by Mary Monroe
Minutes later, after all the other passengers had returned to their seats, Maureen started to whine.
“I left my doll back at that restaurant.”
“What doll? Where you get a doll from?”
“I got it outta gum machine in the bus station in Shreveport. It was a itty-bitty doll I had in my pocket. I left her layin on the seat and forgot to pick her up when we left,” Maureen pouted.
“We’ll get you another one when we get to New Orleans,” Ruby promised.
“But I don’t want another one—I want the old one,” Maureen wailed, starting to cry.
Ruby became embarrassed. The other passengers were turning around, giving her annoyed looks.
“Shhh, Mo’reen. I swear to God I’ll buy you not one but two new dolls, just as soon as we get to New Orleans. Hear me?”
“Aaarrrggghhh,” Maureen wailed, her eyes closed and her mouth stretched wide open.
“Shet up, girl, before these folks think I’m treatin you like a stepchild,” Ruby begged. She reached inside her bra and removed her handkerchief and wiped Maureen’s eyes and nose, but Maureen continued to cry. The bus had not started again yet. Ruby cursed under her breath as she got up from her seat, climbed over Maureen, and hurriedly left the bus.
It took her two minutes to retrieve the doll and return. When she did, the bus was gone.
“MO’REEEEN!” Ruby screamed, running down the middle of the street after the bus. But the bus was too far away already.
Somehow Ruby managed to retain enough control to go back inside the restaurant and call the local police. But she left before they arrived. She had got a ride to New Orleans on the back of a pickup truck driven by a Cajun man who had been sitting in the restaurant. Ruby had put her switchblade to the man’s throat, giving him no chance to refuse her request. They arrived in New Orleans twenty minutes ahead of the bus Maureen was on.
As soon as the bus door opened, Maureen ran to Ruby.
“Mama Ruby, I thought I’d never see you again! That ole nasty bus driver wouldn’t wait on you to get back!”
“Where is that hound of hell?!” Ruby thundered, “I ought to de-ball him!”
“Don’t kill him, Mama Ruby . . . let’s just get our stuff and get on to Miss Mo’reen’s house,” Maureen begged.
30
After two light strokes left one of her arms partially paralyzed, Maureen O’Leary had curtailed her activities considerably. Some of her best girls had been lured away from the old madam, now in her seventies, by smooth-talking local pimps. Her youngest girls had run off to such faraway places as New York and Chicago. The smart ones had been attracted to the western cities, where life was more relaxed and folks more liberal about prostitution. The brothel, a sprawling old plantation house with four white columns and two swings on the front porch, was painted off-white. It had been an icy blue during the months Ruby and Othella lived there.
“Most of my girls done up and left me. Ain’t nothin been right since you and Othella left us, Ruby. Every now and then a fancy man come by and drop dollar bills on us,” Old Maureen said sadly. She sat next to Ruby on one of the front porch swings. A large pitcher of iced tea and a tray of coasters and napkins sat on a cart next to the swing. A thick tapestry shawl lay across Old Maureen’s shoulders. Her hair, once black, was now snow white, her narrow face profusely lined, her loose, liver-spotted skin sagging like the jowls of a turkey.
“I been thinkin about comin out of retirement and takin over my old room here, on a off and on basis. I’d never really leave Florida. I love Florida and my friends, but many a day I wish I’d never left New Orleans and this house, Miss Mo’reen.”
“Why you run off, Ruby Jean? Why you let Othella carry you off? We lost so much business when you took off like you done. Word come to me about yall joinin a carnival and I like to died on the spot. What Othella give you that you couldn’t get from me?”
Ruby swallowed hard and looked out into the street.
“She give me a new life . . .” she replied.
“Pardon?”
Ruby turned to face the old woman.
“After I got to Florida, the Lord made known his presence in my path. He blessed me with a husband, a son, and a livin doll for a daughter.”
“Where is your man?”
“. . . Um . . . he had a little accident.”
Old Maureen looked at Ruby, studying her features. Ruby sat staring down at her lap, rubbing the tips of her fingers together.
“Did you kill him, Ruby? Tell me the truth now; I know how you is. You was always struttin around talkin about killin this trick and that trick for one reason or another.”
Ruby nodded and cleared her throat.
“Who told you?”
“Nobody. I just had you pegged right. Since the day Othella brought you to me, I knowed you wasn’t no ordinary girl. Folks can look at you and see you ain’t like most folks. By the way, seem like you done put on a bit more weight since you left.”
“A pound or two.”
The old madam looked at Ruby’s gigantic arms and touched one.
“How’s your health, Ruby Jean? You was wheezin a awful lot this mornin.”
“My blood pressure done gone wild. Other than that, I’m in pretty good health. Why?”
“A woman your size can fall victim to just about some of everything. Heart attack. Stroke. You name it. Look what happened to me and I ain’t half as big as you.”
“Long as I got Jesus, I don’t need nothin else. He is my mama, my daddy, and my doctor. That’s why I ain’t spent nary a day in jail for killin that low-down, funky black dog I married.”
“Why’d you kill him? And how you get out of goin to jail? They tell me the state of Florida is one of the worse states in the world to commit a crime. They got more folks on death row than the rest of the southern states put together.”
“Well, my man had shamed me beyond redemption and everybody knowed. I was scandalized before my friends and made to look like a fool in front of white folks. That nigger was better off dead anyway. I done it for his own good. He had women comin out his ear. I killed him for that reason.”
“And the laws ain’t fetched you?”
“Well, not exactly. They give me a month and a day on account of when I went to kill that thing I married, I run off and left some white kids alone I was babysittin. That’s what I went to jail for,” Ruby explained.
Old Maureen nodded and shivered. Ruby rose and rearranged the shawl on the old woman’s shoulders.
“Well, Ruby, what else you been up to?”
Ruby smiled mysteriously.
“I got me a fiance and a truckload of Christian friends. And a house—let me tell you about my house!”
While Ruby was giving Old Maureen a detailed report about her house with its sanctified upper room, Maureen and two young girls came skipping from around the side of the house, where there was a wading pool and a sandbox behind a large chicken shed. In season, large plums fell from the two trees that shaded the pool. Debbie Starr was the twelve-year-old daughter of Old Maureen’s black “boarder,” Rosalie. And Lola was the nine-year-old daughter of blond, Mississippi-born Bonnie Henderson, Old Maureen’s current favorite girl. Maureen and her two companions stopped and carefully situated themselves on the steps leading up to the front porch. Debbie had a catalogue she placed on the steps and began leafing through. Lola produced a pair of scissors and they started cutting “paperdolls” from the catalogue. Maureen, carrying a handful of plastic daisies in one hand and big rocks in the other, walked up the steps to Old Maureen and climbed on her lap.
“I brought you some flowers, Miss Old Mo’reen,” she said.
“Mo’reen, girl, climb down off Miss Mo’reen’s lap before you cause her another stroke,” Ruby said, clapping her hands together once. “Go on and play paperdolls with the girls.”
“You leave her alone, Ruby. Can’t you see she done brought me some flowers.” Old Maureen hugged the girl with her one good arm, squeezi
ng her until she squirmed.
Bonnie and Rosalie sauntered through the front door onto the porch, taking over the other swing. Both carried fans and glasses of Pepsi. Bonnie, an occasional snuff dipper, carried an empty coffee can in her other hand that she kept spitting into. Both wore bandannas to conceal their uncombed hair. Their clothes were plain and wrinkled, gray housecoats that were too small and soiled with barbecue sauce and pork drippings.
Rosalie sighed and took a sip of her drink. She toyed with the ice cubes with her long nails, and began talking quietly.
“Ruby, was Santa Claus good to you this Christmas?”
“I ain’t had much of a Christmas this year. See, a couple of weeks ago my boy got lost in that V-Eight Nam. I come to visit my family cause I needed some extra prayer assistance. I ain’t thought much about no Christmas. Otherwise, I’m enjoyin the season. How was Santa Claus to you?”
“Oh, he just by-passed all of us this year,” Rosalie said.
“And everybody else been by-passin us the rest of the year,” Bonnie added. “Ain’t been a sport or a fancy man by here today. Things keep up like they been and I’m subject to drag my tail off to New York somewhere,” she drawled.
“I got a itchin to do the same thing,” Rosalie said, looking directly at the madam. Old Maureen’s eyes filled with tears and she released young Maureen and stood up. Still clutching the fake daisies, the old woman hobbled off the porch, walked softly across the front yard and seated herself on a padded settee inside a white gazebo.
“What’s wrong with her?” Maureen asked Ruby. “What’s wrong with Miss Old Mo’reen?”
Ruby shaded her eyes to look at the old woman, then slowly turned to face Maureen.
“Look like the devil done dragged his tail into Miss Mo’reen’s life . . . just like he done with me.” Ruby took Maureen’s hand in hers and squeezed it.
31
The sun glistened on New Orleans in the early morning as white-hooded figures, with their white faces showing, paraded boldly down Seneca Street on horseback. The earliness of the hour accounted for the lack of curious spectators usually drawn to public Ku Klux Klan rallies. The Klansmen halted and dismounted in a plaza less than a hundred feet away from the cobblestone walk that led to the entrance of Jimmy’s Confectionery Store. Some of the men carried large Confederate flags held high on long poles. Some displayed crudely printed signs with logos:
DOWN WITH MARTIN LUTHOR COON
AND
NIGGERS GO BACK TO AFRICA
Some of the signs were more malicious.
Maureen and Debbie were skipping rope in front of the store while waiting for Ruby to come out. Ruby planned to return to Shreveport with Maureen the following morning, and Old Maureen was throwing a pre-Mardi Gras party in their honor. Ruby and the girls had come to the store to pick up some last minute items needed for the party.
“Look, Debbie, a parade,” Maureen exclaimed as she dropped the rope and leaped into the air, clapping her hands and waving at the Klansmen.
“Girl, that ain’t no parade,” Debbie informed her. “That’s the Klan.”
Maureen looked at her with a puzzled expression and started to walk toward the rally, but Debbie grabbed the tail of Maureen’s dress and held her back.
“Let me go! I’m goin to look at the parade. I like horses,” Maureen said, pulling away.
“You ain’t goin noplace! Them folks’ll kill you dead! They kilt a boy from my school,” Debbie said, placing her hand on Maureen’s arm. “That’s the Klan.”
“The what?”
“The Klan. Look at them signs they carryin. They hate black folks like us. Here it is almost nineteen and sixty-four and they still actin like fools!”
Maureen looked at her hands, turning them over for inspection. Then she looked at Debbie’s hands.
“We ain’t black, we brown. Who they kilt and why?”
“Mo’reen, the Klan law say they hate people like us. The boy they kilt was a boy what messed with some nasty ole white girl. I’m tellin you, girl. They hate us!”
Maureen gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Debbie roughly removed Maureen’s hand and forced her to speak.
“Don’t be mumblin under your breath. You got somethin to say, say it, Mo’reen.”
“I don’t believe what you just said about them Klans, Debbie. You just don’t want me to go to the parade. I’m fixin to go—”
“Mo’reen, them folks kilt my brother too,” Debbie said, her voice wobbling on her words.
Maureen looked at the Klansmen, then quickly back to Debbie.
“What your brother do?”
“Nothin. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Like my brother. Mama Ruby say he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Maureen turned to look at the Klansmen again, this time with anger. Before Debbie realized what was happening, Maureen picked up a huge rock and hurled it into the crowd of Klansmen. One of the men—there were at least twenty—screamed and stumbled off his horse. The rock had hit him on his forehead. His comrades helped him up, and as soon as he steadied himself, he grabbed his flag and ran in the children’s direction.
Debbie grabbed Maureen by the hand and they disappeared around the corner leading to the back of the confectionery store.
“Come on, Mo’reen! Somethin was to happen to you, Mama Ruby said she kill everybody in New Orleans!” Debbie screamed, and she and Maureen ran as if the devil himself were in pursuit.
Egged on by his companions, the Klansman chased the girls into an alley in back of the store. Maureen ran up the back porch steps to the store but fell down on her face. Debbie fell over her to shield Maureen’s body as the Klansman brought his flagpole down across Debbie’s back. Moaning and pretending to be hurt, Debbie lay motionless as the vengeful man turned and began to walk back to rejoin his party.
A well-aimed switchblade thrown with the fury of the devil caught the Klansman at the base of his neck, and a small red stain soiled the white hood. The man staggered, then fell to the ground, dead. Ruby stood on the top step of the store’s back porch. She calmly retrieved her knife, then lifted Maureen from the steps, and with Debbie close behind they made it back to the brothel, long before anyone discovered what had happened in the back alley.
Old Maureen stood in the doorway of the bedroom Ruby and Maureen had been staying in, breathing with great difficulty and leaning on a cane, tears streaming down the sides of her face.
“Ruby, stay here and let me help you. I got a lot of friends in this town what owe me big favors. You won’t spend much time in prison,” Old Maureen cried.
“I got news for you, I ain’t spendin no time in prison,” Ruby replied, moving about the room quickly, collecting her belongings.
“How far you think you’ll get runnin off like this? You done kilt another man. You got a record back in Florida. Runnin off like this will only make matters worse! That’s the law!”
“Law shmaw. Law ain’t got nothin to do with me,” Ruby muttered.
Only minutes had passed since Ruby and the children returned to the brothel. Debbie hid in her room. Lola stood in the window to see if the authorities knew where to start looking.
Rosalie and Bonnie had hurriedly left the house.
“We’ll go spread the word we seen a foreigner runnin from where the Klansman was kilt!” Bonnie had assured Ruby.
“And I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles, I seen the foreigner throw the knife myself!” Rosalie said, dashing out the door behind Bonnie.
Ruby thanked her friends for their help and rushed to start packing.
“We goin home now, Mama Ruby?” Maureen asked eagerly, as soon as Ruby brought out the shopping bag they had packed their belongings in. The footlocker remained at Ruby’s parents’ house with most of their clothes and their train tickets back to Florida.
“Yeah, we goin back home! I’ll write Mama and Papa a letter and tell em we had to rush back cause somebody broke in my house! I can�
�t hang around this state a minute too long!” Ruby said, throwing clothes in the bag.
“You ain’t got no money. You ain’t got no tickets. How you goin to get back to Florida runnin off like this? Anyway, the law’ll be lookin for suspicious people at the bus station, the train station, and the airport. Ain’t no way you can get out of this state alive, Ruby!” Old Maureen wailed. She struggled to move across the floor to the bed where Ruby stood. Maureen stood near the window, peeking out from behind the drapes.
“I’ma worry about that bridge when I come to it,” Ruby said, almost out of breath.
Old Maureen grabbed Ruby’s wrist.
“You can’t keep livin the way you been. Your luck is bound to run out one day. Stay here . . . let me get us a Jew lawyer to straighten out this mess! We don’t know the whole story. Them kids leavin somethin out. I don’t believe that Klansman just lit out after them for no reason at all.” Old Maureen looked over at Maureen, who looked at her and blinked her eyes rapidly.
“Miss Old Mo’reen, see, I hit the man up side his head with a rock,” Maureen confessed.
Ruby stopped for only a moment, then continued packing.
“You heard her. You heard the child admit she give the man good cause to come after her and Debbie, Ruby. Oh, you in a heap of trouble this time! The Klan ain’t nothin to play with!” Old Maureen hollered, following Ruby around. “You hear me—the Klan ain’t nothin to play with!”
“T’ain’t neither!” Ruby replied as she folded the top of the bag over. “Mo’reen, let’s go. We fixin to haul ass again,” she yelled. “Get your shoes, darlin.”
“I can’t let you go, Ruby,” Old Maureen cried, grabbing Ruby’s wrist again. “You can plead insanity—anything!”
Ruby pulled away from the madam and stepped back.
“Miss Mo’reen, I can’t let nobody mess with Mo’reen and live to tell about it. I wish that white-sheeted devil was alive again so I could kill him again! If it wasn’t for me, Mo’reen would have been dead a long time ago.”