As Good as True Read online

  When Eli was fifteen, he had screamed from the alley, and I ran out of the store to find my husband with bloody knuckles and Ivie’s face smashed. Elias had shouted at Eli, “Don’t let me catch you alone with him! Not a walk. Not behind the store. Not alone in your grandmother’s house. He’s crazy. Do you hear me?” Elias’s red face and the veins popping in his neck spoke of what would happen if Eli did not obey. Elias said to me, “The bastard had a knife on Eli.” Ivie skulked off and was gone for weeks. All I could imagine was that Ivie wanted to hurt Eli because he was a gentle boy, and after all the terror that Ivie had suffered in the war, he was jealous of Eli’s innocence. I made ice packs for Elias’s knuckles, and we spoke nothing more of it.

  Nelly stood over Elias’s body. She looked to Ivie, Marina, and Eli, and cupped her hands around Elias’s cheeks. “We will prepare him for the wake,” she said, half asking, half demanding.

  “No, Grandmother.” Eli took Nelly’s hands from his father’s face.

  “He should be here.” She looked hard at Eli and reprimanded him with her pointed finger. “He should be mourned at home with his family.”

  “It’s 1956, for goodness’ sake.” Eli’s voice sounded small and boyish. He was a child in Nelly’s eyes. Even as smart as he was, he was not capable of dissuading her from what she wanted.

  “Listen to Eli.” I stepped toward them. “The funeral home will take him.”

  She turned her ancient face toward me. Her eyes loomed large behind her Coke-bottle glasses and she wagged her finger at me. “Yishghal balak,” she said. May your mind be troubled. “You think you got away with something.” Nelly spoke evenly.

  Eli stepped between us. He knew how unkind she could be.

  “Grandmother,” Marina whispered. “Stop it.” She looked at Father McMurray and placed a hand on Nelly’s shoulder.

  Ivie stood close behind his mother. They gave me the evil eye. She had been giving it to me for years. In her eyes, I could do nothing right. I was the scapegoat that she pinned every sorrow to, never good enough for her son. She never missed the chance to say how I brought him misery, how I was weak or lazy, how unfit a mother I was.

  Marina’s dark, groomed eyebrows knit together. I could see her mind was turning, trying to decide how to handle the situation, how she might convince her grandmother one way or another that it was best to send him to the funeral home—or, if Nelly got her way, what excuses Marina would tell her friends and her husband about having the wake at home. She looked like the little girl at the piano trying to please her father, only now it was Nelly, it was everyone who would come to pay their respects.

  “Look at her.” Nelly poked Eli and pointed at me. “She is happy he is gone.”

  Eli wiped tears from his eyes. He had heard her venom before, but I sensed it was his grief, not Nelly’s words, that affected him as he stood over his father’s body. He had wanted to prove himself to Elias, and now that chance was gone. “There’s no need for this.” Eli’s voice trembled. “The funeral home should take him.”

  Father McMurray’s blue eyes grazed the floor. He cleared his throat and stepped through the swinging door, now propped open. He asked Nelly’s sister for a cup of coffee.

  Marina took her hand from Nelly’s shoulder and touched her belly. She stared out the dining-room window, and I regretted the closeness of Marina and Nelly. She would not go against her grandmother.

  “I won’t leave him in a funeral house.” Nelly was insisting on an old-fashioned wake, laying his body out for three days before the funeral. “We will sing Ginnazat for him.” She tapped Eli’s chest with her gnarled fingers. She sang in her old, warbling voice. The words sounded soft and thick, familiar from my mother’s vigil, when Nelly and Louise had sung them, as had my father and my mother’s sisters, Elsa and Mayme.

  Nelly pointed at Eli, then Marina, then Ivie, as if the words would come to them like a forgotten nursery rhyme if she kept on singing and pointing. We did not know the traditions of the Maronite Catholic Church, as she and my father did, both from Mount Lebanon in what was once Syria. My children knew only English, only the Roman Church, the Latin Mass.

  Louise shuffled in and took Nelly’s hands.

  Nelly cried to her sister, “They do not know how to sing for the dead.”

  Father McMurray crossed the room to Nelly. He balanced a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, unable to place it on the table by Elias’s body. With the other hand, he touched Nelly’s arm with his thick pink fingers. “We will pray. The Lord will take care of him.”

  Her words shot like arrows. “I won’t have him in a funeral house.” Her eyes glared at the priest. “He should be mourned at home with his family.” She wailed. “It was not his time.” She buried her face in her old hands, knotted and twisted like an aged rope. “It should have been me.”

  Eli lowered his voice. “The coroner will need to examine him.” He had regained composure. “They have to embalm. It’s summer and it’s not sanitary otherwise.”

  “That is best,” the priest tried to reassure Nelly.

  “So long as they bring him home,” Nelly whimpered, then she turned to Ivie and broke into another fit of tears.

  The doorbell rang. Nelly quieted as if the sound were a warning to her. Relieved, I left them and walked the ten steps to the door. Maybe it was the hearse come to take him. I should have insisted then that there would be no old-fashioned wake, but as long as he was dead and buried, it made no difference to me how it occurred. I would live my life without him standing over me, reminding me of my failures.

  With my back to the dining room, I took the paper with Orlando Washington’s name from my pocket, tore and wadded it into small pieces. Even in his death, I wanted Elias to have nothing to do with him.

  Ayb

  My brother Gus’s wife, Lila, stood on the top step of the porch. Sophie, my five-year-old niece, danced in the shade of the pecan tree a few yards away. Parked on the road was my brother’s truck, the words Khoury’s Best Groceries and Dry Goods stenciled in white on the black door. I opened the screen and stepped onto the porch. The river breeze cooled my forehead, and I was happy to be out of the swelling heat in my house. Cicadas buzzed, the songbirds called, and the sounds soothed me.

  Lila wrapped her arms around me. “I came right over.” The sharp smell of ammonia rose from her hands. She had been cleaning that morning. The odor made me stand straight and come to attention.

  Lila stood out in our family. She had blue eyes, and fair skin that burned and freckled from working in the sun. She was different also because she had no pretense. Her father was a farrier and she worked horses. She had rough hands and strong arms. She was loud and she’d stand up to a bucking horse without flinching. She wore whatever was comfortable to do her day’s work, sometimes Gus’s clothes, and she didn’t worry if her hair fell out of her braid or looked crazy.

  Gus had eloped with Lila more than twenty years ago, even though Papa had arranged a marriage to Zada, a beautiful Lebanese girl from Mobile. Zada was visiting us when Gus came home married to Lila, who was not Lebanese, Catholic, or even a believer. Lila had a bad reputation. She’d run off with a traveling musician and returned alone a year later, somewhat tarnished, but Gus had been so smitten with her, this pretty woman who loved a hard day’s work, that he did not care how angry Papa was. Gus was salt of the earth himself, and he loved Lila, who was grace and power on top of a horse.

  That morning, though, Lila was in a dress and stockings, not denim for the farm or my brother’s grocery business. She wore nude-colored pumps, not boots. Her ash-blonde hair was pinned in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. She wore pale lipstick and a thin gold necklace. She had dressed for me on account of Elias.

  “Aunt Annie,” Sophie called and glided up the steps. She hugged my legs and looked up, revealing a row of perfect baby teeth. She was dark like her father and looked more like a child of my own than Lila’s. Long and loose brown curls framed her face. Two heavy, dark eyebrows crowned h
er light-blue eyes, the only clue that she belonged to Lila. Her face reminded me of Marina’s as a child, and my heart beat fast thinking Marina’s baby would be as beautiful as this girl.

  Sophie held up her left arm. “See my watch?” Her voice was gleeful. She had no idea of the somber occasion.

  I nodded.

  “Mama gave me it so I could get us to my dance lesson on time.”

  I took her hand in mine and admired the new treasure. “Can you read it?”

  She shook her head, and the dark curls bounced around her face. “When it’s twelve thirty.” She pointed to the watch face. “The little hand is here and the big one there. That’s the one I have to know. That’s when my lesson is.”

  When Gus was her age and I not much older, children heckled us as dirty Turks or white niggers or dagos or sheeny. They did not know what we were, and Gus fought them to make them leave us alone. Still, people asked, “Where are you from?” I would say, “Mounds,” and they would laugh. Papa told us, “You must say, ‘Our parents were born in the Holy Land—the same as Jesus,’ and that will silence them.” I wondered what children said to Sophie and what she said in return.

  Nelly’s words carried onto the porch through the screen door and the open windows. “This is ayb.” It was Arabic for shame, but it meant something worse than shame. It meant that our family honor had been smeared, that someone had been wholly disgraced.

  If Sophie looked in a window or the screen door, she would see him lying on the dining-room table. There was nothing to shield her from the sight.

  I shut the door.

  Eli begged from the dining room. “Grandmother, please.”

  Nelly’s words flowed out of the open windows: “Your mother disgraced him. This ayb caused his death.” Nelly knew ayb and how to hide it. She knew what Elias had done over the years. She had been the one to stand at my bread counter when he left a mark on my face. She gave me advice, how to submit and please him, how to beg, how to save myself. Instead of correcting him, she worked to bend me and to protect her son’s honor.

  Sophie’s head perked in curiosity toward the open windows. Lila laid a firm hand on Sophie’s shoulder to keep her from bounding inside. Lila had a strong, balanced presence. Nothing could throw her off, not wild horses, not flaming torches or what was happening inside my house.

  “We should have a modern funeral, Grandmother.” Eli spoke softly. “This is not what he would want.”

  “Why do you take your mother’s side?” Nelly’s voice needled him. “Your father belongs in his home.”

  “He was her son,” Ivie said to Eli. “She knows better than you.”

  Nelly moaned her agreement.

  Marina opened the front door and whispered to me through the screen. “Mother, can you stop them?” Her eyes narrowed. She was embarrassed. “I don’t want Father McMurray to hear this.”

  Sophie’s face beamed when she saw Marina.

  “You’ll do better with Nelly than I will,” I told Marina. Blood was thicker than water.

  Marina stepped onto the porch and shut the door behind her. She acknowledged Lila, who leaned against the porch rail. “Eli should let Grandmother have her way.”

  Sophie’s blue eyes tracked Marina’s every move.

  Marina stood close to me and I touched her protruding belly. She shifted away from my hand. “This could kill her.”

  Before I could answer, Sophie’s voice chirped, “Marina.” She hooked her arms around Marina’s legs.

  Lila stood back, silently watching her daughter’s infatuation with Marina.

  Marina noticed Sophie, and the worry on my daughter’s face vanished. “My sweet girl. Aren’t you a pretty ballerina?” She touched Sophie’s curls.

  Sophie held Marina’s hand like it was a fragile china doll. She ran her small brown fingers over the pale-pink nails and the soft knuckles, no doubt a wonder to Sophie, in comparison to Lila’s rough hands.

  Sophie picked at the jeans on Marina’s legs. “Where is your dress?” Sophie was always captivated by what Marina wore, the folds of her beautiful clothes, the silk blouses, the flowing skirts. Before she was pregnant, Marina’s tall, thin body moved like a ballerina’s, and I could see similarities between Sophie and Marina, their long legs and short torsos. Their slightness, their grace. Both of them moved with ease, like my mother pulling bread from the oven or rolling out piecrust and placing the fragile discs gingerly inside the tins.

  I was thankful Sophie distracted Marina, if only for a short while. I was scraping together minutes and hours to add up to the three days when he would be in the ground. I nudged Marina to a chair. The porch was large and wide and shaded by the pecan tree. I pulled the cord of the ceiling fan. The stone floor was cool, and the air from the fan was like a baby’s breath on my neck. Marina’s swollen fingers gripped the rocking chair in her effort to balance to sit. I wanted to keep her outside, away from Nelly. I begrudged Marina for loving him and not me, and I wanted to start over with her. He was gone now. I could have her to myself, change the way she saw me. Soon her baby would be in my arms on this porch and I would hold the newborn like I had not held her.

  Marina heard Nelly crying inside and worry knotted on her face.

  Sophie noticed Marina’s distress and looked to Lila. “Mama’s taking me to class,” she said. “We’re practicing for recital.”

  “Let me know when.” Marina touched the girl’s chin. “I want to come.”

  Sophie nestled her cheek against Marina’s arm. “When is the baby coming out of your tummy?” She whispered, knowing this was a private matter.

  “Very soon.” Marina held Sophie at arm’s length to have a look at her. “And this baby will be as big as you before I know it. I remember when you were a tiny baby.”

  Sophie glowed at her words. “You want to see me dance?” Sophie posed for her. She reminded me of Marina at the piano playing for her father, trying to calm the unhappiness she sensed. Children knew when things were wrong.

  “Yes.” Marina nodded and smiled. The wind of the fan kissed her hair.

  Sophie moved in graceful waves across the porch, her body plumb and her legs taut, disciplined, beyond her years.

  “Allegro! Allegro!” Sophie twirled and shuffled. She bounded into the air. “That’s what my teacher says. I think it means ‘Big! Big!’” Her voice boomed.

  Sophie curtsied, and Marina clapped. “Brava!”

  Lila’s face beamed with pride as Sophie’s chest rose and fell with heavy breaths from her dance.

  “That was so beautiful.” Marina would soon have her own child to care for, and I was jealous of what she had. She would be a good mother, better than me. Michael loved her. He was from an old family—Catholic, but moneyed enough that people forgot his religion.

  “I have a tap solo in the recital too.” With eager eyes, Sophie begged her mother. “Can I get my tap shoes to show Marina?”

  Lila shook her head no. “We need to be quiet now.”

  Sophie’s face fell and we could feel her disappointment.

  Again, I heard Nelly’s voice from inside invoke ayb.

  “I’ll see your tap dance later.” Marina touched Sophie’s curls and looked at me with a worried expression.

  My whole life, ayb had been used as a threat, a control. The notion of it had kept me in line, married to Elias and raising our children when I suspected things might be better otherwise. When I was first pregnant with Marina, he had not yet raised his hand against me, but by then I knew he did not love me. I was sad and lonely and I walked to the train depot and read the names of cities—Birmingham, Nashville, Mobile, Memphis, New Orleans, Louisville, Charlotte. On the map I traced the lines of railroads that went all the way to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Seattle. I imagined what I would pack in my suitcase and how to pull enough money together to pay rent for a month or two, long enough to find a job. But threat of ayb tainted my thoughts, how my father and Elias would be humiliated from my leaving, how I would have to lie the
rest of my life about who I was, who my child was, and there was shame in that too.

  After they were born and the beatings started, I did not desert my children. My mother had died and left me, and I loved them too much to orphan them willingly. If I had left, his rage might have one day rested on them, and the shame of that would have broken me. So I obeyed my vows, and I hoped for better, swimming in the happy moments that I could find. I hid the sorrow of my life as best I could and retreated so as not to draw attention from Elias or anyone else, to save face, to protect our good honor.

  Nelly’s wailing dribbled out onto the porch. “Oh, Eli!”

  Marina’s head turned toward the open window. Duty would not let her ignore the old woman any longer. “I wish I could watch you dance all day.” Marina held her arms open for Sophie to hug her. Then she shifted her weight, huffed, and began the process of rising from the chair. I wanted to stand between her and the door. I wanted to cast everyone out, but I knew better than to come between her and her father.

  The front door opened. “Marina?” Nelly’s face, a map of wrinkles, peered through the mesh of the screen. “Marina?” she called.

  “I’m here, Grandmother.”

  Sophie watched Marina’s slow, labored movements, and gloom fell across her face to see Marina going inside. So delicate and small, she had her mother’s eyes, light blue, like a September sky, so incongruous against her olive skin. I had the urge to lift and hug her, to make her smile again, to hold something good for a minute. I reached for her, but she bounded off the porch. A blur of pink and well-worn ballet slippers into the bright sunlight, she spun like a top on the green grass.

  Marina opened the screen and guided Nelly back inside the house. “This is what we’re going to do,” Marina said. She had worked it out, what was plausible to appease Nelly and to stay socially acceptable. Her instructions included everything—the funeral home, the visitation, the Rosary, the funeral.