Mama Ruby

by Mary Monroe

  “What makes you think I won’t like him?” Ruby asked, dipping a finger into the bowl with the potatoes, licking it with a loud smack. “I already like him.”

  “Well, you might not like him when you meet him. He might be a real jackass to you, and you might not like the way he dresses or acts, not to mention the way he looks. After all, he is in his thirties.”

  “Look, he can’t look no worse than none of the other men I been with, and I survived them. Bring him on!” Ruby giggled. She and Othella had been in Florida for five months. Ruby was glad that things had finally begun to fall into place for her, too.

  Before Othella could continue voicing her concerns, Eugene arrived with Roy. As soon as he laid eyes on Ruby he was in love with her, just as much as she was in love with him. He wore a gray seersucker suit with a white shirt and a red tie. A white Panama hat covered most of his head, but Ruby could see that he had thick, curly black hair with a few strands of gray. She was happy to see that he was not the gargoyle that she was afraid he might turn out to be. He was no Adonis either, but he had fairly nice features. He had small, wide-set brown eyes, well-cared for teeth, and the kind of squared-jawed face that Ruby found very attractive on a man. And unlike the gnome that Othella had married, Roy not only had a neck, but he was taller than Ruby by several inches. Had she resorted to voodoo, she couldn’t have conjured up a better specimen of a man, she thought to herself.

  Despite the fact that he had taken his time to meet Ruby, Roy said, “I been dyin’ to meet you.” His eyes rested on her ample bosom.

  Ruby was beside herself with glee. She giggled like a lovestruck schoolgirl. “I been dyin’ to meet you, too, Roy.”

  From that day on, Roy and Ruby were inseparable.

  CHAPTER 53

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR ROY TO DECIDE THAT RUBY WAS just the kind of woman that he needed at the time. In addition to her being so young, she was also stout, so she could do most, if not all, of the housecleaning, and even some of the heavy maintenance work around the house. She obviously liked to eat and he was glad to hear that she was a good cook, too. She could do everything he wanted her to do—wash his clothes out by hand and even scrub the hard wooden floors in his neat little house on Board Street.

  Ruby Jean Upshaw was perfect. He loved everything there was about her, even her unlikely nickname. “Mama Ruby sounds like a name for a much older female,” he mentioned to her, not that he was complaining. “We called my grandma Mama Daisy.”

  “I love kids and they love me. I been wantin’ to be a mama all my life. And not too long ago, a real good friend told me that I reminded him of his mama. That’s why he gave me that nickname,” Ruby explained.

  Ruby was like a totally different person when she was with Roy. There were times when she was so docile and demure, Othella wanted to laugh. And when she and Ruby were alone, she did laugh at the way Ruby was portraying herself around Roy. “I wonder what he would say if he knew about us workin’ for Miss Mo’reen,” Othella snickered.

  “You’ll never know what he would say if he ever found out about us workin’ for Miss Mo’reen, because he never will find out!” Ruby thundered, looking and acting like the Ruby that Othella was more familiar with. “I’m goin’ to be everything he thinks I am.”

  “Hmph! I declare, sister. That brother must be layin’ some serious pipe in you,” Othella teased.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know what I mean! I know how you like to get nasty,” Othella reminded.

  “Well, Roy ain’t laid no pipe in me ... yet.”

  “Girl, you got to be kiddin’ me! You been with him goin’ on two months now and you ain’t rode on his train yet?”

  “Naw! He thinks he’s goin’ to be my first... .”

  “Your first what?”

  “My first man.”

  Othella’s jaw dropped. “He thinks you still a virgin?”

  “Yes, he thinks I’m still a virgin, and you know that I know how to make him believe that!”

  “Hmmm. Well, if I hadn’t thought I was pregnant, I could have used that trick on Eugene. I think he might have appreciated me even more.”

  “Roy said he was glad to finally meet him a woman as virtuous as me,” Ruby said with a dreamy look in her eyes. “I want him to keep on thinkin’ that.”

  Othella stared at the side of Ruby’s face, shaking her head. “You better make sure you stick that chicken blood capsule up in your coochie real good, so it will do the trick. And you better hope he never finds out what you done.”

  “He won’t find out from me. And you’d better not blow the whistle on me,” Ruby warned. “If Roy is fool enough to believe that I’m a virgin, the least I can do is be fool enough to pretend I am.” Ruby snorted. “If he’s already treatin’ me like a queen, can you imagine how good he’s goin’ to be to me once we get married?”

  Roy did believe that Ruby was still a virgin. That was one of the reasons he loved very young women. Even though he’d been with females younger than Ruby, she was the first virgin that he’d lucked upon. The fact that he had never experienced a virgin had bothered him for years. He had six brothers, dozens of other male relatives, and a lot of male friends. He got sick of listening to them brag about how they’d broken in a virgin, and what a fantastic experience it was for a man’s dick. Some claimed to have done the deed with several virgins. His own brother Mason claimed he’d been with three virgins in the same family!

  Yes, Roy loved the idea of getting involved with a virgin. Finally! It had taken him long enough. He was a lot of things, but he was no fool. He was not marrying Ruby just because she was a virgin, he was marrying her for a variety of reasons. She had everything he wanted in his next wife. Besides, she had told him from day one that, being a preacher’s daughter and all, she couldn’t go to bed with a man unless he married her.

  Roy loved sex, but he didn’t pressure Ruby to sleep with him. He didn’t have to. What he couldn’t get from her, he got from other women. That was the main reason he didn’t pressure her to sleep with him.

  Three months after they’d met, Roy married Ruby in the courthouse with Othella and Eugene in attendance. And he made her quit her job at the carnival the next day. He even told her that she didn’t have to work in the fields anymore if she didn’t want to. She thought she’d died and gone to heaven.

  Ruby’s “honeymoon” didn’t last long. Things started to slide downhill at the wedding reception in Othella and Eugene’s house, just hours after she had become Roy’s wife.

  In front of some of Roy’s drunken male friends and their significant others, Roy laid down the law, so to speak.

  With a bottle of beer in each hand, he stood in the middle of the living room floor in his black suit and one of his four white Panama hats and proclaimed, “Mama Ruby is goin’ to do everything I tell her to do! She don’t make a move without my permission! And I ain’t goin’ to tolerate no complaints, no messy house, no burnt or late meals, and no bothersome in-laws! I pay the cost to be the boss! That’s that. Case closed!” He laughed after he finished his long-winded declaration, so nobody took him seriously. Ruby even laughed herself, but Othella didn’t see the humor in the remarks that her best friend’s new husband had just made. The first chance she got, she grabbed Ruby by the hand and took her aside.

  “It sounds like he’s goin’ to be one big-ass head of the household. I hope you can deal with that,” Othella told Ruby as they stood in Othella’s backyard under a moss-draped tree. “Him makin’ up all the rules ...”

  “A real wise old sister, who also happens to be my mama, told me when I was a little girl that it don’t matter if the man is the head of a household. He can be as big a ‘head of household’ as he wants to be, and that’s usually the case most of the time anyway. If the woman is smart and strong, she’s the neck, and without a neck, the head can’t even move,” Ruby told Othella. “I’m smart and I’m strong.”

  “Sure enough,” Othella agreed. “But Roy’s ol
der than you, and set in his ways. And he sounds like he means business. I don’t want to see this man control you to the point where you’ll end up miserable—and me mad at myself for bringin’ him into your life.”

  “Girl, I’m blessed! I love this man from the bottom of my heart, and he loves me! I know he ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ to upset me. You don’t need to worry about gettin’ mad at yourself today, Othella.”

  And Othella didn’t. She had never seen Ruby as happy as she was now, so there was no reason for her to get mad at herself for bringing Ruby and Roy together. At least not yet ...

  Even though Roy was a bootlegger, selling alcohol without a license from a back bedroom in the two-bedroom house that he shared with Ruby, she didn’t complain. For one thing, she now had access to all of the beer she wanted. And that was a good thing because beer had become like a drug to Ruby. She drank it all day, every day of the week.

  People came to the house all hours of the day and night, the same way they did with the man who sold heroin in the red house across the street. Other than taking care of the house, and helping Roy host his guests, Ruby spent most of her time lounging on the living room couch eating rich food and drinking beer.

  But the thing about the dope dealer across the street was, his customers would purchase their drugs and leave right away. They didn’t hang around making a mess for his woman to clean up. When Roy’s customers came, they came to stay awhile, partying until all hours of the night, and sometimes until past noon the next day.

  It didn’t take long for Ruby to get tired of cleaning up the mess the drunks made. And she spent more time in the kitchen than she did in the bedroom. She fried fish of all kinds, boiled greens of all kinds, and baked more pies and cakes from scratch than she could count. She didn’t complain to Roy, but she complained to Othella every time she saw her.

  “Othella, last night I was up until four in the mornin’ fryin’ bass and makin’ hush puppies. I didn’t work this hard at Miss Mo’reen’s place.”

  “Well, at least you won’t have to do much cookin’ next weekend. I hope you and Roy still plan on comin’ to my cookout to help us celebrate the Fourth of July and my birthday... .” As soon as Othella had released her last sentence, she wished that she could take it back.

  “I know what you thinkin,’ and I didn’t mean to remind you of that day again. I can’t tell you how much I wish I had kept my tongue still just now,” Othella apologized.

  “Othella, that day rolls around once every year. You don’t need to remind me about what all happened on that day. I ain’t never goin’ to forget that that’s the day my child was born ... and took away.” Ruby blinked back a few tears. “I already told you, the Fourth of July will be the hardest day in the year for me to get through for the rest of my life. And we can’t change that, or the fact that it’s still your birthday, too.” Ruby released a wistful sigh and then she smiled. That unexpected smile made Othella relax.

  “And another thing,” Ruby continued. “I guess you know that Roy’s got a few kids here and there by some of his exes. He ain’t that old, but I hope his sap is still strong enough to stir up a few kids for me... .”

  CHAPTER 54

  ROY MADE A LOT OF TAX-FREE MONEY AS A BOOTLEGGER. IN fact he made more than any of the other bootleggers in the neighborhood. For one thing, he paid off the right people in city hall, so he didn’t have to worry about getting raided and put out of business like so many of his competitors. He was also very shrewd when it came to making money. He watered down his drinks so he didn’t lose any money with his “buy one drink, get one free” scam. And some people got so drunk that they couldn’t remember whether they paid their tab or not. In most cases, they ended up paying the same tab in full, several times over.

  But Roy’s best rip-off scheme involved Ruby, who found it original, funny, and profitable. More money for him meant more money for her. She would complain to his customers about him being too stingy to let her have free drinks, so she would ask a male customer to buy her a few. When he did, Roy served her a glass of colored water and a real drink to the customer. Ruby was a heavy drinker by now so it was not unusual for a dozen men a night to “buy” her a drink from her own man’s supply. When Roy closed down for the night, he rewarded Ruby with as much real beer as she wanted and money to spend on whatever she wanted.

  “Mama Ruby, me and you are goin’ to live like kings,” Roy assured the new woman in his life, and he was being truthful with her. He was very generous with his money where Ruby was concerned. He gave her more than enough to purchase the things she liked. Peanut brittle, pickled pig’s feet, rouge, and beer were her favorite guilty pleasures. He liked to take her to the beauty parlor to get her hair pressed and curled, her face made up, and her nails manicured and polished. He liked to take her on shopping sprees so she could pick out the kinds of clothes she liked.

  Roy didn’t just give Ruby the things that she wanted, he gave her things he thought she needed. One was a pearl-handled pistol that he’d won in a poker game a year ago.

  “What do I need a gun for? I been carryin’ a switchblade in my brassiere for years. And it’s sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” Ruby said to Roy when he handed her the gun that evening during a lavish dinner of smothered pork chops and black-eyed peas.

  “I don’t care how sharp a blade is, a blade ain’t goin’ to do you no good if somebody get up on you too quick. Besides, you got to be a magician to handle a knife right if somebody get up on you too quick,” he told her, lifting his shirt. There was a small, but ugly scar just above his left nipple. “The last time I tried to defend myself with a knife, the devil that had jumped me took it from me and cut me before I knew what was happenin’. I been carryin’ a six-shooter ever since. Now you put this here gun in your pocketbook. It’s real easy to use,” he said, cupping her hand in his and holding the gun up to her face, pointing the barrel toward the door. “All you need to do is aim and press the trigger. POW! Do you think you can do that?”

  Ruby nodded. She stared at the gun in her hand like it was a rattlesnake. “I guess I could, if I ever have to.” Ruby paused and shook her head as she gently laid the gun on the table right next to a pan of buttered corn bread. “Everybody I done met in this town been real nice to me.” She frowned at the gun some more, it’s barrel pointed directly at Roy. “If I was goin’ to chastise somebody, a gun is just too mean for my tastes.”

  Roy gave her an incredulous look and shook his head in bewilderment. “You think a switchblade ain’t as mean as a gun?” He guffawed. “Girl, you are so damn young. Now you take this gun and when you get up from this table, you put it in your pocketbook like I told you. It’s already loaded. Before we go to bed, I’ll take you out to that pasture off Buchanan Road and you can practice shootin’ a few squirrels, or empty cans, or a few tree trunks or somethin’. I want to make sure that when you do shoot it, you don’t miss your target.”

  That evening, Ruby shot the gun several times at a spot that Roy had marked on a tree. Each time she hit her target, and that made Roy feel good. He loved his young bride, and he wanted to make sure she knew how to defend herself when he was not around.

  Ruby ended up being glad that Roy had made her take that gun. Just five days after he’d given it to her, she had to use it.

  The house to the left of Roy’s was supposed to be a rooming house where black folks traveling through the South could rent rooms when the white establishments turned them away. The woman who owned the house was Maggie Lou Baxter, a once attractive but now plain woman with a Cherokee mother and a black father. Times were so hard for black women that Maggie never had to worry about keeping her rooms filled. There were a lot of women who had been either displaced due to circumstances beyond their control or deserted by their men. They had no choice but to resort to prostitution for money on an “as needed” basis. The men in the neighborhood knew about these desperate women, and sometimes men from outside the neighborhood showed up at Maggie’s door looking for some
female company.

  Quite frequently, a horny man got confused and knocked on Roy’s door by mistake. Over the years, Roy had gotten used to it. He even thought that it was funny. Ruby did, too, until a big grizzly bear of a man knocked on the door one day when she was home alone.

  “I’m sorry, but you at the wrong house,” she politely told the man. “You want Maggie’s place next door,” she whispered, nodding toward the rooming house to the left.

  “You’ll do,” the man said. He was obviously intoxicated and determined. He looked Ruby up and down with his fishlike eyes, nodding his approval. “Uh-huh, you’ll do,” he said again.

  “No, I won’t do. Like I just told you, you at the wrong house.” Ruby had escaped the grip of prostitution. And that was one ugly episode in her life that she did not like to be reminded of. “I’m a Christian woman, so what you got on your mind is offendin’ me to death. I advise you to get your nasty self off my porch right now!” she growled, stomping her foot and shaking a finger in the man’s face.

  This just happened to be one of the days that Ruby had decided to wear one of her most provocative blouses. It was an eye-catching red, sleeveless, and it amply displayed her impressive cleavage. This was her favorite blouse because every time she wore it, Roy stopped whatever he was doing, grabbed her, and made passionate love to her. Another reason she liked this particular blouse was because Othella admired it on her so much. Othella was still talking about how she was going to purchase herself a set of those fake foam titties so she could look good in sexy blouses, too. She was coming to visit Ruby later today, and that was one of the reasons Ruby wore her sexy red blouse.

  But Ruby didn’t expect or want attention from a strange man like the one on her front porch now.