Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  Cool night air dissipates among the crowded bodies and heavy perfume. The penitent line up in front of the pulpit for a touch from the appointed one, from King Saul.

  Coming down the stage, King Saul chooses a woman from the shuddering crowd of sinners, one who isn’t a member of his church, but attends a church on the West Side of the city. “Sista, sista, tell me why you’re here tonight?”

  The young lady King Saul singles out is barely twenty, a round face, the color of melted chocolate. “My momma’s sick. Doctor said she ain’t got much time. She’s down in Georgia and I can’t get to her.”

  Saul shakes his head, putting his arm around the girl’s shoulders. Sara shudders.

  “What’s your name, child?”

  “Hattie. My name’s Hattie Brown.”

  “Well, Hattie, we gonna pray in Jesus’s name! Lord, we come to you bended knee and body bowed on behalf of dear Sister Hattie Brown and her mother...”

  The deacons, like a flock of finely tailored birds, place their hands on King Saul’s shoulders, the church nurses dressed in white surround Hattie Brown and put their hands on her shoulders, they steady her in case she is overcome with the Holy Spirit. Each group imbues whatever goodwill or faith they can muster; they in earnest pray for Hattie, for her mother, pray their prayers aren’t superficial wishes, but instead powerful commands. Some of them imagine Hattie’s mother arising from her hospital bed at that very moment, healed from whatever ailment currently afflicts her body.

  Tears soak Hattie’s face as King Saul bellows out to the Lord. Many in the congregation rise to their feet, yell out: “Help her, Lord!”

  “Heal her, Jesus!”

  “We bind Satan!”

  In all directions, a rush of voices. Bodies sway from side to side, in communion, in plea to God, most never knowing if their prayers will be answered. There is freedom in their cries, there is desire for alignment with a force larger than them. There is oneness in these moments, however temporal they may be, and I am filled with something pure and radiant.

  Could this be the presence of God?

  Makeshift fans born from folded paper, attempt to circulate the heavy air in my balcony. Children snore softly in laps while their parents look up and over to the congregation below. Their bodies, hardened by manual labor and persistent indifference, are tucked up and away from others with slightly more money and more prestige. The grocery store owner, the elementary schoolteacher, those who could afford the celluloid fans with hand-painted decorations of the Bible or Christ’s crucifixion, they perch in the plush pews on the floor, closer to the preacher, closer to salvation. But words spoken can rise, can climb and find ears up here just the same as on the floor.

  Reverend Saul King steps to the pulpit from the altar, especially joyous as he knows the count from the two offerings collected thus far. After that performance, where the people felt as if the Lord himself touched them, he’ll have one more offering right before the Benediction, the prayer and dismissal. A nice night indeed he reckons. He can soothe whatever ails their troubled souls. He’s good with words. He’s good with people, most of them. He’s good at everything. That’s why a few congregants are jealous of him, he tells himself. It’s why they’ll do anything, any-damn-thing, to steal away what he’s worked so hard for. Like Assistant Pastor Andrew Morrison, Violet’s father, who barely conceals his envy behind a flat voice and tepid grins and weak handshakes. Those people aren’t meant to lead, not like him, he believes. This church, the trusting faces he brought through the door, the money in the collection plate are his! His alone! God help anyone who’d try to take it away!

  He’ll revel in his victory, in his belief of wholeness. He’ll speak of Jesus on the cross and get each congregant to see themselves. He’ll get them to see him as holy as God, as righteous, damn near as perfect! He’s good at that.

  Looking out at the crowd, he sees Sara is smiling. He swears she is, and this makes King Saul happy. There is no one to question his power, nothing to usurp his rule, over this church and his home he shall reign forever. And ever.

  Amen!

  JACKSON

  I am making yet another trek to yet another church to deliver yet another sermon about spiritual characteristics of which I’m in deeply short supply. Roscoe Alman asked me to speak at his church’s anniversary service a month ago. And I agreed because a month ago everything was fine; rather everything had the illusion of appearing fine and that was good enough for me. Alice wasn’t dead. Lebanon wasn’t hustling me for more money and a politician wasn’t trying to bribe me for an advantage.

  The tension in the car makes it hard for me to focus on my next sermon. From Joanna’s silence and the rigid fold of her crossed arms, I can tell she’s upset about the conversation I had with Layla earlier today. I saw my mom speak to Joanna before she got in the car. I know Mom relayed the information in absolute detail, from the timbre of our voices to the exact position of each dust particle in the air.

  “Are you going to say anything?” I say, looking peripherally at the grim set of Joanna’s mouth.

  “I’m measuring my words, because anything I say now could be out of anger and hurtful.”

  “You know I’m not always the one to blame.”

  “No one said anything about blame. You blame yourself enough for things that can’t be changed.”

  I shake my head. “I thought you said you were going to measure your words.”

  Joanna continues, “You need to learn how to talk to Layla. Not lecture her. Not overestimate your authority with her.”

  “You just took everything Mom said for fact. You weren’t there!”

  “I don’t have to be there because I deal with you both all the time! I referee and pass messages between the two of you because you don’t talk to each other. And your son, J.P., dismisses you altogether.”

  I feel like I’m trying to breathe underwater.

  In the middle of the street, I stop our black Hyundai Sonata in front of a sturdy three-story gray stone apartment building on Garfield Boulevard. The metallic rush of cars on the nearby Dan Ryan fills my ears. I turn to Joanna. Sun refracts the light causing bursts of rainbow patterns in the car covering our hands.

  “Let’s lay it out. You say you don’t blame me, but you blame me for not being there when they were younger.”

  “Jackson, that was your choice. Yours. And I did what I’ve always done, which is whatever I have to do.”

  “God is important. We must place Him above all else. I want Layla and J.P. to see that by how I live and I don’t think they get that. If they ever will.”

  “Baby, you placed church above your family. Not God.”

  “So you do resent me. For being gone. What else are you holding against me? For introducing Alice to Lebanon? I could have never known it would turn out likes this.”

  “She was a grown woman and made her own decisions. I made my decisions, too. I could have offered her a place to stay the first time Lebanon hit her.”

  “He wasn’t always that way.”

  “You’re holding on to a person who isn’t there anymore.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  My hands are gripping the steering wheel so firmly my fingers are numb. The loud, booming voice I’ve used to deliver so many charismatic sermons can’t even whisper now. Not about a winter night in a hotel room, how Lebanon took the blame for a sin I committed while I sat safe and away and he sat in a prison cell. I can’t tell my wife what is shared between me and a man who stopped being a friend long ago and became an anchor around my neck. I can’t tell her about Syrus Myllstone.

  Joanna’s brown eyes look at me, celestially twinkling. They could unlock the mysteries of God’s universe if she looked at the heavens the right way, but she can’t comprehend why I’m so deeply rooted in my own anguish.

  “Jac
kson, talk to me. Please.”

  “There was a guy. Me and Lebanon... I mean I—”

  A car horn blares behind us interrupting my confession, taking me away from this moment, and I’m slammed back into my shame.

  “I have to make a quick stop.”

  Starting the car again, I drive east. Joanna’s perfume wafts throughout the car and I don’t dare turn toward her again. She glances at me out of the corner of her eye, then stares out the window as the landscape blurs until I stop near 37th and State Street. The small, nondescript storefront buildings on the block vary in size and shape. Across the street, newly constructed apartment buildings with giant windows line the block. The wind pummels my back, urging me to move faster. Behind me the Green Line train chugs past on the elevated tracks. The Chicago Bee Library is on my right side, and though I’m pressed for time, though I have a wife who’s not happy with me and though I must deliver a check that might bankrupt my church, I still stop.

  The structure housed a black newspaper, the Chicago Bee, and I always imagined what went on there. What injustices were reported, how words nicked and chipped away at wrongs endured by an oppressed part of America. My father would bring me and Lebanon by here when the building held a cosmetics firm and tell us about the history. The Chicago Bee, the Chicago Defender, were only two of the black-owned papers in America, but they ran in this city. This wasn’t in our hand-me-down history books. It was told orally by my father to me, and I brought Layla and J.P. when they were little, and I told them what I remembered from my father about these papers, about our people’s time here. Maybe they’ll visit the same block with their children and repeat the story, our collective history, that unless told remains buried in this city.

  “Still a nice building. Remember when your dad would bring us here?”

  I turn around to find Lebanon with a dirty wrinkled brown bag in his hand. I give him the envelope. And he smirks, easy and arrogant. I suppress the desire to punch him. “Joanna not too thrilled with you giving me this, I suppose. What did she say?”

  “What do you care about the conversations between me and my wife?”

  “Watch your tone, Jackson. I’m just trying to make sure she won’t make things complicated. She has a talent for that you know. Can’t tell you how many times she almost got Alice to leave me.”

  The wind picks up even more, lifting the tails of our coats, the few remaining dead leaves on the street carelessly roll down the block. “You almost sound impressed someone could go against you.”

  “I respect it in a way. Someone’s got to have the balls in your family.”

  I take a step closer to Lebanon. “That’s nice. Now, leave Joanna’s name out of your mouth and take the last of the money I’m ever going to give to you.”

  “Did you practice that line, like you do one of your sermons?”

  I glance down the block. I could still hit him. Punch him and leave him on the street hurt and bleeding, and it’d feel so good to do it. But I have a church to speak at in half an hour, and I can’t explain away bruised knuckles and blood on my suit.

  “You could try it, Jackson. You could try and hit me if you want, but don’t think I’m an easy win. Besides, Joanna is waiting for you.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Yeah, you want to hit me. I know that look well when it comes to me.”

  He could always do that, say what I’m thinking before I said a word. It pissed me off and fascinated me at the same time. When we were younger, that made him a great friend. Now, his ability to reach into my being and cypher my thoughts is a violation, one I can’t prevent.

  “I was jealous of you when we were younger,” Lebanon continues. “You had a nice life, and I figured if we hung out enough, your life would be my life. If we were friends. Your mom would be mine. Pastor Thomas, too. Even dead your father was better than the one I never had.”

  I meet his gaze, but it’s unfocused. The beat of his voice reminds me of someone telling a story to people round a campfire.

  “You know what it was like with her. The drinking, the hitting, the men in and out. Being with you and Ms. Violet, I was good for just a little while. I used that to get me through everything else.”

  There’s no response needed for these ancient memories so I don’t interrupt.

  “I ached to be with y’all, but I know I couldn’t stay too long, be happy too long. There’s always a sad part to being happy.”

  When we play as little boys, I am a king and Lebanon is a knight. Sometimes Lebanon wants to be the king, but he is just happy to be in a place where he can breathe and where shadows don’t overrun the light. In the backyard of my home, we slay dragons and save princesses and defeat an evil witch. We wear robes of gold and red, old bedsheets Momma ties around our necks. In our urban kingdom, the difference between good and evil is simple, a line drawn in the dirt. And, after a night or two or three, Sara always comes for Lebanon, takes him back to the apartment. She doesn’t want her son but can’t let him be free from whatever ghosts torment her mind.

  Just like that I feel sorry for him. I don’t know how he can reach into my mind and influence me this way.

  “Look, I won’t bother you anymore, if you do this one last thing for me,” says Lebanon.

  “To never have to see you again, deal with your favors, I’ll do anything you want.”

  Lebanon smirks again, the easy, arrogant one from before. He shoves the dirty brown paper bag into my hand. “Be careful what you say, Jackson. Get rid of what’s in this bag, and you won’t see me again. Ever.”

  Without another word, Lebanon turns and walks way.

  I open the bag, the dirt from it staining my fingers. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and look again hoping to see something different and not a gun, the one I’m sure killed Alice.

  CHAPTER 8

  RUBY

  TWELVE DAYS BEFORE ALICE KING’S DEATH

  Before I open the door I listen behind it, the low and steady music of sewing machine whir, of cutting fabric and snapping thread, the rhythm of the pedal and the dull knock of the chair against the floor as Mom twists and turns to adjust a hem or stitch. I’ve never seen her nick or cut herself when she sews. And she smiles this smile, like everything is rightly placed in the world along with the seams on a quilt. This is her happy or some version of it when she is alone and apart from me or Lebanon. It’s nice she has something she loves that doesn’t hurt her.

  Mom sings the same song each time she closes herself in this room.

  Ask the Savior to help you. Comfort, strengthen and keep you; He is willing to aid you; He will carry you through.

  It’s a pretty song, and I wish I could believe the words. It brings me a memory associated with hope or love or some other good feeling. When I hear this song, I reach back into my mind. I remember the creak of the porch in Tennessee as Grandma Naomi rocked back and forth in her wicker chair. Billowy wisps of white dandelion fluff float by, tickle my nose, and fall back down on the tops of the grass. I can almost feel the sun on my knees and the split board of the top stair slightly digging into my thigh. I don’t move though. I’m tasting the sweetness of the tea as it slips sweet and cold to the back of my throat. I hear laughter. My laughter. Grandma smiles at me, and I’m happy and free in the Tennessee sunlight, hidden in its indigo dreams.

  Ask the Savior to help you. Comfort, strengthen and keep you; He is willing to aid you; He will carry you through.

  Light floods the hall from the sewing room, and I stand face-to-face with Mom; the wrinkles around her mouth pulling down her lips into a tight smile.

  “You realize you were singing, Ruby?”

  “No.”

  “Your singing is just like Mom’s. So pretty. You’re such a pretty girl.” She caresses my face. The faraway sound in her voice lingers in my ears and burrows its way into my heart, cracking it just a little bit more. “Wa
nna come sit down and keep me company for a minute or two?”

  I move a stray hair from her forehead and she flinches, then smiles wide. I can never really say no to Momma. She asks for so little. When it comes to everything, even people loving her, she asks for so little. She should ask for more. We both should ask for more, believe we deserve more.

  “So how’s work, baby girl?”

  “The same. Not much to report. Not a lot of overtime, but I’ll be able to help with the mortgage.”

  “No, no. Just wanted to make sure you were good there. Happy.”

  “Happy?”

  “Yeah. That’s important.”

  I lean forward and Mom scoots her chair away, at a slightly different angle, so that if I were to try to touch her, I’d be just out of reach.

  “Why’d you move?”

  “It’s just these stitches are giving me the blues and my back is acting up.”

  Grabbing a dark green pillow from the small chair next to her, I stand behind her. “Move forward,” I say. Mom does what I ask. Her movements are stiff, ready for anything I suppose. She can’t switch that off, the constant awareness. He’s not even in the room, and she’s prepared to hurt at every turn. How can she think I’m happy when I see this, when I see her live like this?

  She leans back. “Hmm. That is better.”

  “Well, I do have a good idea occasionally. I’m not just a pretty face.”

  “Now where did that come from? I just said thank you.”

  I feel the muscles of my cheeks snatch back in some kind of way. “You don’t have to look like that. You remind me of your father when you make that face,” Mom says.

  “I can’t see how I look,” I reply, folding my arms across my chest.

  “Oh, baby, come on, come on. Don’t be like that. I didn’t mean anything by it, okay?” She scoots her chair near to me and reaches out to take my hand. Her fingers are warm and firm and they grip mine.