The Kindest Lie(54)

Ruth took a detour and stopped the car when they got to the Wabash River, the one place where she most felt Papa’s presence. Here, she could think and wait for her grandfather’s spirit to make everything clear again. A sheet of ice covered the river. Snow dusted the windshield. Mama sat next to her, quietly wringing her gloved hands. Ruth couldn’t ply her grandmother with questions without the old woman taking it as a personal affront, a dagger straight through the dignity of their family. Pulling as close as she could get to the river’s edge, Ruth put the car in park and let the motor idle.

She pulled out her phone to see if she had any messages or missed calls from Xavier. After a stressful day at the office, he often played racquetball at the East Bank Club, where he could yell and whack the ball loudly to let off steam. He hadn’t tried to reach her, so that’s probably where he was. She knew she could just call him, but she wanted him to get in touch with her first.

“I’m tired. Why did you stop here?” Mama asked.

“I don’t know. I guess because this is where Papa took me fishing every summer. I just started thinking about all the memories here and of him working at Fernwood, too.”

“Sure are. So many good ones, too. Baby girl?”

“Yes, Mama?”

She lifted Ruth’s hand from the steering wheel and squeezed it hard. “You know your grandfather and your brother. You’ve known them all your life. They’re good men. Trust in that.”

Fernwood had provided jobs for most of the men in the Tuttle family. The plant did the same for those living in other midwestern cities who came to Ganton, alone at first, without their wives and children. Once they got hired on, they stayed with relatives, sleeping on rollaway beds, cots, couches, and even floors. Then, when they had worked enough shifts to save money, they bought or rented shotgun houses of their own and sent for the rest of the family to join them.

Every morning, Papa rose before the sun came up to press his shirt and pants, even though the dress code allowed for latitude, with some workers wearing wrinkled T-shirts and raggedy jeans. Adorning her grandfather’s head like a crown, that Fernwood cap, even on his days off.

Sitting at the kitchen table eating her Cheerios, Ruth would sometimes snatch his hat and try it on. The cap swallowed her tiny head, its brim falling to her nose. He’d lift it gingerly, just enough to see her eyes, and they’d both laugh. She missed their game of peekaboo.

Sobering, Papa would impart some life lesson. A man’s got to take pride in his work. Do a good job. Do right by the company and that company will do right by you.

That’s why Ruth couldn’t reconcile that steward of values and virtue with someone who would cut corners and put people’s lives at risk. It didn’t add up.



Back at the house, Ruth sat in Papa’s recliner, turned the pages of one of the old photo albums, and handed a loose photo to Mama on the couch next to her.

Mama squinted as if the sun were in her eyes. She peered at the image of her late husband as a young man in overalls, looking cool as a summer breeze.

“I know you miss Papa and that you were always faithful to him. But I’ve noticed that you’re getting close to Dino.” Ruth stopped there and studied Mama’s face to gauge whether she’d gone too far.

“Dino’s a nice friend to have, but he’s no Hezekiah.”

“I know. I wasn’t comparing.”

Ruth was certain that if Papa had lived, Mama would have smiled more, had a reason to fix her hair, polish her nails, and wear the dried-out foundation that Ruth had stumbled upon in the medicine cabinet.

Turning the pages of the album, Ruth stopped at a photo she’d never seen before, of a little girl around eight years old with two pigtails on either side of her head, in a plaid dress with bobby socks and scuffed Mary Janes. She turned it over and read what was scrawled on the back. Ernestine, 1938.

“Now, that was a long time ago.” Mama took the photo from Ruth and pulled the album onto her lap. She ran her pruned fingers over the plastic covering. “Seems like another lifetime.”

“Where was this taken?”

“In Mississippi. McComb. That’s me in front of my school. One room for all the grades. It was segregated, nothing but colored.”

Mama often talked about the Jersey cows and the butterfat milk they produced and how they endured scorching hot days. She relayed tales about her father readying bales of cotton for the textile mills, coming home with stories of how it was so hot he felt his skin melting, sliding right off his body. Just a new kind of slavery, he’d said.

“Look at you,” Ruth said, a bubble of affection for Mama rising inside her. Just thinking of her grandmother as a little girl, innocent and full of wonder, made her whole body warm. “I know you were ready to get out of that dress, so you could go play.”

“I jumped rope half the day in that outfit. There’s one song I made up actually from stories I heard the old folks telling,” Mama said.

“Do you still remember it?”

They brought us here on ships . . .

Then tore us up with whips.

God say nothing to fear . . .

But cotton still king here.



Ruth imagined her grandmother’s voice vibrating in her throat and slicing right through the thick Mississippi air.

“I know times were hard for Black people in those days, but at least you had some fun,” Ruth said.