Cynthia Bond - Ruby

But he hadn’t needed to tell her. Ruby already knew. Already knew she was a whore. A nigger whore who could make $3.25 in tips in a single night.

RUBY KNEW who she was as she stepped out of the tub of cool water, fingers puckered, body shivering. She realized that she had somehow forgotten that fact, playing house at 275 East Twelfth, looking for a mother who knew well enough to leave trouble early. Ruby wouldn’t forget it again.

She reached into the draining tub and pulled out the coin, then dried herself and climbed into bed. Abby curled at the far end of it. Ruby knew Abby had cried herself to sleep, but Ruby didn’t cry. Evil things seldom do.

One week later, Ruby traded up, almost fucking a dyke of better means on the Page Three dance floor as Abby watched. Abby ran up and slapped Ruby hard. Ruby skidded across the floor into a table leg. Stood up, leaned back on the bar and dabbed the blood from her mouth. She smoked a cigarette without coughing as the two women fought. Hard. As they tumbled out bloody into the street. Outside, Ruby glimpsed a tall redhead walking away from the commotion, a unique grace in her step. Ruby didn’t bother to turn her head.

Ruby blinked and in an instant the past eleven years washed down her cheeks. Ephram led her back into the house and sat her on the edge of the bed. The day was slipping into evening. She looked at where she had lived for over a decade. Late. When, she wondered, had it become so late? New York, Liberty, the slide into hellfire. All forty-two years broke across her body, knocking her into a waiting chair.

She managed to push words out of her mouth, “What year is this?”

He didn’t skip a beat. “Nineteen seventy-four.”

She had wasted eleven years walking the red roads of Liberty. Without her noticing, age had stolen into her joints, under the ash of her skin. She sat quite bare before Ephram, looking into his soft, sad eyes.

“Nineteen sixty-three …”

Ruby shook her head. She looked down at her hands and barely whispering said: “I ain’t the woman I once was.”

He smiled. “You plenty woman Ruby, don’t you never think different.”

She looked off towards the window.

Ephram took her hand, “But I’ll tell you what. I’m most interested in the woman you have yet to be.”

Gratitude flooded through her limbs. For the first time in eleven years, that future woman held interest for her as well. The room was almost copper in the afternoon sun. Ephram found her hand and held it soft in her lap. Something like a small window opened in her throat and the first tears began to pour down her cheeks.

Neither she nor Ephram heard the first knock on the door, nor the second. When the windows started rattling and a shrill voice started calling, “Yooo-hooo. Yooooo-hoooo … anybody home?” Ruby and Ephram broke out of the spell that had surrounded them. She heard a small crash and a yelp.

Ruby found the weight of her legs, got up, opened her door and stepped out onto the porch, coming face-to-face with Supra Rankin, Righteous Polk, Moss Renfolk’s wife, Tressie, and Supra’s daughter, Verde, pulling herself out of the vines, sputtering, “Damn steps.” Ruby fell back and inadvertently closed the door behind her. They seemed to loom over her, bearing deluxe Tupperware containers of potato salad, blackberry cobbler, cod peas and smothered chicken, a look of grim determination on each of their faces.

Supra was a wide, square woman with a matching wide, square bosom. She wore a simple green dress. Her hair, silver with generous streaks of taupe, was pulled so tight it lifted the corners of her eyes. She stood a half-inch above five feet, which caused folks to joke that if they didn’t know any better, they’d doubt that she was the Rankin boys’ mama. Her comfortable brown shoes were covered in dust.

The women descended upon Ruby like chicks on a handful of corn.

Ruby turned and ran into the closed door. She felt as if the house had punched her. The women spun her about.

Ephram called from behind the closed door, “Ruby? You all right?”

“Child, how you keeping yourself?” Supra started, her hands petting Ruby along her shoulders until Ruby felt a snarl at the base of her gut.

“Yes, how you been making out?” Righteous twilled in a remarkably high voice.

Ephram tried the door but the women pressed against it.

Tressie Renfolk, a girl-faced matron, kept her lips in a tight line and awkwardly handed the potato salad to Ruby. “We brung this from the Women’s Auxiliary.”

Righteous gentled the thing. “Was already cookin’ aplenty what with Junie Rankin’s wake tonight, so we figured we bring some on over to you.”

Verde Rankin added, “This too.” She thrust a worn Bible into Ruby’s hands.

Righteous produced her Bible from her purse. “Figured we might do a little study while we’re here, if that’s all right with you.”

Ephram pushed against the door until they all peeled away. He took Ruby’s hand: “What y’all want here?”

All four women, as if on cue, slit their eyes at the sight of him. Supra put her arm around Ruby and stepped past Ephram as if he were not there. These four women had petted and praised Ephram since he was a child. He had stood, in his forty-five years, as a perfect example of Christian manhood. Ephram felt their cold shoulder like ice cream on a cavity.

As the women crossed the threshold, they stopped and took in the state of the house. A broom lay by a bucket, black with God knew what. Scraps of filth still affixed themselves to the floors. Rags lay used, every inch the color of tar.

Righteous let out a “Lord have mercy!” Verde pulled out her handkerchief and held it tight to her nose and mouth.

Supra mumbled a prayer against the demon filth. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

She looked at Ruby, distracted, the Bible and salad tilting in her bone arms. “Child, we been meaning to come out, check to see how you doing. See you surely in need of ministering.”

Righteous fell in step on Ruby’s left flank. “Yes we sho’ been meaning to do that. How are you doing girl?”

Verde looked about the house. “I see you been doing some cleaning.”

Ruby’s lip was twitching, her eyes full and wild. Her body began to shake then, began to topple. Supra caught her before she slipped to the ground.

Ephram took Ruby’s elbow, eased her away from Supra and said, “I’d like to thank you ladies for stoppin’ by today to visit with Ruby but as y’all can see she awfully busy—”

Supra shot back under her breath, “You already done enough busy-making last night, ain’t you?”

Tressie pelted him with disgust. “We’ll take it from here, Ephram.”

Righteous spit out softly, “Ain’t you got a home to go to?”

The shame caught Ephram by surprise and made his tongue grow thick in his throat.

Then Supra set Ruby’s potato salad down on the sideboard. The other women followed suit. She took Ruby’s hands in her own and started, “Ruby, I knew your mama and I called your grandmama my friend so I hope you know I’m speaking from my heart when I say this. The Devil got ahold of you and he’s just like a tar baby, anyplace you touch him he stick, and if you tries to unloose him with your own hand you just gonna get more twisted and stuck.”

“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.”