The Kindest Lie(60)
Ruth watched her friend’s hands at work. The mixing process reminded her of the hydrocarbons, whitening agents, and perfumes she blended to make detergent on her job. She smiled in spite of the distance between them, thinking of how Natasha hated chemistry in high school, how she cursed the Bunsen burner and whined about having to memorize the elements of the periodic table. Now she mixed solutions with the finesse of a chemist.
“Eleven years. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. You ghosted me senior year. First, you started acting funny, and then you wouldn’t take my calls or answer the door when I stopped by. So forgive me if I don’t jump up and down at the sight of you and kiss your ass after all this time.”
What could Ruth say to that? Any excuse she gave would sound lame, woefully insufficient to repair the tear in their once durable bond. “You’re right. I did everything the wrong way.”
Natasha rinsed her hands and sat on a box opposite Ruth. As if a dam had broken, years of hurt and resentment gushed from her like rolling waters. “Was it when you got into Yale? Is that when you decided to cut me loose? You needed to upgrade, I guess. I wasn’t good enough for the bougie new friends you would make. Just tell me the truth. No need to bullshit anymore.”
Ruth’s chest caved as if her friend had bludgeoned it with her truth. “That’s not how it was.”
“You were always the perfect one. The good girl with the good grades who got into all the good colleges. I was just the good-time girl with mediocre grades and no planned future. You know what I kept telling myself? That none of that mattered ’cause we were tight. We were girls, ride or die.” Natasha covered her face with her hands. “I was the fool. You played me.”
Drained and tired of carrying the lies, Ruth jumped in. “There was nothing perfect about me. I was hiding from you and everybody else. I’ve been hiding my whole life. Even now.” With downcast eyes, she said, “I was pregnant senior year. I had a baby.”
Silence sat between them, the air charged with Ruth’s revelation. When she raised her eyes, she saw Natasha stunned, mouth agape, absorbing what she’d just heard. “Pregnant? I didn’t know, girl. I had no idea.”
“No one knew,” Ruth said. “Mama had me in hiding and I took my classes at home. Gave birth there, too.”
Natasha propped her legs up on the shea butter box and crossed them with Ruth’s, making a tic-tac-toe board of sorts, just like no time had passed between them. Something loosened inside Ruth. “You could have told me. You didn’t have to go through that all by yourself.”
“I had Mama and Eli in my ear telling me what to do. To keep this secret. That a baby would mess up everything, hold me back. I was too young to know what I really wanted.”
For a moment, an ease settled between them in the tiny supply closet and they were teen girls again, sitting on Natasha’s leopard-print bedspread eating Crazy Bread from Little Caesars. For the first time since she’d been back home, Ruth didn’t feel a desperate need to run away.
Natasha said, “Okay, can I ask you something? I know it had to be Ronald Atkins’s baby, ’cause you didn’t sleep around like that. So, did you tell him?”
Ruth’s stomach knotted at the mention of her old boyfriend’s name. She struggled to speak. “I never told him.”
Natasha leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t like who you were when you were with him. You were afraid to move or do anything without his approval. Then he started talking to other girls while you were still together. I wanted to cut him or at least get his Social Security number, so I could jack up his credit someday.”
Ruth laughed through the tears that choked her.
“He took your spark, girl.”
That’s when Ruth remembered why she had stuck close to Natasha, a girl some dismissed as flashy, a bubblehead, a chickenhead, or fast as popcorn, as Mama called her. A girl whose curves made Ruth’s body look like a bag of bones, all arms and legs dangling and tripping over each other. But if Natasha cared about you, she had your back. Even as a young girl, she would have clawed a grown man’s eyes out if he messed with one of her friends. And as bright as her glow was, she knew when to recede into the shadows and let you stand in the light.
“Anyway, I came back home to find my baby,” Ruth said. “Well, I guess he isn’t a baby anymore. He’s eleven.”
A puzzled look settled on Natasha’s face. “You don’t know where he is? Didn’t you give him up for adoption?”
That question would forever stump Ruth and haunt her. “Mama took him right after he was born and to this day she won’t say what happened. I’m here to finally find answers. You mentioned Ronald. I never told him about the baby, but you know how this town is. He could have still found out somehow. Do you know where he is?”
When she came home to Ganton for her wedding, she had looked over her shoulder, afraid she’d run into him. Now she needed to know if he had registered with the state as the baby’s father. If he had, there was a chance she would be able to find her son.
Natasha said, “Girl, his sorry ass ain’t claiming nobody’s kid. Ronald’s been over in Iraq for a while now. Army, I think. I’m hoping Obama will bring the troops back home. I got cousins over there. What are they fighting for when the real war is right here with people losing their jobs and their houses? It’s ridiculous.”