The Upper Room

by Mary Monroe

  “From now on, it’s just you and me and Mo’reen. We ain’t goin to associate with Othella and her kids no more.”

  “We ain’t? We been thick as thieves from the get go. We goin to just up and act like we don’t know Othella and her kids no more? How we goin to get along without Othella? Shoot! Smart as she is, she the one what keep the white folks off us. She the one what help us make it in this world when we need stuff, on account of she know how to deal with white folks. Remember that time I needed my tonsils out and we ain’t knowed what doctor to go to? You said, ‘We need somebody what would think the way a white woman might. White folks got mucho sense.’ Anyway, you run to get Othella and she took a phone book in a phone booth and went to callin first one doctor then another until she got one what would cut out my tonsils on credit. Remember that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, say I need somethin else cut out. You remember last year how I had the pneumonia? And—”

  “Othella found a doctor what would give me some medicine on credit,” Ruby finished the sentence. She tilted her head back and rolled her eyes back in her head. “I been thinkin. I could probably doctor as good as the next person. Me with my healin hands and all. I could doctor if I was to put my mind to it. We don’t need Othella to find us no doctors no more.” Ruby looked at Virgil and blinked.

  “Well, folks say you could do whatever you put your mind to doin, Mama Ruby. Othella told me that one time you cussed up a storm and it rained for six days straight.”

  “Yep. That was the summer of nineteen and fifty-one. We had us somethin of a drought.”

  “I guess you could doctor. Still, I can’t see us turnin our back on Othella.”

  “I can do anything I set my mind to, boy.”

  “I know, Mama Ruby, cause I seen you do it.”

  8

  It rained heavily later that night.

  “Mama Ruby, did you cuss up this storm?” Virgil queried, as he got ready for bed.

  “You heard me cussin around here this evenin?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well then. This rain ain’t nothin but Satan’s way of poutin. Poutin cause Jesus done answered my prayer and give me a baby girl.”

  “I wonder what Satan would do with his time if you wasn’t you, Mama Ruby. Shoot! He wouldn’t have nothin else to do!”

  “Boy, a low-down, funky black dog like Satan can always find somethin to get into. If it hadn’t been me, it might have been a weaker person. Somebody what ain’t had no glory. The Lord knowed what he was doin when he fetched me. Shoot. Who else could have went up to Satan and called him a low-down, funky black dog to his face?”

  “I sho couldn’t have!”

  “Well then.”

  “But it’s a whole lot of other tough people in this world. I learned about em in history class. Hitler, for one. Caesar. Folks what captured slaves.”

  “Uh huh . . . and where is Hitler today?”

  “Dead.”

  “Where is Caesar and them slave catchers?”

  “Dead.”

  “I look dead to you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well then.”

  “But what I meant was—”

  “Boy, go to bed,” Ruby ordered.

  Later that night, Virgil was awakened by loud footsteps outside his cluttered bedroom. He fumbled under two flat pillows on his bed to remove his razor, and ran to the wall, where he clicked on the light. Ruby was standing in his doorway, holding Maureen. She was fully dressed and a bulging suitcase sat at her feet.

  “Get ready,” she ordered. “We fixin to haul ass.”

  Virgil packed his belongings in a shopping bag and they left Silo in the middle of the night.

  Having no plan, and acting out of desperation, Ruby and Virgil and Maureen boarded the next Greyhound bus leaving Silo. An hour later, they arrived in Miami. Having just a few dollars, until her next social security check, Ruby went to the city’s rescue mission.

  “How long we goin to stay in this hell hole? How come we didn’t go someplace excitin like Key West or the panhandle?”

  “Look-a-here, boy. We is on the lam, can’t you get that through your thick head? We ain’t in no position to be show-casin ourself in no big city. Shoot. We got to lay low,” Ruby explained. “I’m gettin too old to be dealin with folks axin me a lot of nosy questions. My blood pressure can’t take it.”

  “I know what you mean. You ain’t never been this old, Mama Ruby. Or this fat.”

  “I ain’t that fat. I’m just a little on the heavy side. No matter, I am well proportioned.”

  “A elephant is well proportioned—”

  “Shet up. We ain’t goin to be here long. Matter of fact I went out to Goons to see about a furnished house this mornin before you and Mo’reen woke up.”

  “You got us a house already?”

  “Yeah. And it’s all but a palace. Two big bedrooms downstairs for me and you and a upper room upstairs for Mo’reen!”

  Ruby was the only woman staying at the mission and Virgil was the only boy his age. The others, reformed criminals with no place to go, homeless derelicts, and useless war veterans, found Ruby a pleasant addition.

  “As long as we got a home, you got a home, Sister Montgomery,” Brother Anderson Lee, the mission’s live-in minister, said to Ruby as she prepared to leave five days after her arrival. The mission had given Ruby money to cover the first month’s rent on the house in Goons.

  “You is a man of God and you ain’t goin to have nothin but good luck,” Ruby informed the preacher, patting his frail shoulder on her way out the door.

  “AND I HOPE THE GOOD LORD RETURN YOUR HUSBAND TO YOU!” The preacher had to shout as Ruby and Virgil headed for a waiting cab in front of the mission.

  “AIN’T IT SO!” Ruby shouted back.

  “MEN SO WEAK WHEN IT COMES TO THE FLESH!”

  “THEY SHO NUFF IS, REVEREND—BYE!” Ruby slammed the cab door shut and squeezed Maureen against her bosom, cursing the fictitious husband she had told the mission people about: a dirty black dog who had mortgaged their home right out from under them, then left town with another woman.

  9

  Goons, a rural district on the outskirts of Miami, had less than two thousand people. The area was just a few square miles of orange groves, bean and sugarcane fields, and pecan trees. Most of the citizens were black and lived on the miserable migrant camps that provided their livelihood.

  Ruby’s new house sat at the bottom of a small hill off Duquennes Road, a dusty, serpentine passage that spiraled its way through Goons all the way to Miami Beach. Virgil was enrolled in a country school within walking distance while Ruby spent her first few weeks locked up in the house talking to Maureen in the upper room.

  “You is my daughter, not Othella’s. Jesus give you to me and I ain’t about to give up somethin the Lord done all but handed me on a platter. Why else would he have us thinkin you was dead at first? So he could get me and you alone and glorify us. Anyway, he the one what put Othella in my path when we was babies ourself. Shoot. He knowed years later she’d give me you. So what if she the one what went through the labor to get you. It wasn’t my fault. I can’t help it if Jesus made her be the one to do the sufferin. . . .”

  There was a cemetery not far from Ruby’s house.

  “Livin this close to a cemetery, we ain’t got to be hidin dead folks in no swamp like we had to in Silo, huh, Mama Ruby? That is, if we have to chastize any. What you think?” Virgil asked over a dinner of ribs and collard greens one evening.

  “Boy, ain’t you learned nothin bein my boy? If we have to lock horns with anybody and have to . . . you know . . . tetch em up, we’ll continue to do like we been doin. I mean, it wouldn’t be Christian to put folks what ain’t had no funeral or nothin in the same ground with folks what is. There is all kinds of woods and swamps in back of this house, just waitin. Plus, I’d like to fertilize my backyard for me a cabbage garden. All we got to do is set back and wait on some man
iac to get in our way.” Ruby winked at Virgil and reached for another piece of meat. Several pies, all sweet potato, sat on the dining room table next to Ruby’s plate. A can of beer sat on the other side of her plate.

  “Before plantin season rolls around again, I hope,” Virgil replied, scratching his chin. “Somebody fat. We could fertilize the whole backyard with just one maniac big as you,” he said.

  “Listen here, this ain’t no time to be makin jokes. I’m talkin square business. What all you done told them folks at that schoolhouse about our business?”

  “Nothin.”

  “My husband got carried off by a Jew woman. A rich woman from up north. His name was Booker T. Montgomery. He took off before Mo’reen was born. The funky, low-down black dog mortgaged our house right out from under us. That clear?”

  “Mama Ruby, what in the hell is you talkin about?!”

  “That’s our story. That’s what we’ll be tellin folks. That’s what I’ll be tellin Mo’reen soon as she old enough to make some sense.”

  “Mama Ruby, you kilt your husband. My daddy. Othella told me the whole story. Why you makin up such a boldface lie?”

  “Boy, this is square business. My man was carried off by the devil—”

  “You said a Jew woman!”

  “Same thing! Devil. Jew. My husband was carried off by a white Jew woman . . . with gypsy blood. Just make sure you keep the story straight. That clear?”

  “I guess. I was just thinkin. I don’t know if I want to be diggin more holes. . . .”

  Ruby placed her silverware on the table and wiped her lips with the tablecloth.

  “You mean to tell me if you was to see a man rapin me you wouldn’t help me chastize him?”

  “Well . . . it all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Mama Ruby, one time I heard a man tell another man if he seen you fightin a bear, he would help the bear. I think what I’m tryin to say is, if some maniac was to jump on you, he’d be the one more than likely needin help.”

  Ruby sighed with disgust and waved her hand at Virgil.

  “You ain’t got a lick of sense. Pass me another piece of pie.”

  Maureen had been fed and was now sleeping peacefully in the upper room.

  Virgil lifted a butter knife off the table and reached for one of the potato pies that had not been cut. He cut the pie in half and handed it to Ruby.

  “I still say we can put folks in that cemetery. That’s what a cemetery for. Buryin dead folks,” Virgil said, shaking his head.

  “You so anxious to put somebody in that cemetery and just said you don’t want to dig no more holes. How you expect to put somebody in the cemetery?”

  “Mama Ruby, sometime you miss the point of what I’m tryin to say.”

  Ruby stuffed the rest of the pie half in her mouth and swallowed hard.

  “Pass me that other piece of pie, boy.”

  10

  The first month was the hardest. Fear kept Ruby awake nights. Seeing a woman with long black hair like Othella gave her chills.

  “You need a man to take your mind off Othella, Mama Ruby,” Virgil suggested. “Get out and make some friends for a change. You can’t stay cooped up in the house in that upper room with Mo’reen.”

  Taking her son’s advice, Ruby visited her nearest neighbors, Willie and Camille Boatwright. Willie was a bootlegger. He and Camille had five sons. All but an infant named Bobby were in prison. Willie worked days in the fields and Camille sat on the front porch with Ruby drinking beer and fussing over the babies.

  “I declare, Ruby. I can’t imagine your man runnin off leavin you and them children. What got in him?” Camille was a thin, birdlike woman with red hair streaked with gray. She was considerably older than Ruby, yet she regarded Ruby as a figure of authority. “What you reckon you ought to do about the scoundrel?”

  “I done turned him over to Jesus.” Ruby nodded and patted Maureen, who lay sleeping on her lap.

  “And that baby girl of yours is just a livin doll. Ain’t it a shame your man didn’t stick around to see what a fine job he done makin her?”

  “A doggone shame.”

  “And I ain’t never seen no woman so devoted to her children. You don’t let nobody babysit Mo’reen. Nobody but Virgil. You wallowin in grief for losin your man, that’s all. Is there anything I can do to help you pull yourself back together, Ruby? I got a off cousin in Boca Raton.”

  “A off cousin? So what?”

  “The best way to get over one man is to get you another. I can call Cassius over here and turn him loose on you.”

  Ruby laughed and shook her head.

  “Camille, you is a caution to the wind. I don’t need no man. I ain’t about to leave my kids alone at night.”

  “Virgil ain’t no baby. And I can babysit Mo’reen when you do take a notion to get out and enjoy yourself. You keep settin up in the house like you been doin, you liable to get house fever. Like I said, if you want to go out and kick up your heels, I’ll keep both my eyes on them kids for you.”

  With Camille’s urging, Ruby began attending parties on the camps and soon men began to follow her home, making love to her and paying her bills. Her beggardly social security check and what Virgil earned working in the fields could not accommodate her increasing passion for beer and rich food, for she was drinking and eating more than ever now, her weight steadily climbing. Boatwright encouraged her to bootleg and supplied her with watered down beer he had shipped in from Key Largo. Ruby installed a record player in her living room and played Bessie Smith records while her guests drank and danced. One disgruntled visitor attacked her one night when he discovered that the beer he had paid good money for was mostly water. He ruined her false teeth when he slapped her across the face with a metal object. Ruby grabbed the man and slammed him against the wall repeatedly until he was dead, his brains oozing onto the floor.

  “Boatwright, clean up this mess,” Ruby ordered. Her terrified guests shrieked in horror as she dragged the dead man out her kitchen door to the bayou and tossed him in the swamp. She returned to the living room. “Ain’t nobody seen nothin,” she warned. None of the people present ever mentioned the incident, not to her or among themselves. A few told Ruby where she might find a set of false teeth to replace the ones she lost.

  Ruby did not buy another set of teeth right away. It was not until Virgil complained about her shabby smile and slovenly appearance.

  “You with your loose mouth and gray hair, look like a old witch!”

  “I like my gray hair . . . it gives me a distinguished look,” Ruby said, running her thick fingers through her tangled hair.

  “Well, I don’t like your messed-up mouth. Specially when my friends come around and you go to kissin all over me. I know Mo’reen don’t like you slobberin all over her face with them slimy gums. And how you get up enough nerve to romance a man lookin like a fat, old, no-teeth witch?”

  Ruby pursed her lips and gave careful consideration to Virgil’s comments.

  “Uh . . . you really think I look bad? Wonder how come my friends or Camille ain’t told me that.”

  “Cause they all seen you get loose on that drunk at the house the other night. Them folks don’t want to end up out there in that swamp with him.”

  Some of Ruby’s friends went out of their way trying to find her another set of false teeth. It was Boatwright who finally presented her with a pair he had picked up at a panhandle flea market.

  “Willie Boatwright, I ought to kiss you all over!” Ruby grinned, when Boatwright handed her the teeth on a paper plate. The big, dark man with the shiny bald head moved away immediately.

  “Uh . . . ain’t nobody but my woman to be kissin me all over,” he said defensively.

  “Ha ha ha ha ha—Boatwright, you is the dickens.” Ruby admired the teeth for two days before wearing them.

  11

  A week before Christmas, Camille had a massive stroke and died sitting next to Ruby on Ruby’s front porch glider. Ruby grieved
for a month and stopped going out. She went back to sitting in the house with Maureen.

  “It ain’t the end of the world, Ruby. Camille wouldn’t have wanted you to go back to settin in the house. I want you to get you a man friend what’ll carry you out and spend some serious time with you. Not another one of these hit-and-run jokers like you been latchin onto.”

  “But, Boatwright, I got me a man. Me and Roscoe Mattox from the Kaiser camp engaged to get married,” Ruby protested.

  “Roscoe is slow and lazy. He don’t go nowhere but to church and down here hisself. You need a fancy man. A man what know how to go out and shake his tail feathers. Somebody like that Slim Dixon from Miami. I’m goin to put a bug in Slim’s ear when I see him again. He told me to my face, you one of the finest looking women he ever seen.”

  “Slim told you that?” Ruby asked, eager and interested.

  “Sho nuff. Matter of fact, I’m goin to drive over to his place and ax him to say it again.”

  Slim was a tall, middle-aged man with copper-colored skin and thin, greasy gray hair. His wife had left him twenty years earlier and he had no children. Slim was a frequent visitor to Goons. On weekends, he bought beer from Boatwright and Ruby and danced like a teenager with some of the other drinkers. With a little encouragement from Boatwright, Slim asked Ruby to go out with him.

  Virgil was glad Ruby started to go out once again. Slim took her to a saloon in West Miami that he frequently attended, a notorious place called Yocko’s.

  Yocko’s was unusually crowded this particular Saturday night. While dancing with Slim, Ruby accidentally knocked over the table of a short, brown-skinned ex-convict named Mack Pruitt.

  “You big black cow you!” Mack shouted. The attractive young woman with him covered her mouth and giggled as she and Mack leaped up from the falling table.

  “What you call me?” Ruby asked calmly. She had stopped dancing and stood with her massive arms folded. A blue vein on the side of her neck wiggled as her anger rose.