Cynthia Bond - Ruby

Then she grew angry. If Maggie had left, even for a trip to Houston, she would not be on that platform. Fuck Maggie . She saw the Red Cap helping a young blond woman with her bags. New passengers had begun to congregate on the platform waiting for the next train, both Negro and White. Fuck Maggie and fuck the Red Cap. Slow-ass Negro . She flicked her dead cigarette onto the tracks and as she lit another, her jaw started aching. Over the past week she had been pressing her molars together so tight that at times the mandible had begun to throb. She wished she had brought her aspirin, or Mrs. Gladdington’s sleeping pills, or both. Ruby could not remember the last time she truly slept. Even before the telegram, many nights a low scraping sound had kept her awake — like a man sanding a wooden floor. Ruby’s hand shook a bit as she took another long puff of her new cigarette.

The train platform was sparse and clear. She had to think. Wait. She pursed her lips and pushed the smoke out of her lungs. Where was the goddamn porter? Suddenly a dark curve between her bags shifted and moved. Ruby ignored it, as she had ignored it for weeks, as she had ignored so many things lately. But the nothing that lived on the periphery of her vision had been the worst of it. The nothing with small chubby fingers that sifted through the weave in her clothes — that sometimes had the outline of pigtails. Ruby hated her. Hated her need, the way she tried to curl on her chest when she slept. Hated that she knelt beneath the apple bins and ruffled through the bok choy in the fresh-air markets in Chinatown. Ruby saw that the dead nothing was hollow and imagined that was why it had affixed itself to her left femur.

Once anchored, she had trailed behind Ruby like a helium balloon, drifting back down to earth, only to rise again. Ruby had tried to shake her, take sharp turns, or leap into subway cars seconds before they closed, to no avail. Once she had gotten the telegram from Maggie, once she was headed home, the spirit floated above her in Penn Station near the newsstand, fluttering the folded papers with images of the young Buddhist nun guilty of self-immolation. She had settled near a cafeteria radio while Ruby got a regular coffee, and swung her legs in time to “It’s All Right.”

She’d cozied beneath Ruby’s seat on the train, tickling the inside of her knees. Now on the platform she crept out of her hiding place. Ruby refused to look down. In answer the puff of air leapt onto her shoulders. Ruby stood quickly, knocking over two of her bags. Four faces turned her way. A shock of fear shot through her. She sat back on the bag but the little spirit clung tight to her neck. Desperate now, Ruby felt it trying to enter at the base of her skull. She quickly put her hand there, a thin sweat filming her forehead. It then slipped under her arm and was pushing now against her chest, softly at first, then roughly, almost knocking Ruby onto the platform boards. Ruby wanted to run, to scream and kick the cloud of a girl away.

Now, Ruby was trapped on the mountain of pink bags. The day tilted. The horizon slipped blue to prairie brown to cut-outs of green. Too green. An electric spinning green. The black of the tracks, the wash of the ties. Her fingers were on fire. Ruby flicked her orange cigarette to the ground then sucked at the fleshy burns. She smelled the remnant of a cigar burning somewhere, some salty thing like ham, perfume. And sweat. All left behind on the platform. The child was weeping now, so strong that the air crackled. In moments, Ruby knew she would scream. In a few moments she would break through the mirror of convention and the White men would come running, their hands twisting her thin wrists, eyes too red, faces too white. The Black folks would cower as they hauled her to jail or worse. So Ruby prayed. She prayed for the illusion of sameness.

As if in answer, the spirit grew smaller. Younger. A toddler. Younger still until she was six months old, three, until she was a small baby newly born. Ruby recognized her for the first time. Heart-shaped face. Long tan body. Her breath stopped when she saw it was her girl. Her baby who died without a name when Ruby was fourteen.

She was swaddled and tiny, there on the wooden planks, so of course Ruby lifted her into her arms. The child began crying. Bawling so loud, so scared, coughing something out of her lungs, trying to breathe. Ruby held her and rocked back and forth. Her girl. Her lost girl. Ruby tried to hide her from the people at the station, some of them turning to look. Ruby pretended she had a chill and was merely wrapping her arms around her body, but her child could not stop — the sound tearing through Ruby.

There on the platform Ruby bade her to enter. The girl hushed and looked into her eyes. Ruby could hear the echo of her tiny heart and suddenly the baby slipped as if soapy from a bath, and fell hard into Ruby’s chest.

Ruby stumbled back, tripping over her bags. She struggled to right herself and her feet caught the handle of a bag and she fell down again. Then Ruby wept. Huge black tears that plopped onto the sky blue of her dress.

The Red Cap was back, hand on her arm, face crunched like a fist with worry, the Station Master was looming behind him. A small crowd of White folks pushed forward.

The Station Master boomed over her, “What’s the problem here, Jonah?”

Ruby looked around, liquid liner running down her cheek.

The Red Cap, Jonah, knew something. Was it about the child? Had he seen it too?

Jonah threw out a rope. “She just trip and fall is all Suh.”

Ruby took it. “Yes, I’m sorry, I just tripped. Over my bag. I’m so sorry.” Ruby began standing, straightening her dress.

The Station Master took a step forward.

“You drunk, gal?” The White man was less than a foot away.

Ruby knew if she looked at him she would be taken. So she stood, slumped her shoulders, stared at the ground and answered the White man, “No, Sir, No. I’m sorry, so sorry.” She spit out, “I’m on my way home — my cousin is dead.” Ruby cut the truth out of her gut and sliced it up to save herself. “She — her funeral was a month ago. I just found out, Sir. Yesterday, Sir. I’m just — just got upset is all.”

The air was close to boiling. Ruby searched the platform. Her purse lay on its side. She reached down and grabbed the telegram, the one Western Union had tried to deliver to three old addresses before they found her. She pushed it in the Red Cap’s face. He handed it over to the Station Master. He scanned it, lips tight.

Jonah put the nail on the thing. “You know how emotional we be sometime, Suh.”

Nearly satisfied, the Station Master stepped away, throwing the telegram in Ruby’s direction, “One thing I don’t need is another drunk nigger. They been leaving from here all week for that monkey march, I swear to God as drunk as Moses.” His associates chuckled. The rest of the White folk turned on his cue, retreating into cool shade and ice cold soda pops of the Whites Only Waiting Area.

Ruby took a breath. Her hand on Jonah’s arm. “Thank you.”

“No need, Miss. How old was she?”

“Thirty-three.”

“What happened?”

“Cardiac arrest, they said.”

Off of his confounded look, Ruby said, “Heart attack.”

He shook his head, “I’m sorry for you.”

“Thank you. Can you — did you find a car?”

He looked to make sure no one was around. “No. I’m sorry Miss, but you best get yourself out this here station if you gots to walk. They be looking for somebody to lynch since Minister King started this here. My nephew be up there. Young men’s church group. Ain’t never had a drop of liquor in his life.” Then he bustled into the station.

Ruby watched his back walking into the building. Fucking Maggie . Ruby collected her pocketbook and walked and sat on the bench next to a withered plum-colored man chewing a wad of tobacco. A bit of the brown juice dripped onto his chin. He wiped it with the edge of his sleeve. She started crying anew. Her fucking heart. Her fucking weak-ass heart . Ruby pulled out her compact, looked in the mirror. Crazy stared back. Black lines like soot across her face. Crimson lipstick on her teeth, chin. Cheeks. Her perfect hair unpinned and sticking straight up. But it was her eyes that finished the job. Blood red, but more than that, there was a new, empty terror spreading from the center. Her eyes had disappeared and these new dead things had emerged. The old man handed her a handkerchief. She silently thanked him and began to wipe her face with shaking hands.