As Good as True Read online

  A hard knot fixed itself in the center of my chest as I approached my daughter. Neither Eli nor Michael could move her from the spot. She clenched a handkerchief and hung on Michael’s arm despite the muggy heat.

  The gravediggers waited. They would not fill his grave with mourners present.

  Marina’s face looked more swollen than the day before, and I worried her body had reached a dangerous point. I started to sit next to her and take her hand, but the anger across her face stopped me.

  The sky rumbled, and Michael said to her, “Let’s get out of this heat so you can put your feet up.”

  Marina said, “A minute more.” Her ankles had ballooned and I worried her body would burst from the pressure.

  Michael, impatient with her, unlaced her grip from his arm. He said, “I’ll wait by the car,” and climbed the hill.

  “Let’s go with Michael,” I said. “It’s about to storm.”

  She stared at the coffin.

  “Go ahead with it,” I said to the gravediggers when I saw she would not be moved. They removed the blanket of flowers and turned the winch until the casket was deep in the ground. They took down the frame that had held the casket and began to shovel clumps of mud over him. The relief I had expected escaped me. Instead a deep ache resounded with each shovel of dirt that fell on top of him.

  Marina bowed her head.

  Eli waited patiently by. His fingers grazed Marina’s shoulder to let her know he stood beside her.

  “Marina,” I said. “Let’s go with Michael.”

  “You missed Daddy’s funeral.” Anger lathered on her tongue.

  “I had to be with Grandpapa. I had to talk to the doctor,” I said.

  “You stood up there looking down on us,” Marina said.

  “There was no place saved for me and I did not want to disrupt the prayer,” I offered.

  Marina’s eyes fixed on the gravediggers. She seemed to have turned to stone. “I’ve lost my mother and father in the same day,” she said. “Now Grandpapa too.”

  “I’m still here, binti,” I said.

  She blinked and looked at me with red eyes. “What did you call me?”

  “Binti,” I said. “It means my daughter. That’s what my mother called me.” It was hard to believe I had never called her that. “Grandpapa reminded me of it.”

  The sky threatened and the funeral men began collecting chairs behind us. Marina labored to stand. I reached out to help her. My heart pounded with hope when she took my arm, but she gripped so hard that I thought she meant to hurt me. Her face told me that her body had seized.

  “It’s time to go to the hospital.” My voice was tentative, mixed with hope and fear. I knew what was coming and she did not.

  Eli saw the trouble and tried to bolster her up.

  “Let me take you,” I said.

  “No.” Another refusal, but she spoke in a civil tone. “Michael will. Eli, get Michael.”

  Eli rushed up the hill and screamed Michael’s name.

  The gravediggers stopped what they were doing to see if they could help, but I shook my head.

  “Don’t you see that I want to fix things?” I swallowed hard. If I just started to speak, the words would come. “Marina.” I drew a deep breath. “I am sorry.” It was true that I was sorry for the pain I caused her. I didn’t know if she could believe me, but I would try to convince her.

  “No.” She cut me off. “No. No. No.” It was all she could say. She could not catch her breath. She clung to my arm as if it were a rope and she were dangling from a height. She could not stand straight.

  “I love you.” I wanted her to know that. “I’m here for you.” Michael and Eli were running; their heads bobbed at the crest of the hill.

  She held up a trembling hand. “Stop talking.”

  “Okay,” I said. My hands were shaking too. Another roll of thunder clapped.

  She leaned into me with all her weight and I did not know if I could hold her up. “Oh,” one long syllable, came deep from her core.

  “The baby’s coming,” I said. “You’ll be okay.”

  She looked me in the eye and I could see she was afraid. The wind rustled the trees at the edge of the cemetery.

  I struggled to keep her upright. She’d been in labor for days, and now she could no longer ignore the pains.

  “Oh.” She howled a long and primal moan and then a gush of fluid washed down her legs.

  Michael and Eli arrived, breathing hard from running. They wrapped their arms around her middle and I walked behind them up the hill, feeling useless as they moved in awkward jolts. She leaned on me as Michael pulled the car close and we eased her into the back seat.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  Marina’s eyes were shut. She could not hear or speak and I remembered how labor pain took over the whole body.

  Michael said, “I’ve got it from here.” He shut the car door and his tires spun in the gravel as he raced out of the cemetery.

  Eli held my arm. “Let’s follow them,” he said.

  “They don’t want me there.” My eyes fell below us on the statue of Mary, with her hands open and her gaze downcast, by my mother’s grave, down the path from Elias’s. Mama had talked about the icons of Mary from her home, and Papa must have chosen this large statue for that reason.

  The gravediggers looked to the sky and worked fast to get ahead of the storm.

  Eli watched the men working. “She loves you,” he said. “They were arguing about you this morning. She doesn’t want you treated this way.” Eli had a better chance of saving the world than mending what was broken between his sister and me.

  “I want to visit my mother’s grave before I go,” I said. We walked back down to Elias’s grave and I took one of the wreaths meant for him and carried it to my mother’s grave. Eli followed me down the path toward the statue of Mary. Two small headstones that belonged to the babies were on her left, and soon Papa would be buried on her right. Gus and I would bury him, and I wondered how much more I could take.

  Eli’s long legs strode beside me. “She doesn’t want you to leave,” he said.

  “I think she does.”

  Thunder sounded. I touched the inscription of her name: Vega Khoury. Beloved Wife and Mother. On the baby boys’ gravestones, their birth dates were the same as the day they died. I bowed my head and hoped that Marina and her baby would be safe.

  “You need to have faith in her,” he said.

  “You’re right.” I did not have the heart to tell my son the truth of my situation and that I had lost my faith long ago. I worried he had too much stake in it. The smell of damp earth from Elias’s grave carried in the wind.

  “If you stay,” he said, “I’ll stay with you.”

  “My mother was so good,” I said. “So gentle.” I remembered her thick black hair, tied back in a white scarf, her flowing blue skirt, and the accent of her voice. Her bracelets sang as she moved.

  Eli stood by me, close and patient.

  “What will Marina remember me by?” I asked Eli. Nothing so sweet, I thought. “Mama was so young. I thought she knew so much, but she was not much older than Marina when she died.” My Marina was soon to be a mother, and I prayed she would do better than me.

  “I saw what happened to you, Mama.” Eli meant what his father had done to me. “I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  “It’s not your job to take care of me.”

  “Ivie and Grandmother are not going to steamroll you.” He stood tall and his face was stern. He believed he could protect me from them.

  “I was supposed to take care of you and Marina.” I felt sorry for him that he trusted in me as much as he did. I did not deserve it, but I would take it, greedy as a thief.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I’ll come home and go to the state school nearby. Then I’ll apply to law school.”

  “Don’t you change your plans, for me or for them.” I ran my fingers over her name. Vega. “You don’t know what
people are capable of.”

  “I do.” He raised his voice and I heard the anger in it. “I know what my father did and I want to do better.”

  “You don’t have to pay for your father’s sins,” I said. Or mine, I thought.

  Eli searched my face. Then he looked in the direction of the fresh grave. “I can’t ignore what’s being done.”

  “But it’s dangerous,” I said. “You can’t change everybody’s mind.” I hated that I sounded like my family, how they wanted to dissuade me from caring what happened to Mr. Washington, how they wanted me to look the other way. “If I leave, then things can return to normal. You go on with your studies. All I care about is you and Marina and that you’re safe and happy.”

  “If you stay or go, it’s not going to change my mind.” Eli sounded as stubborn as Marina. “You did the right thing by helping him.”

  I shook my head. “I should never have asked him inside.” I could not reconcile my motives or my actions.

  “You were being kind,” Eli said. “Why should either of you suffer over a kindness?”

  The men pounded the red dirt with their shovels to tamp it down and then placed the blanket of white roses over his grave.

  “I’m afraid I helped him to spite your father.” All of it mixed in my mind.

  “You were not wrong,” he said.

  The gravediggers walked up the hill with their shovels and ropes in hand.

  “There is right and wrong,” Eli said. “Lives are at stake and I won’t stand by and do nothing.” He sounded like a man of conviction, but I saw the boy who looked at me with pity, who knew what his father had done to me. For what I had done to his father, there would be no redemption.

  “You have a good conscience,” I said. “You have grown up a good man.” I did not have a good conscience. I had scraped by for so long that I had lost it along the way. The sky was dark and lightning flashed close by.

  “Let’s go see about Marina,” Eli said. He led the way up the hill away from the graves.

  I was tired of what waited for me—Marina’s anger, burying my father, and leaving town—but my son had hope and he believed in goodness. I was afraid for him, afraid if he took his faith too far, that I’d bury him too.

  “We’ll have something to celebrate soon.” Eli’s voice was hopeful and he took my good hand.

  “Yes,” I said. “You are right.” I forced a smile and thought of how Sophie had brought us all together. On the day of her baptism, we had sat around the table, Elias and our children with Gus and Lila, Papa, Nelly, and Louise. We had been so happy watching Sophie play and toddle in her white dress, and I had thought, Now is our chance. We held so much hope in Sophie, that one creature, and here was our chance again in Marina’s baby, who was sure to be loved and adored and smart and beautiful.

  I had made it this far and now Marina’s baby was almost here. If I bided my time, if I had faith in my love for my children, maybe Eli would be right. The rain began to fall and the hot ground steamed. The water fell cool and clean on my face like a baptism washing away the past few days of misery.

  The Trial

  When Marina had been in labor eight hours, Michael bought his second pack of cigarettes from the waiting-room vending machine. It was late, and we were all tired. The rain had pounded the windows all day as Eli whispered his plans in my ear. He wanted to leave the seminary and enroll in the state school nearby, to be close and watch over me. He planned to volunteer for the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights at a Baptist church in Birmingham. The people running it had taken in Orlando Washington, and Eli wanted to do his part until he had a law degree and could work full time.

  I was scared for him to take such a stand. I wanted him safe and whole at the seminary, where the ones who went after Orlando Washington could not get him, but I said nothing, because he was bound and determined and it was his choice to make.

  Michael kept his distance from us and paced and smoked. His suit pants were wrinkled and his shirt was damp. I asked him if he’d like a sandwich from the cafeteria, and he eyed me with suspicion. He wanted nothing to do with me, and at one point, his vitriol spilled out onto Eli. “If you don’t mind, shut the hell up. I don’t want to hear what you’re talking about.”

  It had been dark for an hour when I insisted Eli go home and get some sleep. He offered to go with Gus the next day to help with Papa’s funeral arrangements so that I could take as much time as I wanted with Marina and the baby. He stood and stretched, no longer tentative in nature, but a tall young man answering the challenge before him. I was proud of who he’d become, and surprised too, that Elias and I had raised someone with the fortitude to stand up for others. Before he left, Eli extended his hand to Michael to wish him well and show there were no hard feelings from earlier, but Michael looked the other way.

  When Eli was gone and we were alone in the waiting room, Michael crossed over. “You should leave too.”

  “I’ll wait to see Marina and the baby.”

  “You’re not going to see her or the baby.” He sounded like a judge reading a verdict.

  I did not protest. I remembered what Eli had told me, that Marina and Michael had argued and that she wanted me to stay.

  He moved to the opposite side of the room, and I realized he was more dangerous to me than Ivie. Michael had Marina’s heart, and I was a weight around his neck.

  But no matter how angry she was, I was her mother and I knew she loved me. She was the same girl who stood by me while I baked bread, the same girl who looked at me with trusting eyes when I taught her to float on water, the same girl who spent her childhood watching out for me. I would not desert her because Michael told me to.

  The baby girl was born at midnight, and in the early morning, Marina was brought back to a room. Michael stood gatekeeper at the door, and each time I tried to enter, he had a different excuse. At four in the morning, he said, “She’s too weak. She lost a lot of blood.” At six in the morning, he said, “She’s not herself.” The doctor had given her twilight sleep, and she was hallucinating, in and out of consciousness. At nine, a nurse wheeled a bassinet with the baby into the room. Michael followed her, and as I tried to enter, he stepped in my way and grabbed my arm. “There’s no reason for you to hang around and stir things up.”

  I searched his blue eyes. The dark rings beneath were evidence of the long night and morning. “Take your hands off me,” I said. “I want to see my daughter and grandchild.”

  He removed his hands and crossed his arms. “What I should say, Anna, is, since you are leaving town, maybe it’s better to have a clean break.”

  “You’re wrong about that.” I thought about what Eli said. Have faith in Marina. I remembered what Father McMurray said. There is no fear in love. My stomach churned with nerves. She was angry with me, but she loved me. Blood was thicker than water, and I wanted to see my daughter and her baby. I tried to pass him, but he blocked my way again. His face was slick with perspiration. He smelled like earth and salt. “I won’t leave until I see her.” I wanted to trust his kind blue eyes, but I knew better. He was a snake in the grass, disguised by manners and a handsome face.

  “The brick in the store window and the house burning are only the beginning.” His voice was low. “There will be more trouble.”

  “I’m not afraid of bricks in windows or Ivie’s threats.” I spoke calmly.

  “Aren’t you afraid of a mob at your door?” His voice was disguised with concern.

  “Let me see Marina.” I didn’t care what came after.

  “I don’t think you understand how bad this is.”

  “Eli says it will blow over.” I wanted to believe Eli, that Marina loved me and she could forgive me. I would adopt the mind-set my parents had lived by so long ago. They had forged ahead and put on blinders to trouble and doubt. They got on a boat to a new world, and come what may, they built a new life and saw it through.

  “Eli is an optimist, but I’m a realist.” Michael’s face was calm
like the river on a windless day. He was unmoved by me. “Nobody likes what you did.”

  “I know you want me gone.” The cold green tile of the hospital walls sank into my bones. The nurse left the baby with Marina and walked past Michael and me. I tried to see inside the room, to get a glimpse of Marina and the baby. The shades were drawn, but I could see the wildness of Marina’s black hair fanning over the white pillow. “Eli said you two argued about me. He said that Marina wants me to stay.”

  He grabbed the meat of my arm and the bruises still hurt, three days later. He steered me away from the door and across the hall. “You need to understand something.”

  All night, like a good lawyer, he had thought through his case, piece by piece, laying out his argument for when the time came. “Your neighbor heard the commotion the day the mailman was in your house.” So he’d talked with Verna or Verna had talked to him.

  “Mama?” Marina’s weakened voice called from the room.

  His blue eyes were sharp and cold. He leaned in close to my face. “They’ll take you to jail for fornication with a colored.” His breath, stale with cigarette smoke and coffee, fell on my cheek and sent a chill down my spine. “Even if they can’t prove murder, I cannot help you if you stay.”

  “Mama? Is that you?” Marina’s voice rang like a shrill bell.

  I tried to step around him. “Yes,” I called out to her. “I’m here.”

  He blocked me. “We can sell your house for you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “We can send you money if you don’t have enough.” He was bargaining now.

  I tried to pass, but his arm shot across my way.

  “We can visit you wherever you decide to go.” He was offering false promises. “I know you have your father’s money and money from the store.”

  Marina cried out, “Mama.” Her voice was flat, plaintive.

  “I’m here, Marina.” My voice ramped up with emotion. “I’m not leaving her. Not when she needs me.”

  A nurse leaned over the desk and stared in our direction. “Everything okay?” she sang out.