The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  Eleven

  Ruth

  The rattle of what sounded like a busted engine outside grew louder. The sound was getting closer to their house.

  “What’s that racket out there?” Ruth pulled back the ruffled kitchen curtain and peered out the window. She couldn’t see much of anything, though. The lights on the porch and the side of the house weren’t working.

  “Your brother’s home,” Mama said, without even going to the window or the door. She scrubbed a grease stain off a place mat and set a sparkling fork, knife, and spoon on either side of a plate.

  The side door rubbed hard against the linoleum when it opened, and Eli’s broad frame filled the doorway. Eli looked just like Papa, the way he stood, that scruffy black beard, those eyes that told what was on his mind before he ever said a word.

  “Ooh, do I smell greens? So good makes you want to smack your mama.” Eli winked and bent to squeeze Mama’s waist. “Just kidding, Mama.”

  “Hmm. You know you don’t smell any greens. I’ll have turnip and mustards tomorrow with ham. Fried chicken tonight. Look who’s here.” Mama waved her dishrag toward Ruth.

  Eli shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted, as if he didn’t immediately recognize his own sister. “Who this? Do I know you?”

  “Boy, quit playing,” Ruth said, and ran into his arms. Time had a way of changing people, giving and taking away at the same time. Eli’s body felt lean, yet his stomach had grown rounder. He’d let his hair grow out into a full Afro that appeared even bigger as it framed his thinned face.

  “Nobody told me we were having a family reunion.” Eli opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Bud.

  “We’re not. I wanted to surprise you all,” Ruth said. A sickeningly sweet chemical odor oozed from Eli’s body. “And you don’t need a beer, big brother. You already smell like a distillery.”

  “A man’s got to relax sometimes. Lighten up, lil bit. I know it’s hard to do when you’re still rocking those Clair Huxtable clothes ten years later.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t even funny. You’re getting off your game in your old age.”

  She and her brother slid easily into their half-joking, half-serious battle positions. It could only be explained as muscle memory and Ruth welcomed it, like salve on a wound she’d forgotten existed.

  “Okay, enough, you two. Go easy on your brother. He’s had a hard day. Sit down and eat, Eli, before your food gets cold,” Mama said. She had kept the food warming in the oven. She didn’t believe in microwaves. All that artificial heat kills the taste of the food and the radiation causes cancer. I’m not ready to die before the good Lord calls me.

  Mama put a meaty chicken thigh and breast on Eli’s plate, even though she had gently suggested earlier that Ruth take one of the legs. “He’s grown. Why are you fixing his plate? I’m company and I had to serve myself,” Ruth said.

  “I’m the man around here, remember. And age first. Got to respect your elders, girl. Don’t you know that?” Eli laughed with his mouth wide open and full of chewed chicken.

  “If you were any kind of man, you would’ve fixed the toilet and furnace for Mama. And the porch light, too.”

  “You ain’t back but two minutes and you already trying to boss folks around.”

  Ignoring her brother, she said, “Mama, I stopped in town at Lena’s shop this morning. If it’s just the lightbulb that needs changing, I could’ve picked up some for you earlier.”

  “If that’s all it took, I would’ve done that a long time ago,” Mama said. “But I bet Lena was surprised to see you.”

  “Oh, yeah. I met her grandson. Seemed like a bit of a brat. Running wild.”

  At the mention of Midnight, Mama and Eli exchanged glances. It was quick, but Ruth noticed.

  “What’s the story with that kid? Must be something the way you two are eyeing each other.”

  “Ever since the plant closed, Lena’s been keeping him. Butch lost their place over on Laramie when he couldn’t pay the rent anymore,” Mama said.

  There was something wrong with this caregiving that skipped a generation. An untold burden with a cost that couldn’t be calculated. Mama and Papa had been substitute parents to Ruth and Eli just as Lena was now to Midnight. She wondered what these grandparents had forfeited, what dreams lay barren as they assumed the responsibilities of their children.

  “Well, I say Midnight’s better off not being under the same roof with Butch Boyd,” said Eli. “He’s a lowlife. He shouldn’t have even been allowed to reproduce.”

  Eli had three children, twin boys and a girl, with his wife, Cassie. Ruth noticed that her brother wasn’t wearing his wedding ring, and he hadn’t yet mentioned her niece and nephews. It was obvious he didn’t care for Butch, whom she vaguely remembered seeing around Ganton growing up. If he was as bad a guy as Eli made him out to be, she felt sorry for Midnight.

  Mama heaped mashed potatoes on Eli’s plate as if sustenance might improve his disposition. “Now I know you and Butch don’t see eye to eye, but that’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “All I’m saying is everybody ain’t cut out to be a parent.” Eli’s words stretched into a drawl when he slurped his Bud between mouthfuls of chicken. His words also cut her with the sharpest precision.

  In the early months of her pregnancy, Eli hadn’t said much, but his smirks spoke louder than anything, telegraphing that with him dropping out of high school and her getting pregnant before graduating, it was a draw, with both failing to live up to expectations. Ruth saw a shadow of that same smirk on his face now.

  Mama broke the silence. “You told me you wouldn’t be able to make it home for Thanksgiving or Christmas again this year. I assumed you and Xavier were going to see his folks. But you’re here. By yourself. You say he’s busy working. What is it, baby? Why are you here?”

  Why was she there? She paused long enough to filter her thoughts, determining what she could say that would adequately explain why she wanted to undo a secret their family had harbored for more than a decade.

  Her fingers worried a nick in the table’s wood. “I came back to find my son.”

  Eli coughed, choking on his food. Mama wiped her hands on a paper towel. “You know that can’t happen,” she said calmly.

  “But things are different now. Xavier and I want to start a family. We just bought a new house. We’re both finally making good money.” As soon as those words were out of her mouth, Ruth wanted to scoop them back in. “I’m sorry, Eli. I know you’re looking for work now that the plant’s closed.”

  Her brother let his fork fall to the table. “I don’t need your apology or your pity, lil sis. Me and mine will be just fine. It’s you I’m worried about. You must have lost your damn mind talking about wanting to find your kid after all these years. You getting all high and mighty and cute now with your fancy job and house. Don’t ever get it twisted. You have all of that because of what we did.”

  He pointed his finger at Mama and then himself. Afterward, he picked up his plate and took it to his old bedroom.

  Ruth and Mama sat in a hushed silence, the smell of chicken grease still hanging in the air. Mama spoke first.

  “You and Xavier can have as many babies as you want. But you can’t undo the past and take that child back to Chicago with you. There are other people to think about besides yourself.”

  “I just want to make sure my son is okay.”

  “He’s fine.”

  Ruth wouldn’t give up that easily. Not now, when she’d risked her marriage telling Xavier everything. And she’d decided she wouldn’t live her life any longer without knowing the truth. “What adoption agency did you go through?” She remembered the litany of questions Xavier had asked her. The ones she couldn’t answer. “You were my legal guardian then, so I assume you signed all the papers?”

  A strange look flashed on Mama’s face, but she didn’t say anything, so Ruth went on. “Did you meet the people who adopted him? I need to know who they are and wher
e they live.” Ruth dug her nails deeper into crevices in the wood. “Please.”

  “You ain’t never laid eyes on him since you spit him out and now you want to lay claim to him. What sense does that make?”

  Ruth wanted to say ain’t never was a double negative that negated Mama’s point, but all she said was “I’m not trying to lay claim. You took him from me. I had no choice. You didn’t give me one.”

  “You’re having regrets now because you don’t like what you did. You can’t live with it. But there’s no going back. I’ll tell you something else, young lady,” Mama said, her voice getting tight. “You keep turning up the dirt, you bound to run into a snake one day.” She held up one callused hand, grease smeared on her fingertips. “And it’s going to bite you. Real hard.”

  When Mama got the last word, it chilled you down to your ankle bones. Froze you in place like cement. There was nothing left to say.

  Mama turned her back and started raking leftovers into Tupperware containers. Then she ran a scouring pad over each burner on the stove until the dried sauces and gravies peeled away along with some of the stainless-steel coating.

  Ruth sighed deeply and walked down the hall where the bedrooms were. Eli’s door was closed. “Got Money,” by Lil Wayne, blasted from the other side. Her hand lightly touched the knob. Growing up, a closed door meant he wanted privacy to listen to music, talk on the phone to someone of the opposite sex, or pleasure himself without interruption. She learned the last the hard way when she burst in once on her big brother lying naked on the bed with lotion and a towel beside him.

  This time, she knocked first. When he gave her permission to enter, she found him standing in front of the mirror in his pajamas picking his Afro. Eli shouldn’t be here in his cramped childhood bedroom. He should be in his own house with his wife and children, but this town, this country, this life, had cut him down to a boy again.

  The one question that went unanswered because no one dared raise it was whether she and Eli even shared the same father. No one knew, and after some time, not knowing became easier. You could fill in whatever fantasy brought you peace. But she didn’t need a DNA test to know Eli was fully her brother in every way that mattered.

  “Hey,” she shouted above the music.

  Lowering the volume, he said, “What’s good, lil bit?”

  Ruth considered herself skinny, but not little and petite. Her long limbs flailed everywhere, and she wished to be more compact. Despite incontrovertible evidence to suggest otherwise, Eli’s nickname for her made her feel small and cute.

  A simple question, yet hard to answer. She didn’t want to argue with him, not again. “I like your hair,” she said. “I bet Mama gave you grief over it.”

  A laugh escaped his lips. “Yeah, she said something about how we weren’t on a sixties picket line anymore.”

  Ruth sat on the edge of his bed and then stretched out on her stomach, beginning to feel comfortable again. She looked up to see Eli wagging his finger at her.

  “Now, you know better than to get in the bed with your outside clothes on.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she glanced down at her sweater and leggings. Then she snorted and cackled uncontrollably. Admonitions from Mama could fill a book, and their grandmother had changed very little over the years. Except for one area of her life that left Ruth befuddled and unsettled.

  Lowering her voice, Ruth said, “I saw Dino here when I first came home. He looked real comfortable. What’s going on between him and Mama?”

  Eli shrugged. “If it was anybody but him, I’d have some issues. But he’s a good dude.”

  “Well, yeah, but what about Papa?”

  “What about him? He’s dead. Been dead years now.” The blunt finality of those words stung and made Ruth wince. Eli had once held their grandfather up as an idol, but now he sounded dismissive about the man. Eli went on to say, “One thing I learned a long time ago is that you can’t live your life looking back.”

  Now he was talking about her, and she took his reproach as a personal failing. Somehow, she had not lived up to Eli’s expectations.

  After Papa died, her brother had been the one she desperately wanted to impress. When she wore a new dress or tried a new hairstyle, she hoped he’d notice. Even when she got into Yale, knowing he’d be left behind, she smiled when he bragged to his friends about how smart she was.

  Eli said, “So, you asking about Mama’s love life. What about yours? Where’s your husband?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” she said. “Where’s Cassie?”

  He turned back to face the mirror, and in the reflection she could see his face fall in mock defeat. “Touché,” he said, chuckling begrudgingly.

  The two men remaining in her life had met on her wedding day four years ago at Friendship Baptist Church. She’d been nervous about her brother and her future husband meeting, wondering if they’d get along, hoping for Eli’s blessing.

  After the ceremony, they’d stayed in church chatting, the men soon bantering jovially about the close Super Bowl game between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers.

  “I seem to remember the Bears kicking some Patriot butt back in the day,” Xavier said proudly.

  Eli doubled over in laughter, almost popping his suit coat button. “Man, that was 1985. You still doing that lame Super Bowl shuffle?”

  Ruth and Cassie kept a close eye on their husbands. As long as they were still laughing and didn’t end up in a fistfight in the church, everything would be fine, Ruth thought.

  “Now, if I was in the NFL, I’d really be ballin’,” Eli said, pulling his arm back, tossing an imaginary football.

  Xavier said, “A lot of those cats in the NFL and NBA lose that money as fast as they make it.”

  Pastor Bumpus rose from the pew and walked in circles, just like he did in the pulpit. “Don’t make the mistake of following these ballplayers. They’re greedy. The Bible says no one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money.” He brought a closed fist to his lips and looked like he had the urge to preach.

  In the middle of all of it, Ruth watched Mama in her ivory sequined suit, looking up at both men. The baby had complicated Ruth’s relationship with her grandmother. Yet she could tell she enjoyed having her family and pastor together again the way they had been when Papa was still alive.

  From her seat on a front-row pew, Mama said, “Well, all I know is some of these parents are trying to keep up with the Joneses, buying their kids all these expensive shoes with ballplayers’ names on them. Some of the kids can’t read their own names, but they’re wearing four-hundred-dollar tennis shoes. Now that’s crazy.”

  Xavier said, “You’re right about that, Mrs. Tuttle. We can’t build wealth by putting all our money on our kids’ feet. But it’s bigger than that. We need to start our own businesses. Eli, brother, look here. I hear you know your stuff when it comes to cars and mechanics. Why not open your own shop? Then get your kids involved so they can take it over one day.”

  The twins, Teddy and Troy, had loosened their ties and stretched out on the pew behind them. Cassie bounced Keisha on her lap, spooning applesauce into the little girl’s mouth to keep her happy and quiet.

  Eli surveyed his children as if seeing them for the first time, pondering each of their futures, and deeming it risky to dream too big. “I don’t know about that, man. I don’t have one of those fancy business degrees like you. Besides, soon as a Black man tries to make a big move, they chop your arm off. White man’s got us by the balls, always has.”

  Realizing his language may have been a bit crude for the sanctuary, Eli mouthed an apology to Pastor Bumpus, who laughed it off.

  Even on their wedding day, Xavier had been in teaching mode. “That’s slave mentality, brother. Indoctrination. I know you can learn business, but you know cars already. I’m telling you to think about it. You never know how big it could grow. That’s how the Ford family did it. In ten years, I expect to be driving a Tuttle
SUV.”

  Eli grinned, his eyes twinkling. “A Tuttle SUV,” he echoed. “I like the sound of that now.”

  When they left the church to head their separate ways, Eli whispered in her ear, “I like that dude.”

  If she couldn’t have Papa’s blessing on her wedding day, this was damn close.

  At the time, many of her friends bemoaned the eligible Black male shortage: they were either emotionally unavailable, gay, in prison, or dating white women exclusively. Every magazine think piece reminded her she had a better chance of getting hit by a bus than finding a good brother. But Xavier had put a ring on it and Eli approved. She returned to Chicago believing she’d chosen wisely and well.

  Now, she considered telling Eli about her fight with her husband, but he turned his music up again—too loud to talk over—and bounced to some hip-hop song she didn’t know. That was her cue to leave, and she did.

  Across the hallway was her old bedroom. She’d dreaded this moment and had avoided this room for as long as she could. The door stood open, enough for her to see the wood frame of her childhood bed with the four tall posts anchoring it. When she was a little girl, she’d played with dolls and read books on this bed. Mama was a practical woman not given to sentimentality, but she’d seen no need for wasting money on new furniture when Ruth left for college. So, everything looked the same, untouched by time.

  Everything about it seemed sterile, and it was probably a guest room now. In spite of Mama’s archaic rules about outside clothes touching the bed, Ruth sat gingerly and the springs squeaked beneath her weight. The room smelled of Pine-Sol, clean and airy. But no amount of freshening could wipe away what had happened here.

  Twelve

  Ruth

  August 1997