As Good as True Page 31

  Gus touched his bleeding lip and brushed off his clothes. He went to Papa’s side and tried to offer his handkerchief for the bloody nose, but Papa refused him.

  Ivie grabbed me up and whispered in my ear, “If you don’t go, I’ll have a mob at your door.”

  Eli rushed down the stairs toward Ivie and gripped his uncle’s shirt. “Get your hands off my mother. What’s wrong with you?” His voice sounded harsh and deep like his father’s.

  Ivie whipped out of Eli’s grasp and stumbled backward. “Simmer down, Nephew.” Ivie snickered and tipped the silver flask to his lips. With a flick of his wrist, he screwed the cap back on. He lurched toward the street.

  Nelly, a dark stick figure among the others, knocked her cane on the stone porch. “Go home, Ivie!” She did not want the priest seeing him drunk and fighting, so she waved her cane at her son as if he were a cur dog.

  Marina’s tall, rotund body pinched out the light in the doorway. She put her arm through Nelly’s and said, “Come in.”

  Papa staggered toward the dark street and mumbled under his breath.

  “He can’t walk home like that in the dark,” I said to Gus.

  “I’ll get him.” Gus pulled his keys from his pocket and put his handkerchief to his lips. “I’ll be back after I take him home.”

  “You don’t have to come back,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

  He hugged me and the familiar smell of sweat and lime came from his warm skin. “No,” he said. “You’re not safe here alone.” He jogged off after Papa, and soon his dark clothes blended into the night. Down the street, his red brake lights came on, then the headlights, and soon the rumble of his truck faded in the distance.

  Marina

  In the moonless night, Nelly wailed, “I want to go home.” Her voice held the bottomless sorrow of a mother who had lost her child. She reached for Marina to steady herself and called out for her sister. “I am sick to death. I want to go home, Louise.”

  Father McMurray’s eyes rested on Nelly in the window. Then he looked at me. He touched my arm. “Anna,” he said, “do you want me to mediate between you and Marina?”

  “No.” It was a stubborn refusal of the one thing that might have helped. She would be mortified if our troubles came out to him. “No.”

  Nelly caterwauled, “Take me home. I cannot look at the casket another minute.”

  The two sisters scurried back and forth. Louise complained, “There is too much to be done, Nelly. You have to wait.”

  But Nelly persisted. “I am dying of grief.”

  “I’ll clean up,” Michael said to silence the old women. “Eli can take you home.” He called out, “Marina.” His voice, patient and deep, said, “Tell me what to do.” Marina listed the chores for him: do the dishes, put away the food, wipe the counters, sweep the floor, empty the coffee urn. He told her to sit and rest, but as soon as he was in the kitchen, she fluttered around Louise and Nelly to help gather their things and usher them out.

  “Anna, you have the opportunity to right your wrongs,” Father McMurray whispered in my ear.

  I studied the pale old priest and wondered what Nelly had said to him, if she painted me as a hateful wife or an unfit mother, or maybe he blamed me for the town’s upheaval over Mr. Washington. “What wrongs are you speaking of, Father?” I asked.

  Father McMurray spoke quietly: “Anna, your children are suffering at your absence. I watched you and you did not pray for Elias’s soul. You must attempt to reconcile your feelings about him for their sake,” he said. “I know the two of you had troubles, but the burial of the dead is a corporeal work of mercy and it is your duty as God’s child to forgive Elias.” His words buzzed like radio static. Do your duty, that’s what the church would have said if I had gone to them the first or second or thirtieth time he beat me.

  “How can you say that when you know he went to Mr. Washington’s?” I asked.

  “People are imperfect,” Father said. “But I can help you do your Christian duty. His burial is the chance to forgive him, to right the wrongs that you may have done to him and he to you. No marriage is faultless. Jesus turned the other cheek, and now you must for your children. You must open your heart.” A sermon he must have given before. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the spittle that had gathered in the corners of his mouth. Then, words gentle and unpracticed: “I can see Eli and Marina are suffering from your absence in mourning their father.”

  What he said was true. I managed to say, “Thank you, Father,” but my throat stung as if I swallowed a jar of bees.

  Father McMurray patted my shoulder. “There is no fear in love,” he said and walked to his car. He meant to admonish me for my lack of piety toward mourning Elias, but I took it differently. I loved Marina and she loved me. I could have hope. I should not be afraid to hope for her love. We could work past her frustration with me.

  Eli and Marina helped Nelly down the stairs.

  When she saw the priest was gone, Nelly said to me, “You deserve to be in the coffin. Not my son.”

  “Let me talk to Marina,” I said.

  “You are a good girl, Marina. You are my love.” Nelly spoke sweetly. “You are a good boy too, Eli. You will take good care of Grandma now that your father is gone.”

  I reached for Marina. She was my child, not Nelly’s, but my hands fell on the old woman by mistake. The heat coming from her skin surprised me.

  “Don’t touch me.” She sucked her teeth. “You are a shame.”

  “Enough.” Eli stood tall with his shoulders back. He took charge of Nelly and tucked her into the back seat with Louise. From the car, Louise chided Nelly in Arabic.

  “That’s all the excitement for tonight, I hope.” Eli’s eyebrows pressed together with worry. He said to me, “After I take them home, I’m going to the seminary to check on Mr. Washington. I’ll be here early tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you make a call? Have someone else look after him?” I did not want Eli in harm’s way.

  “No,” he said. “It’s my responsibility.”

  “I want to know you’re safe,” I said. “I want to know what’s happening.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.” Nelly and Louise bickered in the back seat of his car. He hesitated to get in with them. The chirping of their irritated voices trailed as he drove away.

  Marina and I stood in the dark yard. A waxy smell came from her. The priest must have blessed her with his holy oils in preparation for birth. I touched her arm.

  “Please, don’t.” She shuddered, and I knew that Nelly had made good with her threats.

  “No,” I said. “I love you.” I tried to put my arm around her shoulder.

  “No.” She broke my grasp and took a step toward the house. “I want Michael. I want to go home.”

  “Listen to me one minute.” I grabbed her shoulders like she was a child.

  “Let go of me.” Marina twisted out of my grip.

  “Talk to me.” I wanted to grab her and hold her.

  “Grandmother told me what you did. Nothing you can say will make that go away.”

  I saw no trace of love or compassion on her face. My heart pounded in alarm.

  “You’re the only one to let him deliver. I begged you to stop.”

  She was talking about Mr. Washington. My pulse still pounded in my ears, but I could draw a breath. “Marina, the man was just doing his job.”

  “Then you let him in the front door. And God knows what else.” She moved toward the porch.

  I blocked her way up the porch steps. “No, nothing like that happened.”

  “Grandmother says you and that man—”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not true. I only gave him a drink of water.” They had latched onto this idea and could not see past it. “I was trying to help him.”

  “It might as well be true. The idea will ruin us.”

  “It’s not true at all.” I was exasperated that she could not see past petty gossip.
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br />   “Let me by.” She tried to push past me, but I did not budge. She stared at me coldly. “Daddy’s not here to protect you anymore.”

  “Protect me?” I tried not to get flustered so that I could convince her, but I could feel him on top of me trying to press the life out of me. “He never protected me.”

  Her swollen red hands clamped the porch rail like a vise. “He defended you, when people came in the store saying all kinds of things.”

  “If he told you that, he lied,” I said. How many times had he forced himself on me?

  Her fingertips turned white from her grip on the rail. “He told more than one person, ‘She’s being a good citizen in her way.’”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Maybe you said that?”

  Her eyes were as sharp and as keen as a hawk’s. “I heard him say it.”

  “Maybe he said it in front of you. To please you.” My heart raced with panic. “You didn’t know him the way I did.”

  “You are unbelievable.” She crossed her arms and her lip trembled, the same way it did when she was a girl and didn’t get what she wanted. “I will soon have a child to raise, and that’s hard enough without this.”

  “Without what?” I asked.

  “Grandmother said you killed him.” She tried to pass me again, but I did not let her up the stairs.

  “You believe that?” My breath had left me again. I was shaking. I touched her warm arm to try and calm myself, to try and calm her.

  She recoiled from my touch.

  “Your grandmother is hysterical. You can’t listen to her.”

  “Michael,” she called toward the glowing doorway, then turned to me. “He was fine night before last. It doesn’t make sense.” She turned away and called once again, “Michael!”

  Michael could not hear her back in the kitchen.

  “If that were true, Nelly would have me in jail.” I felt the horror of losing Marina’s faith. If I did not have that, I would have nothing. “Marina.”

  “You don’t understand.” She clenched her jaw and slapped the banister. “I am the reason you’re not in jail.”

  I took her hand. “If Nelly loved you, she wouldn’t burden you with her anger for me.”

  “If you loved me, this would never have happened.” She jerked her hand away. “After he’s buried, you are dead to me.”

  My voice rose. “Why won’t you believe me? I did not hurt him.”

  She stared me in the eye. “I don’t know if you did. I’m not sure I want to know, but even if you didn’t, you wanted to. You never loved him.” Not loving Elias was the worst thing I could do in her eyes.

  “I did,” I said. “I did love him. Do you think he ever loved me?”

  “You never let him.” Her voice was thick with anger.

  “He beat me. Just two days ago.” I wanted to go on: What could you know? You were a child. You saw him without flaws. Instead, I said, “He loved someone else, never me. He stayed with me because he had to, and when he got angry, he hit me because I wasn’t her. When he touched me, he was thinking of her.”

  Marina stepped backward away from me. “That’s not for me to know.”

  “He told me. He said it,” I said.

  She shook her head as if she thought I was pitiful. Marina said, “I was a child. I had no power over what happened, and I can’t change it now.”

  “But what he did was wrong.”

  She held my stare. “You were a grown woman and it was between the two of you.”

  I bit my lip. “You will disown me? Do you think I’ll just leave because she tells me to? I’ve lived through hell with him so I could be with you and Eli.”

  Her green eyes stared at me, unwavering. “Michael,” she called again.

  I lowered my voice. “No matter what happens, I love you. I am your mother.” I gave you life, I wanted to say. I stayed with you. I never left you. When she was born, I wanted to hold her, but my body was weak, my mind a mess. Nelly took her and she quieted down.

  “You’re right. I can’t change that.” Marina’s eyes flinched in anger.

  “Please hear me out.” I reached for her again. I was begging, grasping for straws, anything to hold on to. The cicadas vibrated sound in the air and I could feel the sound bouncing off my skin.

  “Michael,” she called out.

  “Don’t turn your back on me.”

  “Really?” She stopped and faced me. “You turned your back on me.” Her lip quivered. She took a deep breath and her green eyes teared up.

  I placed my palm on her damp, warm cheek.

  Her head, heavy and tired, pressed into my hand. It was as if she wanted me to hold her, as if she wanted to forgive me. Marina wiped the corners of her eyes.

  She lifted her cheek from my touch. “I have my own family to think of.” Marina wiped her eyes and looked for Michael over my shoulder.

  “Your grandmother is not your family. I am. I am your mother, and you are soon to see what that means.”

  “She was his mother.” She took an exhausted breath. “But I’m not talking about her. I have a husband and a child on the way.”

  “You are my child,” I said. “And you will see when the baby is in your arms, how nothing mattered before and nothing else will again. Only that child. That is how I feel about you.”

  “I’ve never been important to you.” Vanished were the emotion on her face and the anger in her voice. No longer did her eyes tear or her lip protrude. She held her head high and her neck stiff. “I know what he did. I tried to distract him by playing the piano or talking to him. I stayed up late, I got up early, and you never noticed. You never knew I was watching out for you. I tried to take care of you.” She looked practical and resolute, like a lawyer making an argument. Nothing but reason. “Now you have to take care of me. You have to go, or this will ruin my life and this baby’s.”

  I was frightened that she believed what she said. My body shook. I took off the suit jacket I had been sweltering in all day. “See what he did.”

  She stared at the green and purple marks in the shape of his hands, ugly in the glare of the porch light. “I came to you and told you to stop the business with Washington, but you had it in your head.”

  “I did it for good reasons.” I was about to lose Marina.

  She stared at me with her intense green eyes. She waited for me to speak.

  “His mother, Thea, stood by Mama when she died. She told me, ‘Remember your mama,’ when no one else spoke of her. She called me by my given name and no one else would. She was witness to my mother’s life. She did not let me forget, and I could not stand by and abandon her son.”

  Marina’s eyes were wet. She looked away and wiped them dry. “Cover up before Michael sees that.”

  “I stayed because I loved you and Eli,” I said. “I could never have left you. I lost my mother and I knew how that hurt. I was never as good as her, but I loved you more than I loved my life.”

  “Almost done,” Michael called from the kitchen.

  She covered her eyes. “Even if I want you to stay, they won’t let you.” She walked up the porch stairs past me and stuck her head inside the door. She called out for Michael again.

  “They?” My knees felt weak and I realized I had no power to change what had happened and what was to come. “You mean your grandmother and Ivie. You can make them be quiet. They will listen to you.”

  “There are others.” She wobbled to the rocking chair where Lila and I had sat the night before. “A lot of people want you gone.”

  “Let me stay with you.” I hurried after to support her, but she shook off my touch. “I am not afraid of anything, if I can be with you and the baby.”

  She lowered herself into a chair. My stomach lurched at the sight of the casket through the window.

  “When you were born,” I said, “I held you, so small and warm.”

  “That’s not what Grandmother says.” Her eyes twitched. “She said you refused to name me. Refused to hold me.”

>   “At first, that was true. I wasn’t strong like you.” I touched her hair. “But I did. I did hold you and I loved you, but I was confused. But you won’t be. You are ready. I see you with Sophie and with Michael. You have something I never had.”

  She let out a tired sigh and composed herself. “Please, cover your arms before Michael sees.”

  I put on the suit coat. “She wants to poison you against me.”

  “She only wants to protect me.” She looked at me, cold and unforgiving.

  Elias had sat on the side of the bed in the hospital and asked me what I wanted to name her.

  I could have answered him—Vega, after my mother. He was trying. I knew that. I could see love in his eyes, but it was not love for me, and I was sad and jealous. He loved what I had given him. He loved the baby girl. In my anger, I turned away from him and that anger turned to loneliness and then bitterness. I did not answer him except to say, “Go home.” I had once hoped he would love me, but after she was born, I understood my situation clearly. I told him, “Let me rest while I can.”

  Marina’s eyes were tired and her skin dark beneath them. “I can’t talk anymore.”

  “I was afraid,” I said. “When I had you.” My mother had died when she was not much older than Marina.

  Her perfectly groomed eyebrows arched high on her ivory forehead. “Afraid of a baby?”

  “Yes.” A relief to admit it. “I was afraid of what I would feel if something happened to you, like what happened to my mother. If I lost you, I could not bear it.”

  “That’s an excuse,” Marina snarled. She wiped her wet cheeks and looked at Michael blowing out the candles in the living room. He could hear us through the open windows and the screen door.

  “Your father and your grandmother never said no to you,” I said. “Now you have Michael. I had no one to love or help me.”

  “You never let anyone close to you. Not me. Not Daddy.” Marina closed her eyes and rested her head against the rocker. “Maybe Eli. Maybe you loved him.”

  Elias had come, freshly shaven, smelling so good and clean, of soap and cloves. He wore a starched shirt, and I was lying in a hard bed, cold and smelling of blood. I did not want him to see me like that. His hand touched mine. It was warm, gentle pressure against the coldness of the sheet. “Tell me a name. Whatever you want.” I was silent. I rolled over and left it to him and Nelly to name my daughter. I listened to his footsteps on the tiles and then the door shutting behind him.