“Why isn’t your mommy and daddy’s hair black?” The loud, accusatory question came from Loretta Jenkins, a smart, wiry little girl who always wore three thick braids, one on either side of her head and one in the back.

“Because it isn’t,” Ruth answered her with a hint of defensiveness, without knowing why the distinction about hair color mattered, only that it did.

Knowing that Loretta’s question had left Ruth off-balance triggered the other children to giggle, all their laughter directed at Ruth. Children didn’t need details or context to understand differences and seize upon them.

Encouraged now by the other kids, Loretta piped up again, making her point plain. “They look old. Old as dirt.”

Heat rushed to Ruth’s head and she wanted to lob an equally hurtful blow back at the girl but couldn’t think of a single thing to say with all those eyes on her and their laughter charging the air. She didn’t dare tell Mama and Papa about it. She was too embarrassed. For them as much as herself. Instead, she confided in Eli. Loretta’s brother, Kenneth, was in his class, and Eli marched right up to him the next day and socked him in his jaw. Hitting a girl was out of bounds and Eli knew this. Kenneth’s innocence and ignorance of the whole matter was irrelevant, and when everyone saw his busted lip, Loretta kept her mouth shut for the rest of the school year.

Not until much later and after years of prodding did Ruth learn about Joanna’s drug addiction. It began during the eighties crack epidemic and she was a textbook case: starting with marijuana as the gateway and then graduating to harder, more dangerous drugs. One of those stories that seemed a bit hyperbolic but parents told their kids anyway as a cautionary tale. It worked as a deterrent for Ruth, who swore off drugs. In that one area of her life, she could claim moral superiority.

It was a man—a boy, actually—that had been Joanna’s downfall. Ruth often wondered whether Joanna had a Ronald in her life. Had she gotten caught up with a guy she thought she loved, someone who pounded away at her body until the pain went away? Mama and Papa would only say they didn’t know the identity of Ruth and Eli’s biological father.

You’re better off without him, Papa used to say, sure that his love could fill the gap.

Mama usually dismissed the topic. You don’t need him, whoever he is. You got people. Not everybody can say that.

But a little girl needed a daddy: the first man she would ever try to impress, a man who could spin her around and never let her fall, one who would set the bar so high that no other man could ever reach it.

For a long time, Ruth would look at men’s faces wistfully, hoping that one of them would claim her as his own. She did this until she moved away from Ganton to go to college.

And then the object of her focus changed, and she began inspecting little boys’ faces, wondering if one of them could be her child. Had her son done the same thing in search of her?

Ruth couldn’t help but think of her husband, a good man who desperately yearned for children while a man like her biological father had ducked his duties. But then again, she had done the same thing. How was she any different from the man who had sired her? Whoever said the apple didn’t fall far from the tree had been right, and the pain of that truth never dulled.

Eleven

Ruth

The rattle of what sounded like a busted engine outside grew louder. The sound was getting closer to their house.

“What’s that racket out there?” Ruth pulled back the ruffled kitchen curtain and peered out the window. She couldn’t see much of anything, though. The lights on the porch and the side of the house weren’t working.

“Your brother’s home,” Mama said, without even going to the window or the door. She scrubbed a grease stain off a place mat and set a sparkling fork, knife, and spoon on either side of a plate.

The side door rubbed hard against the linoleum when it opened, and Eli’s broad frame filled the doorway. Eli looked just like Papa, the way he stood, that scruffy black beard, those eyes that told what was on his mind before he ever said a word.

“Ooh, do I smell greens? So good makes you want to smack your mama.” Eli winked and bent to squeeze Mama’s waist. “Just kidding, Mama.”

“Hmm. You know you don’t smell any greens. I’ll have turnip and mustards tomorrow with ham. Fried chicken tonight. Look who’s here.” Mama waved her dishrag toward Ruth.

Eli shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted, as if he didn’t immediately recognize his own sister. “Who this? Do I know you?”

“Boy, quit playing,” Ruth said, and ran into his arms. Time had a way of changing people, giving and taking away at the same time. Eli’s body felt lean, yet his stomach had grown rounder. He’d let his hair grow out into a full Afro that appeared even bigger as it framed his thinned face.

“Nobody told me we were having a family reunion.” Eli opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Bud.

“We’re not. I wanted to surprise you all,” Ruth said. A sickeningly sweet chemical odor oozed from Eli’s body. “And you don’t need a beer, big brother. You already smell like a distillery.”

“A man’s got to relax sometimes. Lighten up, lil bit. I know it’s hard to do when you’re still rocking those Clair Huxtable clothes ten years later.”

Ruth rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t even funny. You’re getting off your game in your old age.”