Cynthia Bond: Ruby

Ma Tante lit a corncob pipe, lowering her lids as she puffed. Eyes closed she added. “And tell the méchants to sit down. Standing make me nervous.”

Ephram and Ruby quickly sat at the table, facing Ma Tante, cold and damp. Maggie lit candles and fed the stove until the room was aglow. As the dark woman smoked, Ephram snuck looks at her. She was so black she was almost blue. He’d heard his father say that she was the Devil’s midwife and stitched evil into night’s coattails. The Reverend had preached for his congregation to stay away. Still, everyone in Liberty knew about Ma Tante. Her late night visits into the piney woods to forage for animal bones and secret plants. Her trips to the graveyard. Her penchant for pulled baby teeth.

Ephram had heard she was born in a place called Jamaica, but that she had moved with her people to Louisiana when she was five, into a community where every tongue was thick with French Creole. She had left there at twelve to begin her “ministry.” No one in Liberty admitted to following her, but Christian or not, folks lived their lives according to a set of rules nobody spoke out loud but everybody understood. Never hanging panties on a clothesline, lest someone steal them for hexing. Be ever watchful for red powder in your shoes or crossing your path. Never borrow or lend salt. Good church women with straying husbands knocked at her gate after prayer circle. Sisters and missionaries came with dollar bills folded in their bra straps. Came with clippings of their fathers’ hair, their husbands’ fingernails, a placenta from a stillbirth folded in newspaper. Came with awe, trepidation and hope. And once there, Ephram had been told, Ma Tante would glare at them with her yellow eyes and smoke her mustard pipe. Those who came without money would be sent away. Still others with money were turned away if they had a bad, what she called, “odeur spirituelle.” The rest she kept, inspecting their palms, the soles of their feet and ears. She would look at their tongues and the whites of their eyes. Then she would give them a colored powder, potion or gris-gris. For stirring into coffee, for boiling up with tea leaves, for folding into egg whites with a touch of sugar and molasses, for leaving out at suppertime sprinkled onto a full plate, for hiding under the bottom porch step, for sleeping under a pillow. For dusting the house only to sweep it out again.

Ephram had heard how she had told a man, “If you go home now you be dead in three hours.” Sure enough the foolish man got hungry for supper and walked the fifteen minutes it took him to get home. Upon arriving, his wife shot him in the thigh for cheating. It took him exactly two hours and forty-five minutes to bleed to death while his wife mended and pressed his good suit for his upcoming funeral. There were many such stories told throughout the piney woods. Ephram wondered if they were all true. Especially about Ma Tante and the story Gubber had told him about the black bird, and the horrible thing the conjure woman was said to have done.

Ma Tante suddenly opened her eyes. “Don’t stahr at me boy. I bite.” Then, “Come heah.” Her eyes caught him, like a hook through a fish’s gills. He wobbled over.

“Your name.”

“E-Ephram Jennings.”

Ma Tante’s eyes gentled. “Ah. Otha’s boy.”

“Yes’m.”

“You got her eyes.”

Ephram let his head drop, so Ma Tante picked it back up again, his chin resting in the crook of her hand.

“Hope you ain’t got her luck.” Ephram wanted to run out of the room, but something in the midnight face held him. She touched the back of his head, her fingernails scraping softly along his neck.

“You ain’t nothing but a wishbone. See there?” She touched the base of his skull — tapped at a small bump. “That say you lives on wishes.”

She pressed into the nape. “Thing ’bout wishbones? They got to snap in two to give up they wish. And somebody always lose. But still …”

Ephram felt his heart quicken as she stared hard into him. Little dots of perspiration bloomed along his forehead and temple as she twisted her face into his. Then Ma Tante turned away, shook her head, sucked at her teeth and said, “Girl, where my tea?”

Maggie clanged and fussed by the stove. “Almost, Ma’am.”

Ephram remained beside Ma Tante.

She suddenly turned upon him almost snarling, “Why you standing there?”

He cleared his throat. “I — thought you wasn’t through talkin’ Ma’am.”

“You got money?” she snapped.

“No’m.”

“Well come back when you do. I done give you what you git for free. You pay if you want more.”

Ephram stood still. His ears hot with shame.

“You want tea?” Ma Tante asked him.

Ephram shook his head no.

“What you say?”

“No’m.”

“Margaret, fix him some. And the girl too.”

Ephram slipped back to his seat and tried not to look too hard at anything. Maggie slid a bowl of hot tea across to him. He followed the steam up and spied an entire wall of the hut. Besides the knives it was stocked with shelves upon shelves of mason jars, some filled with small bones, others with brightly colored powders. There were dried frog legs, snake rattles, apple cores, fuzzy rabbits’ feet. Many jars were stuffed with herbs and roots. One seemed to be full of children’s teeth, a huge glass urn was full of black raven or crow feathers, another with bits of what looked like gristle.

An ember popped in the oven. Ephram let a shiver take hold of his spine. He knew he had to leave, but how to maneuver Ruby out of this place? Maggie handed him a steaming bowl of tea for the girl. The smell was strong, different than his. He felt a twang of concern as he passed it to Ruby, but was soothed by the sweet of her smile as she took the cup.

RUBY SMILED at the chocolate boy as he handed her the cup. She liked the way he grinned all droopy when she did. She smelled the hot tea. It was as black dark as the old lady. The left side of her dress, closest to the stove, was warming against her skin, but her shoes were squishy. She softly pried them off with her toes. She sipped and saw the boy Ephram frown, and her Maggie give Ma Tante a nervous look. Ruby tried to trace everything with her eyes so she could tell her friend Tanny later on.

Maggie pointed scared-like, “And that there’s Ruby Bell, the one I tole you ’bout.”

“I see.” Ma Tante breathed out a curl of smoke.

Ruby looked first to the left. Then the right. Then settled, like a divining rod, into the woman’s face.

Ma Tante hissed at her, “Drink.”

Ruby blew across the lake of tea, then took a big sip. It was bitter. Still she took more. When the cup was almost drained Ma Tante reached over, took it and studied its well. Her eyes like coal set in butter.

“You got company.” Was what she said.

Ruby felt her breath coming in shallow bursts.

“You was born with a glaze over you face. Come out the womb with the white gel what let you see into the gray world. Yes?”

Ruby just barely nodded in agreement.

Ma Tante reached out and grabbed Ruby’s right hand. She turned over her palm and pointed. “You got da mystic star. There.” She took her other hand. “There too. Lord child you ain’t nothing but a doorway. How many haints you count at your heels?”

Ruby stopped dead. It was the first time anyone had seen. It meant she couldn’t pretend it was a game anymore, or a piece of a bad dream. Finally she answered, “Three.”

“Your count be off. And more on the way.”

Maggie and Ephram stayed still, but Ruby began trembling from somewhere near her heart.

Ma Tante’s voice quivered deep and quiet. “Child, they ride you like a chariot ride a horse.” She spit like popping grease into the girl’s hand. Ruby felt frozen in place. Ephram pushed his seat back and stood. Maggie stayed strangely quiet.