The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  Once again, Ruth felt guilty for withholding information from Ronald. She cranked up the heat and blew into her hands to warm them. Rationalizing her decisions made the most sense right now.

  “Mama was so careful to be sure no one knew I was pregnant. And even if Ronald suspected something, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me or the baby.” She watched melting snowflakes slide like tears down her car windows, reliving their breakup, feeling foolish all over again.

  But then she remembered Kaylee and how she alluded to Ruth’s having been pregnant in high school. Mama used to say, Nobody in this town can hold water. Did Ronald know they shared a child? She hadn’t told him, but maybe someone else had.

  “Okay, so you didn’t sign any papers,” Tess said. “You say your high school boyfriend didn’t make a play for the kid. If he didn’t, that leaves your grandmother, who was your legal guardian. However, it doesn’t sound like she had guardianship of your baby. And even if she did, parental rights supersede those of the guardian. This was still your decision to make about what to do with your child.”

  The cold of the afternoon, or maybe a sense of dread, crawled under Ruth’s skin. It coursed through her as she listened to her friend confirm her suspicions. Something wasn’t right. And she knew it. Then Tess offered another unthinkable possibility.

  “You know how we do, especially the old heads. In a small town. Or down South? They’ll give the baby to family or a neighbor to raise and it’s all hush-hush. You just never know.”

  Dropping her cell phone on the car seat, Ruth just barely heard her friend’s voice. Had Mama handed her baby off with no paperwork? If so, without a legal document, Ruth could still claim her son. Not that she was sure that’s what she wanted. She didn’t know what she wanted. But if, just if, she chose to be a mother to her baby, there was a good chance she still had rights to her child.

  Sixteen

  Ruth

  The next morning, Mama’s house creaked like old people’s bones, a bit rusty and resettling with the fluctuations in temperature. As much as Ruth wanted to confront Mama and demand answers, it was best not to tip her hand and let Mama know her suspicions. Somehow, she needed to find proof that the handover of her son had been off the books.

  When Ruth walked down the dim hallway toward the kitchen, she heard a scraping sound. Sunlight streamed through the narrow kitchen window and illuminated Mama kneeling on the linoleum, grating a bar of soap like a block of cheese, her fingers knotted from arthritis. Her lips pressed together and the veins in her forearms bulged with each scrape. That fresh, clean smell reminded Ruth of her cotton church dress flapping in the summer breeze on the clothesline next to Papa’s work shirts.

  Mama poured washing soda and borax into the five-gallon bucket of cloudy white water.

  Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, Ruth cleared her throat.

  Without looking up from her work on the floor, Mama said, “Morning, Ruth.”

  “You know I can get you a deal on detergent through work. You don’t have to do this.”

  “No need,” Mama said, breathing heavily as she continued her soap-making.

  Strangely, it made sense. The woman who had forced Ruth to give birth at home in a little room of shame like some scene out of the 1950s didn’t believe in store-bought laundry detergent.

  Ruth thought of the stories parents told their kids about scrappy childhoods, walking five miles to school in the snow wearing shoes with holes in the bottoms. Skepticism kept Ruth from fully buying into that as a kid, especially when more than one grown-up had the same hard-luck tale. And today, no one besides hipsters and homeschoolers would believe her if she told them her grandmother made her own laundry soap in the twenty-first century.

  “I work on these formulas. You only need to use a little bit of detergent. You could save yourself some money and not have to do it by hand.”

  Mama stirred with more vigor, her breaths coming faster with each rotation of the giant wooden spoon. She stopped to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand. Then she smiled up at Ruth.

  “Oh, listen to my chemical engineer talking. I love it, but don’t forget I was washing clothes before you were born, Miss Thing. I don’t need you schooling me on it now. And before I forget, look what I left for you on the kitchen counter.”

  Beside a scrub sponge and a water glass sat a roll of toilet paper. Ruth asked, “Why is the toilet paper in the kitchen?”

  “Because somebody doesn’t know how to hang it on the roll right. I got up and went to the bathroom this morning and like to have a fit. You know it goes over, not under. Didn’t we teach you that?”

  Ruth wanted to laugh, but she didn’t dare do it with Mama’s scolding eyes boring into her like she was nine instead of twenty-nine. When they first married, Xavier hung the toilet paper the wrong way and Ruth didn’t want to fuss over little things. Instead of nagging over something so minor, she joined him by going rogue with the toilet paper rolls.

  “You tell her, Mama.” Eli walked into the kitchen wearing a blue-and-white pin-striped suit. He tugged at the tie choking his neck.

  No one said a word. Too shocked to craft a smart comeback, her mouth opened in amazement. Her big brother had worn a suit to her wedding. Yet he hadn’t even worn one for his own nuptials, having skipped the ceremony and taken Cassie to the justice of the peace instead. The only other time she’d seen him in a getup like this had been Papa’s funeral.

  “What? Y’all never seen a brother looking clean before? You need to get out more.”

  “Very nice. I’m impressed. Where are you headed?” Ruth said.

  “Sam’s Club. They’re hiring for an inventory clerk. See how I’m matching the store colors? Look and learn, people.”

  Mama put her hands to her face. “You got an interview. Praise the Lord.”

  “I got to go or I’ll be late.” Eli brushed his lips across both of their cheeks before heading to the door. But before he left, he tossed a set of keys on the kitchen counter.

  “Why did you have my keys?” Ruth said, confused.

  “You didn’t see your engine light on?” Eli shook his head, disappointed.

  That warning indicator had come on the night she drove Midnight home, but she’d been too preoccupied to do anything about it. “I guess I need to take the car into the shop for service.”

  “I already got you, lil bit. Your spark plug’s bad. I put in a new one. The car’s probably been starting slow and running rough, right?” When she nodded, he said, “Oh, it’s gon’ purr like a kitten now.”

  Without looking up from her bucket, Mama said, “That was mighty nice of you, son.”

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “Yes, it was. Thank you, Eli.” Affection for her big brother squeezed her chest. As much as he and Mama exerted control over her life, they loved her fiercely. Before he walked out, she said, “Hey, Eli.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Good luck today. You got this.”

  He winked. “They don’t even know.”

  When they heard Eli pull out of the driveway onto the street, Mama turned to Ruth. “This is the best news we’ve had in a long time. Have you been watching your brother’s eyes? He had locked himself away in there and nobody could free him. The old Fernwood plant gave five hundred of them their walking papers. It’s been six months and I prayed he’d come out of that funk he was in, but he hasn’t been the same man since.”

  No one had needed to tell Eli he’d work at the plant someday. Everyone simply knew it, with the certainty of new mornings dawning and darkness eclipsing the day. The Monday after his eighteenth birthday, Eli reported for his first shift at Fernwood, making batteries on the assembly line. In the nineties, life was good, and even in Ganton, people had a little change jingling in their pockets.

  Practically every day for five years while she still lived at home, her big brother reported for duty, sometimes flaunting a particularly generous paycheck after a grueling week of overtime work or a cost-of-living increas
e. Most of his money went for parts for his own car and the thirsty women who inevitably liked to sweat brothers with good jobs.

  “I can’t help it if the ladies love Eli,” he’d say, smiling smugly.

  However, over time, the U.S. economy soured and so did Eli’s idealism about the work that had sustained the Tuttles for generations. Racism on the plant floor, poor work ethic for some, and just time itself dulled the luster of Ganton’s crown jewel. Eli had put in seventeen good years, almost half his life at this place.

  Now, with Fernwood closed for good, it seemed as if the town’s beating heart had stopped. Ruth had been reading up on it. Not only were people not buying as many cars in a recession, but fuel prices had risen, and the American automakers couldn’t keep up with the new demand for fuel-efficient models. Car buyers were turning to Japan and Europe for fuel-efficient imports.

  But understanding what had happened didn’t make it any easier seeing her brother suffer. She could tell it was taking a toll on Mama, too.

  “One drink at Wally’s turned into two and three and . . .” Mama’s voice trailed off and she shook her head, as if she could shake off whatever demons had taken hold of Eli.

  “That’s rough, but he has a wife and three kids to support. I didn’t want to ask in front of Eli, but where are Cassie and the children?” Ruth said.

  Mama dried her hands on the skirt of her apron and pulled a framed photo of Eli and his family from the buffet table. “He’s still married to her on paper. But she found out that while she was working every day, he was hanging over a bar stool talking nonsense. So, she told him to get himself together or get out. I thought she could’ve given him more time. But these women today have no mercy on a man trying to make it out here. Now she’s cut back on how often he gets to see his kids. I know that’s been killing him.”

  “Marriage is supposed to be for better or for worse,” Ruth said absently.

  “Are we talking about your brother or you? What’s the real reason Xavier didn’t come with you?” The intensity of Mama’s gaze forced her to meet her grandmother’s eyes.

  As convincingly as she could, Ruth said, “Everything’s fine between Xavier and me. Really. He’s juggling a lot of major work assignments right now. It’s stressful, but he’s on the executive track and I’m proud of him.”

  “Well, he’s one of the lucky ones.” Ruth heard the pain in Mama’s voice when she thought about Eli. The helplessness. “It’s hard out there trying to find work with a record, you know.”

  “But that drug offense was minor, and besides, it was a long time ago. I have a couple lawyer friends in Chicago. I can talk to them about how we can get that expunged from his record.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Mama said, wiping imaginary dust off a framed photo of Eli.

  One of the darkest times of their lives had been when Eli did time for misdemeanor drug possession. It was the nineties back then, when the war on drugs should have been renamed the war on Black men. There seemed to be a bounty on the head of every brother. It made no sense that Eli was there, even if only for a few weeks, in the same place with murderers awaiting trial. Side by side with guys who had put bullets through people’s heads. They’d expected Eli to serve a much longer sentence—two years—and Mama had moaned day and night that her grandbaby couldn’t live in a cage another day. Get back, devil, get back. Only you, God, can break the shackles and set him free. Through some miracle and maybe Mama’s petitions to the Lord, Eli got out fast, but Ruth always wondered what scars lingered inside her brother, invisible ones he never talked about.

  Mama never took her eyes off Eli’s photo. “He was back in jail just a few years ago.”

  Her words shot straight through Ruth’s chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you dare bring this up to your brother. He should never have brought out that gun, even if he was just trying to keep the peace.”

  “Gun?” Ruth shouted, finding it impossible to believe Eli would get himself involved with guns.

  “Nobody got hurt. It’s over now and I don’t want to talk about it.” To emphasize her point, Mama got up, put on her coat, and left the house, claiming she had errands to run.

  Mama never said it, but Ruth knew she’d wrestled with her own regret over Eli’s not having a man to look up to after Papa died. She tried and failed to be mother and father to him and overcompensated for that failure.

  So many times, Ruth had wanted to scream, What about me? She knew Mama loved her. Deeply. But as much as folks refused to admit it, mothers loved their children differently. Even before Papa died, Mama made a distinction between her grandchildren.

  When Eli threw a football through the living room window as a kid, Mama laughed at the shattered glass and seemed almost triumphant, as if some milestone of raising a boy had been reached. A few years into Papa’s ALS, he asked Ruth if he could just that once pour his own milk over his bowl of Raisin Bran. He was too weak, trembling too much, to hold the carton steady. It was hard to believe this was the same man who had taught her and Eli how to hold and fire a gun during hunting season. But Ruth hadn’t wanted to deny her grandfather that sense of control. She handed him the carton and he dropped it, spilling milk all over the kitchen floor. Look what you’ve done, Mama yelled at Ruth, accusing her of using poor judgment. Those memories stayed with Ruth, and yet reflecting on these slights years later seemed small and petty. There was no fairness scale that could right the wrongs from childhood.

  Shortly after Mama left the house, the doorbell rang. When Ruth opened the door, she found Pastor Walter Bumpus standing in the doorway. He was wearing a long black overcoat, dress slacks, and a wide-brimmed hat he lifted from his head in a show of greeting. As a short man who wore everything oversized, he often looked like a child playing dress-up in his father’s clothing. A blast of cold air rushed in behind him.

  The pastor’s face betrayed him, a brief look of shock flashing there at the sight of her. He hid it quickly, though, with a toothy grin that exposed his blue-black gums.

  “Ruth Marie Tuttle. It’s been a long time.” No one called her by her whole name, except for Mama, and it usually meant she’d done something to earn some reprimand as a kid. In spite of his small stature, the senior pastor of Friendship Baptist Church consumed every room with his rich baritone, which could fill a stadium with no amplification necessary.

  “Good morning, Pastor. It’s good seeing you again.”

  After removing his gloves, he took both of her hands in his, and they were cool, yet soft as a flower petal. “I haven’t laid eyes on you since the day I married you and Xavier. In the Bible, even the prodigal son came home to a forgiving father and a huge feast.”

  Ruth bowed her head, shamed. She knew preachers were just men and women, mere flesh and blood, with no greater connection to God than anyone else. But if the Lord had called this man to ministry, maybe He had anointed him with divine understanding. As a little girl, he had submerged her cloaked body in the baptismal pool, and she couldn’t count the many times he had come to their table for Sunday dinners.

  Sliding her hands from his, she wondered what he could see beneath the shield of her skin. Did he already know her teenage sin?

  They walked to the living room and he sat on the sofa, patting the empty spot next to him. She chose the love seat opposite him, irrationally worried that he could see her sin and it would reveal itself more in the morning light streaming through the window.

  “Mama’s out for a bit, but I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” Ruth said, glancing at her watch.

  Pastor Bumpus stretched one arm across the back of the couch and crossed his legs. He was obviously in no hurry. “Never mind that. You know we take care of the widows at Friendship, so I just stopped by to say hello to Ernestine like I always do. It’s a pleasant surprise to see you here. I am glad you made it home for Christmas and that we get to talk.” After a beat, his lips curled into a small smile. “My, my, my. You look more and more like Joanna
every day. Beautiful.”

  At the mention of her mother’s name, Ruth cringed. They shared genetic material—DNA floating in their blood—but she wanted the similarities to end there. “With all due respect, Pastor, you’re wrong. We’re actually nothing alike.”

  He leaned forward and perched on the edge of the sofa, his hands extended outward, palms up. “Are you a praying woman, Ruth?”

  Slowly, she said, “I guess so. I talk to God sometimes.”

  That answer sounded inadequate. No one had ever asked her that before. Ruth lived a dual identity, raised up on religion but schooled in science. Experts drew a solid line between the two, their differences irreconcilable. She wasn’t sure what to believe. Still, she had prayed her entire life. She prayed for prom dates and promotions. She prayed for Papa to live. She prayed for green lights at intersections when she was running late. She prayed for the Bulls to make three-pointers in the final seconds on the shot clock. She prayed for lemon Bundt cakes to rise. She prayed for the pregnancy test she took at seventeen to be negative, negotiating with God that she wouldn’t be a repeat offender if He let her off one more time.

  Sometimes she prayed for her son, that he was okay, that she hadn’t irreversibly damaged his future when she walked away like Joanna had when she left Ruth and Eli behind. God considered each petition on its merits, she figured, and sometimes ruled in her favor. Sometimes not.

  She felt Pastor Bumpus’s eyes on her. He said, “We all fall short of the glory of God. Joanna did. I do. You, too. We all do. That’s why we have to pray for God to turn every wicked thing into something good. You think of Joanna leaving you and your brother behind as abandonment. Maybe it was. But God knew better. Her leaving allowed you to have a chance at a better life being raised by Hezekiah and Ernestine. Look at you now. An esteemed Yale graduate.”