by Cheryl Reid
I made my way through the maze of chairs and turned on a lamp. Lightning popped near us. Thunder rolled over the surface of the river and seemed to shake the house. Sophie whimpered and gripped tighter to my legs. Rain pounded down. The lights flickered off and then back on.
“Good Lord,” Lila called from the kitchen. I picked up Sophie and went into the kitchen. Lila’s head was tucked in the refrigerator door, and light from inside it glowed around her silhouette. I flipped the switch and yellow light flooded down from the ceiling. “Louise has not left an inch.”
She clattered dishes and muttered her annoyance as she moved pans from the refrigerator to the counter and back again. Odors of her food filled the room—the cinnamon and the mint of the kibbe, the sour smell of the cabbage rolls, the savory scent of okra stewed in tomatoes and coriander. Twenty years ago, my brother begged me to teach Lila Lebanese cooking so that she could make his favorite foods—the fried kibbe, the tabbouleh salad, the stuffed grape leaves. I had refused his wish because their marriage was stormy with drinking and leaving, one miscarriage after the next. I blamed it on her hard ways. Then Sophie was born and my feelings for Lila softened and I taught her what I knew about the food.
Rain fell in sheets outside the window. The sky was black with the storm.
“There’s no room.” Lila slammed the refrigerator shut. The glass dishes clanked inside. “Let’s eat some of this while it’s hot.”
She gathered plates and filled them. She worked the kitchen like it was her own. “Where have you been?”
“I had to go see Papa,” I said.
“Why?” She had not heard the news of the almost lynching or Nelly’s threats because she had not spoken to Gus. He would know as soon as he checked in with my father at the end of his day.
“He said he needed to see me.”
The white linoleum floor gleamed with light. Louise had scrubbed away any trace of Ivie’s boot marks.
Lila put the plates of fried kibbe and cabbage rolls onto the table. She returned to the stove to cover the pans. “What do you want to eat, little girl?” Lila asked Sophie, and the sound of her voice eased the tension in Sophie’s body. She pushed off me to be set down.
Sophie tap-danced around and then moved to the plates of food set out on the yellow Formica table. Her chin cleared the chrome edge of the table. She popped one kibbe ball after the other into her mouth until her mother’s plate was clean. She shuffled out of the kitchen into the hallway.
“Step, ball, step. Step, ball, change.” Her voice started small and grew with intensity as did the clapping of her shoes on the wood floors, making music with the thunder and the rain.
“She won’t take those off.” Lila refilled her plate. “All blessed day long.”
“You’ll miss it one day.” My hand throbbed as I thought of Marina.
“Want the stew?” Lila asked.
“Yes.” I cradled the bandaged hand.
She placed a bowl in front of me. Her hands and forearms were muscled, sinewy from her work with the horses. She started back to the sink, but took notice of blood seeping through the bandage. “That is some cut. Let me see it.”
“No, it’s nothing.” With my left hand, I spooned the stew to my mouth. “I’m fine.”
She raised her eyebrows in doubt. She sat near and ate.
The lamb was tender. The tomatoes were warm comfort going down. She refilled her plate and mine with kibbe balls. She made the kibbe the way I liked it, the way I taught her, with the right proportions of lamb and bulgur, with roasted pine nuts, with more cinnamon than allspice, with mint instead of basil. I ate slowly.
The taste of it reminded me of the work of cooking, holding me comfortably in place, my purpose to do daily good for my children. Cooking had been my meditation. Cutting, chopping, measuring, mixing, the precise moments of the rise and fall of dough, the sweet and sour smell of leaven; too vinegary and the bread was sour, too sweet, no flavor. All of my cooking ended with a tangible thing but it was also my silent prayer of love for them. I loved seeing Marina and Eli come home from school and eat a popover or an almond cookie that I had made. I loved hearing them ask for more bread at dinner. Elias liked my food, and I could please him with that, if nothing else. I wondered if he knew I did it to please him, to anchor him to me, to us, to try and make our life bearable, like Lila was doing for me now. She was giving me love and the energy to face what was to come.
I had not kneaded dough in two days. I had fed the starter, and I would have to remember it tomorrow. It was older than Marina, and I wanted to keep it alive. All the daily vigilance gone in a single day, how I had kept my hands busy in the garden, in the kitchen, in the store, so I did not have to stop and think, what would please or displease him? What would I say or what look would I give that would remind him that his life was not enough, that things would never add up to make him happy?
Lila leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette. She crossed her arms. Her body was taut with strong curves. She watched me eat. “I left a note for Gus. It’s his late night. I figured we’d stay a while.”
I was happy she was with me, and for that moment, she did not know all the trouble. Sophie tapped into the kitchen with a box of crayons and sheets of butcher paper in her arms. She huddled on the floor on her knees and elbows and began to draw.
“What did your father want?” Lila knew how he was. She had once been on his bad side, a thief, in his view, stealing Gus from a proper marriage.
I took my plate to the sink and looked out. The rain had stopped suddenly. Hail and fallen branches had knocked the garden down. Any other day, I would be mending the garden, even in the dark, to escape the confines of the house and Elias’s presence. “He said come over ‘immediately.’ I thought he was having a heart attack.”
“Was he okay?”
“Wait here.” I retrieved my purse from the dining-room table. Outside the front window, the storm had caused cedars to bow like old men with broken backs. Pecan limbs littered the yard. Back in the kitchen, I handed the purse to Lila. “Look inside.”
She peered in and fingered the canvas bag. Her mouth gaped open. She touched the bills with the tips of her fingers, then pulled the money from the purse. Her fingers worked swiftly and her lips moved with the counting.
“He gave me that money so I would leave town,” I said.
The kitchen’s light was warm and yellow against the dark night sky. In her hands was proof of Papa’s rejection of me. She knew what that money was. I fingered the chrome edge of the table.
Sophie stood at my side and presented her drawing. A tree, a girl, a bird. She climbed in my lap and I nestled my face into her deep-brown ringlets. Sophie’s eyes followed her mother’s nimble fingers, the snapping bills and her counting lips. Holding Marina had never been so easy. Marina pulled away, fickle, never at ease, as if we were strangers.
I nudged Sophie to tear her eyes from the money. She would remember sitting at my table, the storm, the money. “You been helping Mama today?”
Her head brushed up and down against me.
“Or have you been a dancer?” I tickled her ribs. She squirmed against me and giggled. “You are a sweet girl.” It was what I always said to her. I waited for her usual response.
“You a sweet girl too.”
When I stopped tickling, she pleaded, “More, Aunt Annie.”
I kissed her billowing hair and breathed in the smell of salt and sweat, like cut green grass. I put her down. “Be good, now.” She flashed a perfect row of small white teeth. Soon I was to be a grandmother, and at the thought of a grandchild, my arms felt empty. I wanted Sophie back in my lap. She tapped away, so full of energy, so excited to be in my house and out of her normal routine. She disappeared in the hallway and her dancing echoed through the empty rooms.
Lila stacked the bills and placed them back in the bag. “More than twenty thousand.” Her voice sounded like a judge delivering a guilty verdict. The lines across her forehead deepened. “He off
ered me half that for Sophie when I left Gus.”
“I know.” I had carried the letter from Papa to her, when she and Gus were separated. I had not known its contents, that it was from Papa’s lawyer offering payment for custody of Sophie. “I still feel terrible about that.”
She had been working horses on her father’s farm. Sophie was a year old, and Papa was incensed that Lila had left Gus. I drove out, walked up to her, handed her the letter like it was a glass of iced tea.
She read it as I held her baby on my hip. When she finished, she thrust the paper in my face so that I could see, in neat typed rows of legal language, an offer of ten thousand for custody and the cold reasoning that Sophie would be better off with us—how Gus, Papa, and I could provide stability, family, money. The language was biting about Lila—an unfit mother, prone to drink. Attached were the custody papers.
Lila’s fair skin had turned red with fear and anger.
“I’m sorry,” I had said, but it sounded easy, like a lie, like the way Elias touched my arm in public for show. I was sorry for having delivered it, for blindly obeying my father, for having treated Lila poorly, when in fact Lila was my family, my brother’s wife.
“He’s not going to take her,” I had said. With my free arm, I had pulled Lila close to Sophie and me. “I won’t let Papa do that.”
She had smelled of earth and horse. I imagined it was one reason Gus loved her, the way she smelled, how she had no pretense toward anything more than what she knew.
“We’re past that,” she said now. The wrinkles around her eyes deepened. A disapproving shake of her head. “That man’s gall.”
“It’s Nelly,” I said.
“But he’s your father.” Lila handed me the purse. “Why would he turn his back on you?”
“They’re boycotting him for what Elias did.” I placed it on the table.
“What exactly did Elias do?” Her face looked puzzled.
From the dining room, Sophie’s steps were accompanied by a chant: “Step, ball, change. Shuffle, shuffle, kick. Heel, toe, heel, toe. Step, ball, change.” She was dancing around the table where he had been laid out. There was a nice rhythm to it, and I wanted to be lulled by it, but Lila watched me like a hawk. My hand throbbed and I cradled it in my arm. Heat came from it, like it was infected.
Her piercing blue eyes were like ice. I held the bandaged hand against my cheek to gauge its heat. She pushed back from the table. The chair legs dragged across the floor. “You are the same as your brother and father.” She stood. Her voice was even, steady. “All of you, stubborn as the day is long. Tell me what Elias did.”
I felt hot, steaming, like the grass and garden outside.
Sophie’s shoes tapped into the room and she piled onto my lap. Her chest moved with every breath and the musky odor of her sweat filled my nose. Sophie wrapped herself around me. Her weight was a conciliation for the sadness and guilt.
Lila sat. “Tell me.”
Without regard for Sophie, I answered her. “He and Ivie and some others went over there to scare him. Ivie says they put a rope around his neck. Papa said they burned a cross. Then Elias is dead. Ivie and Nelly think I killed him and Nelly wants me gone.”
Sophie did not flinch. Her body was still and I regretted the words she heard.
“Eli and Father McMurray are sitting vigil at his house tonight,” I said.
Lila was silent. The lines in her face did not waver. A tendril of dark-blonde hair fell across her forehead. Lila knew that if anybody had reason to kill him, I did. Through the years, she saw the evidence of his anger.
I was grateful she did not ask if what Nelly said was true.
I told her, then, what had happened the day before, that I asked Mr. Washington in for a glass of water and Elias found us sitting at the dining-room table. I could see Lila was thinking of Gus and what he would do in that situation. “You should have let him drink from the hose,” Lila said.
I put Sophie down and pushed up the sleeves of my dress to show Lila my arms. I whispered in her ear, so Sophie would not hear, how Elias had pressed his knee into my chest and wrenched my arms by my head. I told her what he said, that he could press the life out of me and no one would care.
Her fingertips skimmed my swollen and purple arm. “I would have killed him,” she said. Lila’s blue eyes darted from the window to me and back.
Sophie climbed into my lap again and I buried my nose in her curls and bounced her on my knees. She might remember this and make sense of it all. I should have sent her out, but her weight on my lap fortified me. Soon, I might have to leave, maybe not come back, and I prayed she would forget this night. Sophie turned her face up to mine. She whispered, as if her mother could not hear. “Is Uncle Elias dead?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is he in heaven?” Sophie’s blue eyes were intent on mine.
I nodded, yes. No good would come of scaring her. Better for her to be ignorant of the truth.
“He was nice,” Sophie said. “He always gave me peppermint.” Elias had welcomed this child. She reminded him of Marina. “He played Chinese checkers with me.” Often, Sophie stayed at the store while Lila worked the horses on her father’s farm and Gus worked the route. Elias doted on Sophie like she was his own, and he would be kind in her presence. He’d wink at me and say, “What do you think, Anna, do you think Sophie could have an ice cream?”
Sophie’s mouth opened to ask another question about her uncle.
Lila cut her short. “That’s enough.” Lila left the room and returned with her purse. From it she pulled out a pint of amber-brown whiskey. “I thought we might need this.” She took two glasses from the cupboard, cracked ice from a tray, and poured the whiskey. She opened a Coke and mixed mine to weaken the spirits.
I was afraid to drink it. I did not know how it would affect me because I never drank.
Sophie slid from my lap and took up coloring again.
Outside, the sky was pitch black. The first sip burned my throat. Dark clouds hid the moon and stars. Noises of cicadas and tree frogs spilled inside. I told her about the scene earlier, how Nelly wanted an old-time wake, and how at Papa’s, he told me Ivie would have the store and I would leave town after the burial.
She sipped her drink and stared out the black window over the sink. Her jaw clenched and her temples pulsed. She narrowed her eyes, so that I could barely see the blue. “Tell me that Nelly doesn’t know about him and that water, alone with you in the house.”
I took another sip. The burn in my chest gave some relief. I looked over her shoulder out the dark window. “If Ivie knows, she must know.”
She closed her eyes, as if to get a clear picture in her mind of what Nelly and Ivie thought they knew. “And they went to Faris about this glass of water?” She opened her eyes. “And Faris believes them, that you and he—?”
“I don’t think Papa believes that.” I studied her eyes. “He seems to think I’m capable of the other.” I did not want to mention Elias’s death in front of Sophie again. “He’s worried I’m in danger if they talk.”
Lila shook her head. Both Lila and my father had witnessed the cruelties he had done to me. I imagined neither mourned his loss, but they did not want me to suffer any more because of him.
Eli and the priest would be at the postman’s house by now. “What do you think will happen to Mr. Washington?”
“Who’s Mr. Washington?” Sophie did not look up from her artwork.
Lila’s eyes cut through me. She took a deep breath, but no words came.
“Is he coming here?” Sophie looked up from her drawing, a smile on her face, excited that we might have a visitor.
“No,” Lila said. “Be quiet, now.” Lila gave Sophie a hard look. “And don’t repeat what you hear.”
Sophie tucked her head and took up drawing again.
“Eli is there now.” I placed my throbbing hand on the cold glass. “He’s not safe.”
“Eli has God on his side.” She swirled the liq
uid and swallowed down the last of her drink. “But you don’t have a leg to stand on.”
I went to the sink to pour mine out but forced it down instead. The dark clouds separated. A waning sliver of moon, barely visible, peeked from the separating clouds. The moon was tilted as if it were a scoop holding more rain.
“Your papa is right. You’re not safe here.” Lila cursed under her breath and walked out. She paced the length of the hall, returned, and whispered in my ear, “They’re liable to finish him and come here for you.”
I sat stone still. My hand throbbed on the cold glass. “Maybe I should go there with Eli and save them the trouble.”
She slammed her glass on the table. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“He’s in trouble because of me,” I said. “And now Eli is in harm’s way.”
“Are you love-struck? You are so worried about that man.” Lila raised her voice.
“Don’t say that,” I said.
“That is what people think,” she said. “Why are you putting your neck on the line?”
“His mother took care of me.” I knew what people thought, what they said. I mumbled, “Eli said it was the right thing to do.”
Lila cupped my chin and tilted my face to make me look her in the eye. “What in God’s name were you thinking?” Her voice shook.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Lila touched my purse. “What are you going to do with this?” She knew nothing of the money in the trunk.
With the palm of my good hand I wiped the condensing water from the counter. I took a deep breath, held it, until I could hold it no more.
“You can stay with us if it comes to that.” Her eyes turned to Sophie and the harsh lines around her eyes relaxed as she took in her child, asleep on the floor, her tap shoes still on, her head resting on folded arms and her legs tucked beneath her body. “Bless her heart,” she said. “She’s worn out.”
Sophie was Lila’s breath, her blood, her love made real in the flesh. She loved the child without abandon, maybe because she’d been thirty-seven when Sophie was born and she had more wisdom than a young mother. Seeing Lila look at Sophie made me hurt for what I had withheld from Marina.