Cynthia Bond - Ruby

“How to use they lust to please us—!”

“—so we can take—”

“—take they power back.”

“Yes, my Brothers! Take it back! And what Make They Power Stronger!?”

Obeah, the man who had poured the powder around the circle, answered. “The blood make it so.” Otha didn’t notice until he spoke that the man had a butcher knife. That he was standing over the calf.

The Reverend said, his voice as flat as death, “Them gals is for y’all to do with as you please. Them that paid go first.”

Otha saw one of the girls run and try to break out of the circle, only to be grabbed hard and thrown back with the others, so she crumpled her body and stood still. One of the city men pulled her towards him and held her possessively, arms crossed over her chest.

“But this one …” Her husband gently took hold of Ruby. He held her face and gave her a smile. “This one belong to me. Ain’t nobody else touch her. She a prize heifer, worth a-plenty. We send her out where she collect the White man’s power and bring it back to me so’s I can lead y’all.”

The drums began. The girls were all crying, sobbing uncontrollably. Ruby looked glazed and accepting.

Otha heard a sound, a high careening cry, she looked and saw that the knife had been plunged into the calf’s neck by Obeah. Its legs bucking, writhing, blood spurting on the white sheet.

She jumped, so that the branch broke that she rested upon. The Reverend peered in her direction and searched the dark of the woods. Otha watched little Ruby do the same. In a split second the child’s eyes saw her. The Reverend took a step towards the woods, and Otha tasted bile in the back of her throat. She watched the girl Ruby take her husband’s hand and turn him away from her. She saw her husband’s face twist into a jagged grin as he called out to the men. “Now don’t break ’em y’all! They for training! We gots to keep them whole!”

Penter Rankin ran up and threw an ale barrel full of white powder into the pit fire and the flames turned bright blue and green. A wall of blue smoke filled the clearing. It rolled so high and thick it seemed to cover the sky, so that Otha could only see shapes and bits and pieces of men and girls. Arms pulled, dragged off. Pants … legs running. Screams. Screams of the children. The dying heifer calf moaning. Pain. Red on one face. A child’s cheek red. A man’s hands.

Otha was frozen. She wanted to run. Wanted to tell. But who would she tell? Where would she — where would she??? But she waited because, maybe, maybe one day she could tell God. He wasn’t listening now … But later, when the blue smoke was gone. When he could see into the fire. See what they were doing. She would tell the Father so he could set it straight.

Then, then she couldn’t wait — Otha lifted to go, to run, towards or away she did not know, but a hand slapped over her mouth. Another over her eyes. She fought, fought like life was a treasure that she would die to protect. Another set of hands held her down now. She tried to bite, and scream, she kicked into the hands holding her legs. She heard another scream pealing through the trees, a child was screaming louder, louder still. She managed to lift up, against the weight of hands — bodies. Someone punched her hard on the back of her head and she fell forward. In a second, a shock jerked through her, blocking all transmission, so that a jangle of images cut through her. She came to — minutes? hours? later, jerking on the dumb earth. They were still around her. Her hands were moving, moving against the carpet of dry needles, eating at the earth with her hands. Another jolt shot through her and scrambled the last of her reason. Time stopped and crushed in on itself, too too much for her tender spirit to fathom. Otha was shut down, and passed into unconsciousness.

She awoke the next morning while the sky was still gray. The sun was miles from the horizon. She leapt up and hit her shin against the log, reminding her of where she was. She had soiled herself. There were coals burning where the fire had been. They had — the men. The back of her head ached. They had — had someone hit her? They? Who? Something tilted inside her. She fell against the log. It was as if a scale had been tipped in the night. Something had happened, but she scratched in the ashes of her mind and could not remember a thing. Had there been a fire? Who stood before it? She had followed her husband? Or had she run from him? Little webs stretched before her eyes with spiders that devoured every thought before it could surface. Nothing remained of the night before so she walked in the dim gray pale of morning through the forest path; her reason snagged on a tree branch. She felt something tickling her thighs and saw that her hands were lacing again. She thought to stop them but they persisted against all signals to stop. So she walked home, opened her door. She scrubbed her privates with a soaped face cloth and climbed into her bed beside the Reverend, sleeping like death.

Easter morning found her awake under the three-star quilt she had made three falls ago, hands furious, her husband snoring beside her. She leapt out of bed and fell down again. Balance lost, the floor slanted until she slanted her head to meet the new angle and was able to walk that way. She put on her robe and fixed breakfast, glad to have something to occupy her hands; holding a spatula and flipping pancakes proved manageable. Keeping them busy was best so she cleaned while the household prepared for Easter Sunday. Otha looked at her husband and felt sick but she could not place where this feeling had been born. He chewed and swallowed and pulled back his chair and put on his hat. He always went early so she found the tail of a voice in her throat and croaked out, “Good day.” He glared at her, but there was nothing unusual about that. She swept and scrubbed and told Ephram and Celia to go on without her, that she had plenty much to see to before the picnic. Ephram kept asking her what was wrong, what was wrong, until she was sharp with him and told him to go to service. Celia gave her her father’s glare. Long a disappointment to her fourteen-year-old daughter, this was nothing new either. Once they walked away, what was left of Otha died right there on the kitchen floor. She felt all that was familiar: the heart that beat for her children; the morning quiet of her garden; even the ever-present low note of sorrow that ran through her marriage; the lavender scent of her mother; her daddy … every memory, every bit of her retreating, retracting. She burrowed like a parasite into little pockets in her body, then she barricaded them from the inside, until there was nothing, until all that she had been ceased to be.

Some new thing emerged that thought to lift her form and walk her into the bedroom. This new thing took off her robe and proceeded to get dressed. It tied her shoes and put on her hat. It decided that it would be best, if she could not stop her hands from lacing, to carry the lacing tat and pretend to work on it whenever someone glanced in her direction. This new being never considered not walking to the picnic because it lived under the sway of the Reverend’s moods. He would already be livid that she had not come to the church. Why had she not come to the church? No, the floor had had to be cleaned and the breakfast dishes washed and so she couldn’t go but she had wanted to, she would tell the Reverend when she saw him. She would explain to him very clearly, very slowly, so that she would make sure she was saying the words correctly because something was tilting her thoughts as well, mixing up the correct sequence. She was planning exactly what she would say as she walked over the hill, which is why the first scream was such a surprise. A little bug of memory collided with the web of her mind again. A child somewhere was screaming bloody murder, but it was devoured just as the Reverend punched her in the face.