The Kindest Lie(84)
Midnight nodded. “You’re related to Bo? You all don’t look alike,” he said, thinking of his baby sister, wondering if she would have had sandy hair and blue eyes like he did.
“Closer than blood. We not into that funny shit, now, but we cool. Like brothers. I didn’t have my father around when I was growing up. Don’t even know that nigga’s name.”
L-Boogie gave Midnight a serious look and leaned across the table.
“Don’t get no ideas now about repeating that word, though. You hear?”
Daddy had used that word before, when he talked about Eli Tuttle getting better shifts at the plant. But he’d said it different, the way it came out of his mouth wasn’t the same, and Midnight knew it was a bad word. Granny flipped off the radio in the car whenever a song with that word came on. He didn’t understand why, but every time he heard the word, his blood curdled like milk left outside in the heat.
When Midnight realized L-Boogie was waiting for an answer, he said, “I hear you.”
L-Boogie pulled out his cell phone, swiped his left thumb across the screen, and stopped on a picture of a kid in a wheelchair, a boy with a round face and no neck holding a bright orange balloon that said Get Well Soon. In the photo, nurses bent over and stooped to his level, smiling for the camera, but the boy stared blankly.
“That’s my cousin Duron right there. He’s a poet now. I put some of his rhymes to music and he might get a record deal. Anyway, some dude busted a cap in him six years ago. Shot me, too.” L-Boogie raised his shirt to show a thick, ropy scar on his belly.
“Duron can’t feel a thing below his waist.”
Midnight touched his own arm and thought about the nerve damage and how it could be permanent.
L-Boogie continued: “When Bo heard about it, he helped our family pay for some of the operations and went in with me to buy him this chair. My auntie didn’t have to come out of her pocket for nothing. Bo knew she didn’t have the money and he stepped up as a man. He’s like a brother to me.”
He reared back in the booth, stretched one arm across the back of the seat, and took a slow sip of coffee, making a slurping sound. “Looks like you could use some real brothers, too.”
L-Boogie’s mouth was on the cup, but his eyes stayed on Midnight, and it was like he was silently telling him something important. As if he knew things about the world Midnight couldn’t possibly know. Midnight studied L-Boogie, trying to figure out what he meant without coming out and asking him. Some things he knew for sure. No one in Ganton wanted him around unless they could use him. Tolerating him just to have someone to be the butt of their jokes. Being nice to get information. Midnight had never wanted a baby sister until he almost had one. And he had never wanted a big brother until he figured L-Boogie was offering to be one.
“You feel me?” L-Boogie asked.
A doughnut hole bobbed in Midnight’s hot chocolate and he swirled it around with his tongue and nodded. “I feel you.”
Thirty
Ruth
The Sunday after Christmas, Ruth walked up the stairs to Friendship Baptist Church and heard a strident chord from the organ echoing from the windows, the melody as familiar to Ruth as an old nursery rhyme, but still slightly out of memory’s reach. Red poinsettias lined the entrance to the church. Two Black women in stark white suits and white pillbox hats stood stiffly, like dance club bouncers, holding programs in their white-gloved hands, all puffed up with false power. They frowned when Ruth approached.
She ran through a mental checklist:
She’d showered that morning.
Her hair was freshly flat-ironed.
She’d popped a spearmint Altoid in the car.
She’d stomped the brown slush from her boots before entering.
Neither of the women looked familiar, which wasn’t unusual since she hadn’t been back here since her wedding. Their eyes traveled the length of her body, but they said nothing.
“Good morning,” Ruth said, and reached for one of the programs.
“Every morning the Lord gives us is good,” one of the women corrected her, smiling, but showing no teeth.
The church filled quickly, and within minutes Natasha appeared by Ruth’s side, holding Camila by the hand.
“Your hair’s looking fly, girl. Who did it?” Natasha laughed at her own shameless plug and attempt at humor. She’d flat-ironed Ruth’s hair for the service so that Mama couldn’t complain that her granddaughter had scared away the saints and even the sinners.
“You are a magician, but I’m going back to my natural style as soon as service is over,” Ruth said, taking in the congregants, most of whom were dressed in their Sunday best and likely still rocking relaxers.
This church had raised her, and she remembered sitting in Mama’s lap in the choir stand and waiting long after service was over for Papa to be done taking care of deacon business.
Keisha was to be baptized today, so many in her family sat in reserved seats up front. The girl stood by one of the front pews in a long white chiffon dress, her arms extended out from her sides while Mama tied a lilac satin bow at her waist. Her thick hair, pulled into a bun, sat high atop her head. Cassie licked her fingers, then smoothed her daughter’s edges.
Keisha wriggled in her mother’s grasp, tripping over the hem of her dress, squirming to free herself from the pageantry of her baptism. Sitting on the pew, Teddy and Troy reminded Ruth of a young Eli, fidgeting in their suits, tugging at itchy shirt collars, and kicking the back of the seat in front of them.