Mama Ruby

by Mary Monroe

  “We ain’t got no umbrellas or nothin’,” Othella said, hoping her smile would make the man feel less threatened.

  “Look-a-here, this ain’t no way station. Y’all can’t stand around here annoyin’ people,” the guard snapped, making a sweeping gesture with a bony hand. Ruby and Othella looked around the station at the same time. There were at least twelve other people standing around, and half of them had been in the station much longer than Ruby and Othella. The security guard had walked right by all of them and had not told them to move on. Despite the fact that she had lived in the South all of her life and she knew the “rules and regulations” when it came to race relations, Ruby did not fear white people, or the consequences that she might have to face if she got out of line.

  “Look, you can stand your white ass here and talk as much shit as you want to, but we ain’t goin’ out in that rain until we get ready. Now if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell away from us,” Ruby growled.

  It was hard to tell which one gasped louder, Othella or the guard. Othella grabbed Ruby by the hand and attempted to pull her away, but Ruby wouldn’t budge. She slapped Othella’s hand and assured her, “I ain’t goin’ out in that rain, Othella.”

  “That’s it! That’s it!” the guard hollered, backing away. “You people don’t have a clue about the proper decorum around here, but I am goin’ to make sure you do!” The guard trotted toward a door near the counter, opened it and rushed in.

  “We got to get out of here before he comes back!” Othella said, trembling. Ruby’s suitcase was still on the ground. And from the way she was looking, with her arms folded and a scowl on her face, she was not about to go anywhere, anytime soon. Or at least not until it stopped raining. “Ruby, I ain’t goin’ to jail where them white cops might beat us down or worse. You can wait around here if you want to, but I am out of here!” Othella didn’t wait for Ruby to reply. She tightened her grip on the handle of her shabby suitcase and headed toward the exit. She was pleased to see that Ruby was not far behind. It had suddenly stopped raining, and that was the only reason that Ruby had decided to leave.

  They walked briskly down the sidewalk, which was cracked in so many places, it looked like somebody had done it on purpose. As soon as they were two blocks from the train station, Othella set her suitcase on the ground and turned to Ruby. “You almost got us killed back there. You can’t be talkin’ to white folks the way you done that guard, girl.”

  “Pfff! White folks don’t scare me one bit. They bleed, they hurt, and they die just like us colored folks do.”

  “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ about the rules. We have to follow them if we don’t want no trouble. You know how happy these crackers get when they lynch somebody or burn down some colored person’s house. And you and me both know that there is two laws: one for the white folks and one for us. The difference is, the white folks’ law is there to take care of the white folks. Them laws is to make sure we don’t cause no trouble for the white folks.”

  “Law shmaw! To hell with it. I don’t care who it is, white or colored, ain’t nobody goin’ to make a fool out of me and get away with it. That’s my rule and I will die makin’ sure it don’t get broke. Now let’s get to steppin’ so we can find us a place before it gets dark, or before it starts to rain again,” Ruby said, gliding so casually down the street, you would have thought she owned it.

  CHAPTER 28

  RUBY AND OTHELLA WERE UNABLE TO FIND A WHITE-OWNED motel that was willing to rent them a room. One annoyed manager actually chased them out of his motel lobby waving a broom. They had not come across a single motel run by blacks. They couldn’t even find a restaurant that would allow them to use their bathroom facilities.

  At one point, when Ruby had to empty her bladder, she squatted down between two parked cars. Then Othella did the same thing herself, several times. When Ruby had to relieve herself again, she did it behind a tree, with a stray dog sniffing her behind.

  Just before midnight, they ended up in a small, open-all-night colored restaurant where they ate their first meal since their arrival—four slices of buttered toast and some hot tea. The tacky, box-shaped establishment, Boates’ Fine Southern Food—a place that Ruby would not have entered under normal circumstances, even if she had been dying of starvation—had no waitresses or waiters. On one of the four tables sat a pile of old newspapers and some empty lard buckets. Thick grease dotted the gummy floor. The stench of burnt grease, and only God knew what else, permeated the entire restaurant dining area.

  The place was owned and run by the same man, a long-faced individual in his late fifties who lived in a one-bedroom apartment above the restaurant. He took each order with a tight smile, and prepared the FINE SOUTHERN FOOD that was advertised on the sign outside above the door, and on the smudged, dog-eared menus.

  After eating her toast, and anxious to drink the complimentary tea that the man had served in two different size glasses, Ruby gave Othella a curious look and shook her head.

  “What was that look for?” Othella asked, finishing her toast. She lifted her glass to drink, but when she saw a gnat floating on top, she set it back down and grabbed Ruby’s. When she didn’t see any creatures in it, she drank. “Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”

  “I ain’t never been in a place like this before in my life!” Ruby hooted, looking around with her nose up in the air. “Nobody in my family would be found dead in a dump like this.”

  “Well, excuse me. But all of us ain’t as lucky as the royal Upshaw family. Some of us ain’t got no choice,” Othella reminded. “I don’t like places like this no more than you do.”

  Ruby took a sip of her tea and then she let out a mild burp. “At least the man who runs it is real nice,” she said, smiling at the owner as he wiped the counter. He smiled back and nodded.

  “Listen, when I went in the bathroom a few minutes ago, I noticed it looked right safe,” Othella told Ruby.

  “Safe? And it’s clean, I hope. Maybe I should use it before we leave,” Ruby grunted. “Which way do you want to go from here?”

  “Uh.” Othella paused and looked at the man behind the counter as she leaned across the table, talking in a low voice. “I don’t think nobody else is comin’ up in here tonight.”

  “That’s a good guess. We been here for over an hour, and ain’t nobody else been in here yet. What’s your point?”

  “We done tried to get a room and ain’t had no luck. We ain’t seen not nary a place with rooms run by colored folks.”

  Ruby’s face remained blank as she shrugged her shoulders.

  Othella lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t see why we can’t spend tonight in the ladies room here. Like I said, it looks safe enough. And as slow as business is around here, we don’t have to worry about nobody walkin’ up in there while we sleepin’. Finish your tea, and let’s haul our asses out of here. I’m tired.”

  They paid their check, slapped a nickel tip on the counter, and left.

  The ladies room had to be entered from outside, through a door on the side of the building. Ruby was horrified as soon as she stepped inside.

  “Othella, we got to do better than this. I wouldn’t let a hog I didn’t like sleep in here. This place smells like a cow’s carcass that’s been layin’ out in the sun rottin’ for a month!” Ruby complained, wiping her face with a damp wad of rough toilet paper. She coughed and rubbed her nose as she stood in front of a cracked mirror above the only sink. Dim yellow light glowed from a naked forty-watt bulb connected to a cord hanging from the ceiling.

  Othella had rushed to sit on the commode in one of the three stalls. It was the first time in her life that she’d done her business on anything but an outhouse, a hole in the ground in the woods, or in one of those gruesome metal buckets that her mother kept in the house. She took her time relieving herself.

  Her failure to respond right away annoyed Ruby. “You still in there?” Ruby yelled, pounding on the stall door
with her fist.

  “I heard what you just said. I don’t like this no more than you, but I advise you to hush up and find a clean spot on that nasty floor for us to sleep on,” Othella snapped.

  “A clean spot? You seen this damn floor? It looks like somebody spreaded some cow manure on it, and it smells like it, too,” Ruby yelled, coughing some more.

  “Well, it’s either this or we sleep outside on the ground. We tried to get a room at every motel and hotel we saw. We can try another part of town tomorrow.” Othella paused and groaned. “Aw shit! My monthly just came on.”

  “Hurry and plug yourself up and come on out of there. I’m tired and I want to get some sleep,” Ruby said in a worried tone of voice.

  “Don’t you worry about nothin’, girl. Everything is goin’ to be just fine. Tomorrow is goin’ to be a much better day,” Othella insisted.

  Tomorrow was not a better day.

  The restaurant owner entered the bathroom around noon the next day. When he saw Ruby and Othella stretched out on the floor using their suitcases for pillows, he rushed out and returned with a whisk broom.

  “Y’all get up and get your tails the hell out of my place! I ain’t runnin’ no hotel!” the man yelled, poking Ruby’s side with the end of the broom, and kicking Othella’s side with the toe of his thick black leather shoes. “I should have knowed you two tight-asses was up to somethin’ when you sat your tails in my place as long as you did.”

  Ruby wobbled up first, pulling Othella up by the hand. “We real sorry, sir,” she muttered, almost falling back to the floor.

  “Sorry is right. Well, you sorry heifers ain’t stayin’ here!” the angry man shouted, shaking the broom like he wanted to use it on Ruby.

  With a pleading look on her face, Ruby continued. “We didn’t have no place else to go! We was tired and it was late.” She forced a crooked smile and then she fumbled in the quilted purse she carried until she located a crumpled dollar bill. She handed it to the man. He snatched it and promptly slid it into the back pocket of his pants. “It got too dark for us to see too good, so we couldn’t find no motel.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you young girls come from, but I’d hightail it right on back there, if I was y’all. Kids like y’all need to be ’round folks that can take care of y’all,” the man told them.

  “We ain’t young. We both fifteen. And we on our own now. We came here to get jobs,” Othella said with a wide smile.

  The man threw his head back and laughed until tears formed in his eyes. When he stopped laughing, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed. Then he pulled a large red and white checkered handkerchief from the pocket of his dingy white shirt and honked into it so hard he started to choke. Othella didn’t hesitate to slap him on his back. Ruby wanted to slap him, too, but she wanted to slap that stupid look off his face. To her, it seemed like he was enjoying the predicament that she and Othella were in, and his role in it. And he was. His life was just that boring and empty. He had just a few friends, and not much of a life outside of his restaurant. “Jobs? Doin’ what? What in the world kind of jobs do y’all expect to find around here? If it ain’t field work, y’all out of luck.”

  “And husbands,” Ruby added with a nod. “We came here to work and to get married.”

  The man shook his head and looked at Ruby like she was speaking Italian. Then he laughed long and loud again, clapping his hands together like a trained seal. “Now I know y’all crazy. Findin’ a job, any kind of job, is one thing. But a husband and a job? Y’all?”

  “I don’t see nothin’ funny about that,” Ruby snapped. She realized that this man was old enough to be her grandfather, but she sassed him anyway. “You don’t know nothin’ about us, so don’t be standin’ here mean-mouthin’ us!”

  The man gave Ruby a wide-eyed look and shook his head again, looking her up and down like she had just dropped out of the sky. “Let me tell you somethin’, gal. I been strugglin’ for the past five years to keep this hole that my daddy left me open. I done laid more eggs than Henny Penny. I am one step from starvin’ and endin’ up in the streets. Y’all the first business I had in two days—and y’all didn’t order nothin’ but that toast.” The man wiped his hands on the tail of the soiled, bibbed white apron that he wore over his dingy white shirt, and even dingier white pants. He had the nerve to have a white chef’s hat on his head, and it was just as dingy as everything else he wore. “And as far as a husband? Pffft! That ain’t sayin’ much.” He stopped talking long enough to hawk brown spit into the sink. “My mama had four husbands and nary one was worth a plug nickel. Let me give y’all some advice: us men is interested in hips, lips, and fingernail tips when it comes to women. Most men—not me, though—they don’t bring nothin’ to the table but a knife, a fork, and a spoon. Most men—not me, though—is more trouble than they are worth, so a husband ain’t goin’ to do y’all much good—unless you find yourself a preacher man.”

  Ruby closed her eyes and exhaled so hard that her nose ached. When she opened her eyes and looked at Othella, she could see that her friend was struggling to keep from laughing. “I don’t want to marry no preacher,” Ruby announced. “They behave just like all other men.”

  “Amen to that,” Othella offered with a vigorous nod.

  “Well, anyway, y’all need to get on back home until things cool off,” the man told them.

  “Cool off? What do you mean by that?” Othella asked.

  The man’s eyes got big, and a loud gasp flew out of his mouth. “Y’all ain’t heard?” He tilted his head to the side and reported, “Them Japs done blowed up Pearl Harbor this mornin’, and there ain’t no tellin’ what place they goin’ to blow up next. Could be us! Them Oriental folks is real mean and sneaky! Now y’all get out of my place. I’m fixin’ to temporarily shet down in a few days and go stay in a house with a lady friend of mine, or I may go out to my son’s farm in Shreveport where it might be safer.”

  Othella released a heavy sigh as she lifted her suitcase. Ruby looked the man in the eye and told him, “We’ll leave. But we ain’t goin’ no place until you give me back that dollar I just gave you.”

  “Pffft!” The man grunted and gave Ruby a dismissive wave. “I ain’t givin’ you back nothin’, girl! I am keepin’ that dollar to pay for y’all sleepin’ in my place all night. Now y’all git!” He waved the broom in the air but he didn’t have to do it for long or too hard. Ruby and Othella scurried out like frightened mice.

  CHAPTER 29

  “WHERE EXACTLY IS PEARL HARBOR AT ANYWAY?” OTHELLA asked Ruby as they meandered down one street after another. Othella was smart in many ways as far as the street life and high living were concerned. But when it came to the basics of education, there was a lot that she didn’t know.

  “It’s in Hawaii,” Ruby told her, wondering why Othella was looking at her with such a blank expression on her face. “That’s that place way overseas in them islands where pineapples and hula dancers come from.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’s right.” Othella nodded. “I had forgot.”

  They roamed the streets for four more hours looking for another place to sleep. Almost every place they came upon was either already temporarily closed, or about to close because of the attack on Pearl Harbor. And that included the black- and the white-owned establishments. The few white-owned places that were still open told them that they had “no vacancies” even though the signs out front indicated that they did. Finally, when they encountered a black maid coming off duty at the run-down Red Moon Motel, she told them that their best bet was to find a black church.

  Ruby, from her background, knew that the church was usually a dependable refuge for anybody in need of help. She couldn’t count the number of times that people had come to her daddy’s church for help, and none of them had ever been turned away. Especially if that person happened to be an attractive woman.

  With all of the things that she had on her mind now, the last thing Ruby wanted to spend time thinking abo
ut was her father’s un-Christian-like behavior and the fact that he had been leading a double life. Despite all of the sex and alcohol that she had enjoyed, she was profoundly disappointed to know that her own father had indulged in his own worldly pleasures.

  She didn’t feel too bad about her behavior, though. She had a legitimate excuse. She was young and wanted to be like other kids. Besides, it wasn’t her fault that she had been born a preacher’s daughter. She wondered what other sins her father had committed. But she didn’t really want to know. Especially not while she and Othella were currently in such a deep black hole.

  Out of exhaustion and desperation, they attempted to get some assistance at a small Baptist church at the end of one of the many streets that they had randomly wandered down. But the preacher’s wife had run them off, suggesting that they go home to their families and get in a cellar in case the Japanese had more bombs up their sleeves.

  “I’m tired, cold, and hungry,” Ruby complained. “And I’m so dizzy I can barely see straight.”

  “Look, I’m just as tired, cold, hungry, and dizzy as you,” Othella snapped.

  They set their suitcases on the damp ground on a dead-end street, a few yards from the church that had just turned them away. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t take too much more of this. I don’t care how borin’ my life was at home, it wasn’t as bad as this,” Ruby croaked, as they plopped down on top of their suitcases.

  Othella gave Ruby such a disgusted look, it appeared she’d been sucking on lemons. “See, that’s because you ain’t had it near as hard as me growin’ up.”

  Ruby gasped. “Do you mean to tell me that us roamin’ around here with no place to sleep don’t bother you? We got money for a room, but don’t nobody want to rent to us.”