The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  Ruth’s chest caved as if her friend had bludgeoned it with her truth. “That’s not how it was.”

  “You were always the perfect one. The good girl with the good grades who got into all the good colleges. I was just the good-time girl with mediocre grades and no planned future. You know what I kept telling myself? That none of that mattered ’cause we were tight. We were girls, ride or die.” Natasha covered her face with her hands. “I was the fool. You played me.”

  Drained and tired of carrying the lies, Ruth jumped in. “There was nothing perfect about me. I was hiding from you and everybody else. I’ve been hiding my whole life. Even now.” With downcast eyes, she said, “I was pregnant senior year. I had a baby.”

  Silence sat between them, the air charged with Ruth’s revelation. When she raised her eyes, she saw Natasha stunned, mouth agape, absorbing what she’d just heard. “Pregnant? I didn’t know, girl. I had no idea.”

  “No one knew,” Ruth said. “Mama had me in hiding and I took my classes at home. Gave birth there, too.”

  Natasha propped her legs up on the shea butter box and crossed them with Ruth’s, making a tic-tac-toe board of sorts, just like no time had passed between them. Something loosened inside Ruth. “You could have told me. You didn’t have to go through that all by yourself.”

  “I had Mama and Eli in my ear telling me what to do. To keep this secret. That a baby would mess up everything, hold me back. I was too young to know what I really wanted.”

  For a moment, an ease settled between them in the tiny supply closet and they were teen girls again, sitting on Natasha’s leopard-print bedspread eating Crazy Bread from Little Caesars. For the first time since she’d been back home, Ruth didn’t feel a desperate need to run away.

  Natasha said, “Okay, can I ask you something? I know it had to be Ronald Atkins’s baby, ’cause you didn’t sleep around like that. So, did you tell him?”

  Ruth’s stomach knotted at the mention of her old boyfriend’s name. She struggled to speak. “I never told him.”

  Natasha leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t like who you were when you were with him. You were afraid to move or do anything without his approval. Then he started talking to other girls while you were still together. I wanted to cut him or at least get his Social Security number, so I could jack up his credit someday.”

  Ruth laughed through the tears that choked her.

  “He took your spark, girl.”

  That’s when Ruth remembered why she had stuck close to Natasha, a girl some dismissed as flashy, a bubblehead, a chickenhead, or fast as popcorn, as Mama called her. A girl whose curves made Ruth’s body look like a bag of bones, all arms and legs dangling and tripping over each other. But if Natasha cared about you, she had your back. Even as a young girl, she would have clawed a grown man’s eyes out if he messed with one of her friends. And as bright as her glow was, she knew when to recede into the shadows and let you stand in the light.

  “Anyway, I came back home to find my baby,” Ruth said. “Well, I guess he isn’t a baby anymore. He’s eleven.”

  A puzzled look settled on Natasha’s face. “You don’t know where he is? Didn’t you give him up for adoption?”

  That question would forever stump Ruth and haunt her. “Mama took him right after he was born and to this day she won’t say what happened. I’m here to finally find answers. You mentioned Ronald. I never told him about the baby, but you know how this town is. He could have still found out somehow. Do you know where he is?”

  When she came home to Ganton for her wedding, she had looked over her shoulder, afraid she’d run into him. Now she needed to know if he had registered with the state as the baby’s father. If he had, there was a chance she would be able to find her son.

  Natasha said, “Girl, his sorry ass ain’t claiming nobody’s kid. Ronald’s been over in Iraq for a while now. Army, I think. I’m hoping Obama will bring the troops back home. I got cousins over there. What are they fighting for when the real war is right here with people losing their jobs and their houses? It’s ridiculous.”

  Ruth pictured Ronald in fatigues leaning on a tank with desert dust swirling behind him. In high school, he had never been particularly patriotic, and she always assumed he’d get a job at the plant like Eli and Papa.

  “I had no idea he was over there. I hope he makes it back home safely,” Ruth said absently.

  A new sadness and regret swept over her. It hit her that Ronald could die fighting somebody else’s war and never even know he had a son. Not that she had much faith in him stepping up to do the right thing and being a father to their child. Ruth thought of her own father, which she rarely did—a nameless, faceless creation of her imagining, a man she’d been forced to build and design in her mind. Either her mother didn’t know who had impregnated her or she hadn’t bothered to inform him. There was a man out there with her DNA who didn’t know she existed. His absence had left a hole in her that could never be filled.

  Natasha pulled her back to the present moment. “What’s your plan? I wonder if your kid is still here in Ganton. If he is, I probably know him. We’ll find him together. I got you, girl.”

  A heaviness Ruth didn’t know she’d been carrying lifted with her friend’s offer to help. She didn’t have to do this alone. It also hit her that after all these years of holding on to her secret, she’d told three people about the baby in the past month. Xavier had been the hardest to tell, and her honesty might have doomed her marriage. They still hadn’t spoken since she’d left Chicago; it was the longest they’d ever gone without speaking. But Natasha had been supportive and nonjudgmental. If Ruth had confided in her a long time ago, things might have been so different.

  Tess had been helpful, checking with one of her National Bar Association friends in Indianapolis who handled adoption cases. He told her that for every adoption decreed by an Indiana court, the State Department of Health needed to furnish a record of adoption for the child. This was added to the Indiana code in 1997, the same year Ruth gave birth.

  “I don’t have much to go on.” Ruth sighed. “Maybe it was all off the books or maybe not. He could have been adopted, and if so, there has to be a record of it. I’m sure there are plenty of adopted kids in town. How do I find which one is mine?”

  In dramatic fashion that reminded Ruth of the spontaneous Natasha she’d known growing up, her friend lifted her hands, streaked red and gold with hair dye. “You know what? I don’t really remember the details, but a few years after you left Ganton, there was this scandal in town. A lawyer got arrested for some shady shit. He did all sorts of illegal stuff, but I know there was some kind of adoption fraud. Now, I’m not saying it’s connected to your baby, but you never know.”

  Ruth tried to hide her terror. It had never occurred to her that there had been anything nefarious about her son’s adoption. She’d heard stories about people selling babies on the black market, but that only happened in the movies and in news stories overseas. Not here in Ganton. And as churchgoing as Mama was, she’d never be involved in something like that.

  Natasha opened the door of the supply closet. Her next client would arrive soon and she needed to restock her chair area. She had no idea she’d just turned Ruth’s world into a spinning top, leaving her to consider that her son might have inadvertently become a pawn in some crime.

  Ruth followed her friend back out to the salon, where stylists and clients moved about, women getting their hair done before the upcoming Christmas holiday. Natasha called the entire room to attention and wrapped her arms around Ruth.

  “Ladies, this is Ruth. My bestie from day one. She’s a doctor in Chicago, y’all.”

  In a low hiss, Ruth corrected her. “Engineer. Not a doctor.”

  Waving her off, Natasha said, “Same thing.”

  To some people, it really was the same thing. Either you’d made something of yourself or you hadn’t, and that was all that mattered. Ruth was acutely aware of how different her life
was now compared with those of everyone in the room. But even with a six-figure salary, she was still the same person. A twinge of panic still hit her when she would come home to a dark apartment after a thunderstorm before she remembered that she’d of course paid the electric bill that month.

  To her surprise, people cheered as if starved for good news, drinking in a success story. When Natasha hugged her, Ruth smelled the citrus scent of her gum and she thought of how they were scolded by their teachers for gum-smacking.

  Whispering in her ear, Natasha said, “We’re so proud of you. And I’m here for you, girl. Let me know if I can help, okay? You got this.”

  Alone in her car, Ruth turned over in her mind what Natasha had said about a lawyer who was arrested for adoption scams a few years after Ruth gave birth. Pulling out her cell, Ruth ran a Google search and a series of results appeared. She slid her finger over the face of her phone, scanning headlines and the first few paragraphs of several news stories.

  A South Bend family had sued an adoption agency for not disclosing the violent past of a child the couple adopted from India.

  A think piece claimed the world orphan crisis was nothing but a myth. The neediest children were sick, disabled, or too old by the standards of Americans seeking the perfect baby. There just weren’t enough healthy, adoptable infants available in third-world countries for the Westerners clamoring for them.

  Had her son gone to one of these hopeful or even desperate families? Or had he been an ornament, a decorative conversation piece for some ostentatious social climber? That possibility turned her stomach. She thought of the elegantly coiffed white women she’d seen strolling city streets with Chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers peeping from their purses. They even adorned their dogs with sweaters and topknot ribbons like little girls. These had to be the same type of women who adopted Black babies from Africa and toted them around as accessories.

  She kept searching online, scrolling past the most recent stories, and found in the Indianapolis Star an account of an attorney named Stanley DeAngelo, who’d gotten busted several years ago for bribery, extortion, and tax fraud. Apparently, he and his law partner had misused client information to enrich themselves.

  Just as she was about to exit out of the article and move to the next one, she noticed that DeAngelo had been implicated in numerous cases of adoption fraud stretching from Ganton to Indianapolis. One case centered on a teenage girl who gave birth about twenty miles from Ganton and promised her baby to a couple who never got the child. DeAngelo absconded with all the money the couple had paid during the girl’s pregnancy. According to the article, he had drained the bank accounts of several other hopeful couples who wanted babies, but never got them.

  Ruth couldn’t imagine the pain those couples must have felt. And what happened to the babies? She searched for other articles and found a few local news sources that repeated what was said in the Indianapolis Star article. Could this DeAngelo have been involved with her son’s adoption? She couldn’t find news about any other shady adoption stories concerning a lawyer with ties to Ganton. Maybe it was this guy. If everything had been legit and legal, Mama would have said so. But her haunted eyes and tightly sealed lips made Ruth suspect there was more to the story.

  Ruth leaned back in her seat and rubbed her temples. DeAngelo had been convicted in 1999, just two years after Ruth had the baby, and he went to prison for falsifying adoption records and the other crimes. Her stomach churned thinking of her family’s possibly having gotten involved with somebody like this.

  The photo in the article showed DeAngelo in a gray suit, white dress shirt, and red tie, posing in front of a bookshelf, maybe his law library. He had a pinched nose and a cleft chin. More than likely a publicity headshot from his practice.

  On the Indiana Department of Correction website, she typed “Stanley DeAngelo” in the offender name search field. The results came up a moment later: No information found. There was an option to search by the offender’s number, which was useless because she didn’t know it. This man could have answers about her son’s identity. She had to find another way to track him down.

  Twenty-One

  Midnight

  A late holiday afternoon with no homework or chores stretched before the boys, long and tempting. Sebastian went bowling with his family and Pancho went Christmas shopping with his aunts, leaving Midnight and Corey to scratch boredom’s itch.

  Midnight tried not to think about what Daddy had said about sending him away. His father hadn’t said to never play with Corey again. Just not so much. Not to get in trouble. Today didn’t count as so much or trouble.

  Outside Leo’s auto shop, they tried to hold their balance sitting on their lumpy backpacks. After pushing each other off a few times, it got old fast.

  “We can play video games at my house,” Corey said.

  Midnight scooped a handful of snow and stood to smash it into a stop sign. If he and Corey just ran into each other out playing, they couldn’t help it. But if he actually went over to his house right now, that would mean he planned it and Daddy would say he’d broken the rules.

  “Nah, I have a better idea,” Midnight said.

  He spotted a green dumpster nearby, flipped it on its side, and opened the lid. Holding his breath, he dove in headfirst.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Corey said.

  Going deeper into the trash heap, Midnight waded through half-eaten subs, ripped tire rubber, an empty pork ’n’ beans can, carburetor cleaner, pizza scraps, and a bolt cutter.

  A bolt cutter. Yes. That would work. Its jaws were worn down, likely from years of use and repeated sharpening. With his good hand, he shoved it in his backpack.

  “What’s that for?”

  “You’ll see. Let’s go.”

  Midnight’s fingers and toes tingled as he ran through downtown to the outskirts of Ganton. When he licked his lips, he tasted his own snot and then spat in the snow. His breathing pounded inside his head. Corey kept pace with him, his body small, athletic, and lean enough to run for miles without panting. The next thing he knew, Corey had passed him, but slowed down since he didn’t know where they were headed.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Where?”

  A few dozen feet later, they came upon an old fence that wrapped around a large piece of land. They heard a low rustling.

  “What’s that?” Corey said.

  “It’s just the wind.”

  “Where are we?”

  Snow covered a heap of scrap metal about twenty feet high. Something hot and primal raced through Midnight’s body. A high he couldn’t explain, but he felt it every time he did something risky.

  “It’s the junkyard. Daddy brought me a bunch of times last summer. You can find lots of cool stuff.”

  “But it’s winter. Nobody’s even here.”

  Midnight smiled and pulled the bolt cutters from his bag. “I know.”

  A padlock hung on the fence’s gate to keep intruders out. Midnight gripped the brass body of the lock. “Help me out,” he called to Corey.

  “You’re breaking in. We’re gonna get in trouble,” Corey said, his eyes widening.

  “I come here all the time with my dad. No big deal. Just help me hold this. They’re like big scissors.” Together, they wrapped the bolt cutters around the lock and squeezed until they heard the crunching sound and it split in two.

  Midnight pushed the gate open and walked onto the lot. “Are you coming or what?”

  “You might not get in trouble. But I will. Remember what happened at the gas station?” Corey kept looking around like he was expecting somebody to leap out from behind an old car.

  “What’s this got to do with that stupid Dale thinking somebody wanted to steal his stale Funyuns?”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “I don’t get why you’re such a scaredy-cat sometimes.”

  Corey rolled his eyes. “It stinks out here.” He covered his nose with his arm.

  “
Guess I’m used to it.” The smell of garbage and toxic fumes hit them whenever a strong wind blew, but everything stunk after that dumpster dive.

  For somebody not too excited about coming, Corey was already a few feet away wiping snow off a car, his navy-blue mittens doing double time as snow continued to fall.

  “What you got?” Midnight said.

  “A muscle car. One of those old Mustangs. Wonder if the engine’s still in there.” Corey grinned like he did when he caught a seventy-five-mile-per-hour fastball.

  Midnight checked under the hood. “Nah, it’s been stripped already.”

  “Let’s see if we can find some more cool cars,” Corey said, running ahead. “Come over here and look at this one.”

  Midnight slowed his pace, a prickly feeling starting in his feet like little needles stabbing them. From a distance he saw Corey brushing snow off a red car with a white stripe down the middle. “Yeah, that’s a Firebird. Definitely a nice muscle car.” He said it the way Daddy would’ve.

  “So why are you way over there?”

  “Wait. I can’t feel my toes.” The tingling sensation Midnight experienced moments ago had turned to numbness. These boots had lasted him two winters, but now they had holes in the soles.

  “Let’s sit in this one for a few minutes to get warm.” Midnight pointed to a Mustang with black leather covering the inside. Nothing warm about it, but it beat being outside in the bitter cold.

  Hopping in next to him, Corey unzipped his jacket. He must have been hot while Midnight still couldn’t feel his toes. Then, he put his feet up on the dashboard, his knees up against his chin, and Midnight noticed his eyes were closed. Corey wore brand-new, waterproof Timberlands. Watching Corey like that made him think about what Daddy had said once about the Black temp who’d been hired to replace him when the company had temporary layoffs a few years ago.

  “I think Black people have it better than white people,” Midnight said, opening the glove box and rummaging around until he found a straw. The words didn’t sound quite right when he heard them floating in the chilled air of the Mustang.