A Virtuous Ruby (5 page)

Still, she did not have the proper tools. He stepped forward and Agnes began to thrash about, but Ruby stayed with her and held her firm. “Agnes, you done this two times before. You know better! You want to break the child’s neck?”

Agnes stilled, but her jet black eyes fixed on his every move. For the second time in two days, a strange twinge traveled down his arms. There was something so large at work here he had to bow to it. Was this how his mother had looked at the end of her time? In pain, suffering and wild? The small dark cabin seemed close all of a sudden.

“Breathe with me. Breathe.” Ruby’s brown eyes trained on Agnes, compelling her, willing her to calm down, and Agnes did.

“I have something to put her to sleep.”

“Sleep?” Ruby crowed at him. “Ain’t no time for her to sleep. Time to bring the baby.” She turned her body and focus back to Agnes.

“If you give her something to calm her down, she won’t put her child’s life in harm’s way,” he said. Saying it was by rote from a textbook. But Ruby’s sure hands and manipulation of Agnes was a sight to behold. This was someone who knew what she was doing. It always amazed him to watch a person in perfect control of their situation.

“I don’t want nothing to hurt my baby.” Agnes called over her husband who was sitting at their eating table, hands folded and watching the whole scene. “What you call yourself doing bringing this whiter than white Negro up in here? What kind of father are you?”

“Agnes,” Ruby’s voice came low and firm. “Bob loves you and wanted the best for you. This old doctor here has a lot of book learning that could be of some help.”

Old? He was only twenty-five. How old was Ruby? She called herself a granny, but she was barely more than a baby herself.

“I don’t want him looking at my woman parts.” Agnes slid down in bed and he bristled.

“Oh for heaven’s sake. I’m a doctor, I’ve seen plenty of parts.”

Ruby’s eyes flashed bright, almost as bright as the stone of her name. “That’s nice for you to say, you ain’t laying up here having a baby. Who do you think you are talking to her like that? Go sit on down with Bob over there and stay out of my way. If I need you, I’ll let you know.”

Agnes moaned again.

Well, Ruby had the situation well in hand, as Agnes rejected science out of hand. Agnes’s left leg was propped up on Ruby’s shoulder and the intimacy of the gesture startled him.

“I’ll be right here if I am needed.”

“Thank you.” Ruby turned back to face Agnes and he heard her whisper, almost chanting to Agnes, soothing her.

Solomon was her affair, even though she was right. Still though, her hands were unwashed. From where the table was with Bob, he sat and watched Ruby rub a lightly-scented oil all over her hands and place her hands over Agnes’s lower body. What was she doing?

“Come on, Agnes.” Ruby’s gentle voice accompanied her sure touch. “You doing fine now.”

“I want it over.”

“It’ll be over soon.” Ruby crooned and he marveled at the care she showed Agnes. Being a doctor could be such a distancing profession. The distance came in handy sometimes. He didn’t have to be close to anyone being a doctor.

Sitting at the table with Bob, he peered over at the action in the far corner of the room and took the cup that Bob offered him, then pushed it away. “No spirits.” He murmured. “I’m temperance.”

“Just my wife’s ginger water. Help yourself. Nothing spirited in there.”

He sipped at the delicious ginger water and tried not to think about the cleanliness of the tin cup. Bob took a jack knife and cut at the fragrant peaches in a bowl on the table and the shy little girls stepped forward to take slices from their father. “Want some?”

“No, thank you.” That jackknife had not been cleaned, he knew.

“Wanting a boy this time.” Bob wiped the fragrant peach juice off of the knife and handle and pocketed it again. He pitted a peach and took a half into his mouth. “See what I get.”

He never understood this propensity to deciding what a child should be. What should it matter if the baby were a girl who came healthy? “We’ll see here soon.” He kept an eye on Ruby who stood now with Agnes’s leg still thrown over her shoulder.

More agonized yelling came from Agnes. Maybe he would do better getting to know these people before he started practicing. They had to be comfortable with him, as Ruby seemed to be. “I’ll make sure they are both safe and healthy when she’s done. I’ll do my part.”

“That’s fine. I just want Mr. Winslow to know I didn’t want her in here. I didn’t invite her here.”

“Why?” Adam sipped some more of the ginger water, honestly wanting to know this perspective of his father.

“She’ll start talking about what we deserve as employees. Mr. Paul don’t like it.”

“Did he have her attacked?”

“That’s what she say. She been shaking herself around Mr. David for years. Then here she come saying he attacked her. How can that be?”

Had David forced her? “Did people think they were courting?” The ginger water made him warm to the topic.

“She always running around saying he going to marry her. Folk tried to tell her about herself and who she was, but she didn’t want to have none of it. Then the attack happened and they had nothing to do with each other again.”

He couldn’t help it. A surge of anger went up in him at David. Why didn’t David protect her? “Then she had a baby, as quiet as it’s kept. Ain’t nobody seen it. I only seen it today. White as snow.”

“Like his father,” he said. Solomon resembled him more, but he didn’t want to get into the incredible coincidence.

“Come on, Agnes. Here it come!” Ruby stood and Agnes’s white-soled brown foot dangled in the air. “I got him. Oh, yes, my. He a big boy. Praise God.”

He stood too and clapped Bob on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Bob. I’ll go take a look at him if that is okay.”

The wet shone in Bob’s eyes. “Please, Doctor.”

Ruby rubbed the baby with an unclean towel, and the baby gave a lusty cry as she put him into the tin tub. He stood over her and threw out his shadow. “I’ll take over from here, Ruby. Go on home to Solomon now.”

Ruby seemed reluctant to give quarter, but did. “I’ll see to Agnes, then, before I go.” She stopped. “Take care you don’t hurt him.”

He lifted the baby from the tin tub, cradling him, cherishing the silky feel of his newborn skin, newly emerged from its protein cocoon. Ruby had done a wondrous work, bringing this boy into the world, but he kept an eye on her every move as she treated Agnes. This beautiful boy with reddish-brown colored skin should not have to grow up without his mother. No boy should have to grow up that way.

Chapter Five

Three days after the birth of Bob’s son, Willie, the tips of Ruby’s ears still burned about how that doctor tried to bring Agnes’s baby.

She had nothing against him. A wonderful doctor, maybe, but not a wonderful man. Adam Morson was a hypocrite and she wanted nothing to do with him. And he was part Winslow. That made everything worse. Ruby put Solomon into his cradle and patted his bony back and her mind raced. Solomon was getting better, but maybe he needed more care.

Dr. Carson, a white doctor in the next town over, didn’t mind treating Negroes for a very high fee. Her little savings came from doing laundry, not births. She would give the money to the other doctor and pray it would be enough. Adam Morson’s deep voice floated out from the big front room and she did not like the way the maleness of it stirred her. “Good night, Miss Bledsoe.”

He kept saying that as he left to go on back to the Winslows, every night.
Stop calling me that.
Why had her feelings changed in such a short time? At first it made her feel like a lady. Now the address was a raw wound, pointing up her unmarried, shameful status. What of it? That was not a disadvantage, was it?

“Goodbye.”

She kept her voice curt. Would he pick up the clue and leave? She certainly didn’t want to wake Solomon.

The front door slammed and she strained her ears for the time it would take for him to start up his car and counted until the engine sound faded away. Good. She took a deep breath. A free breath. The very air had changed since he left. Things were better, weren’t they? She turned from the window back to the bed and faced her sisters who crowded in the doorway, staring at her. What were they looking at? She did not give them a second glance. “He said Solomon shouldn’t sleep in the back room, so we’ll have to sleep in the front with you all. I hope it’s okay.”

“Ruby, you know we want to protect our little man,” Mags said.

“If you want to take the back room, do. I’ll sleep out here with him.”

“I’ll collect my things right now.” Mags responded a little too eagerly to suit Ruby and she wished she could take the offer back. Travis could come slip in through the back door and…why would she think that about Mags? Mags just wanted privacy, that was it. Ruby was sixteen once too.

“She shouldn’t have the back room.” Nettie folded her arms and pouted. Things were so touchy for Nettie at fourteen. The middle child, Nettie always wanted those little extra special attentions. Because Nettie had been a sickly child, she usually got them, but not this time. “I should. I have a lot more to think about.”

“Stop being so selfish,” Ten-year-old Em chided her older sister. “This is our little man here. We have to make sure he’s well.”

Ruby put a finger to her lips, hushing them. “Thanks. Sorry, Net. You know Mags is the next oldest. It is only fair. I hope you don’t mind me being in here.”

“We don’t mind,” Delie piped up in her five-year-old treble, “but what about Mama?”

Well. Her mother was something else. Ever since she had found out she was going to have a baby, Lona harped on her about her shameful conduct. Told her that she was the one with low moral standards, even though her mother was the one who had first seen her, dazed, rumpled up and clothes ripped up from the attack. Lona had drawn the bath in the kitchen for her right after, even though it wasn’t the weekend, and begged her to forget all about it.
Don’t tell anybody. Let them think you and David went too far one time since you had known one another since you was young.

So she buried the pain at her mother’s request. If she talked about it, it would happen to her sisters. And Ruby didn’t want her sisters going through what she had gone through. Ruby’s silence could protect them. Now her job was to reassure little Delie. “It’ll work out.”

“What about the doctor?” Em asked. “Is he coming back?”

“I like a handsome doctor.” Delie clasped her hands together. That child was a mess.

“He saved Solomon,” always sensible Mags put in. “That was what was most important. And the way he kept looking at Ruby.” Well thank you, Mags.

The sisters started laughing and Ruby glared at Mags. Why had she ever thought her sensible? Or trustworthy? “Do you deny he was looking at you?” Mags spread her hands out from her skinny frame that never got fat, no matter how much peach cobbler she ate. Time to set her straight.

“He was looking at me because he was talking to Solomon’s mama.”

“He was looking at you as more than Solomon’s mama,” the five-year-old, boy-crazy Delie said. “Even I can see it.”

Her sisters all hooted. “It’s time for bed, girls.” Ruby lay down on Mags’s bed. “I’m tired. I need to rest if Solomon wakes up. I can get my things in the morning, Mags. ’Night.”

Mags waggled her fingers at them and it did not escape Ruby’s notice she kept elbowing her sisters as she left to go back to her private sanctuary in the back of the house. Oh yes, she better keep an ear out for that back door. The rest of her sisters fanned out and went to the other beds in the room. They blew out the light and Ruby did not respond to their giggles and hoots that resounded through the darkness. She closed her eyes and tried to forget the intensity of those grey eyes. A prayer of thanksgiving was appropriate, before she fell asleep.
Thank you, God, for taking care of my baby.
Better not to think of the agent of the care. Or his gray eyes.

The large, white Winslow house stood enrobed in darkness when Adam returned that night. Everyone must have gone to bed. But he was wrong. As he went in the front door, he could see David sat in the front parlor, looking anxious. What could he say to this young man, some stranger who had committed one of the vilest and heinous acts a man could commit on a young woman? He went past the parlor and started up the steps to the sewing-turned-guest room the maid had shown him. “Ummm. Hello?” David called to him softly. “Dr. Morson?” The way he said it sounded as if the whole idea of a Negro doctor was a foreign concept and he was deciding how well he liked it in his mouth.

Well, Adam didn’t like his name in David’s mouth, either.
Go see what he wants and get to bed.
Being an only child was a blessing. He had wanted a sibling, someone to belong with his whole life long, but now, hearing David call him, his only child status in the world transformed into a blessing. He didn’t like having a brother and certainly not this one.

“Yes?” Adam brought the full weight of his position into one word.

David tip-toed to him, where Adam was trying to go upstairs. “How is it doing? Is it okay? Ruby’s baby? He got better?”

David’s heavy whispering to him, loud as his regular voice, confirmed David’s thoughtlessness. Paul and Mary did not deserve disruption by what he wanted to say to David. So, as tired as he was, Adam came back down the few stairs he had climbed and into the front parlor. David followed him, like a puppy dog.

“
It
,” Adam put across in measured tones, “is a beautiful child named Solomon—a name his mother probably gave him on purpose to remind anyone who would care to know his father’s name is David, correct?”

David ran a hand over his little moustache, over and over. His thin developing mustache reminded Adam, David was very young himself at just nineteen years old. Just home for the summer from the University of Georgia, David seemed overwhelmed that his reprehensible actions the previous year had resulted in fatherhood. Adam almost felt sorry for him—almost. He remembered the defiant set of Ruby’s stance. His attack of Ruby meant to ruin her. Despite all his best efforts, the resentment Adam believed submerged, welled up as he glared at his brother. David’s face grew warm and flushed in the June heat. Doctors were supposed to sustain life, but Adam wanted to choke David with his bare hands. “I guess.”

“I don’t know you very well, David. I’m sure my presence is a jolt to you. But, let me tell you, people like you make me feel ill. You can acknowledge the boy is yours. Why don’t you?”

David bristled. Good. He didn’t want him to like him. The developing dislike for David comforted him. “Look, I just did what Father told me to do. That’s all. I have to go on and finish school, and make sure I know how to run the mill and our business interests. That’s what Mother says.”

“And clearly, you aren’t man enough to do what you should do,” Adam bit out between clenched teeth, “since you are so concerned with what your parents tell you to do.” His mind reeled at what David said, “What were your father’s instructions?” Adam stood there and met David’s gaze—matching Winslow grey eyes.

“We had a break from school. He said he had a special job for me because someone had to teach Ruby a lesson. We had grown up together and I could get her to go with me easier. He thought it was a great chance to let me have some experience, and get it all over with on a colored girl—he had done it, and so, I did what he told me. I didn’t think a baby would come.”

“Neither did your father, apparently.” Adam could barely speak, stunned at the arrogance in David’s statement as well as his choice of words. “Yet, here I am, proof.”

“I know, and now I have to provide for,” David gulped and spoke, “Solomon. Just as Father did for you.”

“And let me tell you about my childhood, David. My mother died young and I was handed around to various relatives of hers who pretended to want me, but really didn’t. They only wanted those handsome monthly checks Paul Winslow would send to provide for me. They would keep the money and give me as little as possible in anything I needed. I wore rags for the first seven years of my life. I was always hungry. So when he offered me an education somewhere up north, I jumped at the chance. I thought it meant he was ready to claim me. But all he wanted was to claim someone he didn’t have to feel ashamed of, since I reflect a time when he was less than prudent.”

“And you came out fine.”

“Sure. I’ve lived alone all my life, one foot in the Negro world, where I was too light to fit in and then a white world where no one knows who I really am.”

“Well, at least you look like one of us. You should be glad.” David wheeled away from him. Little coward. “At least you can choose your own path. Father has it all mapped out for me.”

“So you did what he told you to do by attacking Ruby.”

Ah! A hit. Good. David faced him again, having the nerve to look upset. “Look.” David ran a hand through his parted hair, “I’ve always been half in love with her. I wanted her to think,
believe
, I had the right intentions.”

“Except your intentions were not right, nor good.”

“She’s colored.” David lowered his head, embarrassed enough to remember who he was talking to. “She’ll be all right, they always are.”

“Yes, they always are.” Making fists of his hands, he put them inside his jacket pocket, afraid of what he might do with them if he did not put them away in some fashion. Doctors sustained life, not compromised it.
Breathe
.

“And the baby?”

Sick of looking at him, and feeling sick that David looked so very similar to himself and to Solomon, Adam moved away and went back to the stairs. “You just said it yourself. They’re always all right. Good night, David.”

Adam walked past him and went up the stairs slowly to the small corner room where his trunk was. A small garret room and the smallest room on the second floor Mary Winslow could give him. He might as well be last year’s furniture, stuck in the attic.

He lay out on the bed, not bothering to undress, and reflected on the past few days. This situation just continued the vagabond way he had been brought up. No, he certainly was not a guest in this house, this terrible house of hypocrisy. He remembered Lona’s offer to stay at the Bledsoe farm. Yes, that was the answer. Better to be in that house than this one.

The beautiful face of Ruby came into his mind. Ruby had a resolve and an inner strength his own young mother did not have. The heaviness in his heart lifted. Still, he had to help her somehow, regardless of whether or not she wanted help. However, the first thing he would have to do would be to get out of this house, and this small suffocating room. He wanted nothing to do with the Winslows anymore and decided, as sleep came to him, to pay Paul Winslow back every cent of the money that he spent on “providing” for him. The provision money, tainted with the blood and labor of his mother, corrupted him and he wanted nothing to do with it, or Paul Winslow, anymore.

The next Monday, she and Mags were back in front of the mill at lunchtime, talking with the men as they ate in the dusty courtyard outside. Ruby spoke to each man individually. “There will be a meeting in our backyard tonight at six. Anyone who is not working second shift should be able to come. We need to figure out how to get you to vote this fall and get equal pay here at the mill.”

“Will Miss Mags be there?” Travis shouted out.

“Of course she will,” Ruby answered, despite Mags poking at her with her bony elbow. Served her sister right. Give her a little taste of her own medicine.

“Then I be there.” Travis waved his cap as he went by after eating his lunch and heading back inside to work.

Mags lowered her head, and everyone laughed. One of the men hovered nearby Ruby’s left elbow. “You be careful now, Miss Ruby.”

“I am, Jonesy. Mags is with me. I always come protected now.”

“The baby at home?”

“Yes. He’s still recovering and I don’t bring him out much. I’ll wait until he’s a little older.”

“He’s precious, I’m sure, if he looks like his mama.”

Ruby smiled and just moved on. Jonesy, along with other people who had not seen Solomon, were trying to get her to admit Solomon looked like a Winslow. But she was not going to bite. Everyone knew who Solomon’s father was. She didn’t need to say it out loud. It would be wrong to.

The men would come. She even got Mags into the spirit of the thing as they headed back home. However, when she and Mags arrived, the same car that had brought her back to her parents’ home on Saturday was parked in front. One of the Winslows or Dr. Morson was there. Which one? Ruby’s heart beat fast at the prospect of the latter. What was worse, facing one of the Winslows or that fake Dr. Morson? When she and Mags opened the door, her heart leapt. Dr. Morson sat in her father’s chair, bouncing a drooling Solomon on his lap.