The Black Shawl – A Telling

Now, people love to talk about the Black Shawl like it was sin wrapped in silk and sold by the hour. But people who talk the loudest usually ain’t the ones who’ve needed shelter at midnight with no place left to turn.
That place on State Street? The one history books whisper about like they’re ashamed of their own curiosity? That wasn’t just a brothel. It was a house of women. A place where bruises could fade. Where bellies could be fed. Where no man got to lay claim just because he had money in his pocket and a temper in his chest.
Pocahontas Hale ran it with rules older than the town itself. No violence. No ownership. No lies dressed up as love. If a woman needed a place to stay, she stayed. If she needed medicine, she got it. If she needed to disappear for a while, Pocahontas knew how to make folks forget what they thought they saw.
Men came and went, same as storms do. But the women? They left stronger than they arrived — or they stayed long enough to remember who they were.
History calls that place immoral. Granny women call it strategic.
And if you ask me? A woman protectin’ other women in a world that chews ’em up and calls it order sounds a lot closer to holy than wicked.