Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  “Am I not supposed to ask myself about possibilities?” I fire back.

  “Yes, but you’re letting what hasn’t happened run your life. You can’t make good decisions doing that. You can’t lead out of fear.”

  “I’m just so tired.”

  Standing up, Alma says, “Better you take yourself down off that cross soon, Jackson. There’s only room up there enough for Jesus.”

  Then she laughs hard and loud and the church doesn’t seem so barren a place. A smile creeps at the corners of my mouth. Alma’s candor at my dilemma, her bold refusal to allow me to fall into self-pity, solidifies my respect and my trust in her. Making her an elder is one of the best calls I’ve made for this church and for myself.

  “Go find Layla. Something’s telling me you know where she may be. Walk through the fear and out the other side. Believe me, you’ll have something much more powerful with you and in you.”

  I feel hope. I feel I need to leave here, let Alma finish what she came here to do, and finally start cleaning up my own messes.

  CALVARY

  Spring 1997

  Layla and Ruby spend a lot of time in my basement. It is their special place among the shadows and the boxes of old clothes and seasonal decorations. In my space they talk, laugh and fight as sisters do, even those who don’t share blood. The girls hold some intangible connection that, even after all my years of existence, I’ve yet to decipher. Though I do recall decades ago three girls who shared a similar bond.

  These types of connections are ones fortified through merciless circumstance not games of jump rope or hopscotch. Perhaps girls, ones whose skin color defines them more than the depth of their character, unearth a reserve of energy and strength alien to those on the outside, and maybe only other girls who share this trait are able to truly understand one another in a way a city or nation or world at large cannot.

  Maybe that’s why Layla and Ruby cloister themselves within my confines so others won’t intrude on whatever they share with each other. Like the first time Ruby told Layla about what Lebanon did at home. Layla didn’t comprehend at first because she’s only ten years old, but she recognizes enough to be quiet for once and listen to Ruby as she explained.

  “It’s like he gets so mad and no one can get him to calm down. So Mom just makes me go in my room and tells me to not come out. That she’ll come get me. She says no matter what I hear, don’t come out of my room.”

  Layla didn’t know what to do with this except to say, “I can tell my daddy. He can do something!”

  Layla grabs Ruby’s arm to take her to her father because he could fix it. She’s sure of this, but Ruby won’t budge. And Layla pulls on her arm and tugs, but Ruby doesn’t move, and, finally when she’s had enough of Layla pulling at her, Ruby yells at Layla, “Stop!” And then she cries, it’s an ugly sound, one frightening Layla. All she can do is go to Ruby and hug her, and Ruby, with her skinny arms, holds Layla and clings to her until her tears won’t come anymore.

  They sit down on a creaky old pew worn down from worship, and Layla offers Ruby a piece of candy which Ruby declines.

  “If no one’s gonna protect you, I’ll do it,” Layla promises.

  “Okay,” Ruby agrees. “I believe you.”

  Ruby puts her head on Layla’s shoulder and there they remain on the old pew until Jackson finds them both and walks them upstairs.

  There was a great shift in their sisterhood after that day, one Layla and Ruby recognized. The next Sunday, Layla begged for Ruby to come home with her to spend the night. She did so every Sunday afterward or whenever the girls saw one another. Sometimes Jackson and Joanna agreed and sometimes they didn’t. But when they did, she and Ruby slept in the same room, in the same bed and Layla clung to Ruby, and tried to think of a way they could both stay together, where Ruby could be happy and Layla could feel there was no longer a reason to keep holding her breath. But this feeling lingered, especially when Layla looked into Ruby’s eyes. And though Ruby loved Layla, she resented her for always believing she needed to be rescued, when all she needed was for someone to listen, not scheme or plot or plan, just listen because Ruby knew, one day, when she got older, she’d figure out how to escape. But Layla didn’t want Ruby to leave—not without her.

  It’s no wonder off Layla goes again to save Ruby. Pull her to some kind of tenuous safety, like she did when they were ten-year-old girls, entombed in the light and shadow and dust of my basement.

  And I hope Layla finds Ruby. For if she doesn’t, I dread to envision what could become of Layla, her family and, if selfishness is a thing for a conscious collection of brick and mortar, of me.

  LAYLA

  I stand in front of Christy’s condo and hope she isn’t pissed it’s after midnight. She was a night owl in college, but aren’t all students, completing papers or studying for exams? Maybe I woke her out of a good sleep. Tim’s hand in mine gives me the smallest measure of hope.

  On the third-floor landing, Christy opens the door, and doesn’t look at Tim and me with anything other than concern.

  “I’m sorry for showing up late like this, girlie, but I—”

  “It’s fine. It’s fine,” Christy responds and ushers us in. “I was working on some late-night social media stuff for Dad. He’s hopeless with it.”

  She glides through her living room in gray yoga pants and a Vampire Weekend T-shirt.

  Her third-floor condo is laid out like something you’d see in magazines, a light gray sectional, an ivory patterned oversized seat and matching throw rug ornament a sitting area, right off a galley kitchen. A modern painting of an elephant on the east wall perfectly complements the modern furniture and surroundings of her posh living room. Christy and I sit on the sofa. Tim takes the chair.

  “I just need a favor...well two,” I begin. “We have a flight in the morning, and I can’t quite go home right now. So could Tim and I just rest here? We’ll be out in a few hours. I promise.”

  Christy nervously laughs. “Really? Is that all? That’s not a problem, Layla. It’s a pull-out sofa. Geez, I thought you were going to ask me to do something like help you bury a body.”

  “Well, I said I needed two favors.”

  “If you need help with that body, then I might have to change my clothes.” She chuckles again, but I don’t laugh along with her. Christy’s eyes slightly narrow. “What do you have up that sleeve of yours, Layla? What’s the actual favor, the one that means something to you?”

  “Your dad knows a lot of people. Has access to information that might take me a while to get.”

  “True,” agrees Christy. “Dad has to have dirt on just about everyone. It’s his stock and trade.”

  “Well, I don’t need dirt, really just a name and an address. Holden Walters. He was a cop, back in the ’70s, probably retired. We think he may have information.”

  “For Ruby?” guesses Christy.

  I glance at Tim, who gestures for me to answer Christy. “Not exactly. It’s just something for me, but maybe in the end it can help a lot of people, including Ruby.”

  “Okay, Layla.”

  “I owe you, girlie. I really do. I’ll owe your Dad too, but I’ll figure something out with that.”

  “You don’t owe me. And you don’t owe my dad. I’ll make sure of that.”

  I lie awake on the pull-out sofa in Christy’s condo. Tim’s muscular arm is draped over my waist as he softly snores in my ear. I close my eyes and nod off, but only in brief interludes. When I manage a few moments of rest, I dream about Ruby. Clips of us: playing, running, laughing. Then there’s black and her face fading away.

  A muffled voice wakes me out of a light slumber. Christy opens her bedroom door and walks toward the kitchen starting the coffee machine. She whispers, “Just put him on the phone, Karen. I know he’s there, and not with my mother, and I’m certain he doesn’t want my mother to know wh
ere he actually is.”

  I keep my eyes closed. Christy walks back into her bedroom and gently closes the door.

  Buzzing around her beautifully decorated condo as if it’s the middle of the day and not the early morning, Christy offers us drinks and food. Tim and I continuously decline. I just need resolution, not a strawberry and kale salad she got from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or some other chic grocery chain that doesn’t have a location on the South or West Sides of the city.

  Tim stands against the wall leading to the kitchen, the soft gray of the curtains in the living room create a strange, but magnetic contrast to his brown skin. I steal a glance at him, or two or three.

  A ping from Christy’s BlackBerry steals my attention away from Tim.

  “Finally!” exclaims Christy as she makes her way to the laptop sitting on the countertop of her kitchen. She opens her email and the file attached from her father. And there before me is everything I can know about Holden Walters.

  There are two pictures: one as a determined dark-eyed officer, full lips frowning with a policeman’s cap firmly fixed to his neatly trimmed afro; the other one as a tempered older man. White hair dispersed like errant snow among his onyx mane framing high cheekbones encased in skin the color of mature clay. He’s a handsome guy who aged well. Kind of an everyman, Denzel Washington type.

  I notice the difference in his eyes. The most striking feature, they’re more hopeful than the younger cop in the fuzzy color photo from a few decades before. I don’t know why this causes me to smile, but I do. Maybe I’m seeking any light in an otherwise nightmarish few hours.

  Also in the folder is information about his organization, Uplifting Chicago Youth. The office is in a Hyde Park street storefront with colorful painted handprints bleeding into the glass of the windows. His home address is also included, and isn’t very far from that office, a walkable distance.

  “If we leave right now, Tim and I could make it to his house in half an hour,” I say. It’s not the best wake-up call, but maybe Holden Walters would be getting ready to head out for the day. Maybe he’s an early riser with a few minutes to talk and help me shape a past from the almost forty-year-old picture in my hand.

  Before leaving, I give Christy a bone-crushing embrace, hoping it conveys my gratitude for her help and commiseration about the dysfunction between fathers and daughters. She smiles in a bright way with sad eyes.

  “Thank you for everything,” I say.

  “Anytime,” she replies.

  Outside of the condo, crisp air smells like gasoline. Our flight leaves in a few hours, and our journey finds itself back to the part of my city I know best, the South Side. Of course it’s the place where all of this will come together and I will get my answers.

  “You ready?” Tim asks.

  “Of course not, but I’d rather know something bad than keep pretending there’s nothing on the other side of all of this.”

  We climb into his truck and head toward Hyde Park.

  I’m willing to dismantle everything I was taught, everything I know for the truth. Ultimately, this could forever break my church and my family into a million parts. I still have no idea what to do with the information once I have it.

  Tim turns on the radio. I hear the unmistakable poetic, bare guitar chords of “Redemption Song” and Bob Marley sings.

  “Stop thinking about what you’re going to do,” Tim says. “Just learn to live with the decision you’ve already made.”

  CHAPTER 15

  LAYLA

  This is a happy place. I can tell just from walking up the steps. The Georgian home stands proud but looks stunted next to the higher apartment building on its left. Matching burgundy shutters on the two top windows lie against sand-colored bricks. Sunlight creeps above wispy clouds, soft raspberry and sherbet hues kiss the rapidly dwindling stagnant puddles on the walkway.

  I don’t expect a smile when Holden Walters opens the door. I expect grumpiness, maybe a little cursing. He stands beyond the threshold grinning at Tim and me like old friends, like he was expecting us and greets us, “Morning! What can I do for you?”

  I try to ease into the conversation so I don’t sound as crazy as I feel. I go into my professional voice, the one I use on the phone in the office, the one that makes white people not so afraid of a black person. I’m a representative of myself.

  “Sir, I’m Layla Potter and this is Timothy Simmons. I got your name from Samuel Sikorska. I just want to ask you about an event in January 1979. The Syrus Myllstone case. Do you happen to remember it?”

  His smile fades as he replies, “I do.”

  “I have some questions about a newspaper article.”

  “What questions? You wasn’t even born then.”

  I can’t say I’ve ever had someone stare into my eyes the way he does, sizing up my character, my motivation as easy as someone breathes in and out.

  “Mr. Walters...”

  “Call me Holden.”

  “Holden, I think maybe you knew my father, Jackson Potter.”

  My stomach clenches from calling my father by his first name. Or it could have been the cheap coffee from the gas station we stopped at a few minutes ago.

  “You both might wanna come in out this cold,” he replies.

  The compact living room seems bigger with only a small couch, red patterned chair and a small coffee table. I recognize a print of an old Jackson Pollack painting hanging above the couch. The pony wall to the small eat-in kitchen reveals an older woman standing with a short-cut salt-and-pepper afro, bright eyes and a cup of coffee in her hand.

  “This is Tabitha, my wife,” Holden introduces.

  A few pictures of Holden, Tabitha, family and friends hang on the wall nearest the side door. One picture, the frame bigger than some, smaller than others captures Holden next to a guy with bushy blond-gray hair, Senator Sikorska. He and Holden are fishing and, by the looks of the large swordfish and the smiles, it was a good trip.

  “We’re sorry to disturb you,” I begin. “Tim and I have a flight this morning. I swear we won’t take much of your time.”

  “No bother,” he says.

  From my pocket I retrieve the yellowed article.

  “I’ll put some more coffee on,” Tabitha says.

  “We won’t be here long,” I reply, but Tabitha only smiles and walks back into the kitchen. She’s the same height as Grandma Violet. Possesses the same kind of firm, but gentle gaze like Momma. She has spoken only a few words since I walked through her door, but I already trust her.

  Holden’s face sags further. The imprints of caramel skin etch an accepted grief, a sorrow he learned to live with long ago.

  “I knew this time would come. That this story wasn’t over. You just weren’t who I was expecting,” says Holden.

  “Who were you expecting?” Tim interjects.

  He points to the sole picture from the article, a picture of Lebanon. “I was expecting him.”

  He began the story. The night he arrested Lebanon hiding in a backyard two blocks from the scene, clothes covered in blood. The violence overshadowing an abominably cold night.

  Hotness in my belly courses north, sledgehammer-strong pulses knock against my temples. I wait for destruction. I wait for him to mention Dad. I wait to hate my father. Tim squeezes my sweaty hand. There is a cost to the knowledge Holden carries, a burden heavier than two thousand pounds on his shoulders. Hunched over, deflated he relays the last of the tale.

  I still have questions. Important ones. “The clip said you believed someone else was there that night.”

  Holden fidgets with his perfectly starched collar and replies, “Yes.”

  “Was it my father? Did he kill Syrus?”

  “No, sweetheart. I knew someone else was there, but Lebanon didn’t let on. The only thing he told me was someone, I’m guessing that might have been yo
ur dad, hit Syrus with the pipe and was so scared, he ran off. Syrus was alive. Lebanon confessed he kept hitting Syrus. Killed him.”

  “But why?”

  “All I can do is speculate. Maybe he thought he was helping your dad. Maybe he was tired of feeling powerless and thought killing a man was a way to take power back. Maybe both those things together.” Holden stood up and walked to his wall of pictures, staring at none of them in particular. “Lebanon never said why he did it and I didn’t spend a lot of time with him. When I saw him, he was already beaten to hell. There wasn’t a thing I could do for him either. We both had to keep our mouths shut. He didn’t talk about your dad and I didn’t talk about his bruises. I was a cop first, black second. But, Lebanon, the thing that struck me is he didn’t shake or mumble or cry. He took whatever was done to him in those rooms and acted like it was normal. It was disturbing. It was sad and disturbing. I’ll never forget that or him. I hoped maybe he got out, did something with his life. I hoped he wasn’t dead or in another prison somewhere. I quit being a cop a couple years later, wasn’t making the difference I set out to. First time I realized that was looking at Lebanon. I didn’t help him. Didn’t feel like I could. And I regretted it. All these years.”

  A tightness spreads across my chest. “So how does my dad play into this? When did you meet my father?”

  “Never have. Not face-to-face.”

  “So how did you recognize his name?”

  “Your daddy was the local golden boy! Everyone knew him or about him. Football star. Good student too from what I heard. College bound. Preacher’s kid. He had a lot going for him. More so than a lot of other kids then. Which means he had a lot to lose I suppose. Someone like Lebanon can latch on to that. Not hard for someone like him I’d think.”

  So, Dad didn’t murder anyone. He just believes he did.

  Lebanon presented himself a martyr, someone who took the blame, and used my father’s guilt. He made sure Dad served some type of sentence with a special cage of his very own making.