Rachel Eliza Griffiths

The Cinder Prayer (published, Lumina, Number 6)

I knew I killed Saul before he choked on his dinner. For the last year or so I felt him pushing me away; he declined my cooking unless I forced him to eat out of guilt or anger. He kept asking about Special Esther; at first I tried to tell him she had gone to school faraway. Saul was like my father; he was always away (inside of himself) and even absent when he was by my side in bed. He was a conductor and rode the train all over the country. We went together on the trains often and when Special Esther was small she came along. Eventually Saul rode the trains alone and wanted it like that; he got a good pension when he retired too. But all of our lives Saul and I had only really needed each other; I think Special Esther knew this, even as a baby, and I was grateful when she took off young. I sent her money though she always sent it back to me. I had an address for her but I never said anything to Saul about it; he couldn’t rescue all of us though I felt he would have tried to.
The afternoon he died Saul had blazed through the door, demanding that I tell him the truth. I was afraid of him for the first time, how scared he made me feel when I had been trying to protect him. I knew he wouldn’t understand it. I agreed to tell him the truth and he sat down, breathing hard and holding his heart like it was crumbling. I turned the radio on looking for a station with no static.
I had never told my daughter the truth about how Saul and I met. It was something private and mine; after I became a mother and wife I kept giving and giving to everyone but myself and this, as small and as insignificant as it was, seemed to be the only thing I could keep.
The story, I understood later, indeed had a decent ending but somehow I had been compelled to change the events to my liking. I think my daughter knew I had held out on her; I think he had told her the truth. Saul had bought me a chicken sandwich only after we did it in an alley that smelled like fish paper and old tomatoes. Saul did not have enough cash on him to pay for me and the car he was driving was stolen.
“Special Esther is a --------,” I said to him that afternoon and tapped baby carrots onto his plate with a heavy silver spoon. “Well, she said she only dances for money.”
“I don’t want any goddamn carrots, Hyacinth. Too bright.”
“She’s gained weight though. Not skinny like me anymore.”
“Deke and Alabama told me while I was at Rummy’s. They laughed so hard, like Lucifer laughing at Jesus on the crucifix when I said my daughter was at college.”
“These carrots aren’t as bright as the ones I made last week to tell you the truth.”
“Our daughter is a whore,” Saul said in a soft voice, chewing. I think the last word tore his senses loose. You could see how a word destroys pleasure; it was clear to me that I had killed him. Saul shoved the food into his mouth. Corn, carrots, roast, spinach, rice, lima beans, okra. He held onto the fork as though it were a raft. Tears fell down from his face and disappeared in the plate. His body trembled the heaped platters of color, which were spread out on the good tablecloth; I knew it would all go to waste.
I had stopped crying for Special Esther two years ago when I had driven her to St. Agnes Hospital because a man had stabbed her. Later I told Saul that Special Esther had been in the hospital for appendicitis.
I remember pushing the plates at my husband’s hands. Eat, eat, eat. I pushed my chair back from the table and stared at the way Saul held the fork. Ever since I had known him he clutched the fork like he had been in jail. This was the first moment it angered me. I took a sip of milk before I would ask him the last question I would ever ask him.
“Since when have you needed a drink on a Sunday, Saul?”