“Are you okay?” asks Tim.
“I think so. I mean Dad isn’t a killer and that’s, God I can’t tell you how much of a relief that is, but the rest of it. It’s crazy, Tim. Crazy and sad.”
The blessed aroma of coffee wafts from the kitchen. Excusing myself, I go pour a cup, think about the violent loop we’re in. I realize it isn’t just merciless. It’s ravenous, consuming everything and everybody.
Light footsteps invade my heavy thoughts. Swirling around ready to ask Tim to give me some space to absorb everything, I instead see Tabitha.
“Sweetie, there are many things we learn in this world,” she says. “Those things can make you hard, but you have a choice to not let it. You don’t be the rock. You be the river. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now go do what you need to do. Stay strong. It’ll be alright.”
She’s a great hugger. Just the right amount of squeezing and warmth.
It will be okay. It must be.
Go!
JACKSON
Airports herd people. Countless bodies plodding through lines and metal detectors; my daughter likely somewhere among them. Only a few ways in or out, but I spot Layla zipping through the sliding doors with Tim close behind.
When I call her name, she turns and rushes to me, hugging me so hard. Layla breathes out the word “Daddy.” The hateful words we exchanged in the kitchen. What I called her. What she said. I see my daughter smile at me, the way she used to. When her hand barely fit in mine, before she learned fathers make awful mistakes.
“You’re not angry with me?”
“I think you’ve tortured yourself better than I ever did.”
How can these small hours since our separation cause such a difference? How is grace in such abundance? It has to be a trick. She should believe I’m a killer, but she grabs hold of me tighter.
“I met Holden Walters,” Layla says.
“From the article?”
“Yeah, from the article.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Everything I needed to know. Some things I didn’t want to know,” she confesses.
Taking my hand and squeezing it, Layla reveals the story, the one Holden told her. The one I already know thanks to Thorolese Myllstone, the one where I’m not a murderer. So much time wasted. I suppose many people feel like this at one point in their lives. How a mistake can color every other action.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, sweetheart,” I begin.
Eyes darting to Tim, he stands there the whole time, bearing witness to the clumsy stitching of old wounds, a partial closing of a bitterly deep divide. He is a good man. I treated him horribly.
“For what I said, I have no excuse.” Extending my hand, he shakes it. No hesitation, no animosity. Just forgiveness. Travelers filter around us, whipping blurs of bundled bodies and boarding passes.
“Sorrys don’t do much, Pops. It’s about action now,” Layla says.
“You’re right, which is why I’m going with you. Lebanon is after Ruby, too. He’s only a few hours away from Tennessee I’m guessing.”
The lies and secrets. Protection masquerading as self-perseveration. I can stand in this gap, this abyss where nothing moves.
“Can I get a ticket this late?”
Less than an hour remains before the plane leaves. Two more agents approach the counter and begin taking customers. Thank God! We make it to the front in less than ten minutes. There are three tickets left for the flight, but I snag one. Layla pulls Tim’s arm so we can sprint for the gate, but he doesn’t move.
“I should stay here,” Tim suggests. “You need to do this. Just you and your Dad. Plus, on the small chance Ruby comes back, I can make sure she’s safe until you two return.”
Layla shakes her head. “No! We should all—”
And Tim kisses her. Right in front of me! I don’t know whether to punch him or thank him again.
Tim lets her go and says, “Just say thank you, Layla.”
Rolling her eyes, with a begrudging smile spreading across her face, she says, “Thank you.”
She hugs Tim. I take her hand and we run for the security line. So winded by the time we make it to the gate, I resolve to start working out with J.P. when we return to Chicago. My right knee still throbs from the earlier run-in with Lebanon.
Layla finds seats near the gate so we can be the first to line up before they begin to board. Layla bites her bottom lip, a nervous tic Joanna made me privy to when she was younger.
“What’s wrong?”
She faces me. “We have to figure out how we’re going to find her. I don’t know Ms. Naomi’s address. Maybe Grandma Violet knows, but that’s not a definite.”
She’s right, none of us know the address, but we’ll figure something out. We can’t leave Ruby behind, let her slip away. Friends shouldn’t let each other go.
“Give me your phone, sweetheart.”
“Don’t go too far, Pops. The plane will probably start boarding in ten minutes or so.”
Out of earshot, I call the house. It rings twice and Joanna’s voice answers.
“Don’t hang up,” I plead.
“Jackson, I’m not some teenage girl throwing a tantrum. I save those theatrics for you. Do you have my daughter?”
When Joanna’s mad, her words are cold, but damn! Maybe Layla’s smart mouth isn’t something for which I should take all the credit.
“Layla’s with me and we’re getting ready to board a plane for Tennessee to find Ruby.”
The phone is silent, and I almost think the call dropped until Joanna says, “Now you’re going to help Layla find Ruby? I thought you—”
“Long story. Long, long story I swear I’ll tell you when I get back, and I mean everything, Joanna, I promise. Right now, I need to speak to Mom. Please.”
The phone goes silent again for about ten seconds, then I hear Mom’s voice in equal measures of alarm and relief. “Jackson, thank God. Did you find Layla?”
“Yes, I’m with her now. I love you, Mom. But I have questions and I need answers quick.”
“Okay, baby.”
“What’s the address to Ms. Naomi’s old house? Layla and I think Ruby is there, and Lebanon is after her and we don’t want her to be alone. We don’t know what will happen when he confronts her.”
The static on my end crackles loudly. I step closer to the boarding area, but still out of earshot of Layla. “You think Lebanon would hurt her? He could be like you, trying to make sure she’s okay and won’t hurt herself.”
“He is the one who will hurt her,” I counter. “He’s not above inflicting pain on those closest to him. Mom, I know you see something good in him and that’s fine, maybe there’s something there, but even if there’s a chance he might hurt Ruby, wouldn’t you rather Layla and I be there?”
“Of course, but I don’t know if y’all going there will fix what’s wrong, what’s been wrong for a long time.”
“Because of your stubborn granddaughter, I’m finally learning we have a choice, Mom. We aren’t prisoners of our past actions.”
I glance at Layla. She catches me looking and grins. She always takes pride in her ability to be obstinate. She thinks it’s a superpower. The crackling static becomes louder. I move to the left and it worsens, I then move to the right, and it gets better. It probably appears to onlookers I’m doing a really bad version of the electric slide.
“Mom...are you there?”
“It’s a small ranch house with a red door. Not far from my house—3729 Cottonwood Road. Just get the girl. Save Ruby.”
“We will. I promise.”
RUBY
I smell the wood of the floors. I long to smell fresh sunflowers. I stretch my arms and twirl around like I did when I was a little girl. I wanted to be a dance
r, stand with learned feet en pointe, creating circles of air, extending my body into impossible angles. I wanted people to marvel as I pirouetted onstage, as I rose and touched brilliance.
My experience of dancers and their struggles was limited to what I saw on television or an occasional movie. Mom could afford lessons, barely, but it was possible. Lebanon laughed, said it didn’t make sense to waste the money. “She probably ain’t gone be good at it anyway,” he prophesied.
But in this place, I pivot and spin, and I am perfect. I have no scars and I have no pain or guilt or shame. Movement and motion possess me. My focus, sharp as butcher’s blades, keeps me upright as the living room blurs round the edges of my vision.
Maybe I could have been a great dancer. I’ll never know.
Promises unfulfilled and dreams deferred or cast aside altogether.
As agile as I am, I tripped walking through the red door a few minutes ago. I forgot the warped floorboard past the threshold. Furniture is covered by dusty white sheets, which I remove.
I thought Mom sold this place years ago. I thought this sanctuary was lost.
Memories tease my head, make me think the times here weren’t real, that I was never that happy, that I didn’t laugh or make silly faces with Grandma Naomi.
But I did. I was happy with her and sometimes watching Mom sew and make beautiful things from tattered strips of fabric. I think of Mom in her sewing room. I think of how I bumped my leg against her desk and heard the faintest jingle. I opened her drawer and found the deed to my grandmother’s home in Mom’s name and keys to open the doors. Sanctuary.
We could have left Lebanon when Grandma died; we would have at least had a place to go. But Lebanon would have found us and beat her and me. We would have returned to Chicago.
The same photographs still sit on the fireplace mantle, layers of dust covering each image, including the one in the silver frame, the one with the three girls. Using a sheet to wipe away the filmy residue, I once again study the picture, taking in the faces. One of them is my grandma Naomi, the other Ms. Violet, Layla’s grandma, but I never found out the name of the girl in the middle. I asked Grandma Naomi about her when I was younger. Her face confirmed there was a tale too heavy to share with an eleven-year-old. Her eyes misted over with tears and the half-moon wrinkles around her mouth, normally upturned in laughter, sagged in such a way it terrified me.
Grandma Naomi was the person I loved most, and I couldn’t bear being the cause of her grief, too. I was already so well acquainted with making people who were supposed to love me, either hate me or feel miserable.
I never asked another question about the picture.
I did think about the three girls together, the girl in the middle, at the oddest moments, folding laundry or answering a call at the office. I wondered who she was, how was she connected to Grandma Naomi, and what happened to her. I thought I saw parts of me in her face or maybe I wanted to because her sadness seemed familiar. No one wanted to talk about her. Over the years, she ceased being a person and became part of discarded memories. Now, she’s just a picture with no name.
I wonder if years from now, Layla’s children will look on a picture of us and ask about me, and she will hold the same look in her eyes as Grandma Naomi, and her children will know to never ask about me again.
I’ll be forgotten.
Save yourself, baby.
Why didn’t Mom at least try? Why didn’t she sell Grandma’s house and take me and the money and disappear? Why didn’t she fucking save us? Why didn’t she save me? Was I not worth her even trying?
She cried, she begged. She was weak. I was weak. She loved me, but she just wasn’t strong enough to love herself. The idea of who Mom was, and my belief in the quiet strength of Grandma Naomi, inhabit two separate and damaged spaces in my heart.
What will happen to me without her?
How can there be a me without her?
Grandma Naomi’s home and the sunlight don’t lift my spirits as much as I’d hoped, but in some small way, I do feel better.
A freedom from anger and lies and hurt and sadness. A way to leave these things behind. The shape of my journey is no longer this triangle connecting my pain to my mother’s failures and Lebanon’s anger. It’s just a straight line from captivity to freedom. And I no longer need a razor to accomplish this.
All I need is my black purse with the gold buckle.
LAYLA
My ears fill with air then pop, an invisible needle jammed over and over again. I’m hungry and these stale cookies are not satisfying. Dad doesn’t remove his eyes from the window, surveying long lines or circles of blue interlocking with patchworks of flat green and brown land gliding by below.
It’s weird, almost unsettling to be here with him. The secrets and lies, the pride and spite dividing us was for nothing. Dad kept me at arm’s length and I resented him, many of the things I said or did were meant to hurt him, and a chasm formed.
He turns from the window. “How are we going to make Ruby come with us?”
“We have to convince Rue she’s safe from Lebanon. The way we do that is by standing up to him. He doesn’t have power over you anymore. We have the truth. All he has is fear.”
Though fear is a strong force, inescapable for some.
“Do you think that will be enough?” he says.
“We can’t make her do anything, but if we’re both there, if we show her we won’t let Lebanon torment her anymore, torment us anymore, we have a chance.”
The plane firmly shudders and rocks. The fasten seat belt signs ping on. We jostle, bounce up and down. I squeeze his hand, and smile, I remember what Ms. Tabitha said while I was at her and Holden’s home. “You can’t be the rock. You have to be the river.” I repeat this same statement to Dad.
He stares at me, his eyes as much of an enigma to me as they always have been, because I have no idea what he’s thinking. That happens if you close yourself off to someone, but I’ll get to know his looks and he’ll learn mine.
“What is it, Pops? Because you’re freaking me out a little staring at me.”
“I’m just proud of you, is all,” he says.
I want to say this means little to me, but of course it doesn’t. Of course, it means everything! You always want your parents to be proud of you, think you’re doing a good job at something; it doesn’t matter what that something is. Most importantly I want him to believe, to know I’m a good person, and that’s what his smile and his words confirm.
“Proud of me? What does that feel like?”
“Something between joy and fear. I think I’m gonna burst to be honest,” he answers. “It could also be indigestion. Maybe that’s what pride is, at least when it comes to you, Layla. Joy and fear and a little indigestion.”
“I don’t think I can argue that, Pops.”
He chuckles, and though the lifting of one weight seems to free part of my heart, another part of me is still heavy. That space is occupied by Ruby.
Is she okay? Can I bring her back?
CALVARY
SEVEN DAYS AFTER ALICE KING’S DEATH
Ruby sits alone with her thoughts. The ivory casket gleams. Ruby’s pearl-colored dress contrasts with her bronze skin and green eyes. Gardenias are lovingly draped along the ends of the aisles and the smell wafts under her nose. Mourners will be here soon, the family, the friends, the knowing, the curious, the congregation, all together, to sing Zion songs and eulogize a woman they never knew.
Not really.
She rises and walks over to the casket. The mortician put a smile on her Mom’s face, a soft one, a believable one, Ruby thinks. It was the same smile she gave when someone complimented her pound cake for a church bake sale or said they liked the quilt she made for the annual church raffle.
“Momma, can you hear me?” Ruby whispers, “Are you in Heaven? Is there a Heaven?”
Alice’s face remains placid and smiling, the answers to the questions Ruby asks trapped behind embalming liquid and thick makeup. Ruby reaches down to touch her mother’s hands, a Bible firmly clutched in them, and they are mannequin rigid but slightly warmer than Ruby expects.
Layla walks up behind Ruby and hugs her. “Sister Johnson brought that tuna noodle casserole no one’s gonna eat.”
Ruby sighs. “It’s like eating fish-flavored plastic.”
Layla laughs out loud and smiles. It vanishes when she looks at Alice’s casket. “Your mom wanted you to be happy. She loved you.”
“I know.”
“You got this, Rue. You do. I’m here.”
Jackson walks down the aisle. “People are beginning to arrive. Ruby, where’s your father?”
She shrugs and looks back at the casket again.
Lebanon enters my hall from the east clad in an alabaster suit, an indigo tie, and a gardenia pinned to his left breast pocket.
“I’m here. Looking damn good if I say so myself.”
“You smell like beer and flowers,” says Ruby.
“Had a little drink in honor of your mom. So what? I don’t have to explain myself to you, girl, ever. Remember that.”
Ruby scowls and Lebanon glares at her.
Layla stands between them and clenches her fists. “Shouldn’t you be making your way to the people who want to give their condolences?”
“Get your girl, Jackson,” Lebanon growls, “before she says something she regrets or I do something I’ll regret.”
“Let’s all make our way to the front,” Jackson orders in a tight voice.
And they leave. Ruby and Layla arm in arm, Jackson following, and Lebanon bringing up the rear.
A small breeze from no open window slightly bends the gardenias.
Alice, is that you?
RUBY
Lebanon never knocks on doors. He pounds on them, breaks them, splinters the wood, bends the hinges into abstract forms no longer able to hold things in frame. He treats doors like he treats people. All things can be broken. In my life, I’ve realized people can become the easiest of all to destroy.
Saving Ruby King Page 25