A Virtuous Ruby (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ruby couldn’t believe Adam’s proposal. It would mean really leaving her home. Winslow was a childish pipe dream. It was time to put it away. But how, how would she do without the piney woods? The creek? The quiet and loneliness of this beautiful land? She took a deep breath of air and inhaled it. She would never, ever forget this, even as she returned to it.

When she came to the wider part of the brook, closer to the beginnings of town, she startled to see David sitting there, picking apart pine needles and staring into the creek.

Her heart leaped in her throat. Despite the preeminence of her heart, she turned back and tiptoed away, quietly as if she were a deer.

“Ruby!”

Then, she became a deer as she ran.

No.

No more.

She had been caught before. Flashes of that day swept through her mind, coming home after delivering Jacob’s son, relishing in the joy of that family, David seeing her there on the road, offering her a ride on his horse. And she accepted, thinking she would get home faster, sooner before the dark.

Save me, please, save me.

“
Ruby!”

Why didn’t she move faster? Run harder? Had the ravages of childhood compromised her body? No, something else made her feet leaden and weighty, fear.

God will protect me. He will keep me.

But once before, one time sixteen months ago, David and she were on the back of his fine horse, with Ruby using one hand to grab him around his waist, so she didn’t fall off and grabbing onto her birthing bag with the other.

Could David feel her heart thudding? Was her heart thudding as it did now? She had not felt alarmed when David said he was going a different way, because he wanted to show her something.

When they had been friends as children, they spent much of the day tearing through the woods in bare feet and patched-together clothing until her body betrayed her and became something strange and foreign to her.

And after a space of a few years of ignoring her, he noticed her again. Now he was a sophisticated college man coming home on break. She was his old childhood chum, from back when they would hang out together all day long and they didn’t know who was white and who was black.

Or at least she didn’t know.

She didn’t know, until David took her to the vast fields behind the cotton mill and bothered to tell her.

“What you got to show me? You know Mama, she going to worry.”

David helped her down off the horse, and his hands around her waist made her feel grown up. Like a young lady. “Just this way, over here.”

Why was there such grimness in his voice? What was wrong?

“I be glad to help you. But not for long, you know how Mama is, so I got to get back.”

But she wasn’t scared. Not for one minute. This was David, not his father. They used to spend whole afternoons talking about the difference.

David, not his Daddy.

Ruby, not her mother.

They were never going to be like their parents of the same gender.

Except, Ruby was. And she didn’t know it.

“Come here, Ruby.”

“What for?”

Ruby went over to him in the field. “Hey, this is just where the old cisterns were. But your Daddy’s crop is doing fine. That’s good for you all.”

And she lost her voice, because David had taken down his pants and stood there, exposed to her in the warm March day.

At first she wanted to laugh. What was her old chum up to? She had seen him before. They used to go skinny dipping all the time in the creek, didn’t think anything about it. They had to look at each other, just to prove that Ruby was as white as he was. They were both white all over and that satisfied her to know that she was as she thought she was, white.

She lived in some type of sustained workplace, and would stay there until David graduated from school and would come and marry her and sweep her up and take her to live in the big white Winslow house.

That was to be her life. That was her dream.

Now, she was forced to wake up because David stood exposed in the warm March day. And it came to her, in a way she hadn’t understood before, that she was a Negro.

Everyone kept telling her.

And she hadn’t believed it until that moment.

And now, David asked her to do something, vile and terrible.

He might as well have slapped her. And she stood there. But then he did slap her and the sting of it resonated on her face. “Do it.”

Ruby backed away. “Are you okay?” She asked him. What was wrong with him?

He grabbed her wrist and began to twist it in his hand, hard enough to bring Ruby to her knees in the hard red dirt. “Do as I say.”

“I can’t do what you say. I can’t.”

“If you don’t, there’ll be worse.”

“Worse?” Ruby repeated as if she didn’t know what the word meant. Except she didn’t. What was worse than the filthy thing he wanted her to do to him? What had college done to him? This wasn’t her old childhood chum. He was different, acting different.

And he joined her, on his knees, her wrist still in his hand and faced her, angry at her as if she had done something to make him mad. What could she have done to make him upset? “Lift up your dress to me.”

“David, I ain’t lifting up my dress to nobody until I’m married before God.” Was that what he had brought her out here to the cotton fields for? To get her to marry him? All he had to do was ask, so why wasn’t he asking proper-like on the courting porch with John Bledsoe saying yes?

Ruby tried to use her other hand to free herself, but David’s strength was too great. She could smell liquor on his breath and all of a sudden he frightened her. She kicked him in the thigh and, startled, he let go of her wrist and she scrambled away in the dirt, not caring if the red dust ruined her shirtwaist and skirt. She had to get away from him.

Just as she was now. She had heard stories about how when white men had a Negro woman, they couldn’t stay away, that they kept coming back. She had no intentions of being David’s play toy. Childhood was over.

Now, with the Bledsoe home looming in the clearing, where Adam had gone back to the house, everyone laughing happily with the Carvers eating biscuits and sausage gravy and Adam was disappointed that she had said no to him. After all he had endured being on the chain gang and everything, how could she say no? It hurt her to her soul that she had hurt the doctor, because she truly loved him, but she wasn’t worthy of him. She was dirty.

“Be still, Ruby. Come on, be nice.”

David pressed himself on top of her, deep into the red dirt, ripping at her work skirt with one hand and holding her down with his terrible, powerful strength with the other. “Stop it, David. Stop. Don’t do it. Please.”

As he ripped her underdrawers, intent on his goal, Ruby screamed, but she knew it didn’t matter. No one ever came out here to the edge of this field. She was alone and the spiky cotton bolls and dirt pressed deeper into her back.

He slapped her again. “Be quiet. And still. Do you hear me? Don’t make me have to hurt you worse.”

Worse? What was worse than him doing this to her in a dirty smelly field rather than in a bed in the big Winslow house with a wedding ring on her finger? There was worse than this?

When it was over, he stood over her, and adjusted his clothing.

“That’s what they teach you up in college, I guess?” Her voice shook.

David was over by the horse. “Get on.”

Get on the horse? As if she could. The pain was too much to bear, and she couldn’t imagine wrapping her arms around him to stay on the horse. Ever again.

“I don’t want to.”

“I can’t believe you are acting this way. All of your kind like it. Come on. Stop being mad.”

“Give me my bag.”

David tossed her the bag and her tools clanged in the dirt. She picked them up and silently put them back in.

David got on the horse’s back and stood over her, taller and bigger and stronger than her. “You better not tell anyone, Ruby. And you need to stop doing what you are doing to hurt my Daddy. And the mill.”

What? What did Paul Winslow have to do with this? “Your Daddy too big time for any little Negro gal to hurt him.”

“That’s right. So stop it. I mean you to understand.”

He rode off, leaving her behind in the field to fend for herself in the darkness and to make the long, long walk home by herself in the dark. Which was easy. She herself was a part of the dark now. No matter how light her skin was, she was a part of the dark in a way she never understood before.

Now, he was here again, and loomed in front of her. “Ruby. I just got to tell you…”

Ruby screamed and she ran toward the house away from the memory in her mind’s eye, straight into the protective arms of Adam. He cradled her to him tenderly and she never, ever wanted him to let her go.

There had been few times in his life when he had been so disappointed. Just a few. Ruby’s missing acceptance of his proposal felt like a failure and he didn’t fail many times in his life. Only when he had been very young, and was not able to get his cousin Lucas to feed him more or treat him better. Ever since then, he had been on a roll and this failure, in particular stung.

He had fallen in love with her.

His brief exposure to life as a Negro man in the South was enough to convince him. He wanted away from here as soon as possible and he wanted the petite, soft roundness of Ruby next to him for all his life.

“Where is she?” Lona fixed upon him with intensity.

“She went off into the woods.”

“She’s just thinking,” Mags said softly as she put the biscuits on the table. “She be back soon. No fish?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t stay long enough to help her and she didn’t have any.”

“She upset?” Lona asked.

Adam nodded his head and sat down in the awkward chain gang clothes, eager to change back to his suits. “I told her I wanted to take her away from here and marry her. She ran off.”

“She thinking she don’t deserve better.” Lona wiped her hands on her apron. “I find her and talk to her.”

“We needs to pray for our Ruby,” Sister Carver intervened. “I expect she got something in her mind got a hold of her and don’t want to let her go.”

Sister Carver may have been a simple preacher woman, but she was right. There was a lot of wisdom in country folk. They were teaching classes at Michigan. Psychology—treating medicine of the mind. He wished he had paid closer attention to them.

“Fine. Let’s pray.”

“You going to pray with us?” Delie sidled up next to him on the bench. “You believing in God’s word?”

He looked down at the small, heart-shaped face and all of its innocence. “Yes, Delie. I understand now, these things that have happened, me coming here, finding Ruby, getting to know her despite the way my mother died, I’m a part of something much greater than myself. God’s plan. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

“Praise him,” Sister said. “Let us join hands. Brother?”

“You was doing good, Sister.” Brother put down his biscuit and wiped his lips. Some of the girls snickered a bit. They all joined hands and prayed.

When they were done, they let go of each other’s hands and the fluffy cathead biscuits were split and coated with thick gravy. But he wasn’t hungry. Twenty-four hours ago, he would have jumped on the food. Now? All he could think about was the turmoil of his beloved and how he could relieve it.

He got the plate that Mags served him and started in on it, reluctantly and accepted a cup of hot coffee.

A scream from the woods echoed through the still of the summer morning. “It’s Ruby.”

Adam stood and on fast feet made his way to the direction of the scream at the edge of the farm where the woods began. What had caused her to react so?

He started to part the trees, calling her name, over and over. Anyone or anything that dared to harm her would have to answer to him.

The thudding fear in his chest, that was what love was. It was in his soul to be attached to another human being. He understood now. And he was not going to let it go and he would not let one more thing happen to her. She had been through enough.

A heavy weight smacked into his chest. Ruby. He pulled her into the circle of his arms and held her. “It’s okay. Whatever it is. It’s all right, Ruby. I’m here.”

“The dirt. I was in the dirt.” She sobbed into his chest and he could barely hear her.

“No, love, you’re here with me. You’re with me now.”

The pines parted and David, with that fine sheen of sweat on his face came through. “I didn’t touch her.”

Adam spoke in a loud voice, but his nerves pricked his fingertips, making him want to curl his hands into fists and pummel them into his brother.

“You did something to make her upset. And you’ll answer for it if you did.”

“Dr. Morson, Adam, I’m telling you.”

He pulled Ruby under one arm and put his body in front of hers to shield her from the sight of her rapist. “You don’t look well, David. Go on home.”

“I just wanted to let her know—”

“She doesn’t want anything from you. Leave her alone. Come on.” Ruby’s petite frame shook and tears fell fast down her face as they made their way back to the Bledsoe farm.

“You can’t have a dirty wife, Adam. That’s why I can’t say yes. I-I’m dirty.”

He stopped her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I want you for me, just as you are. I love you.”

“I love you too, but I just can’t.” He put his hand under her chin and put his lips to hers again. But she trembled still and he pulled her close to him and held her tight.

Then the idea came to him about how to make it alright. Today.

“I want to be baptized. And you must sponsor me.”

“What?” Ruby wiped her tears away and looked confused.

“In the creek. Won’t Brother Carver baptize me?”

“I don’t know. We never done anything like that before. Usually if it isn’t babies, Rev—”

“And we know he won’t want to do it. Let’s ask.”

His request seemed to perk her up. And it perked him up too. He wanted to get into the creek to wash away the grime of the chain gang, and everything else that had been holding him back. As they went into the house, Adam said, “I want to be baptized. Ruby is going to sponsor me.”