The Upper Room

by Mary Monroe

  After looking under the bed and in the chifforobe, Fast Black left quietly and returned to the living room to join the others.

  “Yall, I bet that girl’s halfway to Mexico by now!” she hollered.

  22

  Maureen, blinded by her tears, stumbled along the bank of the Blue Lake.

  “What’s your name, girl?” she heard a masculine voice, unfamiliar to her, ask.

  She stopped crying and looked up.

  “My name Mo’reen,” she replied to the fisherman, an elderly white man holding a bait can in one hand and a fishing reel in his other.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothin. I’m just runnin away from home,” Maureen wailed. “I had me a pig, and some crook stole him and ate him up!”

  The man looked Maureen over thoroughly.

  “Whose little ole girl is you?”

  “I’m Mama Ruby’s little ole girl.”

  The man looked at her hard.

  “You drag your tail on back home, girl. Somethin was to happen to you and Mama Ruby’ll raise everything but the Titanic!”

  Back at the house, Virgil fussed and fought with Slim. Reverend Tiggs had just arrived and was standing over Ruby, who lay in a deathlike state in the middle of the floor, her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth wide open. Fast Black stood over Ruby and fanned her face. Suddenly, she removed Ruby’s teeth and backed over to the coffee table to place them in an ashtray. Then she returned to Ruby and resumed fanning.

  “You ain’t had no business lettin Mo’reen out your sight, boy!” Slim shouted at Virgil.

  “Shet up, Slim, and let me finish explainin! I am tellin you, I had just run outside to get me a breath of fresh air. You can ax Fast Black.”

  “He ain’t lyin, Slim! He had just run outside to get a fresh breath of air. I seen him do it!” Fast Black agreed.

  “How Mo’reen get out this house without you or Fast Black seein her?” Reverend Tiggs asked Virgil.

  “Huh? Well—we was in the kitchen at first. Me and Fast Black. I was cleanin a catfish!” Virgil lied.

  “He sho nuff was, yall—I seen him do it!” Fast Black said.

  Slim looked from her to Virgil.

  “Where the catfish at now?” Slim folded his arms and waited for a response. “I just come from the kitchen and I ain’t seen no catfish.”

  “I cooked and ate it?” Virgil suggested.

  “Sho nuff—I seen him do it!” Fast Black nodded.

  “Listen, I want the true story from yall.” Slim walked up close to Virgil and shook his finger in Virgil’s frightened face.

  “Tell the truth, Slim . . . me and Fast Black was in the bedroom,” Virgil admitted.

  “Doin what?” Slim demanded.

  “See—see Fast Black told me to carry her to the bedroom on account of she had a notion between her legs that was hot as a stole car!” Virgil moved back from Slim and leaned against the wall.

  “You lyin baboon!” Fast Black ran across the room and slapped Virgil’s arm.

  “STOP THAT!” the preacher ordered. “Yall in enough trouble already! Virgil, I’m ashamed of you, corruptin this young girl!”

  “Let’s try to get to the bottom of this mess. We ought to be tryin to get Ruby back to normal.” Slim clapped his hands as he spoke, moving over to Ruby.

  “Mama Ruby ain’t dead, is she, Slim?” Fast Black returned to Ruby as well.

  “Ain’t moved a muscle since I been here,” the preacher complained. “If she ain’t dead, she sho nuff playin possum.”

  “Poor Mama Ruby. Just look at her layin there. You could buy her for a nickel the shape she in.” Fast Black dropped to her knees and touched Ruby’s cold face. “Lord, her face hard as Chinese ’rithmetic.” Fast Black began to cry.

  “All this on account of Mo’reen runnin away,” Virgil said hoarsely. “Mama Ruby is sho nuff crazy when it come to Mo’reen. I can’t believe that girl done run away.”

  “Virgil, what make you so certain the girl is done run off? We all standin here assumin. She ain’t left no note or nothin,” Slim said suddenly. “Shoot. This just might be a fake alarm.”

  “Slim, I looked everywhere for Mo’reen. I checked her chifforobe. I checked under the tables and beds. I searched this house from asshole to appetite and the girl ain’t in it. The girl done run off. Even stole my suitcase!”

  The screen door slammed.

  “This girl live here, sho nuff?” It was the white fisherman talking.

  Maureen set down the suitcase and ran to Ruby and gasped.

  “Who done kilt my mama?” she cried out. She leaned over Ruby and placed her hands on Ruby’s shoulders and shook her violently. “Mama Ruby, Mama Ruby, don’t be dead.”

  The pupils in Ruby’s eyes returned to their proper place, her mouth closed and she sat up, coughing. She ignored the others, and rose from the floor with Maureen in her arms and they went to the upper room.

  Slim and Reverend Tiggs looked at one another. Virgil looked at the fisherman and shrugged.

  “I declare, yall. Somethin was to ever happen to Mo’reen, we just as well give Mama Ruby up for dead,” Slim muttered.

  23

  A cross from Ruby, at her living room table, Zeus shuffled a tattered deck of playing cards. To Ruby’s left was Irene Flatt, a woman who lived near the camps. Irene was a florid, gap-toothed woman of forty, with limp greasy hair and dull brown skin. The sleeves of her red shirtwaist dress were rolled way up her arms, revealing developed muscles. Facing Irene was her plain brown husband Bishop, a retired janitor. Of Ruby’s vast circle of friends, the Flatts were the only married couple. Catherine, the Flatts’ eight-year-old daughter, was Maureen’s schoolmate and best girlfriend.

  “You goin to read them cards or eat em?” Ruby asked Zeus.

  Zeus read fortunes with playing cards, sometimes with startling accuracy.

  “Give me time, Ruby,” he coughed. “You just give me time to read these damn cards.”

  Irene and Bishop sat completely still, sphinxlike, afraid Zeus might rearrange their future. Four beer cans sat on the table, emptied, and a platter of rib bones sat on the floor next to Ruby’s feet. Both windows in the room were propped open, for even though it was December it was uncomfortably warm.

  A scratched Ray Charles record had been playing over and over for two hours straight.

  Zeus flipped a card.

  “Ace of spades,” Bishop said with alarm. He shuffled around in his chair, straightening his suspenders and rearranging his too-small shirt.

  Irene turned to Ruby.

  “What is it, Zeus?” Ruby asked in a weak voice. “I know that’s the bad-news card. . . . My boy . . . my boy . . . my boy over there in that V-Eight Nam . . . is he?” Ruby stopped speaking and rose slowly. “Virgil ain’t been in that army but a few months. Don’t you tell me somethin done happened to him already!” she shouted angrily. Irene reached up and took Ruby’s hand, gently pulling her back down in her seat.

  “These cards don’t lie. Somebody in this room, at this table, got a dark cloud over em . . . could even be me,” Zeus announced tiredly. He reached in his shirt pocket and removed a container of eyedrops. “Yall all know how wild Fast Black is. Yellow Jack ain’t got a lick of sense. My nephew Loomis is just as wild as Fast Black. Always runnin over to that Key Largo or into Miami and them honky-tonk bars.” Zeus shook his head. “Poor Fast Black is bound to get herself raped or kilt or somethin.” Zeus applied the eyedrops in his fishlike eyes. The others stared at him quietly as he returned the eyedrops to his pocket, then flipped over another card: the queen of spades. Irene covered her mouth with her hand.

  “The dark cloud hangin over one of yall women,” Zeus said, relieved.

  Ruby snatched her handkerchief from inside her bra and sobbed quietly.

  “Zeus, you put them cards away,” Irene ordered gently.

  Zeus sighed and stuffed the deck of cards back into his pants pocket.

  “Hush up, Ruby,” Bishop shou
ted. “You is some crazy if you think Virgil stupid enough to let them Japs in V-Eight Nam get the best of him. Shoot.”

  “Somethin awful is fixin to happen to me,” Ruby mumbled. “My children—Mo’reen!” She leaped up from the table and ran out onto the front porch.

  Maureen was at the side of the house playing grown-folks with Catherine and Yellow Jack. All three children, bloody and scratched, threw down their sticks when they heard Ruby’s voice.

  “What?” Maureen asked.

  “Is you OK?” Ruby asked, running around the side of the house.

  “Yeah,” Maureen shrugged, wiping blood from her forehead. “I beat Yellow Jack and Catty the most,” she said proudly.

  Yellow Jack and Catherine, whose nickname was Catty, sat on the ground with blood and tears streaming down the sides of their cheeks, but they were grinning.

  Ruby grabbed Maureen’s hand.

  “You come on in the house with me . . . I’ll feel better with you bein somewhere where I can see you.” Ruby’s voice shook as she spoke.

  “Mama Ruby, I want to stay out here and play! I ain’t no baby no more! I’m eight! Why I got to be somewhere for you to see me?!” Maureen stomped her foot, then kicked at the sand.

  Catty stood up. Like Maureen, she was a tiny, dark, cherubic youngster with long jagged braids.

  “Mama Ruby, Mo’reen chased Bobby Boatwright home with a rock up side his head,” Catty informed Ruby.

  Ruby glared at Maureen.

  “You have to come in the house cause you fight too much,” Ruby explained. “Chasin Bobby Boatwright with rocks up side his head. You want old man Boatwright to come whip you? And look at all the blood on Yellow Jack and Catty and yourself! Yall will wake up with scabs in the mornin. You out for school Christmas vacation. Don’t you children want to do somethin different for a change? Yall kept on playin grown-folks, one of yall liable to end up dead!”

  “We like playin grown-folks!” Yellow Jack said truthfully. “I want to bust me somebody’s head open one day, like you do.”

  “We fight like this all the time. It’s sho nuff fun, Mama Ruby! Me, I want to choke folks’ tongues out like Yellow Jack say Fast Black told him you done!” Catty shouted.

  “When that girl tell you that?” Ruby gasped, facing Yellow Jack.

  “When I was a little bitty boy. She ax me if I wanted her to get you to take my tongue and feed it to the gators! Shoot naw, I told her! But I want to snatch out somebody’s tongue myself. Will you show us how?”

  “Uh . . . uh . . . you kids shouldn’t try to grow up too fast. Grown folks is serious business. See, I be settin in the house all the time worryin on account of I’m grown and that’s what grown ladies have to do. Worry. Like now. I’m worryin about Mo’reen out here. I want her to come in the house and let me keep my eye on her.”

  Catty tugged at Ruby’s dress tail.

  “We fixin to shoot marbles.” Catty removed a fistful of marbles from her pants pocket. “Please let Mo’reen play with us.”

  “Well . . . I guess it’s OK. But no more playin grown-folks today. Catty, you run down to Roscoe’s and tell him I said to send me some beers,” Ruby commanded. Catty darted off toward the hill.

  “Don’t yall leave the yard,” Ruby called to the other children, as she turned and went back inside.

  Yellow Jack removed a fistful of marbles from his pants’ pocket and Maureen lifted a coffee can containing her marbles off the ground. Within ten minutes, Yellow Jack had won all of Maureen’s marbles.

  “I declare. I ain’t playin with you no more. I’m goin to go back in the house and play with my mannequin if you don’t give me back my marbles,” Maureen threatened.

  “You ain’t no fun, girl. I’m goin to stop walkin to school with you.” Yellow Jack stabbed Maureen in the chest with his finger. “And I ain’t goin to eat lunch with you no more neither. I might take a notion and beat you up side the head with a stick and bust your goddamn brains out.”

  “Sho nuff, Yellow Jack?”

  “Sho nuff.”

  Maureen sighed and shrugged.

  “OK. Give me back some of my marbles so we can play some more, Yellow Jack. I don’t really want to go in the house and play with that ole mannequin no how.”

  Yellow Jack looked around and moved closer to Maureen.

  “Mo’reen, you want your marbles back?” he asked in a low, deep voice that did not sound like an eight-year-old boy. He placed his arm around Maureen’s waist.

  “Yeah,” she replied, bug-eyed and anxious.

  “You give me some pussy and I’ll give you back all your marbles.”

  Maureen jerked her head back and looked Yellow Jack in the eyes.

  “What’s pussy?” she asked.

  Instead of speaking, he lightly touched her crotch.

  “What you goin to do with it?” Maureen giggled.

  “See, grown folks do this thing. I seen my mama do it with No Talk and I seen her do it with Virgil. One time I peeped in Mama Ruby’s room and I seen her do it with Slim. I have to lay on top of you—”

  “Oh yeah—that! I seen Fast Black and Virgil doin that in Virgil’s bed that night before he went to V-Eight Nam. You want to lay on top of me and shake?”

  “Well . . . there’s more to it than that. From what I seen No Talk do, I have to put my thing inside you. Then we shake.”

  “Oh.” Maureen thought for a moment, then frowned. “That don’t sound like much fun. And it’ll make us talk crazy. Virgil and Fast Black was sayin, ‘oh baby baby baby’ and ‘oooh oooh oooh.’ I don’t want to talk crazy,” Maureen giggled, turning up her nose and frowning.

  “Listen here, girl. You ain’t got to talk crazy. All you got to do is shake.”

  “That all?”

  “I swear to God that’s all you got to do.”

  “OK—first let me ax Mama Ruby!” Maureen said, running up the stairs.

  “WAIT A MINUTE!” Yellow Jack yelled after her, but he was not quick enough. As soon as he heard the screen door slam, he fled into the bayou.

  Maureen entered the house and ran across the room to Ruby.

  “Mama Ruby, can I give Yellow Jack some pussy? Can I, Mama Ruby?” she asked excitedly.

  “Say what—get thee behind me, Satan!” Ruby shouted. She jumped up so fast she knocked her chair over. Irene, Bishop, and Zeus roared with laughter.

  “Yellow Jack axed me to give him some pussy and I told him I had to come ax you first. Can I, Mama Ruby?” Maureen begged.

  Ruby ran outside, calling Yellow Jack. Irene grabbed Maureen by her hand and pulled her close.

  “That’s a bad word,” she scolded, shaking a finger in Maureen’s face.

  “How come?”

  “That’s somethin just grown folks do,” Bishop explained. “Kids can’t do what grown folks do.”

  “We fight like grown folks. Catty say next time we play grown-folks, we goin to kill somebody. Maybe Yellow Jack or Bobby Boatwright. We goin to kill Bobby Boatwright next time we play grown-folks,” Maureen smiled.

  “Mo’reen, child. Just cause grown folks do certain things don’t mean they right,” Zeus informed Maureen.

  Confused, Maureen pulled away from Irene and retreated to the upper room.

  Twenty minutes later, from her footstool at the upper room’s front window, Maureen watched Catty moving down the hill hugging a large brown bag with the beer Ruby had sent her for. Before Catty made it to the porch, Maureen spotted an unfamiliar car coming down the hill.

  “White folks!” she gasped. She leaped up from her stool and ran downstairs. “Mama Ruby, here come the white folks drivin down the hill! Real white folks—not the kind like Big Red! They in a po’lice car!”

  Irene and Bishop ran to the door. Catty rushed in and handed the beer to Ruby, who quickly set it on the floor, then ran to the window.

  “Who is that, Irene?” Ruby asked. “Who is them white folks comin here?”

  Zeus ran to the door.

  “That a po’lic
e car or what?” Ruby asked.

  “Yeah,” Zeus said. “Look like they might be some of J. Edgar Hoover’s mens. . . .”

  “Lord . . . no it ain’t. Them ain’t no J. Edgar Hoover mens. That’s a government car. The same kind what came when Lottie’s boy got hisself shot up in V-Eight Nam.” Bishop’s voice trailed off.

  Ruby started to tremble as she watched the car come to a stop in her front yard. Dust rose up and drifted slowly back to the ground, like sheets of sepia. Two tall white men in military uniforms got out. They coughed and fanned the dust as they walked toward the house, their colorless faces grim and stonelike.

  “I seen them mens before. Last year. Ooooh, yall, them is the same two what come to tell Lottie about her boy gettin hisself shot up in that V-Eight Nam!” Bishop said again. “Wonder who they got bad news for?”

  “Shet up, Bishop!” Irene hollered. “We all know Ruby the only one live in this house what got a boy in V-Eight Nam. Ruby, I—” Irene stopped. Ruby stumbled backwards, sideways, and finally forward. When she hit the floor she fell on Irene, almost squashing the life out of her.

  24

  Roscoe and No Talk carried a huge, heavy footlocker out of Ruby’s house and set it on the back of Roscoe’s old pickup truck. Ruby sat on her front porch glider next to Loomis. The temperature had dropped considerably the last few days, and it was now cool enough for sweaters. Ruby and the three men wore long-sleeved shirts with thick linings. There was a snug-fitting black cap on Ruby’s head pulled down over her ears, giving her face a severe look. A thick bandanna was tied around the cap to keep it in place.

  “Don’t you worry none, Mama Ruby. I intend to take real good care of your house while you and Mo’reen in Louisiana,” Loomis said. He placed his arm around Ruby’s shoulder and moved closer to her.

  “Just make certain you don’t go in the upper room,” she said firmly. “And you better not let nobody else in it neither.”