Prayers and Lies

by Sherri Wood Emmons

  I couldn’t see Reana Mae, sitting on the other side of Mother, but I knew what she would look like if I could. Her eyes would be open, staring straight ahead at the back of the old man’s head before her. Her mouth would be set in a firm, flat line. She never bowed her head in church, never closed her eyes, never even sang the hymns. She wouldn’t have come at all if Mother hadn’t insisted on it.

  Reana Mae did not believe in church or God or Jesus. “A load of crap,” she called it, though not in front of Mother.

  “All them people prayin’ all them years, and look at the world,” she said disdainfully. “Why don’t God do something about all the wickedness, if he’s real? Why don’t he stop people killin’ each other and all that?

  “Plus,” and this was the cornerstone of her argument, “why’d he let all them Jews get killed, if they were his chosen people? That just don’t make sense.”

  She had given our Sunday school teacher fits in junior high with questions like that. Mrs. Russell was a nice old lady, but she wasn’t prepared to discuss the theological ramifications of the Holocaust with a thirteen-year-old.

  “Everything happens for a reason,” she’d repeated again and again. “God has a plan. We just can’t understand it yet.”

  “You got that right,” Reana Mad hissed back at her more than once. “I don’t understand it at all.”

  She was quiet in Sunday school these days. She liked the teacher better, for one thing. Velva Dreese had been a missionary to the Philippines for years and years, and Reana Mae loved hearing about other places. But she still didn’t believe in God.

  That night, Daddy called to tell us that Aunt DJ had died during the afternoon.

  “What about Grandmother?” Tracy asked. “How is she?”

  “She’s very upset.” Mother sighed. “Daddy will bring her home on Thursday, after they get things settled there.”

  “Where will she sleep?” Tracy asked. “I think she better have Melinda’s room.”

  “I think you’re right.” Mother’s brow furrowed. “We’ll have to put Melinda’s things upstairs, with you girls.”

  She turned to Reana Mae and me.

  “Will you two move your things so we can fit Melinda’s bed up there?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

  I didn’t much mind having Melinda move in with us. She hardly came home from college anyway, and she’d always been the easiest of my sisters to get along with. But I wondered how our house could absorb another person, even one as tiny as Grandmother Araminta.

  Tracy, on the other hand, seemed thrilled. She helped Mother pack up Melinda’s things and move them upstairs. Then she set to work with the vacuum cleaner and dust rag, cleaning the room Grandmother would take. She didn’t even complain when Mother asked her to scrub the bathroom.

  “Maybe we should get one of those toilet fresheners,” she said as she scrubbed the toilet bowl. “The blue ones that make the room smell good. I bet Grandmother would like that.”

  Mother just nodded and smiled at her. She looked worried and tired.

  By the end of the day, Melinda’s bed had been moved upstairs, and her old room was spotless.

  “We’ll have to get a hospital bed,” Mother said, writing in her notebook.

  “I’ll go with you, Mother,” Tracy said, sitting beside her on the couch. She was watching Mother make her list, volunteering items she thought Grandmother might like.

  “You are grounded, young lady,” Mother reminded her.

  “But I want to help,” Tracy sputtered. “She’s my grandmother, after all.”

  In the end, Mother relented and took Tracy with her to the Hook’s Rehab store to look for a bed, then to the mall for sheets and blankets and pillows and new curtains. I thought about when I had accompanied her to the mall on a trip like that, when we knew Reana Mae was coming. That had been scary, but this was worse. I couldn’t imagine our house with that old lady in it.

  “Probably, we won’t even be able to play the stereo,” I fumed at Reana as we made up Melinda’s bed. “No noise or anything fun.”

  “Well, now, Bethany,” Reana Mae answered calmly, punching down the pillow. “That’s just how things are with family. She’s your granma, after all. And she ain’t got any other family.”

  She sat down on Melinda’s bed and looked at me sternly. “And family is all there is, you know.”

  She sounded just like Mother.

  On Thursday evening, Mother and Tracy drove to the airport to meet Daddy and Araminta. Tracy had bought a bouquet of daisies at the grocery to take for Araminta.

  Melinda’s room looked like a hospital room. A new bed with rails sat against the wall. Reana Mae and I had already taken turns moving the head and foot up and down, turning a knob on the side. A picture of the Last Supper hung above the bed. Mother said Araminta had always had one like that in her apartment. A wheelchair sat waiting in the living room.

  Reana Mae and I started supper. I was making hamburger Stroganoff and Reana had bread rising on the counter. She hummed to herself while she worked. Reana Mae loved making bread, pounding and kneading the dough till it felt just right, then letting it swell till she pounded it again. And her breads were always good. She didn’t use a recipe, just threw in handfuls of flour and whatever else struck her fancy. Sometimes she added dried fruits or nuts, sometimes leftover mashed potatoes or applesauce. Even Tracy liked Reana Mae’s bread.

  Reana was just taking two perfect golden loaves from the oven when we heard the front door open and Tracy’s voice chirp, “Here, Grandmother, let me carry that for you.”

  Reana Mae carefully dumped the loaves from their pans, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and walked into the living room to meet her great-aunt, who had been Loreen’s aunt long before we were ever born.

  “Araminta.” I heard Mother’s soft voice. “This is Reana Mae. She’s Arathena’s great-granddaughter.”

  “Well, now,” Araminta said, smiling at Reana, “I can see that. She takes after Arathena, plain as day.”

  Her voice was low.

  “So you’re livin’ here now, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Reana sounded deferential.

  “Well, that’s best, I reckon. Can’t have you down there with no one to look after you. Your mama couldn’t, I reckon. She always was a wild one, your mama. I heard all about her from Loreen.”

  I stood at the stove, stirring sour cream into the Stroganoff.

  “Bethany?”

  Mother stood at the kitchen door.

  “Come say hello to your grandmother.”

  So I put aside my wooden spoon and walked to the living room.

  “And here’s Bethany Marie.”

  Araminta smiled up at me from the couch, her bright blue eyes unclouded and clear.

  “Hello, Grandmother,” I whispered, kissing her soft, crinkly cheek.

  “You’ve growed a foot,” she said, inspecting me critically. “I reckon you’ll be as tall as DarlaJean soon.”

  She looked away, out the window at the bare tree in the yard.

  “My DarlaJean, why, she was five feet seven inches tall. Nearly as tall as her daddy, she was.” She sighed heavily. “And now she’s with him, I reckon.”

  Tracy sat down beside her and took her hand.

  “First Winston, then Jimmy, and now my DarlaJean,” she said. “I reckon I lost everyone I ever loved.”

  “I’m here, Mother,” Daddy said anxiously, watching her. “You haven’t lost me.”

  “Why, Jimmy, I lost you when you was just a baby,” she said. “I lost you sure as I lost Winston.”

  She sighed again. “And now my DarlaJean, my own little girl. I never figured on losing her. I thought I’d have her with me till the end.”

  A tear slid down her cheek.

  “You have me, Grandmother,” Tracy said. “You’ll always have me.”

  “You favor me, child.” Araminta stroked Tracy’s cheek. “You surely favor me.”

  I don’t think I ever sa
w Tracy that gentle with anyone before or after. Reana Mae looked at me in surprise.

  “Well, Mother, let’s get you settled in.”

  Daddy picked up her big suitcase and offered his hand. “Let me show you your room.”

  “I’ll take her, Daddy.”

  Tracy rose and helped Araminta to her feet, then walked slowly beside her down the hallway to Melinda’s room.

  “See, Grandmother? We found a picture for you.”

  “Well, that’s a comfort, child. That’s a real comfort.”

  Reana Mae and I escaped back to the kitchen to finish supper. Then we all sat down to eat, Grandmother Araminta in Mother’s chair, Tracy perched right beside her.

  “What’s this?” The old lady stared at the Stroganoff before her.

  Mother grimaced, then immediately regained her composure.

  “That’s beef Stroganoff, Araminta. Bethany made it.”

  “Well, I never had that before.” She smiled at me, then looked back down at her plate. “I reckon I’ll have to get used to lots of new things up here.”

  “How about some bread, Mother?” Daddy said, cutting a slice and slathering it with butter. “Reana Mae makes real good bread.”

  “Well, that’s something I know about,” Araminta said, taking the slice Daddy held out to her. “Me and DarlaJean, we always eat bread. DarlaJean, why, she bakes the best bread you ever ate.”

  She took a bite of the warm bread, chewed slowly, and looked around.

  “Jimmy, I don’t guess you got any schnapps?”

  “I’ll get it.” Tracy rose immediately and disappeared down the hallway toward Melinda’s room. She returned carrying a bottle of peach schnapps, then carefully poured a tumbler full and placed it before our grandmother.

  “What a sweet girl you are.” Araminta beamed at her. “Helen, this here child is an angel. It’s like she’s my own granddaughter.”

  I saw Daddy shoot Mother a pained look, then he cut another slice of bread for his mother.

  “Lord God Almighty,” Reana Mae said later, when we’d gone up to bed. “She’s not a bit like Aunt Belle, is she?”

  “No.” I sighed. “She’s not fun like Aunt Belle.”

  “She surely seems to favor Tracy.”

  I nodded. “She took to Tracy right from the start. I guess because Tracy looks like her … that’s what she said in Florida, that Tracy looks like her when she was young.”

  “She looks real sick. I hope it ain’t too hard on Aunt Helen, takin’ care of her.”

  “Maybe if she gets too bad, she’ll have to go to a nursing home,” I said. Cindy’s grandfather lived in a nursing home.

  “No,” Reana said, lying back on her bed. “Uncle Jimmy ain’t gonna do that.”

  She rolled onto her stomach to look at me. “He won’t never do that, on account of he’s so guilty that he don’t love her like he does Belle. And she knows it, too. She knows he loves Belle like his mama.

  “What I can’t get is why Tracy is so nice to her,” she continued. “I’da never figured on that.”

  I didn’t understand it either, but Tracy was wonderful with Araminta. Every day after school she came straight home to spend time with the old lady. They played hearts and euchre and even poker, when Mother wasn’t home. And Tracy read to Araminta every night after supper. Araminta loved to hear the Bible read.

  “Now, my DarlaJean, she’s a real good girl. But she didn’t read good like you do. That’s a sad-sorry fact. That girl never read nothin’ but them romance novels. Trash, I told her, nothin’ but trash. But she read ’em anyways. Now you, child, you read them Bible stories real nice.”

  Tracy fairly beamed with pride.

  27

  I Seen Death

  At Thanksgiving, Nancy announced that she was dropping out of college to get married. Daddy hollered and Mother cried, but they couldn’t stop her. She’d been working in a jewelry store in Bloomington, and the owner had asked her to marry him. Neil Berk-son must have been forty, but he was rich and he doted on Nancy, and she was determined to marry him, even though he was Jewish.

  “He’ll get baptized, Mother,” she’d explained matter-of-factly. “So we can still get married in the church if you want.”

  Neil arrived the day after Thanksgiving, bearing flowers and cider and a gorgeous brooch for Mother.

  Reana Mae and I gaped at his paunchy middle and the bald spot on the back of his head. Neither of us had ever met a Jew before. I don’t know what we expected, but he seemed normal, just like everyone else, except old.

  “I guess he’s her sugar daddy,” Reana Mae said that night, after Neil had left.

  I started, remembering when she’d said that about Mr. Ephraim Turner, who had finally married Cleda. It seemed a world away.

  “But I don’t understand why she’d marry him,” I said. “She could have anyone.”

  “Well,” Reana Mae grinned, “maybe she wants a fat, bald, rich Jew.”

  I shook my head, remembering all the good-looking boys who’d been through our front door, pining after Nancy. Reana Mae must be right, I thought. Nancy must want a rich husband.

  They got married just after Christmas in our church, Neil having dutifully been dunked in the baptismal the week before.

  Nancy was stunning in an ivory, floor-length taffeta gown and fingertip veil. Melinda looked gangly in her peach bridesmaid dress, the ruffled skirt barely skimming her flat white shoes. Neil looked hot and uncomfortable in his black tuxedo, the cummerbund digging into his soft middle. But he looked happy, too—like a dying man who’d suddenly come across the fountain of youth. He paid for an extravagant reception at the Canterbury Hotel, with dinner and a swan made of ice and a champagne fountain and a live band.

  Daddy seemed to have made his peace with the marriage, but Mother looked strained and tense. I’d heard her the night before the wedding, trying one last time to talk Nancy out of the marriage.

  “Honey, you’re so young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Can’t you just wait until after graduation?”

  “No, Mother, I can’t,” Nancy had replied firmly as she painted her fingernails pink. “I am not going to come home for Christmas break and share that basement room with Tracy. That’s all there is to it. Why should I, when Neil has a big, beautiful house with a Jacuzzi hot tub?”

  Reana Mae raised her eyebrows at me then in an “I told you so” kind of way. It seemed Nancy had indeed found her sugar daddy, and she was determined to marry him and get out of our tiny house.

  When Nancy and her groom returned from their two-week honeymoon in the Virgin Islands, we drove down to Bloomington to see her new house. It was purely grand, with a sweeping staircase and a screened back porch, manicured lawn, and modern kitchen … and on the back patio, the prized Jacuzzi hot tub.

  I stared at the tub, wondering how Nancy felt about sharing it with a middle-aged husband.

  “Well, I guess she done better than Cleda Rae,” Reana had whispered. “A hot tub beats a fake fur coat any day.”

  We both giggled as Nancy swept through the kitchen to tell us that dinner was ready. Not that she’d cooked it, of course. Neil had a housekeeper who cooked and cleaned and a lawn service to tend the yard. Balding and chubby he might be, but Nancy’s husband was determined to give his young wife anything and everything she wanted.

  Grandmother Araminta did not attend the wedding or the reception. She’d felt poorly, she said, and wanted to stay home. Tracy wanted to stay with her, but Mother made her come to the ceremony. They both made the trip to Bloomington, however, to see Nancy’s house.

  “Big as a mausoleum,” Araminta said afterward. “And just about as warm.”

  Tracy laughed as she did whenever Araminta made a joke. And she repeated the assessment later at school, to Lynette’s delight.

  Tracy was calmer at home, with Araminta there. Her outbursts came far less often, and never in the old lady’s presence. Reana and I wondered why she was so attached to her grandmother, but she tr
uly was.

  Poor Reana Mae often got stuck at home tending to Araminta on Friday nights. Tracy was dating yet another basketball player, this one named Luke. And most Fridays, I went with Brian to the movies or the mall or a friend’s house. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that I was dating Brian Hutson. I thought I’d wake up and realize it had been a dream.

  Sometimes I felt guilty leaving Reana Mae behind, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “I been around old folks my whole life,” she explained. “Hell, I took care of Granma Loreen for a long time before she died, and she was a goddamn yapper. At least Araminta don’t talk, talk, talk at me all the time.”

  Reana Mae never accepted the dates she was offered by countless boys at school. Not one time did she go to a movie or a dance with a boy. Once I tried setting her up on a date with Brian’s friend Chuck, who had just broken up with his girlfriend. But she said no, she was fine just by herself. And every blessed night she wrote in her journal about Caleb. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t let go of him. She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since she’d left the Coal River. He’d never even tried to get in touch with her. But she still waited, expecting that someday he’d come for her.

  One Friday afternoon in April, Mother asked Reana if she’d mind spending the evening with Araminta. Tracy had a date with Luke, and I was helping with the spring musical—sewing costumes and painting sets. Daddy was away on a trip to the home office, and Mother had a meeting at the church.

  “I won’t be out late,” she said. “And I’ll be right at the church if you need anything.”

  “Surely, Aunt Helen,” Reana Mae said, smiling. “I don’t mind. You go on to your meeting. Me and Araminta will play cards or watch TV or something.

  “Long as she don’t make me read that damned Bible,” she whispered to me as Mother turned away.