by Mary Monroe
“Nothin. Oh . . . I wish I had never been born, Mama Ruby!”
53
Another week went by and Maureen was still trying to figure out what to do. She avoided Catty and Fast Black, and Yellow Jack avoided Maureen. Snowball had been admitted to a Miami halfway house again, his drug problem worse than ever.
Ruby watched Maureen closely, following her every time she left her sight.
“Mama Ruby, I’m just goin to the toilet,” Maureen said with disgust. “I don’t need no escort.”
“I know you don’t, but you need me,” Ruby insisted.
Instead of working in the fields, as she usually did this time of year, Maureen spent her days sitting in the living room watching television with Ruby.
Logan Hutchins, Snowball’s cousin, came running up on the porch this particular Thursday afternoon, hysterical and calling for Ruby.
“MAMA RUBY—AARRGGHH!” he cried, snatching open the door and falling face forward on the floor.
“What in the world is goin on?” Ruby demanded, rising. She ran to Logan, who was struggling to lift himself off the floor.
“Mama Ruby—it’s Snowball! Lord help us! Come quick! He done dropped dead and we need your healin hands to try to bring him back to life!” Logan cried.
“Dead?” Maureen mouthed, rising and running to Logan. “Who kilt him?”
“He overdosed on heroin!”
“Overdosed? I thought Snowball was in the halfway house again,” Ruby said.
“He was. That’s where he overdosed!” Logan informed them.
“Snowball done overdosed in the halfway house?!” Ruby asked. She grabbed Logan by the shoulders and shook him.
“Aaarrrggghhh!” he screamed. He pressed his face against Ruby’s chest and wailed frantically.
“What is we goin to do now? You have to come and try to raise him, Mama Ruby!” Logan began beating Ruby’s chest.
Ruby released Logan and turned to Maureen.
“Mo’reen . . . look like Satan done come to Goons and took up permanent residence,” she said. “If anybody come lookin for me, tell em I went to try and raise a dead albino.”
But Snowball was beyond help.
54
“Aaarrrggghhh—”
Everybody on the camps and everybody living in the houses throughout the camp area was awakened by Ruby’s frantic screams that morning, three days after Snowball’s funeral.
“Irene—Bishop,” Ruby wailed as she ran up on their front porch in her housecoat. Irene snatched open the door and ran outside in her slip.
It was early on a hot Sunday morning. Dogs, made uncomfortable by the humidity, were already up, howling and biting at june bugs.
Ruby had awakened and prepared an elaborate breakfast for herself and Maureen. Reverend Tiggs had promised a special sermon and Ruby wanted to face the Sabbath on a full stomach. When Maureen did not come down for breakfast at her usual time, Ruby went to the upper room to find out why. Maureen was gone. Her bed had not been slept in and a crude note had been tacked to the door of her chifforobe.
Dear Mama Ruby,
I done run off on account of I am fixing to have a baby. By Snowball. A albino and a dead one at that. See, he overdosed, I think, on account of he knowed he was good as dead anyway. We figured you’d kill him dead and so what’s the use. Tell Slim not to get me nothing for my birthday on account of I won’t be there to get it. Tell Catty she can have that transistor radio Bobby Boatwright gave me, it don’t work no how.
Love, Maureen
“My child done left me!” Ruby cried, waving the note at Irene. Irene slapped Ruby’s tear-stained face to silence her. Ruby closed her mouth but continued to wave her hands. Irene grabbed Ruby’s hand and led her inside, where Bishop was sitting on the sofa in his pajamas.
“What done happened?” he asked.
“Mo’reen done run off cause she pregnant by that albino what died the other day,” Irene answered, reading the note she had snatched from Ruby’s trembling hand. Irene and Bishop looked at Ruby at the same time.
Ruby was wailing and her eyes were rolled back in her head as she stood in the middle of the floor.
“Bishop, run over to Roscoe’s and call Big Red. This is sho nuff a po’lice matter,” Irene said. Bishop obeyed, dashing from the house calling Roscoe’s name.
Twenty minutes later Big Red came speeding down Duquennes Road with the siren blaring. He ran over six speckled hens in Irene’s front yard as he brought the squad car to a halt inches away from the porch steps. He fell getting out of the car, making some teenagers double over with laughter. Ignoring the youngsters, Big Red ran up on the porch and on into the house.
“Come on in, Big Red,” Bishop invited, as he stumbled into the living room with his hand on his revolver.
Catty entered from a back room wearing a housecoat and looking obviously annoyed.
“What’s goin on out here?!” she asked.
Irene looked from Catty to Big Red.
“Mo’reen done finally got herself pregnant. Now she done run off on account of it’s by that dead albino,” Irene told Catty.
“I knowed it! I knowed it! Me and Fast Black said Mo’reen was messin around with Snowball!” Catty announced, bouncing up and down.
“Big Red, you got to find Mo’reen!” Ruby hollered. “Find her and tell her I forgive her. I don’t care who she pregnant by. Just bring her back to me! OH LORD!”
Fast Black entered holding a mason jar filled with pot liquor in one hand.
“I remember when Mo’reen was a itty-bitty baby,” she sighed. “Now here she is fixin to have a baby herself.”
“By a albino. Lord. Mo’reen might end up with a all white baby,” added Bobby, who had entered the house immediately after Fast Black.
Big Red drove Ruby back to her house and within ten minutes Ruby’s living room was filled with concerned friends.
When Maureen walked up in the front yard, she heard all kinds of chatter coming from inside the house.
“Yellow Jack, come out of Mama Ruby’s ice box!”
“Slim, quit steppin on my foot!”
“Big Red, put that gun away.”
“Catty, pull down your dress.”
“Loomis, stop feelin on my legs!”
“I bet a maniac done kilt Mo’reen and fed her to the gators.”
“Aaarrrggghhh!”
Maureen stopped, then walked quickly around to the back of the house. She listened and peeked in through a hole in the kitchen door. The kitchen was vacant. She quietly opened the door, let herself in, and tiptoed to the upper room. She unpacked the few items she had carelessly tossed in a shopping bag, returned them to her chifforobe, and went to bed.
Maureen had spent the night in the Greyhound bus station on a bench. By morning she was hungry and homesick and could not return home fast enough.
A few hours after her return, she left the upper room and went down to the living room. Irene and Bishop were the only ones left with Ruby, as everyone had gone out to search for Maureen.
“What’s wrong with Mama Ruby?” Maureen asked.
Irene and Bishop gasped and turned around to face her. They stood over Ruby, who lay on the sofa in a catatonic state.
“Mo’reen, the whole world’s out lookin for you,” Irene barked.
Maureen rushed to Ruby and grabbed her hand.
“You get your big ole fat self up from there!” Maureen ordered.
Ruby opened her eyes and sat up to embrace Maureen.
55
Maureen’s labor started before daybreak, one morning in the middle of March.
Ruby moved her from the upper room to the living room, where Maureen’s twin daughters Loraine and Loretta were born at noon on the pallet Ruby had laid on the floor.
“What I have, Mama Ruby?” Maureen asked tiredly when she came to. She had had a fairly easy labor, but had passed out before the actual birth.
“Twin girls,” Ruby said proudly. “Two beautiful little girls that lo
ok just like you.”
“Just like me?” Maureen asked eagerly, afraid her children would take after their father.
“Just like you. Same nigger-toe color. Same straight black hair. Same looks. Everything, just like you.”
“. . . Um, they don’t look nothin like Snowball?”
“Shoot. Them kids don’t look nothin like that homely baboon.” Ruby grinned.
PART FOUR
56
It was fall, 1973. The Viet Nam war was over and most of the men from Goons who had participated in it had returned home. Still, there had been no word about Virgil. Ruby and Maureen prayed for the day another government car would come to the house carrying Virgil. They spent more time than ever looking out the window, up the hill.
Maureen sat on the footstool in the living room looking up the hill, shading her eyes with her hand. Ruby lay on the sofa with Maureen’s six-month-old twins on her lap.
“Mama Ruby, come look out the window and see what I see,” Maureen called over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off the hill.
Three slender white girls were walking toward the house accompanied by a gigantic black woman and a tiny black man carrying a suitcase. The white girls, all teenagers, had on shorts and flimsy blouses and were barefooted. The dust and the hot sun had turned their feet and legs brown. The big black woman wore a full-length muumuu and carried a large black purse. In her other hand she held a fan and was fanning her face. The man wore a dark suit, made from a fabric unsuitable for the weather.
“Look like Cousin Hattie, Sukey French, and some other white girls. And a itty bitty black man,” Maureen reported.
“Have mercy,” Ruby replied lazily, not taking her eyes off the children.
Maureen moved from the window and positioned herself on a hassock next to the sofa, pretending to be reading a Bible she had snatched off the coffee table. The crowd entered without knocking.
Hattie had opened the door and the others followed behind her in single file.
“Wooo wee!” Hattie exclaimed, grinning from one side of her face to the other.
“Cousin Hattie!” Ruby shrieked. She rose up from the sofa and ran to her cousin. Sukey took Loraine and one of the other girls grabbed Loretta from Ruby’s arms and went to the sofa and sat down. Ruby embraced her cousin and kissed her about the face.
“What you doin in Florida, Cousin Hattie?” Ruby asked.
“Didn’t yall get my letter?” Hattie replied, pulling away from Ruby.
The two girls accompanying John’s sister Sukey were his other sister, fifteen-year-old April, and the girl he had planned to marry, eighteen-year-old Bonnie Sue McFarland. Maureen watched with disapproval as the white girls fussed over the twins.
“We was bringin you your mail, Mama Ruby,” April announced. She left the sofa and sauntered over to Ruby and handed her an envelope she removed from her blouse pocket.
“It’s a letter from Cousin Hattie!” Ruby laughed, waving the envelope postmarked three days earlier. In the letter Hattie informed Ruby and Maureen of her visit. Hattie had mailed the letter the same day she left Baton Rouge.
April often removed Ruby’s mail from her roadside mailbox and delivered it to her. She’d use any excuse to get to Ruby’s house and play with Maureen’s beautiful brown babies, who reminded both April and Sukey of their cousin Charlotte’s baby girl.
“Cousin Ruby, Mo’reen, meet my husband, Pharaoh Maze,” Hattie said proudly. The man, who appeared to be shy, smiled at Ruby.
“How do,” he said in a childlike voice.
“Lord in heaven, Cousin Hattie, you done finally got yourself married?” Maureen asked, coming over to shake Pharaoh’s hand. “When you get married, Cousin Hattie?”
“Last Tuesday!” Hattie answered. “We met at a funeral and hit it off right off the bat!” Hattie took her husband by the hand and led him to a chair, then sat down on one of the sofas.
The white girls were interested only in the babies and seemed oblivious to the others in the room.
“I been blessed,” Hattie sighed.
“Ain’t it so. We all been blessed,” Ruby insisted, looking at the girls with the babies.
“Mama Ruby, can we carry the babies for a walk?” Bonnie Sue asked.
Maureen ran to Sukey and hastily grabbed Loretta, then went to Bonnie Sue and snatched Loraine. Hattie leaped up from the sofa and took the children away from Maureen.
“These the little angels I done heard so much about!” Hattie squealed, frightening both twins, who looked at her wide-eyed. Though Ruby and Hattie were identical, Hattie’s face was covered with several layers of heavy face powder and rouge, looking very unlike Ruby. The babies started crying.
“Cousin Hattie, you scarin em,” Maureen said gently. She removed Loraine from Hattie’s arm and handed her to Ruby. Sukey rushed over to Hattie and grabbed Loretta back.
“I just love these little babies so much,” Sukey smiled. “They is so much like Charlotte’s baby.”
“Sho nuff is,” Bonnie Sue added sadly.
“They goin to grow up and be heartbreakers like Mo’reen is,” Hattie said with a laugh.
Maureen left the crowd fussing over the babies and returned to the window.
“Mo’reen, get back here! Where is your manners? Run get ice water for our company,” Ruby instructed, walking toward her bedroom with the suitcase Pharaoh had carried in.
“How long yall plannin to stay, Cousin Hattie?” April asked.
“Not long, darlin. Just a few days,” Hattie answered.
Maureen went into the kitchen and prepared a pitcher of ice water. When she returned to the living room carrying a tray with a pitcher and several glasses, everyone was outside in the front yard taking pictures.
“Come get in a picture with me, Mo’reen,” Ruby yelled, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
Maureen placed the tray on the steps and silently joined them, placing her arm around Ruby’s waist. Hattie had a self-developing camera and three photos had already been snapped and set on the bannister to dry.
“Yall smile!” Hattie ordered.
Ruby grinned broadly while Maureen barely moved her lips. After the picture-taking session, the photos were passed around.
“Look at this one of Mo’reen . . . it’s got a shadow on it!” April shouted, waving the picture at Ruby.
“Wonder what happened . . .” Ruby said, running her finger across a dime-sized shadow almost covering Maureen’s face.
“Probably Bonnie Sue’s thumb when she snapped it,” Pharaoh suggested, looking at Maureen.
“Yeah . . . that must have been what it was,” Maureen mumbled, with a hint of worry. She was confused and frightened. Before Virgil went into the army, Slim had photographed him. In one of the shots, Maureen had seen the same kind of shadow on Virgil’s face.
It was much later that day that Maureen discovered the same kind of shadow on Loraine’s face in one of the other photographs. Maureen was convinced it was not from Bonnie Sue’s thumb.
57
On the second afternoon of Hattie’s visit, Slim and Pharaoh left Ruby’s house to go fishing in the Blue Lake. Maureen, Loraine, and Loretta were off visiting Catty, and Ruby and Hattie went to see Zeus for a card reading.
“Aaarrrggghhhh!” Ruby screamed as she fell from her chair in Zeus’ living room.
“Get up off that floor, Ruby!” Zeus ordered, throwing the cards down on his coffee table. He stood up from the sofa and glared down at Ruby lying on the floor spread-eagled. Hattie left the sofa and ran to Ruby to help her up.
“I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!” Ruby roared as she staggered back to her chair.
Zeus sat back down and picked up the cards again.
“Now you wanted the truth and that’s what I’m givin you!” Zeus said angrily. “I’m tellin you to your face, Mama Ruby, them kids ain’t yours to keep. They all, Mo’reen, Lo’raine, and Lo’retta, goin somewhere and ain’t never comin back!”
“Aaaarrrggghhh!” Ruby screamed, banging the coffee table with her fist. She leaped up and started to jump up and down, causing things to fall off shelves and the pictures on the walls to slide about. A chandelier hanging over the coffee table started to shake.
“Ruby, you tearin up my house!” Zeus shouted, clapping his hands together.
“Tell me them cards lyin! Tell me my kids ain’t goin to leave me!” Ruby screamed.
Hattie grabbed her by the arm and forced her back down in the chair.
“Them cards don’t lie! I ain’t runnin one of them Mickey Mouse fortune-tellin games! You dealin with me, you dealin with a big-time operation! Shoot! I got white folks come all the way from Key Largo for me to read the cards for em. You know them cards ain’t lyin about them kids of yours leavin you, Ruby!” Zeus hollered. “Now you get your big self on out my house before you tear it up! Shoot!”
Hattie took Ruby by the arm and led her home.
“Cousin Hattie, I got to make sure . . . make sure that the devil don’t get his hands on my kids,” Ruby whimpered as Hattie helped her to bed.
“You can’t fight fate, Cousin Ruby. Like Zeus said, you dealin with a big-time operation when you got him readin the cards for you. You just can’t fight fate.”
58
“Oh, Mama Ruby, I was lookin out the window in the upper room just now, and I seen a soldier man comin down the hill!” Maureen exclaimed, running into the living room where Ruby sat on the sofa watching television with the twins, who were now five.
“We don’t know no soldiers, Mo’reen. You must be seein—soldier?” Ruby jumped up and leaped twice in the air before running to the door. “PRAISE THE LORD—IT’S VIRGIL!”
Ruby and Maureen ran out the front door, leaving Loraine and Loretta bewildered.
Virgil, now a willowy veteran of thirty-five with sad eyes and a lined face, stopped in the front yard and smiled.
“VIRGIL!” Maureen screamed. She ran into him with so much force he fell to the ground, dropping the military bag that contained his possessions.