by Mary Monroe
“All right then. ’Night, Ruby Jean,” her mother yelled, already padding back down the hall to her room.
Ruby breathed a sigh of relief. “ ’Night, Mama,” she hollered, listening with her ear against the door. She wore her green terrycloth bathrobe over her loose-fitting blue cotton party dress, not the one that Othella had shoplifted for her and told her to wear tonight. That flimsy green jersey dress was way too tight. It clung to every lump, jellylike roll, and curve on her body. It would make her look pregnant even if she wasn’t. She had hidden her condition for nine months, and she was not going to expose herself now, when she was so close to the end.
Ruby cracked open her door to make sure her mother had gone into her room and shut her door. Two seconds later, a super sharp pain shot through the lower part of her belly. It was the most painful contraction so far. It was the only one that made her wish she had never even seen a boy in her life, let alone screwed one. She had to close the door fast and cover her mouth with her hand to keep from screaming.
Maybe she wouldn’t make it to the party after all....
If Ruby didn’t know any better, she’d swear she was carrying a pit bull instead of a baby in her womb, the way he or she was kicking. And to think that some of the women she knew went through this more than a dozen times! Her oldest sister Flodell had given birth to ten children. Ten! The thought of going through labor ten times was enough to make Ruby’s heart skip a beat and her chest tighten. More pain was the last thing she needed right now. She pushed the thought of multiple births out of her mind and decided to focus on the only one that mattered to her tonight.
Despite the discomfort that she was experiencing, the fact that she was still a child herself and unmarried, and the fact that she’d gotten pregnant by mistake, Ruby still felt blessed. Like her mother, she believed that every child was a gift from God, even the “mistakes” like the one she was carrying.
Ruby waited another ten minutes. Then she tiptoed down the hall to her parents’ room. She immediately peeped through the keyhole. Damn that labor! Bending over to look through the keyhole had caused her another sharp pain, making her legs tremble. She held her breath until that pain had subsided, then she placed her ear against the door and listened. Her parents had turned off their bedroom lamp, and her daddy was already snoring like a moose. She was sure that she was in the clear now, so she tiptoed back to her room. She locked her bedroom door again. Then she removed her bathrobe and placed it on the back of the chair in front of her dresser. After listening for a few more moments, she waddled to the window, opened it, and slid out like a huge snake. She hit the ground running like a track star.
Ruby was not a beautiful girl. Most people thought that she was just a little too stout and a little too dark. Her hair was too coarse and short for her to wear most of the latest styles. She usually wore it pressed, with a few finger waves on the side like now. Her inky black eyes were too small for her large round face. But those “imperfections” didn’t stop any of the fifteen boys at Othella’s party from wanting to dance with her. For one thing, she was a good dancer for such a husky girl. Nobody could do those swing dances like Ruby. She’d just introduced the jitterbug, a dance that she had picked up in Baton Rouge last month while visiting one of her musician uncles. It was not a new dance, but it was to her friends and they all wanted to learn it.
Another reason why so many boys wanted to dance with Ruby was because other than herself and Othella, there were not that many girls at the party. Othella had invited only three others, and she had handpicked borderline plain Janes. There was a good reason for that; Othella was smart when it came to dealing with Ruby. She read that girl like a book. She knew how important it was for her to get a lot of attention. Since the two of them didn’t go for the same type of boy, Ruby had very little competition tonight. She had not stopped dancing since she walked in the door an hour ago. And she’d already drunk so much beer that her contractions didn’t seem to hurt nearly as much now.
Six of the boys at the party had had sex with Ruby, each one at least twice. And one was the father of the baby that she was going to give birth to in less than an hour.
While Ruby was in the kitchen smacking on some barbequed ribs, her water broke. It saturated her panties and dripped a small puddle on the floor. Though she knew what was happening, it still startled her. She was glad that nobody else had come into the kitchen with her. She would have dropped dead on the spot if one of her friends had witnessed the gruesome mess she’d just made on the floor. And since nobody did, it was nothing for her to be concerned about. Clumsy partygoers had already spilled beer, soda pop, and other liquids in several other spots on the floor. Ruby didn’t think anybody would notice the mess she’d just made.
She was not going to let even this incident interfere with her fun. She ducked into the broom closet facing the stove and removed her wet panties. Then she snatched a dust cloth off the shelf and wiped herself off. She wrung out as much of the water as she could from her panties before she put them back on. Then she stuffed part of a wadded up brown paper bag from the supermarket between her thighs, lining the crotch of her cotton panties from side to side. When she left the closet, she took a few vigorous steps around the kitchen table to make sure the makeshift diaper was secure. She didn’t want it to slide out and end up on the floor, too. Once she was satisfied, she returned to the living room so she could dance some more.
“You sure enough actin’ strange all of a sudden,” Ike said.
Please, Lord, let Ike be the daddy of my baby, she thought to herself. She blinked at him as he stared at her out of the corner of his eye. “You actin’ real strange right now,” Ike accused. “You was dancin’ all right a little while ago. Now all you doin’ is stumblin’ like you blind, and steppin’ on my toes and shit. And don’t tell me that it’s because of the beer. You drink beer every time you come over here, and it ain’t never made you this clumsy. So what’s wrong with you, girl?”
“Huh? Um ... what ... what do you mean?” Ruby asked slowly and with a pout, hoping that it would gain her some sympathy and end the nosy questions.
“You all jumpy and stuff, too. You got gas or what?” Ike had his arms around Ruby’s waist. Before she could stop him, he thumped her stomach with his fingers, like he was inspecting a melon. “And another thing, your belly is as hard as a rock. What do—” He stopped talking and froze, shaking his hand like he’d just burned his fingers. “Girl, your stomach just moved!” With a pinched look on his face, he put his arms back around Ruby’s waist.
Ruby let out a loud breath and removed Ike’s arms from around her. “Oh, it’s been doin’ that a lot today. Gas.” She gave him a playful pat on his shoulder. “And stop talkin’ so loud. I don’t want everybody to know about that. A problem with gas at a party is so ... unsociable,” she whispered. “Especially when it’s a girl with the gas problem.”
“You want to sit down before you cut loose and stink up the place?” Ike asked, rubbing his nose. “I ain’t smelled nothin’ yet but ...”
“Oh, I’m fine.” Ruby dismissed that thought with a giggle and kept dancing.
“Do you mean to tell me that gas is makin’ your stomach move? You must have some bazooka farts tryin’ to get out, if gas can make your stomach move like that. It felt like somethin’ was kickin’ in there, girl,” Ike said in a low, guarded tone of voice. He scratched his head and then he attempted to feel Ruby’s stomach again. She moved away in time. He cocked his head to the side and gave her a suspicious look. “Gas, huh?”
“Yep! My mama made baked beans to go with them ribs we barbequed, and I ate a mighty big plate,” Ruby explained, nervous sweat forming on her face and under her arms. “Go get me another bottle of beer while I run to the toilet and do my business. I don’t want to be droppin’ no farts in front of all these boys,” she said with a laugh, rushing out of the living room before Ike could say another word.
The toilet, which was a large metal bucket with a cover in a clos
et next to Ike’s mother’s bedroom, was occupied when Ruby got to it. She didn’t want to go outside to use the smelly, spooky, rat-infested backyard outhouse in the dark, so she went back into the kitchen. Another super-sharp pain exploded in her stomach, making her dizzy. All of a sudden everything went black. She fell sideways, her arm hitting the sharp corner of the stove with such force she bled. She came to a couple of minutes later, with a small but nasty wound on the side of her arm. When she attempted to rise, she passed out again on the kitchen floor. That was where Othella and her mother found Ruby five minutes later, with blood oozing from the cut on her arm.
Simone squatted down next to Ruby and quickly lifted the tail of her dress. “Oh shit!” she shrieked, almost falling to the floor herself.
“What’s wrong with Ruby Jean, Mama?” Othella hollered, hopping from one foot to the other. She and Simone had come into the kitchen to check on the beer supply. But as soon as they saw Ruby on the floor, they forgot all about the beer. “Look at that blood on her arm.” Othella paused and looked at the floor. “And on the floor. You want me to run down the street and get Dr. Hollis?”
Simone didn’t answer; she was temporarily speechless. All she could do was stare at Ruby’s bloated belly, and the way it was moving.
“She done drunk too much beer, I guess,” Othella suggested. “And look at her bloomers. She done peed on herself, too, huh?”
“This gal ain’t drunk. And she ain’t peed on herself. This gal is fixin’ to have a baby,” Simone reported, speaking in a low voice out of the side of her mouth. “This sneaky-ass hussy!”
“Nuh-uh!” Othella jumped back and bumped into the front of the stove. “Oh no she ain’t! Ruby Jean can’t be pregnant, Mama! I would know if she was!”
“Look, girl. I done had enough babies myself to know all the signs. Grab ahold of her arms and help me haul her out of here.” Simone lifted Ruby by her legs, and Othella lifted her by her arms.
Ruby regained consciousness again about ten minutes later. She was disoriented, but she was lucid enough to know that she was in Simone’s bed, and that her baby was struggling to make it through her birth canal.
CHAPTER 11
SIMONE’S BEDROOM, WITH A WINDOW FACING THE OUTHOUSE in her backyard just a few yards away, was not the ideal place for a baby to be born. But Simone had given birth seven times already in this same gloomy room. And, she decided, if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for Ruby.
Even though it was the largest bedroom in her shabby house, it was a small room with cheap, mismatched furnishings. Simone was a hoarder, so there were at least a dozen medium-size cardboard boxes stacked five high along the walls. Some contained items that should have been discarded years ago: old clothes, old newspapers and magazines, broken toys, cracked plates, and even the steering wheel from a car that Simone had owned ten years ago.
There were large brown paper bags filled with more junk on both sides of Simone’s lumpy bed. One contained a dried-out ham bone that she kept forgetting to feed to Hairy James, her nine-year-old sheep dog.
There was a long, deep indentation in the middle of the bed’s mattress, evidence that Simone still had a vigorous sex life. There was a wobbly nightstand on the side of the bed by the window. On the stand was a kerosene lamp, an open pint bottle of whiskey, a dog-eared magazine with a lurid cover, an empty jar with plum-colored lipstick on its rim, and crumbs from the chocolate cake that Simone had baked for Othella’s party. A large plaid chair, its seat stained with various liquids including menstrual blood and gravy, sat next to the footstool that Othella occupied at the foot of the bed.
“I knew somethin’ was fishy by the way this girl’s been stumblin’ around ever since she got here. I seen her run into a wall a little while ago, but I just figured she was a little drunk,” Simone told Othella in a nervous voice. “What’s wrong with you, Othella? Why is Ruby here in the shape she’s in? What if that fall in the kitchen had killed her? We don’t need another peacemaker snoopin’ around here askin’ a bunch of nosy questions. And I don’t want another dead body in my house like that other time.” Last December, one of Simone’s elderly men friends had suffered a massive heart attack and died in the middle of making love to her. It had been an embarrassment and a major inconvenience for Simone. Dead bodies were too disruptive, especially in her bed. She didn’t want to go through that again anytime soon. She glared at Othella. “I ought to whup your behind for lettin’ this gal come here tonight in her condition!”
“Mama, I swear I didn’t know till now that Ruby was pregnant,” Othella defended. “Honest to God, I—”
“Shet up!” Simone interrupted. “Do you mean to tell me that you and Ruby Jean been runnin’ around together every day all this time, and you didn’t know she was pregnant? You blind, stupid, or both?”
Othella blinked and looked at Ruby sprawled on the bed. Then she looked back to her mother and shook her head. “I didn’t know. She was already big. I just thought she was a little bit bigger than she normally was, because she’s been drinkin’ so much more beer lately than she used to. Look at her, Mama. She don’t really look like you did all them times you was pregnant, now does she? Her stomach ain’t even pokin’ out that far.”
Before Simone could respond, somebody pounded on the door. “Mama, can we eat the rest of them ribs in the kitchen?” O’Henry, Othella’s twin brother, yelled as he jiggled the doorknob.
“Get away from my door, boy!” Simone screamed, covering Ruby’s mouth with her hand to keep her from screaming.
The door creaked open but before the boy could enter, Othella sprang up off the footstool and ran to the door and slammed it shut.
“What y’all doin? Is Ruby Jean in there?” O’Henry asked.
“Get back to that party, knucklehead!” Othella shouted. “Go change the record on the Victrola.”
There was a moment of silence before O’Henry spoke again. This time in a nervous voice: “Mama, there’s some nasty lookin’ bloody stuff on the floor. All the way from the kitchen to ... uh ... right here outside your door,” he announced. “Y’all know how blood makes my skin crawl.”
“Blood? Uh, it’s mine. My monthly snuck up on me,” Othella offered.
“Again? Already? Wasn’t you all crampy and laid up last week? I thought y’all females only went through that nasty mess once a month!”
“It did come last week, but these things don’t always follow no time line. Now you get back to that party and change the record on the Victrola like I told you, boy. I’ll be back out there directly. I’ll mop up that blood before I go to bed,” Othella told her brother.
Instead of leaving, O’Henry remained at the door, shuffling his feet and wondering what his sister and their mother were up to. “Is Ruby Jean in there? I want her to teach me that jitterbug dance.”
“Yeah, she is in here! Uh—she’s helpin’ me pick out another frock. I got some blood on the britches I had on when my monthly came,” Othella said, becoming more agitated by the second.
“Ruby Jean is helpin’ you pick out another frock ... in Mama’s room?” O’Henry asked with a snicker.
Simone beckoned for Othella to move closer to her. As soon as Othella reached her mother’s side, Simone grabbed her hand and used it to cover Ruby’s mouth. “Make sure she don’t holler so somebody can hear her. I don’t want nobody to think we beatin’ on her or nothin’ like that, up in here. We got enough mess on our hands already.” Simone wrung her hands and sprinted across the floor. She cracked open the door. She glared at her son with so much hostility that he almost jumped out of his shoes. “Boy, you get your nosy ass away from my door! Now!”
“Yessum,” O’Henry muttered, trying to look over his mother’s shoulder. “I know what y’all doin’ in there,” he sneered. “You and Othella and Ruby Jean.”
“What?” Simone barked, closing her door a few inches more.
“Y’all in there drinkin’ some of the good whiskey,” O’Henry accused with a loud belch.
“That’s right! If you want some, there’s a fresh bottle in the kitchen cabinet over the stove,” Simone told him. She quickly closed and locked the door.
“He’s gone,” Simone said in a low voice, returning to the bed. “We need to hurry this thing up. We got to get Ruby Jean out of here before him and the rest of them kids get too nosy.”
For the next five minutes, Ruby writhed in agonizing pain as the baby took its time making a complete entrance into the world.
“Hold your breath and push real hard, Ruby Jean! Push like you sittin’ on the commode doin’ your business,” Simone ordered, hovering over the bed. Ruby still wore the same dress that she had worn to the party. Simone and Othella had pushed it up around her waist and elevated her pelvis with two pillows and a folded up quilt. “That’s it ... that’s it. Now give me one more real hard push.... The head’s out ... the shoulders is comin’! It’s almost here!”
CHAPTER 12
WITH HER HANDS SHAKING AND COVERED IN SWEAT, OTHELLA held Ruby down by her shoulders. There was a sudden, squishy noise as the baby popped out of Ruby’s body and slid into Simone’s anxious hands.
A few seconds after Simone had slapped the newborn baby’s behind, and gently forced open its mouth with her fingers, the baby wailed like a banshee. Othella covered the baby’s mouth with her hand to keep the other kids in the living room from hearing. She kept it there until the baby stopped crying.
As soon as Ruby realized she had finally given birth, she sat bolt upright, reaching for her baby. But before she could snatch the baby out of Simone’s arms, she passed out again.
Ruby came to less than five minutes later. Simone was standing over her with the baby wrapped up to its neck in a pink towel, all cleaned up and gazing around the room, reaching with one hand. A tiny finger grabbed one of Simone’s fingers and held on to it as if it were a lifeline. It was almost as if the baby knew and realized the grim circumstances of its birth. And it was a beautiful child, the most beautiful, most healthy-looking baby that Simone had ever seen before in her life. It had golden brown skin and large brown eyes. A lock of silky black hair spiraled down the baby’s forehead, looking like a fishhook.