Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  Ruby’s head presses against the window of the detective’s car. The police quickly took control of the scene after they came through the door of Ms. Naomi’s home. Their guns raised first, we all heard them shout orders and we obeyed, but with the distinct fear all of us have when it comes to police, that no matter the level of compliance, we might still have our caramel-colored bodies riddled with bullets nonetheless. They rushed Ruby out of the house and into the back seat of a dusty brown sedan and there she’s remained for the better part of an hour. I just need to say a few words. I just need a little more time with her.

  Just a few minutes.

  One of the detectives, a stocky bull of a man with a pear-shaped nose and pink skin, stands next to the brown sedan with my friend in the back seat. Asking him to speak to Ruby, he briefly sizes me up, silently making his judgments about my merits and intent. He goes into the car, behind the driver’s seat and rolls down her window. I grab her hand. It’s so cold.

  “I want you to know, Momma forgave me, even though I killed her,” Ruby whispers.

  I’m still having a hard time processing this information. I’m not mad at her for what she did to Dad. I can understand how easy, how gratifying it’d feel to take some kind of power back, to wrestle it from those who’d stolen it from you. It’s not right to feel this way, but feelings aren’t a matter of right or wrong, they’re a matter of acknowledgement or denial.

  There’s no right way to respond to her confession. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “And say what, Layla, I killed my mom while trying to kill my dad? What could you have done?”

  “Whatever I had to do, Rue.”

  “And that’s why I didn’t tell you. You’d have done something you can’t take back, like me. I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself. You can’t be that hero for me, Layla. You gotta live with that. Like I gotta live with this.” She raises her handcuffed wrists.

  There’s an acceptance in Ruby’s voice. One that’s chilling. Who she is and who I am are wrapped up in two identities: survivor and protector.

  Ruby endured a mom bound to a man she swore to love; a community and church willing to look the other way; she had to endure me, a friend, so caught up in my own battles to be right that I lost sight of the promise I made to her in a church basement, to protect her.

  Ruby was lost in all of it. So lost, the only way she saw out was to kill Lebanon.

  The only true words I can think of leave my lips, “Your mom loved you.”

  “She did her best. It wasn’t always good enough, but I loved her so much. I can’t believe she’s gone, because of me.”

  “But it was a mistake. Like you said, she forgave you,” I reply.

  “There’s no making this right, Layla. No amount of praying or church. No perfect sermon.” She squeezes my hand harder. I don’t pull away. “I told them...about what happened in Chicago, to Mom. I suppose a happy ending isn’t for me. There wasn’t for her.”

  “You’re not your mom. You’re not Lebanon either. Life doesn’t give us our happy endings. We take them and sometimes we take too much, but I gotta believe there’s more for us.”

  Ruby marks the veracity of my statement and looks at me with those pretty green eyes. “Momma told me to save myself before she died.”

  “So do that,” I answer.

  Her eyes take in the whole of the car’s worn, musty interior. “How?”

  “I don’t know, Rue. But you’re taking responsibility for what happened and that has to count for something.”

  Holding on to Ruby’s hand even tighter. “There has to be some kind of justice.”

  “There is, and that justice is happening now, and that’s why I have to go. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Mom was right, too. Maybe the only way to save myself was to tell them about what really happened so what isn’t said doesn’t have power over me anymore, over any of us.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.” My heart rattles around my rib cage and my heartbeat almost drowns out Ruby’s next words to me.

  “Just don’t forget me, okay.”

  The pear-shaped-nose detective comes around the car and looks down at my bent frame. “Miss, we’re taking her. You need to wrap this up. Now.”

  I need more time. Just a few more minutes, seconds with my friend. These people have made their judgments about her after a mere hour, but they don’t know who she is, why she is. I barely know Ruby in the way I thought I knew her, but there’s a history between us and our fathers, and it’s led us here, with me crouching next to a brown car with my friend in the back seat.

  “I won’t forget you because I’ll be with you every damn step of the way. I promise.”

  The detective gets behind the driver’s side again and starts the engine. The window squeaks as it rolls back up, and I hold on to Rue’s hand for as long as I can before we must let go of one another. The brown car whisks Ruby away from me and I stand in front of Ms. Naomi’s house. Most of the gawking neighbors retreat into their homes. Lebanon’s car ambles in the opposite direction to the highway and back to Chicago. I don’t cry.

  My dad and I head back inside for a last look and to lock up. In this moment of quiet, I almost collapse when I recognize Ms. Naomi, my grandma and another girl in a photo. Ms. Naomi was one of the Three Women in my dream. Alice took some time. It came to me standing on this porch looking at her daughter through the glass of the detective’s sedan. I didn’t recognize the smile. I didn’t take in her youth. The picture next to Ruby’s bed in her room, that was Alice as she always should have been, but never became in this life. A protector. I still can’t identify the third woman. She was beautiful with light skin and bright eyes, almost gold. I’ve never seen eyes like that. Maybe she was an angel.

  The Three Women: Naomi, Alice, and The Woman with the Gold Eyes. My cheerleaders from the Other Side. When I needed their guidance the most, they pointed me to Ruby. They showed me the way.

  My thoughts and hope and regret all come together inside me. The only certainty is that I will keep my promise to my friend. Turning around I ask Dad, “How long before we can get to the police station?”

  “About ten minutes or so,” he answers.

  “Let’s go.”

  CALVARY

  Doors are closed and locked and I am empty.

  Sunlight warms my spine of pews. Cold batters my bulky limestone skin and though there is a temporal absence of chattering bodies and music and movement, I don’t feel alone. Solitude is a beacon for genuine reflection.

  Quiet moments allow me to lay out all that is behind and all that is to come, never allowing fear to weaken my being or soul, if there is such a thing for the likes of me. I take solace in the fact good things are built to last. It’s our choice to preserve or neglect them.

  Family. Sisterhood. Brotherhood. Time. Life. A Church.

  Each of these and more can stand as indestructible and abiding as God, but it takes care and vigilance. It takes love and courage and selflessness. It takes other fruits of a spirit not listed in the Bible.

  All have the potential to discover peace, turn it into something everlasting. But humans carry their sorrow and disappointment, their trials and tragedies. They drag them with them, ugly, battered luggage, opened and rummaged through for the sheer purpose of torturing themselves with unfortunate past actions.

  Our history can shape the future, but it doesn’t define it. Our present is anchored by those around us, those we allow in our lives and those who, by default or shared blood, walk a road with us. What we choose to do with that companionship is up to us.

  Past, present and future communing together, the joining of this holy trinity. Who humans are, and what the world is, live in these three things.

  Remember this, always.

  LEBANON

  A MONTH AFTER ALICE KING’S DEATH

  I used to think Sara was too m
ean to die. I was wrong. She died in her sleep two weeks ago with Auntie Violet holding her hand. I stayed at the bakery and made a pineapple upside-down cake. Auntie Vi gathered her belongings from the hospital including the picture of her, Sara and Ms. Naomi.

  In Sara’s belongings was a dinged-up tin box decorated in roses and a bunch of letters from when she lived in Memphis, from a man named Jonas. There are letters from Sara to him, too. They are hopeful and sweet. There was also a journal in the tin box, but I haven’t read it yet. Sara started writing in it after I was born. It might have something about me, something I’m not ready to take on.

  Sara’s death was supposed to bring peace, but I have more questions than answers. She never told me my father and my grandfather were the same person. She never told me what she endured. I didn’t understand her way with me, why she had no patience for my shortcomings, why she hit me, why she couldn’t look me in the eye.

  Her way of surviving, drinking and men and such, always seemed a punishment for me. Who I am, or at least part of it, is because of something horrible that happened to her, and now things make sense, or at least part of her makes sense.

  I didn’t go to the homegoing. Jackson delivered the eulogy. Auntie Vi said it was a nice service, that Sara would’ve liked it. I got dressed up that day and sat on my bed, in my nicest suit, indigo with a red satin lining, a Christmas gift from Alice a few years ago. I think Sara’s favorite color was blue, but I can’t really be sure of it. I’d like to think I knew her favorite color, but I don’t.

  I do know Sara loved roses.

  Today, I’m at Restvale Cemetery, and I brought a dozen of them to her grave, all freshly cut, most in full bloom with a lush red embedded in every petal.

  Yeah, Sara would like these.

  There isn’t much to say to her except I wish I could’ve known you, really known you, Sara. I wish you would’ve saw fit to love me despite how I came into this world. I’m glad you knew love for a short time in Memphis, even if that love didn’t come from me. I want both of us to find peace in this world or, for you, in the next one.

  A westward wind blows a few petals off the roses onto Sara’s plot. I’m not naive enough to believe it’s some cosmic sign she’s watching. I know I’m only speaking to dirt and a patch of struggling grass. But maybe my words in the air can find you, wherever you are. Maybe I want to say I’m sorry and I think you’d say you’re sorry, too.

  But I won’t ever know that so best get on with it.

  RUBY

  FOUR YEARS AFTER ALICE KING’S DEATH

  I walked a mile to Walmart after the bus dropped me off. A pink backpack with a fairy on it was the first thing I’ve bought in almost five years that wasn’t from the commissary. I count twenty-four different cereals lined up side by side on the shelves. Twenty-four different cereals to choose from. Funny, the things you miss. I missed Frosted Flakes. I also missed clothes without numbers, someone calling my name and not “Inmate” with that practiced sharpness. I’m not a number anymore. I’m not faceless.

  Didn’t realize I spent twenty minutes in the cereal aisle. I’ll buy Frosted Flakes next time. The $56 in my pocket isn’t gonna last if I spend it on brand-name cereal, but a $5 pink backpack with a fairy is worth it. I can throw away the white sack with black airbrushed numbers.

  The first person to speak to me after I left prison was a Walmart cashier. Her name was Darla and she told me to never smoke. Said she’s been trying to give it up for at least fifteen years but hasn’t been able to stop. She said it’s a horrible habit and it’s expensive, too.

  “Trust me. Cigarettes are the devil. You know I could have bought at least two cars with what I spent on those things? I don’t care how much stress you got, don’t smoke! You’re a pretty girl, too pretty to do that anyway,” she preached.

  Darla was once a pretty girl. Maybe smoking took that away or maybe it was something life does to some of us. And though we’re not always left looking pretty, we have a ragged beauty, one that shows strength instead of a perfect nose or sculpted cheekbones.

  I smile and reply, “Thanks.”

  I wait for Layla on a bench where fresh air caresses my face, but crawls along my scars. They’ve faded over time or I think they have, willing my body to somehow start to forget. My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the plain squat buildings making up this town. They search for skyscrapers in the distance and instead find barren green pastures and skinny asphalt roads with rumbling trucks blaring country music.

  A little brown girl looks at me, curious with flashing dark eyes, almost black, wearing a pretty green dress. Her mom scolds her for staring, takes her hand and ushers her across the parking lot to their blue car.

  And I see her. Layla. Smiling. She’s gonna ask me if I’m okay and I might be, at least more okay than I was a day ago, and the week before that and so on. She’s gonna smile at me and hope I return the smile. Isn’t freedom, my freedom, cause for celebration? Isn’t friendship, her friendship, enough to tug at the sides of my mouth in a bright arc?

  I go to her silver car, me and my pink backpack with the fairy on it. She hugs me across the divide of a gear shift and cup holders, and I let her. Hazard lights blink. Tick. Tick. Tick. I don’t pull away. I put my arms around her. I take in someone who wants me to be here, someone who’s happy to see me despite who I am and my mistakes. Kinda like what people at church said God was supposed to be like. A friend driving hours to pick up another friend, maybe that’s God, too.

  Layla smells of soap and cinnamon. I don’t know how I smell. I hope it’s good. Someone honks their car horn. Layla lets me go before I let her go.

  And we drive.

  “You got a new car? It’s nice,” I offer.

  Layla’s glances at me sheepishly. “I’ve had this car for a few years.”

  Which is code for I got this while you were in prison, but I don’t want to make things any more awkward than they are. “It still smells new though,” I say.

  She smiles apologetic and hesitant.

  The silence is nice for a time. I think about Mom and what she’d be doing right now. How would that quilt have turned out? Who would she have given it to? I think about her a lot especially during sunset. And that thing happens when I think of Mom, some dark part in the back of my mind grudgingly dredges up Lebanon, my thoughts about him an unfixable, leaky faucet.

  Lebanon never showed up to any of the hearings. The ones that determined I was at first a danger to myself, when I spent days in a cell with nothing to hang or cut myself with. A dirty mattress on the floor with no bedding was the only furniture in the room, but they gave me a cell with a window. Cold eyes scanned my small space every fifteen minutes or so to make sure I was still alive. Pale yellow walls became my clock and measure of hours. The sun splashed lower and lower against concrete blocks laid in rows until the moon made the cell bone white. Or, when there was no moon, I sat in the dark until the sun came out and I again began to count the days.

  I did this for a week.

  I wasn’t going to kill myself. Me dead would make Lebanon’s life easier and why would I want to help him out? Me living is revenge enough. I wish I would’ve recognized that before everything.

  Jackson and Layla never missed a court date. They were there every step of the way like Layla promised that night by the police car. The public defender pleaded my case down. Said I was depressed. Wasn’t thinking straight. Thought it was a burglar. Was so scared I hid the gun. I didn’t tell him it was Lebanon who hid it or that it was his gun. It would’ve been so easy to implicate him, have him behind bars, but he had tried to help me by hiding the gun. That was the closest thing to fatherly I ever saw him do for me, and maybe that meant in some deep recess of his heart he loved me, or at least that’s what I chose to believe and that’s why I kept my mouth shut.

  The detectives, the big one and the one with red hair were there too, but never t
estified. They just came to make sure their case was closed out. That their job was done. The judge looked at me or maybe through me. I couldn’t tell. He said my mistakes would cost me five years. Then I signed some paperwork with my lawyer. I liked my lawyer. He didn’t remind me of the slick guys at my old job. He listened. To him I wasn’t invisible, and he was good at what he did. I could’ve spent the rest of my life staring at the sun and moon on a bare concrete wall, but I spent only four and a half years doing this. Let off early for good behavior. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around good behavior after I took a life.

  I suppose there’s nowhere else to go but up from here.

  And we drive.

  Gentle bumps on the road give way to mild concrete craters and then back to gentle bumps, then deeper craters. Layla glances over from time to time but lets me be until she can’t anymore.

  “He doesn’t come around the church. I don’t think he and Dad have talked since that night. So, you’re safe.”

  “From him? Yeah, I’m safe from him now.”

  My vision grows blurry for a second. Dull green and even duller brown become some swirl of color, like my eyes, while the sky matures to a darker blue and the clouds a starker white.

  “You want to ask me what happened while I was gone, but there’s nothing to tell, Layla. I appreciated the letters you sent though.”

  “Why didn’t you want us to visit?”

  “What purpose would it have served? Small talk. Forced jokes. Your Dad reading a Bible verse or two or twelve. It’s worse for me to see you knowing the world’s going on without me. That you’re going on without me.”

  It’s hard to breathe now; the plush confines of the car slowly feel suffocating. Chicago’s skyline dimly glows from a distance and suddenly bursts forth with all the noise and life and dirt I remember.

  “I’m not trying to be a bitch, Layla.”

  “No, you’re not trying,” she retorts and then she chuckles. It’s a warm sound. “I can’t say I know your feelings, Rue. I don’t, and I know I push—”