The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

“Driscoll’s changed a lot. It’s not like when we were there. They started bringing in kids like Corey from Hill Top and some whites, too, put a little money into it, and now it’s actually a pretty decent school.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Ruth said.

  Pretty decent wasn’t good enough for her son, but she didn’t say anything, not wanting to offend Natasha any more than she had already. Ruth kept her eyes on Camila when she finally spoke. “What do you wish for Camila? When you think of her living anywhere in the whole world, what do you imagine? Can you picture that place? Can you see it?”

  Natasha closed her eyes and ran her fingers through Camila’s hair.

  “Remember that group called The Future Is Girl? We were like eight or nine years old and they took us to that big house in Indy with the leather sofas and chandeliers. Even the faucet handles in the bathroom were gold. When you looked out the windows, the grass was the greenest I’d ever seen, all of it the same height, and there was no end to it.”

  “Yeah, it was a country club.” Ruth had almost forgotten that field trip for at-risk girls, where skinny white women in capris served them asparagus roll-ups and fried oysters and then watched them like lab rats to see if their palates could appreciate fine food.

  Natasha’s eyes widened. “That was a country club? All these years, I thought one of those ladies owned that house.” She laughed. “Anyway, I never forgot it and I always imagined I lived there. Once I had Camila, I pictured her living there, too.”

  “I hope Camila redecorates. That striped wallpaper made my eyes hurt, and those golden dog statues were ridiculous.”

  They groaned at the memory and sat quietly, letting the past wash over them. Suddenly, Natasha nudged her with her knee. “Sit up. I just remembered the rest of the words.”

  “What words?” Ruth said.

  “To the rhyme, girl.”

  Once again, they played the hand-clapping game, laughing so hard it seemed obscene to indulge themselves this fully.

  Brother’s in jail raisin’ hell,

  Sister’s on the corner sellin’ fruit cocktail . . .

  They parked on the street outside the recreation center, where many of the kids went to socialize while school was out for the holidays and their parents were at work. Many in town now credited Pastor Bumpus for working to get this facility off the ground in spite of his questionable methods.

  Just an hour ago, it seemed reasonable to take time to process everything she’d discovered. But the more she talked with Natasha, the more excited she became. After eleven years, what sense did it make to wait any longer?

  They decided sitting outside Corey’s house felt indecent for some reason. Stalking him at the rec center somehow felt more appropriate. Since Midnight would likely recognize Ruth’s Infiniti, they’d taken Natasha’s car.

  Camila entertained herself in the back seat, loudly singing the Sesame Street theme song. Whenever she took a break to sip her apple juice, Ruth could clearly hear strains of laughter and squeals from the kids on the other side of the fence. The children chased each other, tumbling in the snow, and they became a blur, one kid indistinguishable from the next. Without ever having seen a photo of Corey, she wondered if she’d recognize him, if there would be a maternal buzzer that would sound in her body to alert her.

  “There’s Sebastian. He’s the one in the black jacket with the red stripes on the arms. Look at him go,” Natasha said. “You should see him running bases.”

  But Ruth couldn’t focus her eyes on Sebastian. She had a familiar tightness in her chest like she was losing air, the same feeling she had when the doctor told the family Papa would eventually die from ALS. It was that dread, the fear of what was certain to come next, that wouldn’t turn you loose. After blinking a few times, she saw that right on Sebastian’s heels was a slender white boy, and Ruth recognized the way he moved with sudden stops and starts. “Midnight?”

  “That’s Patrick . . . my bad . . . Midnight, always hanging around the Black and brown kids. He thinks he’s Black, Lord help him. Cracks me up. Always wearing hand-me-downs. White people kill me trying to be Black when it works for them. Just pitiful.”

  “Don’t say that. He’s been through a lot. I think he’s just trying to get some love wherever he can find it,” Ruth murmured, keeping her eyes on Midnight darting around other kids, his feet kicking up sprays of snow. She surprised herself with her quiet yet solid defense of a boy she hadn’t known very long. When he turned to face the street, Ruth slouched in her seat, hoping he hadn’t spotted her.

  Natasha gripped her arm tight and said, “There he is. That’s Corey. The one in the yellow hat.”

  Ruth sat up straighter in her seat. She was staring at a stranger. She was staring at her son. How could both be true at the same time?

  A marble grew in her throat, threatening to cut off her airway. Her forehead pressed against the car window, which had grown foggy from her breath, and she wiped it fast. Still, that window separated them. She yanked off her gloves and laid her hands flat on the glass. If she couldn’t have skin-to-skin contact with her baby as she had the day he was born, this would have to be enough.

  Her eyes followed the boys, who were flipping and tumbling in the snow. Corey climbed a high mound and rolled down the slope with elegance and ease. He exuded gracefulness and athleticism. He was everything she wasn’t. The other boys followed his lead and seemed to pull from his energy. He stood at the center of things, not apart from the others as she had in middle school.

  She hadn’t expected Corey to be so slight. But Natasha acknowledged he was small for his age. If he’d been born in a hospital, she’d know his birth weight. How big should an eleven-year-old boy be? Ruth had no idea what was normal for his age.

  She heard Natasha’s voice next to her but kept her eyes riveted on the playground. “That’s your boy. You loved him from the beginning. He’s here in this world because of you.”

  This boy could be hers. It was very likely that he indeed was. Ruth stayed quiet watching the boys run, jump, and tumble, their bodies descending in the snow and rising again.

  Averting her eyes, Ruth sighed. “I still don’t know that I feel like a mother.”

  “Look, there’s no one way a mother is supposed to feel.” Then Natasha lowered her voice and glanced back at Camila, who was now jamming to music through her headphones. “Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t had a kid. What could I have done in these three years if I’d been free to come and go as I pleased, no kid to tie me down? This little girl drives me crazy sometimes, but I love her to pieces. Love can be complicated and messy. Believe that. Stop beating yourself up.”

  The kids on the playground kept screaming, and before long Camila was begging Natasha for a Rice Krispies Treat. Ruth tried to cancel their noise and isolate the sound of Corey, only hear his voice rising above the others. Of course, that was impossible.

  Ruth scanned the playground until she spotted Corey again, and she watched him until a whistle blew to end the outdoor activities and the children filed back inside the rec center.

  When she saw him disappear into the building, she couldn’t help but think of him vanishing with Mama on the other side of her bedroom door all those years ago. She had an overwhelming urge to run into the rec center screaming his name—some action, something—all the things she now wished she’d done the day he was born.

  Twenty-Six

  Ruth

  After leaving the rec center, Ruth rewound and replayed the image of Corey on the playground over and over. A private memory she could enjoy alone in her own mind, even as she sat across from Eli in the living room. It was Christmas Eve, and they were lounging on the couch, binge-watching back-to-back reruns of some nineties sitcom. A couple of cans of Bud sat on the TV tray next to the couch. Eli sat expressionless, not reacting to any of the punch lines or laugh tracks. She and her brother had said very little to each other since the night at the bar.

  His words had cut into her. She thought of the sacrifice
s he and Mama had made so she could have a chance at doing something with her life. The way they’d protected her reputation. How had she never thanked them for that? She’d gone along with the lies all those years because she worried about what other people would think of her. How that one slipup could forever tarnish the image she’d clung to like a lifeline.

  “When I got pregnant, what did you think? I mean, what did you really think of me?” After Papa died, she knew that Eli considered it his duty to stand in for their grandfather and preserve her reputation. “Did you think I was a ho?”

  Some sort of spell broke, because Eli almost rolled off the couch laughing at the hopefulness in her voice. “Nope, one baby don’t put you at ho status. You still a corny-ass nerd, though.”

  When he turned his beer can up to his mouth, Ruth saw Eli at ten years old guzzling whole milk from mason jars, at thirteen draining orange juice straight from the jug, and then at eighteen, when they were barely speaking to each other, throwing back Gatorade before basketball games. He caught her staring and she gave him a goofy smile, one of those smiles that she hoped meant no matter how old they got or how much they hurt each other, they’d always be brother and sister.

  She wanted to tell Eli how the guilt of leaving behind her son had eaten away at her. That the truth might have ruined her marriage. But she also wanted to tell him how excited she was that she’d figured out who her son was, or at least she was pretty sure she had. And most of all, she wanted to thank Eli for protecting Corey, for sacrificing his freedom for her son. But the words stuck in her throat, and before she could untangle them, she heard the sound of Mama’s slippers.

  “Cut these lights off. You’re not paying the light bill here.” Mama flipped the wall switch and unplugged the small Christmas tree by the window, leaving the house in darkness except for the flicker of the TV. Ruth shared a quick eye roll with her brother while Mama’s back was turned.

  “And get those filthy boots off my couch,” Mama said to Eli, her voice buzzing in the room like a housefly.

  “Stop trippin’, Mama. Relax,” he said.

  The TV screen went black and Ruth could see in the dim room that Mama was holding the remote. Eli opened his mouth to protest but closed it. Growing up, they both knew that look on Mama’s face meant she was serious.

  “Scoot over,” she told him, turning on one lamp after realizing the room had gone dark.

  Eli unlaced his Timberlands, tossed them on the floor, and threw his legs over the back of the couch so she could sit down. The popping from the furnace provided the only sound in the room. Someone from church had come by to fix it, and now the house radiated heat. Perched on the edge of the sofa, Mama pulled her nightgown above her knees, exposing stretch marks and dimpling on her thighs. Her face looked tired, lines of age and stress creasing it, and Ruth knew she and her brother had put more than a few of them there. Maybe time away with Dino would do her some good after all.

  Mama glanced at Ruth. “You’ve been mighty busy since you’ve been home, staying out till all times of the night. Hope you’re not still meddling about that boy.”

  Ruth considered stalling or lying outright. She still wanted to find out if or how that lawyer factored into everything, and she needed more time. But she couldn’t hold back any longer. “It’s not meddling when it’s my son. I’ve found him. I know that Corey Cunningham is mine.” A heavy weight lifted from her when she said that. She took a deep breath and waited, watching their faces closely.

  Mama and Eli stared back at her, motionless. Mama spoke first, in a quiet voice. Too quiet. “What was that you just said?”

  “I said—”

  “I heard what you said. I want to know what in God’s name got into you.” Mama stood and hovered over Ruth, who got to her feet, too. Then her grandmother bent over and her hand came down like a brick and smacked the coffee table. Mama’s body shook. “I told you to leave it alone. You never listen. As much as your grandfather and I have done for you. All we sacrificed and you just throw it away like trash. Is that what you think of us? Of yourself?”

  The wall clock chimed, the pendulum swinging back and forth. The knot in Ruth’s belly tightened.

  Mama turned to face Eli, who was still stretched out on the sofa. With accusation in her voice, she said, “Was it you? Did you tell her about Corey?”

  Ruth covered her mouth with both hands, hearing Mama finally admit the truth. Eli stared at the ceiling, shaking his head. “I didn’t say a word, but she was gon’ keep pushing until she found out that boy’s name.”

  “I don’t care how much pushing she did. We had an agreement,” Mama said. “And besides, you know how Ganton is. Word will get around that we’re making trouble for the Cunninghams, and you know Harold Cunningham is a big deal downtown at the bank. And you’ve been in jail twice now. What good is that going to do you when you’re trying to get somebody around here to hire you? Huh?”

  Ruth turned to her brother. “I know what you did to protect Corey. You went to jail for it. Thank you.” Eli acknowledged her gratitude with his eyes but said nothing.

  She had known this moment would come, an inevitable reckoning when she would need to stand up to her grandmother. Even if it meant lighting a match to her rage, or worse, becoming the source of her greatest disappointment.

  “I’ve lied to everyone all these years, even my own husband. What’s worse is I’ve lied to myself. No more. I’m not a child. I let you manipulate everything because you said you were doing it for my own good. Now I get to decide. Me and no one else.”

  Her words landed hard, crashing onto the living room floor.

  “That boy has a mama and a daddy. He has no idea he’s adopted. Have you thought about that? If you care anything about him, you won’t turn his life upside down.” Mama fixed her granddaughter with a stare, long and steady.

  Something Ruth couldn’t name sat heavy on her chest. The truth was she hadn’t thought that far ahead, beyond knowing her son’s identity and making sure he was all right. Now that she had his name and had seen him, what would she do about it?

  “All I know is I’m tired of the secrets in this house. I’m tired of keeping quiet about everything. There’s a lot of messed-up stuff in our family and we just pretend it’s not there,” Ruth said.

  “Child, if you don’t quit talking in circles . . . You got something to say, spit it out.” Mama sat on the couch again, folding her arms over her chest.

  Ruth glanced at her brother and then said, “I want to talk about Butch Boyd.” Eli seemed fidgety all of a sudden, like he was ready to spring from the couch and walk out of the room.

  “Butch said something about Papa cutting corners at the plant. He made it sound like he’d broken the law. You two told me not to believe it, but you never looked me in the eye and said there was no way Papa could do something like that.”

  A part of Ruth felt sorry for Mama, watching her recoil as if she’d been slapped in the face.

  “People always talk shit on the line, especially Boyd,” Eli said. “Papa never did nothing wrong.”

  Mama held up one hand to quiet Eli, and it seemed like she was trying to swallow around something hard in her throat. Looking straight ahead, she took a couple of long breaths and then spoke as if she were narrating a movie in her mind. “The first time they asked Hezekiah, he said no. Came home and told me the line supervisor wanted him to pass a lot of parts through real fast. They needed him to keep things running.”

  Ruth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Mama, I’m sure they had quality control engineers come by and check to make sure everything met standards. If cars went out with bad parts in them, that’s dangerous.”

  “It’s those engineers who sign off on stuff when they know it ain’t right,” Eli jumped in. “That was way above Papa’s pay grade. So, it wasn’t his fault.”

  Mama worried the seam of the sofa’s slipcover. The woman always so sure-footed, certain of everything, bold in every proclamation she made, searched f
or words.

  “Your grandfather was no saint,” Mama began, finally looking at Ruth and Eli. “He did cut corners like they say.”

  Leaning forward on the couch with her elbows on her knees, Mama put her face in her hands. “We almost lost this house when they went up on the rent. When he first got sick, he could still work, but he was on a lot of prescription drugs. You remember. We used every penny he made for medicine. Those supervisors out there knew about it and they took advantage.”

  “Aw, man,” Eli said, jumping to his feet. “I always heard stuff. You know how people talk. But I didn’t know they did Papa like that. I would’ve handled it for him.” He pounded his closed fist into his other hand.

  “Settle down now,” Mama said. “Everything your grandfather did was for the two of you. We saved up any extra money we had after all the bills and kept it in a special fund.” She looked at Ruth. “Your scholarship didn’t cover books or your dorm room fees.”

  Another sacrifice to give her a better life. At Yale, she worked out at the campus gym that had a pool and a sauna. A chef prepared themed meals in the dorm. When she turned it over in her mind, it felt like too much, a burden.

  Ruth looked back at her grandmother, stunned. Mama said, “Remember when your grandfather pulled you out of Driscoll and promised you’d never have to go back? That fall, you had a spot at Mother Mary, that Catholic school.”

  Ruth shook her head. “No, no, no.”

  “Yes. He did what he had to do to give you the best education possible. That wasn’t free. None of it.”

  If only she’d known at the time, she would have told Papa it wasn’t worth it. The price was too high.

  “That’s what parents do,” Mama continued. “They don’t think about themselves. They put the children first.”

  Without coming out and saying it directly, Mama was calling her selfish, not selfless like her grandfather. All because she wanted to know her own son. But Ruth refused to accept that label, knowing now that a lifetime of lies never added up to anything good. A lifetime of doing the wrong things for the right reasons. A lifetime of lies that started small, like a nick in the windshield, then eventually shattered the glass.