Cynthia Bond: Ruby

THE ENTIRE congregation stood in white at the southern shore of Marion Lake. The sound of Verde Rankin bludgeoning the hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” filled the air. Ephram Jennings stood, the fourth in line, behind Chauncy’s drunken uncle, Mandy Petty’s seven-month-old son and a woman from Nacogdoches. Ephram was to be the last and final baptism of the day.

The choir blended in at the chorus, “I sing because I’m happy! I sing because I’m free!” One or two angels’ voices rising above the pool of wispy notes of old women and the booming off-key singers cramming every note into God’s beleaguered ear. Verde was only one. Moss Percy’s wife, Clara, was another. Women for whom tone-deaf and well-meaning family members had mistaken volume for talent and praised them thusly, and so both Verde and Clara sang even louder, each trying to top the other.

Ephram did not look at them. He kept his eyes on his bare feet, stoic and silent. A hangnail on his left baby toe was red and swollen. He wondered what the muck at the bottom of the lake would do to it.

When Celia had first suggested, over pork chops, grits and scrambled eggs, that Ephram be reborn through baptism, he had said no. But she had nagged so, every day another drop, until, to spare himself years of erosion he had complied.

He was to be the slow-cooked pork roast of the evening. The rest were only yams and corn and okra. Chauncy’s uncle was the Tabasco sauce.

Ephram could not help but think of Ruby. She entered him like a taste at the back of his throat — the memory of his mama’s peach cobbler. Now, Ruby would be only a yellowed recipe to be hidden away, slipped into his shirt pocket. He would unfold her on the way to work or when he was sitting on his bed alone.

A few pines clung to the banks of the lake, dipping their branches into the murky green. Reeds rose and clustered as the sun dipped and painted the world a twilight blue. Ephram took in the whole of life around him, the hush of the forest, the slant of the sun hiding behind the pines. It was as if a banquet lay before him, but it became sawdust in his mouth.

The Pastor entered the water and walked until it rose to his thighs. He spoke in a rich, low tone, stumbling only here and there. Chauncy’s uncle, all in white, was the first.

“B-Brothers and Sisters, Matthew chapter twenty-eight, verses nineteen to twenty, say: ‘G-g-go ye therefore, and teach all nations, b-b-aptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: T-t-t-teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ Amen.”

Then he took the man and dunked him backwards in the water. The man came up sputtering and coughing, his hand high in the air, followed by general hallelujahs, and made his way to the shore.

Ephram straightened the baptismal robe he wore over a white cotton T-shirt and shorts. He felt naked each time the wind blew the light fabric against his body. Ephram imagined the discomfort of rising from the water in soaked garments, all but transparent, as he walked back to the shore. He noted that the congregation was always a bit richer with husbands and grandfathers when an attractive church sister was set for baptism.

The third acolyte inspired such attention. Her white gown was flowing as some of the gentlemen from the congregation crowded closer. Her hair was newly pressed. Ephram imagined, knowing the workings of woman’s hair, a good three hours’ worth. She seemed to have felt it was a worthwhile sacrifice in the face of eternal salvation.

Celia stood proudly at the forefront of the congregation. Her Church Mother sash satin white with glittered letters. Her shining Page Boy wig, and crisp white jacket and suit with tiny false pearls along the collar. Ephram could see that she had never been happier in her life.

Ephram felt something like steel in his belly as his turn approached, a firm anger churning, for to do this thing, to take the walk to Marion Lake Celia had bade him take, Ephram had had to leave pieces of himself along the open road. Celia, plump and grinning since he arrived home, seemed to have collected them in her apron.

Verde was about to start another hymn when K.O.’s wife, Evelyn, had the eternal mercy to push out in front. She began, “Oh Happy Day …”

The choir gently echoed, “Oh Happy Day …”

Next the preacher sprinkled lake water over the baby and recited,

“Mark chapter one, verses four and five: ‘John d-d-did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the b-b-baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unt-t-t-o him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.’ ”

“Oh Happy Day …” Evelyn’s voice sailed through the air, “When Jesus washed …”

Softly behind her, “Oh when he washed …”

“He washed my sins away …”

A familiar gush washed through Ephram. He had stood on these banks his entire life, his papa’s voice thundering across the water, his real mama standing to his left, her hand gentle upon his shoulder, so close her perfume, sweet and lemony, seemed to settle on his clothes. He had fallen to his knees and the hands of the congregation had stretched around him when his mama had died. He had passed into the void and felt something holding on to him, holding him tight.

“When Jesus washed …”

“Oh when he washed …”

“He washed my sins away.”

“Oh Happy Day! Oh Happy Day!”

The church sisters, their aroma of Royal Crown hair oil and baby powder, were all he had known. The pride in their smiles. Pride, he knew, that only Black women can have in pointing out a good Black man. Their arms that had held him in esteem for decades.

He had sat in the pews, seasoned with the salt of sweat and tears for forty-five years. But that was not Ruby. It held no wildness, no talking hair and whisper kisses. No magic bolting through the world. But it did not cut him. It did not blind him with pain.

The woman from Nacogdoches stepped onto the shore and fell onto the thin sleeve of sand. She began jerking and speaking in tongues and the whole of the congregation rushed to her, placing their hands upon her body. Ephram passed the time looking at the moving lake. Her salvation could take more than a little while.

Then, Ephram knew that soon it would be his turn to step into the waiting water.

RUBY LAY with her back flat on the ground, the pines stretching high above her. She could still remember, still feel the slick on her body. She could still hear their chanting. Then, her cheek against the forest floor, Ruby realized it was singing. Someone was singing. “Oh Happy Day …” Sailing wisps of cotton. “Oh Happy Day …” The song gliding through tender, new saplings. There was a rumble of hope somewhere in the world. Not here. Here, she had led other children to the pit fire. Here, she had pointed out Otha to the Reverend with a glance and they had caught the woman and done the unthinkable. She had let Mr. Green take the cord from her own neck. She had watched in silence as her friend was murdered. She had allowed all of her spirit children to be taken. Taken and swallowed into the oblivion of the Dyboù.

Her own child had also been taken because Ruby had never fought. Not once, not the whole time she was at Miss Barbara’s.

Ruby knew all that she had done. All that she had allowed. She had blood under her nails, up to her elbow.