Nebula Awards Showcase 2006

by Gardner Dozois

  “Nitey-nite, Miss Mouse,” she says, and goes outside.

  “G’night Ruby,” says Mary Louise, and goes upstairs.

  When Ruby goes to vacuum the rug in the guest bedroom on Thursday morning, she finds Mary Louise sitting in the window seat, staring out the window.

  “Mornin, Miss Mouse. You didn’t come down and say hello.”

  Mary Louise does not answer. She does not even turn around.

  Ruby pushes the lever on the vacuum and stands it upright, dropping the gray fabric cord she has wrapped around her hand. She walks over to the silent child. “Miss Mouse? Somethin wrong?”

  Mary Louise looks up. Her eyes are cold. “Last night I was in bed, reading. Kitty came home. She was in a really bad mood. She told me I read too much and I’ll just ruin my eyes—more—reading in bed. She took my book and told me she was going to throw it in the ’cinerator and burn it up.” She delivers the words in staccato anger, through clenched teeth.

  “She just bein mean to you, sugar.” Ruby shakes her head. “She tryin to scare you, but she won’t really do that.”

  “But she did!” Mary Louise reaches behind her and holds up her fairy tale book. The picture on the cover is soot-stained, the shiny coating blistered. The gilded edges of the pages are charred and the corners are gone.

  “Lord, child, where’d you find that?”

  “In the ’cinerator, out back. Where she said. I can still read most of the stories, but it makes my hands all dirty.” She holds up her hands, showing her sooty palms.

  Ruby shakes her head again. She says, more to herself than to Mary Louise, “I burnt the trash after lunch yesterday. Must of just been coals, come last night.”

  Mary Louise looks at the ruined book in her lap, then up at Ruby. “It was my favorite book. Why’d she do that?” A tear runs down her cheek.

  Ruby sits down on the window seat. “I don’t know, Miss Mouse,” she says. “I truly don’t. Maybe she mad that your daddy gone down to Florida, leave her behind. Some folks, when they’re mad, they just gotta whup on somebody, even if it’s a little bitty six-year-old child. They whup on somebody else, they forget their own hurts for a while.”

  “You’re bigger than her,” says Mary Louise, snuffling. “You could—whup—her back. You could tell her that it was bad and wrong what she did.”

  Ruby shakes her head. “I’m real sorry, Miss Mouse,” she says quietly, “but I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause she the boss in this house, and if I say anythin crosswise to Miz Kitty, her own queen self, she gonna fire me same as she fire all them other colored ladies used to work for her. And I needs this job. My husband’s just workin part-time down to the Sunoco. He tryin to get work in the Ford plant, but they ain’t hirin right now. So my pay-check here, that’s what’s puttin groceries on our table.”

  “But, but—” Mary Louise begins to cry without a sound. Ruby is the only grownup person she trusts, and Ruby cannot help her.

  Ruby looks down at her lap for a long time, then sighs. “I can’t say nothin to Miz Kitty. But her bein so mean to you, that ain’t right, neither.” She puts her arm around the shaking child.

  “What about your little bag?” Mary Louise wipes her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a small streak of soot on her cheek.

  “What ’bout it?”

  “You said some magic is for protecting, didn’t you?”

  “Some is,” Ruby says slowly. “Some is. Now, my momma used to say, ‘an egg can’t fight with a stone.’ And that’s the truth. Miz Kitty got the power in this house. More’n you, more’n me. Ain’t nothin to do ’bout that. But conjurin—” She thinks for a minute, then lets out a deep breath.

  “I think we might could put some protection ’round you, so Miz Kitty can’t do you no more misery,” Ruby says, frowning a little. “But I ain’t sure quite how. See, if it was your house, I’d put a goopher right under the front door. But it ain’t. It’s your daddy’s house, and she married to him legal, so ain’t no way to keep her from comin in her own house, even if she is nasty.”

  “What about my room?” asks Mary Louise.

  “Your room? Hmm. Now, that’s a different story. I think we can goopher it so she can’t do you no harm in there.”

  Mary Louise wrinkles her nose. “What’s a goopher?”

  Ruby smiles. “Down South Carolina, where my family’s from, that’s just what they calls a spell, or a hex, a little bit of rootwork.”

  “Root—?”

  Ruby shakes her head. “It don’t make no never mind what you calls it, long as you does it right. Now if you done cryin, we got work to do. Can you go out to the garage, to your Daddy’s toolbox, and get me nine nails? Big ones, all the same size, and bright and shiny as you can find. Can you count that many?”

  Mary Louise snorts. “I can count up to fifty,” she says.

  “Good. Then you go get nine shiny nails, fast as you can, and meet me down the hall, by your room.”

  When Mary Louise gets back upstairs, nine shiny nails clutched tightly in one hand, Ruby is kneeling in front of the door of her bedroom, with a paper of pins from the sewing box, and a can of Drano. Mary Louise hands her the nails.

  “These is just perfect,” Ruby says. She pours a puddle of Drano into its upturned cap, and dips the tip of one of the nails into it, then pokes the nail under the edge of the hall carpet at the left side of Mary Louise’s bedroom door, pushing it deep until not even its head shows.

  “Why did you dip the nail in Drano?” Mary Louise asks. She didn’t know any of the poison things under the kitchen sink could be magic.

  “Don’t you touch that, hear? It’ll burn you bad, ’cause it’s got lye in it. But lye the best thing for cleanin away any evil that’s already been here. Ain’t got no Red Devil like back home, but you got to use what you got. The nails and the pins, they made of iron, and iron keep any new evil away from your door.” Ruby dips a pin in the Drano as she talks and repeats the poking, alternating nails and pins until she pushes the last pin in at the other edge of the door.

  “That oughta do it,” she says. She pours the few remaining drops of Drano back into the can and screws the lid on tight, then stands up. “Now all we needs to do is set the protectin charm. You know your prayers?” she asks Mary Louise.

  “I know ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’ ”

  “Good enough. You get into your room and you kneel down, facin the hall, and say that prayer to the doorway. Say it loud and as best you can. I’m goin to go down and get the sheets out of the dryer. Meet me in Miz Kitty’s room when you done.”

  Mary Louise says her prayers in a loud, clear voice. She doesn’t know how this kind of magic spell works, and she isn’t sure if she is supposed to say the God Blesses, but she does. She leaves Kitty out and adds Ruby. “And help me to be a good girl, amen,” she finishes, and hurries down to her father’s room to see what other kinds of magic Ruby knows.

  The king-size mattress is bare. Mary Louise lies down on it and rolls over and over three times before falling off the edge onto the carpet. She is just getting up, dusting off the knees of her blue cotton pants, when Ruby appears with an armful of clean sheets, which she dumps onto the bed. Mary Louise lays her face in the middle of the pile. It is still warm and smells like baked cotton. She takes a deep breath.

  “You gonna lay there in the laundry all day or help me make this bed?” Ruby asks, laughing.

  Mary Louise takes one side of the big flowered sheet and helps Ruby stretch it across the bed and pull the elastic parts over all four corners so it is smooth everywhere.

  “Are we going to do a lot more magic?” Mary Louise asks. “I’m getting kind of hungry.”

  “One more bit, then we can have us some lunch. You want tomato soup?”

  “Yes!” says Mary Louise.

  “I thought so. Now fetch me a hair from Miz Kitty’s hairbrush. See if you can find a nice long one with some dark at the end of it.”


  Mary Louise goes over to Kitty’s dresser and peers at the heavy silver brush. She finds a darker line in the tangle of blond and carefully pulls it out. It is almost a foot long, and the last inch is definitely brown. She carries it over to Ruby, letting it trail through her fingers like the tail of a tiny invisible kite.

  “That’s good,” Ruby says. She reaches into the pocket of her uniform and pulls out a scrap of red felt with three needles stuck into it lengthwise. She pulls the needles out one by one, makes a bundle of them, and wraps it round and round, first with the long strand of Kitty’s hair, then with a piece of black thread.

  “Hold out your hand,” she says.

  Mary Louise holds out her hand flat, and Ruby puts the little black-wrapped bundle into it.

  “Now, you hold this until you get a picture in your head of Miz Kitty burnin up your pretty picture book. And when it nice and strong, you spit. Okay?”

  Mary Louise nods. She scrunches up her eyes, remembering, then spits on the needles.

  “You got the knack for this,” Ruby says, smiling. “It’s a gift.”

  Mary Louise beams. She does not get many compliments, and stores this one away in the most private part of her thoughts. She will visit it regularly over the next few days until its edges are indistinct and there is nothing left but a warm glow labeled RUBY.

  “Now put it under this mattress, far as you can reach.” Ruby lifts up the edge of the mattress and Mary Louise drops the bundle on the box spring.

  “Do you want me to say my prayers again?”

  “Not this time, Miss Mouse. Prayers is for protectin. This here is a sufferin hand, bring some of Miz Kitty’s meanness back on her own self, and it need another kind of charm. I’ll set this one myself.” Ruby lowers her voice and begins to chant:Before the night is over,

  Before the day is through.

  What you have done to someone else

  Will come right back on you.

  “There. That ought to do her just fine. Now we gotta make up this bed. Top sheet, blanket, bedspread all smooth and nice, pillows plumped up just so.”

  “Does that help the magic?” Mary Louise asks. She wants to do it right, and there are almost as many rules as eating in the dining room. But different.

  “Not ’zactly. But it makes it look like it ’bout the most beautiful place to sleep Miz Kitty ever seen, make her want to crawl under them sheets and get her beauty rest. Now help me with that top sheet, okay?”

  Mary Louise does, and when they have smoothed the last wrinkle out of the bedspread, Ruby looks at the clock.

  “Shoot. How’d it get to be after one o’clock? Only fifteen minutes before my story comes on. Let’s go down and have ourselves some lunch.”

  In the kitchen, Ruby heats up a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, with milk, not water, the way Mary Louise likes it best, then ladles it out into two yellow bowls. She puts them on a metal tray, adds some saltine crackers and a bottle of ginger ale for her, and a lunchbox bag of Fritos and a glass of milk for Mary Louise, and carries the whole tray into the den. Ruby turns on the TV and they sip and crunch their way through half an hour of As the World Turns.

  During the commercials, Ruby tells Mary Louise who all the people are, and what they’ve done, which is mostly bad. When they are done with their soup, another story comes on, but they aren’t people Ruby knows, so she turns off the TV and carries the dishes back to the kitchen.

  “I gotta do the dustin and finish vacuumin, and ain’t no way to talk over that kind of noise,” Ruby says, handing Mary Louise a handful of Oreos. “So you go off and play by yourself now, and I’ll get my chores done before Miz Kitty comes home.”

  Mary Louise goes up to her room. At 4:30 she hears Kitty come home, but she only changes into out-to-dinner clothes and leaves and doesn’t get into bed. Ruby says good-bye when Mrs. Banks comes at 6:00, and Mary Louise eats dinner in the kitchen and goes upstairs at 8:00, when Mrs. Banks starts to watch Dr. Kildare.

  On her dresser there is a picture of her mother. She is beautiful, with long curls and a silvery white dress. She looks like a queen, so Mary Louise thinks she might be a princess. She lives in a castle, imprisoned by her evil stepmother, the false queen. But now that there is magic, there will be a happy ending. She crawls under the covers and watches her doorway, wondering what will happen when Kitty tries to come into her room, if there will be flames.

  Kitty begins to scream just before nine Friday morning. Clumps of her hair lie on her pillow like spilled wheat. What is left sprouts from her scalp in irregular clumps, like a crabgrass-infested lawn. Clusters of angry red blisters dot her exposed skin.

  By the time Mary Louise runs up from the kitchen, where she is eating a bowl of Kix, Kitty is on the phone. She is talking to her beauty salon. She is shouting, “This is an emergency! An emergency!”

  Kitty does not speak to Mary Louise. She leaves the house with a scarf wrapped around her head like a turban, in such a hurry that she does not even bother with lipstick. Mary Louise hears the tires of her T-bird squeal out of the driveway. A shower of gravel hits the side of the house, and then everything is quiet.

  Ruby comes upstairs at ten, buttoning the last button on her uniform. Mary Louise is in the breakfast nook, eating a second bowl of Kix. The first one got soggy. She jumps up excitedly when she sees Ruby.

  “Miz Kitty already gone?” Ruby asks, her hand on the coffeepot.

  “It worked! It worked! Something bad happened to her hair. A lot of it fell out, and there are chicken pox where it was. She’s at the beauty shop. I think she’s going to be there a long time.”

  Ruby pours herself a cup of coffee. “That so?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mary Louise grins. “She looks like a goopher.”

  “Well, well, well. That come back on her fast, didn’t it? Maybe now she think twice ’bout messin with somebody smaller’n her. But you, Miss Mouse”—Ruby wiggles a semi-stern finger at Mary Louise. “Don’t you go jumpin up and down shoutin ’bout goophers, hear? Magic ain’t nothin to be foolin around with. It can bring sickness, bad luck, a whole heap of misery if it ain’t done proper. You hear me?”

  Mary Louise nods and runs her thumb and finger across her lips, as if she is locking them. But she is still grinning from ear to ear.

  Kitty comes home from the beauty shop late that afternoon. She is in a very, very bad mood, and still has a scarf around her head. Mary Louise is behind the couch in the den, playing seven dwarfs. She is Snow White and is lying very still, waiting for the prince.

  Kitty comes into the den and goes to the bar. She puts two ice cubes in a heavy squat crystal glass, then reaches up on her tiptoes and feels around on the bookshelf until she finds a small brass key. She unlocks the liquor cabinet and fills her glass with brown liquid. She goes to the phone and makes three phone calls, canceling cocktails, dinner, tennis on Saturday. “Sorry,” Kitty says. “Under the weather. Raincheck?” When she is finished she refills her glass, replaces the key, and goes upstairs. Mary Louise does not see her again until Sunday.

  Mary Louise stays in her room most of the weekend. It seems like a good idea, now that it is safe there. Saturday afternoon she tiptoes down to the kitchen and makes three peanut butter and honey sandwiches. She is not allowed to use the stove. She takes her sandwiches and some Fritos upstairs and touches one of the nails under the carpet, to make sure it is still there. She knows the magic is working, because Kitty doesn’t even try to come in, not once.

  At 7:30 on Sunday night, she ventures downstairs again. Kitty’s door is shut. The house is quiet. It is time for Disney. Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. It is her favorite program, the only one that is not black and white, except for Bonanza, which comes on after her bedtime.

  Mary Louise turns on the big TV that is almost as tall as she is, and sits in the middle of the maroon leather couch in the den. Her feet stick out in front of her, and do not quite reach the edge. There is a commercial for Mr. Clean. He has no hair, like Kitty, and Mary Louise
giggles, just a little. Then there are red and blue fireworks over the castle where Sleeping Beauty lives. Mary Louise’s thumb wanders up to her mouth, and she rests her cheek on the soft nap of her Bankie.

  The show is Cinderella, and when the wicked stepmother comes on, Mary Louise thinks of Kitty, but does not giggle. The story unfolds and Mary Louise is bewitched by the colors, by the magic of television. She does not hear the creaking of the stairs. She does not hear the door of the den open, or hear the rattle of ice cubes in an empty crystal glass. She does not see the shadow loom over her until it is too late.

  It is a sunny Monday morning. Ruby comes in the basement door and changes into her uniform. She switches on the old brown table radio, waits for its tubes to warm up and begin to glow, then turns the yellowed plastic dial until she finds a station that is more music than static. The Marcels are singing “Blue Moon” as she sorts the laundry, and she dances a little on the concrete floor, swinging and swaying as she tosses white cotton panties into one basket and black nylon socks into another.

  She fills the washer with a load of whites, adds a measuring cup of Dreft, and turns the dial to Delicate. The song on the radio changes to “Runaway” as she goes over to the wooden cage built into the wall, where the laundry that has been dumped down the upstairs chute gathers.

  “As I walk along . . . ,” Ruby sings as she opens the hinged door with its criss-cross of green painted slats. The plywood box inside is a cube about three feet on a side, filled with a mound of flowered sheets and white terry cloth towels. She pulls a handful of towels off the top of the mound and lets them tumble into the pink plastic basket waiting on the floor below. “An’ I wonder. I wa-wa-wa-wa-wuh-under,” she sings, and then stops when the pile moves on its own, and whimpers.