"You ain't my Mama, you ain't," Marcene would say.
"Go on now, child, and do as I tell you."
"I won't."
They would separate, each pouting, until Joboy returned and Marcene would get to him first as he came into the yard and she would sound her arguments against Ruby and he would come in and glower. Other times, she didn't know why, she would take to herself in the bed for hours until he came to her.
"What you be wanting, woman?" he would say. "She's a child, why you act this way?"
"She ain't my child."
"She's our child."
"No, you know better."
He'd say, "You better get used to it, gal," and he always left in the morning. He started staying away for days at a time, and at home there was only Marcene. Then Joboy came in that night sweating the powerful odor of fright and confusion. He packed a paper sack with some clothes. He said at the door, "I'll be gone awhile." She heard "armed robbery" a few days later and the next time and the last time she saw him was at the courthouse.
The gray-green dome was in full view now and houses lined the road, the outskirts of town. A dog bounded snarling up to a fence. A voice from within the house behind called, "Hey, there!" and the dog stopped, slobbering, eyeing her as she walked.
Joboy had worn blue faded overalls with numbers on the breast pocket the day of the trial. She remembered the judge saying, "I hereby sentence you to five years incarceration at the State Penitentiary in Huntsville," and the bash of the wooden hammer and then a deep, chilling silence. Joboy had looked back at her with his pretty, dark eyes, so frightened and far away.
She was in town. The chain saw had gone quiet, but she glimpsed the glass doors of the courthouse, like big silver eyeglasses watching her. There were stores and restaurants around the square, and she lingered. Televisions flashed at the Western Auto. Big-cushioned couches beckoned at Sal's Furniture Store. Frilly summer dresses graced handsome mannequins at Lilly's Boutique, where a young white woman was pinning up the hem of a yellow frock in the display window. Ruby paused, looking in. She often imagined herself living in the city with a closetful of Holiday Fashions like the ones she had seen in the catalogues, and maybe a car and maybe one of those little apartments she'd heard about that had carpets and a garbage disposal. And Joboy'd have a job doing construction he could do all sorts of things and they'd have their own bedroom furniture. She wanted to go inside the store, but the woman in the window glanced up at her with a face that told her not to. Ain't got time, anyway.
She walked around the courthouse. The granite building loomed above her with its round-topped windows and high eaves, and she remembered the day she had gone inside. Joboy, his elbow in the grip of a deputy, had come to the rail in the courtroom before they led him away. She could smell him, oily and sweaty, and his overalls didn't fit him at all. He kissed her on the cheek, his lips rough and quivering, and he leaned into her ear: "She be yours now, take care. She's yours." That was three years ago next month and she had memorized the letter.
20 February 1972
Dear Ruby
I am getting out early on good behavior. May 16. Come here to the gate wait for me do not
come inside and then we will stay the night in town before going back. Don't bring Marcene.
Joboy
The letter, already yellowing and ripped from two months of handling, lay neatly folded in the purse under her arm. It was only the second letter she had received in the time he had been away while she and Marcene lived in the little room off the kitchen at the Livermores', and she had not seen him, never going to visit. His first letter had said not to. This is no site for you and most important not for Marcene. Stay away.
So she worked for the Livermores almost thirty months now wearing the tight-fitting maid's uniform that Mrs. Livermore had bought her and putting away the "good money" she got each month in the white purse. She kept her wages in a separate compartment of the purse from the "little extra" that Mr. Livermore slipped into her pocket on his "special occasions."
She carried $800, enough to get away. She would have to convince Joboy, make him see that they should get away, to the city, any city. But the Livermores had promised to give Joboy a job on the ranch when he got out. Joboy liked ranch work and, except for the lying and the worry and the sweat of that old man as he pawed her, it wasn't a bad life with the Livermores. They had given her work and a place to stay with Marcene when she had had no place else to go; and they had given her the day and the night off to go to Huntsville and bring Joboy back.
Ruby went up the block to the bus station. The man at the ticket window said she had missed the first bus; it would be forty minutes. She paid and took a seat beside a woman with a suitcase and a small boy who ogled her with cheerful blue eyes. She smiled at the boy and then took out her handkerchief, a lavender color with maroon piping. Propping her right foot on the edge of the bench, she wiped off the dust that had turned the shoe gray. Then she bent low and wiped the left one.
II
"Hurry, Marcene," Ruby had said that morning. Her voice butted against the bathroom door. "I'm late and you got to stay with Mrs. Livermore today." The girl said nothing. She'd been quiet for two solid days. Ruby knocked on the door. "Hurry, girl. Mr. Livermore's waiting on me."
The door opened. Marcene stood there, looking, pouting. Ruby glanced over Marcene's head and saw herself in the mirror: the glaze of still-sleepy eyes, the rough morning face and the odd slant of the brow, the hair cleaving to one side of her head.
"Are you through, girl?"
Marcene squeezed by Ruby and threw herself onto the bed. "Why I got to stay with that old lady for?"
"You know why. I'm getting your daddy today."
"Why I can't go?"
"You know that too. Now quit your surliness and get dressed."
Marcene's lips pouted. Ruby stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. There had been a boy lately. Ruby had seen them together, getting off the school bus, laughing, touching, talking in the long minutes in the light dust that swirled up and remained after the bus chugged away. And she had come home bruised one day, a swell under her eye, saying that she had had a fight with a girl. But there was the boy, tall, lanky and pretty, like Joboy, and Ruby had told her to wait.
"There's lots and lots of time."
Then Marcene: "Wait for what?" Going real surly: "What-chu mean?"
Then Ruby: "Just wait, please, you'll know soon enough," but thinking, Should I tell her now, is now the time?
Ruby thought, I can't today, and what would I tell her? She washed her face, combed her hair, sprayed cologne on the long line of her neck. The slip was pearly white against her skin.
Three knocks banged through the outer door the bedroom door muffled, snappy, the hand of Mrs. Livermore. "Come on, now, Ruby." The old woman's voice pierced the door like the clash of pots and pans in a sink. "Mr. Livermore can't wait all morning."
The door opened. Marcene yanked the bed covers up to her neck and let out a sharp squeal. Mrs. Livermore, her dark dyed hair sticking to her forehead in curls, walked through the room as if inspecting it for something. "Good morning, Dear," she said to Marcene. "Aren't you cute. You little ones are always so cute in the morning." Marcene gave Ruby a puckish, closed-lip smile.
"I'll be right there," Ruby said.
"Hurry," said Mrs. Livermore, marching out to the kitchen.
"Close the door," Ruby whispered. She went back to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, but could see in the mirror that the door was still open. "I said close that door." She strode out of the bathroom, flung the door shut. "Listen to me, girl."
Marcene's little tongue shot out of her mouth and disappeared again. "I don't got to listen to nothing you say.
Ruby stood still, shaking her head at Marcene. "I ain't got time for this. I just ain't got time." She took her Sunday dress from the bedstead and slipped it over her head, shimmied into it. "Now you mind Mrs. Livermore today or you really be in for it. Hear me?" Ma
rcene's lips pouted. "Hear me?" The girl nodded.
Ruby stepped into her shoes and collected her purse from the closet. She took out a five-dollar bill for Marcene. The girl looked at the bill as if it were dirty. "That's not to spend, you hear. It's just in case. In case something happens and you need a little. Keep it and give it back to me tomorrow." Marcene threw the bill to the floor. Ruby picked it up. "Take it." She shook the bill. "Take it, I said." Marcene took it. "Now get dressed, and be sure to press your nice one for your daddy tomorrow."
Marcene got up and went to the closet, took down her dress, threw it on the bed. Ruby watched the girl's naked body, legs slender, little nubs where breasts would soon form, and she briefly glimpsed her future as a woman. There is pain and blood, gal, she thought, and it's the same for all of us.
"Look, child," she said. "It be only one more day and he'll be home. Things will be better, I promise."
Marcene, calmer, standing still above the dress on the bed, glared straight back at her. Staring at each other, they each waited. And then, like a cat springing for a lizard, the girl moved, letting out a tiny sound, and in two strides was before Ruby, her arms around the soft waist, her face pressed against the jutting bone of Ruby's shoulder. She clung, her breaths coming in raspy whimpers, nearly cries. "Ruby," she said. "Ruby."
The woman hugged the girl's neck and lay her cheek against the pillow of hair. She smelled the sweet-sour morning odor of the slender body and felt the pressure of ten little fingers in her back. She heard, "Ruby," cry-like and distant. She held her. They swayed gently, and Ruby thought, Yes, this is the way it is. There is pain and blood and the future and the worry and it is always the same. But she said, "Now now, child." Cooing now. "He'll be home tomorrow and things'll be better, I promise."
In the kitchen the old woman sang, "Hurry, hurry!" Ruby hurried out. The car the big Lincoln was idling in the driveway and she could see Mr. Livermore, shadowy and distant behind the windshield, both hands on the wheel. She opened the back door.
"No no," he said. "Up here." His hand patted the seat.
She got in, smoothed out her dress. He looked at her, hard, close, right in the eyes. She glanced at him, just a turn of the head. His eyes were smiling, gentle, but his mouth was even and flat. Something touched her arm and she started to pull away, but then realized what it was. He touched her again, turned his hand over on the seat for her to hold, but she left it alone.
"I guess things are going to change a little now."
"We better be going, Mr. Livermore. I got to catch a bus."
"It doesn't have to change."
She looked at him. Now his mouth was smiling too, almost tenderly, lovingly. He said, "I'll keep him busy."
"Mr. Livermore"
"I know," he said through his moustache, gray, yellow-stained from cigarettes. They lurched backward and he leaned over the seat, peering back, gripping the wheel with one hand. The car swayed into the road and he whipped it around, started off. He was smiling again, and she knew it was to convince her. He was an old man and she knew that he thought he would have to convince her. "You can have a good life here, Ruby. Just listen to me."
"Right now I got to get to the bus and you're already late."
"Are you listening?"
"I hear you." She paused. "You know he'd kill us both."
"He'll never know." He spoke through his moustache, gripped the wheel with both hands, the car surging forward over the dust.
"I can't do it no more, Mr. Livermore."
"Don't call me that," he said. He touched her thigh and she jerked it away. She could feel his disappointment, the minute shifting of his shoulders, the added pressure on the seat from the deeper slump of his body. "There are ways," he said.
"No. Not no more. I can't no more, I just can't."
She sensed him slump again. There was a frightening finality to it as if he might strike her because he couldn't convince her, in the same way that all men do, even the gentlest of men, who strike out at what they cannot control. She held on to the armrest of her door; he made no movement except for the minute adjustments of the wheel. They were silent as the car rushed on.
At the junction he stopped. The dirt road arched up onto the blacktop, the highway. Something in the silence, the queer stillness, the taut grip of his hands, made her think that he was waiting for her to do something. "I'm late in Bryan," he said.
She snapped her head toward him. His face was serious, grim amid the spots on his fleshy cheeks, those white bushes above his eyes and the lines above them. "But you said you'd take me."
"Sorry," he said with a half-glance, like a child's.
She got out. The car lurched up onto the highway. She walked up, up the arch, and watched it. Crossing the highway, she watched it. The car, wavy as it went away, melted into a shimmer beyond a hill. She started walking. Hurry. Hurry.
III
The highway sign said HUNTSVILLE 5. It was cool in the bus the window was streaked with condensation but the air was smoky and musty smelling. Then the narrow road between the trees swept open and became a four-lane, the blacktop lined with yellow stripes. Ruby could see the Interstate up ahead, rising in a camelback. Cars and trucks lumbered by on the overpass. There was someone up there on the shoulder: a woman in bright orange pants. And her arm was out. A hitchhiker, going to Houston.
Ruby had been to Houston once when she was a girl. She remembered the tall buildings and the traffic downtown, sidewalks clogged with hundreds of people she didn't know. The people walked swiftly and paid no attention to her, even when she was lost. Her daddy had found her, hugged her, when she had been afraid. He took her into a drug store and gave her a dollar. She bought two little Goody barrettes; she still had one of them.
She glimpsed a sign: HOUSTON 72. Only 70 miles. A shadow darkened the window and the roaring of the bus grew louder as it passed under the Interstate. The woman up above disappeared.
They were in Huntsville. She had been through Huntsville a few times. The bus turned several corners and then they were on a thoroughfare with businesses and restaurants, traffic. They went under a canopy. The bus stopped, hissed. The driver stood up and stretched, and then everyone started pushing down the aisle.
Inside the bus station, congested with people, a man told her where the prison was. "Six blocks down, four blocks over."
She started walking. A clock on a bank showed twelve-fifteen. She walked four blocks and turned into a neighborhood of old houses and old trees, tall and thick. Soon the neighborhood on one side of the street gave way to a high, red-brick wall, each brick separate, clean, outlined with mortar. Atop the wall at a corner was a brick block with a pointed roof, like a garage or a shed. Curly wires hung from it and a man in dark glasses stood under the roof. He seemed to watch her as she walked.
She came to a place where the wall veered away from the street like an alcove. There was a high gate and another little house with another man in it. The road that led to the gate curved around a flower bed in the middle of the asphalt. She walked in the shadow of the wall until she could no longer see the little house at the gate or the guard who had watched her.
He'll come soon, she thought, I'll wait. He'll find me.
Down the street was a vacant lot, grown up with weeds, and she could see the foundation of a torn-down house. At the front of the foundation were the old porch steps, and a rusty bathtub turned upside down. Scruffy hedgerows shielded the lot from the homes next door. Ruby crossed the street and sat down on the steps. It won't be long, she thought, opening her purse and taking out an apple. Mrs. Livermore had said the apples were good this week. She ate the apple and waited.
The sky shone orange and purple like the wildflowers. The sun had just slipped below the trees. Ruby got up and walked toward the gate in the prison wall. She stopped when she saw the man in the little house. He was busy, a telephone in his hand. Now the guard saw her. She could tell by the tilt of his head, his halted motions. She wanted to go up and ask him where Joboy
was, but he seemed threatening, menacing in his uniform.
Night lurked just above the trees. In the yard behind the foundation she found a blanket, olive drab, soggy on the corner, pressed flat against the ground and covered with a layer of pine needles. She picked up the blanket and shook it out, carried it to the steps. She wondered if this was the wrong day, if she had mixed up the dates. But she had let Mrs. Livermore read the letter and they had agreed, today was the day. I'll just wait.
Then it was night. She looked out at the street once more to see if Joboy were there, but the street dripped with silence under the trees. Letting her head rest on the old doorsill, she laid down and spread the blanket over her body.
Memories, yapping at her mind, kept sleep at bay like the hounds that her father used to run when he hunted. They bellowed and howled until even the thought of sleep crawled out of her and hid in the branches of the trees. She recalled a night, a night only weeks before Joboy had left. "Where you been for three whole days?" she had asked him. He had just come in, it was late.
"Looking for work," he said.
"No, you ain't looking for nothing. I think you found it."
"Let me be, woman."
"Why I should let you be? I'm your wife." He stared at her, his eyes slippery-looking but direct. "Am I not your wife?"
He stared. He walked toward her, staring, and kissed her.
"Answer me, man."
He kissed her, rubbed himself against her. His heavy man odor filled her head and she could just make out his pretty face in the darkened room. He said, "Come on, let's make a baby." She said, "No!" but he touched her, purred for her. And she lay beneath him then. Later, curled warmly in the bed beside him, she had whispered, "Am I your wife, or not?" but he was asleep.
Now, as her own sleep began to numb her body, she realized that the thumb on her left hand had been rubbing the fleshy skin between the knuckles of her bare ring finger. She made it stop and then everything was calm. Once in the night she woke, chilly and frightened, to a sound in one of the shrubs, a rustling, as if someone were shaking it. When she sat up she saw a bird fight its way out of the leaves and strike off into the darkness.
In An Arid Land Page 6