As Good as True Read online

  Michael gave a smug smile and a wave. The nurse went back to her work, but Michael did not like the attention we were drawing, and he softened his voice. “You are on the wrong side of this.”

  My heart beat faster than it should. “His mother cared for me. I wanted to help him.”

  “That’s how these people work.” Michael stared past me, down the hall, to see if the nurse was still looking. “You are the victim here. He preyed on your ties and your kindness.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said.

  “It’s reprehensible what he did to you. They go against every tradition and structure.” He blocked Marina’s doorway again, gesturing as if he were before a jury. “Even if you did not have relations with him, he put you in a bad position. He knew better than to go inside your house, and now your fate is no better than his.”

  “I’ve lived my life on both sides of this town, and I don’t see it that way.” I was tired of arguing with him, when what I had been waiting for was across the threshold.

  “That is precisely the problem.” He touched my sleeve faintly with his fingertips. He could see I was upset, and his softer touch was an attempt to calm me. “Nobody will believe you, Anna.”

  “I don’t care.” I was not frightened by him or the possibilities, because beyond him, in that room, was my hope, my daughter and hers.

  “Listen to me.” His tone was all business. “You are now finished with your part of civil rights. They burned his house, and if you keep on, one of you will be dead.” He looked at me and he saw trash. All the time he had been with Marina, he had hidden his disdain, or else I had been blind to it. “You need to save what little pride you have and move on.”

  “I have no pride.” I stared into his cold, crystal-blue eyes. “I have a daughter and a son and a grandchild. That’s what I have.” I was not afraid of being alone or leaving town, but I did not want to leave. “One day, I hope you will lose your pride, for the sake of my daughter and yours. Now, I want to see the baby.”

  I tried to push past him, but he braced his arm. Michael, this blond father of my grandchild, my daughter’s husband, was attempting the same thing as Elias, trying to control what I said and did. I looked at his arm, barring my way, and thought Marina had married a man like her father, his way or no way. But then, she called out, “Michael, let her pass,” and I knew Marina would not be held back by him. She was a force of her own.

  At her demand, he swept his arm aside, motioning that I should enter, as if he had never intended to block my way.

  Marina’s black hair sprang wildly around her swollen, ruddy face. She looked crazed, not beautiful or glowing but bedraggled, like my mother on her deathbed.

  “I almost died.” Her speech was slurred and the darkness of her eyes swallowed me up.

  “No, no, you are fine.” My heart danced to see Marina nestling the baby.

  “I died for a minute,” she said. “They tied me down and ripped her out.”

  “But you are okay.” I walked toward her and thought every woman feels close to death giving birth, but Marina was safe now. The ordeal was over.

  “You are a ghost,” she said. Her eyes were like black coals and she did not blink. The medicine was still active in her body and playing tricks on her mind.

  “No. I’m right here.” I stopped, afraid if I got any closer she would ask me to leave. The baby was swaddled, and a tuft of black hair peeked out.

  “I can see you, I can hear you, but if I touch you, nothing will be there.” Marina’s face seemed frozen in a frown. The medicine skewed her mind.

  “You are dreaming,” I said.

  “No.” She shook her head calmly. She looked at me with wild, black eyes. She seemed not to notice the weight of the baby in her arms. “You are dead to me.”

  “You’re not feeling well.” I wanted to go to her, to touch her and hold the baby, but I was afraid she would lose her wits and do something horrible. “I understand.” My confidence in her love diminished with each word and doubt crept in.

  “He’s here, waiting for you,” she said.

  I wanted to ask, Who? But I dared not, because she might have said Daddy. I said, “The medicine they gave you makes you have bad thoughts.”

  “I’ve always had bad thoughts.” No emotion showed in her face or in her voice.

  Of course she’d had bad thoughts. How could she have escaped my sadness or her father’s? We had shared it from the beginning, before she was ever born. I’d withheld from her or been incapable, and she, an innocent child, watched and waited for me to be better, but she could not fill the gap and make me whole. Marina had, like me, lived without a mother.

  She said, “If they don’t get you, he will.”

  Whether she meant Elias or Michael or Ivie, her words sent shivers down my back.

  “You said you wanted me.” I hoped to change her line of thinking. “I heard you calling me.”

  “I did. I called for you when they strapped me down.” She looked at her wrists. “You didn’t come.”

  “They wouldn’t let me. I was here the whole time waiting for her and praying for you.” I inched closer and when she did not protest, I stood by her bed. The room was the same as the room her grandfather had died in.

  “There was lamb’s wool on the wrist straps that held me down and I thought of the lambs Grandmother fed all summer before she led them to slaughter.”

  “I’m here now.” The room Papa had died in was on the floor above and looked out over the same view.

  “You disappointed me again,” she said. The truth was spilling out like a flooded well.

  Maybe this was motherhood, longing for a person who would outgrow you, longing for a love outside your reach.

  “You should have warned me about giving birth,” Marina said.

  I tried to swallow the tears. “You’ll forget all of this when the medicine wears off.” She would forget this conversation and the labor.

  “I will never forget.” The pupils in her eyes, big and black, cut out all the green. If anyone had the will to overcome medicine that blocked memory, it would be Marina. I wanted her to smile at the baby, even if she stayed angry at me. “I don’t care if you stay or go,” she said.

  I wanted to give her comfort and touch her face or comb her hair. I wanted a glimpse of her newborn.

  “Michael says if you stay we’ll leave Riverton.”

  The baby’s crop of black hair peeked out from the swaddle. “Do you want me to leave now?” I would go if it would end her suffering.

  “No. I want you to see what you’re missing.” The deliberate cadence of her words felt cruel. “Take her. I’m tired.” She held the baby at arm’s length. “Go on, take her.”

  She was weaker than she knew, and I scooped the baby, afraid Marina might drop her. I held the light, warm bundle, so much lighter than Sophie. For all the sadness weighing on me, for the bile Marina wanted to spill on me, I felt immense joy to look at this new face, the pink, scoured cheeks and eyelids curtained in thick eyelashes. This baby had come late, I could tell by the fullness of her cheeks, her thick hair.

  There was no proportion to the joy I felt, or what I had ever felt, good or bad. Holding my grandchild, I had a glimpse of what love could be, and I lost my breath, as if all the bad did not matter. That moment with Marina’s baby was all the good of the past and the future. “What did you name her?”

  “Eliza,” Marina said. Her eyes drooped with sleepiness. “I named her Eliza Anne.” She rolled over, with her back to me, and fell asleep. The medicine, the birth, all of it had worn her out.

  The baby rested in my arms and the warm bundle soothed my heart. I looked out the hospital window to a brilliant blue sky with none of the clouds or rain from the past few days. The sun glared white hot off cars parked below. The world was bright and clear, but I could barely grasp what there was to see. In that small room, my daughter slept and I held her daughter named after Elias and me. The truth was the bundle in my arms, and I could feel i
t, a fleeting glimpse, that love had come too late and all in a jumble. All love and loneliness, and I had only a short time to sort it out.

  My mother’s Gypsy came to mind. Mama had tried to tell me how she had been lonely in her new world, an oddity to most people she met. She had been the Gypsy on the outskirts and now I was the same, never to be trusted or let in, scorned and cast out by my daughter and family. I watched Marina sleep, and I felt her love and her loneliness too. She would be as lonely as I had been without a mother or the father she loved. He had been a different man to her than the one I knew, and I realized one person could be many. My mother, brave and wise in my memory, was young and frail and worried to my father. I could not know them any better than I could know if Marina would change her mind about me.

  I did not want to put the baby down, because when I did, I would be without a purpose, drifting like a raft in the middle of the river. I was not afraid of being alone or staying or leaving. I was afraid I would not know this child, Eliza Anne, breathing, soft and quiet, against my cheek. She opened one eye to peek and her lips moved in a sucking motion.

  Marina mumbled in her sleep, “I don’t want to choose.” She opened her eyes, serious and deep, the pupils like a black lake with a fringe of green. Her breath shuddered and she closed her eyes again. With the baby in one arm, I wet a rag with cool water and placed it on Marina’s forehead. She did not stir.

  The baby’s lips parted and closed as she dreamed of suckling. I pushed the call button for the nurse to bring a bottle and it was a powerful feeling to hold her. Marina would love her and do better than I had. “This will pass, Eliza Anne,” I said out loud, and as the words left my lips, I felt a rock in my chest. How many babies did one get in a lifetime? I had had four, Marina, Eli, Sophie, and now Eliza. I had wasted time being angry and passed my anger on to Marina. All I could hope for was a chance to show her better now. I could not dare to hope for more.

  My arms cramped, and I was tired from not sleeping, worry, and emotion, but I knew it was my chance, my beautiful chance to hold her. The baby squeaked and let out a newborn’s wail. I changed her diaper, and when the air hit her naked body, she howled. I swaddled her, and in the warmth and tightness of the blanket, she stopped fussing. I picked her up and felt calm, despite the knowledge that very soon, I would bury my father.

  Michael stood sentinel in the hallway. He coughed and looked in and I knew he was counting the minutes until I left. The nurse brought a bottle and I fed the baby, rocked her, and watched Marina sleep for two hours. Her fingers were still swollen, and I wondered how many days before she would be slim again and fit into her smart clothes. I wondered if the baby would change her, if she would soften in her dress or in her attitude or if she would see the world in a gentler way. I felt a thickness in my throat—a cold, hard lump that I could not swallow. The heaviness traveled through my whole being, and I worried I was too late in my understanding. I should have been more patient with her, more giving and loving, and I should not have begrudged her for being her father’s child.

  Michael stepped inside the door. “Are you done?”

  “No,” I said. “Not close.” It was folly to have thought he would help me. “The baby is hungry again. Would you have the nurse bring a bottle?”

  The nurse came in at two thirty with another bottle. I said, “Let her rest.”

  Marina continued to sleep through the afternoon.

  At the five o’clock feeding, the nurse offered to take the baby to the nursery, but I said, “No. Leave her with me.”

  The baby ate again with vigor and burped louder than I remembered a baby could. I changed her again, swaddled her, and breathed in the smell of her scalp. I languished in the warmth of her small body.

  “I know you,” I whispered to Eliza Anne. “I love you.” Both of them slept and the baby was a beautiful weight in my arms. She was fed and content. The nurse checked Marina’s pulse and listened to her heart while she snored.

  I put the baby down in the bassinet and tried to tame Marina’s wild hair. She did not stir as I ran my fingers through the waves of hair, as she had loved for me to do at bedtime when she was a girl.

  I peeked through the blinds. It was near five thirty, and the haze of white heat had burned off and the sky was softening toward sapphire blue. In less than three hours it would be dark. Warm sparks of sun bounced off the cars below, and mine sat on the street with a trunk full of money, a thief’s dream, hiding out in the open.

  Part of me thought I should go south to the Gulf of Mexico, to a room or a cottage on the beach, and make a home for myself. If I went far away, Eli would feel no obligation to protect me, and Marina would be free of me. I would cross the Riverton Bridge and see the old courthouse in my rearview mirror. I would look back until the river, the bridges, the town were gone from sight and the pain would trail behind. But when I looked at Marina sleeping, I knew better. I could not leave.

  I looked at Eliza Anne’s sweet face and tried to remember what I had wanted when I married Elias. I had wanted him. I had wanted love. I had wanted to be like my mother. All I knew for certain, I had wanted more than what I had or what I got. That was when regret washed over me like cold water. I had waited too long to stand up for myself, for others, for Marina and Eli, for this baby girl, and I had gone about it the wrong way.

  Marina stirred. “You’re still here?” She reached out for me or the baby.

  I left my post at the window and tucked the baby next to Marina.

  Marina rubbed her eyes. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “No,” I said. “It breaks my heart to go.”

  I buried my head against Marina’s neck. Her scent was mixed with sweat and blood and hospital soap.

  “Mother.” Marina nudged me. “Get up. The baby is fussing.”

  I stood back and looked at them.

  “You should go,” Marina said. “You should go tonight.”

  I sat on the edge of her bed. “I have to bury my father. I have to do what is right.”

  “I’m afraid for you.” Her pupils had shrunk, and the bright-green color of her eyes was visible again.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “You are a mother now. You worry about her and I’ll do my best.”

  Michael, who had been listening in the doorframe, came in. “It’s time you go, Anna.”

  Marina stared at me with wet eyes. I prayed she would never know what it was to sacrifice love or feeling in order to survive, to finally have a chance, to have it so close, as close as I held baby Eliza, and to feel it slipping away. She would never trust me. Seeds of doubt had been planted in her mind, in Michael’s mind, and nothing I could do, no denial, no words, could change that.

  “I’ll follow you home.” Michael was civil in Marina’s presence.

  “No need for that,” I answered.

  “I think there is.” He spoke with a kind and fatherly tone, for Marina’s sake, but I knew his true feelings. “There could be trouble.” Michael was as liable to drive me off the road or throw me in the river as anyone else.

  “I’m not going home,” I said. It was half truth. “So you don’t have to worry about me.” He could think I was leaving town, that was fine—I wanted nothing from him. I kissed Marina’s forehead and then touched the warm baby’s cheek. I whispered in Marina’s ear, “I’m not leaving you.”

  She did not flinch or protest. She did not give me away to him.

  I walked through the cool, sterile halls of the hospital where my children and my grandchild were born and where Papa had died, and out into the heavy, humid air. The sun hung low, bright and hot, and the air was thick with light. This was my home and I would not leave Marina and her baby. I would not be run off.

  Home

  The mockingbird shrieked from his perch in the tree as I walked up the porch steps. The coffin was gone, my furniture had been righted, but the table remained cluttered with servers and chafing dishes. No second round of food had been warmed for a funeral reception, because we ha
d gone to the hospital for Marina.

  In the dim house, I emptied the pantry of dried fruit and nuts for the neglected bird. I tossed the treats for him and the leaves rustled as he swooped down. He sang and flitted around his bounty, and I thought, Let the old bird gorge himself. His handouts from me would soon be over. He could eat from the garden for the rest of the summer, but in two months’ time, the geese would come, the leaves would turn and begin to fall. Maybe by winter the mockingbird would forget our arrangement.

  I took off the suit Marina had bought me and put on a loose-fitting dress. The sleeves were short, but it did not matter who saw the bruises and who did not. I packed my clothes and jewelry, some sheets and housewares. Downstairs, I gathered the rakweh, the spices, and my recipes. I found the picture of my mother and her sisters, the one of Marina and me and the ones of my children. I checked the money in the trunk of my car, and then filled it with my things. Then I began to load my baking supplies, the bowls and pans, the baskets, my measuring cups. I took my bread starter from the icebox and carried it like a chalice to my car. It smelled slightly of vinegar, but I would feed it to bring it back.

  Verna stood on her porch watching me. I turned and smiled and raised my middle finger to her, in case she didn’t know how I felt.

  She said, “Well, I never,” loud enough to carry across the street. She turned on her heel and went inside, but still I felt her eyes on me as I packed my car.

  I was so tired that I could have gone inside and slept, but my old life stopped me. I would never live there again, not where he breathed, not where he died, not where I had scraped by. Nor would I leave this town, Marina and her child. The sheriff or a mob might still come for me, but I would face whatever I had to for Marina and Eli. I was not leaving. I would rather live on Marina’s fringes, like the Gypsy of my mother’s story, begging for scraps, an outcast, waiting for glimpses of them and their love, than run away to nothing.

  Verna sat in her window and she must have been happy, thinking, That Arab is finally gone. The sun dipped, and the horizon was a line of pale green and the sky a deep sapphire blue. I marveled at how quickly the sky and the world could change. In the dark, I picked enough figs to fill two baskets and put them in the front seat of the car. “Figs for prosperity,” I said to keep from crying. Like a bittersweet prize, I ate them and tossed the skins on the road as I drove across town to my father’s store.