A moving van idled at the end of the street, and when he leaned against the shop window, he saw J. B. Wagner from school stumble over a pothole. He carried a tube TV with the cable cords dragging behind him. After J.B.’s little sister, Polly, died in that fire, his folks had cleared ash from the roof and gutters and mopped up the soot, but every time Midnight walked by their house, the air hit his nose and it always smelled of death.
Granny had said, Too many bad memories in that house, and you can’t wash them away.
J.B.’s neck stayed scaly and red from burns that hadn’t healed. The kid should’ve worn a turtleneck to hide them, the way Midnight wore long sleeves to cover his scars. Midnight pretended he didn’t see him when he walked in the store. “We’re moving today,” J.B. said.
Midnight licked the peanut butter from a Reese’s off his thumb. They had both lost their sisters, but that didn’t make them friends. “Yeah” was all Midnight managed to say.
“My dad got a job at a dairy in Crawfordsville.”
When Midnight didn’t respond, J.B. said, “So everybody from school says Corey tried to shoot some lady and the cops with your gun.”
A wad of spit rose from Midnight’s throat and filled his mouth. He wanted to shoot the projectile at J.B., but he swallowed it. “Shut up and leave me alone. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. I thought you were busy moving.”
“We are. It’s just that I heard stuff. Sebastian’s mom said you and Corey might have to go to jail.”
Nobody was going to jail, but in a way, Midnight wished he could pay for what he’d done with something other than bad dreams that chased him from night to day.
But none of that was any of J.B.’s business.
A Coors beer can rolled onto the street and a car zoomed by, crushing it flat. Midnight stared hard out the window at the mangled aluminum, keeping his eyeballs real still until he couldn’t see J.B. anymore, even with his side vision, then he felt J.B. move away after he got tired of being ignored.
Midnight wandered to the back of the shop and found Granny closing up the register. She put a hand on his shoulder and asked, “You doing okay?” The last couple of days, he’d caught Granny staring, watching him more closely than before. And she touched him lightly, as if he might break.
He mumbled an “okay” and watched her finish up around the shop. When she was done, he followed her out to the car and they sat in silence on the drive to her house.
Midnight set the table as Granny heated up the roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and fancy peas. She told him to use their good dishes, a sign she was trying too hard, and that usually made him nervous. She even asked him to put out the cloth napkins, instead of the paper towels Miss Ruth had said were plenty absorbent.
When he had come home from the river Monday, Granny hugged him so hard he thought his bones would break. Then, in the next breath, she screamed at him. What were you thinking? You could’ve got yourself and Corey killed out there. Don’t you ever, ever, ever do that again.
Now, he knew what she’d tell him over dinner. When something you had expected for a long time happened, it fell like a peanut falling in the snow, making no sound at all.
She would ship him off to live with his cousins in Baton Rouge. He’d go to a new school. Make new friends. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to start over. Maybe even be given a new nickname by those who knew nothing of Midnight and his old life.
Granny took long, slow drinks of tea. Glancing up at the photo of him and Mom on the mantel, she said, “I miss Hannah every day. She was my firstborn. I can never get her back, but I have you now. You know, I’ve been thinking about some things.”
“Like what?” he said, waiting for it, even choosing to welcome it with parted lips.
She glanced up at him. Her shoulders rounded as if somebody had strapped a fifty-pound sack to her back. “I’m selling nearly everything in the shop. I’m gonna have to close it.” He heard the sadness in her voice.
“So, I’m moving to Louisiana.” He said it for her, so she wouldn’t have to.
With his fork, he squashed the lumps in the mashed potatoes.
“Let me add a little sour cream and butter to them,” she said, whipping the potatoes with the serving spoon. “That should make them nice and creamy.”
She continued. “I got a new job at Save A Lot, where your auntie Glo works. Cashier for now, but they know I’ve run my own shop for years, so they’re talking about making me a store manager. Less stress. Money’s not bad. So, nobody’s moving anywhere. I want you to stay right here with me.”
Granny shuffled to Midnight’s side of the table and wedged her hips onto his chair. He smelled the Jergens face cream she used to smooth out her wrinkles. Squeezing him hard, she said, “I promise you this. We’re sticking together as a family. We’ll do just fine right here in Ganton. All of us.”
He’d longed to hear those words. But now, he stared at his plate unblinking, watching potatoes ooze between the prongs of his fork.
“What about Daddy?” he asked.
Granny sighed. “He’s still looking for work. I think he’s checking into that dairy in Crawfordsville to see if they’re hiring. But he’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”
Nothing felt solid and sure anymore. Midnight leaned his head back on the kitchen chair. Miss Ruth’s face haunted him, the deep disappointment he’d put there frozen in his memory. She had been the one to tell him she felt closer to her grandfather at the Wabash River. That place sounded magical in her voice, and maybe that’s why he’d gone there in the early hours of Monday morning. To find some magic.
Midnight wanted to start over, but how could he do it here in Ganton? How could he face Corey at school and all the other kids who knew what he’d done? For the first time, he wished he were J. B. Wagner in his family’s Chevy following the moving van, leaving all he’d loved and lost in a trail of exhaust.
Thirty-Seven
Ruth
Ruth found herself on Verna Cunningham’s doorstep New Year’s Eve morning, facing the woman in her wrinkled nightgown. Verna’s eyes were tired, empty, as if she were long past crying. Ruth didn’t want to cause any more upset than she already had, but she needed to talk to the woman raising her son. The memory of the hurt and shock in Corey’s eyes still haunted her, and she braced herself for facing him again.
Verna opened her front door wider and stepped back into the house as if she were expecting Ruth—an unspoken invitation, or just resignation. The severe, single braid Verna had worn when Ruth saw her at the river now hung loose and undone on her shoulder. She walked to the kitchen and Ruth followed her. An Obama yard sign leaned against the kitchen wall. Verna removed a reminder note stuck with a magnet to the refrigerator door.
“There’s a school trip in a couple weeks to the Children’s Museum in Indy. The permission slip is due Monday,” Verna said, sitting at the counter typing hurriedly on her laptop.
“I hear they have some nice exhibits there. I’m sure Corey will love it.” Ruth didn’t know exactly what to say or even where to stand in this woman’s home. She kept expecting her son to come around the corner any moment.
Apparently sensing her unease, Verna said, “Harold and Corey went to pick up groceries for dinner tonight. They won’t be back for a little while.”
Nodding, Ruth swept the kitchen with her eyes, taking in the matching yellow curtains and canisters, imagining her son growing up here in this cheery, storybook home Verna and Harold had made. She wondered which of the four kitchen chairs was Corey’s, but she didn’t ask.
Mothering bloomed in houses like this, where the scent of gingerbread wafted through the air, and Ruth suspected it came from something freshly baked and not an air freshener. She tried not to be too conspicuous, her eyes consuming this strange house that Corey could probably navigate blindfolded.
Ruth thought about Xavier and pictured the two of them with a family of their own, baking cookies, hustling little ones out of the house for school in
the morning. Xavier in cahoots with the kids, cracking corny jokes and conspiring with them to do something indulgent while she remained the practical one.
Finally, Ruth said, “How’s he doing?”
Leaning back in her chair, Verna said, “Last night he started screaming. When I went in his room, I could tell he was having a nightmare.”
“Everything that happened at the river was terrifying.” Ruth paused before saying, “I didn’t mean for him to find out about me this way. I didn’t even know who or where he was until a little over a week ago.”
Verna held up a hand to stop her. “I thought about this day so many times. I pictured it. What you would say. What I’d say. But I knew this day would come. That you’d show up at my door. But I always thought it would be me or Harold who told Corey he was adopted.”
Unsure of how to respond, Ruth looked down at her hands and said, “I know it was hard for him to hear the truth that way. I’m just glad I showed up at the river when I did.”
Something fiery flared in Verna’s eyes. “Don’t expect my gratitude.”
“No. No, I’m not expecting anything.”
“You came to town and befriended Midnight, playing mother to him. He’s a fragile boy and you got him all worked up. Those cops could’ve shot and killed my son. Corey told us about Midnight daring him to fire that gun and then calling the police.”
“I had no idea Midnight knew the truth, and I didn’t realize how angry and resentful he’d become.” Ruth chose a chair next to Verna’s, slowly lowering herself into the seat. The two women sat quietly, avoiding each other’s eyes.
This time when Verna spoke, her voice registered low and soft, the kind you had to lean in to hear. “When Pastor Bumpus told us about the baby, I’d just had my fourth miscarriage. Some of it was from stress probably. You never know for sure, though, why your body betrays you.” She twisted the tie from a bread bag around her index finger.
Had the Cunninghams been desperate enough to participate in a fraudulent adoption just to become parents?
Verna’s eyes hardened and she looked directly at Ruth. “That boy is ours in every way that matters. We are the only family he knows.” Her words sounded like a preemptive strike in case Ruth wanted to reclaim her son.
In a reflective tone, she said, “I’ll never forget when Pastor placed Corey in my arms for the first time. It was hot that day when he brought him here to our house. I still swaddled him in a blanket, and Corey kept his eyes on me, followed me everywhere. That night, I told Harold he had the air-conditioning set too high. I didn’t want Corey to catch pneumonia.”
“What about your husband? How did he feel about raising a child that wasn’t his own? Biologically, I mean.” Xavier’s words replayed in Ruth’s head, his assurances that he could have handled the truth and loved Corey as his own.
The corners of Verna’s mouth turned up slightly. “I swear, the minute Harold laid eyes on Corey, he said, ‘That boy’s got my nose and my chin.’” Verna laughed at the memory. “The older Corey gets, the more people swear they look alike, and Harold just smiles and doesn’t tell them any different.”
Ruth looked at this woman, trying to read her face, wondering how much she knew about Corey’s adoption. “Do you worry, though, that everything could be upended?” She paused before saying, “I know about Stanley DeAngelo and what he did.”
Tess’s friend said criminal laws in Indiana had changed and crimes were reclassified after 1997. Still, he suspected DeAngelo would be guilty of forgery or counterfeiting for having Mama sign adoption forms falsely claiming to be the birth mother. He also felt certain that DeAngelo had committed a federal crime by defrauding a state institution. That meant Mama and the Cunninghams could be culpable for their involvement in the crime.
Verna pinned Ruth with a steely stare. “I know you probably think Corey’s adoption is phony. But we have papers. They’re still legal papers. We signed them.” Her eyes pleaded with Ruth to believe her.
“So you’re saying that in the eyes of the state, this was a legitimate adoption?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Mr. DeAngelo met us at Friendship, in Pastor’s office. Harold and I knew there was something fishy about a woman Ernestine’s age having a baby. When we questioned Pastor, he admitted that you were the actual mother, but you were young, too young to raise the baby yourself, and wanted your son to have a good life. And we wanted to be parents so badly.” Verna bit her lip.
Ruth felt a surge of indignation rise within her. “But I didn’t say I wanted anything. I had no say. I had no idea where my grandmother had taken my baby.”
Surprise flashed across Verna’s face, and she quickly tried to hide it. “I’m sorry for anyone who got hurt in all this. When Mr. DeAngelo went to prison for conning those other people, Harold and I got scared. But in all these years, nobody’s come around asking questions or stirring up any trouble for our family. Until you.”
The ticking of a grandfather clock in the living room echoed in the background. Ruth pressed her fingers to her lips. “I don’t want to cause any problems for you or Corey. One thing I’m sure of now is that you love my son and he loves you. I don’t want to mess that up. I won’t interfere.”
Worry and anxiety seemed to drain from Verna’s body. She nodded. Then she got up and moved to the staircase, motioning for Ruth to follow. Ruth had never imagined what Corey’s bedroom looked like, but now they stood in the doorway. Baseball trophies crowded every flat surface, dirty gym shorts hung from the lampshade, and video game cords and comic books poked out from beneath the bedspread. She derived some pleasure from seeing a glimpse of untidiness in the Cunningham home.
“I tell him to put all this stuff away before somebody trips over it,” Verna said quickly, placing a baseball glove on a shelf in the closet.
Every detail of this room reminded Ruth of all the small moments of mothering she’d missed with her son. His first tooth coming in. Stomachaches and scraped knees. The Little League games. Cupcakes for school on his birthday. Time—and one lie on top of another—had robbed Ruth of all that.
Verna pulled a laundry basket from under Corey’s bed and began tossing shirts and socks and pants into it.
Ruth’s voice caught in her throat. “This isn’t easy for me, but I’m grateful to you for loving him.”
Verna nodded. “We’d do anything for him. Corey can be too trusting and naïve for his own good sometimes. His dad and I had the talk with him last month.”
“Oh. Corey’s been thinking about girls already?” Ruth whispered, as if someone could hear them. “And sex?”
Verna laughed. “All boys think about that at some point. But no, I mean the talk about how to carry himself as a Black boy in these streets when his dad and I aren’t around.”
Sunlight streamed through the curtains of the small window. A Black boy’s life wasn’t worth two dead flies, Mama always said.
Verna continued: “My biggest worry has been that he’ll grow into one of those Black men that white people fear and then kill because of that fear.” What she left unspoken was that his small, young body triggered that same fear.
“I’m sure you told him not to argue with the police.” Ruth’s thoughts returned to the morning at the river and to the bucket boy in Chicago. She thought of Eli getting stopped for carrying weed. Even Xavier wore suits sometimes on casual Fridays to avoid getting hassled. A wave of nausea passed over her as she began to comprehend the constant worry the Cunninghams had trying to keep Corey safe.
Verna looked up toward the ceiling and exhaled. “Always be polite. Don’t talk back. Keep your hands—”
Ruth finished her script. “Out of your pockets. Make sure they’re visible. Stay alive.”
“We tried to prepare him, but see? It still didn’t matter. His best friend handed him a gun and set him up.”
Opening the closet, Verna stood on tiptoe to reach the top shelf. She brought out a framed photo of Corey and Midnight hoisting a science fair troph
y high above their heads. Both boys smiled brightly.
Ruth’s heart plummeted all over again wondering how Midnight had learned the truth.
Lines of worry and life experience furrowed Verna’s brow. “First it was gangbangers coming after Corey and his friends. Then Midnight. If Midnight were Black? He’d be in juvie right now. And you know if Midnight had been the one holding that toy, the police never would’ve pulled out their guns to begin with. But my boy. My sweet boy scared them. How could they point their guns at him?” Her voice stretched like a frayed rope ready to break.
Ruth nodded and her own voice quaked as she relived her fear. She recalled staring into the barrels of both guns, bracing for bullets. “I’ve also been thinking about these local gang members. How big of a threat are they?”
“Harold and I reported them to the police. Apparently, Ganton doesn’t have any organized, official gangs. Not yet, anyway. Those guys are Bo Thompkins and Larry Baisden. Their families go way back, I guess. They’ve done some small, petty crimes and police say they have their eye on them. But apparently, befriending neighborhood kids isn’t illegal. It’s Midnight I can’t get over. He’s a nice enough kid, been to our home many times, but he has no idea. He doesn’t know what it means to be a Black boy in this country.”
“You have so much weighing on you as a parent. I can’t imagine.”
“My son is everything to me. Everything . . .”
Tears must have flooded Verna’s throat. She couldn’t go on. Just thinking of all that could crush her son before he got a good start in the world overwhelmed Ruth. She thought of both boys and how the world saw each of them in black and white, how they’d be forever defined by that distinction.
The Kindest Lie Page 30