Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  I wasn’t squeamish and Pearl’s story didn’t faze me. What was bothering me was the bowl and whisk. This was uncharted territory for me. In our home, our guests didn’t see the kitchen; the food mysteriously appeared on a trolley pushed by Mae. I couldn’t recall Maman even making herself a cup of coffee, and I’d never so much as stirred a saucepan.

  ‘What’s the matter, honey?’ asked Pearl, stepping back and studying me with her twinkling eyes. ‘You don’t cook?’

  She was about fifty years of age, and Alma looked to be seventy. Alma had been born after the Civil War, but her parents could have been slaves. I wasn’t going to say that we had a coloured maid at home who did everything for us. Luckily Dora chimed in and saved me from having to explain anything.

  ‘You gotta learn how to cook, Jewel!’ she said emphatically. ‘I know you entertainers live on Chinese takeaway, but those pretty looks of yours ain’t going to last forever. You got to come up with something else to please your man.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Eleanor, grinding her hips at the stove. ‘I might be an old married lady but I can cook and please my man. It don’t have to be one or the other.’

  The women burst into laughter. From the living room came the sound of ragtime — the men were jamming.

  ‘Well, Jewel, I’m going to teach you how to make a pudding,’ said Pearl. ‘Then next time you come, we’ll work on a main.’

  I was eighteen years old and it was the first time I’d ever beaten eggs. But I learned a lot more that day than how to make sweet potato pudding, garlic spinach and spicy tomato salad. As we cooked, Pearl and Eleanor took me through the entire process of conducting a funeral, including collecting the body.

  ‘We went to collect good old Florence Lewis who lived on the top floor of a townhouse. But she weighed over five hundred pounds! We had to get her down the stairs while the family waited in the foyer, weeping and grieving. We tried to be dignified, with Milton carrying the stretcher at the head and Joseph and Dwight at the feet, and me walking slowly in front with a rose in my hands. But Milton stumbled on the narrow stairway and Florence’s body slipped off the stretcher. Those of us in front had to run like crazy down the stairs or else get crushed. Thankfully, one of Florence’s legs got wedged in the balustrade and she came to a halt, otherwise there would have been more than one funeral to arrange!’

  This story, which had obviously been told before, sent the women into peals of merriment.

  ‘Of course, Leroy don’t work in the family business,’ Pearl told me. ‘Goes faint at the sight of a corpse. He became a musician instead. But I always remind him he got his start playing in funeral parades.’

  Bunny, who had been sneaking admiring looks at me, asked, ‘Jewel, do you really take your clothes off on stage?’

  In Ruby’s social circle that question would have been the end of the conversation. I was surprised Leroy had told them what I did. But the women considered me with curiosity rather than disdain.

  ‘Well, I don’t take everything off,’ I explained. ‘Men appreciate a little mystery. In fact, you can get a room of men excited just by slipping off your sweater if you do it the right way.’

  ‘Show us something,’ said Eleanor, putting down her spatula. ‘Show us one of your moves.’

  I’d never performed for a group of women before, and certainly not in a kitchen, but I slid my hands up along my body and flicked back my hair before slowly untying the apron strings at my neck and waist. I tugged the apron away and held it out for a moment before letting it drop to the floor. Then, one by one, I undid the buttons of my sweater before slipping it deliberately over my shoulders and wriggling free of it.

  The women clapped and cheered.

  ‘Woo hoo!’ said Alma, fanning her face. ‘You keep that up, young lady, and I reckon you could turn me into a lesbian!’

  Dora and Bunny had to hold their stomachs they were laughing so hard.

  ‘Hey, ladies,’ called Joseph from the living room. ‘What’s all this monkeying around? Your men are hungry.’

  I’d never known such camaraderie between women before. Even the charity lunches Maman used to take me to were highly competitive. I wondered why Leroy’s family was so accepting of me, apparentlty not at all bothered by my race or what I did for a living. Maybe it was because their own profession — and the horror people associated with death — put them on the edge of society too. Or maybe dealing with death had made them realise what was truly important in life.

  The food was laid out on the dining table on a fruit-patterned tablecloth that matched the curtains in the front room. The adults sat around it, while the children were delegated to their own table in the kitchen. I took a moment to admire my surroundings. Bunny had made a centrepiece from a carved-out pumpkin filled with sunflowers, which bloomed until autumn in New Orleans. The plates were simple Pyrex trimmed in green, and the serving dishes were ceramic. There was nothing showy about Leroy’s family home. Nothing was there to impress. Rather, every item — from the overstuffed armchairs to the pictures of waterbirds on the walls — seemed to have been chosen to create a welcoming atmosphere.

  Leroy, seated opposite, winked at me. I couldn’t have been happier in that informal setting, where people passed dishes to each other instead of waiting for a maid to do it. I’d never known family life like this — everyone talking at once about everything from baseball to the neighbour’s new baby and yet seemingly able to understand each other. It made me wish I really was Jewel and not Ruby. If I could become Jewel forever and live like this, I’d do it.

  Then I thought about Maman and Mae. I doubted they could adapt to this life, even if it would do them the world of good. Maman was a kind person who’d always treated her servants with respect, but she’d only ever seen coloured people as domestics. And Mae couldn’t seem to picture herself any other way.

  There were eleven adults squeezed around a table designed for eight, but there was one place left empty. Who was it for? A deceased loved one? I received my answer a few minutes later when a young coloured man dressed in a grey flannel suit stepped into the room and everyone’s eyes lit up like the Lord himself had walked in the door.

  ‘Ti-Jean!’ cried Pearl, standing up and embracing him. ‘I didn’t know if you were going to make it. I got a plate warming in the oven for you, but you sit down and help yourself to what’s on the table.’

  Everyone else greeted Ti-Jean, then Joseph directed him towards me. ‘This is Jewel, Leroy’s lady friend,’ he said, then said to me, ‘Ti-Jean is my eldest son.’

  The flicker of surprise that had initially crossed Ti-Jean’s face now became a frown. He flashed a look at Leroy as if to say, What are you doing bringing a white woman into this house? Although it deflated me after the warm welcome I’d received from the rest of the family, I understood it. As soon as Ti-Jean had arrived, I’d recognised him. He’d been the leader of the three men who’d sat in the ‘Whites Only’ section at Avery’s Ice Cream Parlor. Although he wouldn’t have recognised me, dressed as I was as Jewel, his disapproval was understandable after the treatment he’d received from the white people at the parlour.

  The conversation for the remainder of the meal was civilised, despite the hostile glances Ti-Jean sent in my direction. Bunny filled me in on some of Leroy’s childhood pranks, including climbing to the highest branch in the pecan tree and getting stuck; and Alma talked about how she stole out of the house with her late husband when they were engaged to listen to jazz in Storyville. It was only when the table was cleared and we’d retired to the garden for some coffee and coconut cake that Ti-Jean finally exploded.

  ‘You trying to raise yourself in society by bringing a white girl home?’ he said to Leroy. ‘Isn’t a coloured girl good enough for you?’

  Leroy bristled. ‘Mind yourself, Ti-Jean!’ he said, a growl of warning in his tone.

  ‘Your brother’s right, Ti-Jean,’ said Joseph sternly. ‘Jewel is a guest in our home and you’d better treat her with respect.’


  My face twitched and I wanted to cry. I’d been feeling so welcomed by Leroy’s family and I wanted to be liked and accepted by them. Despite his attitude towards me, I could see why the family looked up to Ti-Jean: something in his manner commanded attention. I didn’t want him to turn the rest of the family against me.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with having white blood,’ piped up Bunny. ‘Plenty of advantages if you do. Sometimes, for the fun of it, I ride in the white section of the streetcar and drink from the ‘Whites Only’ fountains. People aren’t sure whether to tell me off or not because I look more Mediterranean than coloured. I’m often mistaken for a Spanish Creole.’

  Alma nodded to me. ‘This family’s got white blood in it anyhow. My daddy was a plantation owner. My mama was a housemaid. You get the picture.’

  Yes, I did and I hated it. The liberties plantation owners took with their servants, even the married ones, were horrific. Even more so because once the coloured servant was discovered to be pregnant, the plantation owner’s wife would send her off, often to a place with worse conditions.

  ‘Bunny,’ Ti-Jean said, ‘wouldn’t it be better if you could sit wherever you wished and drink from whatever fountain you wanted to? Wouldn’t it be better if in order to do those things you didn’t have to pass yourself as white?’

  The awkwardness the others had tried to dissipate returned. Leroy clenched his fists. I would have hated to be the cause of a fight. I could have told the truth then and there about my privileged background and let the Thezans decide for themselves what they wanted to about me, but I desired so much to be loved and approved of by them. Maman always said that the best way to break tension was to tell a good story and my propensity for telling stories got the better of me.

  ‘I know all about passing,’ I said to Ti-Jean. ‘I live as a white, but my great-grandmother was a quadroon.’

  A hush fell over the gathering and all eyes turned to me.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Like Alma, she was born to a French plantation owner and a mulatto servant. But the servant died in childbirth, and little Claudine was so pretty and fair that the childless plantation owner’s wife took her as her own. The only reason we know about it was that when Claudine was grown, her birth mother’s sister urged her to remember her mother and her heritage, even when passing as white.’

  ‘Lord have mercy!’ said Alma, rubbing her knees. ‘I thought you did have a little colour in you. I can usually tell.’

  Leroy regarded me with a curious expression, no doubt wondering why I hadn’t told him this story before.

  Eleanor pointed her finger at Ti-Jean. ‘That’s what you get for making assumptions. Of course Jewel’s got to pass herself as lily white to work in that exclusive club. How else is she going to make a living?’

  Ti-Jean tugged at his earlobe and looked contrite. I felt ashamed but tried not to show it. There I was, Vivienne de Villeray, descended from a line of French aristocrats, passing myself off to these good people as the great-granddaughter of a quadroon maid.

  ‘You got to excuse our Ti-Jean,’ said Pearl, patting my hand. ‘He didn’t mean to be rude. He’s active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and he takes things more seriously than the rest of us. I don’t want the schools to desegregate. I don’t want coloured children to learn white people’s ways.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Bunny, ‘I want the schools to desegregate. Each time Darlene gets a secondhand book at school with a white child’s name written in the front, she cries and wants to know why God didn’t make her good enough to get new books too.’

  I recalled what Mrs Lalande had said about how giving coloured people inferior facilities was a hindrance to them getting the same level of education as white people. That day at the house in the Garden District felt like centuries ago. I hadn’t thought about the Lalande family for a long time. Kitty had called a few times to see if I wanted to play tennis again, but I’d always found an excuse not to. She’d eventually stopped calling.

  The sun faded and the air turned cold. It was time for me to go home to have dinner with Maman before I left for the club. Leroy walked me to the gate; it was still too light for him to accompany me all the way back to Chartres Street.

  ‘My family likes you,’ he said.

  I grimaced. ‘Not Ti-Jean.’

  Leroy shoved his hands into his pockets and lowered his voice. ‘Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s mad at the world because he came top in his class at law school but he can’t get a job. Still, under that stony exterior lies a warm heart. When you get to know him, you’ll see.’

  ‘I admire him joining the NAACP,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want things to be different; he wants to make them different. What about you, Leroy? Don’t you want things to change too?’

  ‘Of course I do, but I got another way of going about it. I’m proud of who I am and what I do. When I meet a white man I look him straight in the eye, not to intimidate him, but to say, I believe you’re a good man and I’m a good man too. We should respect each other. I believe each white man I encounter goes away thinking a little differently about coloured men because of the way I act. Mama always says you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.’

  Leroy’s gentle strength was one of the many things I loved about him. I wished I had his patience but I didn’t.

  ‘Don’t you wish things would change faster . . . for us? So we don’t always have to hide?’

  He looked at me hopefully. ‘Is it true you’ve got coloured blood in you?’

  By law, only one drop of Negro blood would make me coloured, no matter how white I appeared to be. If I was ‘coloured’, nobody could stop me and Leroy from getting married, although we’d still suffer harassment because I looked pure white.

  I shook my head. ‘I only said that because I thought it would make it easier on your family. Every time I see the happy couples who come to the club, to dance and dine together, it stings me that you and I can’t do that. Don’t you think about our future, Leroy?’

  He looked at me tenderly and brushed his fingers against my cheek. ‘I love you and you love me and that’s all that matters for now. Let’s be as we are and let life give us the answer.’

  By the time winter arrived, I’d earned enough from dancing at the Vieux Carré to pay the River Road Sanatorium in full. I set my mind to getting our apartment back, and asked Sam for his advice.

  ‘That low-down scum,’ he said, after he’d listened to my story. ‘I can get your title deed back and I can fix that uncle of yours.’

  I was touched that Sam had protective feelings towards me, but I declined his offer. ‘All I want is the title deed back — and in my name this time. Then if you can help me speak to the bank about paying the mortgage in monthly instalments, I’d appreciate it.’

  He nodded approvingly. ‘You’ve got a practical head on your shoulders, Jewel. If you weren’t a woman, I’d have you as one of my associates.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, rising from the chair. ‘But I think I’ll stick to dancing.’

  He laughed. ‘You need anything, you see me, all right? You’ve been good to me, Jewel, and I’ll be good to you. Remember that.’

  When I rose the next day, I found Maman out on the gallery watering the ferns. A bone-chilling damp hung in the air.

  ‘Maman, you’ve got to stay inside over the winter,’ I told her, guiding her back into the sitting room. ‘You can’t afford to get a respiratory infection.’

  ‘But I get bored,’ she protested. ‘You’re young and out and about. I miss you.’

  Apart from the elaborate breakfast we shared on Sunday mornings before I set off to visit Leroy’s family on the pretence that I was visiting Adalie de Pauger, I had been neglecting her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with her, but all the to-ing and fro-ing from the club to home left me exhausted. Although it was going to mean less time for napping at Chartres Street, I committed myself to reading to Maman for an hour every day befor
e I left.

  We started then and there with Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which had been one of my childhood favourites. But now as I read it, I saw things as an adult that I hadn’t before, like the hypocrisy of slavery. Maman, however, was riveted.

  ‘Thank you, my darling,’ she said when we’d finished for the day. ‘That was the most enjoyable hour I’ve spent in a long time.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been busy,’ I told her.

  She smiled and took my hand. ‘It pleases me that you’re enjoying your life, Ruby. You are doing exactly what I would want you to do. But tell me, do you have any beaus?’

  Her question had me squirming in my seat. How was I going to answer?

  Fortunately, Mae came into the room to remind Maman that it was time for her massage. She helped her up from her chair and the way Maman wobbled on her feet made my heart ache. Although she had improved, she was not strong and never would be.

  Maman’s greatest wish was to see me married and happy before she died. But how could I ever reconcile the two worlds I now lived in? My life was a fantasy, but I knew reality wouldn’t leave me alone for long. It had a way of seeking a person out and wresting her from her dreams.

  After we’d worked our way through the books we had in the apartment, Maman said she’d like a mystery novel for a change. On my way to Chartres Street I stopped by a bookstore on Canal Street. I was studying the bestsellers in the store window when something in the reflection caught my eye. I turned to see a coloured girl about six years old standing behind me. She was smartly dressed in a checked cape-collar dress and Mary Jane shoes.

  She pointed to the sign in the shop window and read aloud, ‘No col-o-reds.’ She tilted her head and considered me with curious eyes. ‘What does that mean? No col-o-reds?’

  My stomach flipped. The street was full of signs like that, telling coloured folks that they could look at but not try on clothes or hats, couldn’t use the toilets, or couldn’t eat at the same end of the lunch counter as white people. All those instructions conspired to send the message that Negroes were inferior. The girl folded her hands in front of her and waited politely for my answer. I bit my lip. How could I tell this innocent child, beginning to find her place in the world, that ‘col-o-reds’ meant her? Before I had a chance to think what to say, the girl’s mother arrived and grabbed her hand.