A Cup Of Warm Ginger Tea

When Anna Maria Ferguson knelt to pray that night she had no inkling that her prayer would get answered by next morning.

The police were the first to come followed by the doctor who checked the body of her father for vital signs and found none. Death by hanging, he pronounced and the corpse was briskly taken down from where it was hanging from the ceiling, loaded into a waiting ambulance and whisked away to the morgue.

In the living room, Anna sat in a state of shock and disbelief. She could hear her mother sobbing bitterly in the kitchen while Mrs. Timothy, their kind neighbor prepared a pot of ginger tea. Harry, Anna’s eighteen month old brother, played by her feet, oblivious to the graveness around him.

A shiver ran up Anna’s spine as she remembered how she’d rushed into her father’s bedroom upon hearing her mother’s screams and found him dangling from the fan like one of those plastic mannequins she had seen in the mall suspended from the skylight with wires. He’d looked grey and cold. She did not know how but she’d sensed immediately that he was gone for good. He was never coming back.

A gloomy pall hung over the house. Her mother’s sobs and the sound of a spoon tinkling against a tea pot were the only sounds in the house. Anna knew she should be feeling relieved, ecstatic even because God had finally seen it fit to answer her prayer- the same prayer she’d been murmuring every night for the last two years. She wondered why she was not, in fact, singing with joy. But her body felt leaden. Her mind was stunned into numbness. She felt as if the great big hand of God had reached down from the skies to touch her but so immense had its power been that it knocked her off her feet and spun her world on its axis. She shuddered, feeling suddenly very afraid, afraid of the miracle she had witnessed, afraid of the magnitude of that miracle and of how naïvely she had assumed that God, when he answered prayers, did so with tenderness and ease, wiping blots from the world like a teacher wipes chalk from a black board leaving it clean, spotless and ready for a fresh new beginning. In reality, there had been nothing gentle or easy about the sight she’d witnessed that morning. Her blood had turned to ice at the sight of her father’s body. Death had turned him stone cold.

Not that she remembered him being any different while alive. She touched a bumpy spot at the back of her neck. It was still tender to the touch — a gift from her father for being too loud in the house. For weeks, she’d had to wear a scarf to school to hide the purplish mark.

Her friends had laughed at her. “What a weirdo! Wearing a scarf in spring.”

Anna had ignored them the same way she’d been ignoring everybody for the past two years.

Baby Harry climbed onto her lap. She hugged him, burying her face in his soft hair. He smelled of last night’s tears. Anna’s eyes became wet. She wished the last two years had never happened, that her father had never shown up on their door step that cloudy morning after her eleventh birthday.

Fifteen years ago, when Linda had fallen in love with suave, handsome Ted, she had been a hopeless romantic. After a whirlwind courtship, when Ted had proposed, she’d said yes without a moment’s thought and they’d gotten married immediately afterward in the courthouse. But even before the honeymoon was over, she was beginning to have second thoughts.

Three months later, she walked out of her marriage, penniless, battered and pregnant.

Shifting to the city had been a big move for the small town girl but with the move came luck — a new job, a new beau and a fresh chance at happiness. The soon-to-be mom grabbed at it with both hands.

Seven months later, when Anna arrived, ruddy-cheeked and hollering, John Ferguson had wept, as real fathers do when seeing their offspring for the first time. It was then that Linda decided to give her daughter John’s last name even though she kept turning down his proposals for marriage. Under John’s loving care, Anna flourished and grew up without even knowing that she wasn’t really a Ferguson. John insisted on keeping it that way.

A day after Anna’s eleventh birthday, Ted showed up at their door, looking leaner and handsomer than he had been fifteen years ago. He claimed that he had mended his ways and wanted his wife and child back.

“I’ve turned over a new leaf, hon and I still love you,” he said, in his silky smooth voice.

Over the next few weeks, John and Anna would come to realize that over all these years, Linda had never ceased to be a hopeless romantic. Harsh reality hadn’t knocked sense into her. Instead, she had simply kept her true feelings bottled up inside of her and when she saw her handsome husband, looking lovelorn and remorse-stricken, her faith in true love was restored.

“I never gave him a chance,” she sobbed into John’s chest, imploring him to understand her decision to leave him. “I should have stayed and helped him reform.”

John begged her not to go. “That man is a snake. Don’t make the same mistake twice, Linda. Think of Anna. Don’t put her through this.”

But the sad truth was that all these years, Linda had never really felt anything for John. He had been her safety net, a refuge for a single mom in a scary new city. Her heart had room only for Ted.

John realized why she had refused to marry him all these years. His heart was broken but he was a gentleman and he let her go. And with her went Anna.

But a gentleman was something Ted never was and never could be.

After a second honeymoon, Linda returned to the city, once again pregnant; once again, heartbroken. But this time, Ted moved in with her.

At forty, Linda didn’t possess the strength or courage which had propelled her fifteen years ago to walk away from her abusive husband. That and the guilt of having torn John’s heart apart made her listless, tepid. She submitted herself to her fate with resignation and a cup of warm ginger tea.

When Stuart would criticize the way she looked or cooked, she would sit wordlessly in her chair and sip a cup of warm ginger tea.

When Stuart would slam her against the wall because she couldn’t get baby Harry to stop crying, she would pick herself up and go to the kitchen where she would make herself a cup of warm ginger tea.

When Stuart would take her money or call her names and break her furniture, she would disappear in to her bedroom with a cup of warm ginger tea.

When Anna got slapped or kicked for no fault of hers, she would make a cup for her daughter and say, “Have some ginger tea, dear. You’ll be back to feeling just fine.”

By the time Anna was thirteen, she had drunk so much ginger tea as could fill a small pool.

She never believed that ginger tea could help her. But she believed in the power of prayer.

John had been a religious man and he’d told Anna that “Prayer can open doors you didn’t know existed.”

So, Anna prayed. Every night it was the same prayer. That her biological father should drop dead that very night.

One night, she would pray, “Dear Lord, please make the earth open up and swallow Ted whole.”

The next night, she would say, “Dear God, please strike Ted with a bolt of lightning and turn him to ash.”

Every morning, she would wake up to find that her prayer hadn’t been answered. As Ted got increasingly violent with each passing day, her mother started placing bulk orders for ginger tea.

Then, something happened which had never happened before. On the night of the fateful incident, Ted had sunk to a depth Anna had never thought him capable of. He had hurt baby Harry.

Ted had been having trouble at work lately. He was an investment manager whose investments had all gone south. His boss wanted to fire him and his investors wanted to skin him alive. He’d come home that night, drunk and strangely quiet.

Sensing a storm, Anna stayed upstairs while Linda went to bed early. Ted brooded in front of the TV in the living room. As he smoked cigarette after cigarette, baby Harry waddled up to him and placed his pudgy hands on his father’s knees.

Ted stared at the benign face for a moment and then plunged his live cigarette into the baby’s arm.

Baby Harry writhed in agony. His anguished howls ripped through the quiet night rousing even Linda out of her inertness. She rushed to his side, took one look at his burnt palm and flew at Ted like a female antelope charging against a lion in defense of its young. With her long nails, she clawed at his face.

Ted rose to his feet and slapped Linda across the face. She went crashing into a table. He lunged after her but she picked up Harry and fled to her bedroom. Staggering drunkenly, Ted deliberated chasing after her to give her a sound thrashing. He then noticed Anna at the top of the stairs, gaping in horror. He deliberated chasing after her to give her a sound thrashing.

Anna copied her mother’s example and fled to her room. Bolting the door, she pushed her study table against it in case the intoxicated man attempted to kick it down. Baby Harry’s heartbreaking wails filled the house. In tears, Anna stumbled across the room to her bed, got down on her knees and sobbed, “Dear God, I beg you, please let baby Harry be alright. Please let him be alright.”

Her heart pounded against her chest like a hammer. Tears flowed like water from a burst dam. She prayed on, gasping for air in between words, “Soothe Harry’s wounds. Heal him… May he…. never…. have to go through something like this again. Please…..please… God, for his sake, free us from this monster.”

As the house grew quiet, she fell asleep praying.

That night, her father hanged himself.

A knock sounded at the door, pulling Anna away from her thoughts.

“Dad,” she cried upon opening the door and threw herself into John’s arms.

Warmth and relief washed over her as he wrapped his arms protectively around her. She’d missed him, his warmth and protection and love. She’d missed her dad.

As they walked toward the kitchen, John scooped up baby Harry from the floor and held him against his chest. Linda broke down on seeing him. He pulled her into his embrace, stroking her hair and saying everything was going to be all right. As Anna looked at her mother and father, she realized that God did answer prayers with tenderness and ease. The answer to her prayer had never been Ted’s death but John’s reappearance in her life. He was her real miracle.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked into the sympathetic face of Mrs. Timothy.

“I’m so sorry for what happened to your father, dear,” the old lady said sincerely.

Anna nodded wordlessly. Mrs. Timothy had no idea how she really felt.

“Shall I get you a cup of warm ginger tea, dear?” the woman asked.

Anna shook her head and said, “I won’t be needing that anymore. Thank you.”