Prayers and Lies (27 page)

I showed her the space I’d cleared in the closet and told her Tracy’s stuff would get moved out after Christmas.

“Good!” she said firmly. “I was wondering if I’d have to share a room with her. I reckon she’d hate that.”

We sat down to a supper of tuna casserole and good, hot bread.

“This is real good, Aunt Helen,” Reana said, buttering a third slice of bread. “Donna Jo taught me to make bread, but mine ain’t usually this good. That old cookstove we got burns the bottoms most times.”

Tracy stared at her disdainfully, wrinkling her nose slightly.

“I guess you’d better not try cooking here,” she said, smirking. “Our kitchen probably is a lot different than you’re used to.”

“It sure is.” Reana nodded, ignoring or missing the snub. “But I guess I could learn to use it.”

“Of course you can, Reana Mae.” Mother scowled slightly at Tracy. “This is your home now, so you just think of it that way and make yourself comfortable.”

“Thanks, Aunt Helen,” Reana said, chewing her bread slowly. “But I reckon once Mama calms herself down, I’ll go back home.”

Mother and Daddy exchanged a worried look. My sisters kept their eyes fixed firmly on their plates. I simply stared at Reana in amazement. She must know she wasn’t going back to the river. She couldn’t … not now that everyone knew. I couldn’t imagine Jolene would ever forgive Reana Mae for growing up to be so pretty, and for attracting Caleb’s attention when Jolene herself couldn’t. And Ida Louise would surely not let her come back to church, ever.

“Well, we’ll see, Reana,” Mother said.

“Or else Caleb will come and get me,” Reana continued, smiling now. “I figure once he gets hisself a job, he’ll come for me, ’cause he loves me true, you know. And he’ll need me to take care of him and cook his dinners and wash the laundry. He ain’t too good at that stuff.”

Silence hung over the table. I was afraid even to breathe, afraid the awful, unspoken truth would break over us like one of those big waves we saw in Florida, taking us under and pulling us out to sea.

I gaped at Reana’s bruised and swollen face, her left arm in its cast, a set of long, ugly gashes down her neck from Jolene’s fingernails. How could she even think that Mother and Daddy would let her go back to the river—or, worse, away with Caleb?

Daddy put down his fork very quietly and leaned toward Reana, looking her straight in the face.

“That boy is not coming to get you, Reana Mae. If he comes anywhere near this house, I will call the police and have him arrested. Do you understand me?”

“You can’t do that!” Reana said sharply. “You can’t arrest Caleb. He ain’t done nothin’ wrong!”

Mother cleared her throat sharply and rose.

“Girls, why don’t you clear the table? Your father and I need to have a talk with Reana Mae.”

She offered her hand to Reana and led her toward the living room. My father followed, carrying his coffee cup.

“Good God,” Nancy said. “What is she thinking?”

Melinda shook her head grimly. “I can’t believe she thinks that … that
bastard
would come here for her. Or that Mother would let her go with him.”

“Well, obviously she’s stupid enough for almost anything,” Tracy said, rising from her chair. “She’s already proved how stupid she is, sleeping with her own uncle. I mean,
my God!
”

I stared at her, openmouthed. How did she know about Reana Mae and Caleb? Melinda rose abruptly, her cheeks reddening. She didn’t meet my eyes. I realized then she had told Tracy and Nancy.

“Well,” Melinda said, gathering up a stack of plates. “She’s only eleven, after all. She’s just a kid. But he … well, he ought to be hanged!”

“Nancy didn’t think so last summer!” Tracy smiled maliciously. “I guess she thought he was all right then.”

“You just shut your mouth, Tracy Janelle!” Nancy snapped. “I never so much as looked at that pervert.”

Tracy laughed, rolling her eyes.

“Reana Mae looks like she’s been in a car wreck, doesn’t she?” Melinda said. “I can’t believe Jolene did that to her.”

“Well,” Tracy snapped, “I hope to God she looks better than that before school starts. Lord knows, she’s embarrassing enough just by herself. If she goes to school looking like that, I’ll just die.”

“God, Tracy.” Melinda’s voice rose sharply. “It’s not her fault!”

“It most certainly is,” Tracy snapped back. “If she hadn’t been screwing her own daddy’s brother … well, I don’t blame Jolene for beating her. I’m surprised she didn’t kill her for being such a tramp.”

“Shut up, Tracy,” I said. “You just leave Reana Mae alone.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Bethany. I plan to leave her alone.”

Tracy flipped her auburn curls, shooting me a look of pure disdain.

“Lord knows, I don’t want anything to do with her. The further away she stays from me, the better.”

Just then I heard feet pounding up the stairs to the attic. Mother appeared in the kitchen, her face tense.

“Bethany, why don’t you go upstairs and help Reana Mae get settled in,” she said, picking up a dish towel and wringing it absently.

As I left the room, I heard her say, “Tracy, if I hear you talk about your cousin that way again, I will ground you for a month.”

Upstairs, Reana Mae was curled up in a tiny ball on her bed, Essie’s lumpy little body cradled in her uninjured arm.

“You okay?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at me.

I sat down on the bed beside her.

“I’m sorry, Reana Mae.”

It was the only thing I could think of to say. I wasn’t even sure what I was sorry about—Jolene’s beating her, Bobby Lee’s continued absence, her disastrous love for Caleb … there were just so many things to be sorry for.

“They can’t keep him away from me,” she said, speaking so quietly I had to lean down to hear her.

“He’ll come for me, and they can’t keep him away.”

She cried then, softly at first, then big, gulping sobs. I sat on the bed, holding her hand, and watched her cry until finally she cried herself out and drifted off to sleep. Even then, I sat beside her, as if somehow I could protect her just by being there.

But I couldn’t protect Reana Mae. Not then, not later.

I couldn’t protect her from Tracy, or from the hurtful things people said about her. I couldn’t protect her from the pain of waiting day after long day for a lover who was never going to come. I couldn’t protect her from her loneliness or her anger.

I could only love her, like I always had, and hope it was enough.

22
New Beginnings and Old Baggage

C
hristmas morning came quietly. We’d opened most of our gifts days before, though Mother had held back a few. I had a new record player and several albums. Reana and I spent long hours in the attic room listening to Three Dog Night and the Temptations. Sometimes Cindy joined us, though she didn’t quite know how to talk to Reana Mae. Mostly, she stared as if Reana were from another planet, listening carefully to everything Reana Mae said, watching for some sign that Reana was joking when she talked about life on the river.

Tracy whined to Mother daily, but we had already laid claim to the room. Tracy had been effectively moved out, and until Nancy went back to college, she couldn’t move downstairs. So she slept on the couch in the living room and complained bitterly.

Reana Mae had a new camera from Mother and Daddy, and we took dozens of pictures during winter break. Years later, I looked through those photos often, searching the faces of the two little girls on the brink of adolescence, looking for signs of things to come. Reana’s face stared back, her lip swollen fat, her eye dark and puffy, her grin snaggletoothed. Except for the bruises and the cast on her arm, she looked like any other twelve-year-old. But of course, she wasn’t. She knew things most twelve-year-olds hadn’t even dreamed about. Things I certainly didn’t know.

Three days before school started, Mother took Reana Mae to the dentist to get a cap put on her broken tooth.

“See,” she grinned at me afterward, “you can’t even tell it’s broke.”

So at least when she started middle school in Indianapolis, her teeth were okay, though she still looked like she’d been in a car wreck. The swelling had receded, but her upper lip still showed cut marks from the garnet in Jolene’s wedding ring, and her eye was ringed in a faint greenish-yellow.

We stood at the bus stop, bundled against the blowing snow, and I tried to tell her everything I could think of that she might need to know about school.

“Miss Hancock is nice, but she gives lots of homework. Just don’t talk in her class. And Mr. Burke … well, he’s just gross. He always has spit on his mouth and his breath stinks! And he paddles, so be careful with him.”

Reana Mae stroked the fur of her parka hood, seemingly un-fazed by this information.

“And if Mr. McCormack calls on you and you don’t know the answer, just ask him a question about another problem. That always gets him off the subject. He’s pretty easy, as long as you do the homework.”

Still, she said nothing.

“Aren’t you nervous?” I asked finally. My stomach had been churning all morning.

She smiled at me in that smug-adult way she had sometimes.

“Naw, I ain’t scared,” she said airily. “I figure I ain’t gonna be here long enough to worry about it.”

I didn’t reply.

She still expected Caleb to show up and whisk her away to her fairy-tale life, in a big house with air-conditioning and lace curtains. No matter what Mother or Daddy or I said, she refused to believe that he wasn’t coming.

She liked her new clothes, of course, and her new coat. She liked the bed and dresser Mother had bought, and our room in the attic. She liked Mother’s cooking, and she had pitched in with housework cheerfully. She seemed to look on the entire episode as a vacation, a lark away from her mother and the disapproval of her kinfolk on the river.

I didn’t see Reana all day. Sixth graders were in a separate part of the school building. When the bell rang, I ran to the bus, anxious to hear how her first day had been. But she wasn’t on the bus. Ten minutes later, when the bus pulled away from the school, she still wasn’t on it. I tried to convince Mr. Gonzalez, the driver, to wait, but he just told me to sit back down.

I ran home from the bus stop. I had to tell Mother that Reana Mae had missed the bus. But when I opened the door, Reana was already there, sitting bolt upright on the couch, her cheeks red and her eyes bright.

Mother turned away from her when she heard me.

“Bethany, go upstairs and get started on your homework.”

I looked from her face to Reana’s. Neither looked happy.

“But, Mother …” I began.

“Don’t argue with me, now. You go on up to your room.”

Upstairs, I lay on my bed, straining to catch any sound from downstairs. But Mother’s voice didn’t carry up the stairs.

After a while, Reana Mae came up. She didn’t look at me or say anything, just flopped down on her unmade bed with a huge sigh.

“What happened?”

“I ain’t never goin’ back to that school,” she hissed.

“But, Reana Mae.” I walked over to sit on her bed. “What happened?”

“It wasn’t my fault, Bethany.” She rolled over, punched her pillow hard, and flopped back down. “Those stuck-up girls just kept doggin’ me and doggin’ me till I couldn’t stand it no more.”

“What girls?”

“I don’t know their names,” she said, staring at me as if I were stupid. “These three girls that are in all my classes … they started in first thing, and they kept at it all damned day.”

“What did they do?”

“Called me a hillbilly, first off. Made fun of the way I talk. Said I was a goddamned charity case, ’cause Aunt Helen and Uncle Jimmy brought me up here.”

She blinked furiously, trying to hold back tears.

“Then in gym class, they told everyone I was a whore. Said I had sex with my uncle, and probably lots of other men. Said that’s what hillbillies do … have sex with their own kinfolk.”

I stared at her, openmouthed. How had they known about Caleb?

Then I realized, it had to be Tracy.

“Those girls,” I said, “was one of them short, with blond hair about down to here?” I gestured at my waist.

Reana Mae nodded. “That’s the worst one. She said I was trash and belonged in a reform school.”

“That’s Jenny Spangler,” I said. “And the others were probably Amy Adams and Patty O’Hearn.”

Reana didn’t answer. She just stared at me.

“How’d they know, Bethany?” she asked, not taking her eyes from mine.

“Oh, God, Reana, I didn’t tell them!” I couldn’t believe she would even think that. “Jenny’s big sister is Lynette. That’s Tracy’s best friend.”

Reana Mae nodded solemnly. “That’s what I figured,” she said. “No one else could be so goddamn mean.”

“So, what happened then? When they kept teasing you, I mean.”

“Well, I ignored them for a while, you know. But at lunchtime one of them—the one with real short hair—she dumped her whole tray of food on me! Got macaroni and cheese all over my new sweater. And then they all just laughed, like it was so goddamned funny.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching for her hand.

“Well, you don’t have to be sorry for me, Bethany Marie. No one has to be sorry for me! I can take care of myself.”

“What did you do?”

“I knocked her flat on her ass.”

“Oh, Reana, no! You didn’t!”

“Oh yes, I did.” She smiled grimly. “I got her with one to the chin. Hit her so hard she went right down. Then I hit the blond one, too.”

“Oh my God! You hit Jenny Spangler?”

“I guess she’s got a shiner worse than this one.” Reana Mae smiled again, pointing to her own eye.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Every once in a while, boys got in a fight in the lunchroom or in gym. But girls never fought—never! What would everyone think? God, what did Mother think?

“The tall one, the one with the long nose, she ran off and told a teacher. So here came this big old fat bastard, no hair on his head, looking fit to be tied.”