Page 15 of All the Way to the River
It was a tough job for a little kid—making sure nobody around me ever got angry, or sad, or disappointed.
The strain did a number on me. I always had digestive and sleep problems. I was a bed wetter and a thumb-sucker, of course.
My little body was a clenched fist; my childhood dreams were horror movies.
I was a bright and cheerful child (and I understood that it was very important for me to be bright and cheerful), but I was also jumpy, tearful, easily frightened.
At eleven, I had the sort of excruciating backaches that people get in middle age.
My hands always shook. I remember teachers commenting on it: “Smart girl like you, why can’t you draw a straight line? ”
Because being straight is scary , lady!
But it wasn’t scary to Rayya.
Not only was she deeply honest herself, but she had the most sublime ability to tell when someone was being dishonest with her—and she would never let them get away with it.
(“She didn’t want your false self,” our friend the writer Jonathan Miles would say of Rayya at her memorial service, years later.
“She wouldn’t allow your false self.”) And so we all spilled our truths to her sooner or later, whether we’d originally planned to do so or not.
Back in college, I once took an ethics class with a professor who both looked and sounded exactly like Peter Falk.
I remember him teaching us that many people learn to lie as children, because we are given such mixed messages from our caregivers about the nature of honesty.
As he said one day in his fabulously thick New York accent: “Take my mutha, for instance—she demanded the truth, but she couldn’t deal wit’ it! ”
But Rayya both demanded the truth and could deal wit’ it—and that, to my eye, was a miracle.
If there was anything tense or unspoken between Rayya and another person, she’d say to them, “Let’s just lay it on the table, man.
The sooner we see this mess, the sooner we can start cleaning it up.
And don’t spare my feelings, dude—just say it!
I’d rather have it come out all wrong than stay in all wrong.
Cuz if it stays in, it’s gonna be all wrong. ”
And never did I see her use the truth for harm.
One night back in 2009, when Rayya had only recently moved to town, I invited her over for dinner with a mutual friend who was going through a divorce. It was a bad divorce—the kind of divorce that involves addiction, abuse, cheating, lying, and the possibility of financial ruin.
Let’s call my friend Tina.
I’d been inviting her over for dinner a few nights a week, just to make sure she was okay and to keep her company. But clearly Tina was not okay. She was tanking. And she had the jaundiced skin and swollen face one typically associates with heavy drinking.
Out of politeness, I’d made no direct mention to Tina of how worried I was about her condition.
I’d been taught as a child not to pry into other people’s private business, so I stood back and watched my friend’s suffering from a remove, although I was racked with concern about her well-being.
The only way I knew to care for my friend was the way I have always cared for my friends: I will feed you, I will soothe you, I will shower you with encouragement and praise and gifts, I will silently feel your feelings for you, and I will distract you from your pain with my funny stories.
But that night, I had invited Rayya over to our house for dinner, too.
Rayya was a mere acquaintance of Tina’s, not an intimate friend.
But that did not stop Rayya from walking straight up to Tina, putting a hand on her shoulder, and saying with firm tenderness, “How you feeling about the divorce, babe? How’s it going? ”
“I’m fine,” said Tina. “Just a little tired.”
Rayya looked more closely at Tina—the same way she used to look at a haircut from all angles, searching for loose strands.
“Really?” she asked. “Fine? Just a little tired?”
“Yeah,” said Tina, slumping farther down into her chair.
Rayya leaned in. She took Tina by the chin, gently tilting up her head.
“Then what’s with the yellow eyes? What’s with the booze breath? Why does your nose look like that? What’s really going on here, dude? Are we really not gonna talk about how much you’ve been drinking?”
I gasped.
Because you can’t say that!
Where I come from, we do not confront our friends about their binge drinking. And when someone says they are “fine” or “tired,” we accept those answers without further inquiry, because, in fact, “fine” and “tired” are the only socially acceptable answers to the question “How are you feeling?”
But “fine” and “tired” were never answers that Rayya would accept. (I cannot tell you how many times over the years she said to me in exasperation, “Goddamn it, Liz— tired is not an emotion! Dig deeper! Look inside yourself! What’s actually going on in there? What are you feeling ?”)
When Tina did not immediately respond to Rayya’s outrageously direct questions, she pushed again: “Come on, Tina. We don’t need you to stay all zipped up for us, babe. Just tell the truth.”
What happened next was astonishing.
Tina was taken aback for a moment. But then—far from taking offense—she became … unzipped. She collapsed into Rayya’s arms and began to weep. For a long time, Tina sobbed while Rayya held her with quiet ease.
Then, as Tina’s voice returned, the whole story spilled out.
She confessed to binge drinking, to cutting herself, to suicidal ideation, to begging her husband not to abandon her (even as he was already living with someone else).
She confessed to every last bit of the defeat and shame in which she was living.
As Rayya took charge of the situation, the entire tone of the evening shifted.
The vibe went from “Liz trying to cheer Tina up” to “Rayya allowing Tina to be honest.” And the relief was palpable, because the unspoken thing had finally been spoken: Tina’s awful, hidden, poisonous secret life was now on the table, being openly discussed.
Throughout all the sobbing and confessions, Rayya kept her gaze—calm, unalarmed, and fully present—upon Tina’s face.
Whenever Tina started drifting back into the drama of her story, Rayya would put up her hand and say, “That’s enough of the story, babe.
We know the story already, we get it. But we don’t live in our stories anymore, okay?
If you’re living in the story, you’re still living in the problem.
That’s the old way, and it’s getting you nowhere.
We live in solutions , dude, or else we die.
So let’s start planning some solutions here.
Because the way you’re living is about to take you under.
And if the booze doesn’t kill you, then it’s gonna make you end up looking like a washed-up old crack whore, and nobody wants to hit that. ”
“I need help,” Tina said, laughing and weeping at the same time.
“Yeah, you sure do.”
“Will you help me?” Tina asked. “Can I call you tomorrow? Will you come over and help me?”
“Nope,” said Rayya. “But I can point you to some rooms where help can be found.”
I sat back and watched this conversation unfold as though I were a visitor from another universe—and maybe I was.
How was Rayya doing this?
How was she telling the truth, extracting the truth, offering compassion without getting pulled into the role of a rescuer, holding perfect boundaries without laying on any shame, and making the suffering person laugh—all at the same time?
What sorcery was this?