ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 11, 1996 TAG: 9606110021
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Make the attempt if you want to, but you will find that trying to go through life without friendship is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Part of growing up usually means growing away from the old friends you used to play Barbies with. Not so with Vickie Ross and Cheryl Scott.
They grew up down the street from each other on Massachusetts Avenue Northwest. They met when Vickie was 5, Cheryl 9.
``Me and my sister taught her how to ride a bike,'' Cheryl recalls.
As adults, they knew each other's phone numbers at work and home. If that new outfit Cheryl loved made her look fat, Vickie would tell her the truth - and then stand with her at the store when she went to return it.
Both William Fleming High School alums, they rarely missed a home football game at the nearby school. ``We would sit in the bleachers and cheer like we were still in high school,'' says Cheryl, 39.
That bond was passed down to the next generation. When Vickie Ross gave birth to her daughter, Briana, more than five years ago, Cheryl's two daughters, Ashleigh and Lauren, quickly took the girl under their wings.
They spent most weekends, holidays and birthdays together. In fact, the girls were all together at Cheryl's apartment the night of Dec.29.
Vickie had gone to her own home for the first time in weeks. She hadn't been there since telling her husband, Bryant Ross, she was filing for divorce. The couple had been happy for six years of their seven-year marriage, Cheryl recalls.
``But he'd started getting very controlling,'' she says. ``In the past year, he'd gotten physical with her a couple of times. That's why she left.''
The last time they had argued, on Thanksgiving night, he had choked her and dunked her head into the toilet, Cheryl recalls. ``She was very afraid of him. She didn't want to be alone with him.''
So when Bryant Ross called Dec. 29 to tell his wife he was going to Philadelphia for a funeral - and that he was moving out - Vickie assumed it was safe to return to their apartment, pick up some things and take a shower.
She didn't know the truth until she was standing near the tub, half undressed. She didn't understand she'd been tricked until he barged into the bathroom and shot her. Six times. She was 34.
For Cheryl, the worst part is imagining her best friend's last moments - the jolt of an intruder, the discovery of her husband, the realization of his lie, and, finally, the sound of a gun.
What horrible things did he say to her? she wonders. When did her best friend realize she would die?
Bryant Ross is scheduled to be sentenced for his wife's murder this month. That's about the time the women and their daughters had planned to go to the beach.
Later this summer, Cheryl's sister, Tina Hunt, was going to teach Vickie how to drive a stick shift. And the three women had often marveled about 5-year-old Briana's starting kindergarten this fall.
``Vickie was so excited to see this child's first day riding the school bus, she could hardly stand it,'' Cheryl recalls.
Cheryl's daughter Ashleigh Donahue, an eighth-grader at William Ruffner Middle School, doesn't talk much about what happened to her Aunt Vickie. But she did reveal her feelings in a 46-line poem she turned in for English class, called ``How Could a Man Kill His Wife?''
...What you don't know is they had a five year old girl,
And it took both of them to bring that child into this world...
How can we tell her what her Dad did?
The entire family still talks about Vickie Ross in the present tense. ``Tina and I look at funny things and say, `Vickie would be rolling,''' Cheryl says. ``We go to places, like Festival in the Park, and think, `She would be here with us now.'
``Vickie had this tie-dyed dress that we used to make fun of. And Tina stays in that dress now because it makes her feel close to Vickie.''
There was a time, shortly after her death, that word of the murder traveled like this: ``One of the Hunts was killed.''
``So many people thought she really was our sister,'' Cheryl explains.
Asked how the 5-year-old handled the news of losing her mother, Cheryl said, ``She screamed.''
Though she lives with her grandmother now, Briana still visits Cheryl's apartment often. ``When she's not here, she calls 15 times a day.''
It's like that with best friends: Phone numbers memorized, photo albums filled.
Cheryl can't wait to take the training wheels off Briana's bike this summer and steady the teetering 5-year-old - guiding the child into her motherless future, reliving her own distant past.
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (From left) Tina Hunt, Vickie Ross and Cheryl Scott.by CNBcolor.