Cheryl Reid > Quotes

“Marina noticed Sophie, and the worry on my daughter’s face vanished. “My sweet girl. Aren’t you a pretty ballerina?” She touched Sophie’s curls. Sophie held Marina’s hand like it was a fragile china doll. She ran her small brown fingers over the pale-pink nails and the soft knuckles, no doubt a wonder to Sophie, in comparison to Lila’s rough hands.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I hung up the receiver and hurried to make the house presentable. I ran to the basement and put his sullied sheets and clothes in the washer. I opened windows and turned on fans to move the hot air. Already I was sweating, and it would matter to Marina, to others, how I looked, how the house looked. My father’s Old World and Riverton, Alabama, were the same in that respect. Family duty and pride were tied to honor and shame, how a person was seen, how things appeared, whether a person was respectable”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“What is wrong with you?” Nelly nestled Marina in her own bosom, cooed to her and looked at her with eyes full of love. I knew I should want to hold the baby and feel attached, to feel love for her, but in my gut and head, there was only despair. Nelly clicked her tongue. “A mother who refuses a newborn is unnatural.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“She loved him as I loved my children, but she burdened us with the depth of her love. It went as deep as misery.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I was shocked to see my beautiful Marina in such a mess, no makeup and her green eyes bloodshot. Her ebony hair, usually smooth and swept up in a French twist, was disheveled and damp. She wore one of Michael’s button-downs and rolled-up blue jeans, not one of her smart and tidy dresses. To my surprise, she wrapped her arms around me and held tight. Heat emanated from her body.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“All of my cooking ended with a tangible thing but it was also my silent prayer of love for them.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“This burial would be done tomorrow, and we could move on. We could put this torture past us.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“Loving a child was the most bittersweet joy, maybe the most difficult thing in the world. I wanted to tell her, she could do her best and her child might see it as all wrong. She would know soon enough, this terrible chain of love, from mother to child, how the love was not always returned in the same measure, how it can hurt as deeply as it could be sublime.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I walked through the cool, sterile halls of the hospital where my children and my grandchild were born and where Papa had died, and out into the heavy, humid air. The sun hung low, bright and hot, and the air was thick with light. This was my home and I would not leave Marina and her baby. I would not be run off.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I should have said no. I should have been stronger when he came asking for you.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I should have created more happy moments for her when she was a child, seeds of joy to grow on. Elias had given her so many. But I was stingy and too bitter to share what little hope I had stored away. If I had given her something more, she would have that now. She would see me differently.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“would have no one who would remember me as an innocent child. No one who held me or watched me grow or remembered things I had no memory of.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I wanted to warn her that carrying a child was easier than labor, and labor easier than raising it.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“That’s how I remembered my father. He called me his daughter in one breath and banished me in the next.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“tied to honor and shame, how a person was seen, how things appeared, whether a person was respectable or not. All efforts to save face must be made.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“I never thought I would feel the depth of pain I had known as a child the night I lost my mother, but seeing him helpless in the bed brought it back fresh. I would have no one who would remember me as an innocent child. No one who held me or watched me grow or remembered things I had no memory of. My father knew things about me that I did not know yet, and I needed him here to tell me.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“That was the moment when love was clear to me, when I had a glimpse of truth, that pain and suffering were the right costs to have paid for my children.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“Thea pointed off in the distance, across the water to the line of trees on the southern shore. “Look how small those trees are,” she said. The river was wide and deep, and across the way the trees were miniature lines of bark and leaves. She held her thumb up and took mine to do the same. She squinted, showing me how to measure the size of the trees. “See how small they look,” she said. “But they’re as big as these.” She pointed to the trees, the tulip poplars and grand old oaks, one hundred feet tall, growing near the trail, and I could see perspective, how something so large looked smaller the farther away you got from it. “That feeling you have, how sad you are about your mama, won’t ever go away,” she said. “It’s not supposed to. But one day it’ll be like those trees over there, not like these here.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“That was when regret washed over me like cold water. I had waited too long to stand up for myself, for others, for Marina and Eli, for this baby girl, and I had gone about it the wrong way.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“Water is life,” she liked to say. “It reminds us we are always moving, that we are alive.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“The wind was dead and the river was still. It looked dark and peaceful, like a sheet of black glass, but lurking beneath the surface was a current, cold and deep, with snakes and tangles of vegetation that could be your end. People could be the same. They could smile to your face with hatred in their heart while they pulled you down.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True

“Who did they think we were? They had no idea the misery that happened within these walls.”
― Cheryl Reid, As Good as True