Cynthia Bond - Ruby

Impervious to her monthly blood as it dried in fresh smears down her legs, until the loss of weight caused her womb to stop its monthly orbit.

More than all of this, Ruby had lost her train ticket home to Manhattan. She had lost New York.

She remembered wearing black stockings clipped into place, red lipstick and hair hot-combed and slick. The parties and whispers in her ear about so-and-so and what he painted, what he wrote, who he slept with and the heady rush of the drinking, clinking crowd.

She’d remember the telegram from Maggie, pulling her trump card and calling Ruby home.

Ruby remembered the crush of a dark Manhattan penthouse loft, flooded with women in black tights and false lashes, a few Chanels and Ceil Chapmans in the crowd like lights on a Christmas tree. The men in skinny slacks and ties, or leather jackets with pony caps. The room was filled with a gray cloud of smoke where people appeared then floated away. There were the magnet men who walked with headlines fluttering over their heads, who carried a circle of human bodies, tight to their arms, their voices. Who waited with ready laughter and deference. Then there were the falling men, who had slumped out of the limelight, who sat with a glass resting on their crotch, a stringy female threaded through their arms and Ruby gliding through it all. One of four brown faces who were not famous — each a footnote in the Bohemian Guide to Entertaining.

That she looked like Dorothy Dandridge was the compliment most often paid her. Makeup like Sophia Loren, heels adding two and a half to her five eight so that she looked down when she was introduced to the poet Gregory Corso and the painter Robert Motherwell. Quite far when she spoke briefly to James Baldwin — about Texas and little Liberty and the victory of Brown over Topeka’s Board of Education. He told her she was beautiful in that pure way that only gay men can, and peeled generously away only when the hostess, Mrs. Gladdington, called for him.

And for a moment after, she had become a magnet, as if mere proximity had gifted her with the power of attraction, and a circle had orbited her, until they realized she was not an author, a famous man’s girlfriend or a singer — only a pretty Negro girl who worked for the hostess, and all had drifted away. Still from across the room, she caught a supportive, conspiratorial wink from James Baldwin and felt, for a moment, seen and known by sparkling brilliance.

In a second she was back in Liberty. Ruby looked down at the browning mattress and could feel his crinkled grin fading. Her dresser mirror in Manhattan, her bras, panties, stockings, cigarettes, the bottle of Chanel 19, her English-French dictionary, for the trip she was to have taken with Mrs. Gladdington. Gone.

But for all that Ruby had lost, there were many things she had found.

A rising growl that rumbled out of her belly. Drool that wetted her lips and slid down the angle of her jaw. A jerking, rhythmic contortion of her face. Because these often happened without her permission and in view of the town, Ruby found what it was to no longer be seen as human.

She discovered that she could hammer her pride so wafer thin that she could accept alms like a beggar.

Then, one late afternoon, Ruby found a new pitted terror, as she sat on her bed watching dust swim in the light. She heard the slow creak of the screen door, a flutter of sparrows outside. She listened as a cup of water on the kitchen table turned over, and a thin cascading splash, like a man urinating, poured onto the floor. Ruby waited — it would not be the first time someone had come unannounced. But instead of a man, she saw a weighted, umber thickness slide into the room.

It shifted, moving along the floorboards. It darkened the corners, adding mass to the shadows. Ruby whispered, softly to herself, that there was nothing there, just the coming evening. Still her skin tingled hot, her mouth dry as it crossed the space between them and pressed against her, flattening her dress against her chest, her legs.

Ruby did not know why she sat on the bed, then lay down, but the old curtains ruffled towards the window frame, not away. Then something fell upon her chest. The scent of a dead candle filled her, making it hard to breathe. When the mattress sank deeper, Ruby thought to scream, but whatever lay upon her whispered the creaks and groans of the house into her ear, it smoothed and relaxed her until she felt a soft pressure upon her groin. To her fogged surprise, her body responded, a swelling excitement that ebbed through her thin frame. Ruby felt compelled to turn onto her stomach and push her pelvis into a mattress spring just under the padding. The bed seemed to roll under her, its legs grating, rubbing on the floor. Ruby knew this was a Dyboù—what Ma Tante had spoken of so long ago. A heat pulsed around her, then entered her. The house seemed to shake.

She spoke, but it was not Ruby speaking. In a low graveled voice she grunted, “Bitch,” hot air escaping her lips, “Whore.”

She ground harder, faster, with mechanical precision until, in the building heat, an explosion roared through her. Her scream filled the room, the house suddenly still. Her sex spilled, chest empty, Ruby had fallen into sleep.

The Dyboù had come the next night, shifting the pillars of her grandfather’s home, entering her pores, her follicles, until it moved like oil under her skin. Soaking, filling every second of her heartbeat, each rise of her breath, night after night until she felt that she became what he called her. Slapping at her own buttocks, grabbing handfuls of her hair and smashing her face into the bed. In this way, Ruby found the Dyboù. In this way, Ruby learned to rape her body each night.

She was exhausted and drained when she found it — heard the sound of a child crying, faint, like wind through the tall pines. It was not the cry of a living child, Ruby knew that much. She had seen and heard the ghosts of children before. She followed the sound, and found a cloud of a girl weeping in Marion Lake. She was clear as glass, cinnamon brown, and no more than seven. She rippled the water with each sob. When she saw Ruby looking at her, relief loosened her shoulders.

She flowed towards Ruby until she was inches away. They locked eyes and Ruby felt, knew that the girl had not merely drowned in that lake — someone had held her under. Ruby put her arms around her, but because she could not hold air, the child walked inside of her body, curled there and settled into her womb. Ruby held her belly and rocked. She hummed and said softly that everything would be all right now, and the girl let out a little burp and fell asleep.

Ruby knew something about ghost children. Along with the hundreds of ghosts, they too had passed through her body. Seven had even taken up residence, but had been scared and wily enough to hide inside of her marrow. This new child was not so lucky.

That night, when the Dyboù slid into Ruby’s bedroom, it stopped at the door. It seemed to grow larger. The air became electric. Spider cracks spread across the panes. Instead of reaching for Ruby, the Dyboù lifted above her, the whole of the ceiling in shadow, then it dropped down upon the new spirit sleeping within her.

In seconds the girl was gone, inside the creature, screaming, terror flashing in her clear eyes, small arms reaching for Ruby, as the Dyboù slithered across the floor. It paused and turned as if it suddenly sensed the other spirits Ruby had hidden deep inside her years ago. Ruby shouted out and quickly it turned away and was out the door. Ruby followed, ran outside into the black. The trees were hollow, the shadows between them empty. She did not know what to scream. She did not even have a name. So she shrieked, howled into the woods — wailing like a distant train.