Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  “Blessed?” I can feel myself frowning. Mom always got on me about that. She said it made me look like Lebanon, like I didn’t want to talk to anybody.

  “You don’t think you blessed, child?”

  He smiles, his teeth are nice, even and white. It’s a warm smile, not a pretend action of the mouth.

  I want to return his smile. I can’t.

  “So where you headed, child?”

  “Away from here.”

  “Visiting family?”

  I’m still frowning. Because of the questions, the tightness in my forehead spreads to my mouth.

  The stranger’s face softens even more, brown and liquid like chocolate pudding. He says, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean no harm. Not trying to be nosy.”

  But he is being nosy. He wants answers to his questions and, truth is, maybe I want to talk. Maybe Mom sent someone to me, a stranger, someone to talk to me, keep my words, like a living diary. Besides, a stranger can’t really do any harm.

  Family can.

  “I’m heading to Tennessee. Just need a change is all.”

  I need a new life. I need to stop thinking about nights I can’t take back, the people I won’t see again. I’ve never been outside Chicago except for those hot summers in Tennessee with grandma.

  The old man moves in his seat a bit to face me. His eyes are a pale blue, the result of age, the pigmentation of once earth-brown eyes now gone and replaced with two circles the color of the morning sky.

  Dirty snow clings to the edges of the asphalt roads, most of them barren, ground frozen. Staring at nothing, focusing my eyes on a horizon far off; it’s calming.

  “Change. That’s exciting depending on what you lookin’ for. So what are you lookin’ for, child?”

  “Peace.”

  Ghostly golds and blues and pinks of early evening paint the sky, the warmth, the roll and bump of the highway. Far away I go. Down the rabbit hole. Like Alice.

  “Peace. Still trying to find that myself. Old as I am, I ain’t got much longer to find it.” He laughs, it’s high-pitched, but soft and his body trembles. “But I think peace is something we gotta fight ourselves for. God gives it to us, but we always find some way to kill it. Human nature, I’m guessing.”

  “So, it’s my fault I’m not at peace.” I see my reflection in the window across the aisle. It’s smashed and misshapen. Everything is always my fault. From this stranger to Lebanon to my mom, everyone and everything is my fault. Hearing the same things from multiple people at multiple times, I think church folk call this Confirmation.

  It’s been confirmed, I am the problem. The Mistake.

  “Well don’t get ready to bite my head off just yet, child.” He chuckles again. What the hell is so damn funny? “I just mean there are situations we come from, and we can’t control what happens, but we can control how we allow God to help us through it. Giving up that control, that’s peace.”

  “Are you trying to be a Bible study teacher? I didn’t ask for your opinion.” I know my tone is less than respectful. I feel the disapproving look of Mom from beyond.

  “Not at all, but I know some part of you is listening. I don’t have peace yet, child, but I do have faith.”

  “I don’t have peace or much faith, but I have a plan.”

  “And what’s that?”

  I say nothing and he grins. I touch my black-and-gold purse. I search for the envelope in my jacket pocket. Again, I want to return his smile, but I can’t.

  LEBANON

  If you don’t have hope no more, you remember the time you gave up on it, the moment where you knew you weren’t like a lot of other people, because you weren’t still a fool like a lot of other people.

  I lost hope about a week before Syrus.

  Hell, I even remember where I was when I let that feeling forever abandon me.

  There was this part of the kitchen in the old apartment where, if the light hit just right, everything’s made to look beautiful. Stand right over the sink when the sun is coming up, and the prettiest diamond don’t sparkle like the person standing in that light.

  Only our place had this gift.

  This one morning Sara was standing in the light.

  She looked like what she probably did before I came along. Eyes not so full of hate and obligation. Could’ve even swore I saw a smile lingering on her lips. She was pretty to me in that moment. Looked like what I thought a mom could’ve looked like. Maybe she found some kind of peace or maybe she had a good meal. Maybe one of the men she brought home saw her as more than temporary entertainment, more than something to greedily grope at in the dark. I don’t know, but I wanted to hug her. Never really felt that way before, but I did that time. And before I could stop myself, I threw my skinny arms around her ample body, holding on to her with any part of my heart I might’ve had left.

  I held on tight. Tighter than anything. Nothing happened. No tears. No struggle. Just a slab of meat sparkling in the window. Pretty and dense and rigid.

  And I waited. I waited for something. For love, I guess. I thought maybe if I tried really hard one more time, something would happen like magic, and she’d love me. Fuckin’ stupid idea but it didn’t stop me from trying.

  I let go. Didn’t even look at her. I walked out of the kitchen, out of the apartment. Went to Jackson’s house. The spare key was under a green flower pot. Auntie Vi told me where it was in case of an emergency. I had a lot of those when I was younger.

  Their house always was tidy. It smelled like magnolias and whatever she was cooking. There Jackson sat with Auntie Vi and they were laughing about some such nonsense. Even though he didn’t have a dad no more, he had her. I didn’t know my dad, didn’t have a mom.

  Killing someone might not be a sin if you want what they got bad enough. I wanted what was at that table even if it was half of what other people had. Still better than nothing.

  JACKSON

  I sit staring at Thorolese Myllstone in her sparsely decorated room. Most of her belongings are still in boxes piled against the wall behind me. The walls are painted a cheery yellow; a window behind her reveals the tops of budding tree branches made bare by the harsh winter. The architect said bright colors and lots of natural light were good for seniors, said there were studies done proving this. On a small maple shelf, a picture of Syrus, smiling wide and happy, a look so completely foreign to the boy I knew, the boy I killed that night in the snow.

  “He only smiled like that for me,” she brags like so many mothers, undeniably proud of their child and completely blind in the moment to their faults. She picks up the framed picture and hands it to me.

  My hands tremble holding it. “He looks like a nice kid,” I manage to say. I hand her back the picture.

  “My niece is gonna help unpack the rest of this stuff an’ finally get me nice an’ settled. Patrice is a good girl. Takes care of me like she my own child,” she boasts.

  Thorolese smiles, the same as Syrus, and pats my hand. “Patrice the reason I sought you out. She took me to your church this morning. That was a mighty powerful sermon today. Mighty powerful indeed.”

  “I’m so happy you think so.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Sat right up in front.” Her eyes glimmer searching mine for some recognition of her face. I don’t remember her. I don’t remember the face of the woman whose son I murdered. I saw her only once standing outside of the church where they held Syrus’s funeral. Six men carried his oak casket down the stairs. She followed it, hunched over, face covered by a handkerchief while she bawled and wept and mourned her son, mourned Syrus.

  Thorolese gets up and pours a cup of tea and serves it to me without request. I don’t like tea, but I drink. The cup is small and delicate. I think about the tea parties Layla made me have with her when she was three or four years old. The cups and plates seemed tiny in my hands and so did she. Small and fragile, some
thing to be protected and cherished. I failed at keeping her safe. I’ve failed at her loving me. Now God has delivered me to the hands of the woman whose life I’ve irreparably destroyed.

  Words escape me, so I sip my tea and watch Thorolese do the same. She puts her cup down and tightens the scarf around her head, blue with white lilies.

  “I know you got places to be, Reverend Potter.”

  “Call me Jackson, Mrs. Myllstone.”

  “I will do no such thing! That’s disrespectful the way I was raised,” she gasps. “And it’s Ms. ’cause I was never married.”

  Fluorescent lighting emits this annoying buzz-hiss. “I asked you here ’cause what you said this morning when you was preaching about letting go of the people who’ve hurt you. I wanna do that for the man who took my baby, my Syrus. I know you know him. That y’all are friends. I saw him at your church today. I’d never forget his face, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to that man.” She sighs. “Thought I forgave him, but when I saw him, it all came back. Maybe I ain’t as over everything as I think.”

  I almost drop my cup so I set it down on the small brown table. “Ms. Myllstone, to forgive someone who took from you what was taken, your child, some would say that’s practically impossible.”

  “Pastor, you know better than anyone else with God all things are possible.”

  Would she believe all things possible if she knew the real murderer of her son is sitting across from her? That she served him a cup of tea?

  “I do know Lebanon King. We are friends, but I’m not sure what you want from me, how you think I can be of service.”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d pray with me, for me, for my son, that he found peace away from this earth since he never found peace on it.”

  “You don’t think he was at peace? Do you believe he is now?”

  She rises again and shuffles behind me to refill her cup of tea. “I don’t know, Pastor Jackson. I know he was, how you say it? Troubled. He could be downright mean, a bully, and he had the ability to hurt others. He’s hurt me.” Thorolese puts down her cup and softly pulls down the collar of her blouse, four small dark dots are embedded beneath her collarbone. “Syrus did this when he was twelve. Took the fork he was eatin’ with and stabbed me with it. His daddy said he was comin’ to visit him and never showed up. It hardened my boy, being disappointed like that, and I couldn’t make it better. I tried though. But he still took his disappointment, his anger out on me.”

  Thorolese raised her sleeve where a scar, shaped like a crescent moon, was etched on her forearm. “Syrus did this when I didn’t want him to go out that night, the night he was killed. He pushed me out the way and I cut myself on a broken door frame. I just knew something bad was gonna happen that night, but he didn’t listen.” She sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “He was still my child. I birthed him. I knew the bad, but I knew the good. He helped me with rent. Never forgot my birthday, and, if he was havin’ a real good day, he gave the best hugs in the world, like a warm mountain of love surrounding you. My Syrus was hurt so he hurt other people. Maybe this was always gonna happen. Too many wounded out there. And maybe, well, I can’t help but think to do what that boy did to my baby, that he was hurtin’ somethin’ awful, too.”

  “I’m sure he was Ms. Myllstone. I’m so sure he was.”

  She stirs honey into her tea and slowly nods, affirming there was enough pain in this world that plenty can be brought to any and all doorsteps, from a janitor to a president or even a pretend holy man like myself.

  “Maybe then I can tell him, I can forgive him or learn to at least. Maybe I can look on his face and give him some peace and find some myself.”

  “Do you want me to bring him to you?”

  She smiles wide, her gaze is far away, like Mom’s and Sara’s in the hospital room. “Well, Pastor, I think you can help me so when I get ready to see him, I can bear it. And then, maybe I’ll get some peace for myself. Like I said, I know me and I knew Syrus. He wasn’t a good boy, but he was my boy, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him, that boy hittin’ him all those times, but maybe I can find out why he did what he did.”

  Of all the wisdom Thorolese has shared, one fragment rings loud as a bell in my ears. Syrus was hit all those times. I hit Syrus once and I ran. One time.

  “Ms. Myllstone, what do you mean all those times? From what I remember about—what Lebanon told me, I thought Syrus was hit once and died.”

  “Naw, baby. I saw my Syrus’s body. I saw it.” She shudders. “The doctor told me, what was the term? Blunt trauma.”

  “Blunt force trauma,” I correct.

  “Yes! That’s what he said. Multiple blows. The first hit hurt him. Didn’t kill him. He got hit at least seven times. Seven. Can you imagine what it took to do that?”

  She finishes the rest of her tea and sets the cup down in front of her. “We had a closed casket. Couldn’t let people see him like that.”

  Only from the edges of my vision do I see Thorolese make her way around the table to sit down next to me. “You okay, Pastor Jackson? You ill?”

  “Where’s your bathroom?”

  “Just down the hall, first door on the right.”

  The bathroom is compact and smells like lavender. I vomit into the sink. And now the bathroom smells like lavender and rancid meatloaf.

  Thirty years! I’ve wasted thirty years. And I’m raging at myself, but even more than I want to yell and shout and scream, I just cry in sorrow and relief. I use a fancy rose-colored lace towel to muffle my sobs.

  I’m not a murderer. I’ve spent what feels like an eternity believing I was! Lebanon was the only one there after I hit Syrus once and ran off. Lebanon was the one who hit Syrus over and over again. He was responsible for Syrus’s death and held it over my head. And I’ve spent decades loathing and hiding and hating myself, keeping everyone around me far away and it was for nothing. Nothing!

  All this time. All this damn time!

  Ms. Myllstone might not get the closure she craves because I might kill him.

  I might kill Lebanon.

  CHAPTER 14

  LEBANON

  I hate packing, even for small trips. I always forget something simple: a toothbrush, belts, underwear. Alice did it best. Knew what I needed before I did. That was useful. I guess I miss that. I limit myself to just one or two more beers before I hit the road to find the girl.

  I just need one day’s worth of things so hopefully I don’t mess that up. Sitting in the same pair of boxers for two days going back and forth to Tennessee is not my idea of fun. Losing a day of business isn’t fun either, but the check I got from Jackson will help. I’ll give whatever’s leftover to the hospital and hopefully that’ll shut them up for a while until Sara dies.

  Pounding on the front door interrupts my process. Damn it. I’m gonna forget the underwear. I just know it.

  Jackson stands on my porch. I let him in, and I close the door. Turning to ask him why he’s here this time of night, he shoves me against the living room wall with the whole force of his body, a cinder-block wall of muscle and pressure suffocating me. A picture of Alice, the girl and me clatters to the floor.

  “Sonofabitch!” he yells.

  He puts his forearm against my windpipe and pushes into me harder and harder. I can’t breathe. I try pushing his elbow up. It doesn’t budge. The muscles in my face pulse and throb. My eyes meet his and witness his dark joy at my pain. I almost want to congratulate him. Jackson finally found the balls to do something he’s wanted to do, in this case it’s probably to kill me, but at least he seems to be going for it with gusto.

  I don’t quite plan on going to meet my Maker today. I kick his right knee and he buckles; his arm gives a little and I dodge to my left.

  “This is the second time today you’ve tried to kick my ass,” I accuse, but I’m laughing at
him.

  Hunched over, taking in deep breaths. Jackson mumbles something.

  “What?”

  “Thorolese Myllstone! I met Syrus’s mother and she had an interesting story. Turns out Syrus was hit seven times, not once. I didn’t kill him, you did!”

  What does he want me to do? What does he want me to say? It’s not like he didn’t hurt the boy, too. So he didn’t deal the death blow, but I wouldn’t have had to if he just kept it together. Now he comes at me with this? When I need to find the girl? When I need to make sure my legacy is kept intact?

  “I finished the job you were too chickenshit to finish, you self-righteous asshole!”

  He lunges again, but his wounded knee prevents him from reaching me.

  “You want me to cry for you? If I didn’t take him out, he would’ve gone back and told everyone what you did...and then what? You would’ve gone to jail. I went instead of both of us going. My story was already told. Sara saw to that. And what’s another black man behind bars? At least I gave you the chance to make something of yourself. You should thank me. I killed him for you, for the people who looked up to you—right or wrong. So all this whining about your damn conscience, your wasted potential, you can take that somewhere else.”

  “It only happened ’cause I was taking up for you that night. He called Sara a drunk, called you a piece of shit.”

  “So the hell what? Sara was a drunk, still is! I got called a piece of shit all the time. That day wasn’t any different. I didn’t ask for your help, but you gotta come out all big and bad trying to prove you’re a hero, the church boy your daddy would’ve been proud of.”

  Jackson’s breath slows, and he finally stands upright. “Thirty years, man. I lived with this for thirty years,” he growls.

  “And you still managed to get a family and a church and everybody acting like you the damn king. You’re welcome.”