As Good as True

by Cheryl Reid

  I did not think of my mother the night we buried Leona, but my body remembered the smell of opened earth and what it meant—life and death, living and dying. The lion that I had met shortly after she died was gone. Elias looked up at me. The temperature had dropped. It was a cold snap, but a feeling like hot water washed over me. His eyes worked my face, as if he was thinking, What next? He was as lost as me. Neither of us knew what we were doing or why we were doing it.

  The helpless look lasted only a second. The rain began to fall harder. His expression went cold and he yelled at Ivie, “Let’s get this damn thing in the ground.” He threw the shovel and lifted himself out of the earth. It took all five men dragging her from the cage to the grave. They pushed her in, and she fell, heavy and loud.

  Cause of Death

  My foot left the bottom step, but I went no further. Nelly and her sister bickered in the kitchen. The dining and living rooms were empty of people, but in the living room, the polished mahogany box sat like a sailboat cupping his body. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed and pomaded in neat waves. His nose jutted toward the ceiling and his cheeks sank into the hollows of his mouth. The makeup on his skin had an orange tone, unnatural against the casket’s tufted white silk. A rosary wrapped around his folded hands. His gold wedding ring caught light and gleamed. I wondered what he had felt the day I slipped it on his finger.

  The time since his death seemed long and wide. He had been a daily fact of my life. Unexpected feelings of grief and guilt welled up and my legs went numb. I sank to the bottom stair and sat where his face was no longer visible, only the tips of his shoes, the silver crucifix that hung from the white silk of the open lid, and Nelly’s portrait of him above the fireplace.

  The night before last, Elias left me lying on the floor and drove away. He came back after dark and sat in the car for an hour. He killed the headlamps, but the dashboard glowed green on his face. The silver bottom of a flask flashed each time he tilted it. By the way he hung his head, he was drunk. I left the window and locked myself in the bathroom and tried to wash away all that had happened that day—the heat, the sweat, the sewing of the baby clothes, Orlando Washington stepping over the threshold, Elias in the doorway and then over me and then on top of me, trying to press the life out of me.

  When he entered, he hollered, “Anna,” again and again. His shoes clapped through the house, up the stairs, and stopped outside the bathroom door. It was locked, but Elias, drunk and determined, jimmied it open.

  He loomed over the tub.

  “Leave me alone.” I pulled my knees to my chest to cover my body. My heart raced.

  He grabbed the meat of my arm, tender from earlier. He was strong and anger made him stronger. He pulled me from the water as easily as a mother lifting a child from a bath.

  I told him, “No,” but he shoved me and lay on top of me on the cold, hard tiles. I tried to get out from under him, but he pinned my spine against the unforgiving floor. Sliding, pushing, flattening. He had not touched me in so long. I thought he was done with me or was impotent or had someone else.

  I could not fight him from my position, wet and cold on the hard floor, so I turned my head and let my mind wander. I looked at the underbelly of the tub, the beautiful claw-foot tub I had once been so impressed by, that I had bathed my children in. I would bathe Marina’s baby soon.

  He pulled my hair so tight my eyes felt they would pop out of my head. “Look at me,” he said. “Pay attention.” He told me with his eyes that he hated me, that he wanted to kill me, that he was stronger and meaner, and that I was nothing to him. His eyes said, Stay in your place. He had been to Orlando Washington’s house by then, but I did not know. He left me on the floor and I washed again. I dried the wet puddle where I had lain. I dressed and went to my room.

  “Make me something to eat,” he bellowed from the kitchen.

  Downstairs, he was sitting at the dining-room table. I took my car keys and went out the back door. I could have driven to Lila and Gus’s, or to Marina’s to show her the bruises forming on my arms, but I knew he would follow me wherever I went and this would go on until I was dead. I felt a weight in my chest as I stared at the black night sky. I felt paralyzed, stuck to that very spot, as if he were holding my feet to the ground.

  When he came to the back door and repeated his demands for food, I said, “I will be right there.” He accepted my answer. He must have believed, after the night’s events, that he was in control of my actions, that I had been put in my place. But before I returned inside to cook, I walked to the shed and then through the garden for a ripe tomato from the vine.

  The swinging door was propped open and I could hear him in the dining room. Even his breathing sounded drunk. I made some quick gravy, warmed peas and flatbread, and cut the tomato from the garden. I sliced some ham and took him his plate. His chair creaked as he shifted his weight. He said, “Do you know where I’ve been?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. I did not want to know.

  He cackled. “You would care.”

  He sneered and I thought it was because of what he’d done to me. I left him at the table. I wanted to get out of his way as quick as I could. In my room, I pushed the highboy dresser to block his entrance. The feet of the dresser left scratches on the hardwood, but it no longer mattered. If he tried to break through the door, I would climb down the branches of the pecan tree outside my window. I was resolved he would not touch me again. His smell hung in my nostrils.

  An hour later, I heard him mount the stairs, and then his nails scraped across the door. The sound was soft, soothing even, the way a lover might run his fingers across his beloved’s back. His voice, low and hushed, said my name. “Anna.” He paused. “I need your help.” The curled telephone cord was in my pocket. I would have to remember to put it back.

  I studied the pecan-tree limbs, like sweet arms reaching toward me. I could scoot out on the roof and grab that one. I’d rather fall than have him go at me again.

  I listened to him breathe until his breath caught. After a silent moment, a quiet moan escaped him. His dinner did not agree with him. His voice, angry and low, seeped through the door. “You trying to kill me? You want to be with that ape?”

  From the hallway, Nelly entered the living room shrouded in a black veil and a long black dress. She looked like she belonged in the last century. Intent on his body in the casket, she did not notice me sitting on the stairs. She pulled a chair near his head. Her gnarled hands worked rosary beads and her body swayed. Her prayers sputtered like hot grease through the thick air.

  I hugged my arms and squeezed the bruises beneath the suit sleeves.

  From the kitchen Louise asked, “Coffee?”

  A man answered, “No, thank you.” I did not recognize the voice.

  “No,” I heard Marina say quietly. “I won’t have it.”

  Through the screen, twenty yards away, Marina and Michael faced each other by the lamppost and the clematis her father had trained.

  Michael’s wide shoulders filled his seersucker coat and his hands dug into his pockets. He stared down at the ground, as if studying the grass blades beneath his shoes. I heard him say, “We need to . . . you need to . . .” But I could not make out the rest of his sentences. His back was facing the house.

  A pained expression covered Marina’s face. Because of Michael she was bona fide. That is what Marina believed. His family bragged that they had settled this land when there was only a ferry to cross the river, that they had once owned slaves and their plantation had been one of the biggest and most prosperous in Alabama. He was Catholic, neither of them could escape that, but his family had old money.

  Marina stood tall and erect, despite her massive belly. “Easy for you to say.” Her voice was muffled. “This is my family.” She was a fighter, and I saw the fight on her face. Her cheeks were red from the heat. Marina scowled and her lips moved slowly as if she were solving a difficult problem. Her hawk eyes stared in my direction, but the bright sun was above
her and I did not think she could see me through the shadows of the porch or the screen door. I wanted to help her.

  He held out a handkerchief and she took it. The river breeze rustled the bright-green leaves of the pecan tree. The wind settled and I heard her clearly. “What do you want me to do?” She used his handkerchief beneath her eyes. “She’s my mother.”

  I could hear in Marina’s voice that she was rattled. I wondered if Nelly had made good and told her I had been alone with Mr. Washington, or of her suspicions that I was behind Elias’s death. I wondered if Marina believed I could be capable of killing her father.

  Michael’s lips moved close to her ear, counseling her, telling her what to do.

  “No,” Marina said. “No.” She knew my faults better than anyone.

  He touched her face and tried to fix her rumpled hair.

  She batted his hand away and pulled the pins from her hair. It fell in black waves.

  An old truck drove up and the driver waved at Marina. Her gardener, come to clear the branches and storm debris.

  “Mother.” Eli stood before me at the base of the stairs and held out his hand to help me stand.

  “You are okay.” I stood and hugged him. No smell of smoke from a house burning, but I wanted to know what he had seen and how Orlando Washington was.

  Eli’s face was grim and his eyes were dark-ringed from lack of sleep. “The coroner is here.”

  I touched the new bandage on my palm and had a sinking feeling. “What does he want?” I touched Eli’s face and arms. He was whole. No trace of harm, but my eyes watered.

  “He wants to talk to you.” His voice was solemn and he held his shoulders erect. “He’s waiting in the kitchen.”

  “All right.” Worry lines across his forehead made him look older. “I want to know what happened with Mr. Washington,” I said. “Is he safe?”

  “For now, he’s safe.” He seemed changed, more focused, less anxious, than when I saw him the night before. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted my cheek. “The details can wait.” His handkerchief smelled like his father. So did he—his breath, his clothes.

  In the kitchen, a man in horn-rimmed glasses and short-cropped hair stood by the table. He was younger than me, tall and straight, stiff in his clothes, like he belonged in the military. “Mrs. Nassad?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Martin Dupont, the county coroner.” I recognized his name from past ballots and elections. “I examined your husband yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  What to say to that? Thank you did not seem right. “Yes,” I said again. Today would be the visitation and later the Rosary. There would be people saying I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sorry and I did not know the words of a grieving widow. I tried to remember what Papa said when Mama died, but I could not remember words, just hollow-eyed grief and the low, painful sighs.

  Eli held a chair for me to sit.

  “Let’s go over the findings,” Mr. Dupont said.

  Nelly hobbled into the kitchen. She mumbled in Arabic to her sister Louise and noticed me sitting with Mr. Dupont. She spit out, “Who is this?”

  The coroner turned his head in her direction. He stood and held out his hand. “I’m the coroner.”

  Nelly fell into a fit of wailing. She looked ancient in her black-lace veil.

  Louise turned from the stove and took her sister into her arms. “Nelly, Nelly.” Her voice was a sea of calm. “Hush, now.”

  “No.” Nelly pushed Louise away. “He should know. I will tell him what she did.” Nelly pointed her cane at me and then to Mr. Dupont.

  Eli rushed to Nelly’s side. “Hush, Grandma. No more of that today.”

  “You should be ashamed,” Nelly said to Eli.

  “Calm down,” Eli said. No longer did he sound like a boy talking to his grandmother. He sounded forceful yet patient, like a loving parent who knew best.

  “You should defend your father.” Her voice rose to a shriek.

  Marina would disapprove of the scene in front of this man, and I wished she’d come inside and gather Nelly up.

  Mr. Dupont removed his glasses to clean them. His eyelashes were as thick as a baby’s, and his eyes seemed gentle as he stared at her. He put them on again and watched Nelly chanting one of her grief songs. He clearly did not know what to make of her. Mr. Dupont returned his gaze to me and pushed the dark-rimmed glasses to the bridge of his nose. His eyes magnified. “I have a few questions,” he said.

  “You will ask her?” Nelly demanded. “She never took care of him.”

  Mr. Dupont squinted at me. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes fanned out across his temples. He was not as young as he first appeared. “Can we speak in private?”

  “Eli, please?” I motioned for him to take her out of the kitchen and was glad the coroner had asked for privacy.

  “I don’t need your help.” She flapped her hand at Eli. “I want to hear what she says.”

  Louise gathered her sister’s arm. Eli took the other and they steered her out of the kitchen. “Come with me, Grandma.”

  “No, I should be here. This man needs to know the truth.”

  The coroner looked at his black clipboard and wrote. The pen scratched the paper. His glasses slid down the slope of his nose.

  “That’s enough,” Eli said. “Let’s go outside.”

  The screen door shut behind them. From the porch, I could hear Nelly whimpering. “I will not leave him. I will not leave my boy.”

  “Nobody wants you to leave,” Eli’s voice trailed in.

  Over the rims of his glasses, the coroner’s eyes followed the voices, then turned to rest on my face.

  My palms sweated and the bandage slipped.

  Her wailing sieved through the screen door. “I want Ivie. He will listen to Ivie. Why you don’t hear me, Eli?” Her words were like ants crawling over my skin.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Grief hits everyone differently.” He jotted a note on his paper.

  “She doted on him her whole life,” I explained. “He was her firstborn son.”

  “I see,” he said. “It is never easy to lose a child.”

  “No.” I held his gaze. “I can’t imagine.” But I could imagine. I was losing Marina, with each moment that I did not make my case with her. I needed to tell her I had done nothing wrong in helping Mr. Washington, and if I must answer Nelly’s accusations about her father, I would deny harming him until my last breath. My eyes were hot and my heart beat high in my throat.

  Nelly quieted. Marina must have been with her.

  He laid his writing pad on the table and leaned toward me. “Questions are hard at a time like this.” He cleared his throat.

  I gripped Eli’s handkerchief.

  “Your husband—you found him?”

  “Yes.” I had listened to him die.

  “About what time?”

  “Nine in the morning,” I said, but it had been one thirty when he ceased his commotion. For thirty minutes, I had waited in the stillness. I listened at the door for sounds of breathing or movement. With shaking hands I pushed the dresser out of the way. I looked out. A crowbar lay on the ground near my door.

  “Is that your usual waking hour?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Usually Elias is up first and then me to cook his breakfast and start the baking for the store. But I overslept when he did not wake me.”

  He scribbled and I wondered what was useful in those details. Looking up, he said, “I wanted to say, I have enjoyed your baking over the years.”

  An unexpected kindness. “Thank you,” I said, but I wanted him gone and Elias’s body gone, the flowers, Nelly. I loved Louise, but I wanted her out of my kitchen, out of my sight. I wanted to put him in the ground. Once he was buried, I would be free. I wanted peace and quiet. I wanted the baby to come.

  “Did you notice anything unusual the night before?” He twirled his pen between his fingers.

  “No,” I said. “No.” I squeezed
the bruises on my arms. What did this man know of the postman, about the threat of lynching, about his house burning to the ground? I tried to search his face for clues.

  Michael pushed in through the swinging door, and the smell of expensive cologne entered with him. His clothes were crisp and his wavy blond hair fell just so. I wondered if their baby would have blue eyes like him, like Sophie. Marina must have sent him in, and I imagined she was hovering on the other side of the door and listening.

  “Good afternoon,” Michael said to Mr. Dupont. He stood close behind my chair. “I’m Michael Matthews. I’m Mrs. Nassad’s son-in-law.”

  The coroner nodded, but returned to questioning me. “Did you notice any tossing or turning, him getting out of the bed?”

  I cleared my throat. “We did not share a room.” I held Eli’s handkerchief over my eyes. My heart stirred like a startled bird. What does it matter? I wanted to ask. He wanted to kill me. If it had not been him, it would have been me. The bandage slipped.

  “What happened to your hand?” He gestured to the cut.

  “I cut it on a piece of glass yesterday.”

  Michael shifted his feet.

  “Did you hear him call out?” Mr. Dupont asked.

  “No, nothing.” It was a lie. Elias’s noise kept me sitting on the edge of my bed. The light of the waning moon reflected in the mirror and bathed the walls in a wash of lilac. In the mirror, I looked ghostly. I listened to him gag and bellow. I wanted it to be over.

  Mr. Dupont wrote on his pad. “And why was his body moved?”

  I had picked up the crowbar and stepped carefully into the hall in case he might be lurking, waiting to flush me out, and then I saw his body, facedown and sprawled across his bed. I had watched for a movement and listened for a sound. When his chest did not rise or fall, I turned him over.

  The coroner’s small, childlike eyes searched my face.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Nelly, on the porch, started up again. “Let me go in, Eli,” she said, and I could hear Marina shushing her too.