by Cheryl Reid
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2018 by Cheryl Reid
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542049733 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1542049733 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781503949546 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1503949540 (hardcover)
Cover design by PEPE nymi
First edition
For William, Reid, Grant, and Nathaniel
Contents
Death
Mourning
Ayb
The Path
Orlando Washington
Across Town
Papa
The First Time
Where I Belong
The Store
Maple Street
My Two Children
Sophie and Lila
Mama
The Mail
Louise
Wedding Day
What Is Real
The Lion
Cause of Death
The Vigil
The Scene
Marina
The Hospital
The Grave
The Trial
Home
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Death
Any other day, the shrill alarm would ring at four thirty and I would dress in cool darkness and start the day’s baking for the store. By five, I would be leaning against the oven, its heat ticking up, while I sipped my first cup of coffee and cooked his breakfast. By six, he would have eaten and left to open the grocery. But I had failed to set the alarm and I woke startled at nine a.m. with the bright sun in my eyes and sweat beading on my neck. The heat was already at a high pitch and the cicadas had begun their deep drone outside my window.
At the doorway of Elias’s room, morning light filtered through the sheer drapes. Across the bed, on top of the sheets, his body lay stiff. The stench of vomit and shit still lingered. I opened windows and turned on the fan. No breath. No movement. Only the whir of hot air pushing across my cheek. The house was quiet with a dead man in it.
The night before, he had scratched around and pried at my door until the small hours, when all he could do was say my name, at first begging, then with rage. But I stayed locked in my bedroom, the highboy pushed against the entrance, and I listened for him to be still.
When finally I stood over him in the dark, his body was contorted, his knees drawn inward, his head crooked sideways, and his eyes fixed on the north-facing window.
I did not turn on lights in the wee hours as I cleaned his mess with vinegar and baking soda to kill the odor. I turned his body to change the dirty sheets. The deadweight was heavy and unwieldy, but I straightened his limbs and ran my fingers over his eyelids. His dying had not been easy.
In the bright morning light, I searched for any signs he might have left behind, anything I might have missed in the dark. His pants lay crumpled on the floor by his bed. In his pockets were small change and bills, about two hundred dollars, bound by a silver clip our son had given him. He had kicked off his work shoes—black wing tips, polished to a high shine, the hard ridges of leather gleaming and clean. His thin black socks had been peeled off, and the shapes of his toes were molded in them. I looked in his bureau for anything out of the ordinary but found only the white T-shirts, the underpants and socks, all of which I had washed, folded, and put away.
I picked up the dirtied sheets on the floor. From them fell a piece of paper, a wadded receipt from our store. I smoothed it and saw Orlando Washington’s name and address. I studied the paper in my hand and knew Elias had intended him harm.
My chest constricted as if someone were binding me in a corset. I’d had similar spells of pain over the years, finding it hard to catch my breath, as if my ribs were too small to contain my heart and lungs. I told myself Elias was no longer a threat, just an empty shell. I wiped my palms against the cotton of my gown.
My fingers found the fresh bruises on my arms where he had held me down and tried to press the life out of me. I wanted his body out of my sight. My eyes landed on the old crucifix, carved of olive wood, hanging between the bedposts. His father had brought it with him on the boat from Beirut. The Christ figure’s head hung sideways and the suffering wooden eyes gazed down on Elias. We had been married twenty-seven years and I felt relief to have him gone.
Mourning
A piercing ring disturbed the silence of the house. I knew who was calling. The store had not been opened, and she would be worried. I folded the paper with Orlando Washington’s name and slipped it in the pocket of my gown. I gathered the dirtied sheets and Elias’s pants and socks and hurried down the stairs to answer the telephone. My hand shook as I put the receiver to my ear.
“Mother,” Marina’s voice demanded. “Michael went by the store on his way to the office and no one was there.”
“I was about to call you.” She loved her father, and the news of his death would strike her hard.
“What’s wrong? Is Daddy sick?” I heard a splinter of uneasiness in her tone.
“I just found him.” I tried to speak gently. “He’s gone.”
“What do you mean you just found him?” Her usual unflinching voice broke like a scratched record.
“I overslept and he didn’t wake me,” I said. I cradled the receiver on my shoulder and fingered the paper in my pocket. “I woke up and he was still in bed.” My chest shook from the inside out. I wondered if she could hear the shaking in my voice. “He died.”
“How?” She sounded small, weak.
“I don’t know. In his sleep.”
She held her breath for a moment. Then the sobbing came. From early on, she had been Daddy’s girl, something about his deep voice or his bright-green eyes or the smile he could not drop when she was near. From the time she could reach for him, he had held her. When she had bad dreams he sat with her at night, and he left the store in my charge so that he could drive her to piano or dance lessons. He gave her anything she wanted. He never said no, not even when I caught her smoking at sixteen and, raging mad, sent her to him for punishment. She stayed calm and baited him: “You smoke, everyone smokes. So why can’t I?” And he let her have her way. She shot me a look, one of her perfect eyebrows raised and a smirk on her lips, to let me know my place.
“I haven’t called Eli or anyone,” I said.
“I will.” I listened to her cry for a respectful amount of time.
“Let me come to get you.” She was too far along to drive.
“That will take too long.” Marina’s voice shuddered from the sobs.
“If you go into labor and wreck, it could kill the both of you.”
“I’m getting dressed and coming over,” she said.
“Okay.” I knew better than to argue with her, especially the past few days. She had been frustrated with me over Orlando Washington.
Elias liked to say Marina and I were like oil and water, but it was his fault, always doting, spoiling her, and treating me like the whipping boy whenever things did not go his way. He never hit me in front of the children. He tried to keep his cruelty hidden, but they must have known.
I hung up the receiver and hurried to make the house presentable. I
ran to the basement and put his sullied sheets and clothes in the washer. I opened windows and turned on fans to move the hot air. Already I was sweating, and it would matter to Marina, to others, how I looked, how the house looked. My father’s Old World and Riverton, Alabama, were the same in that respect. Family duty and pride were tied to honor and shame, how a person was seen, how things appeared, whether a person was respectable or not. All efforts to save face must be made.
I should have stayed awake longer after he died, should have forgone the comfort of bed when I usually began the day’s baking. I should have worn myself out getting the house ready for what was to come. There was my bed to make, and back downstairs to clean the kitchen counters. He’d been sick here in the early-morning hours, and my hands shook as I wiped and rinsed all the spots I had missed in the dark. In the corner, my crock of bread starter was bubbling from the heat.
At this time any other day, I would have already taken the leaven to start the bread. I would have fed the rest with water and flour, the counters would have been covered with proofing loaves, and the ripe, sweet smell of bread would have filled the air. But this day, the flour, bowls, and bread baskets were put away. I took the crock of starter from the counter and put it in the icebox, and as soon as duty would allow, I would come and care for it.
I ran back upstairs to my closet to find a dress to cover the bruises Elias had left on my arms. All of my long-sleeved dresses would be too hot. The only dress near appropriate, a black gabardine with a high collar and dolman sleeves, was too heavy to wear all day. I’d come back, find something cooler and lighter when I had a moment, once Marina and Eli came and after the funeral home took the body away.
I transferred the paper with Orlando Washington’s name to my dress pocket, and then lipstick, a brush through my wild hair, stockings. My face was slick with sweat. Powder, a handkerchief. A clean sheet over Elias and shut his door. Marina would care what others saw when they looked at me. I’d been born and lived my whole life in Riverton, but I was a Syrian immigrant’s daughter who’d grown up on the Negro side of town. My features were odd to most people in town—the olive skin that darkened with one day of sun, the heavy eyebrows, the curly hair too stubborn to tame, and the Arab nose, like my father’s, that curved down toward my lips. A few times that I had stayed in the sun too long, whites had mistaken my race. I was alien, even though my family had been here for fifty years. I needed to be circumspect in everything I did now.
I was on the bottom step and blotting my face when Marina pushed through the front door. The screen slapped behind her. Her stomach and rear protruded. Her thin, angular face was now full and plump. She was so big. It was painful to see. The baby could come any minute. For days she’d complained of aches and pains and stiff, swollen legs, but she glided to the base of the stairs because her beloved father was up there.
I was shocked to see my beautiful Marina in such a mess, no makeup and her green eyes bloodshot. Her ebony hair, usually smooth and swept up in a French twist, was disheveled and damp. She wore one of Michael’s button-downs and rolled-up blue jeans, not one of her smart and tidy dresses. To my surprise, she wrapped her arms around me and held tight. Heat emanated from her body.
I was dazed to have her holding me. It was not the normal thing for Marina to be close or give affection. She was independent. There were times she wanted me, like the day I taught her to float on her back in the river. At first she’d clung to me out of fear and held my arms and legs in a death grip, though she was only waist deep. My gentlest coaxing loosened her grasp, and once she floated, her hands released. Part of me wanted her to grab hold again, to need me, and then a small comfort came, her delicate fingers brushed my arm, my side, to check that I was near.
The day her father died, I held on to her and pitied her to be nine months along in August. I hoped that grief would churn inside and the baby would come and distract her from thoughts of Elias, and that all her attention and love would flow to the newborn. I wanted Elias buried, and then I would have Marina to myself, never to deal with him again. And when the time came, I would listen to her grief and keep my mouth shut. I could forgive her for her complicity, for all those times it was them against me. My jealousy could float away.
Elias saw me as little more than the one who did his laundry and cooked, the one who worked in his store and raised his children. I had dwindled to nothing in his eyes, and I worried that was how she saw me too. Maybe now that he was gone, she could see me untainted, that I was her mother who loved her. For now, I would keep secret my happiness that he was gone. I would give her that.
I touched her hair and she pulled away. Her long, delicate fingers rubbed her eyes. “I called Father McMurray and Eli. He’ll telephone the funeral home and Grandpapa.” My father. She sniffled. “Grandmother is on the way.”
At the mention of Nelly, Elias’s mother, I lost my breath. My mind had skipped over all the people who’d be involved in his death—his mother and those who would mourn him. Marina would busy herself with details of what should happen and how it should go. I had forgotten all the shoulds that Marina would demand, and the hell of kneeling and praying and nodding politely to strangers before he was in the ground.
“Go see him if you want,” I said.
She began a slow climb upstairs. Marina would not be still for long, nor would she lean on me.
My fingers skimmed the hem of her shirt. I went up with her, maybe to stop her. “Don’t, if it’s too much.”
She looked back at me. Her face wrenched, and a stream of tears rolled down her cheeks. I tried to hold her again. She waved me off and stepped inside his room.
I waited and listened to be sure she had not broken down. My stomach tightened with hunger, and after a few minutes, I left my post outside his room and went downstairs to the kitchen.
I took the starter from the icebox and scooped out the usual amount of leaven, and though I hated to waste it, I threw it in the trash. There would be no flatbread or popovers made with the discard. I fed the remaining leaven with flour and water and stirred it with my hand. Marina loved my bread, but she hated the sticky feel of dough, so she never made it. I rinsed my hands and placed the starter back in the icebox. I put the flour away and looked at the shelves of baskets and pans and wondered how long before I would bake again. I should have baked some quick bread to comfort her and get my mind off what was about to happen, but that would not look right. My house would soon be full, and there could be no questions about why I was baking at this sorrowful time. For all anyone needed to know, our house was peaceful, I was in mourning, and his death was an ordinary one.
I had known Elias my entire life—his parents and mine were two of three Syrian families in town. I had begged my father to let me marry him. The summer after I graduated high school, he came to Papa’s store, not to talk the usual business with my father or ask Gus to do a day’s work at Nassad Grocery, but to talk to me. He smelled good, of cloves and spice, and I liked when he stood close and leaned on the counter so that his forearm brushed against mine. I liked the way his long fingers tapped a cigarette on his lighter before he put it to his lips. One Sunday, after a few months of his attention, he walked me home from Mass and we spent the afternoon sitting on the bank of the river, holding hands and kissing, after surveying to be sure my father was not watching. That was the day he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a gold ring with a square emerald. He proposed to me, and I was giddy and full of nerves.
I showed Papa the ring on my finger. He stared at it as if I held a rat in my hand. “You are too young.” His kind voice was gruff and hard.
“I’ll be nineteen in a month,” I said.
He thought he could say no once and I would listen. His body stiffened and his head shook as he looked at me with pity. “The Nassads are hard on their women.” I did not understand his meaning, then, but he had known Elias’s father and what kind of man he was. He had watched Elias grow up and seen what he’d had to take.
&nbs
p; For months, I argued and I wept. I insisted to my father, to myself, that if I married him it would be a step up, away from the colored section of town. My father’s store was a half mile west of the railroad track. People in Riverton called it Blacktown or worse, but the neighborhood people called it Mounds for the two flat-topped hills where the Cherokee had buried their dead. My brother and I had crossed the tracks each morning to go to school and later to come home. We crossed them to go to church or the movies or town, and I had the notion that I would marry Elias and cross into Riverton proper, elevate myself and never look back.
Elias came to convince Papa what a good match we would make. He shook Papa’s hand and smiled. Elias swore he wanted to marry me, that our marriage would be an opportunity, and his store and Papa’s store would benefit each other.
In private, Papa pleaded with me, “You can go to school or we can arrange a better marriage for you.” But an arranged marriage would mean leaving him and Gus, and leaving Riverton. I was nineteen years old and thinking how smart I was to position myself for a better life with Elias, ten years older and handsome and rich. His store was on Main Street in the middle of town. I would be moving across the tracks and up in the world.
Elias whispered in my ear how wonderful our life would be, and I believed him. The words sounded nice, like a dream. I liked the salty smell of his breath, his clove aftershave, his bright-green eyes. A bird in the hand, I thought. I stared at the bright-green emerald and knew that no one else in Riverton would give me such a prize and marry me, the Catholic Syrian girl from across the tracks.
I dug my heels in, refused to eat, and stayed in bed. I tormented Papa with threats that I would run off and elope. The thought that I would marry outside the Church shamed him. He was still broken from his wife long dead, and being his only daughter, the only female he loved, I confounded him. Papa gave in to me because he wanted me to be happy, but he should have told me, then, that Elias’s father beat Nelly and abused his boys. Papa should have heeded his worries that brutality seeped down through generations. I did not know. Maybe Papa second-guessed his worries and told himself it was history, dead and buried. Elias seemed earnest and hopeful, and maybe Papa convinced himself that Elias would not repeat his father’s sins. Maybe Papa thought I was too delicate for the truth, and that if he told me what he feared, if he said it out loud, that if I married Elias, then the beatings would become prophecy for me. Not until years later, when Elias first hit me, did I know what my father meant when he’d said, “The Nassads are hard on their women.”