Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  “You like green!” says Naomi.

  “Not this green!” Violet replies. “But this was the only color he agreed to. Like he’s the king of England or something. It’s green, who cares what shade we use for Revival?”

  Every year for three nights, Revival was held at different churches in the Chicago community. This year it is held within my walls. Thursday to Sunday. Preaching and singing and praying will take place with renewed vigor under my roof. Revival is a tradition. It is a movement that sparks other movements of equality. Revival lures people out of gin-soaked taverns and dance halls with the opportunity of salvation for sins past and present.

  Other people from churches within the city and beyond arrive to celebrate or mourn or release whatever pent-up anguish is harbored in their lives. These are people to whom the indifference of the world felt many times over is too much to bear. Brown bodies will arrive through my doors, seeking an impossible solution to injustices not provided by the nation at large. But the relief they feel need not be complete, just enough so that they can return to their normal lives with the strength to deal with the indignities large and small suffered because of skin color.

  “Well, he is the pastor of this church, Violet. You know how big it is for Revival to be held here! So many churches are attending. We have to represent Calvary Hope in the best way possible,” reasons Sara, her hand shoots to her hip, her dark brown eyes cutting toward her friend.

  “My father being pastor would be the best way to represent this church,” Violet says. “But it’s a damn popularity contest around here. And we all know King Saul is popular.”

  “Stop calling him that.” Sara’s face tightens, her skin flushing red, her fists balled up at her sides. She hates that name! It was never meant as a compliment, but a warning. Sara remembers what happened to King Saul in the Old Testament. How he was a temporary king. How he eventually fell to David. Maybe if she was more righteous, maybe if she was more holy, maybe if she painted these walls the way her father liked. Maybe things would stop. Maybe Violet would stop being mad at her for things she couldn’t change. And maybe her father would stop.

  “He worked hard to get this,” Sara whispers.

  “You don’t even believe that,” Violet says looking at her. “Your daddy is light skinned with pretty eyes. Your daddy knows everybody on the church board. Your daddy, Reverend Saul King, is so perfect, huh?”

  “You don’t know anything, Violet,” Sara says. “You talk so much but you don’t know a damn thing.”

  Violet steps closer to Sara who drops her paintbrush, which luckily lands in the bucket, though a few splatters mar my concrete floor.

  “Be nice,” says Naomi who steps in between the two girls. “We’re not gonna keep doing this. We’re friends. Cradle to grave. That’s how it is. That’s how God wills it. Forever and to the end.”

  Naomi holds Violet’s stare until she breaks it, bends down and resumes painting. Naomi then turns to Sara who again picks up her brush and returns to slathering my walls.

  “Forever and to the end,” Violet and Sara mumble.

  “Now, it’s a good color,” Naomi continues. “This basement could use some lightening up.”

  “Like your face,” quips Violet, who then flicks small droplets of paint to her right, hitting Naomi. Harsh looks and harsher words almost forgotten, Naomi and Sara run after Violet, laughing.

  They speed through my halls, light cascading in cloudy shapes, never quite catching the quickness of the girls’ movement, their jostling. Raucous pattering of shoes resonates in heavy thuds on my floor.

  “What’s all this noise?” a voice booms from the edge of the hallway tapering off into the worship hall.

  Reverend Saul King looms in front of the girls, and Violet, unable to stop herself in time, slams into him and tumbles to the ground. She quickly scrambles onto her feet.

  Saul King isn’t an especially tall man, he barely reaches six feet, but his compactly muscled body, honed by years of construction work, gives him the appearance of a modern-day gladiator clad not in armor, but a nicely tailored blue suit. His light skin and pretty green eyes cause flirtatious stares from women, hearty handshakes from men. When he smiles, all rumors about his character quickly dissipate like water on summer-baked sidewalks. But he’s not smiling now.

  “I gave y’all permission to repaint this basement ’cause Revival is tonight and we gotta make sure the church looks its best. I also want you to make sure this one,” he says pointing to Sara, “stays out of trouble. Are y’all the bad influence I gotta keep her away from?”

  Reverend King stares hard at the trio. Naomi and Sara tremble, hands crossed behind their backs, heads down. Violet looks at the Reverend in his eyes. Her father is the assistant pastor, second in charge, and she pushes King Saul at every opportunity.

  “Violet, do I have to speak to your father? Better yet the church board? That wouldn’t be a good reflection of your father’s performance. They surely do listen to me, the church board does.” Saul King smiles cruelly. “Also, it’d be more of a shame for you and young Thomas Potter to have to get married somewhere else, if I were to say something.”

  Violet grits her teeth and bows.

  Reverend King pats Violet on the head, then turns to leave. “Good girls. Now this kind of lack of temperance, this arrogance of will is something that displeases God, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir,” they answer as one body. Sunlight cuts through my glass block windows.

  “Will disobedience be tolerated?”

  “No, sir,” they answer, again as one.

  Sara focuses only on her father’s light brown shoes, how they make the same hollow tap just before they approach her bedroom door in the night. The squeaky twist of the doorknob. The smell of lilies from Louisa’s black yarn hair.

  “We’re sorry, Reverend Saul. We were having fun and we got carried away is all,” Naomi whispers. “Won’t happen again. We promise. It’s like you said in your sermon this past Sunday, ‘God favors those who favor forgiveness.’”

  “So you do listen, little Naomi.”

  “I treasure your sermons, Reverend,” her soprano voice almost a whisper in my halls.

  Violet smiles wide, hoping King Saul can’t see from her bowed head the wide arch it creates in her cheeks. Naomi always falls asleep at some point during the sermons! So much so Violet and Sara take turns pinching her sides to keep her awake.

  “Well, you’re right, Naomi. As the Bible says, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’”

  Violet barely stifles her laughter. She’s not sure if King Saul even cracks open the Bible except for Sunday mornings. That quote is from Alexander Pope.

  “And what’s this?” Reverend King strolls to Sara’s bag. “You still carrying this doll around with you?”

  “It helps me remember Momma,” Sara murmurs, her voice barely floating past Violet’s ears. He snatches Sara’s doll from her bag.

  “Put away childish things, Sara,” he orders, his voice heavy with authority. “You’re a...woman now.”

  Violet slightly raises her head and turns, Saul King’s back and shoulders impeding most of her vision. Saul’s hand rests on Sara’s arm and then travels to her waist. Violet quickly whips her head back down farther into a bow. Her arm breaks out in skinny little bumps. Violet tries to float along in thought, tuning out most of King Saul’s rambling. Moments later, she peeks her head up and sees him turning the corner away from them and out of sight.

  Spent, the girls slouch down on the ground leaning against my walls.

  “You know that quote ‘To err is human...’ isn’t in the Bible—” Violet starts.

  “I know!” Naomi whispers, her small hands covering her smile. “Didn’t have the heart to say anything.”

  “My mom stopped correcting him,” Sara offers. “She said you can’t teach an ass to stop being an ass.�
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  For a moment, the girls laugh hard and loud and free. Sara is laughing such, tears spring from her eyes, until Naomi and Violet realize these are no longer laughs, but sobs, angry and unbound. She’s talking, but it’s hard to make out what she’s saying.

  Naomi holds her and speaks softly, “What’s wrong? You can tell us.”

  Sara lifts her head, her tears covering her face so that her skin seems to move with the liquid leaking from her dark brown eyes.

  “I told him, no, but he wouldn’t stop.”

  “You told who to stop,” Violet asks.

  “My father, the righteous and holy Revered Saul King. He wouldn’t stop what he was doing, and Mom’s gone so, I got no one, but y’all.”

  “What did he do?”

  All Sara can do is look down. She can’t say those words, what he did, to her friends. She doesn’t need to. All she can muster is, “I been sick in the mornings. It’s been happening for a while now. My clothes are getting tighter. I know what’s happening to me. Momma explained woman things before she died. I know I can’t hide this. He’ll kill me if he finds out. I know he will. He can’t have me around the church like that...too many questions.”

  They know. Her eyes tell them what Sara’s father did and the terrible consequence.

  For a while, no one speaks. They hug and cry. Violet, however, can stand feeling sorry for only so long before taking action. Standing up, she wipes her face. “We need a plan. You can’t go back there, so we gotta figure out what to do.”

  “Where can I go? He’s the pastor, above reproach, above everything I guess. No one’s gonna believe me.”

  “I believe you,” says Violet.

  “I believe you, too. And we can help you. Let us,” implores Naomi. “Now, my favorite aunt, Lennie Mae. She lives in Tennessee, in Memphis. She’ll look after you. I won’t tell her too much, but she’s always been a kind spirit. She won’t judge your situation.”

  “Tennessee?”

  What is there for Sara in Tennessee? People she doesn’t know, a different way of living, where her skin color is not a welcome sight in most places, an acquiescence, regression about black life and its meaning—and with this, she isn’t comfortable. Chicago has its limitations, a place where white people have created this rigid little box for blacks. The inequality permeating the streets and neighborhoods is not ideal by any means, but it’s livable. Down south, weight of segregation seems to be oppressive and immoveable. But what choice is there? Banishment to the South or the unknown dangers of her father.

  Extending her hand, Violet orders, “Leave the rest to me. We’re going to your house now, we’ll get some clothes. You’ll leave as soon as Revival is over. There’ll be so much going on, King Saul won’t know you’re missing for a while.

  “Time to go,” Violet says. “Say goodbye to all this, to him. You’ll never be back.”

  With those few words, Sara’s decision is made, for a time. Violet thinks she has the answers, a set plan where God will allow everything to fall into that perfect and right place.

  But Sara deep down in a place close to her blood and bone fears she will be back. That decision is made for her, too. Something will always bring her back to these walls, to her father, someone evil, but evil isn’t new. It doesn’t disappear. Men like him don’t disappear, but maybe with Naomi’s and Violet’s help she can. Maybe they’re right and she can leave. She must believe something good for once.

  Walking to the end of the hall, they reach my entrance door leading to the densely packed street. The three girls look back at my half-painted basement wall, then at one another. Violet utters, “Forever and to the end.” Naomi and Sara, respond in kind, “Forever and to the end.”

  They close my door.

  CHAPTER 4

  RUBY

  FOUR DAYS AFTER ALICE KING’S DEATH

  Funeral homes are funny places. There are fresh flowers and pictures of dead people in gold frames. This tries to pass as good taste, but it’s creepy having painted eyes stare at you while you decide on whether your mother would like to be buried or cremated, which shade of white would she have liked her casket, brass handles or silver or chrome.

  Why are there so many kinds of white? Do the creepy eyes think I have good taste?

  Walls and ceilings consist of light brown, tan and bronze. Mom likes these types of colors; well, she liked them or would have liked them. They are boring and she is boring, she was boring. Boring was safe so boring was pretty. She finds, she found reds and yellows and pinks too loud, tactless for a “proper home.” Different kinds of brown she likes, she liked.

  It’s been only four days. I still remind myself everything about her is now past tense, not present.

  Layla asks all the proper questions in her most professional voice. I call it her “white girl” voice. That practiced, overenunciating dialect we all must speak to be considered worthy of someone calling you intelligent or, worse, “articulate.” She’s great at that voice. Not too high or low, easily conversational, nonthreatening, nonregional and unstained with color or humanity.

  I use this voice at the office, but I’m not as good as Layla. She probably perfected conversating like this in all the college classes teaching her philosophy and economics and sociology. She probably talked to her white friends over coffee and impressed her white professors who probably thought she could barely read the book they gave her, let alone understand it. I bet they thought she was the first person in her family to go to college, like in all those movies and television shows they enjoyed. I’m sure her “white girl” voice quickly eroded any idea of ignorance. Well, it probably didn’t do all that, it probably just made them feel comfortable enough to invite her to their house for dinner. They probably even used the good silverware and only checked once or twice to make sure their valuables weren’t stolen.

  Why are there so many pamphlets on dealing with grief? They always use terms like acceptance and family. The safety cards in the backs of airline seats are more helpful at this point. I wonder what the funeral director would do if I bent my body and put my arms over my head.

  My life is one big crash landing, isn’t it?

  I need more than a folded-up piece of paper to tell me how to deal with a dead mom, a demon posing as a grieving father and a color palette making me want to blind myself. But I have Layla, and I’m grateful, for a voice, for a friend, for something that doesn’t consume me whole.

  I hear Mr. Hawthorne, the funeral director, talking to me. His practiced somber voice, low tone, brown-black eyes sad but greedy for the insurance money his place surely needs to keep interring the dead for a hefty profit.

  I find the worst in people. I think it’s a gift.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” I say. I try to take a deep breath, but the room smells funky, like butterscotch candy and fake pine trees.

  He repeats, “Will you be droppin’ off the burial outfit for dear Alice?”

  Mr. Hawthorne didn’t know my mother, but he calls her Dear Alice. I never heard Lebanon ever call her dear or sweetheart or baby, say I love you.

  Layla hands me a tissue. I’m crying. Didn’t feel it, but I don’t feel much anymore. Maybe that’s another gift.

  Save yourself, baby.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Layla replies.

  “Very well, very well,” he says.

  Mr. Hawthorne stands. A well-tailored navy blue suit doesn’t hide his broad stomach, but the material gives the appearance more so of former football player than man who sits on a scooter puttering down Walmart aisles. Fingers sheathed in skin a few tones lighter than an Oreo cookie grip my hand and solemnly repeat the six words I’ve heard dozens of times the past few days: I’m so sorry for your loss.

  Layla’s rusty black car slumbers in front of the Hawthorne Funeral Home. No one stole it. We’re not that lucky.

  “Let’s
grab something to eat. I’m starving,” Layla suggests, her short camel-brown coat outlining the curvy silhouette of her frame. I wanted that coat, but I’m two sizes smaller.

  “You’re always hungry.”

  “You’re always a pain in the ass.”

  She smiles so I smile. She hugs me and I return her embrace. It’s the only true comfort I allow myself. I don’t really deserve it or love or forgiveness. I deserve to be the one on a cold metal tray with brown-gray skin, filled with chemicals.

  Mom should be here with Auntie Joanna choosing caskets and handles and planning a service I’d probably hate. Maybe Mom and I could’ve been here together planning out the service for Lebanon and I could have him buried in an old polyester jogging suit, plan a small service where no one would come and mourn him; put him in a small plot with no headstone—a final screw you. But he’s not dead because life’s not fair, and because God is as real as Santa Claus or rap stars who write their own lyrics or a father’s love or maybe love itself.

  The sun has yet to appear through the labyrinth of bloated slate clouds and the inside of Layla’s car is slow to warm.

  “Where do you want to eat?” she inquiress.

  “Flowers. I want to go take care of the flowers first.”

  I can see her eyes dull a bit, but she tries to hide her slight disappointment and hunger and replies, “Sure. Whatever you want, Rue. You know what type Auntie Alice liked?”

  “Gardenias.”

  LAYLA

  Christy makes her way up the cracked stairs of the church. I stand out front and wave. I should’ve called and canceled. Said I had a bad cold, the church had a flood, something other than there was a murder and I needed to be there for my friend, my sister, Ruby.

  During the commencement celebrations at my college, I invited Christy to visit the church. It was a vain attempt to keep her in my life and I didn’t think she’d take it, but she did, and then she chose the one Sunday that couldn’t have been more inconvenient.