Ruby on the Outside

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  I didn’t want to hear whatever it was she was going to say. But I had to say something to act like I was interested and then get her to change the subject.

  “What happened to him?” I picked out a new color, orange, and I started going over the parts I had already colored purple and the whole thing was looking like brown mush.

  “To who?”

  “Nick.”

  There were other kids around, some talking quietly, some playing games, some fighting with their mom, arguing about why they were getting in trouble in school or at home, or being disrespectful and angry. I never understood how you could use the tiny amount of time you have with your mom like that.

  “He went to prison, Ruby. You never have to worry about him again.”

  “For longer than you?”

  I wanted to believe there was something fair about this whole thing, that seemed so horribly unfair to me, but when I asked that question I saw Matoo rolling her eyes around in her head like she was having a seizure.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t matter, Ruby,” my mother told me, which meant she wasn’t going to answer me. “What matters is how I move forward from here and if you can forgive me.”

  “Forgive you?” My orange crayon snapped right in half in my hand. “For what?”

  I watched as Matoo started shaking her head in some silent sister communication. “Let it be, Janis,” she said finally.

  And my mother got quiet. She kissed the top of my head, picked up a yellow crayon, and starting working on the page with me.

  She was letting it go. Now I could breathe.

  I already knew what happened to Nick, though, even before I asked. I had heard Matoo on the phone so many times even when I tried not to. Nick had some information about even bigger more dangerous drug dealers, the ones he bought drugs from, and he traded that information for a lesser sentence. He was offered what they call a plea bargain. He ratted out his drug supplier and in exchange he didn’t have to spend as many years behind bars as my mother, who had done nothing. She didn’t have anything to give them in exchange for a lighter sentence. They didn’t even offer her a plea bargain.

  Nobody needed anything from my mom.

  But I did.

  Chapter Nine

  Margalit’s house looks almost identical to mine. The bedrooms are in the same place, the same little balcony from the upstairs overlooking the living room. The fridge and the stove and the sink are all in the exact same place as ours, but hers is ten times more crowded. And it’s not just because three people live here instead of just two—Margalit, her mom, and her dad, who I haven’t met yet—it’s all their stuff.

  I’ve never seen so much stuff. So much cool and interesting stuff. There are things everywhere, ceramic bowls filled with coins or dried flower petals, one with glass marbles. There are books, just randomly piled or stacked on top of any sort of surface; magazines; a little collection of antique-looking wind-up toys. Colorful glass bottles are lined up on the windowsill in the lower-level living room.

  Matoo likes to keep our house very neat. If she sees me get up from an upholstered chair in the living room, she runs over and smooths out the lines in the fabric so you can’t see that anyone had ever been there. We have a glass table, so you don’t have to worry about your drink leaving a stain, but we aren’t allowed to have any drinks in the living room, so it stays pretty clean.

  It’s not that Margalit’s house isn’t clean. It is. It’s just wonderful. The white walls are so covered with artwork, framed and unframed, that there is hardly any white you can see. Some of the paintings were done by Margalit’s mother and some by their grandfather, I am told, as Margalit points everything out and explains it. The couch is all mushy and soft looking, and there are different-colored, different-size pillows just thrown all over it, not fluffed up at all. Some are downright smushed to smithereens.

  Matoo wanted to know whose house I would be eating at and what time I’d be home, but other than that I think she was happy I was eating with a friend. Remember to smile, she told me, and be polite.

  I am smiling now.

  “I hope you like my homemade macaroni and cheese. I didn’t think to ask,” Margalit’s mom is saying when the house tour brings us into the kitchen. “Not everyone loves it like Moochie here does.”

  That’s what Margalit’s mom calls her. Moochie. Or just Moo.

  “Oh, I love it,” I answer, though I’ve never had homemade and I am wondering if it will be as good as the kind from the box, because I see it in the baking dish and it isn’t even orange. Then Margalit pulls me by my arm.

  “Come see my room,” she says.

  We are both sunburned from being outdoors all day. Yvette wasn’t there today and Beatrice kept us at the pool all day. She was actually a lot more fun without Yvette around. I guess, Beatrice felt she could be more like a kid without Yvette around. We played Marco Polo and water tag and it was almost like we were just four friends. I even think Elise had a good day.

  I follow Margalit up the stairs, which are just like my stairs, and into her bedroom, which is right where my bedroom would be.

  “Wow,” I say. It’s all I can say.

  Wow.

  Before we can even walk into the room, we have to get past all the loose scarfs, hanging like a soft wavy rainbow from a bar that stretches across the top of the doorway. I carefully move some out of the way and then I kind of have to duck to get inside.

  “Wow.” I say it again.

  Margalit has a big double bed, like grown-ups have, but it’s anything but grown-up looking. Like her couch downstairs, her bed is covered with pillows, but it is also covered with stuffed animals and blankets that look like they might have been baby blankets, knitted and flowery. One cottony blanket bunched up at the bottom has blue bunnies on it. There is one big sort of pillow–stuffed animal combo and it looks really old, and really well loved.

  Her walls are covered with posters, some that were clearly from kindergarten, like Hello Kitty, and some must be pretty new, like Demi Lovato. Margalit’s room is just like she is: a free spirit. An open book. An open heart with lots of color.

  And then there are her books. Everywhere. Her shelves are filled with what looks like a history of art projects—little FIMO-clay creations, beads, crepe paper flowers—and her books are stacked on the floor, under the bed, and on the windowsill.

  It takes me a while to see everything.

  “My mom keeps wanting me to clean up,” Margalit says. “I will. Soon.”

  “Well, it’s not dirty,” I say.

  Margalit bounces on her bottom right onto her bed. “Thank you,” she says. “That’s what I say.”

  “And it looks like you’ve lived here forever,” I say, because it does. It is so full of Margalit.

  “I know, my mom wanted me to, but I wouldn’t get rid of anything when we moved here from Glens Falls.”

  “Where’s that?” I ask, not because I really want to know but it sounds polite. I want so much for Margalit to like me. I don’t want to do or say anything thoughtless or rude by mistake. Sometimes I do that. I don’t mean it, but I do.

  “Oh, it’s a little town upstate. Near Saratoga,” she tells me

  Saratoga?

  That’s where we used to live and I am just about to tell her that but I’m not sure that’s very interesting, or if that’s like being one of those friends that whenever you tell them something they tell you something about themselves right away. So I can’t decide, but I don’t have to because right then her mom calls up the stairs telling us dinner is ready.

  “We gotta wash up.” Margalit jumps to her feet. “I can’t wait for you to taste my mom’s cooking.”

  Me neither.

  And by the way, homemade mac and cheese is much better than the kind from the box. Dinner is delicious. I wasn’t going to ask,
but Margalit’s mom asks me if I want seconds, and I do. Margalit’s dad is working late, so I don’t get to meet him.

  It’s only seven thirty and it’s still light out. Matoo had said it was okay for me to walk back home by myself. It’s just two rows and a few condos down. But Margalit’s mom makes me call my house first to say I’m on my way. I even remember to thank Margalit’s mom for dinner before I leave.

  “Anytime,” she says.

  Margalit echoes, “Anytime.”

  Now Matoo is waiting in the doorway. The light in the hall is on behind her and she’s almost glowing. Her hands are on her hips.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. I stop at the edge of the sidewalk, the way Loulou does when she doesn’t want to come in from her walk, when it’s so nice out and there’s so much more of the world to explore.

  “Nothing, why do you think something’s wrong?” Matoo steps out of the way as if that will encourage me to come in faster. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” I say, but I still haven’t moved closer. “You look mad, that’s all.” Without her glasses, Matoo looks more sad than upset, actually. Her face looks smaller. Her worry is more visible.

  “Come on, come on already.” She puts her glasses back on and starts waving her arms. “You’re letting all the bugs in.”

  When I get inside, I see a bowl in the sink with leftover milk and a few Cheerios still, which Matoo must have had for dinner. I can’t believe she hasn’t washed her dishes yet and put them away.

  Something is wrong.

  “Did you have a good time?” she asks me.

  “Oh, yeah. I had a great time,” I say. “I really did.”

  Matoo smiles at me. “I’m so glad,” she says. Her face relaxes.

  I know it sounds crazy, but I think Matoo missed me tonight. Like maybe she likes it when I mush up her pillows.

  “Next time, you can invite her here.”

  I think I will.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s pouring rain. Yvette and Beatrice can’t believe we showed up this morning for camp—me and Margalit. So far no one else has, which at this point just means Elise.

  It’s dark inside the clubhouse, which is our rain-day location, but I don’t think anyone thought we’d really use it because it’s pretty dingy. What it is, is a big empty room they use to store pool stuff over the winter, so it is filled with extra folding chairs, tables, hoses, rakes, and umbrellas stacked against the walls, and there is a steady drip of water in three places, plunking down onto the concrete floor.

  “Okay, guys,” Beatrice is saying. We have fitted ourselves all onto one big beach blanket with another towel on top of that, so even in this damp weather it’s actually warm and cozy. “This is what we’re going to do.”

  That must be her cue, because Yvette dumps out a big white plastic bag from Target; notebooks, colored pencils, markers, pens, little-kid scissors, and glue sticks all spill out. Seeing it all, I can feel my skin tingle and my heart thumbing a little bit faster. It’s exciting, all those brand-new art supplies and before I can stop myself I blurt out with unbridled enthusiasm, “Oh, I love colored pencils!” and I instantly feel my face heat up with regret.

  I’ve done this before—just this past school year, in fact, in fifth grade. It was early in the school year. It was our first year moving from classroom to classroom, but just one switch. Math and science with Mr. Williams and then right across the hall for social studies and language arts with Ms. Genovese. My embarrassing display of eagerness happened to occur in Mr. Williams’s class.

  We had just learned about the seven characteristics of a living thing. First, Mr. Williams asked everyone, or anyone, to guess. I think making kids guess always spells trouble and I don’t know why teachers haven’t figured this out. It’s not like it makes everyone think or figure things out for themselves, it just creates chaos.

  But anyway, after a few really ridiculous answers and a lot of toilet jokes from the boys, Mr. Williams wrote all seven characteristics of life on the board one by one explaining about each one: organization, reproduction, energy, response, growth, and adaptation. And without meaning to, I started thinking about my mother because there was something missing from that list, but I didn’t want to share it out loud.

  Eating is swell. Growing up, maybe. Adapting and being able to figure things out on your own is pretty crucial too, I suppose.

  But love, I was thinking. Living things need to be loved.

  Well, maybe not all living things, like maybe not amoebas or earthworms, but human beings do. Human beings need to be mothers who love their children, and children need their mothers to love. I’d read about babies in orphanages who actually don’t grow because no one picks them up and loves them.

  So my mind was wandering and I wasn’t really listening and then all of sudden I noticed that the class is talking about manatees and baby seals and I didn’t want to be thinking about my mother and how I can’t be with her, so I just blurted something out.

  “Oh, I love manatees!”

  And the whole class got quiet and it wasn’t because I’d just said something really stupid. It was because I seemed so happy about it, too eager to share, like a little kid, and that made everyone uncomfortable and they all started laughing.

  They started laughing at me.

  And I slouched down in my seat and vowed never to look overly excited about anything again.

  But now I feel the same embarrassment heating up my face, only this time, instead of laughing at me, Margalit says, “Oh, me too. Don’t you just love a brand-new perfectly sharpened pencil?”

  She takes one of the colored pencils out of the box and holds it up.

  “Good for both of you, then,” Yvette is saying. I think she is being sarcastic, but I don’t even care.

  “This long, long day should go just swimmingly then,” she adds.

  Beatrice laughs like that is really funny and they both get up, head over to take down a couple of folding chairs, and start their high school–type conversation.

  They leave us alone. The rain is steadily hitting the roof of the clubhouse, like hundreds of tiny drummers. The wind picks up. The rain shifts direction and smacks against the Plexiglas windows.

  “Let’s write a story together,” Margalit says. “And draw pictures to go with it.”

  “Okay.” I like that idea. I’ve never written a story with someone else before, but it sounds like fun. I pull out one of the spiral notebooks. Margalit does the same.

  “I’ll start drawing first and you start writing and then we’ll switch,” she says.

  I look down at the blank pages, tiny blue lines inviting me to touch my perfectly sharpened pencil right down between them and see what story is left behind.

  “What do I write about?”

  “Anything you want,” Margalit tells me. “So what should I draw? Let me think about it.”

  I’m sure it’s raining in Bedford Hills, too, and that thought comes into my head but I know if my mother is in her cell, she can’t see it. I wonder if she can hear it. I wonder if there are other ways to know if it’s raining. Can she hear it? Do the COs come into work and talk about the weather? What is it like not to see the sky when you wake up in the morning?

  The bright, beautiful sun or the dark, stormy clouds. The soft humid breeze on an early July morning. The misty cool breeze of a summer storm.

  It’s just so sad, so I blurt out, “Manatees?”

  Jeez, that was stupid, but I need something to fill my head.

  “Perfect,” Margalit says. “Did you know that they think maybe early explorers, like even Columbus, thought that the manatees were mermaids swimming in the ocean?”

  “Mermaids?”

  “Exactly,” Margalit says.

  So I say, “I’ll write a mermaid story.”

  �
�And I’ll draw a mermaid and I’ll throw in some manatees.”

  Margalit holds up her notebook. She has already begun decorating the cover. “This will be our illustration book and the one you’ve got can be our storybook.”

  We worked all morning and all afternoon, trading back and forth. I started a story about a mermaid and a manatee. Then I passed it on to Margalit and she wrote a little bit more while I drew a picture to go with the part I had just written. I didn’t think too much about it. It is pretty much like playing house or playing dolls, only instead of setting up toys I just wrote down what I imagined everyone in the story was doing and what they were saying. We worked on our story and illustrations all the way through lunch. Eating while we work. And just like that, the time goes by. It’s three o’clock and the sun comes bursting out. Yvette pulls open the sliding door and we all stand looking out, the sunlight glistening and sparkling off every wet surface, every leaf and blade of grass—even the plastic lounge chairs that are set up around the pool are shining.

  “Oh great, now it gets nice out,” Beatrice says. We all emerge from the clubhouse and outside into the fresh air.

  “I think I lost half my tan today.” Yvette holds out her arms.

  I am blinking in the light. It feels like we’ve been underground for weeks and that we’ve just lived a whole other life, the life Margalit and I wrote down in our storybook and illustrated.

  “We need a title,” Margalit says. She’s rubbing her eyes.

  “Yeah, we do.”

  Even Yvette and Beatrice get in on the discussion as we all walk back to our houses, but we haven’t come up with the perfect title yet.

  My sneakers get wet because instead of staying on the paved sidewalk Margalit and I keep running around each other on the grass.

  “My toes are squishing in my soaking socks,” Margalit says.

  “Mine too.”

  And this seems to launch us into a whole other conversation about wrinkly toes and fingers and memories of staying in the bathtub too long. Yvette and Beatrice aren’t the least bit interested but Margalit and I seem to be at no loss for things to add to the infinitely engrossing discussion.