The Ring on My Mother’s Hand
“Jeannie Marie. Where’s my ring?”
I had a lie ready. I’d been rehearsing it since six that morning. It’s safe, Mama. It’s put away.
I did not get to say it.
“Brandi has it,” my mother said.
I couldn’t speak.
“She took it Wednesday. Slid it right off. I felt it go.” Her mouth made something that was almost a smile. “I thought I was dreaming. I thought it was Orville. Then I thought, no, that’s the child.”
“Mama, why didn’t you say?”
“I could not make my mouth work.” She closed her eyes so long I thought she’d gone under. When she opened them they were wet. “Jeannie. I made that girl a promise. On the porch swing. She was nine, she’d lost her front tooth and was crying about it, and I put my ring in her hand and said, ‘Someday this is yours, honey.’ I meant it. Then I forgot I’d said it, and I said the same to you.”
She turned her head. “I promised it twice. That’s on me. Not on her.”
“Mama, she’s telling everyone the aides stole it. She’s got Marguerite sent home.”
I watched that land. I watched my mother’s face change.
“Marguerite,” she said. “No.” She tried to push herself up and couldn’t. “That is a wrong thing. Jeannie, you listen.” The words came one at a time now, like coins out of a purse. “You’ll tell Carolyn nobody on that hall touched it. You’ll vouch for her. But you will not say Brandi’s name. Don’t you make that girl a thief in front of this town. She’s thirty-four and she took her grandmother’s ring because she’s been afraid all her life that nobody in this family saved anything for her. I know that fear. I put it in her.”
I was crying by then.
“There’s a letter,” Mama said. “In my Bible, in Ruth, where it falls open. I wrote it in February when the pastor’s wife was here. I told her it was a grocery list. It’s for Brandi. I never could make myself give it to her. I was a coward. You give it to her when she’s ready, and don’t you read it first.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Let her carry it back herself,” my mother said. “In her own two hands. A thing that’s given back is worth more than a thing that’s found. Give her a way to bring it home.”
“Yes.”
“Good girl.” She let her head sink into the pillow, and the clear look went out of her eyes like a lamp turned down. “Tell Orville,” she murmured, and said nothing more I could follow.
She died at ten past six on Saturday morning, the fourteenth, with the sun coming gold through the window over the parking lot and Ray’s hand on my shoulder. Marguerite wasn’t there. She was home on leave, because of what I hadn’t said. I will carry that one a while.
The next four days were the real test.
I found the letter that afternoon in the Bible in her nightstand drawer. It fell open to Ruth, the pages soft as flannel. Whither thou goest, I will go. Tucked in the gutter was a plain white envelope, sealed, with two words in my mother’s wobbling hand: Brandi Lynn.
I didn’t read it.
Sue called that night, crying about Mama, and then she said, “Brandi’s very upset about the ring. She says if the home won’t find it, she’ll take them to court. You’ll back her up, won’t you? You were there.”