Prayers and Lies (33 page)

“How about some bread, Mother?” Daddy said, cutting a slice and slathering it with butter. “Reana Mae makes real good bread.”

“Well, that’s something I know about,” Araminta said, taking the slice Daddy held out to her. “Me and DarlaJean, we always eat bread. DarlaJean, why, she bakes the best bread you ever ate.”

She took a bite of the warm bread, chewed slowly, and looked around.

“Jimmy, I don’t guess you got any schnapps?”

“I’ll get it.” Tracy rose immediately and disappeared down the hallway toward Melinda’s room. She returned carrying a bottle of peach schnapps, then carefully poured a tumbler full and placed it before our grandmother.

“What a sweet girl you are.” Araminta beamed at her. “Helen, this here child is an angel. It’s like she’s my own granddaughter.”

I saw Daddy shoot Mother a pained look, then he cut another slice of bread for his mother.

“Lord God Almighty,” Reana Mae said later, when we’d gone up to bed. “She’s not a bit like Aunt Belle, is she?”

“No.” I sighed. “She’s not fun like Aunt Belle.”

“She surely seems to favor Tracy.”

I nodded. “She took to Tracy right from the start. I guess because Tracy looks like her … that’s what she said in Florida, that Tracy looks like her when she was young.”

“She looks real sick. I hope it ain’t too hard on Aunt Helen, takin’ care of her.”

“Maybe if she gets too bad, she’ll have to go to a nursing home,” I said. Cindy’s grandfather lived in a nursing home.

“No,” Reana said, lying back on her bed. “Uncle Jimmy ain’t gonna do that.”

She rolled onto her stomach to look at me. “He won’t never do that, on account of he’s so guilty that he don’t love her like he does Belle. And she knows it, too. She knows he loves Belle like his mama.

“What I can’t get is why Tracy is so nice to her,” she continued. “I’da never figured on that.”

I didn’t understand it either, but Tracy was wonderful with Araminta. Every day after school she came straight home to spend time with the old lady. They played hearts and euchre and even poker, when Mother wasn’t home. And Tracy read to Araminta every night after supper. Araminta loved to hear the Bible read.

“Now, my DarlaJean, she’s a real good girl. But she didn’t read good like you do. That’s a sad-sorry fact. That girl never read nothin’ but them romance novels. Trash, I told her, nothin’ but trash. But she read ’em anyways. Now you, child, you read them Bible stories real nice.”

Tracy fairly beamed with pride.

27
I Seen Death

A
t Thanksgiving, Nancy announced that she was dropping out of college to get married. Daddy hollered and Mother cried, but they couldn’t stop her. She’d been working in a jewelry store in Bloomington, and the owner had asked her to marry him. Neil Berk-son must have been forty, but he was rich and he doted on Nancy, and she was determined to marry him, even though he was Jewish.

“He’ll get baptized, Mother,” she’d explained matter-of-factly. “So we can still get married in the church if you want.”

Neil arrived the day after Thanksgiving, bearing flowers and cider and a gorgeous brooch for Mother.

Reana Mae and I gaped at his paunchy middle and the bald spot on the back of his head. Neither of us had ever met a Jew before. I don’t know what we expected, but he seemed normal, just like everyone else, except old.

“I guess he’s her sugar daddy,” Reana Mae said that night, after Neil had left.

I started, remembering when she’d said that about Mr. Ephraim Turner, who had finally married Cleda. It seemed a world away.

“But I don’t understand why she’d marry him,” I said. “She could have anyone.”

“Well,” Reana Mae grinned, “maybe she wants a fat, bald, rich Jew.”

I shook my head, remembering all the good-looking boys who’d been through our front door, pining after Nancy. Reana Mae must be right, I thought. Nancy must want a rich husband.

They got married just after Christmas in our church, Neil having dutifully been dunked in the baptismal the week before.

Nancy was stunning in an ivory, floor-length taffeta gown and fingertip veil. Melinda looked gangly in her peach bridesmaid dress, the ruffled skirt barely skimming her flat white shoes. Neil looked hot and uncomfortable in his black tuxedo, the cummerbund digging into his soft middle. But he looked happy, too—like a dying man who’d suddenly come across the fountain of youth. He paid for an extravagant reception at the Canterbury Hotel, with dinner and a swan made of ice and a champagne fountain and a live band.

Daddy seemed to have made his peace with the marriage, but Mother looked strained and tense. I’d heard her the night before the wedding, trying one last time to talk Nancy out of the marriage.

“Honey, you’re so young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Can’t you just wait until after graduation?”

“No, Mother, I can’t,” Nancy had replied firmly as she painted her fingernails pink. “I am
not
going to come home for Christmas break and share that basement room with Tracy. That’s all there is to it. Why should I, when Neil has a big, beautiful house with a Jacuzzi hot tub?”

Reana Mae raised her eyebrows at me then in an “I told you so” kind of way. It seemed Nancy had indeed found her sugar daddy, and she was determined to marry him and get out of our tiny house.

When Nancy and her groom returned from their two-week honeymoon in the Virgin Islands, we drove down to Bloomington to see her new house. It was purely grand, with a sweeping staircase and a screened back porch, manicured lawn, and modern kitchen … and on the back patio, the prized Jacuzzi hot tub.

I stared at the tub, wondering how Nancy felt about sharing it with a middle-aged husband.

“Well, I guess she done better than Cleda Rae,” Reana had whispered. “A hot tub beats a fake fur coat any day.”

We both giggled as Nancy swept through the kitchen to tell us that dinner was ready. Not that she’d cooked it, of course. Neil had a housekeeper who cooked and cleaned and a lawn service to tend the yard. Balding and chubby he might be, but Nancy’s husband was determined to give his young wife anything and everything she wanted.

Grandmother Araminta did not attend the wedding or the reception. She’d felt poorly, she said, and wanted to stay home. Tracy wanted to stay with her, but Mother made her come to the ceremony. They both made the trip to Bloomington, however, to see Nancy’s house.

“Big as a mausoleum,” Araminta said afterward. “And just about as warm.”

Tracy laughed as she did whenever Araminta made a joke. And she repeated the assessment later at school, to Lynette’s delight.

Tracy was calmer at home, with Araminta there. Her outbursts came far less often, and never in the old lady’s presence. Reana and I wondered why she was so attached to her grandmother, but she truly was.

Poor Reana Mae often got stuck at home tending to Araminta on Friday nights. Tracy was dating yet another basketball player, this one named Luke. And most Fridays, I went with Brian to the movies or the mall or a friend’s house. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that I was dating Brian Hutson. I thought I’d wake up and realize it had been a dream.

Sometimes I felt guilty leaving Reana Mae behind, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“I been around old folks my whole life,” she explained. “Hell, I took care of Granma Loreen for a long time before she died, and she was a goddamn yapper. At least Araminta don’t talk, talk, talk at me all the time.”

Reana Mae never accepted the dates she was offered by countless boys at school. Not one time did she go to a movie or a dance with a boy. Once I tried setting her up on a date with Brian’s friend Chuck, who had just broken up with his girlfriend. But she said no, she was fine just by herself. And every blessed night she wrote in her journal about Caleb. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t let go of him. She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since she’d left the Coal River. He’d never even tried to get in touch with her. But she still waited, expecting that someday he’d come for her.

One Friday afternoon in April, Mother asked Reana if she’d mind spending the evening with Araminta. Tracy had a date with Luke, and I was helping with the spring musical—sewing costumes and painting sets. Daddy was away on a trip to the home office, and Mother had a meeting at the church.

“I won’t be out late,” she said. “And I’ll be right at the church if you need anything.”

“Surely, Aunt Helen,” Reana Mae said, smiling. “I don’t mind. You go on to your meeting. Me and Araminta will play cards or watch TV or something.

“Long as she don’t make me read that damned Bible,” she whispered to me as Mother turned away.

I left the house at six, carrying an armload of freshly pressed skirts for the play. Reana Mae had set up the card table in the living room and was dealing a hand of poker.

“That ain’t the way Tracy deals ’em,” I heard the old woman’s querulous voice as the screen door shut behind me.

I spent the evening dragging scenery on and off the stage and sewing a tear in the lead actress’s dress. Finally, at eight thirty, I walked home in the cool, fresh April night. At nine I knew Brian would call. He called almost every night at nine. At the corner, I paused just long enough to see a shooting star streak across the sky. I wished that Brian would ask me to the junior prom—Mother always said if you wished on a shooting star, God would hear the wish.

I turned the corner onto our street and stared in confusion at a jumble of flashing red lights. They were in front of our house, and the front door was open. I began running, stumbling now and again over the skirts trailing from my arms. What was happening? Was Mother all right? Where was Reana Mae?

I bounded onto the porch and into the house, to find several men in uniforms standing about the living room. They stared at me as I paused, gasping, looking wildly around for Mother.

“Mother!” I called out. “Where are you?”

Then I heard the reassuring click of her high heels in the hallway.

“I’m here, Bethany, I’m fine. It’s okay,” she said, scooping me into a hug. “Reana Mae’s fine, Tracy’s fine, I’m fine.”

“Why are they here?” I panted, pulling back to look at her face.

“Araminta has died,” she said, stroking my hair.

“Died? Here? In my house?”

“Yes, honey, here in her own bed.”

“But why?” I asked. “What happened?”

“Well, that’s what the EMTs are trying to find out,” she said, looking back down the hall. “But it looks as if she just died in her sleep.”

“Where’s Reana Mae?”

“She’s upstairs,” Mother said. “Why don’t you go on up?”

She nodded toward the group of men standing awkwardly about the room. “They’ll be gone soon.”

Upstairs, Reana Mae was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, turning to look at me.

“She just died, Bethany. Just like that. We was playing poker and I just won a hand, and she said she was tired, so I helped her get in bed. And when I went back to check on her, she was dead.”

“What’d you do?” I asked.

“I called Aunt Helen at the church, and she came home and called for the ambulance. But I already knew she was dead. I seen death before.”

“What did she look like?”

I’d never seen a dead person.

“Well, she was real still and her eyes were open, staring straight up at the ceiling. And then I touched her, you know, and she was real cold. So I knew she was dead.”

“Were you scared?” I thought I would have been scared to death.

“Naw.” She shook her head so that her blond hair brushed her chin. “She went real peaceful.”

Downstairs we heard tramping boots. We looked out the window to see a hospital gurney being wheeled to the ambulance. A white sheet covered the shape on the gurney.

“Leastways she got to die at home,” Reana Mae whispered. “She didn’t want to go to no hospital. She told me that.”

“And now she’s with DarlaJean and Winston,” I added.

She shot me a look of pure disdain then. Of course, Reana Mae did not believe in Heaven, or in hell either. “Dead’s dead,” she always said.

“Did Mother call Daddy yet?” I asked.

She nodded. “Right after she called the ambulance. He’ll be home in the morning.”

I wondered how he would feel, with his mother dying while he was out of town.

“Then she called Belle,” Reana continued.

“Belle?”

“Course, silly. Belle is Araminta’s sister, after all.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I had never seen the two of them together, and Araminta always spoke of Belle with anger.

“Is she coming?”

“She’ll be here tomorrow night.” Reana Mae smiled at me. “It’ll be good to see Belle.”

I nodded, watching silently as the men raised the gurney with my grandmother’s body into the ambulance.

A car pulled up behind the ambulance, its headlights illuminating the scene.

“Oh, Lord,” Reana Mae hissed. “There’s Tracy come home. She’ll have a fit!”

Sure enough, Tracy was out of the car before the driver even came to a complete stop. She ran toward the ambulance, as Mother ran down the walkway, trying to intercept her.

Tracy reached the gurney before Mother, shoved the EMT aside, and snatched at the white sheet, tearing it away to reveal Araminta’s pale face, her eyes still wide open, staring at the sky.

“No!” Tracy screamed, elbowing away an ambulance attendant.

“No!” She slapped at my mother, who was trying to reach her.

I sat transfixed, watching as she fought off the paramedics, a police officer, my mother, and her date, who had left the car running behind them when he jumped out to follow her.

“No, no, no, no, noooooo!”

Her wails filled the quiet street. Neighbors came out to stand on their porches. The EMTs stood back, wary of Tracy’s flying fists and fingernails, watching as Mother tried to subdue her. Even Tracy’s boyfriend stood back, well out of reach of those hands. I looked to see what Reana Mae would say, but she was gone. In an instant I saw her running across the yard toward Mother and Tracy.