Ruby

by Cynthia Bond

  “Amen,” Righteous whispered.

  Supra looked hard at Ephram. “And them who come up to that tar baby with good deeds on they lips but sin in they heart gone git stuck just the same.”

  Ephram saw Ruby try to say something with her eyes but Supra rolled right over it. “Now mores the shame we ain’t been out here sooner, but livin’ in a world of sin you get tired of fighting fires with thimbles and just start tending to your own backyard, your own good family. But when my friend Celia break down and cry her heart out in church, well then we talk to the Pastor and he agreed to meet us down to the lake.”

  Tressie’s girlish face cut through with concern. “We would greatly appreciate your company to the lake for a baptism. Wash your spirit clean in the blood of the Lamb.”

  Verde grumbled under her handkerchief, “Washing her ass clean be a start.”

  Righteous piped in, “We got three deacons and our new Church Mother Celia waiting down there as well. She don’t bear no grudge for nobody for nothing. That’s just how she be.”

  Tressie added, her face somber, “They praying down there while we come up here to get you. If we ain’t down there directly, they might just come up here and take you.”

  Ephram broke in, “Ruby—she’s not going nowhere.”

  The women promptly ignored him.

  “Celia say that the Devil been content with your soul, but now,” Righteous shook her full face in concern, her skin as smooth as a river stone. “He’s interested in pulling the rest of Liberty, one by one, down into hell and can’t nobody let that happen. She say when he can grab hold a good man like Ephram Jennings, then ain’t none of us safe.”

  Supra pulled Ruby towards the door. “Come on now, child, it ain’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”

  Ruby found herself, felt Ephram’s eyes strong against her, yanked her hand out of Supra’s. The woman’s fingers were like ice. Ruby felt the whole of her arm growing into one long icicle. In a moment she knew she would smash her fist into the woman. In a moment she knew she would scream.

  Ephram quickly swallowed the silencing shame into his gut where it belonged. “I’m sorry but y’all got to leave.”

  Supra took a stand. “I wasn’t talking to you Ephram Jennings. You sound like you been batter-dipped and fried in wrongfulness. I was talking to this poor bedeviled child.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Rankin,” Ephram managed, “but it took y’all eleven years to get here, another day or two won’t make no difference.”

  “How long it take you?” she shot back.

  He looked at Ruby. She let him catch her eye. “Too long.” A calm washed over her and the ice melted.

  Verde whined through her kerchief, “Mama, can we just go? You can cut the funk up in this place with a knife.”

  Supra then put her hand on Ruby’s face. “Child, your mama might of fallen from grace but that don’t mean you got to follow. You got to choose right, else evil win every time.”

  Verde started stacking the Tupperware tubs against her chest.

  Supra glowered at Verde. She turned to Ruby and said deathly quiet, “Folks ain’t going to leave this thing to buckle the weave of the town. You come to us or we come to you, but we gone have your salvation come Sunday.” Then between gritted teeth to Verde, “Leave them things.”

  Ruby finally spoke. She turned to Verde and said, “Leave everything but the cod peas.”

  Verde greedily eyed the cobbler and the chicken, then her mother, who nodded yes. Verde fumed out of the house with the cod peas, followed by Righteous, Tressie and finally Supra.

  When the door closed Ruby looked at Ephram. She breathed out, let the floorboards steady her and managed, “I always did hate cod peas.”

  “They never did one thing for my salvation neither.”

  Ephram put on a smile, so Ruby found hers and dusted it off. They looked straight at each other long enough for her grin to settle.

  Then Ruby pulled away from Ephram, from Papa Bell’s house, and walked into the pines. She found the narrow pathway she had taken so many times as a child, all the way to the far side of Wilkins land, where they buried their kin, even after they had all moved to Beaumont. All but Maggie. Ruby saw the grave in the distance, flecked with thin, curling willow leaves. She wished Maggie had a headstone. She deserved at least that, with something sweet and secret etched on the front—but the sisters had built the cross nice and sturdy. Ruby knelt there for a time, her hand flat upon the soil. Then she lay down not three yards away, near a waving cluster of jonquils. She had come there for answers, but since she wasn’t sure of the questions, she breathed in the sweetness—then erupted into a hundred little yellow blossoms and slept the afternoon into evening.

  THE REST of the day the road in front of Bell land had more business than it had in years. Ephram walked the road exactly four times, once to borrow a bath tin and a change of clothes from Rupert Shankle, once to find a trim of fallen cedar to chop into cooking wood, twice to buy things on credit at P & K. He’d already used up the ten dollars he’d won from Gubber and he wasn’t yet ready to face Celia for his wallet. He cursed himself for having forgotten the lamp oil the second time. Both times he walked past the crowd at P & K in silence, each time causing a stir as he left.

  Then there were the children who’d been in church that morning when Sister Jennings—now Mother Jennings—had told the congregation that the Devil was living out on Bell land. Never having seen the Devil in person, about six of them perched on the fence across the road from the Bell house and waited for him to show his face.

  About twenty other people found themselves wandering the back road to Bell land that day to see if Ephram would fall down and start foaming the evil out of his mouth. Instead they watched a lone man clean and tote and haul. But it was still more than enough. It wasn’t just the exhibition of sin that Celia Jennings had painted so beautifully during testimony that morning, it was the pure, unadulterated, juicy, unholy spectacle of the thing. The scarecrow crazy whore of Liberty had taken up with the township’s mule of a deacon. It was the best piece of gossip the town had had to chew on in twenty-three years.

  Chauncy Rankin and his brother drove by slowly as evening gave way to night on the way to their uncle’s wake. They parked just up the road and watched the glow of the house. Chauncy wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him to clean the gal and the place up proper so that he and Percy could have her on tap whenever they got the itch. He quietly cursed Ephram Jennings, and realized he hadn’t, in all the years he’d known him, given the man his due.

  Evening found Ruby leaving Maggie’s grave. The perfume of tiny cream flowers still drifting from her pores. Then she made her way through the silent, watching pines. When she reached her home its windows shone with amber light. The water pump held moon light.

  Ruby imagined Ephram inside and felt a gentle hand upon her heart. But her children were calling to her, so she went to the chinaberry and knelt. Their voices rose like music from the earth, violas and flutes, weaving into one song. Then she felt the many small ghosts who were still hidden in her body. The ones she had yet to give birth to. They turned and shifted within her. Ruby looked at the last whispers of dark blue evening and felt compelled to dig not only one grave, but another and another. Then she waited for the pain, the pushing to begin—seeing yet another murder.

  Suddenly each child, still roaming her body, looked towards the small graves of sifted earth. Something was different. They moved in unison. Ruby knew it was time. They did not tear through her as they had every night for years. Instead each one simply floated from her belly, soft as a puff of talcum powder. It was not a birth, but a gentle exodus.

  The last to leave was her own baby. The one who had followed her from New York, who had come to her on the train platform.

  Her own child. The sweet baby girl she never named. The child Ruby had at Miss Barbara’s when she was fourteen. When, pregnant and round, men still took her body gently, or sometimes with an amazing bru
tality, in spite of, and at times because of her condition.

  Ruby looked up. It seemed that there were more stars peeking above her, moving into position, the Dipper and the Southern Cross.

  The little spirit paused at the small precipice. She looked at Ruby. She wanted Ruby to remember, so Ruby saw it all. Her old room, after a man had left, before another entered. Ruby remembered how she had felt, full of hopeful life. The morning sickness had stopped. Now, at eight months, her girl was strong within her, in spite of the fact that Ruby had never seen a doctor. It was as if the child knew she would have to build and grow without a kind or knowing hand. Ruby’s child was the strongest part of her, until one night Ruby was knocked down by a crushing punch into her gut by a john, who paid a little extra. Always a little extra. Ruby curling, holding, protecting as he kicked with a brown boot. Again and again. Then acted out a rape, a brutal rape of a soon-to-be-mother, which is what he had come for. One day after he left, the contractions came. The ripping unbearable pain. No hospital. Nothing. Pushing, screaming, with not a single soft eye upon her. Still her baby fighting, then slipping out of her. Someone caught her child and dropped her onto Ruby as if the infant were soiled laundry. Ruby saw the top of the baby’s head, wet, red dotted with white. Little hands … ten little chubby miracles. The child was crying, laying upon her. Crying. Then coughing. Coughing as if she had swallowed Marion Lake. Hands taking her away. Ruby reaching out. Her baby coughing so hard. Then soft. Then little gasps of air. Then she was quiet in another person’s arms. Until the silence grew heavy with meaning.

  The only words Ruby heard were, “She dead.” Which is how Ruby knew she was a girl.

  On the rise of the hill, under the sky, the little spirit turned away from Ruby. She seemed satisfied. Her mama had not forgotten her. She lay herself down and let herself be covered with earth.

  Ruby kept her hand upon the mound for a long time. She let out a sigh. It was safer there—the womb or the earth. The womb or the earth. Ruby realized sitting next to all of her children that the soil was both. The world would hold them.

  Ruby knew they would still leap and play. She would still visit them come sundown, have them lean up and listen to bedtime stories. Even play hopscotch and freeze tag during the day. But at night they would sleep in their graves. At night they would be safe. She bent down and kissed the kind earth and went towards the warmth of the house.

  When Ruby walked through the doorway the first thing she noticed was that the house smelled of cedar.

  There were two kettles of water boiling and a huge tin tub full of bathwater on the floor. Ephram stood in the center of the kitchen, washed and wearing a pair of overalls two sizes too big.

  The house was clean. A few furtive stains remained in the grooves of the floor, but the walls, the baseboards, the window frames, all of the wood seemed to glow like bronze. The belly of the stove was alive with flames. The six kerosene lamps threw saffron rays onto the walls. A full plate of chicken and potato salad sat on the sideboard. The steam rising from the bath and the kettles was doing something magical and luminous with the light. Crickets and owls harmonized in the blackness outside.

  There was a clean sheet folded near the tub.

  Ephram motioned towards it. “I’ll be outside drawing plenty water. You eat your fill, then get in that water, have yourself a good soap, then drape that sheet over the tub. I’ll be in directly.” And he stepped into the night. Ruby did just that. The food, though seasoned a little heavily with judgment, went down just fine.

  The water was almost too warm against her skin and its waves held her. She looked and found the Dove soap on the floor. The white turned tan where it touched her skin. She washed her face. Her neck. The water was just right now, so warm under her arms and between her thighs, her long, long legs, her breasts, her cocoa nipples, her belly. She dunked her hair under its surface and brought it out steaming, stretched the sheet over the tub and softly called to him.

  Ephram walked in and looked at Ruby. He poured an alchemy of oil, steam and well water into a pitcher and poured it over Ruby’s thick hair. It seemed to drink the water like desert sand. Ruby sighed.

  He arranged his supplies on the sideboard: two large tins of Crown Royal hair dressing. Casey Farms peanut oil. Ginger root. White Rain Shampoo and Conditioner. Hair bands, small blue worlds attached to black elastic eights, like children wore to Sunday school. And a wide-toothed comb and scissors.

  Her hair was hard in places like thick plastic. It had matted so that scabs had formed along the scalp, bled and dried into scars. Some of the hair had tangled into ropes, so dense, so solid that it would have been easier to shave her head and start fresh. As if she could read his thoughts she said, “It might be easier to cut it off.”

  But she said it the way pretty women say things they know people will disagree with. He smiled at the weight of her pride. The roots of her belief in her beauty ran deep, had lasted through over a decade of drought. Maybe, he thought, the tips of her hair remembered.

  Ephram had always thought of a woman’s hair as living testimony to her life, her memories. Celia kept hers twisted tight under bobby pins, bound by headscarves and wig nets. His mama had kept hers free and puffy, until, he’d heard, they had made her tie it back at Dearing. He’d silently watched women and the complexity of their hair all of his life. He knew that some memories were better cut out, amputated. He’d seen women freed that way. But his bones told him that Ruby needed her past to find her way home. So he spent the night tending to her hair.

  He had no one to ask so he supposed. He started with soap. The first suds turned black. He rinsed her hair with a pitcher, pouring the water into a separate bucket to spare the clear moving warmth of the tub. Then he washed it again and again. By the seventh rinse, the water almost ran clear. It felt like heavy, black wet wool.

  The hair started whispering to his fingers. It showed him where to part and what to leave alone. It told him to crush wild ginger and mix it with the peanut oil, to warm it, to slip into the tunnels beneath the tumult and work that concoction along her scalp with his fingertips. He suddenly realized that it had been speaking to him all day while he was cleaning, telling him what to buy, what it needed. It frightened him. He wondered if Supra hadn’t been right after all, that maybe devilment was catching. Maybe crazy was a cold you caught. But then the fear left him and he realized that the whole wide world had been talking to him for years, only he’d stuffed cotton into his ears, packed it tight until a rail thin storm of a woman had knocked it out with a kick to his head.

  So he opened himself up and listened as it told him how to work the conditioner into each corded knot. How to aim not to free the bond, but be content with loosening it bit by bit. It led him to eventually comb the fringed edges, then helped him to work like a craftsman, extracting strands one, two, three at a time.

  He kept the kettles on the stove so that the air stayed heavy and moist. He heated the water in Ruby’s bath as slow hours passed. He worked steadily, courteously. He worked in love.

  Around two in the morning, he stepped onto the porch as Ruby emerged from the bath naked and golden, and lay herself under clean linen atop the mattress. Ephram covered her with another sheet, slipped a grocery bag under her head and continued working. She tumbled into a sleep so deep, that she forgot to be afraid.

  White Rain and oil at the ready, Ephram combed and soaked, teasing out the stubborn fists. At about four in the morning, three-quarters was free. It twisted and curled and waved like a river set loose from a dam. Down her neck, across her shoulders and dripping past her angel blades. Then Ruby’s hair began to do more than guide Ephram’s hands, it began to guide his heart.

  It spoke to him in feelings. Each strand holding a story, each knot an event. Trapped bundles of thought, released. Her youth lived at the ends of her hair. Her present life near her scalp. He was midway down her back when suddenly the words Where is my baby? seeped into his hands. He felt an empty hollow in his belly. His throat
clenched tight. Then Where is my baby? Where … is … she! What happened? Then a scream, spreading like a grease fire, until it exploded. Where you put her body? Gone. Taken. Ephram parted her hair through his tears. He worked in fractions.

  Exhausted, eyes red, Ephram freed a coiled spool of black. It seemed to bounce lightly between his fingers. He felt his skin soft as gardenia petals. The froth of silk against knees. Lips coated in thickly spread color. He heard the thump of music and felt the sway of his hips keeping perfect rhythm. A man’s firm hand, spinning him, skirt swirling, lifting. Then the eyes of men pausing, watching. He felt a confidence, a certainty in the power of beauty, as the music swelled and laughter bubbled from his throat.

  He loosened another strand and felt the blue flame of life in his belly. His body yielding, accommodating, and like a sweet gum tree come autumn, filling with milk. He felt his torso stretch, making way for the building, spinning matter, until it was as heavy as a planet in his womb. Until a sixty-foot wave crashed into the thimble of his body and there the child was, like a damp feather upon his breast, weighted as a new world.

  He reached a knot, too tight, too large, it tugged free in his hand. His face grew hot. A terror so strong it busted the wall of reason. Felt himself entered, torn, ripped, bleeding. Felt sweat slick, spit hurtling against his cheek. He felt himself gag, choke then accept. He felt what it was to be mute earth. A dull ache wound through his fingers until he tackled another mass.

  As he held tight to Ruby’s hair, his palm itched and then was tickled, so he was forced to smile. Then laugh. Then gasp as his pelvis warmed like honey in the sun, as hot sticky waves swirled, as his entire body tightened, contracted, as a lightning rod of bittersweet ache buckled his flesh. Too, too sweet, embarrassingly so, like a roller coaster crashing to the dip, only to discover it had another hill to climb and dip, and climb and dip. Exploding again and again and again. When it ended he didn’t know how to fix his face. He wilted like a week-old rose. He released the reins of her hair. He looked up and saw the moon reaching in through the window. Ruby still sleeping and the caw of a lonely crow breaking up the silence.