Missing Her

Saturday morning my door bell rang. I paused, the last time my door bell rang on a Saturday morning it was a junkie asking to borrow a spoon - but that was then and this is now and it was past 7am and there was a chance it was not a junkie. It might be someone trying to sell me magazines or to sell me on their church. We can be ever hopeful. I still waited because I also don't care for people trying to sell me magazines or their faith.

If they catch me on a bad day I will end up with a houndred subscriptions to Essence and a membership in the Church of Zorg. I can be weak, but catch me on a good day it is better for the both of us if you don't tarry,  just leave your pamphlet in my door and then run away, don't wait for me to shove it back down your throat, because I will - this bad attitude brought to you by someone who does go door to door bothering people with both pamphlets and surveys. I know my karma and I approach every door as if I am answering it myself: I'm either going to win a convert to Zorg or I am going to cursed at and have the door slammed in my face.  Everyone has good and bad days. I am hopeing it is a bad day for them. Go Zorg!

The young woman at my door looked like a magazine salesperson. I am working my way through school and to raise money we are selling blah, blah, scam,  fraud, rip-off, etc... I brought all my available Spanish to the front of my mind , prepared to no esta her off my porch.

She didn't want to sell me any magazines, instead she handed me a flyer. Her mother went missing in 1993 and she used to frequent this area of town, should I see her, please call the number at the bottom of the sheet. There was a picture of a  heavy set white woman with a mullet  and a knock off Members Only jacket. According to the dates she was 33. She looks 45 the hard way.

A white woman in a mullet with missing teeth in my neighborhood circa 1993? When I moved here in 2001, the only other white women I saw were hookers. Who all had mullets, missing teeth and knock off Members Only jackets. The sheet didn't give an occupation but did give a lot of numbers and acronyms. NamUS, NCIC, RPD. I still didn't buy it. I decided that it was a wank, that it was really a ploy to see who was home and who wasn't, it was a theft ring checking out the neighborhood. Thanks to the Internet anybody could pull a picture and cut and paste to their little hearts content.  I thought about alerting the police to this scam.

I went online myself.  She really is a missing person and she was as I suspected a prostitute with ties to the drug business. A white woman in this neighborhood at that time was not here to go to church - and if she was, it was a really, really, really long service. She's been gone for 17 years.

The girl at the door made it sound like there was a reasonable chance I was going to run into her at Wal-Mart and that the woman was among us and perhaps just hiding, maybe changed her name or had a one night stand that got out of hand and  now she was embarrassed to come home. I believe the lady is no longer with us and its a testament to her  that 17 years later , her adult children ( I saw the girl and another guy hours later, still hitting doors) are going door to door in the heat to ask us if we've seen her.

Have you seen her?

Parley Ann Pate

She went missing on 2/9/1993
Last seen - Raleigh, NC
DOB 6/16/59
H/W - 5'7, 140-160 pounds
Eyes/Hair - Hazel, brown
Scar on forehead and abdomen.