by Mary Monroe
“You heard me!” Mack shouted, showing out for his female companion. The bar’s band, four sleepy Cubans, ceased playing. Patrons at surrounding tables moved away. Slim backed away quietly, hiding behind the bar, holding his breath. Everyone watched and waited. Nervous whispers and a loud wall clock were the only sounds that could be heard.
“That man’s goin to hurt that lady,” one woman whispered to another as they crouched behind a dusty, defunct jukebox.
“That ain’t no regular lady—that’s Mama Ruby!” the other woman gasped.
Ruby started to move toward Mack, her eyes narrowed. Her knees always knocked together when she walked and her enormous feet and legs were penguinlike.
“One other man on this planet called me a black cow. I carried him out to Squire’s pasture and showed him what a black cow look like . . . that’s where he at to this day,” Ruby said, dropping her arms to her sides, standing in front of Mack.
“I say you is a big, black cow—and your mama one too!” Mack yelled, turning to his lady friend, who was having trouble suppressing her laughter. “I guess I told her, huh?” Mack said, winking at his lady.
“I’m fixin to beat you till you piss—then I’m goin to beat you for pissin,” Ruby told him.
Mack stepped back as she reached for him. Quickly, he removed a .32 from his jacket pocket and started firing in her direction. Every woman present screamed. Every woman but Ruby.
She grabbed his arm and shook the gun from his hand. Then she tore the arm completely from his body at the socket.
Slim rushed Ruby home and insisted on staying the night to make sure she was all right.
“You sure you OK, Mama Ruby?” Slim asked repeatedly. He sat close to Ruby on her living room sofa, his arm draped lovingly around her shoulder. Blood covered the front half of her dress.
“I’m fine,” she coughed. She was having difficulty speaking. Virgil hovered over the sofa breathing loudly, worried about his mother. Maureen stood in front of Ruby with a puzzled expression on her three-year-old face. Ruby looked at her and smiled. Candy and sand all but covered Maureen’s pudgy brown face. Her long black hair was dotted with cockle-burrs and leaves.
“I can’t see how Mack missed you, close as he was when he went to shootin,” Slim said, shaking his head. He scratched the back of his neck, not taking his eyes off Ruby’s face. Her eyes were bloodshot and beads of perspiration covered her forehead. Slim became more alarmed when he looked down and saw that Ruby’s hands were trembling.
“Ruby, I’m fixin to go up to Kaiser’s camp and bring a jackleg doctor down here to see you. You ain’t fine—just look how you settin here shakin! I’m goin to get a jackleg doctor.”
“You better bring one for yourself too. I’m goin to cold-cock you, if you come bringin a doctor down here and I ain’t sick. Shoot. I’m some kind of doctor myself. Any doctorin I need these days, I can do it. Lest I need doctorin in a spot I can’t reach,” Ruby said in a low, weak voice.
“You do need a doctor, Mama Ruby,” Virgil insisted, moving around to stand in front of her.
“Jesus is the only doctor I need,” she replied with conviction. “Virgil, run get me a beer.”
Virgil silently obeyed.
“I bet that gun-totin nigger won’t mean mouth his maker, which he is sho nuff on his way to meet right now,” Ruby sighed.
“Shoot! Mack ain’t dead! I called Yocko’s and they told me Mack was hauled out of there—him on a stretcher and his messed-up arm on a tray! Shoot. That nigger ain’t dead. They tell me after they got that nigger to the hospital, he set up like nothin ain’t happened. Say he goin to hunt you and cut your head off, Ruby!”
“Who told you all this, Slim?”
“Old man Yocko told me. Soon as I got you back here, I run down to the camp to use the phone and called out there. I was scared the law was on the way out here.”
“Ain’t no law comin out here to mess with me. You know that.”
“Yeah, but you never know. White folks is so unpredictable. Who knows? You kill up enough folks and they just might take a notion to come out here tryin to arrest you.”
“I doubt it.” Ruby coughed again and sighed heavily. “I got trouble enough without the law comin down on me. Me with the devil ridin my coattails. Shoot. My load done got so heavy I’m about to fall out.” Ruby stopped talking and drank the beer Virgil had handed her.
“I’m comin back out here in a couple of days to check on you, Ruby,” Slim said firmly.
When he did return, Ruby had taken to her bed with what she at first believed was just a severe case of gas.
“Virgil, get me my butcher knife. Slim, you get me a beer.” Her voice had become a whisper. “Virgil, make sure you scorch the blade first,” she added. Maureen lay in her arms.
“Mama Ruby, is you fixin to die?” Maureen asked with concern. She had never seen Ruby so sick that she had to be in bed. “You don’t talk right . . . and your eyes lookin funny.”
“I ain’t goin to die. Least no time soon.”
“Slim say that man tried to kill you. Why that man tried to kill you, Mama Ruby?”
“Girl, there is crazy folks all over the place. He was crazy and too blind to see my glory.”
“You goin to get him, Mama Ruby?”
“Uh huh.”
Virgil left the room and returned within minutes with the knife. Slim still stood over the bed looking down at Ruby.
“Slim, I told you to get me a beer,” Ruby coughed.
“You ain’t drinkin no more beer till we find out you ain’t goin to get sho nuff sick. Shoot, Ruby. I ain’t never seen you this bad off.”
Virgil handed Ruby the knife and stood back to watch her sit up.
“Help me,” she told Slim. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into a comfortable position.
Maureen climbed out of the bed and stood between Virgil and Slim as Ruby removed her gown and bra and proceeded to feel around her spacious torso.
“Look-a-there!” Virgil pointed to an unfamiliar spot on Ruby’s middle. His eyes bugged out and he leaned forward to touch the dry wound.
“I declare . . . you is been hit, Ruby! You been hit sho nuff!” Slim shouted.
“Stand back,” Ruby ordered, waving them away with her arm.
Maureen whimpered and Virgil quickly scooped her up in his arms and held her as they watched Ruby perform “surgery” on herself. She removed the bullet with her fingernail and the butcher knife and placed it in a mayonnaise jar lid on her nightstand. She had made no sound.
“Slim, Virgil,” she began, pausing to look at Maureen, “Mo’reen, yall, somewhere in this world is a one-armed dead man.”
PART TWO
12
Ruby had gone to Miami to meet her cousin, Hattie Pittman, arriving from Baton Rouge on the six o’clock bus. Slim drove her to town in his pickup truck. She had ordered Virgil, who was now sixteen, to babysit Maureen, but less than five minutes after Ruby left the house, Virgil went to visit Fast Black.
Fast Black’s real name was Wanda Sue Harris. She was a thin, dark-skinned eighteen-year-old who lived on the other side of Duquennes Road in a shabby little wood house with her widowed father and her five-year-old son, Yellow Jack, a child she had deliberately had by a Chinese tourist to spite her father. She was not a pretty girl; her eyes were too far apart, there were gaps between her teeth, and her nose was almost flat. She had just been released from a school for wayward colored girls where she had been sent for robbing a school teacher with a weapon she had made out of fish hooks and a bicycle chain.
When the girl was not in a reform school, her father never locked the door to his house, since when Fast Black was at home, the police visited frequently. After they had kicked down the door a few times, Fast Black’s father, a humble, hardworking man named Zeus, stopped wasting money on latches.
Certain people in Goons did not allow Fast Black to visit.
“Don’t let that fast girl in my house—she might get loose!” one
woman told her teenagers.
“That Fast Black is forever in a mess,” Virgil said to Ruby the day Fast Black was sent to jail for robbing the teacher.
Ruby had laughed long and loud.
“She ain’t eatin right, that’s all’s wrong with her. It done drove her crazy. Shoot.” Ruby laughed again.
Ruby knew that every time she left the house, Virgil went to visit Fast Black. Zeus worked as a cook in a Miami hotel nights and in the fields during the day, so he was rarely around to control his daughter, but he was a man with many good qualities. He saw that Yellow Jack was left with a responsible babysitter when Fast Black was on the loose. And since Ruby was usually the one taking care of Yellow Jack, he became Maureen’s favorite playmate.
This particular day, Yellow Jack was in Miami with his grandfather helping him prepare advance meals for the springtime spate of northern tourists.
As usual, Maureen ruined Virgil’s visit to Fast Black. Ten minutes after he had dashed up the hill, Maureen followed him. With her, in a meal sack full of holes, was her pet piglet, Le Pig, squealing and thrashing about madly. The pig weighed close to twenty pounds and it was a struggle for Maureen to carry him around with her, but she managed. She was rarely seen without Le Pig, either in the sack or walking along with her. He went to church in a picnic basket and was more pampered than any baby in Goons.
After Virgil arrived at Fast Black’s and she had settled him in her living room, he recognized the pig’s persistent squeals as Maureen stumbled up on the front porch. The front door opened and Maureen marched in boldly.
“Great balls of fire!” Fast Black yelled.
“Mo’reen, what’s wrong with you, girl?” Virgil hollered, leaping up from the sofa.
“Sweet Jesus, Mo’reen! Ain’t you got sense enough to knock on folks’ door?” Fast Black asked angrily. She stood up and smoothed her skirt down. “And you look-a-here, girl—you get that nasty pig out my daddy’s house before he footprint this clean floor! I don’t go around here moppin for my health.” She turned to Virgil. “You straighten out this mess!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Virgil replied contritely. He shook a finger in Maureen’s face. “What you got comin, I wouldn’t wish on a dog!”
“Virgil, you got to come home and babysit me,” Maureen whined. The struggling pig fought madly to be liberated. “Virgil, I’m fixin to—OOPS!” Maureen dropped the sack and the pig got loose, running through the house, his muddy feet leaving tracks all over the floor. Virgil and Fast Black chased after him, cursing Maureen. After Virgil caught the pig, he returned the animal to the sack and handed it to Maureen. Then he thumped her about her head with his fingers.
“Aaaarrrggghhh!” she screamed.
“Shet up!” Virgil shouted.
“I’m tellin you for the last time, Virgil, you better do somethin about Mo’reen comin here messin up everything. Otherwise I’m goin to get me a man what ain’t got no baby sister!”
“Fast Black, you couldn’t just quit me, like that!”
“You just watch me! You don’t straighten out this girl, I’m goin to be spendin my time with another man! Shoot!”
“OK,” Virgil mumbled, and backed out the front door. Maureen ran behind him, dropping the pig again on Fast Black’s porch and leaving him to scramble after her.
13
Virgil stomped angrily down the hill with Maureen running to keep up with him.
“Wait on me, Virgil,” she begged. Her short legs were no match for his, so much longer and determined to reach his destination. Her braids swayed in the wind. It was springtime, the smell of dandelions and lilacs filled the air. It seemed that every other day it rained. After the rain the wind, which was always mysteriously warm, would rush down their hill, lifting and scattering the sand.
“Doggone your soul, girl!” Virgil cursed, not looking back at Maureen. The wind suddenly blew sand in his face, obscuring his vision. He coughed, then stopped to rub his eyes. Maureen stopped with him, wrapping her arms around his legs.
“Virgil, carry me!” she pleaded, coughing. Sand had blown into her mouth.
“Un-ass me, Mo’reen,” Virgil ordered. He removed her hands and arms from his legs and continued walking.
“You goin to get a whippin from Mama Ruby,” Maureen informed Virgil, again running to keep up with him. She was a lovely child with a doll’s face, dimples, large black eyes, and her mother’s long, silky black hair.
“I’m goin to beat a scab on you when I get you home, Mo’reen,” Virgil threatened, not slowing down as he turned around to look at her. “I ain’t got no time to be foolin around with you and Mama Ruby. Shoot. I’m a man. I told you to stay home in that upper room while I go pay a visit to Fast Black. How you expect me to spend time with my woman and babysit you at the same time? I done told you and Mama Ruby, I ain’t no babysitter. I ought to take a notion and join the army. See how you and Mama Ruby would like that!”
Maureen blinked to hold back her tears.
“You don’t like me no more, Virgil?”
“Girl, I ain’t never liked you! You been trouble since the day you was born. You is the reason Mama Ruby so crazy in the head. We was doing all right till you come along. Mama Ruby been nutty as a fruitcake ever since the day you was born!”
Maureen stopped in her tracks and stood looking down at the ground. Virgil stopped and glared at her.
“What’s the matter with you now, Mo’reen?”
“I wish I was dead. I wish I was dead if you don’t like me,” she sobbed. “I’m goin to up and die!” She threw herself to the ground, face down.
Virgil ran to her and forced her up, snatching her by the arm. He brushed sand off her smock.
“Girl, Mama Ruby ain’t no regular woman. She say you can’t die, lest she let you. She say you ain’t never goin to die long as she live. That big black woman is some kind of supernatural. She is mucho crazy!”
“What you mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Mama Ruby ain’t like nobody else alive. She done changed this whole town. She do what she want and nobody mess with her, lest they ready to die. Mama Ruby done put a spell on Goons! Just like you done put a spell on her.”
Maureen gave Virgil a puzzled look and took a deep breath, as confused as before.
After arriving home, Virgil swatted Maureen’s legs with a palmetto switch.
“Aaarrrggghhh!” she screamed and danced about the living room until he sent her to the upper room.
14
Ruby’s living room was large. Large enough to accommodate two big sofas, a striped easy chair, a chifforobe, and numerous other odds and ends. A large imitation oil painting of a black Jesus hung on one wall. A life-sized nude female mannequin, Maureen’s favorite toy, stood against another wall. On either side of the mannequin were cheap drawings of dead presidents. A long, low dining table with six unmatching chairs sat in the middle of the floor.
It was just past seven. Ruby and her lookalike cousin Hattie had just covered the table with bowls of boiled duck eggs, a platter of fried chicken, bowls of vegetables, a slab of ribs, and several cans of beer.
“Have yourself a seat, Cousin Hattie. You been fussin around ever since you got here,” Ruby said, seating herself at the table with Maureen on her lap.
Hattie sat down across from Ruby with a groan.
“That bus ride just about done wore me out,” Hattie complained. She had just gotten off the bus from Baton Rouge an hour earlier and had agreed to spend a month with Ruby. “I feel like I been hit by a semi-truck,” she continued, reaching for the eggs.
“Mama Ruby, don’t forget to beat Virgil for whippin me,” Maureen said, tapping Ruby’s knees.
“I’m goin to kill him dead, sweetie,” Ruby promised.
“And I’m goin to hold him while you do it,” Hattie said. Maureen smiled and felt warm all over. Her smile turned into a grin as she watched Hattie toss duck eggs into her mouth and swallow them whole.
“I don’t know what makes t
hat boy’s head so hard,” Ruby said. She lifted a chicken leg, stuffed it in her mouth, and chewed furiously. “Got the devil in him . . . I guess.” She lifted a can of beer and drank it down.
Maureen feasted quietly on a chicken wing.
Ten minutes after dinner had started, Virgil came racing down the hill. He stumbled up on the porch and fell again trying to get into the house in a hurry.
Ruby looked over at him struggling to lift himself from the floor.
“What all ail you, boy?!” Hattie asked, not looking up from the table.
“It better be the devil after him at least, for him to come tearin into my house like a wild man!” Ruby barked, rising. She gently stood Maureen on the floor and moved toward him with her fist poised.
“Don’t kill me, Mama Ruby! I got some news. I got some big news! I just come back from Fast Black’s house. Me and her and Yellow Jack and her cousin Loomis what just got out of prison and Moe Wilson from Kaiser’s camp—we was all settin around eatin plums. The next thing we know, Moe jumped up and said I stole Fast Black from him right out from under his nose!” Virgil stopped to catch his breath again.
“Hurry up, boy!” Ruby ordered, placing her hands on her hips. Maureen and Hattie continued to eat.
“I say to Moe, me and Fast Black been sweeties a slap year! I say we even got baptized together. Which we did. I suspicioned Moe and Fast Black had a thing goin too. But I ain’t started no mess on account of I know how Fast Black is. I don’t want her goin up side my head with no mop handle. She done done just that once and all I had done was ax her what man that was what carried her to that party in Key Largo that time—”
“GET TO THE POINT, BOY!” Ruby roared, stomping her foot.
“Give me time, Mama Ruby. I can’t never tell a story without you buttin in—”
Ruby rushed up to Virgil and thumped his head with her fingers.
“Yoww!” Virgil rubbed his head and continued. “Anyway, Moe say he goin to go up side Fast Black’s head for messin around with me. Fast Black told him he better leave her in her grave cause she goin to pop her blade in him if he was to even act like he goin up side her head. He was drunk. He slapped Fast Black down where she stood. She jumped up and said ain’t no man comin in her daddy’s house and shamin her. She pulled out a pistol and shot Moe in the neck! Mama Ruby, FAST BLACK DONE SHOT MOE IN THE NECK!”