A low-key murmur in the moments before lunch grows into a steady euphony; a consonant call for sandwiches and wraps and actually-not-syrupy-sweet tea.
It’s just after 11 a.m. in Greenville, on a cobalt day draped in gauze. Condensation-frosted doors obscure the sky outside -- or would, if these same doors didn’t keep popping open to bring hot, watery air into the chilly coolness of Jasmine Kitchen.
For the next three-and-a-half hours, the women working this counter and those in the kitchen just behind it will chat with regulars and newcomers. Some of the workers will be a little socially awkward. Some of the customers will be too.
The everchanging queue swells and thins, bends and scatterplots, as eyebrows stretch and fingers curl below newly smiling bottom lips. Customers are realizing they have dessert options that won’t trigger their allergies; solid lunch options without animal products; and a chicken salad that comes hyped and doesn’t disappoint.
The whole place smells of fresh bread, peanut butter cookies, hot soup, and summer air.
A little more than seven years ago, this countertop restaurant was still the second half of a larger dream. It was to be where women would find a lifeline to the outside world.
There are no Help Wanted signs in the window. To work here means you’ve come through Jasmine Road.
And to come through Jasmine Road means you’ve gone through a lot.
Jasmine Road’s mission “is to provide a path to healing and economic opportunity for women survivors of sex trafficking, prostitution, and addiction” in Greenville, says the nonprofit’s vice president of development and communications, Hali Tankersley.
Jasmine Road is an 18-to-24-month program the provides free housing, medical care, trauma-informed therapy, recovery services, case management, and substance use disorder help. Under all of that is Jasmine Kitchen, where women who have gone through the program step into -- sometimes for the first time ever -- legitimate work.
“The first 30 days we consider just a healing period,” Tankersley says. “We are getting our nervous system back online.”
Between 30 and 90 days is when survivors enter Jasmine Road’s “social enterprises.” In the restaurant space at Jasmine Kitchen, soaps and supplies, balms, and baubles bedeck a tabletop not far from the lunch counter.
All these items are made by the women in Jasmine Road’s program. Sales go back into the operation and give the survivors something to work for. It’s lost on no one that the products for sale skew heavily towards things that heal.
The second, and larger, social enterprise, of course, is this restaurant. A lot of the women have gaps in their resumes, Tankersley says. Some have no resume at all. They still go through the interview process before they start working here.
“We've even had one woman who shared that Jasmine Kitchen was the source of her first legal paycheck,” she says. “And so women who may not necessarily been formally employed before, this is the first real interview that they're having.”
Tankersley laughs a little when she let’s a not-at-all-a-secret out of the bag -- the interviewees are going to get the job.
“ You know you have the job at the end of it all,” she says, “but you do get a chance to practice what it's like to sit with an employer on the other side of the table and practice your answers.”
As the restaurant (and bellies) fill up, two Jasmine Road graduates wait on one of the picnic bench tables out on the back deck. They are Taji and Felicia, who will only be referred to by their first names.
We don’t get into their pasts. We don’t get into their futures. Their presents are where they need to be
“ I'm not trying to find a distraction in a relationship,” Felicia says. Rather, she is learning something she’s never been taught: “ It's taken me a while to get to a place of self-love and where I'm learning to fall in love with me. “
Felicia was raised not to pray for herself. Too selfish. Having gone through the program at Jasmine Road -- and having worked front-of-house, just through those frosted doors, a few feet away -- she has figured out that prayer is for everyone, including herself.
They’re also for Taji, for whom she prays regularly. Sitting beside each other at this table, the pair hug often; tell me “I love her” almost as frequently. They have the kind of bond that only happens when you’ve dragged each other out of hell and into sunshine.
“ The first day I came into the program, Taji was one of my housemates,” Felicia says. “She welcomed me with absolute loving arms, and I always looked up to her like she was a big sister. To this day I still do. I adore her.”
Felicia thinks of Taji as the embodiment of love and strength. In return, Taji sees Felicia as an inspiration. Felicia has returned to work as a paralegal. This has lit a fire under Taji to follow the same path. Kind of.
“ She even inspired me because my first love was paralegal,” Taji says, then admits with a laugh, “I didn't go back to that.
But that’s all right, Felicia tells her. “You can live vicariously through me.” Taji says she is happy to do so.
While both admit the Jasmine Road program is “not all peaches and cream,” they also know it wasn’t meant to be. Recovery from a cycle of violence, abuse, and exploitation was never going to be smooth.
But hope wins. Love thrives. Taji and Felicia both want you to know that. They want you to know that help is there and love can get you through everything.
“ In my darkest times, I felt like I was so alone and I was so hopeless,” Felicia says. But something deep down told her that her situation was not all right. So she leaves us with this:
“There is something within your core. There is a still, small voice within yourself when you know things are not right or not okay. Listen to that. Hang on to that. Don't give up on that. That is you. “
