Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  Only a few steps behind her father, Layla says, “Dad, I have an errand to run. It’s going to take a little time. I won’t be able to come to the service this afternoon.”

  Jackson turns around, his brow deeply furrowed, replies, “You’re needed.”

  “No. You’re needed. You’re speaking. I have something important and I gotta go do something other than make you look like Dad of the Year.”

  “What’s so important that you can’t give some time to the Lord?”

  “Considering the past twenty-four years in God’s Army, I think He can forgive me one church service.”

  Jackson Potter’s immense stature when angry seems to give him an extra three or four feet in height. At least it appears this way to Layla, who does her best to feel tall and powerful and not give the impression she’s backing down an inch from this man. Like someone does with an angry, wild bear.

  Jackson bellows, “It’s not just about one church service!”

  “Really? Please do enlighten me. I so need to hang on your every word.”

  “You know, there’s this little part in the Bible about children obeying their parents.”

  One trait she got from her dad that she proudly flaunts is her stubbornness. She wanted to have the conversation on amicable terms, but now all she wants to do is piss him off. It’s sport for her now. Layla’s voice now matches the volume of her father’s, but the venom bubbles and boils with each word leaving her mouth. “That line only works if I’m a child. I’m an adult.”

  “An adult that still lives under my roof.”

  “I’m more than happy to change that arrangement anytime but seeing as being pastor here means you make less than I do, you might need me to help with the mortgage.”

  That dig at his ability to provide for the household, that not so subtle hint of glee in Layla’s eyes when she let those words leave her lips, enrage Jackson and he steps toward Layla. A Bible gripped in his fingers points so close to her face, a few inches separate the air and the spine of the book. She swats it away.

  “I ask again. What is so important that you have to miss service?” His voice pummels and pounds the empty air of my hallway, near the spot where he once cradled his daughter in his arms.

  “Trust me. It’s worth it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So you wanna grab me like you did in the office? You wanna hit me? You aiming to turn into Lebanon—is that it?”

  He won’t touch her. The guilt about this morning still fractures him, and he knows there aren’t enough apologies to make it right, but Jackson feels he needs to protect Layla, his daughter, his little girl. Though he can’t speak the words, share the underpinnings for his motivation, he needs her to stay under the roof of the church, stay with him.

  “What in God’s name are y’all two going on about now?”

  Behind Layla stands Violet, her voice the only physical testament of her presence as Layla’s body blocks her from Jackson’s view.

  Jackson looks at his mother. In this moment, that command and strength vanish and he is a little boy.

  Stepping between Layla and Jackson, Violet holds them both silent. “Let her go do what she needs to do. She’s a grown woman. Treat her like one.”

  Jackson opens his mouth in response, but one look from Violet and he thinks better of it.

  “Layla, you show your father due respect. Now, in the short time I’ve got left in this city, there is no more of this bickering. Am I understood?”

  Both answer, “Yes, ma’am.” Pitch-perfect and on time, the conductor of an orchestra couldn’t have produced a better symphony of acquiescent melody. Layla and Jackson glare at one another. There is no great awakening or recognition and acceptance of faults. Just a momentary truce. Violet produces an immense wall against which neither Layla or Jackson will break themselves so Jackson walks the other way to his office and prepares to worship at yet another church service.

  LAYLA

  Left in the hallway, Dad stomping off to his office, the floor feels uneven and slightly lumpy underneath my feet. I don’t immediately meet Grandma Violet’s crystalline gaze, afraid of any reproach I’ll find dancing in it.

  “‘A soft answer turns away wrath...’” she begins.

  “‘Grievous words stir up anger,’” I finish with a sigh.

  Distant voices and light footsteps echo above us. Dusty boxes full of seasonal decorations are tucked against the wall. Grandma Violet guides me to the old, creaky pew where Ruby and I used to sit and talk after church was over, where I learned what life was like for Ruby and how my father, a man I thought could do anything, seemed powerless to stop bad things from happening to my best friend.

  Looking into Grandma Violet’s eyes I see love mixed with reluctance. “You are just like me.” The lilt of her voice holds equal measures of pride and concern as she takes my hand in hers. Her magnolia perfume wafts in the air with dust particles. “I used to battle everything,” she says. “Made me feel like I was fulfilling some great calling, but I learned you can’t do that all the time. There’s a time for war yes, but peace...that’s the real prize. You need to figure out when to fight and when to be still, baby. Learn this lesson and learn it now. Learn it like I never could.”

  Grandma Violet reminds me of so much good, all the stuff I sometimes forget when I’m angry or upset. Her voice, the gentle offering of her wisdom, reminds me of how she talked to me when I was a little girl. I remember the sun’s peekaboo filtering through trees in the neighborhood. Well-kept lawns. Girls playing double Dutch on the sidewalk while the boys play football or basketball in the street. Power lines and crowded homes. Candy houses on every block selling treats to kids after school. Laughter and a rush to always be somewhere. The impatient cries of moms calling in kids for dinner after a long day’s work. Grandma Violet’s soft and wrinkled hands firmly holding on to mine and my brother’s as we make it home from school. And her voice. There was always a tale or lesson to be taken from the stories she told me about her youth here in Chicago. But the stories, some wild and some sad and some funny, though I loved them, they were bleached, cleansed in places.

  Grandma Violet loved Chicago. Said it was beautiful and big, bursting and violent and dirty and so very unfair at times. But what other part of the world championed fairness, especially for us with dark skin and eyes that have seen too much? Chicago was indicative of life for everyone, not just blacks. There was more freedom for us up north and we arrived with all the hopes and dreams that green lady with the torch promised. From the red clay pathways of Georgia, the long winding river corridors of Mississippi and ruthless heat of Louisiana we came. The Great Migration it’s called, like blacks were geese or buffalo, Grandma Violet mused. The North was Jericho, it was Mecca, it was Nirvana. It was everything America promised and in wanting everything, people are always disillusioned with the results.

  There weren’t so many of those strange fruit harvests Billie Holiday crooned about on the radio and blacks were free enough to come and go as they pleased without fear of retribution from some imagined slight. Louis Armstrong once roamed these blocks, raging down red and orange streets with wintry blue jazz, music from his dull brass coronet to shining gold trumpet, harnessing rare talent with the likes of King Oliver himself! Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks and Lorraine Hansberry stained paper with beautiful words of tragic circumstance and racial pride and sometimes Pyrrhic victory.

  Invisible lines dissected black lives from white ones, and these lines were intentional and political and created with clear meaning. The unspoken rules and written laws define these boundaries. It’s okay to be my garbage man but not my neighbor. It’s okay to be my housekeeper but not my doctor. It’s fine to paint my house but don’t expect to see your work of art shadowing any great halls of museums. Be who you want to be as long as your potential doesn’t eclipse mine. Know your place. Stay in your plac
e. As a result, much of our majesty and power remained invisible to us—lost, entombed, obscured, hidden among the rubble of the past; in demolished buildings and omitted paragraphs in history books. The city Chicago was color-blind; people, however, were and are another matter.

  Decades, some assassinations and a black president later, those lines are not erased but redrawn. Blacks for the most part reside on the South and West Sides and the whites are up north in trendy neighborhoods like Lakeview and Lincoln Square or in the burbs. The Asians have Cermak-Chinatown and the farther north you go of Ashland Avenue, you stop seeing soul food restaurants and murals of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and start seeing taquerias and paintings of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the baby Jesus. It’s a melting pot jigsaw puzzle with very distinctive boundaries. And those invisible lines still carve up the city, separating black, brown and yellow from white, opportunity and a void of such things.

  Though much of Chicago has evolved—the city a living organism of growing glass and steel and asphalt—segregation and its impact hasn’t stopped spreading borders of discord and violence. I suspect that this is the reason why Grandma Violet left for Tennessee. I never knew the exact reason. Grandma just said she had too many memories of this city, of this church and wanted to be somewhere different, try to live different. She left it at that. She left us.

  She left me.

  Having Grandma Violet here this past week for Auntie Alice’s funeral has been a comfort, her steady presence a welcome distraction. When she’s in Tennessee, there is one less barrier between my dad and me, one less translator, one less person to stop us from tearing each other down.

  I want her to stay.

  “That temper of yours—it’s about as smart as trying to kill an ant with a hammer. I guess I’m guilty for giving you and your daddy that.”

  “Can he listen? Just once.”

  “Do you listen to him?” she says.

  I have nothing. No smart-ass response.

  Clutched in her hand is her Bible, old and tattered and held together by duct tape and prayers. I smile and follow Grandma Violet back into the main worship hall.

  With church over, some people crowd around my father to congratulate him on another rousing and uplifting sermon and others speak to Lebanon, offering condolences and words of encouragement. Some like to be seen, some mill about to possibly hear another tidbit about what happened that night, now a little over a week ago. Gossip is an unfortunate language of the church, but in this congregation so many, men and women alike, are fully fluent.

  Reds, blues, golds and greens of the eight stained-glass windows cast light across the mostly empty pews. Each thirteen-foot pane tells a story from the Bible. Most of them about Jesus. His birth. Feeding His many followers with only fishes and loaves. Death. Burial. Past the pulpit to the back of the church, a stained-glass window depicts Christ’s resurrection. It is the biggest in the hall spanning twenty feet from top to bottom and seventeen feet across. I always feel warmth from the colors on this panel. Focusing on every little detail in this fragile piece of art is a great way to not think about the run-in I just had with Dad.

  Next to the drums on the second platform of the church, Momma stands slightly above the remaining congregants. They would like nothing more than to approach her with their questions about last week, but most know better than coming to Joanna Potter with gossip in the first place. And in the second, Auntie Alice was Momma’s best friend.

  They know she is grieving, but hers is a private kind of grief. There are many forms, but two basic tenets involve those who relish in the attention mourning brings and those who wish to be left alone with their thoughts and memories and regrets. Momma is the latter.

  I again walk out of the main hall, down the corridor and open the door leading to the alcove where Momma is perched.

  I squeeze lightly on her shoulder.

  “You know I thought when I got older, I’d dislike him less. Being older doesn’t always calm your hate, but you can teach yourself to hide your feelings a helluva lot better.”

  “Sorry, Ma, when it comes to Lebanon, you don’t hide your feelings as well as you think.”

  “I suppose when it comes to that man, I do not. All I think about is the last time I saw her. I keep thinking I failed my friend. I got used to that beaten down look in her eyes. I got used to ignoring the bruises. I got used to her not wanting me to be involved. I got used to a lot of things I shouldn’t have gotten used to. It was convenient, baby. And now I have to live with that.”

  “Momma, it’s not your fault.”

  “Thanks, baby, but don’t.” Momma sighs and it’s the saddest sigh I’ve ever heard. “Maybe part of me was relieved to not bring some of her pain to my doorstep. For that, I will answer to the good Lord.”

  “Momma, God forgives, right? Maybe you should, too.”

  I feel her hands on my face as she whispers, “No.”

  She walks down the four steps to the first platform and makes her way down to stand behind Dad. He is still talking with Lebanon and a crowd of at least fifteen others.

  Momma never had a good poker face. The firm line of her mouth. The flat sound in her voice. Not many people recognize this version of First Lady Joanna Potter, but I do. My father should also, but sometimes he’s too wrapped up in himself to notice her feelings. Interacting with Lebanon King is the only time I observe Mom exhibit this behavior. It’s as close to hate as I have ever seen from her.

  I understand perfectly why Momma loathes Lebanon. But I want to know why my father remains so loyal? How can you see someone you claim to be your friend hurt someone in the ways Lebanon hurt Auntie Alice and still want to be his friend? I’ve never understood this and so I push back at the idea that we see only what we want. We mind our own business.

  What goes on in your house. Stays in your house.

  But. It. Doesn’t.

  It doesn’t stay. It bleeds into the next home and the next block, the next family. My family. And then you question why your father would bend over backward to help a man who abuses his family.

  Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I’m like Momma. Hoping my compassion is enough. Enough to take calls in the middle of the night from Ruby. To plot and plan with my friend. To coax and cajole. To threaten and scream. Rip yourself apart to help a friend you love, and in the end, wind up desperate, heartbroken and defeated.

  And even though I ask these questions in my head, I come up short on answers. What I need to know, what could help me, help Ruby, free all of us is the answer to this question:

  What are the frayed bindings holding these people together when ties should be cut?

  CHAPTER 6

  LAYLA

  Outside the church, five guys mingle on the west end of the street, pants hanging low, loud talking about their next reckless conquest, and a friend who was shot. Curses liberally added in between every other word tumbling out of mouths. This scene I’m glad Christy didn’t witness. Most don’t grasp the nuance of South Side living and all the work of representing this place not as a warzone, but somewhere with nice homes, friendly faces and untapped potential. Those guys on the corner are the South Side stereotype personified. What people imagine and fear when they listen to thirty-second news stories.

  If we’re to truly look at ourselves and not at our pain. If we realized our value and spent less time captive to hasty perceptions. If we saved ourselves, what could we become? They fear our skin and we fear our power. It’s a perfect storm for destruction. Our destruction.

  I’m always exerting time and energy and effort justifying where I live to colleagues and friends and strangers who believe they have the right to speak about where I come from based on hurried statistics, as if they’re some kind of ordained experts on my neighborhood, my side of the city.

  Shades of black and brown and tan, deep and light, intermingle throughout these streets wit
h a different kind of testimony; a different kind of worship; a different kind of church, and prison or death, a different kind of hell. But sometimes it’s too much. Wearied residents abandon Chicago, a place cradling both rich history and affliction, for Atlanta and North Carolina and Alabama. A reverse Great Migration of sorts.

  The guys on the corner are too consumed with missed chances, lack of opportunity, relinquished dreams and hollow guidance. They’re ready to prove manhood by lashing out with a gun, bad aim and the temperament of a child; they eagerly war among themselves for imagined domain and false pride.

  A few of the guys on the corner I recognize. One of them went to my elementary school. We were in the same class. His name is LeTrell. He stopped coming around seventh grade. Then I started seeing him on the corner.

  LeTrell spots me now and I smile at him. He at least nods. A small gesture, nothing big, but a recognition.

  The headache returns. My temples throb in a familiar rhythm.

  “Hey.”

  Even though I recognize the voice, I still jump.

  “Damn it, Tim!”

  “Whoa. Such language, church girl.”

  “Other than sneaking up on people like a ninja, did the army teach you how to annoy the hell outta people, too?” I say.

  He chuckles. “That talent comes natural along with my good looks and charm.” He comes from behind and embraces my waist, and I turn and kiss him.

  “Aren’t you afraid of someone saying something to your dad?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Tim lets go and searches my eyes with that deep, abiding gaze and replies, “What’s wrong?”

  “Is it too dramatic to say everything?”

  Tim tilts his head to his left, unsure of how to reply.