Prayers and Lies

by Sherri Wood Emmons

  Tracy climbed into the backseat of the car and we drove straight home. She spoke briefly but relatively nicely to Brian and ignored me completely. Valium worked, but it didn’t work miracles.

  As we pulled into the driveway, where a Honda was parked, Tracy said, “Why, Paul’s here!”

  She was surprised, I could tell. And in an instant, my stomach lurched.

  “Tracy, wait,” I called to her. “Can you help me with these papers?”

  But she was walking swiftly toward the house and never even paused.

  Brian got out of the car and stood uncertainly. I ran up the walkway behind Tracy. I wanted to get to the door before her, to keep her from going inside. I knew—I don’t know how or why—but I knew what she would see.

  Tracy reached the door just ahead of me and pushed it open. Standing just behind her, I saw them as soon as she did. Paul was reclined on the couch, wearing only his unbuttoned shirt. Reana Mae was completely naked, straddling him, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.

  When he saw Tracy standing in the doorway, Paul froze, his eyes locked on hers. Then he tried to get up, but Reana sat firmly on top of him, grinding her groin into his. She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t stop grinding.

  “Reana Mae!”

  It came out in a strangled cry as I pushed past Tracy and grabbed at my cousin’s arm. “Stop it! Stop it, Reana! Get off!”

  I pulled hard at her arm and she opened her eyes, looking past me at Tracy. Then she smiled.

  I stopped pulling at her, stunned by the smile on her face. It hit me then, hard, that she knew exactly what she’d done. She’d meant for Tracy to find them that way. She’d done it on purpose.

  I backed away from her, staring at that smile, feeling sick. Behind me, Tracy made a single, small sound like a kitten mewing for its mama. When I turned toward her, she was already out the door, running down the porch steps and across the yard.

  “Tracy, wait!” I ran after her into the yard, where Brian still stood by the car. She ran down the sidewalk and I pounded along behind her. I heard Brian running behind me, catching up and then passing me. He ran ahead, following Tracy, till he caught her arm just before the railroad tracks.

  She swung around and began beating at him, slapping his face, his arms, his chest. But he held tight on to her until I caught up to them, panting and crying.

  “Tracy, wait,” I said, mimicking Mother’s soothing tone. “Just wait a minute and calm down. Don’t run off, please don’t, Tracy. You’ll get hurt. You need to sit down, just sit down here with me and Brian. Please, Tracy, please sit down.”

  Brian had pulled her toward him so he could wrap his arms around her, and she finally stopped hitting him and collapsed into his chest, heaving great sobs and clutching at his arms. He held her tight, stroking her hair and making shushing noises while he looked over her head at me, his eyes wide.

  Then we saw Paul jogging toward us, his unbuttoned shirt flapping in the wind. At least he’d put his pants on.

  I looked frantically from him to Brian and tried to wave him off. Tracy plainly did not need to see him, not now. But he kept coming.

  “Tracy?” His voice was soft. “Tracy, honey, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She pulled back from Brian then, turning to stare at Paul as he stopped before her. Brian held her arms firmly, so she couldn’t run away again.

  “Please, honey, please let me talk to you. It was a mistake. I don’t even know how it happened. I’m so sorry. I love you, Tracy. You know that, don’t you? You know I love you.”

  With a sudden twist, Tracy lurched away from Brian, running toward Paul and screaming. She scratched at his face, leaving long red welts, then slapped him again and again until Brian caught hold of her arm. Then she wrenched her arm loose from Brian’s grip and ran headlong toward the railroad tracks, toward the flashing red lights and the clanging bells and the whistle of a locomotive.

  “Tracy, no!” I could hear myself screaming it over and over again. “No, Tracy, stop!”

  Brian and Paul both ran after her, but I stood frozen to the sidewalk, watching my sister run toward the oncoming train.

  “No, no, no, no!” I screamed, just as Tracy had done the night our grandmother died.

  Brian tried to grab her arm as she reached the tracks, but she twisted away from him and threw herself onto the rails. The last thing I saw before the train hit her were her hazel eyes, staring up at Paul, wide and clear and beautiful. Then she was gone, and the huge engine rushed by, pulling car after car over her while Paul dropped to his knees by the tracks, and Brian sank to the ground, sobbing.

  Daddy’s car screeched into the driveway. The street was filled with flashing lights, policemen, a fire engine, and neighbors.

  I ran down the porch steps toward him, toward Mother, who had just stepped out of the car, her eyes wide.

  “What the hell is going on?” Daddy bellowed.

  I couldn’t even answer him. I ran straight to Mother and threw my arms around her. I wanted to protect her, to shield her from knowing what had happened.

  A police officer carrying a small notebook stepped forward and said solemnly, “I’m afraid there’s been an accident, Mr. Wylie.”

  Daddy stared at him for an instant, then asked, “What kind of accident?”

  “I’m very sorry, sir, but your daughter was hit by a train.”

  “A train?” Daddy repeated it, uncomprehendingly. “What kind of train?”

  “A freight train, sir. She ran onto the railroad tracks just in front of the train, and … and she’s dead, sir. I’m very sorry.”

  The policeman looked kindly at my father, who still stared at him as if he didn’t understand.

  Mother stood absolutely still in my arms. She was staring at the policeman, too.

  “Tracy?” she whispered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the officer agreed. “Your daughter Tracy.”

  “Where is she?” Mother looked around the yard, as if she might spot Tracy.

  “The ambulance took her, ma’am. She’s at the hospital.”

  “Well, then, we’ve got to get to the hospital,” Daddy said firmly. “We’ve got to see her. We’ve got to be there when she wakes up.”

  The officer shook his head sadly. “She’s not going to wake up, Mr. Wylie. She was dead before the ambulance arrived.”

  “Sir?” Brian stood behind me, his voice shaking but sure.

  “We tried to stop her,” he said to my father. “Paul and Bethany and I all tried to stop her before she got to the tracks.”

  “Why?” Daddy asked, looking straight at me. “Why would she be on the tracks?”

  “She and Paul had an argument,” Brian said softly. “Bethany and I got home and they were arguing, and then Tracy just started running … toward the tracks. And when she got there, she didn’t stop. I guess she thought she could beat the train. But she fell …”

  At this, Mother sank to the ground. I tried to hold her up, but she slipped from my arms and fell in a huddle on the grass.

  Daddy dropped to his knees beside her, and a police officer helped him carry her into the house.

  On the porch, Paul sat shivering and crying. He’d thrown up twice and he looked like hell. He followed us into the house and watched in silence as Daddy and the policeman laid Mother on the couch. Her eyes were open and tears slid down her cheeks, but she didn’t say a word. She looked as though she could be dead herself, except I could see her chest rising and falling.

  Daddy stared from me to Brian to Paul, then back to Mother. Finally, he said, “Go get your mother a glass of water, Bethy.”

  Brian went with me to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and took it back to Mother himself. I simply followed behind him. Daddy had stepped outside with the policeman.

  I sat down on the couch by Mother and stroked her hair, the way she often stroked mine. She never looked at me. She just stared up at the ceiling and let the tears stream unchecked down her cheek.

  After a little
while, Daddy came back into the house. He looked as if he’d seen the Armageddon. His shoulders slumped, his eyes were puffed red, and he reeked of tobacco.

  “I expect you boys better get yourselves on home,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” Paul whispered. “I’m so sorry I hurt her. I tried to stop her….”

  “I know you did, son. I heard the police report. It wasn’t your fault.” He sighed and ran his hand across his swollen eyes. “Hell, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, ’cept maybe mine.”

  He dropped into the recliner and stared sadly at Mother.

  “Helen tried to tell me, all those years. But I wouldn’t believe her. I kept saying she’d get better.”

  Paul watched him anxiously, then backed quietly out the door. I couldn’t imagine how he must feel.

  Brian stayed a while longer, helping me make a pot of tea, fetching a blanket to drape over Mother on the couch, asking my father again and again if there was anything he could do.

  Finally, Daddy told him he’d done more than enough—more than anyone had a right to expect. And of course, Daddy was right even more than he knew.

  It was Brian who’d lifted Tracy’s mangled body from the railroad tracks and run back to the house with her—past Reana Mae, who was standing on the sidewalk, her fist shoved against her mouth, shaking uncontrollably, just the way Tracy had all those years ago when she’d watched Jolene beat Reana Mae with a belt.

  It was Brian who’d called the police and the ambulance. Brian who’d run across the street for Dr. Statton, in case anything could be done to save Tracy.

  Brian, covered in Tracy’s blood, had talked to the police and the ambulance driver and the firemen. And he’d told them each the same story. He and I had just come home from school, he repeated over and over. Tracy and Paul were having an argument on the porch, and then Tracy lost control and began running down the street. And she’d tried to beat the train and had fallen.

  Paul and I just listened at first. Then we repeated the same tale when it was our turn to talk. None of us said out loud that we would lie. We just did it. To protect Mother and Daddy from knowing that Tracy had done it on purpose. To shield them from her final pain.

  None of us mentioned Reana Mae.

  Daddy called Melinda and Nancy, then Aunt Belle. He led Mother by the hand to the bedroom and helped her into bed. Finally, he walked back out to the front porch, where a puddle of Tracy’s blood was drying, and began to sob. I sat in the living room, watching him. I wanted to go out and help somehow, but I knew I couldn’t. So I just watched him for a long, long time.

  Finally, at about four in the morning, I walked upstairs to my bedroom. The lights were off, but I knew Reana Mae was there. She’d run upstairs hours earlier, after we knew that Tracy was dead, before the police came. I hadn’t seen her since.

  Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see her, kneeling on the floor by her bed, her head dropped into her hands. She didn’t move when she heard me, but I could see her breathe harder.

  I got undressed in the dark and climbed into bed. I felt like I was in the middle of a movie—a horror film—or maybe a nightmare. Tracy was dead—beautiful, hateful, angelic, demonic Tracy. Her body had been crushed beneath a locomotive and seventeen freight cars. I’d counted each one as it passed. I couldn’t help myself. It was as if I had to mark each car’s passing, to acknowledge it.

  When Brian picked her up, she looked like a rag doll. Her head lolled to one side, blood dripping from her mouth and nose, half her face looked entirely gone. And she looked small … too small to be Tracy. Small like a little girl.

  I stood still in shock when Brian ran forward to pick her up off the tracks. And I could only follow him as he ran back toward the house, Tracy’s blood drip, drip, dripping onto the sidewalk as he ran. He’d laid her on the porch and run inside to call the police. And all I could do was sit down on the porch by Tracy’s bloody body and hold her hand. That’s when Paul threw up the first time, right in the bushes by the front porch.

  Tracy was dead. I’d watched them lift her onto the gurney and cover her with a white sheet, just like they’d done to Araminta. And when they drove away, it was to the morgue. Right now, right this very moment, my sister was lying dead in a morgue.

  And it was because of Reana Mae.

  I looked over to her bed, where she still knelt. And in the gathering early dawn light, I could see her lips moving. Reana Mae was praying. I hadn’t seen her pray in years, not since she first came to live with us, when she prayed every night for Caleb to come.

  I turned my back to her and cried then. I cried harder and longer than I’d ever cried before. I cried till I had to get out of bed and go into the little bathroom and puke.

  33

  Sisters and Cousins

  For the second time in a month, our house was filled with mourners. Nancy and Melinda had arrived before I came downstairs the next morning. Melinda hugged me tight and said it was a blessing that Brian and I had been here. Nancy kissed my forehead and told me that she loved me and that I’d been a good sister to Tracy. Nancy’s husband, Neil, sat quietly in the front room, watching anxiously for a chance to help.

  Neighbors and church friends came and went, bringing casseroles and pies and banana bread.

  Daddy and Mother had gone to the morgue to claim Tracy’s body. I cried thinking of them seeing her like that.

  Brian arrived around noon. He and I took a pan of soapy water out to the front porch and scrubbed at the dark stains in vain. We were still there when Mother and Daddy came home. Daddy held the car door open for Mother, then took her arm and helped her up the walkway toward the house. She looked very fragile, just as fragile as she always said Tracy was.

  She stopped on the front porch to give me a kiss. Then she kissed Brian on his cheek and said, “Thank you for trying to help her.”

  Then she went inside, back to her bedroom, and closed the door behind her.

  Daddy left soon after for the airport to pick up Aunt Belle. Melinda and Nancy drove to the grocery to buy milk.

  Reana Mae stayed upstairs most of the day, venturing down around three in the afternoon. She looked like hell, but I guess we all did that day. Without a word to anyone, she put on her Wind-breaker, pulled Bo’s leash from the closet, and walked out the back door. She leashed Bobby Lee’s old coonhound and left, walking slowly down the street, away from the railroad tracks, away from our house.

  Brian asked if we should go after her, but I just shook my head. She needed to be alone, I thought.

  And I didn’t want to be around her.

  Aunt Belle’s arrival brought some life back into the house. She bustled in, took a tray of soup and crackers to Mother, sent Nancy and Neil out to arrange for flowers, supervised Melinda in the kitchen, then shooed Brian and me out to take a walk.

  “Don’t keep worryin’ over them stains,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Bloodstains don’t never come out.”

  We walked slowly, holding hands, quiet.

  “Thank you,” I finally said.

  “It’s okay,” he said, squeezing my hand.

  “I guess you aren’t so envious of my family now.”

  “Not today,” he said. “But your family will be all right. They love each other, and they’ll get through this.”

  We walked in silence again. Then he said, “I’m worried about Reana Mae, though.”

  I shrugged.

  “Bethany,” he said, pulling me to a stop beside him. “I know it’s her fault, hers and Paul’s. But she didn’t mean for this to happen. She didn’t mean for Tracy to get hurt.”

  “I think she did,” I said flatly. “I think she wanted to hurt Tracy.”

  “Okay, maybe she did want to hurt Tracy. She wanted to get back at her for all the times Tracy hurt her. But she couldn’t have meant for this to happen. She couldn’t have known Tracy would do what she did.”

  “I know.”

  And I did know. I knew she didn’t mean for Tracy to d
ie. Still, Tracy was dead.

  “She must be pretty torn up about it.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Should we look for her?”

  I shook my head again. “She’ll come home when she’s tired,” I said. “Or when she gets hungry.”

  He looked at me sternly, straight in the eyes. “I don’t know, Bethany. Maybe she’ll think you don’t want her there.”

  “I don’t.”

  And that was true. I didn’t want Reana Mae in my house, in my family’s house, in Tracy’s house. For the first time ever, I wondered about how hard it had been on Tracy to have Reana Mae there. I thought about what she’d said at Araminta’s funeral, about Reana stealing Mother away.

  I shook my head hard, trying to clear away the image of Reana Mae sitting atop Paul, smiling past me at Tracy. I’d known she hated Tracy. I’d seen how much anger she was holding inside. And I’d done nothing. Hadn’t talked to her about it. Hadn’t talked to Mother about it. I’d just pretended it would go away.

  And now, Tracy was dead. My sister—the fragile, hateful stranger I’d shared a room and a family with all those years—was dead. And it was Reana Mae’s fault … and maybe mine, too.

  “I want it all to be like it was yesterday,” I said. “I just want …” But the words caught in my throat.

  Brian pulled me close and let me cry then, just let me cry against his chest. After a while, we walked back. I stared numbly at the bloodstains on the porch, then kissed Brian good-bye and sent him home. I figured he’d had enough of our family for one day … or for one lifetime.

  We sat down to a quiet supper of split pea soup and bread. Of course, it was store-bought bread, because Reana Mae was still out. But it didn’t matter. None of us ate much.

  Belle poured some bourbon into Daddy’s Coke and he drank it, but he didn’t eat any of his soup. After a few minutes, he went back to the room where Mother still was, closing the door behind him.