Ruby on the Outside

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  I waited but I thought about that little girl again and I just had to know. I remembered her mother calling out her name—Larissa—and I took a chance.

  “Can you tell me what did Larissa’s mother did?” I stepped up to the CO. “Why is she in here?”

  A lot of the correctional officers were women, but Officer Rubins was a man. He was tall, at least to me, and pretty fat. His face was all scarred with tiny indents. He never smiled, so I don’t really know where I got the courage to talk to him at all. Just seven-year-old stupidity, I guess, combined with this strange new urge to find something out.

  “Larissa’s mother?” He looked down at me. I thought he was going to answer me. Maybe I had been wrong. Maybe he was nice after all.

  “Yeah, the girl and her grandmother. They were sitting next to me and my mom. Table fifteen? Larissa. Do you know what her mother did to put her in jail?”

  And Officer Rubins started laughing. His laugh was loud and like a bullet, it just forced its way out of his belly and his mouth and into my chest. When his laughing lessened to a chuckled, he just looked mean again.

  “Never mind about Larissa’s mother. Why don’t you just worry about why your mother is here,” he told me.

  Of course, that’s what I really wanted to know.

  Of course.

  But I wasn’t ready for that. I wanted to keep my two worlds apart. I didn’t want anything from this inside world that might affect my outside world. When I got home and that world became this world again. I decided to never make the mistake of asking about anyone else, ever again.

  And then, hopefully, no one would ask about my mom.

  Not even, and especially not, me.

  Chapter Six

  Visiting hours at Bedford Hills are from eight thirty in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon, which means during the school year I can see my mom only on weekends.

  And now, even though school is out for the summer, I still have to wait a full week before I can see my mother again. During the week, I’m supposed to go to the pool, where two older kids in the condo run a “camp.” The good news is that Kristin left for her real sleepaway camp in Maine or Maryland or Massachusetts—I wasn’t really listening when she told me—and that Margalit gets stuck here with me and that Matoo seems to have forgotten about taking me to a fancy hair salon.

  “This is so boring,” I say. But I’m not really bored. I am happy to be out of the house and happy that Margalit is here at camp with me. Happy it’s not raining and it’s not too hot. And happy that they have a carrom board.

  So I’m not bored at all, but Kristin makes fun of me when I get too excited about things. So I think I have to act like I am.

  “Really? I’m not,” Margalit says. She is standing on the other end of the board getting ready to shoot her red checker piece into the hole, if she can. “I love carrom.”

  And, wow, that’s so cool. But now I am feeling stupid for saying I was bored when I wasn’t, and maybe that made her feel stupid, which makes me worried. I really want her to like me. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  “Do you want to do something else?” she asks me.

  She misses and it’s my turn.

  “Oh, no,” I say quickly. “I love carrom too. I just thought you were bored. So I said I was bored. I know, weird, right?”

  Margalit is just looking me. “No,” she says. “Not weird at all.”

  I feel a big smile take over my face. Matoo might be right about smiling making you feel good. I look down at the wooden board, position my fingers, take my shot, and I miss too.

  There are no cabins at this camp or dining hall or whatever else they probably have at real summer camps. We have the condo pool, a couple of high school girls from the condos as counselors, and the grass on the other side of the fence, where there is a picnic table, which is where we are having lunch.

  “My mother made me peanut butter and jelly again,” Margalit says. There are only five of us by noon. The one boy who comes usually leaves around eleven. I think this is more like a drop-off babysitting. It’s not like we learn to make fires, sing camp songs, and roast weenies. Though I think that stuff might be fun too.

  But right now it’s me and Margalit, one really annoying seven-year-old girl named Elise, and our two “counselors,” Beatrice and Yvette.

  I have peanut butter and jelly too.

  “Me too,” I tell Margalit and we both open our mouths and bite.

  “Beatrice is a funny name for a kid,” Elise is saying to one of our counselors. Elise has finished her lunch, apparently. She gets one of those packaged lunches from the grocery store, with the little compartments of cheese or grapes and a container of milk, which Yvette keeps, as advertised in her flyer, in a cooler, which is never that cool, but Elise doesn’t seem to mind, though. She doesn’t seem to have eaten much of it.

  “It’s no funnier than Elise,” Beatrice says. She’s trying to have a high school–type conversation with Yvette, but Elise keeps interrupting.

  “Yes, it is,” Elise says. “It’s like an old-fashioned name. Like an old-lady name.”

  “Gee, Elise. Thanks for that,” Beatrice answers, but she doesn’t turn her head. She and Yvette are both sitting on the same side of the picnic table, practically whispering to each other. When they talk quietly like this, they are talking about boys.

  “Go finish your lunch.” Yvette shoos her away.

  “We’ll go for a swim after rest time,” Beatrice says and they go back to their whispers.

  I think that Elise is going to start bothering us now, but she doesn’t. She just looks kind of dejected. She gets up from the table and goes and slumps down onto the grass.

  “I feel sorry for her,” Margalit says.

  “Yeah, me too,” I say. “She’s got no one her age to hang out with.” But really that hadn’t occurred to me until just then.

  I know what it feels like to sit alone and feel left out, watching other kids hanging out with their best friends. But in this moment, now that I don’t have to be doing that, I can see how sad that is for someone else.

  After we finish eating, Margalit and I are sitting under the shade of the one full-grown tree in the whole condo complex. It’s a big, thick tree, with its root gnarled and poking out of the ground all around the base, like giant bark fingers. We each have our favorite “finger” to sit on and eat and talk.

  We watch as Elise starts bouncing her pink rubber ball, the one she keeps in her pocket, on the concrete. Elise and her parents live in the unit right next to mine. She is always bouncing that ball against her front steps.

  “Too bad there aren’t more little kids here for her to play with,” I say. “She doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, either, so she’s alone all the time.” I say this mostly because I want to look like I have something to offer, even if it’s just how much I know about the neighborhood. Like maybe that’ll be another benefit to being my friend.

  Margalit looks at me with this sad face and I wonder what I’ve said wrong. It’s just like me to say the wrong thing. I’m sure I have, but I don’t know what it is.

  “I used to have a brother,” she says.

  So now I know.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean like that. Like there is something wrong with that or anything. I mean, I don’t have a brother or sister either.” And now I am rambling because that’s probably not at all what Margalit meant, but before I can fix it or make it worse or anything, she stands up and brushes the peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich crumbs from her shorts.

  “Let’s play another game of carrom before they make us rest on our towels.” And she looks pretty happy again.

  “Okay,” I say. “Wanna ask Elise to play too?”

  Margalit nods and smiles. “Yeah, that’s a great idea.”

  Chapter Seven

  I imagine there comes a certain t
ime in a new friendship when the inevitable invitation comes up:

  Wanna come to my house?

  Which will mean, sometime fairly soon after that, you most likely have to reciprocate. This is exactly why I’ve always managed to successfully avoid it until this moment. Of course, that is also why I never had a best friend before.

  “Wanna come to my house for dinner tonight?” Margalit asked me yesterday.

  It isn’t that I don’t want anyone to come to my house. I do. It’s just that I’m afraid they’ll ask questions. They might wonder about Matoo’s name or figure out that I am not, in fact, Navaho or Sioux or a descendant of any other Native American tribe. Or they will see the photo of my mother on the mantel.

  It’s actually a very important, special picture. It’s a photo of me and mom at Christmas. But there are a lot of red flags in the picture. Well, not really red flags, but things that might lead to questions. Questions about where it was taken. And why it’s so different looking.

  They might ask.

  For one thing, my mother is dressed in all green, but that, in and of itself, might not seem so odd. It’s just a green sweater with the green collar of her shirt poking out and plain green pants. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, nothing fancy, and if you looked closely you’d see she has no jewelry on. But who would really notice that?

  My mom is sitting on a metal chair—another giveaway—and I am standing in front of her, kind of between her knees. Her arms are around me. I am wearing this really ugly blue striped dress, because it’s a holiday visiting day and they make a big deal of it at the prison, with decorations and sweets, and Matoo made me get dressed up for it with a hand-me-down dress from a friend of hers.

  But that’s not it either.

  No, it’s more about the roaring fireplace and the fur-trimmed Christmas stockings behind her. There is a big wrinkle right down the center, rolling right across the brick chimney and making a bump in that roaring fire, because it’s really just a plastic background, like the screens they use for slide-show projections.

  So it doesn’t take a genius to tell it’s fake.

  There are no flames coming from that fire, no smell of cookies baking in the oven or turkey roasting. There were no presents under that tree. Not that year, the year before, or the year after. All of it was fake.

  But then again, you couldn’t get more real than spending Christmas Day with your mom in prison.

  And I love that picture more than anything.

  I just didn’t really want anyone else to know about it.

  Okay, so when Margalit asked me over to her house, I said no.

  “Oh, all right,” Margalit says.

  Camp is over for the day. Yvette and Beatrice walk us all back to our houses. We drop Elise off first. When we get to Margalit’s house, her mom is waiting outside the front door. At least I assume it’s her mom. When you don’t have a regular mom situation you’d think you wouldn’t assume these kinds of things, but I usually do anyway. Just like everyone else does.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come over, Ruby?” Margalit asks me again. Then she looks up at the mom, like maybe she could say something that would change my mind.

  I look up the few steps leading to their house. But, oh no, that has to be Margalit’s mom. She has the exact same black hair, shiny and straight, only the mom has hers wrapped up on top of her in that way that looks neat and secure but also loose and pretty.

  When I visit my mom, she brushes my hair, sometimes for the whole visit. We aren’t allowed to have a hairbrush, so she uses her hands.

  “Now, Moo, don’t put your friend on the spot,” Margalit’s mother says. “Maybe she needs to get home. Maybe she’s just tired.”

  And I am so torn because Margalit is the first girl that ever seemed like she might be my real best friend and if I don’t take this next step, I’ll never find out. Next year is middle school, and by all accounts a best friend is an essential accessory. Not to mention, I really really like Margalit.

  “Maybe another night,” I say to Margalit, glancing up at her mom for her approval.

  “How about tomorrow night, then?” Margalit jumps in right away.

  Yvette and Beatrice are still standing there, waiting, not really listening but sort of half waiting for the conversation to be over so they can move on and get rid of me at my house, like when the bus driver patiently lets some kid hold on and say good-bye to his mom for longer than necessary. But you can bet if Margalit’s mom weren’t right here, Yvette and Beatrice wouldn’t be being so patient.

  “Moo, you’re doing it again.” Margalit’s mother was going to start to protect me again, but time is running out, and we are only getting older and closer to sixth grade by the second, so I just say it.

  “Okay. Sure. Tomorrow night.”

  Really fast, before I have a chance to come up with more reasons why this is a bad idea and change my mind, Margalit starts jumping up and down.

  “Oh Mom, can you make us homemade macaroni and cheese? And can we bake cookies afterward and then do FIMO clay?”

  “Okay, okay, hold on.” She is smiling. “Ruby. It’s Ruby, right?”

  I nod.

  “Well, first we’ll have to ask your mom,” Margalit’s mom says. “Do you want me to call her?”

  “Oh, no. That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll ask her when I get home.”

  That’s when Yvette seemed to come back to life.

  “Okay, then,” Yvette said. “All settled. Let’s get you home, Ruby. Bye, Mrs. Tipps. See you tomorrow.”

  Tipps?

  Beatrice adds in, “See you tomorrow, Mrs. Tipps.”

  And somewhere in the back of my head that name sounds familiar, but I am more concerned with how I am now going to go to Margalit’s house for dinner tomorrow afternoon without having to then invite her to my house, but maybe this will finally turn out to be my very first, very real best friend and maybe everything is going to work out perfectly.

  Chapter Eight

  It wasn’t like we didn’t have our own story. We did. Mostly, the story between Matoo and me about my mother, was to hate Nick Sands.

  “I never liked him,” Matoo would say. “Not from the first moment I met him. He wasn’t nice to your mother. Oh sure, he said all the right things. ‘Baby doll.’ ‘Beautiful creature.’ He had all the lines, but that’s all they were. Lines.”

  I can’t remember my mother at all from our time with Nick. I liked to imagine her, though. I like to pretend. I have this movie in my head of the two of us living alone and I am just a baby. And because in order for a good fantasy to really work you need to weave in some factual details, we live somewhere outside of Albany. We live in a little house, one story, yellow with white shutters. Or sometimes it’s red shutters because that part I have to make up. My mother makes pies for a living, which means she is in the kitchen all day and I get to play with pots and pans on the floor right next to her. She sings while she is cooking and at the end of the day, we eat pies for dinner, then she gives me a bath and brushes my hair with a brush, while she tells me a bedtime story about her own magical childhood.

  I had to make that all up too.

  I can’t remember anything specific from before my mom went to prison. We don’t talk about my real dad, but I know my mom was really young when she had me. So I think when Nick came around she wanted so badly for someone to love and take care of her, take care of us, that she would have done anything for him. At least that’s how Matoo describes it.

  The truth is, I didn’t want to hear even that much. But sometimes, my mom tries to tell me things.

  One visit, about a year ago, we were in the children’s center, which is that separate area of the visitors’ room at Bedford Hills. There are toys and stuffed animals and books and art supplies and posters, so when you are in there, you can almost pretend you are in a nursery schoo
l somewhere, instead of a prison.

  I was curled up in my mother’s lap, but I was leaning over the table drawing while we were talking. At ten, I was probably too big to sit like that, with all my weight on her legs, but she was holding me, balancing me while I was working hard in that coloring book, trying to stay inside the lines perfectly, trying not to make a mistake.

  “The social worker wants me to talk to you, Ruby,” my mother said.

  I think it was the second time she tried to say this. I was trying to ignore her. I was glad I couldn’t see her face, only the picture in front of me. Someone before me had already drawn in this coloring book. I found the only page that was still clean, that I could make my own.

  “I mean, I want to talk to you too,” my mom went on. “About what happened that night. About why I am in here. I think you are old enough now to hear some things.”

  I wasn’t.

  I kept coloring. Purple within the lines. Dark purple over the light purple.

  And somewhere in my brain, a memory was triggered. There were little shots of bright white lights darting around a bedroom in my mind far away, flashlights and voices and shouting. And so long ago, a woman in a blue uniform handed me a teddy bear.

  Then I don’t remember anything else until I am living with Matoo, who isn’t Matoo yet. She is my mother’s older sister and I’d never met her before.

  “I have to take responsibility for my choices, Ruby. I wouldn’t be a good mother,” my mother paused, like she was stopping herself from saying something and then with effort she continued. “I wouldn’t be a . . . mother . . . if I didn’t do that. If I didn’t take responsibility.”

  I know Matoo says that my mother didn’t do anything wrong. It was all Nick. I heard her talking, sometimes crying. Nick was a drug addict. My mother didn’t even take drugs. Everyone gets tested when they get arrested and my mother didn’t test positive for anything. Not even alcohol, and that’s legal. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what Matoo says.

  “Ruby? Are you okay?” my mother asked me.