMW picked because I want a Black Man Working in my life at all times. I cranked the engine and peeled out.
While driving, I decided that getting money from the cash station was a bad idea, remembering the stories that I’d done on folks who’d gotten killed at night withdrawing money from cash machines. So instead I drove to a twenty-four-hour currency exchange on Stony Island.
This particular currency exchange was frequently used by South Siders. It was bordered on all sides by big, well-traveled streets and located smack-dab on a well-lit corner. This was the safest currency exchange I could find at this time of the morning. I gave my Visa Gold card to the cashier in the cage after filling out a form for a cash advance of $1,000. My nerves were getting more and more edgy as I thought about the task that lay ahead of me.
“How would you like it?” the cashier asked, opening a drawer full of crisp new bills.
An idea suddenly blossomed. “I’d like hundred-dollar bills, please.”
I took the money and stuck it in my purse. Now all I needed was the paper bag. There was a gas station a couple of blocks down. It was a handy excuse to feed my sweet tooth. The cashier put my Snickers bar and my can of Diet Dr Pepper in a paper bag. I ran back over to my car and threw the candy bar on the seat, snapped the top on the pop, sipped some, and stuffed the money in the brown bag.
I had to go. And I had to follow the instructions I was given to the letter. A mistake could cost Butter her life. Now who could live with something like that?
I
was hyped up … and I was alone.
When I checked the clock in my dashboard it read 4:48
A
.
M
., twelve minutes to get to where I needed to be. Finally I pulled my car into the vacant lot of an abandoned hotel. The sound of the engine had been good company and I missed it when I parked. Glimpsing a cop car in my rearview mirror, I quickly ducked down and waited for it to pass. I sat back up and that little voice in my head, that little voice like everyone has, started singing. It was a new song. The verse went:
I don’t like this … uh-un … This is scary.
That was the verse. The chorus went:
You must be crazy, yeah, you must be crazy
.
I took the crisp hundred-dollar bills out of the bag, opened my glove compartment, and took out a bottle of pearl white fingernail polish I kept there. Flipping the bills over, in the part where it says “In God we trust” I whited out the word
In
with the polish. I was dotting, blowing, and fanning the bills to dry them. I checked my watch and the clock in the dash and realized I had somewhere shy of five minutes left. Quickly, I gathered the bills back together, folded five of them, and put them into the paper bag. The other five I folded and palmed in my hand.
It was a short walk over to the third pole by the tracks. I could see it through the darkness in the distance. My steps were steady, firm, maybe even sure as I began my sojourn to meet the voice that I’d hoped would whisper to me the secret of Butter’s whereabouts. Although it was dark and spooky, fear did not overwhelm me. I thought of my sister, Peaches, who always says I’m stone crazy with a dash and a half of nerve.
I stopped walking when I saw a stack of red bricks behind the fence. The fence was tall, silver, with spiked wire loops coiled across the top. Nearing the third pole, I reached down and tugged at the fence and part of it peeled back just as my instructions said. Boyfriend didn’t lie. Turning sideways, I squeezed through and walked over to the third pole, then tagged it with my hand. I thought, okay now you’re it.