Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  “You don’t feel bad about anything you’ve done? None of it?”

  “Yeah, I feel bad. I feel bad you got all this shit handed to you. You had a mom who didn’t beat your ass for just existing. You knew your daddy. You had a nice home, food in your belly and you still managed to almost fuck it up! Then I come to your rescue and you’re still ungrateful as hell!”

  “Go to hell, Lebanon.”

  “Fuck you, Jackson.”

  He turns around, lumbers to the door and slams it shut. I return to the bedroom and look at my throat in the mirror. It’s red and swollen. It hurts to swallow, but this isn’t anything I can’t get through. I finish packing.

  I got about a seven-or eight-hour drive before I get to Naomi’s house. The girl’s got to be headed there. Good memories for her. I was born in Tennessee and lived there until Sara moved us back to Chicago when I was about two or three years old.

  Last time I stepped foot in Tennessee, Naomi died. Before that, when Alice tried to leave me. She came back though. Alice saw me standing on that porch and all the words she probably set up in her head vanished, just like the courage that got her to the house.

  Naomi was always stronger than her daughter, but I never knew where she got it. I never bothered to ask and she hated me so I doubt she would have ever talked to me about it. If she had the strength, she’d probably have killed me. She put up more of a fuss about me being there than Alice. She was a tough ole bird. I’ll give her that. A pain in the ass, but tough. The girl is a lot like her.

  Won’t do much good thinking about all this now. I’ll be on the road in a few hours. I’ll get the girl and be back by early Tuesday. I can start my life a different way. Not the way I planned, but you roll with the punches. You live your life and you remember to pack goddamn underwear for a road trip to find your prodigal daughter.

  LAYLA

  The article in Dad’s old Bible is dated May 2, 1979. It explains a few things to me that his sermon doesn’t. Lebanon served five years in prison for manslaughter; he killed a boy named Syrus Myllstone. An officer named Holden Walters made the arrest but believed there may have been another assailant.

  Another assailant. Dad.

  His confession, that wrinkled piece of paper now carefully folded in my coat pocket, isn’t nearly as aged as the clipping. It was stuck between the pages of that old Bible for a while though. The lives it would destroy at this point wouldn’t just be his. It’d be Mom’s and J.P.’s and mine. Not to mention the church’s.

  Now everything becomes clear. This is why Dad’s protected Lebanon all these years. You don’t leave behind the one person who can expose you. You can either keep him quiet when he leaves prison with a nice job and a sweet girl named Alice, or you can silence him. I guess my dad was only capable of murder once.

  Tim’s truck rumbles north on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Every few minutes he glances over at me and I stare straight into the windshield.

  “Pull over.”

  “Layla, we’re in the middle of—”

  “I’m gonna be sick! Pull the hell over!”

  Tim turns on his blinker and then his hazards, slowly pulling onto the shoulder along the 63rd Street exit. The whir of passing cars is silenced only by my vomiting and dry heaving. Tim tries to approach me, but I wave him off. Constant bright yellow blinking of hazard lights assaults my peripheral vision. After I’ve given up anything I’ve eaten today or yesterday, I finally straighten up. Tim jogs to the truck, going into the glove compartment and retrieving napkins. When I don’t feel like I’m going to lose my guts again, we both head back to the truck.

  “We’ll sit here as long as we need to until you figure out what you should do next,” counsels Tim.

  Staring again at the windshield, past it, a few miles north of here, peaks of cosmopolitan towers seem like a living organism. Chicago ebbs and flows in architecture, white headlights and red taillights buzzing around its confines—a hive and fat bees attracted to its honey glow.

  I rummage through my bag and finally recover my tin of mints and take two of them. The tick of the hazard lights gives me an audible reminder of the time slipping by and my limited options, and at this moment the only person who can help me.

  “I need to see Christy.”

  Tim flicks off the hazard lights, checks the rearview mirror and pulls back into traffic.

  “You wanna let me in that head of yours?”

  I can’t even begin to break down how fixing my father’s lies, this horrible act, will help me and Ruby, but I’m going to try to explain. Even if Tim doesn’t think it’ll work, even if he thinks my idea is stupid, I know he’ll help me. He loves me so he’ll help me.

  “If I want to bring Ruby home, I have to break down this stronghold Lebanon has on my dad. The only way is by exposing Lebanon and my dad to the community. This means revealing secrets, including those of my family. These secrets are keeping me and Ruby from being safe.”

  “So how does going to Christy help figure out what happened with your dad?”

  “The only way I can see doing this is by getting answers from someone who isn’t Dad or Lebanon, someone who was there that night in January, but wouldn’t have a reason to lie about who else was there. Holden Walters. I don’t know who that is, but Christy’s dad probably has access to information about cops, past and present.”

  “It makes sense, but it’s a long shot at best.”

  “It’s the only plan I got right now unless you got something better.”

  “So possibly revealing Reverend Potter killed someone is the way to do that?”

  “If Ruby comes back and Lebanon tries to use Dad’s past as leverage, I need something, some nuclear option of getting him to leave Ruby alone. And the truth, the naked truth, is the only way I can do this—it’s the only way I can save Ruby and myself. If Lebanon sees I’m serious about outing my own dad, that might get him to leave Ruby alone for good.”

  “If not, if it doesn’t stop him?”

  “Then I’ll buy Ruby another ticket anywhere she wants and I’ll...let her go.”

  Tears blur my vision passing Cermak-Chinatown toward the Circle Interchange. Barreling toward Lincoln Park, I think of what I’ll say to Christy, my friend who rarely goes south of 35th Street; my friend who lives in Lincoln Park, one of the richest neighborhoods in the city.

  To be fair, I rarely go past the Loop onto the North Side, a part of the city where I feel I don’t belong. Rather I sense the whispers and stares of the white people who stroll up and down the blocks; the cute little shops and restaurants and other businesses that wouldn’t think of opening or investing in our communities, because, well, this is their community and south of 35th Street isn’t anything they really want to think about. And that is why I don’t come—it’s not that I don’t feel worthy, it’s because my self-esteem dictates I don’t go where I’m not wanted or appreciated. If they don’t want to deal with my neighborhood, then I won’t deal with theirs. They can have their artisan cupcakes and organic coffee and handmade gelato.

  I’ll take the South Side with its jagged splendor and unrealized beauty, the tangled ways of survival and the underbelly of violence that seems to color every part of our lives and the community at large. It’s an honesty the North Side will never possess.

  But right now, I need Christy’s help if I want to bring Ruby home.

  My left arm is again broken into skinny bumps. I don’t want to call Mom or J.P.—not yet. If I must tear apart our lives, I need to make sure I have all the facts. When I was in college my journalism professors taught me many important things, one of them being how to pull apart a story piece by piece and compose the parts again into a narrative that makes sense and is believable.

  One thing I know as a proud American is having a rich friend with a powerful father gets you answers quicker than trolling Google.

  JACKSON
>
  I returned to the church to pray for answers about Lebanon, to find Layla and reconcile with her. I came to compose a plan to take back my life or some semblance of one without guilt, lies or imaginary obligations. It’s a delicious affliction of relief and terror. Who am I without guilt and fear shaping every decision I make, every relationship I build? I’m free to be me, but who is that now?

  Harnessing raggedy bits of my hatred for Lebanon into something that looks like empathy, I still continue in thought. How can I reassemble any fragment of love for him? How can I forgive him? All the brokenness that wove itself into the fabric of Ms. Sara’s life, her and Lebanon’s pain, each can be traced back to the one person put on this earth to protect them.

  For now, though it seems nearly impossible, my focus is finding Layla. If she tracks down Ruby and she gets in Lebanon’s way, what would he do? Layla will fight for Ruby with everything she’s got. Is Lebanon capable of killing my baby girl? He killed Syrus. He likely killed Alice, too.

  I rub my right knee again, and limp to my office and open the door. I recognize Alma cleaned the place I left in shambles after my earlier day’s tantrum, and though things are neat and orderly the way they should be, something feels out of place.

  Earlier, I hoped Layla would come back to the house, abandon this whole crusade. I know better. Now I have to play detective. Think like my daughter. My clever, loyal, beautiful, obstinate, disrespectful, disobedient daughter. Scanning my space, I surmise she’d want to use the computer. I turn it on. Layla taught me how to look up a search history, but I’m drawing a blank.

  Our conversation about this computer was, like everything else in our relationship lately, a fight. She insisted I get one. I didn’t need one because it was an extra expense for the church, another item to get approved through the board. Plus, I like to write everything by hand. Feeling the pen’s weight on the page and the paper giving way to my thoughts is more satisfying. Layla said the church and I needed to step into the twenty-first century, said the church needed a website, mentioned something called “metrics” and social media and websites I never heard of and I just said okay so she’d stop talking.

  I’m not sure where to place my fingers and a few of the keys might as well be written in an ancient language. I just learned how to text a few months ago, and all Layla did when I sent her a message was correct my spelling, so I stopped texting her. I stopped texting period.

  Layla’s right about me not listening, but I didn’t fully pay attention because she was harping on one more thing I wasn’t doing, one more thing as her father I was miserably falling short on.

  Like tonight.

  So I got this box with wires and chips and it normally collects dust, but the cover on the screen is removed and the keyboard is placed to the left, not the right. I spend ten minutes clicking away on a mouse until I finally see the search history. She saved the password on the airline’s site. Thank God. I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten access to the account.

  The recent purchase is a flight to Memphis, Tennessee. I call Joanna. She doesn’t answer so I leave a brief message. She won’t talk to me until I bring Layla back through the door of our home. I try calling my daughter. It goes to voicemail.

  So busy with walking through the valley of the shadow of computers, I didn’t notice my Bible was opened. I swallow the softball-sized lump in my throat as I flip through the pages hoping to find what I already know is missing.

  I don’t feel myself collapse in my chair, but I do feel the healthy bounce it gives supporting my sudden weight.

  She’s read my confession. Layla probably thinks I’m a monster, a murderer, but I’m not. She doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know that for the past thirty years I served time in a jail with no bars and no walls. That I lived my life scared every step would lead to irreparable exposure. I’ve been holding this secret for so long, I don’t know how my life is shaped without it. I don’t know how to exist without withholding some part of me from the people I love, and now I find myself free of this burden. I’m now feeling the weight of another one, the possibility of losing Layla over a secret I was never meant to keep, a label of murderer I was never meant to bear, and a debt to the kind of man I once, long ago, held as dear as a brother.

  The only thing left to do now is drive the half hour to Midway Airport and attempt to speak to Layla and have her believe me. Did Layla already tell Joanna about what she found? Is that why no one is answering my calls? Does Joanna hate me? Does J.P.? That feeling of being an outsider in my family would no longer be an intangible fear, but a constant, nasty reminder I never belonged with them and their hearts were never mine to protect. Somehow they knew to never trust me.

  Good for them.

  Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe Layla doesn’t know what she has. Maybe she hasn’t told Joanna anything. Maybe I still have time to fix this mess, redeem myself.

  Maybe I don’t.

  I don’t know if God ever forgave me for lying and still trying to shepherd a community of people who trusted me to do the right thing even when it was the hard thing.

  Layla can hate me, but she must know, my family must know, I didn’t take a life. I’m not a murderer. I’m a liar and a coward, but not a killer, and that brings me a relief perhaps only God can interpret.

  If forgiveness is not an option on the table for my daughter, then I will try meeting the consequences of my past actions with the courage eluding me all these years. Then I can show her how much I love her, how much I wish I was a better man, a better father.

  Someone is singing. I can’t quite place the origin of the music. Following the sound past my office and another two rooms, I turn right and into the main hall. The church feels downright cavernous when not filled with people. I find Alma. I thought by some miracle it’d be Layla, maybe she forgot something. I should have known better.

  Alma prefers the church to be empty while she does her cleaning. She lines her spray bottles of disinfectants, bleaches and waxes from biggest to smallest. The vacuum stands guard at her right side. She reverently croons the same song Thorolese Myllstone’s radio played a few hours ago, “Lord, Don’t Move the Mountain.” Alma serenades an invisible audience, baptizing the dusty air with a pure soprano. It’s her devotion before she cleans the church during these brief midnight hours.

  “God don’t want a dirty home,” she likes to say when complimented on the pristine state of the church.

  Tonight, Alma begins with the altar. I listen to her a little longer before she spots me.

  “Pastor!” she exclaims. “You just standing in the shadows scared me half to death!”

  Alma is a match for anyone who’d dare rob the church, or cross its threshold with dirty shoes, but I understand why she’s startled. I’m never here at this hour, but my circumstances are far from normal these past few days.

  “I wanted to apologize, Alma...for earlier.”

  She smiles and takes my hand, covering it with hers. “I forgave you when you did it, but act like a three-year-old again, and I’m gonna tan your hide like you’re a three-year-old.”

  Returning her smile, I squeeze her hand. “Okay, Alma, okay.”

  She laughs but the underlying timbre has a conviction and I know she’d not perform that mercy for me again. Ever.

  “Now what are you doing here this time of night, Jackson? I know it’s not to help me clean.”

  She laughs again.

  “I apologize, Alma. Thought you might be someone else.”

  “No, sir. I just got here a moment ago.”

  I turn to leave, the throbbing in my right knee forcing the slightest limp.

  “You okay, Pastor?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Somehow, I seem to attract every human lie detector within a hundred-mile radius.

  Momma. Joanna. Layla. Alma Locke.

  Her head cocked, eyes narrow
ed, Alma sizes me up. “Now I’m not one to get in other people’s business—” she begins to tell me, which is the introduction of someone about to insert themselves in your business “—but why are you here this time of night and who did you think I was?”

  Examining her face and knowing this woman for the better part of twenty-five years, I know whatever I reveal stays between her, myself and God Almighty. Alma doesn’t gossip. She just needs the truth and she wants me to be accountable.

  “I thought you were Layla.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I hope so. We had a fight.”

  “So it was bad.”

  “Are there any good ones, Alma?”

  Her smile vanishes. “She the reason you’re limping?”

  “No. I just bumped it on the desk is all.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Alma guides me to the front pew in the middle aisle, right in front of the pulpit.

  “I preach forgiveness, but I don’t know if that’s an option for me or with us,” I say.

  “It is. People who love one another always think they have that one fight to end all fights. Have something in their past making them the one person God can’t touch. It’s happened to me plenty of times, but I’m still here and I still love people and they love me.”

  “How do you come back from that, Alma?”

  “Make a choice to love. That choice ain’t easy. It’s hard as anything you’ll ever do. Love needs action, but I imagine living with hate in your heart is much, much harder.”

  She says these words with such faith, I wonder if there is part of her I can liquidate and bottle, just like the cleaners lying on top of the altar.

  “What if I’ve pushed her too far? What if Layla doesn’t want that? What if she never comes back to me?” This last question lurks all monster and shadow beneath my regrets.

  “So you’re going to stand on ‘what-ifs,’ Jackson? The Man of God needs to be stronger than that.”