“So you did what he told you to do by attacking Ruby.”
Ah! A hit. Good. David faced him again, having the nerve to look upset. “Look.” David ran a hand through his parted hair, “I’ve always been half in love with her. I wanted her to think, believe, I had the right intentions.”
“Except your intentions were not right, nor good.”
“She’s colored.” David lowered his head, embarrassed enough to remember who he was talking to. “She’ll be all right, they always are.”
“Yes, they always are.” Making fists of his hands, he put them inside his jacket pocket, afraid of what he might do with them if he did not put them away in some fashion. Doctors sustained life, not compromised it. Breathe.
“And the baby?”
Sick of looking at him, and feeling sick that David looked so very similar to himself and to Solomon, Adam moved away and went back to the stairs. “You just said it yourself. They’re always all right. Good night, David.”
Adam walked past him and went up the stairs slowly to the small corner room where his trunk was. A small garret room and the smallest room on the second floor Mary Winslow could give him. He might as well be last year’s furniture, stuck in the attic.
He lay out on the bed, not bothering to undress, and reflected on the past few days. This situation just continued the vagabond way he had been brought up. No, he certainly was not a guest in this house, this terrible house of hypocrisy. He remembered Lona’s offer to stay at the Bledsoe farm. Yes, that was the answer. Better to be in that house than this one.
The beautiful face of Ruby came into his mind. Ruby had a resolve and an inner strength his own young mother did not have. The heaviness in his heart lifted. Still, he had to help her somehow, regardless of whether or not she wanted help. However, the first thing he would have to do would be to get out of this house, and this small suffocating room. He wanted nothing to do with the Winslows anymore and decided, as sleep came to him, to pay Paul Winslow back every cent of the money that he spent on “providing” for him. The provision money, tainted with the blood and labor of his mother, corrupted him and he wanted nothing to do with it, or Paul Winslow, anymore.
The next Monday, she and Mags were back in front of the mill at lunchtime, talking with the men as they ate in the dusty courtyard outside. Ruby spoke to each man individually. “There will be a meeting in our backyard tonight at six. Anyone who is not working second shift should be able to come. We need to figure out how to get you to vote this fall and get equal pay here at the mill.”
“Will Miss Mags be there?” Travis shouted out.
“Of course she will,” Ruby answered, despite Mags poking at her with her bony elbow. Served her sister right. Give her a little taste of her own medicine.
“Then I be there.” Travis waved his cap as he went by after eating his lunch and heading back inside to work.
Mags lowered her head, and everyone laughed. One of the men hovered nearby Ruby’s left elbow. “You be careful now, Miss Ruby.”
“I am, Jonesy. Mags is with me. I always come protected now.”
“The baby at home?”
“Yes. He’s still recovering and I don’t bring him out much. I’ll wait until he’s a little older.”
“He’s precious, I’m sure, if he looks like his mama.”
Ruby smiled and just moved on. Jonesy, along with other people who had not seen Solomon, were trying to get her to admit Solomon looked like a Winslow. But she was not going to bite. Everyone knew who Solomon’s father was. She didn’t need to say it out loud. It would be wrong to.
The men would come. She even got Mags into the spirit of the thing as they headed back home. However, when she and Mags arrived, the same car that had brought her back to her parents’ home on Saturday was parked in front. One of the Winslows or Dr. Morson was there. Which one? Ruby’s heart beat fast at the prospect of the latter. What was worse, facing one of the Winslows or that fake Dr. Morson? When she and Mags opened the door, her heart leapt. Dr. Morson sat in her father’s chair, bouncing a drooling Solomon on his lap.
Ruby removed her big pink hat and stuck the hat pin in the back of it as if it were Dr. Morson. She would be mean so he’d know he wasn’t welcome, so she did not address him directly but spoke to her mother. “What’s he doing here?” Ruby swallowed a lump in her throat, angry they had eaten dinner without them. She also wanted this tall, muscular and undesired presence gone from her home.
How could the entrance of a person matter so much to him within a few short days? Adam’s heart lightened as he watched her put up her pretty pink hat and ignore him.
He got to her. A warmth spread through him at the thought.
Maybe not in a good way, though. Her fair skin, like his, reddened as she directed the question to her mother. Adam gave the baby a pat. She couldn’t keep ignoring him as long as he had this capital little fellow with him. What a great baby he was. Solomon was improving, getting better, thank goodness and he readied himself to face her.
“He’s here checking on the baby. He going to be staying in the back room. I got to thinking about it. He need someplace to stay and Mags don’t need to be back there by herself.”
She did not like his appearance in her space.
Ruby donned a crisp white apron and tied the strings a little tighter than needed as her mother made her revelation. Adam enjoyed watching her squirm as she kept ignoring him. “Meeting is here out back, so as long as he don’t interfere.”
“I thought you had stopped having them meetings, Ruby Jean,” Lona addressed her daughter as they stood in the kitchen. Adam overheard their rising voices as he played with Solomon in the corner of the big front room.
Then it occurred to him.
This was a home.
The wonderful hospitality of the Bledsoe family was enjoyable. They laughed and chattered as they had eaten dinner and had their fill of the delicious dinner of side bacon, fresh pole beans and potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and split hot biscuits with sugared Georgia peaches. It was basic fare, but at least they had enough.
He had a good time when Delie took him out to their orchards and showed him the well-kept farmland that made up the Bledsoe lands. Clearly, John Bledsoe had the magic touch with farming, something Adam lacked despite working on the farms of the various relatives he grew up with. Farming was not easy, but John and Lona Bledsoe were onto something with their farm.
And they had their priorities. As Adam played with the baby, in the time after dinner, books came out. Clearly, there was a great deal of emphasis on academic work even though school had dismissed for the summer. When she came in, Ruby started to direct Delie, Nettie and Em with their work and made sure they had plenty to do to keep up their skills. Mags read a book while they worked. But what about Ruby’s skills? Struck by Ruby’s intelligence and quick mind, he marveled at her. How had she gotten so smart? What was her training?
John came up to him and took the baby, smiling down at Solomon, but then taking on a solemn look when he sat down on a pine chair next to Adam, dandling his grandson on his knee.. “My girls are going to be somebody.”
Adam nodded his head. He didn’t know what to say to the man, so it was best to keep silent. “They jewels. Each one of them.”
Mags came by and kissed her father on the cheek as she took some dirty napkins out to the kitchen. “He means it literally, Dr. Morson. Ruby, Garnet, Emerald, Cordelia and Margaret.”
Adam puzzled. “Margaret?”
“It means Pearl, Dr. Morson. Mama didn’t like the name, so Margaret had to do instead.”
John nodded. “She didn’t like Pearl at all. Had a friend named that a long time ago and wasn’t going to name our second born that, ’cause of her.”
“Nice names.”
“They are jewels. Especially Ruby. She don’t have anything to be ashamed of with this here fine boy. She g
oing to be something and so is he.” The proud man gripped onto his grandson a little tighter and adjusted him on his lap. “You have something to say?”
“No, sir.” Adam blinked his eyes fast.
“Hmm.” John lifted Solomon up and made the baby laugh. The bond between the man and the child was good for the baby. And the man. Some close contact with this wonderful child might do Paul Winslow a world of good, but it would never happen. Adam enjoyed sitting in the bosom of this family. Had he been brought there to ensure Solomon’s life would be different than his? “You know, but you got to find it out for yourself.”
John got up with the baby in his arms and walked into the parents’ bedroom, leaving Adam puzzled at their encounter. Now, Lona and Ruby fought in loud voices, with Ruby coming out of the room, the victor in the whole affair. “We’re meeting in the orchard.”
“You know she don’t want them meetings near us and the house.” John came back in, toting Solomon on his hip. He had diapered his grandson and the baby’s face was wreathed in smiles. How had John done the woman’s chore so quickly? “And you know why.”
“That’s why we’re meeting in the orchard. Goodness, I can’t believe you all don’t want to help.” He could see Ruby’s brown eyes examining the room, purposefully not settling on him. Adam wanted to laugh at the measures she took to evade him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Ruby was right in some way. He had to figure out what way.
“That’s enough, girl. You got your way. Don’t rub it in—your mama has enough to deal with.”
“Yes, sir.” Ruby stepped over to her father and took the baby. “Let me try to get him to go down so no one sees him.”
“Go on into the front room.” John directed her as he took the baby out on the porch. Suddenly, Adam was aware his presence changed the dynamic in the household. Ruby had to get Solomon calmed down by feeding him, by giving him her breast and Adam didn’t need to see it even though he was a doctor. No. He shifted a little in the chair he was sitting on. Delie’s reverent gaze stayed on him the whole time.
“She’ll be back soon, Dr. Morson. She just don’t want Solomon at the meeting with the workers.”
“Why not?”
“He ain’t no one’s business. He’s our baby. He hasn’t done anything wrong, just because he came out of the cotton field.” Delie turned to him. “Maybe you could be his daddy. Solomon likes you. Remember how he was on your lap and how you calmed him down and all? You’re good for him.”
“Delie, hush,” Em told her younger sister as she worked on a piece of mending.
“Can’t I just say what I think?”
“No, ladies don’t do that.”
“I don’t want to be no lady. I want to be like Ruby.”
Lona appeared in the doorway and coughed. The two young girls scattered out through the back door and the kitchen where Mags had disappeared. Lona sat down opposite him in the chair John vacated. “It’s mighty hard keeping track of these girls. Now here’s Mags, she sixteen and Travis already got something for her. She see Ruby and no one ain’t giving her a hard time. Everything fine, even better since Solomon come. None of them, not Mags, Em, Net or Delie know what is wrong with how Solomon come. They all be up in here with their own babies soon enough, and I’ll have no peace.”
“They seem like sensible young women,” Adam spoke in their defense.
“Humph.”
“Especially Ruby.”
“Really?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
Adam cleared his throat. “She’s strong, she’s defiant, and…very strong.” And beautiful. There the words were, unspoken by him, but in his mind, loud and clear. He might as well have said them. His words brought her out of the kitchen and he appreciated the smooth neatness of the apron over her dress, and the braided black hair surrounding her head like a crown. The freckles across her nose brought a sweetness to her dignified countenance. Very beautiful.
“She need more than strength.” Lona fixed her gaze on him. “She need support because she is too hardheaded to see what trouble she can get in. You got to let her know and even better, take her far away from here. I’m afraid of what will happen for her here.”
“What do you mean?”
“She can go somewhere and learn more than what Miss Annie taught midwifing. John and I put aside some for school, but she needs to go somewhere and learn a skill so she can be ready for the world.”
“It seems as if the world isn’t ready for her, ma’am. What does she want to do?”
“She midwifing, but she always want to be a nurse. Don’t you need a nurse?”
Adam cleared his throat. He did. His visit in Winslow was a prolonged stop on his way to a new position as chief doctor for the Negroes in the steel mills in Pittsburgh. Some of the steel barons had looked for doctors to care for the Negroes because they couldn’t get anyone else who wanted to do it. The barons agreed he needed a nurse and provided funds for it. But it wasn’t easy finding trained Negro nurses.
Adam’s mind clicked apace. The money Paul Winslow had given him was ample enough to get Ruby into a program and help him part time. Then when she was done, he could pay her a salary. The salary could help Ruby, as well as Solomon and her sisters to gain a foothold somewhere away from this place, where they didn’t have to live in fear of being attacked. If Adam believed in divine providence, or what some called God, he would have thanked the being. However, as it was, God had taken his mother from him, and ever since he was a little boy, he was enraged at him. So he let God go his way and he went his.
“I might.”
“Well, then,” Lona huffed. “You got a church?”
“No, ma’am.”
“We got our church here. Hard to go these days though, since Ruby’s shame, so we read our Bible here and worship in the mornings on Sundays. That’s what happens when you got a daughter who makes trouble.”
“Enough, Mama.” Ruby smoothed her tapered fingers over her apron as she came back in the room, and walked past Dr. Morson to the back porch. “I’m ready for the meeting.”
Lona shook her head. “She thinks these white people are playing around here. They ain’t playing.”
“I guess not, ma’am.”
Lona fixed him with a stare. “I don’t know you. I know the Winslows.”
“I don’t know them either.” Adam began.
Lona held up a hand and he was silent. “They’re good people and paid good money no trading. David and Ruby grew up friends and she went shaking herself around him and he couldn’t help himself. He just a boy, trying to find his way.”
No. Adam could not agree with her assessment, knowing what he knew. David was a spoiled young man and always got his way. Ruby’s resistance to his seduction didn’t change his desires. No. Her resistance might have made him even more determined. Adam’s stomach turned over thinking about it. However, he didn’t want to take Lona on after she and Ruby had fussed at each other. He frowned.
“She makes trouble around here with these ideas and meetings and such. Think she doing what my brother wanted her to do. If Arlo were still living, he tell her the same thing. Get a home she can settle down in. You got a wife?”
“No, ma’am.”
Lona clasped her hands. “You’re what I been praying for. You got to take her on away from here. She won’t listen to nobody, she so bossy and all.”
“Lona, come on.” John slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “She a good girl, but she just stubborn.”
“She think she know everything. She don’t. She has to find out what she don’t know, and then she can set back in life.”
Ruby’s strong insistent voice sounded out on the back porch. Through the open door in the scrubbed and clean kitchen, he viewed Ruby and Mags sitting on wooden peach boxes out in the orchard and about five men sitting on boxes as well. R
uby stood up and waved her arms around and spoke. Words like “pay” and “equality” and “justice” were in the air and the men were nodding their heads, dazed. Most of them were infatuated. The meeting seemed nothing more than an opportunity to court either Ruby or Mags, an audition for future husbands. Ruby didn’t see that, however. Lona came and stood in the doorway next to him.
“Any one of the men in the mill would marry her. They seem quite taken with her.” Adam pointed out and a sharp pang entered his heart as he spoke the words.
“Who would beat her every Saturday night when he got paid. The mill ain’t no good for nobody. John ain’t a part of it. And I kept my girls out so far.” Lona folded her arms and regarded him again. “What’s wrong with you?”
There she was, brave and beautiful Ruby, talking to the men about their rights, refusing to be silenced by the powers in Winslow. “Everything, ma’am. I’m not worthy of such a virtuous prize.”
“You know your Bible.” Lona seemed pleased and Adam swallowed. “It’s where we got her name. ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.’” Lona quoted then fixed him with a frown of her own. “What you mean worthy?”
“She’s unafraid, even when they tried to keep her down, tried to humiliate her.”
“And?”
“I live in fear of who I am.” Adam turned on his heel and went into the little back room they had given him to stay in, Ruby’s former room, feeling the need to be alone for a while.
He must have fallen asleep there, fully clothed on the bed, for he startled awake when he heard a lot of noise and commotion in the front part of the house. He stood and brushed himself off then opened the door to the room. The nightgown-outfitted Bledsoes hovered in the doorway and a scream came from one of the girls. “Get the doctor, get the doctor!” John called out over and over again. Shining in the dark living room was a familiar bloody pulp which only slightly resembled a man’s face.
A Virtuous Ruby Page 6