Mama Ruby

by Mary Monroe

  “I think my husband is involved with another woman,” Othella told Ruby. “And if he don’t come to his senses soon, I just might not be here when he gets back the next time.”

  Eugene was a few steps ahead of Othella. He had already moved in with another woman in Sarasota. And when he did come home again, two weeks later, it was only to get the rest of his belongings. That was the last time Othella saw or heard from him. He never bothered to check on his son or send a dime to help support him.

  “Let that fool go on about his business,” Ruby told her. “So far, all men have done for us was get us in trouble.”

  “What about the babies?”

  “And that, too,” Ruby said with a gasp and a cackle. “That was all Roy was good for. May he rest in peace until I get there... .”

  CHAPTER 58

  OTHELLA LOVED HER SON, BUT THERE WERE TIMES WHEN she resented being tied down with a baby. It took a lot of money to support Clyde, which meant more hours of backbreaking work in those damn fields. She had begun to hate oranges, beans, sugarcane, potatoes, cabbage greens, and cucumbers from the bottom of her heart.

  With the sun beating down on her for up to ten hours a day, five to six days a week, Othella had begun to lose her looks. Another reason that Othella was not too thrilled to be a mother was that she could no longer come and go as she pleased. And even though she had started seeing other men, she couldn’t entertain them as freely as she wanted to. She was disappointed that Ruby didn’t feel the same way.

  Ruby loved being a mother. Despite the fact that she didn’t give birth to a baby girl, she didn’t let that stop her from treating her son like a daughter. She dressed him in frilly bonnets and ruffled gowns. She even adorned his thick hair with pastel-colored barrettes and ribbons, or braided it, despite his tearful protests.

  At first, Othella didn’t give too much thought or concern to the way Ruby was dressing that poor baby. For one thing, Ruby had already purchased most of her baby’s wardrobe way before his birth, or before she even got pregnant for that matter. And since she’d been convinced that she’d give birth to a girl, she had purchased only feminine items. But as the boy grew, Ruby continued to purchase girly clothes for him. She bought a doll for him to play with, but that didn’t last long. The very first time that Virgil’s little friends saw him carrying a doll, they taunted him and called him a sissy. He ran into the house and cried and then he ripped off the doll’s arms and legs and bit its nose down to a nub. Ruby laughed it off, but she never bought him another doll.

  Othella became concerned when she went to visit Ruby in the little three-room house she rented a couple of blocks away, finding Ruby ironing a girl’s bonnet that she had purchased for Vigil. Raising him like a girl had not been so bad when Virgil was an infant. But by this time, he was a year and a half old.

  “Mama Ruby, I ain’t tryin’ to tell you how to raise your boy, but you don’t want no sissy on your hands. Remember that sissy man what lived on Powell Street back home?” Othella said.

  “You mean the one that everybody called Punk Willie?”

  “That’s him. Remember how people used to mess with him all on account of him bein’ a sissy?”

  “He was a sissy and if he ain’t dead, he probably still is a sissy,” Ruby replied. “He didn’t try to hide it. He wore makeup, fixed his hair like a woman, and wore dresses from time to time. He looked better as a woman than he did as a man!”

  “My mama told me that when he was a little boy, his mama used to dress him like a girl. She’d even marcel his hair to make him look like that Shirley Temple.”

  “What are you tryin’ to say?”

  “Don’t make your son’s life no harder than it’s already goin’ to be. He’s goin’ to have to deal with a lot of things because of his color. That’s enough of a burden; me and you both know that. Don’t add to his burden by makin’ him be somethin’ that so many folks don’t accept.”

  “At least I don’t put dresses on my boy, and I don’t marcel his hair. He likes the way I dress him in all them pretty blouses and sandals.”

  “But you do everything else that you’d do for a little girl.”

  “Virgil is too young for it to bother him. And he looks so cute in his bonnet! Besides, by the time he’s old enough to know better, I’ll have me a new husband and a girl baby or two. Matter of fact, I got me a date lined up for tomorrow with that new overseer at the grove where we picked oranges at last week. He just might be the one.”

  The man who took Ruby and her son on a picnic the next day was not “the one.” After he slept with Ruby that night, he never spoke to her again.

  As the months crawled by, Ruby predicted that each new man whom she allowed into her life and bed could be “the one.” But the one that she spent the next few years preparing for never came.

  Five more years passed, and the only male who remained in Ruby’s life for more than a night or a few weeks was her son Virgil. Ruby had become hopelessly addicted to beer. She drank up to twelve cans a day when she could afford it. She had also gained eighty more pounds. But since that didn’t stop men from approaching her, her weight didn’t faze her one bit.

  Othella’s luck with men was not much better than Ruby’s. She had lovers come and go. And the only indication that she’d had lovers at all was the fact that she’d had five more children, four of them girls!

  Each time Othella gave birth to a girl, Ruby slid into a deep, painful state of depression. But she didn’t want Othella to know that. As difficult as it was, she kept a smile on her face when she was around Othella with her babies. She wanted her friend to believe that she was happy enough with just her son, and she was—somewhat. Even though she still dressed him like a girl most of the time. But Virgil was not a weak or docile little boy. He eventually started to rip off and dispose of those frilly flowered blouses and lace panties. And as fast as Ruby dolled up his hair, he snatched those pastel-colored barrettes, ribbons, and bows off and either stomped them to pieces or threw them at her.

  “I ain’t no girl, Mama Ruby! I ain’t wearin’ no girl stuff no more!” Virgil yelled on the day that Ruby attempted to make him wear a ponytail with a black ribbon dangling down the back of his head like a python. He was six years old now, and she had never had his hair cut. By this time, it was past his shoulders.

  “But, honey baby, everybody talks about you bein’ way too pretty to be a boy. And the way they fuss and fawn over you, they wouldn’t do it if you was a regular boy!” Ruby reasoned. “Enjoy it as long as you can, sugar!”

  “If you want a baby girl so bad, go take one from Othella! She got way too many—you said so yourself!”

  That much was true. Not only did Othella have too many baby girls, but Ruby often told her so. “Othella, if it wasn’t a shame I’d sneak in your house one night, snatch one of them girl babies you got, and I’d run like hell. I’d raise her as my own.” Ruby laughed.

  “And I wouldn’t try to stop you,” Othella told her. She laughed, too. “Maybe then poor little Virgil can lead a normal life.”

  “Don’t worry about my boy. He ain’t goin’ to grow up to be no sissy. The boy is way too mean for that.”

  Virgil was just mean enough to cut his own hair that night with the scissors that Ruby kept in her sewing basket next to her bed. He wanted his mother to give birth to a baby girl just as much, if not more, than she did.

  When Ruby walked into the tiny room that was supposed to be a pantry and saw her son sitting on his roll-away bed scooping his shorn hair up off the pillow, she screamed and swayed from side to side. And then she fainted.

  After that day, she never treated her son like a girl again.

  When Ruby and Othella were not working in the fields, they spent hours at a time on Othella’s front porch kicking back, chitchatting about one thing or another, and drinking beer. Their lives had become predictable and routine. And in some ways, empty.

  “Mama Ruby, you ain’t got to be over here all the time. With this house full
of kids I got, they can help me all I need with these younger ones,” Othella told Ruby. It was a Saturday afternoon in March.

  “You know I don’t mind comin’ over here,” Ruby mumbled. “After slavin’ away in them fields so much, this is real relaxin’ and I love watchin’ you with all of them kids.”

  “Listen, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I really do feel bad for you and the fact that you can’t seem to get the family you really want.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I love my babies, and you know I do. And no matter how many times I douche myself out after I been with a man, I keep gettin’ pregnant. It ain’t fair for women like me to keep havin’ babies. It ain’t fair that there’s women like you with just one child that really wants a house full and can’t seem to have ’em.”

  “Well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be. But the good Lord did bless me with one child, when there is women all over the world that can’t even have one. So I still feel blessed.”

  “But you still want a baby girl to ... you know ... to replace that other one.”

  “We ain’t talked about that in a long time,” Ruby mumbled, tears forming in her eyes.

  “I know we ain’t, but I know you like I know the back of my hand. Ain’t a day goes by that you don’t think about that baby you gave up.”

  “The baby you and your mama made me give up,” Ruby reminded.

  “We won’t go into all that. But the thing is, you ain’t never goin’ to get over that until you have another baby girl. Maybe not even then. You been harpin’ on this for so long that by now you probably think you deserve a few baby girls, not just one.”

  Ruby had stopped believing that she’d ever find another husband. But she still believed that she would eventually have a daughter.

  “You know you can always go get you a baby girl from one of them orphanages. Even if it’s just a foster child. Them orphanage folks don’t care who they place colored kids with.” As soon as those words left Othella’s mouth, she wanted to bite off her own tongue. What she had just said was the last thing that Ruby needed to hear. Othella sucked in her breath and awaited Ruby’s wrath.

  “What in the world makes you think I’d do somethin’ like that?”

  “Well, I ... I thought ...” Othella couldn’t even finish her sentence.

  “The only baby girl that I would want from a orphanage is the one you and your mama made me give up!”

  “I’m just tryin’ to help!” Othella whined. She was holding her daughter, Mae Alice, so tight, you would have thought that she was afraid Ruby was going to snatch that baby and bolt. “I don’t know what else to say to you when you get like this.”

  “Then maybe you should stop sayin’ anything about it at all!” Ruby hollered.

  “Don’t you put all the blame on me, girl! You always the one that brings the subject up, most of the time!”

  Ruby bowed her head and shook it. Then she looked up and gave Othella a tight little smile. “I know,” she said with a heavy sigh and a dismissive wave. “Give me that baby so I can burp her. You look awful. You need to get some rest.” Ruby paused and widened her smile. “Me and you both hope you don’t get pregnant so quick with the next one.”

  “I hope there ain’t no next one. I done had enough babies.”

  “Well, as long as you keep spreadin’ your legs, these babies will continue to come.”

  “I know, I know, Mama Ruby. And I know none of them daddies will stay around to help me raise them kids neither.”

  “Men! Low-down, funky black dogs. Just like Satan.” Ruby laughed. She hugged Othella’s new baby against her chest and patted the baby’s back. “I just hope I get me one of them dogs with some sap potent enough for me to have the baby girl I deserve.”

  “Well, I hope I don’t hook up with another one with no potent baby-makin’ batter no more.” This time Othella laughed.

  CHAPTER 59

  TIME MOVED ON FOR RUBY AND OTHELLA. OTHELLA’S NEXT lover arrived less than two months after she’d given birth to her eighth child. When she didn’t get pregnant by him during the three months that he courted her, she decided that her baby-making equipment had finally shut down and not a minute, or a baby, too soon.

  Ruby purposely got involved with a man who had fathered twenty children with three different women. “If his sap ain’t strong enough to make me a girl baby, I’m goin’ to throw in the towel and get me a girl puppy,” Ruby said to herself two days after her son’s eleventh birthday. She was joking, of course. Because by now Ruby was convinced that she would never have another child.

  Ruby, Othella, all of their children, and Bo, the man Ruby was involved with at the time, celebrated Ruby’s birthday that May in Ruby’s backyard. Bo and the two oldest boys, Virgil and Clyde, had built a picnic table where they all sat munching on spicy ribs that Bo, who was from Jamaica, had cooked using his mama’s special recipe. It was May 21.

  “This is de best cookout I’ve attended since I left de island,” Bo said, giving Ruby a loving look. Ruby thought that he was too good looking for his own good, with his naturally curly red hair and dimples. Which meant he wouldn’t be with her too much longer. Men who looked like him, who approached women who looked like her, were usually after the same basic things: convenient sex, a few home-cooked meals, a “few dollars till I get on my feet” that they never paid back, and a place to sleep until they found one better.

  “You should have seen what all we had last year at Mama’s birthday cookout,” said Othella’s son Clyde. He was lucky that he had inherited her good looks and build, and not his beastly, short-legged father’s—who hadn’t been seen or heard from in years now.

  “Oh? When was that?” Bo asked, smacking on a roll, looking around the table at each face. He didn’t like kids, and that was the only reason he’d approached Ruby instead of Othella at the juke joint the night they’d met. He could deal with the one that Ruby had, but not the mob that Othella had produced. “I hope I’m able to attend it this year. When is your birthday?” he said, looking at Othella.

  She didn’t have a chance to answer. Ruby did it for her. “Fourth of July,” she said in a strong voice.

  “Ow wow wow! On de holiday! We’ll have a double celebration! And oh, what a happy day it will be!” Bo sang.

  Like so many others before him, his lip service was just that—lip service. Bo had gone on his merry way by the time July rolled around, and it was just as well. Even though it was Othella’s milestone birthday, and she wanted to mark the occasion, Ruby came down with a devastating summer cold and had to remain in bed for a week and a half. The very next day after she recovered, Othella took to her bed with the same symptoms. Then the kids took turns getting sick with one childhood malady after another.

  By September, they had all forgotten about celebrating Othella’s thirtieth birthday. For once, Ruby was glad. Each year she dreaded that day in July. And even though the tragedy that had made it such an undesirable date in her life had occurred fifteen years ago, it still caused her a tremendous amount of pain. By now, she knew that it would be painful until the day she died, or until the day she got her baby girl back....

  A few weeks later, Othella got sick again at Ruby’s house. This time it was nausea, a migraine headache, and dizziness. She reluctantly broke the news to Ruby that she suspected she was pregnant again. That information didn’t even faze Ruby. As a matter of fact, she even made a joke about it.

  “If this one is a girl, I just might run off with it.” She laughed, rubbing Othella’s belly.

  Ruby said the same thing a few months later when Othella went into labor as they sat drinking beer in Ruby’s kitchen.

  “You might steal my baby and run off? Ha! You done said that so many times! But I know you better than that. Mama Ruby, you ain’t the kind of woman that would steal another woman’s baby.”

  Ruby stared at her kitchen wall as if in a trance. She took her time speaking again. “Let’s have a cookout in
my backyard to celebrate this new baby. I got that record by that new singer we seen on The Steve Allen Show the other week. That Elvis Presley. Remember him?”

  Othella nodded vigorously and squealed like a teenager. “Oh yeah! He plays a mean guitar, and he ain’t a bad singer for a white boy. A cookout is a good plan. I should be up and about, day after tomorrow, if it comes tonight like I have a feelin’ it will.” Othella got quiet as she drew imaginary circles with her finger on the top of Ruby’s kitchen table. “Would you do that to me?” Othella asked, snapping her fingers to get Ruby’s attention.

  “A cookout? I’ve done it with all them other babies you had. What makes you think I wouldn’t do it for this new one that’s fixin’ to come in a few hours?” Ruby replied, turning slowly to face Othella.

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant, what you said about stealin’ my baby.”

  “Oh. Would I steal your baby?” Ruby laughed. She didn’t answer Othella’s peculiar question because at this point, she didn’t know if she was the kind of woman who’d steal another woman’s baby. She stopped laughing and snapped her fingers because she suddenly remembered something. “Oh, before I forget ...” She stopped talking, removed a folded envelope out of her bra and handed it to Othella. “The mailman put it in my box by mistake. It’s from your mama.”

  “More upsettin’ news, no doubt,” Othella sighed, stuffing the envelope into her bra. “I wonder who died this week, or what new affliction my mama done contracted.”

  Othella’s letters from home usually contained depressing news, especially the last few years. But not that long ago, Simone used to send letters that contained lots of uplifting information. She had reported that none of Othella’s three younger sisters had resorted to prostitution or a reckless lifestyle on any level. All three had graduated from high school. The two older girls had married truck drivers, and the other girl was engaged to marry a politician’s chauffeur. Othella’s brothers had also done quite well, considering the fact that they’d been raised by a prostitute. Two of her three brothers had finished high school, and all three had served in the military. They had all eventually secured respectable jobs. Every single one of her siblings occasionally attended Ruby’s father’s church, something they had never done as children. And every single one of them had children of their own. Othella smiled just thinking about all the good things that had happened to her family. But she still was in no hurry to read her mother’s letter.