The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  Ruth pulled a blue turtleneck sweater of Corey’s from the laundry basket and held it to her face, covering her mouth and nose with the fabric, and breathed in the scent of the boy she and this other woman shared.

  “I’ll take that.” Verna slid the sweater out of Ruth’s hands and returned it to the basket.

  Whether it signaled protection or possession, Ruth didn’t protest.

  Then Verna stooped to pick up dirty white socks. Ruth watched this woman, her child’s mother, do something so basic, something she’d likely done thousands of times before without thinking anything of it. The seed Ruth had planted more than a decade ago was now the budding flower Verna would go on tending to keep it blossoming.

  Thirty-Eight

  Ruth

  That afternoon, Ruth’s car idled outside the little green house on Kirkland. Through the window, she could see that a tabletop tree with a tilted Santa were the only remnants of holiday cheer at Lena’s house. Sometimes it took everything in a person to stand upright in a bent world. Tired of waiting and prolonging what was to come, Ruth got out of her car and walked to Lena’s front door. She had no idea how long she stood out there, but the door opened and Lena invited her to come in.

  “Happy New Year. Well, almost. He’s in there.” Lena walked down the dark hallway to her bedroom, leaving Ruth in the front of the house.

  Ruth’s eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and she saw Midnight sitting on the couch, his thumbs moving vigorously across the screen of his phone. The last time she’d been in this house, she’d been terrified, hoping and praying he’d make it back here safely. It had only been a few days, but it seemed much longer.

  “Hi,” she said. When he didn’t answer or look up, she walked over to the tree by the window, found the extension cord, and plugged it into the wall. The string of colorful lights lit up that corner of the room.

  Midnight startled, his lips parted. Still in his baggy pajamas, he appeared smaller than he had just days ago. A mere boy, with the palest skin under the shadowed canopy of the overcast winter afternoon.

  “What you doing?” she said, perching next to him on the sofa.

  He shrugged. “Playing a game.”

  “Something you got for Christmas?”

  “Assassin’s Creed.”

  A million thoughts rattled in her head, but none of them formed coherently enough for articulation. She began regretting that she’d even come.

  Midnight might lose a friendship and would likely suffer from hurt and disillusionment for a long time. But she knew he’d be okay. Just as markets corrected themselves over the years through the inevitable downturns and upswings of the economy, white boys who fell on hard times could often count on being made whole again. Not so much for the Black ones. She wanted the possibilities of the world to open up to him and Corey equally, but she knew that some wishes—even ones made at the start of a new year—would likely go unfulfilled.

  She also sensed that the closeness they’d shared in the short time they’d known each other had somehow receded after what happened at the river, and she was just now assessing the storm damage: His sallow skin, and the unruly snatch of hair over his brow that barely obscured his shadowy eyes. His back bent as if an invisible weight pulled downward on him.

  Ruth covered his phone with her hand, and he flinched.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  Slowly, he lifted his eyes.

  “What you did the other morning was extremely dangerous. You could’ve gotten yourself and Corey killed. It’s not a game.”

  “I know that,” he said, his voice tinged with frustration.

  “You’ve been through a lot for a boy your age. I want you to know I don’t blame you for being upset, for wanting to make all your hurt feelings go away.” She thought about all the mistakes she had made as a teenager and how she would’ve done anything to erase the pain that had built up in her over the years. Pain she couldn’t give a name to at the time, even as it consumed her.

  Midnight twisted his mouth and said nothing, but it didn’t matter as long as he heard what she had to say. She went on. “The other day at the river, you said I don’t care about you. I do care. I was just starting to get to know you and like you.”

  He remained quiet.

  When she picked up her purse, looped it around her arm, and began to get up from the sofa, Midnight spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at her expectantly, as if awaiting her forgiveness.

  She thought of Joanna, who had left her motherless despite her best intentions. And of Mama, who did what she did for what she considered all the right reasons but had still been wrong. She considered Midnight, his innocence corroded already by a world that had dealt him a bad hand. But he’d been reckless and put her son’s life in danger.

  Yet he was just a child, and maybe he deserved her forgiveness. Being Black, she came from a long line of people who were expected to forgive reflexively. But she couldn’t do it. She hadn’t sat long enough with all that had happened to set him free. Not yet at least. So, she gave him what she could. Her understanding.

  “I know,” she answered him. “I know you’re sorry.”

  His shoulders drooped even more, and he reminded her of a ship bobbing in the ocean before sinking. She got up and walked to the front door, but then paused. Turning back to face him, she said, “At least nine days, maybe weeks.”

  When he gave her a puzzled look, she smiled. “I’m just answering your question. That’s how long a cockroach can live with its head cut off.”

  The sliver of light she saw now didn’t come from the little Christmas tree in the window, but from his eyes.

  Thirty-Nine

  Ruth

  On New Year’s Eve, Mama had always admonished her children to stay home and off the streets. To avoid drunk drivers and itchy trigger fingers and wayward firecrackers. She even skipped Watch Night services at Friendship. Usually, Ruth spent this night celebrating with Xavier and their friends at a downtown Chicago hotel.

  There were some battles in life you had to fight alone, but your burden grew lighter—or at least it seemed that way—when you huddled close to somebody in the bunker. Xavier had always been by her side helping her soldier on. Being apart from him these past few weeks felt like having limbs idled and cut off from the heart pumping blood to them. She ached to see him and make things right. She ached to kiss him at the stroke of midnight, but that wasn’t to be.

  But this year, for the first time ever, Ruth sat alone with Mama watching Dick Clark count down until the ball dropped in Times Square and couples kissed openmouthed on national TV. They didn’t say anything to each other, because any words they used would be sharp, jagged enough to cut and draw blood. When they’d had enough of viewing a million strangers usher in the new year, they retired to their respective bedrooms.

  Sitting on her bed in silence, Ruth decided she couldn’t avoid the inevitable any longer and knocked on her grandmother’s bedroom door.

  “It’s open.” Mama was still awake, in her blue terry cloth robe, tying her hair with a black satin scarf.

  A wide-tooth comb lay on the dresser. Ruth picked it up and, with a trembling hand, held it out to her.

  “Get down on the floor.” Mama perched on the edge of the bed with Ruth sitting cross-legged at her feet. The comb sounded like the scrape of a rake as Mama pulled it through Ruth’s tightly coiled hair. This had been their ritual every night when she was a little girl, and she eased into the feel of Mama braiding her hair again.

  “Ouch.” Mama’s thick thighs tightened around the sides of her granddaughter’s head.

  “You’re still tender-headed, I see.” She tugged the comb more gently in Ruth’s kitchen, the kinky hair at the nape of her neck.

  They hadn’t finished their conversation from Sunday about Mama’s role working in cahoots with Pastor Bumpus and DeAngelo to fix things. Nor had they spoken about what had happened at the river. But all Ruth could think about now was how she had found her son afte
r all these years and then almost lost him. Instinctively, Mama knew.

  “You haven’t said a lot since the other morning.” Mama leaned down so she could look Ruth in the eye. “You finally met your boy. You all right?”

  “I’m fine, or at least I will be. It’s Corey I worry about. Those cops could’ve killed him. I keep thinking about Amadou Diallo all those years ago, and every Black boy who has to be tense all the time not knowing what might happen. Mothers and fathers are scared every time their sons walk out the door.”

  The movement of the comb through Ruth’s hair stopped. Mama said, “Brings back those memories of Alfonso getting lynched. Just when you think things have changed, you get more of the same. I worried myself sick about your brother when he was growing up. Still do. That’s why I doted on him so much. Thought I could love on him enough to keep him safe.”

  “I’m just glad Corey has the Cunninghams to lean on.”

  “Did I hear you right?”

  Admitting that suddenly felt like giving in, acknowledging that Mama’s machinations had yielded something good. But she’d meant what she said. “Yeah, I know he’s where he’s supposed to be.”

  “It’s all about doing what’s right by your child. Mothers sacrifice. We put our babies first. Before ourselves. I didn’t want it all to come out like this, but it did, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it now.”

  Mama seemed more than resigned now. Maybe unburdened after holding her secrets inside so long. Ruth hadn’t thought to consider the toll it had taken on her grandmother trying to orchestrate everything behind the curtain.

  “And someday Corey will get over finding everything out the way he did,” Mama added.

  “How did you know you were doing the right thing when I got pregnant?”

  Mama paused before parting another section of hair, greasing Ruth’s scalp. “There’s no right way to be a mother. You do what you know how to do at the time and pray it all comes out okay in the end. I think of it like baking a cake. You pour all your best ingredients in the bowl. Flour, sugar, eggs, and real butter—no yogurt or applesauce substitutes, either. You mix it real good and then put it in the oven and you wait for it to rise. Take it out too early, it won’t be done, or it may fall.” She bent close to Ruth’s ear and said, “You were my precious cake. Your papa and I poured everything we had into you. You still had a lot of rising to do in this world. I didn’t want you to fall.”

  Ruth rested her cheek against Mama’s thigh while she braided. It struck Ruth that every mother’s choice had repercussions for generations, and it fanned out into a web that could ensnare you or catch you when you slipped. It all depended on how you looked at it.

  “It’s been good seeing Natasha. Watching her with Camila, I started wondering what my life would be like now if I’d married a guy like Luis from high school and raised a family here in Ganton instead of moving away from home.”

  Mama grunted. “You’d be going through a world of hurt and doing your best to convince folks you were happy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Natasha’s sharing her husband the way she shared her mother with that revolving door of men all those years. He’s cheating on her, for sure.”

  Back in the day, Mama had disapproved of her friendship with Natasha, thinking her friend would hold her back somehow. But it was time to let that go. “Every family has its problems,” Ruth said.

  “Child, if you don’t get your head out those fairy tales. Even truck drivers come home sometimes, but not Luis. You know how folks talk. They say he’s got another whole family out there. Mexican, like him.”

  “He’s Puerto Rican, Mama.”

  “Whatever. You get my point.”

  She could’ve chastised Mama, but what good would it do? They were finding their way back to each other, but she accepted some things would never change.

  Mama scratched her granddaughter’s scalp with the comb, freeing flakes of dandruff that dotted Ruth’s eyelashes like snowflakes. Natasha had never let on that there were problems in her marriage. Ruth wondered if every woman harbored a secret tucked away in her heart, a cross she carried all alone.

  She began thinking of Joanna now and how little she knew of the woman who had given her life. And she never would know her, because she hadn’t bothered to stick around.

  Twisting her head to look up at Mama, she said, “At least you loved Corey enough to try to do what you thought was right. My mother didn’t give a damn about me and Eli. I know you don’t like for me to say it, but I inherited the abandonment gene from her. I tried not to, but I ended up just like her.”

  Mama stopped combing, her hand suspended in the air. “I should’ve given you the whole story. You’re grown enough to handle the truth.”

  “What story? My mother was a druggie and she loved that high more than her own kids. What else is there to say?”

  Mama pressed her hands into Ruth’s shoulders. “No. No, that’s not the way it was at all. She was on that stuff, yes, and it did have hold of her. But when she decided she wanted to get out of Ganton, she said she was going to take you and Eli with her. Her mind was made up.”

  “But she didn’t, did she? She left us behind.”

  “Because Hezekiah and I begged her not to take you. We knew she loved you kids, but how could she be a real mother to you when she had all that poison inside her? It made no sense. It took a lot, but we convinced her to let us raise you two.”

  Ruth pulled away, moving out of the grip of her grandmother’s heavy thighs. No, not again. Not one more way Mama had manipulated her life, pulling strings without her knowing it. Her body seized with anguish. How could this be true?

  “Are you saying she really wanted us?”

  “Yes, I am. You and your brother were always wanted. Your mother wanted you. Papa and I wanted you. You hear me? You understand?”

  Tears filled Ruth’s eyes. “I understand, all right. You played God with my life.” When she spoke, her words emerged thin from exhaustion, all her anger depleted. All these years, she thought her mother had abandoned her without looking back.

  “I wasn’t playing God. I was loving you and your brother the best I could. I love Joanna something fierce. She was the only child Hezekiah and I had. It tore me up inside to see her walk out that door forever. And then to separate her from you and Eli? That’s a special kind of pain. We put her in rehab so many times, but she’d get out and go right back to that stuff. Your grandfather and I knew we were losing Joanna to that dope. We couldn’t lose you and your brother, too.”

  For so long, Ruth had wanted answers, the truth. And now, it descended upon her in an avalanche. As a grown woman, she now recognized her own mistakes. Why had it taken eleven years and Xavier’s push to start a family for Ruth to come looking for her child? As she passed the blame around, she had to take her share, too. She saw that now.

  And what about Joanna, coerced into leaving her babies behind? Did memories of Ruth and Eli haunt her the way the first day of Corey’s life had haunted Ruth? Gazing out the window, she wondered if her mother was looking upon these same stars right now. The two of them knew better than anyone the price you paid for walking away from your child because someone else decided for you what was best.

  This new understanding brought a measure of peace, but worry still needled her. If it ever became known that Corey’s adoption was illegal, everything could be ripped out from under her son. If anyone questioned Ruth about the adoption, she would lie gladly this time. She was a mother, and what Mama had said was right—mothers protected their children. This much, she knew. And someday, she’d write a letter to Corey telling him she’d loved him from the moment she found out he was growing inside her. She’d apologize again. Over and over, as many times as she needed to until he believed her.

  Mama’s hands and the comb still rested on top of Ruth’s head, but they hadn’t moved. Ruth turned around and looked up at her grandmother, trying to read her thoughts. She followed her eyes out the
window to the porch, which was aglow with light. Ruth said, “I see you finally got the porch light fixed.”

  “Dino came over and took care of it.”

  Ruth teased her grandmother. “Oh? Seems like he’s spending a lot of time over here. You know, you could’ve invited him for New Year’s Eve.”

  “Hush your mouth, girl.” She felt a light tap of the comb on the back of her neck, but she still heard the smile in Mama’s voice. “Now that there is exactly why I didn’t invite him.”

  Then Mama got to humming something throaty and soulful, maybe gospel or jazz.

  “Sing it, Mama.”

  “When I was a little girl, that’s all I wanted to do was sing.”

  “You used to sing around the house all the time.” She had stopped singing after Papa died and their house became eerily quiet.

  “No, I wanted to really sing, onstage, you know. In front of lots of people. I’d heard about Leontyne Price learning to sing opera at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. They always make exceptions for one of us. But Black girls from Ganton, Indiana, didn’t go to Juilliard in the fifties and sixties. So, I stayed here, finished school, and made do working at the hotel.”

  Ruth inhaled the Jergens lotion that Mama always slathered on her legs after her nightly bath. Greasing her fingers with oil, Mama slid them down the lines of Ruth’s scalp and followed that up with a spray sheen. Ruth laughed to herself thinking of the Coming to America Soul Glo stains she’d leave on the pillowcases that night.

  “What are you smiling about, child?”

  “Nothing, Mama. I’m just imagining you living your dream, singing professionally, with all those people spellbound under the power of your voice. You never told me that story about your singing dream.”

  “I’m telling you now. And you know I’ve never been one for wasted words. Save your breath for when you die.”

  As surely as Ruth knew another year had begun, she understood that Yale had been her Juilliard.