The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  The door to the truck opened and Daddy got in and revved the engine long and hard. The truck charged ahead, making Midnight bump his head on the back of Daddy’s seat. He let out a yelp.

  “Patrick, what the hell are you doing in my truck?”

  That’s how he knew Daddy was mad. Usually, he called him kid or nothing at all, rarely his real name. Daddy and Granny and the teachers at school were the only ones who called him Patrick. The name didn’t feel right for him. After all, Patricks had a certain look, like Patrick Mulligan in his sixth-grade class. Red hair combed neatly, freckles all over his face, and navy-blue pullover sweaters. That’s what a Patrick looked like.

  Daddy didn’t like the nickname Midnight, and he hated where it came from. In third grade, Midnight had started noticing Black boys who made the coolest shapes with their hair and somehow it stayed in place and never fell in their eyes. Boys who casually dropped the g on words sometimes, like when they told him to quit buggin’ when he said something silly. They walked with that cool limp, the dip that had a rhythm to it like music always on beat. One time he followed them into class imitating their walk until their teacher, Mrs. Thornton, made him stand in the corner, calling what he’d done inappropriate. She never explained why he was being punished, but he’d learned early on that grown-ups didn’t have to explain themselves to kids.

  From then on, he became known as the little white boy who acted Black. Whatever that meant. The Black kids at school started calling him Midnight and he wasn’t sure if it was because they liked him or because they were making fun of him.

  The seat reclined, and Daddy leaned back, still fuming under his breath, his long brown rattail hanging below his wool hat. He guided the steering wheel with one hand, small red scratches dotting his white knuckles, with a Camel dangling from his fingers.

  “Did you know you can hold your breath for seventeen whole minutes without passing out?” Midnight leaned forward with his elbows on the armrest between the two front seats.

  “Sit back.”

  “Oh, and if you cut a snake’s head off, it can still bite you hours later.”

  The traffic light at Shepherd Street had just turned yellow and Daddy floored it, making the truck skid, forcing him to jerk the wheel to keep them going in a straight line.

  “Damn ice,” he said.

  “Did you know there’s ice on Mars in the polar ice caps and on some glaciers? They say that people may be able to live there someday.”

  When Daddy turned his head from side to side to watch traffic, the rattail he’d been growing for years slithered across the headrest. He raked his hands over it, something he probably didn’t even realize he did. Whenever Granny asked when he planned to chop it off, he flipped it, a way of flipping her off, too.

  “You do your homework?” Daddy said, not sounding too interested in the answer.

  “School’s out for Christmas the end of this week. We don’t go back till it’s the new year.”

  “Hmm.”

  Midnight opened his backpack and took out a pair of scissors, the ones with the green rubber grip handle and blunt tip, school-sanctioned official scissors. With a shaky hand, he opened the scissors and placed the rattail between the blades, and that’s when Daddy slammed the brakes. The truck’s wheels ground in the snow, throwing Midnight forward into the back of his father’s seat. The scissors fell to the floor.

  “What the hell?” Daddy yelled, either at the red light he almost ran or at the tug he felt at the nape of his neck. Midnight wasn’t sure whether he would’ve had the guts to go through with it or not, but because of Daddy’s crazy driving he’d never know.

  On the side of the road he saw Tank, a guy who used to work with Daddy at the plant, but who now spent all day collecting cans he could trade for cash. He was one of those people who always wore a stupid grin even when nothing was funny.

  Tank motioned for Daddy to pull over to the shoulder of the road. The hazy lights of a police car came into focus through the rearview mirror.

  “Get out, kid,” Daddy said.

  The cops weren’t chasing anybody. They were leading a procession of long black cars with dark windows, the kind where those inside can see you, but you can’t see them. Following was a line of regular cars and pickup trucks, all with their lights beaming in the heavy fog. Snow hit at a strange angle, hurling little spiky balls at them, and Midnight buried his head in his jacket to shield his face.

  Daddy grabbed Midnight’s good arm. “Get your hands out of your pockets and put your head up. Show some respect.”

  The cold and snow stung Midnight’s eyes and he squinted against the force of it. Daddy saluted, and Tank did, too, as the funeral cars rode by with the American flag waving frantically on sticks in the windshields.

  A few cars in the funeral procession honked their horns in greeting, breaking the silence of respect like some guys did when they laughed too hard at the pastor’s joke, as if they were in the bar and not church.

  “That was Elroy Richards, you know. When he retired from Fernwood, he always said he wanted to own a bait and tackle shop. He did it. He did the damn thing,” Tank said, holding his dingy baseball cap over his chest.

  “Hell, yeah, he did. One of the best guys on the line. Put in his thirty years. Never let anybody down. A good man. What happened?” Daddy dropped his head.

  “Cancer. He was bad off and Marie said they couldn’t afford chemo or any of that.”

  “That’s rough. A damn shame.”

  They watched those slow-moving long black cars with their bright lights until they blended into the afternoon sky.

  When they got back in the truck, Daddy got real quiet and ran his hands through his greasy hair. He was in a bad mood. He had been in a bad mood for a long time. For years.

  “Thinking about Mom?” Midnight said.

  “I’m not always thinking about your mother. Will you give it a rest already? Sit back and be quiet. Fasten your seat belt.” Daddy gunned the engine, maybe to drown out anything else Midnight might have said.

  Midnight stopped talking, but not even Daddy could control his thoughts. What went on in his mind belonged to him, no guardrails, no judgment from the grown-ups, no rules to break, just a private space in a cluttered world that was his and his alone. A space to be with Mom.

  She used to move around the kitchen in their old house, her hands soaking wet with Dawn dishwashing liquid, her hair growing wild as prairie grass. She always winked at him when she made his scrambled eggs and pancakes in the mornings, her eyes a deep blue or maybe green. He couldn’t remember. He never saw her mad. Sometimes she mussed his hair and called him her little mad scientist, just like Einstein. When she smiled, her whole face lit up and you wanted to get closer to the flame.

  The night she and Daddy told him he was getting a little sister, they went out for hot fudge sundaes before dinner. A drop of chocolate stained Midnight’s wide-ruled notebook paper where he made a list of all the things he’d teach her: the right way to throw a spitball, how to dig for worms, and the proper form for pitching a curveball. Midnight would always have a seven-year head start and she’d never catch up. He liked it that way. When she was old enough, he decided he’d take her to the junkyard to sift through metal for something special, like the time he and Daddy found a grille and lights from a damaged cop car. Daddy had let him keep both in his bedroom to show off to his friends when they slept over.

  “Can I hold her when she gets here? I won’t drop her. I swear I won’t,” he’d said to Mom.

  “Yes, sweetheart. I promise,” she’d answered, looking him in the eye.

  Daddy just grinned like he always did back then, even when he had to work overtime at the plant to bring in extra money for the crib and all the other baby stuff. The night Mom’s water broke, Daddy ran all the red lights to get them to the hospital. He sang the whole way to keep Mom calm.

  The hospital smelled funny, like a mix of Lysol and cough syrup. People in white coats and what looked like pastel
pajamas rushed around holding clipboards and checking their pagers.

  They didn’t allow kids inside the birthing room, so Granny waited with Midnight down the hall, close enough though to see Mom’s room. They tried to decide who his little sister would look like—whether she’d have Daddy’s long, narrow nose or Mom’s pink lips and sandy hair.

  Just when he and Granny were about to start playing Uno, the door to Mom’s hospital room swung open and Daddy flew out of it like he’d been knocked back by a blast from an explosion. Even now, Midnight could still see Daddy’s body hitting that wall behind him and sinking to the floor. Granny jumped from her seat quicker than Midnight had ever seen her move. He got up, too.

  A tall doctor walked toward them, his head down, and it looked to Midnight that the man’s eyeglasses might tumble from the tip of his nose. When the doctor finally spoke, he said Hannah didn’t make it. It took a couple of seconds for Midnight to recognize his mother’s actual name, and he didn’t know right away what didn’t make it meant until Granny fell against a chair and Daddy squeezed his head between his hands as if it would fall apart unless he held it together.

  All the lights went out in Midnight’s brain and he couldn’t make sense of what anyone said after that. Later, Granny would remind him that the doctor had said Mom and his little sister had died of something with a weird name. Preeclampsia. It had something to do with high blood pressure, which made no sense. Granny was his mom’s mom and she had that, and she still lived to get old. His sister hadn’t even lived long enough to get a name of her own.

  Midnight wondered what he had done wrong. Why had Mom lied about all the things he’d get to do with his little sister? Was she mad about that time he tried to stick her tampons up his nose? Or because he never cleaned his room when she told him to? Or helped her wash dishes?

  Midnight watched from the doorway of her hospital room as Daddy and Granny tiptoed in as if Mom were asleep and might wake up if they made too much noise. From the doorway, he saw her in the bed, but with everybody gathered around, they were blocking her face. He almost screamed and ran away but didn’t want Daddy to think he was a little punk, something he called him when he refused to touch a dead possum or a snake slithering on the side of the road. So, he stood there, close enough to prove his manhood, but far enough away that his clearest memories of his mother would not be of her lying there in that bed, dead.

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t forgive her. To him death was just another way people broke their promises. A way for them to leave and have the last word.

  Six

  Ruth

  Every time Ruth held her key card up to the wall reader on the twenty-third floor, she heard a soft click, then saw a green light that brought her more relief than she cared to admit. That small token granted her access through the electric-powered doors into the inner sanctum of Langham, the consumer-packaged-goods company where she’d worked since graduating college.

  Nothing had been the same with Xavier since Thanksgiving, when she told him the truth about her baby, so when she walked into the reception area at Langham the Monday after, the air felt different, lighter somehow. Here, she could surround herself with the certainty of product testing and avoid the variability in her personal life. The laboratory had always been her refuge, and she immersed herself in building laundry detergent formulas. Yet lately, she felt the way she had as a kid in gym class teetering on the balance beam, where one misstep could land her in a heap on the floor.

  Once a week, Ruth sent her lab coat out for dry cleaning, because she preferred it neatly pressed, the fabric crisp and white without blemish. After a few years on the job, some of her colleagues had settled into a more casual relationship with the company, their dress sporadically slouchy and their performance erratic. But when you came from where Ruth did, you knew what the bottom looked like, and you couldn’t slip and fall back there again.

  Shelley, the Black assistant who sat at the front desk to greet visitors, nodded to Ruth in sisterly approval. Obama’s win had widened her smile more than usual and Ruth grinned back.

  “You’re working it today, girl,” Shelley said, as she did most mornings when Ruth stepped off the elevator. But all Ruth was really working was the customary uniform of any laboratory scientist from the research and development team: long pants and long sleeves under a lab coat, closed-toe shoes, safety goggles, and purple gloves.

  It was nearly impossible to be cute in this getup, but Ruth recognized what Shelley meant without either woman having to verbalize it. Their conspiratorial looks said Ruth had made it and so had Shelley, by proxy. Just her mere presence as a chemical engineer made a statement: a road map for the handful of Blacks in the company and an unwritten, unspoken exclamation point for anyone who doubted they could dominate in the sciences.

  The lab’s fluorescent ceiling lights illuminated the brown liver spots at the top of her boss Clayton’s head, the open terrain that his sparse mud-brown hairs failed to cover. Side by side, they poured surfactant into beakers.

  She cleared her throat and said, “I see Max’s getting his name on lots of patents lately.”

  Had her tone sounded casual, as she’d intended? Or had her insecurity bled through her practiced nonchalance? Holding the beaker eye level and swirling the liquid inside, Clayton said, “Mmm. I’d say our entire group is innovating.”

  Defending her statement would seem just that, defensive, so she kept quiet. Max had joined their team as a scientist just two years ago, and after she trained him, he was quickly assigned to core brands and then new innovations. In Langham lingo, they were the high-market-value, high-market-share products.

  No one in the workplace was indispensable, yet when senior leaders said they wanted a detergent with ten times more cleaning power than that of their main competitor, Ruth busted her ass to make those claims true. In the early days, Clayton often referred to her enviable talent.

  Three years into her tenure with the company, Ruth began working on core brands, but recently, Clayton asked her to only make small tweaks to formulas. Nothing more challenging than that. Now was not the time, despite Xavier’s eagerness, to get pregnant and have Clayton question her commitment to Langham. In spite of Clayton’s early praise of her work, she feared her own position would always remain tenuous. A bull she would ride for as long as she could hold on without it bucking and knocking her to the ground.

  She had met Clayton at a National Society of Black Engineers recruiting event on Yale’s campus a few months before graduation. Her knees trembled beneath her somber gray interview suit when she faced him as he scouted new talent at the networking reception.

  Her grandmother’s voice rang in her head that night. Stand up straight. Don’t slouch. Look them straight in those blue or green eyes, because they’re no better than you. Let them see how smart you are.

  It didn’t take long for Ruth and Clayton to bond over being born and raised in the Midwest—the Indiana auto factory town for her and a dairy farm in Wisconsin for him. Even though she was Black, and he was white and older, they had similar roots. The same values. Corn-fed folks. Sturdy. Good, decent people at the core.

  They laughed at their mutual preference for no-frills cuisine with names that were easy to pronounce. But it was their banter over biochemical interactions and thermodynamics that lit her up, and before they knew it an hour had passed. Their conversation was so all-consuming that Ruth forgot her fear and left behind the shamed teen mother from Ganton who had been intimidated by the Ivy League freshman year. By this time, she had become a butterfly shedding her cocoon, finding her legs and then her wings.

  Now, Max stood on the other side of Clayton, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his corduroys.

  “Which mission are you on?” Max asked their boss. Splotches of red dotted the skin of his neck just above the collar of his lab coat.

  For weeks now, the two of them had been talking endlessly about Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron. Clayton said, “I
’m on Korriban. We got Han Solo unfrozen from that carbonite. Now we’re attacking Emperor Palpatine.”

  Max said, “Okay, you’re on the ninth mission then. Just wait till he gets trapped and you have to help him get into the shield generator base. Pretty gnarly.”

  At night, Ruth found herself googling the adventures of Han Solo so that she could add something to these conversations. But it was as if Clayton and Max were speaking another language that she didn’t have the patience to learn.

  Trying to ignore their voices, Ruth turned on the propeller mixer and watched the cloudy haze of blue color mix with a cleaning agent. It always reminded her of a smoothie in a blender.

  She felt someone’s eyes on her and looked up to see Nigel, a scientist from Ghana, glance at her quickly before returning to his acid-level test. The sting from his furtive gaze burned her cheeks. She wished she hadn’t confided in him her fears about Max cozying up to Clayton and leapfrogging over her in the company.

  “You just have to work harder is all,” Nigel had said dismissively, before launching into a diatribe about what he called the abysmal work ethic of American Blacks.

  When he joined the team, Ruth had rejoiced at having another person of color in R&D. Without exaggeration, Nigel’s skin could be described as blue black, that you-can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face level of darkness. Yet his snobbery reminded her of Victor. As Zora Neale Hurston once said, All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.

  Christmas ads, Christmas music, and Christmas decorations seemed to sprout everywhere like overgrown weeds she wanted to trample with only a week to go before the holiday. The brightness of window displays that had delighted her days before blinded her now, and she blanched at their lack of subtlety. All this festivity shoved Ruth into the arms of cheer she didn’t really feel and actively resisted.

  Back in the day, her grandparents had a scarcity mindset, always pinching pennies, even at the most indulgent time of the year. They gave one present each to Ruth and Eli, instilling in them the value of family, not frivolity. Not that she and her brother had appreciated the larger lesson back then.