by Cheryl Reid
My back was turned, but I could feel Nelly’s presence. She entered the kitchen from the hallway. She called out in her thick accent, “Sahira.” Witch. She lapsed into a flurry of Arabic that I could not follow. Papa had refused to teach my brother Gus or me. We were to grow up American, and Arabic was of no benefit to us here. But we gathered what scraps we could.
I turned to face Nelly, and when she saw that her words were wasted on me, she spoke in English. “You never cared for my Elias.” Her glasses were as thick as bottle bottoms. They magnified her ancient eyes to the size of ripe plums. “You killed my baby.”
“Nelly,” I said, “Elias was a long way from ‘baby.’”
“You feel nothing.” She leaned on her cane and pointed a shriveled finger in my face.
When I married Elias, Nelly had been a fat woman, gluttonous, but now her black dress hung on her like a dress on a wire rack. Just as Papa had begged me, she had pleaded with Elias not to marry me. Anna is too young, she said. She is too frail. She will end up like her mother, dying in childbirth, and where will that get you, a dead wife and a dead baby? Nelly wanted to decide Elias’s bride, and she was irate that he would choose for himself. She wanted a better marriage for him—one that would connect them to a rich Lebanese family from Birmingham or Mobile, not me, the scrawny girl from across the tracks.
She tolerated me for a few years, until Marina was born, and when I was not the kind of mother she thought I should be, her frustration with me festered.
Marina pushed through the swinging door from the dining room in time to hear Nelly’s words: “You never cared for him. If you did this in the old country, you would be stoned.” Marina said nothing to admonish her grandmother, who had belittled me all of Marina’s life. Instead, Marina trudged across the room with her belly like a lead weight and embraced Nelly.
When Marina was born, I thought I would die. The birth had been traumatic—my body torn by forceps and stitched back up. My milk did not come and she wailed with hunger. My breasts were swollen and hard like stones, and my mind was in bad shape. I worried that no one—not Elias, not the baby—loved me. For four days, the nurses brought me food and I refused it. They asked me if I wanted to see her, and I said no. I knew I should hold her, but I was afraid I would never be a good-enough mother for her. All I wanted to do was sleep, to close my eyes and shut the world out.
Elias drove us home, slowly, nervously. I held the baby in the car, and I fought the urge to lay the bundle on the seat between us. But I knew better—that would have been wrong. When he opened my car door, he took her so I could get out, but I did not wait to take her back. I hobbled to my room and shut the door.
At home, Nelly appeared in my room, the baby wailing in her arms. “You will feed her,” she informed me. “It is the best way.” She undid my gown and took my breast in her hand, squeezed, and put the baby’s mouth to it, again and again. The baby cried. I cried. Nelly was trying to help us, but I cringed at my nakedness and her closeness. Marina sucked, and the pulling felt like nails shooting through my breast. The pain became too much, and finally I cried, “Take her. Take her and go.” I thought, then, she would be better off without me. “Just take her.”
“What is wrong with you?” Nelly nestled Marina in her own bosom, cooed to her and looked at her with eyes full of love. I knew I should want to hold the baby and feel attached, to feel love for her, but in my gut and head, there was only despair. Nelly clicked her tongue. “A mother who refuses a newborn is unnatural.”
If they had made me hold her, I would have laid her down and slunk away. I thought, The baby will suffer because of me. I thought, I have nothing to give her. Nelly shushed Marina’s cries, and soon, she held a bottle in Marina’s mouth. The baby’s slurping carried down the hall. I rolled over and thought she was better off with Nelly.
For the next week and weeks after, I lay in my room, which smelled of blood, my sour breath, and thick sleep. I could hear that Marina was safe and being cared for. I limped to the bathroom and the kitchen only when I would not see them—not Elias, not Nelly, not the baby girl whose cries disturbed my sleep.
I felt betrayed by them all—by Elias, whom I wanted to love but who did not love me; by his child who cried in the night, but softened and cooed when Nelly took her. I felt alone, with no mother of my own. My father and brother were not able to tend me, nor would they know what to do. For almost too long, I chewed on that lonely feeling like a bitter root and let the taste wash through me like the tide coming in.
On the day Elias died, I watched the two wailing women claim my house. Nelly, feeble with age and wrinkled like a vine, pointed at the cuckoo clock over the kitchen sink. Marina raised her swollen arm to stop the pendulum. The ticking ceased. Then Nelly led Marina to the buffet in the dining room for tablecloths. Nelly had Marina drape one over the mirrored hat rack near the front door. Then Nelly pointed to the mirror above the mantel. Marina pushed a chair toward it.
I stopped her. “I don’t want you climbing.” I took the cloth from her. “You could hurt yourself and the baby.” Elias had been dead since one thirty in the morning, and if his spirit was to be caught in mirrors or clocks, it was too late.
“I can do it.”
My daughter had always done what the old woman wanted, but I had not suffered Elias for so long to have Marina suffer now. I pulled her back and stepped up in the chair to cover the mirror. “I won’t have you fall over this nonsense.”
Seeing what she had asked Marina to do, Nelly said, “Your mother is right. You should not be up there.” Her voice was gentle, full of motherly concern. I could not fault her for loving Marina. “Soon you are to be a mother. Blessed be God that I will see my great-grandchild.”
“What else would you like done, Nelly?” I would be helpful to the old woman in an effort to soothe Marina.
Nelly swatted the air as if my voice were a droning fly. She hobbled across the living room to the dining-room table and took two candles in her withered hands. She spoke to Marina. “Take me to him.”
Marina wrapped her arm around the old woman’s waist and they climbed the stairs. She loved her father, and now was her time to mourn him. She loved her grandmother too, and I knew better than to come between them.
I looked out the screen door for any signs of my son, my father, or the priest, but saw no one. I leaned against the wide wooden door and turned my eyes to the rooms of the house. We were rich to most people. To the left, the dining room with its mahogany panels and coffered ceilings. The buffet, the china cabinet, the long table, and the piano Marina played to delight her father. To the right, the living room, its massive stone fireplace, the Persian rugs and fine furniture and beautiful lamps, as good as any in Riverton. I had Wedgwood china and Roseville pottery. I had silver trays and cutlery and nice things that could be bought. But nice things only went so far. We were oddities in Riverton—my father got off the boat with thirty-eight dollars in his pocket and peddled from New York to Nashville. Elias’s father’s experience had been similar, and both men had saved and prospered. But money could only raise you so high. We were curiosities, and we had to be extra careful what we did or didn’t do.
Yesterday, Elias had walked in our door and stood in the same spot I was now standing, between the dining and the living rooms, the heart of the home. He noticed nothing of the furniture or the fine things we had. His eyes lit on Orlando Washington, a glass of water in his hand, sitting at our dining-room table, and me across from him.
In my pocket, I fingered the paper on which Elias had written Orlando Washington’s name and address. Elias had accused me of more than I had done, but now the accusations were dead with him.
Soon, the funeral men would carry Elias’s body down the wide stairs and out the front door. I would have no reasons to dread life here. I had itched to have Elias and this house, finer than my childhood home with its rough edges, cracked plaster walls, and beams of wood showing from the ceiling. The furniture was hard and the windows leaked. Th
e odors of the store drifted up to the bedrooms and clung to the curtains and bedsheets. The spices, the onions, the tobacco from the cigarette shelf, blood from the meat counter, and the earthen smell of silk fabric and wool carpets stacked in the store’s back room. When my mother lived, the smell of burning wood from her brick oven woke me in the morning, and in the afternoon, the smell of white ash and hot bread comforted me. There was nothing soft or fancy about that place, but I remembered feeling safe. Now that Elias was gone, I hoped I would have that feeling again.
The floor above me creaked where Nelly and Marina moved. Then I heard steps on the porch. Eli opened the screen door and stood, pale and young, in the black dress of a priest. He looked like his father thirty years ago, tall and thin, the angular face framed by jet hair, cropped short. The difference between the two: Eli stood with his shoulders slumped, his head hanging low, as if he did not feel worthy of his height or the power of a man’s body. His father had always stood straight and moved with confidence—or false confidence, unsuspected by anyone, even me. Elias’s expression had been intense, no matter the emotion, whether he was speaking kindly to a customer or glowering at me. Eli’s gaze was soft, forgiving, so unlike his father’s, but their eyes were the same.
“Mama,” he said. He hugged me. His dark shirt was damp with perspiration. He must have sped from the seminary, thirty miles south. Eli looked at me with boyish eyes, full of sorrow. That was how his father had seen him: as a boy, not a man. Elias loved Eli, I knew, because he never raised a hand against him, but Elias hated that his son wanted to be a priest. He had never shown Eli that he was proud of him in the way he had Marina, and I realized how difficult his father’s death would be for him. My throat stung.
“Anna, Eli.” Father McMurray stood on the opposite side of the screen door. “I am sorry.” He was a bald, fat Irishman with a thick brogue, pale skin, and a pink tip of a nose. At times, in conversation, his words would ramble and trail off, and I would notice the sweet odor of alcohol hanging around him and understand that he was drunk. That morning, I prayed he’d had a shot or two in his coffee.
He carried what looked like a doctor’s bag. Inside it were his holy instruments—a censer and incense, holy oils and balms, holy water. He had come to bless the dead.
“Go up with Eli, Father.” I pointed to the stairs. “Marina will be glad you are here.” The two men ascended in their somber clothes. The ceiling creaked above. I hesitated before I walked the stairs and stood outside his room, where my family gathered to pray the Rosary.
Father McMurray recited scripture. “As Saint Paul tells us in the Corinthians: ‘The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption; and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy victory?’ May our prayers for Elias deliver his soul incorruptible before Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
Marina and Nelly made the sign of the cross. Marina had combed her hair and pinned it in a French twist. She had rinsed the redness from her face. The windows had been shut and the heavy curtains pulled over the sheer drapes, so that only a dim light bled from the edges of the windows. Vigil candles burned on either side of the bed. The air was humid and heavy with the warm odors of melting beeswax and sulfur from a match. Small flames licked the air as the ceiling fan spun round and sent shadows dancing across the dead man’s face. A trick of light made Elias blink. I looked away to keep from falling down.
The priest continued: “Our prayers for Elias show our love for him. Though he has lived a good life, no one can know the temptations his soul has suffered on earth. May our prayers help purify him and excuse him from purgatory, so that he can reach his destiny with our Lord in heaven.” The priest swung the censer and ribbons of smoke trailed around the room. “May our prayers float heavenward to God on this sweet smoke.” The odor of incense mingled with the rose water that Nelly used to wash her son.
The priest began his first invocation of Mary, and familiar voices followed. I got lost in the sounds, especially Eli’s deep voice breaking in sorrow. For nine months, since last Thanksgiving, Eli had been praying at the seminary for every living person on earth, and now he prayed for his father’s soul. I felt a sting in the pit of my stomach—my son, his father, Nelly’s voice warbling in prayer, her son, my husband, my daughter—and then a lightness in my head. This will pass. My own quiet prayer. It will be better now.
Elias’s body was covered with the linen sheets Nelly had given us when we married. She found them on the highest, farthest shelf in the hall closet. Somehow, with a mother’s touch, she had manipulated the shape of his mouth and the arch of his forehead to look peaceful. She had laid his hands, long and delicate, over his heart, and entwined a rosary through his long, thin fingers, the same long fingers of his children.
Across the room, Nelly hung on Marina’s arm, and Marina’s shoulders drooped with the extra weight. Her legs and feet must have throbbed. I wanted to lead her out of the room, away from his body and Nelly and into a comfortable chair. But if I tried, she would protest and Nelly would cling more. I prayed Marina’s water would break to loosen Nelly, who clung like a vine winding around a great tree, grounding Marina to that place to pray for her father.
Elias’s skin had grown gray. The coarse black hairs on his body seemed darker in death against his pale skin. The holy oil that Father McMurray smeared on his forehead gleamed in the candlelight. Soon he would be in the ground. The thought soothed the pressure in my chest. Familiar rhythms of prayer filled the room. I swayed to the sound. It was the duty of the living to pray for the dead, but I did not pray for Elias. The last thing I wanted was to help him. God was straight with the facts. If I prayed for anyone that morning, it was for myself.
Midway through the Rosary, I heard voices in the kitchen, then heavy shoes clomping up the stairs. Elias’s brother, Ivie, brushed past me into the room. Nelly saw him and fell into a fit of wailing. “Ibni,” she screeched. “Ibni!” It meant my son. “He is gone,” she squalled. She pulled at Marina to go with her to Ivie, but Marina did not budge. Marina distrusted him, the same as her father and me.
The old woman’s gnarled hands gripped a handkerchief, and she flapped her thin arms like a wounded bird. Nelly disappeared in Ivie’s arms. He was tall like Elias, but thicker in the chest and shoulders from years of manual labor and his time in the army. He’d been back six months now without a bender, and Elias had succumbed to Nelly’s pleas to give Ivie odd jobs—painting, cleaning, and stocking at the store. They had fallen into roles—Elias had the money and called the shots, and Ivie, who was a down-and-out drunk, took what he could get.
Instead of calming Nelly, Ivie’s touch seemed to inspire her grief. She’d lost Ivie to drink so many times, too many to count, and now her good son was dead and laid out in front of her. If she could have sacrificed Ivie to raise Elias, I swear she would have. Ivie must have sensed his mother’s feelings, because he stared at me across the room, as if blaming me for his mother’s pain.
I left the scene and went downstairs to find Nelly’s sister, Louise, in my kitchen. She was putting on coffee and hiding the sugar, for the coffee must be bitter—murrah—on such a sad occasion. Her English was broken and she spoke little, having depended first on her husband, Joe, to speak for her, and now that he was gone, on Nelly, whom she loved and served. But Louise had always been kind to me, her one rebellion against Nelly. She put her damp hands on my cheeks and said a prayer—something about Jesus blessing those who suffered most—and gave the sign of the cross. I kissed her powdered cheek, and she wrapped her soft, fleshy arms around me. She smelled of rose water and Pond’s Cold Cream. I wanted to rest on her shoulder, to sink down into the loose flesh of her neck and pretend she was my own mother, raised from the dead to comfort me. But I pulled away, because indulging in that thought would only hurt. Louise spoke in Arabic, something
about my mother, and her words in that familiar yet strange language were all the comfort I could afford.
“I don’t think we should move him.” Eli’s voice fell from the top of the stairs. “We should let the funeral home do that.”
From my vantage in the kitchen, I saw Ivie begin to step backward down the stairs. At first I thought he was moving furniture.
Ivie appeared with Elias’s shoulders in his grip, Elias’s head resting on his forearms. Then Eli came around the corner with his father’s legs. Eli knew his father would have spit in anger to have Ivie’s hands on his body, moving him, standing over him. A procession followed: my stunned daughter, Father McMurray, Nelly. They trailed through the kitchen over my freshly waxed linoleum. Ivie’s work boots left black marks. Louise scurried ahead of Ivie and held open the swinging door into the dining room.
Father McMurray paused beside me. He held his black case in one hand and shoved the other deep into his pocket. He was older than me and took no pause at the laying out of the dead at home. I’d had no intention of that, but I kept quiet as Ivie and Eli placed the body on my mahogany table, the one I had dusted earlier, the one that we used for special occasions like Christmas and Easter or Marina’s wedding party two years before.
His pale bare feet poked out of the linen sheet. His toes pointed to the coffered ceiling and the crystal teardrops of the chandelier. The room was crowded with bodies and furniture. Eli stared at Ivie, and I could see that my son was figuring how to stand up to his uncle without his father’s protection.