A Virtuous Ruby (11 page)

“What?” Agnes’s face was puzzled and Adam could not help but admire Ruby. There were other ways of getting this information, without getting Bob into trouble. “What she talking about?”

“Oh come on, Agnes. This here’s men’s business,”

Bob had not said the right thing, because Agnes puffed up. The woman who he had thought of as having a shy and cowardly countenance changed all of a sudden.

“I think we better be going.” Adam stood from the hewn pine table to leave.

“This my business too, if it involve letting Mary Winslow know she don’t run our business. She sending folk up in here all the time, all hours, thinking she owns you like it’s slavery times again. Well, it ain’t.” Agnes folded her arms and faced the still-seated Ruby. “What you want to know?”

Ruby faced Bob and gazed straight into his eyes, unafraid. “Did you give her the flyer?”

“No.”

“Who did then?” Adam asked, curious to know himself.

“Reverend Dodge.” Bob spit out the two short words. “No more now. Go on home, Ruby Jean. It was nice seeing you, though, Dr. Morson. Thank you for coming and checking on the family.” Bob stood and shook his hand with a firm, sure grip.

Ruby slapped a hand on the rough-hewn wooden table. “I should have known. Sell-out.”

“Reverend Dodge is a minister of God, and you ain’t got no right talking bad about a Christian man.” Bob shook his head. “You got to go on home before my young girls see how you doing.”

Agnes unfolded her arms. “They is a Christian man, and then there is Christian ways. Telling on Ruby ain’t no Christian way. The Reverend, he get on my nerves sometimes.”

Bob’s eyes widened as he looked as his wife. “Girl, what you saying?”

Agnes stood next to Ruby’s chair. “He try to act like he judge and jury over Ruby here when she had the baby. I didn’t like it, not one bit.”

Ruby stood and grasped her hand. “I appreciate it, Agnes. More than you know.”

“Ain’t no sin in having a baby. Especially if you love somebody. But it really ain’t if someone forced it on you.”

Bob was silent. “I don’t know nothing about it.”

“Yeah, I know we in trouble water now, since we talking about Queen Mary again.”

“We had better go.” Adam made a move to the door and Ruby followed him.

“Thank you, Agnes.” Ruby hugged her.

“Bob.” Ruby nodded to him. “We see you at church and for the celebrations on Sunday.”

“Yeah, we see you,” Agnes echoed and waved a little.

“Don’t start nothing you can’t finish, girl. This here community see you,” Bob warned.

Ruby stood before Bob. “I know. And the reason I say what I do is ’cause I see them too.”

Bob patted her shoulder. She and Adam made their way through the thick tall weeds down the road to the car. Adam ducked whenever a chigger came close to him. Ruby’s mood shifted to the quiet as they climbed back into the car, and he started the machine.

“What are you thinking about?” Adam climbed in next to her and began the slow drive out of the thicket.

“What reason could Dodge have of telling on me to Mary Winslow?” Ruby’s naiveté startled him.

“Revenge. He wants you for himself and can’t have you. So he’s doing his best to ruin your life. You need to stay as far away from him as possible.” Ruby nodded her head and seemed thoughtful on the ride back.

The bad feeling in the pit of his stomach was not a bellyache. How much of what he said had she taken in? She needed protection from the forces at work against her, and from Dodge.

What was stopping him from providing the protection this admirable young woman clearly needed from him?

Rejection.

He knew that embracing him would be embracing the enemy—he was Paul Winslow’s son, after all. And David’s half-brother. Taking up with him would practically wed her to her attacker.

She might not like that.

But he was bonded to her, as if they were drawn together by an invisible force. Even the positive way they had begun to regard each other was still so new, he was afraid to take a chance on its permanence.

His training in science guided him in his work, as well as in his emotions. He was a scientist and he would proceed with caution. However, when he pulled up to the front porch of the Bledsoe house, a strange horse nickered at the car, rebelling at the tether holding her to the post. Ruby’s creamy skin went a shade paler beneath her adorable cinnamon-colored freckles. “What is it?”

“Dodge…he’s here to see Mama, I guess, to make my life more miserable.”

Before Adam could stop her, Ruby climbed the front steps and he came behind her, standing in the doorway to overhear Dodge in his pretentious voice. “A woman like her needs a man of God for protection. She need protecting from the community and from herself. She need to atone for what she has done. And the boy need a right firm hand from a man of God to be brought up in the light. I’m here to be of help and service to you.”

“What’s going on here?” Ruby stood in the doorway, not in a reticent posture, but in full attack mode. Adam breathed a sigh of relief, glad at her show of spirit.

Lona wiped her hands on her apron as she sat as the family all were sitting at the front room table, eating peach cobbler and drinking coffee. Dodge had the biggest helping of all and scraped the plate clean with his fork picking up every drop. At least Mags wouldn’t have to wash the plate.

Lona spoke up. “Reverend Dodge is here, Ruby. He has an offer to make things right for you.”

“Right for me?”

For some reason Adam couldn’t fathom, his heart started to beat faster, both at the Reverend’s words and how Lona and John cowed in fear. Adam didn’t like they had to be afraid in the comfort of their own home, but he guessed these matters depended little. Most Negro people had little control over their own lives.

“Reverend Dodge has come to offer for you, Ruby. He wants to marry you.” Lona’s usually harsh register softened as she spoke to her oldest daughter.

His heart shattered in a thousand little pieces.

Chapter Ten

So her sisters’ teasing was true. Dodge did have feelings for her—why would he want to marry her otherwise? What could she possibly say?
Think, Ruby.
Then something occurred to her. “Oh, Reverend,” she said with more enthusiasm than she thought she could ever gather at such a prospect. “I’m a sinner. How could someone like you be married to someone like me? I could never be a preacher’s wife. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of what you do.”

Dodge ran a thoughtful hand over his mouth. “Well now, Ruby Jean. I’ve given it some thought. I suspect the people here in Winslow know your past. But we’ve forgiven you. And, as I travel, other churches will want my services. They’ll have no reason to know about your disgraceful actions.”

Adam Morson fairly bristled next to her, but she couldn’t react just now. She had to think—think—think of a way to hold this man off. Dodge held out his plate toward the pan of cobbler. Lona obliged him with another big flaky piece. Ruby tried to keep her face straight as he picked up his fork and went to work on the cobbler as if his life depended on it.

He said, “People will see us, you, me, your child and they will take us as a Christian family. In time, we’ll have our own. So it’ll be all right.”

“Umm.” Ruby paused. She heard Solomon cry.
Thank you, God.
“I have to go and get him.”

Her mother gave her a distressed look out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t know what Lona was thinking of now—should she marry Dodge or not? Ruby could sense her mother didn’t like him either, but Lona would never speak against a man of God. Lona went along with his dictate when he made it purposefully uncomfortable for her to attend church at First Water. And she thought it was because she had sinned.

Now, she understood it was because he was angry she had been with someone else in what he considered a sinful way, and Solomon was evidence of her sin. She went in and picked up Solomon, who smiled at her. She peeked into the back of his diaper and smelled him. Nothing wrong there. “Thank you for coming to my rescue, you old spoiled thing you.” She kissed his little forehead.

Solomon gurgled and cooed while the rest of her family was out in the big front room, talking low, making plans for her life. Adam stood in the front door, blocking the daylight out with his tall and manly frame. He appeared upset, with both hands on his hips looking off into space. What was he thinking of at this latest turn of events? Could he help her in some way?

Ruby shook her head at the thought. How nice it would be if some great knight had swept down into her life out of Michigan and Tennessee to help her out. All she got was Dodge. Life didn’t work out that way. She had to help herself out of this mess.

She smoothed Solomon’s little dress down and placed him back in the cradle. She stood from the bed and smoothed down her skirt.

“Ah, here is Sister Ruby again.” Ruby almost bristled as the Reverend used the Sister appellation, seemingly accepting her back into the body of Christ. “Baby okay?”

As if you really cared. You didn’t even come back to pray for him when he was really sick.
“He just wanted to say hello.”

John smiled, but Dodge frowned at the prospect. “He can’t always get his way now. He got to learn he can’t get you to do whatever for him. Spare the rod, spoil the child. He got to know.”

“Amen,” Lona intoned.

“Actually, he is a very good baby,” Adam Morson said. “One of the finest specimens I’ve ever seen.”

Dodge shifted in his seat. “He’s a looker alright. He look like his mama.”

Ruby cringed inside. “Thank you, Reverend.”

“You’re right welcome.” He stood and towered over her, smelling of bergamot oil and hair grease, gripping his hat. “I give him a good home. I make him a fine Christian daddy.”

“Solomon need that. A daddy,” Lona voice was low, so low only Ruby heard her, and the words went straight to her heart in slender shards.

Ruby forced herself to look at the Reverend and his round face peered at her in hope. “I never expected to be on the receiving end of such a proposal. I don’t know what to say to it, sir. I wonder if I might have some time to consider what you say.”

He clapped a hand on her shoulder as if he were a good buddy of hers. “I see what you are saying, Sister Ruby. And it is wise. I’ll give you some time—maybe at the Forth of July picnic?”

Three days away. Ruby had to stop herself from breathing out a sigh of relief. She could think of
something
by then. “Yes, I could give you an answer then.”

He edged to the door. “I’ll leave you all, then.” He put his hat on his head and gave a special tip to Adam as he left. What was that all about? She didn’t have time to dwell on it or think about it. A proposal was too much to consider. She hurried back into the room where Solomon was and wished there was a door to close.

In the corner of the room, she just slid down and sat there frozen, feeling helpless, as if a big hand had closed over her and cut off her circulation. How would she ever consider marrying the very man who had made her feel as if she had done something bad?

She was not bad, nor was Solomon, and she would never feel any different. The problem was, if she said no to Dodge, then he would see to it her life in Winslow or anywhere else with him, was intolerable. Because of Dodge, she wouldn’t be able to stay in Winslow. It wasn’t a question of if she would leave her hometown, but when, how and with whom.

All of the ideas from her Uncle Arlo about making Winslow better were just a beautiful pipe dream.

Adam stood in the doorway. His chiseled features were slightly flushed and reddened. His eyes held a tightness that continued to his lips, as if he wanted to say something, but he stopped himself. She wished he hadn’t, because his lips, as she could see them from sitting in the room, were full, lush and beautiful. Clearly, people saw what they wanted to. Adam might be as pale as pine, but he had the lips of a Negro man. What would it be like to kiss them? A rush of crimson warmth came to her face. By his downcast look, she could tell he was embarrassed to be there too.

“Your mother held dinner. She has plates for us.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Adam cleared his throat and she could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down and wondered what it would be like if she reached up to trace her fingers over it. “I’m not either, but we could study afterward. If you like.”

Would Dodge let her continue to study for school if she married him? She could never imagine such a thing. Studying was an opportunity to spend some time with Adam, a prospect which would certainly stop if she had to go off with—she swallowed—another man.

“Yes. Thank you.” Ruby stood and went out to the large front room, where her sisters clustered in the kitchen, trying to act as if they were not listening in on everything. In her desire to spend time with Adam, she had not thought of Lona wanting to say something to her. Her mother emerged in the doorway.

“Dr. Morson,” Lona said, “I would like a word with Ruby.”

“I’ll go get the study guides.” Adam gave her an encouraging look as he left the room.

“Yes?”

“What you going to tell the Reverend?”

“I don’t know.”

“What you mean, you don’t know?”

“She said she don’t know,” John echoed as he emerged in the doorway next to Lona. He folded his arms. “I believe her.”

Lona turned on him fiercely. “I’m talking to Ruby Jean. She think she have a decision to make, but it’s made for her.”

Lona whipped around to her and came to where Ruby stood. “You ain’t going to wait until no picnic. You’re going to tell him tomorrow you say yes. It can be announced in church on Sunday before that picnic. Me and Mags will make a special cake in celebration.”

Was the ground ready to swallow her if she fainted? She hoped so, and she was not the fainting kind. “I can’t give up my life to that man.”

“You can and you will. Being married to a man of God will cloak your shame.”

“He’ll torture me all the time for it. Even Solomon. You want your grandson to be tortured?”

John stood and shook his head. “No indeed. Ruby, you take your time deciding. Do what feel right.”

“What if I say she don’t have no place to live if she say no?”

John shook his head. “This here is my house when we come to to Winslow to live. I say she stay.”

“She ain’t even yours, John.”

Stars burst in front of Ruby’s eyes and pain as her mother’s words entered her ears.

Every cell in her body was still.

Was her head going to explode?

Lona covered her mouth as if the action would take her words back. John sat down on their bed, all of the wind taken from his sails.

“What are you talking about? What’re you saying?”

Lona sat down on the bed next to John too, covering her face with her apron, wailing. John slipped an arm about Lona’s shaking shoulders and he drew closer to her.

Somehow, she had always known.

Not because of her too-light skin which was nowhere near an amalgamation of her medium-brown mother and John, who was a deep rich mahogany color.

No, it was always the way Lona was at arms length with her. She had been even more sure of it when Solomon had come.

Her mother always treated her as an embarrassment. Ruby thought it was because of how she had gone around causing trouble. But now, she understood, it came from something much deeper. The whispers behind her back in school, at church, they all made sense now.

There were tears at the corner of John’s eyes, and seeing his pain made Ruby feel for him, far more than her mother’s sobs. “It’s true, Ruby. I’m not your birth daddy. But you know I love you like you my own.”

“I know, Daddy. Thank you.”

Lona took the apron away and her tear-stained face was a rebuke to Ruby. “You got to marry him, so it don’t happen for Solomon. He got to have a daddy to take the shame away. Just like I did for you.”

Ruby stood in the corner and pushed aside the curtain to let in a little daylight. She cleared her throat. “So who is my daddy?”

Lona dabbed at her eyes. “I wish I knew.”

That was not the answer Ruby was expecting to hear.

Not at all.

Not the way Lona put herself forward as a pillar of the community.

“What you mean you don’t know?”

“I was fifteen. I was coming home from a dance with John. We,” Lona looked over at him, “We were in the courting buggy and it got taken over, by some men.”

John waved and fanned his face. “They dragged me out of the buggy and I…I couldn’t save her.”

“I know they was men of the community. I couldn’t recognize their voices. It was four or five of them. They all beat me down and had their way with me. I tried to fight them off, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

The blood roared in Ruby’s ears.

Before this moment, she had thought everything she had endured was terribly bad and awful.

Now she knew there was far, far worse in the world.

John took up the tale. “And they knock me out so I couldn’t protect her. We was so ashamed of what happened. I had been saving my money, but I took what I had and we moved to the next state as soon as we could get married, way before you were born. When I saw you, I knew you were a child of God. I loved you, and I was your daddy.”

“And,” Lona said, through her tears, “when you came in here with your clothes all torn up, I knew what happened to you. I couldn’t protect you. It was like it happened all over again.”

Ruby couldn’t help it, tears started to slip unbidden down her cheeks. She didn’t want to remember that night. She had wept in her mother’s lap. She just remembered how quickly Lona heated water for a bath. “Wash it away,” she kept saying over and over. “Wash it all away.” And she had. Or she thought she had.

“So we come here,” John folded and unfolded his hands slowly. “We come to get away from them terrible men.”

“So the way they scared you off worked.” Ruby kept her voice flat, a pure monotone.

“It sure did.” Lona’s voice was equally flat. “Do you think we were fools enough to stay? We got the message.” She stood up quickly and smoothed her apron down. “Sometimes, I wish you would as well.”

“What message?”

“Stop causing trouble, Ruby. Marry him.”

“I don’t want to,” Ruby wailed.

“See there. She don’t want to. That’s enough.” John stood. “I’m going to bed.” He started to turn down the covers.

Lona came and stood next to Ruby. Ruby was almost as tall as her mother, but now the older woman’s strength and power towered over her. “I done told you what to do. You got to do something for this here family for your sake, for your son, and your sisters. Now.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Marry him,” Lona said, one more time then she and John went to the front porch, arms around each other, not wanting to talk to her anymore.

Adam came into the large front room holding two hot plates with towels in his hand and settled them on the wooden table. He slid a plate toward her and Ruby looked down at the pork chops, sweet potatoes and greens. Her stomach turned over, just like her world did.

He pushed a glass of milk toward her. “You’ve got to keep your strength up, for whatever decision you make for yourself.”

“There is no decision to make,” Ruby’s back faced the plate. “I could never marry a man I don’t love.”

“I see.”

“My problem is how am I going to tell him without him feeling rejected? I can’t afford to have him feel as if I’ve done him a great wrong somehow. I have to get him to see I’m not worthy of this ‘honor.’” She sighed. “I just wish I could go on away.”

“My previous offer still stands, Ruby.” Adam put down his pork chop. His Winslow gray eyes were very earnest and sincere. She loved how handsome he was in his glasses. In her mind’s eye, they were standing in front of some other minister, with him holding Solomon. The fantasy made her feel good all over.

For just one second.

But she could not ruin his life. It would not be fair.

“Thank you, but I got to figure this out for myself. I’m not sure leaving Winslow is the answer.”

There was silence between them and she spoke again.