Mama Ruby (31 page)

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Authors: Mary Monroe

BOOK: Mama Ruby
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CHAPTER 55
“F
OLKS IS GETTIN’ CRAZIER AND CRAZIER. I BETTER MAKE
sure you got plenty of bullets to keep in the house,” Roy told Ruby after she told him about the horny intruder that she’d scared off.
“I’d rather have a new pair of red high heels,” she whined. “To go with that new red dress you bought me last week.”
“You can get a new pair of red high heels, too. And anything else you want. You are just the kind of woman a man like me needs,” Roy assured her.
Ruby’s face got hot, her crotch tingled, and her stomach fluttered. She grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Why thank you, sweetie pie,” she purred.
Roy had realized right away that flattery went a very long way with Ruby. It was like mental nourishment. The more he fed her, the more she became like putty in his hands. He was molding her well—the same thing he had done with all of his other women. Being able to control a woman was one of a man’s most important responsibilities. If a man could keep his woman happy, she’d keep him happy.
“Don’t thank me; thank the good Lord. He outdid Hisself when he made a luscious woman like you. I could understand why that sucker tried to get his hands on you.”
“Luscious? Me?” Ruby’s voice was so thin, she barely recognized it. She was not used to this much flattery, and it felt damn good.
“Damn straight! And I’m keepin’ your luscious self all to myself. I ain’t never leavin’ you!”
What Roy didn’t tell Ruby was that he’d told his other wives the same things he’d just told her. He also didn’t tell her, or the exes, that he only kept a particular woman all to himself, and would never leave her,
until
he found another woman that he liked better.
“Well, I’ll be bound,” Ruby said with a dreamy sigh. “Listen, sugar, all I want to do is keep you happy. You are a double blessin’, and you deserve only the best treatment. If I ever do somethin’ to disappoint you, just let me know and I’ll straighten out whatever it is that I done wrong. I love you to death.”
“I love you to death, too, Mama Ruby. You done made me a real happy man,” Roy swooned.
 
Ruby couldn’t have been happier. Each new day was better than the last. She couldn’t wait to take Roy home to Shreveport to meet her family, which she hoped to do soon. She couldn’t wait to see the looks on her six sisters’ faces and their uppity husbands when she paraded her husband around in front of them. Ruby was almost afraid that if she got any happier, her heart would explode.
Roy couldn’t have been happier himself. Each day his new young wife seemed more and more like a dream come true. She didn’t nag him when he stayed out all night. She didn’t make a fuss when too many people came to the house and got so drunk and loud in the back room that she couldn’t get to sleep. And she didn’t complain when the married people who came to the house to drink brought single, unattached female friends with them. Even though most of these friends were man-eating hoochie coochie women who brazenly flirted with Roy, Ruby didn’t complain. She didn’t complain about anything. At least not to Roy.
Despite the fact that Ruby used Othella as her sounding board, Othella thought that Ruby had a damn good thing going with Roy. He gave her a lot of attention, even in public. He held her hand, kissed up and down her neck, and he even pinched her titties right in front of Othella.
Othella was mildly jealous, and it was no wonder. Roy treated Ruby like royalty. She had married a Prince Charming, Othella had married a scalawag. Not long after her marriage to Eugene, he began to travel around the South even more in that loud old station wagon of his. He was now driving around selling knickknacks to carnivals, circuses, and amusement parks in a couple of additional states. Whenever Othella complained about his frequent absences, he reminded her that she was lucky to have a man who had a good job.
“Ain’t too many colored men can get hired to travel around the way sellin’ stuff like me,” he reminded her. “I’m one of the best salesmen there is.”
“If you think you such a good salesman, why don’t you get a job that you don’t have to travel so much for? You can sell the same things that them Raleigh men drive around town sellin’: hair products, kitchen doodads, and sheets and blankets.”
Eugene gave Othella an impatient look, something he did almost every time she spoke to him now. His job wasn’t the reason he spent so much time on the road,
she
was! That was how irritating she had become. She whined like a puppy, day and night. She was like a fish stick in bed, a frozen one at that. Every time he asked her to cook him a neck bone casserole, she burned it to a crisp. It seemed that no matter what she did, it got on his nerves and annoyed him to the point of no return. She had become a nuisance, an albatross around his neck. She was smothering him and sucking his spirit out of him. The sight, the sound, the touch, the thought, and the smell of her offended him.
“Woman, what’s the matter with you? What company is goin’ to send a colored man out to sell women’s whatnots?” Eugene growled, holding his breath to keep from gnashing her neck.
“Women buy them things! They buyin’ them from them other Raleigh men!”
“For one thing, them products is expensive. Ain’t enough colored women got that kind of money to make it worthwhile. Another thing is, if only white women can afford to do regular business with a Raleigh man, do you think my company is goin’ to allow me to call on white women in their own homes durin’ the day while their husbands and kids and whoever is out and they all alone? The first time I run into a white woman with a bad attitude, all she got to say is that I looked at her the wrong way. And the next thing you know, I’ll be swingin’ from a tree by my neck!”
“I know all of that,” Othella said. “I just wish we had more time together. I married you so I wouldn’t be so alone.”
“Alone? You?” Eugene guffawed long and loud. “As long as you got Mama Ruby, you ain’t never got to be worried about bein’ alone. Now didn’t you tell me somethin’ about her havin’ a birthday comin’ up in a few days?”
Othella nodded. “And I bet that Roy’s got all kinds of nice things planned for her.”
 
For Ruby’s seventeenth birthday, that following Saturday, Roy gave her a fistful of money and told her to go shopping on her own, because he had to visit a sick friend.
What Ruby didn’t know was that the sick friend was Roy’s latest girlfriend, the same woman that he had spent the night with the day before he married Ruby.
What Roy didn’t know was that Ruby thought she was pregnant. She wanted to buy some baby items that she would display at a special dinner, when she would announce her good news to him. She bought the baby blankets, booties, undershirts, and other baby items. Unfortunately, by the time she got home that day she discovered that she’d bought them too soon. Her delayed period had started. She was devastated. When Roy got home an hour later, he found her in a fetal position on the couch, crying like a baby. As a matter of fact, she was so distraught she didn’t even bother to ask him about his sick friend.
“Now don’t you worry none, baby. You still young and healthy, so you’ll get pregnant soon,” Roy told her, bouncing her on his lap, lucky that she didn’t smell the other woman’s perfume on his shirt or see her lipstick on his collar.
A week later, when Roy came home again with the smell of another woman on his person and her lipstick on his collar, Ruby noticed. “I smell perfume,” she said as soon as he strolled into the house. She sniffed some more, moving closer to him. “And I see lipstick on your shirt.”
Roy was a careless man, even more so now. Ruby was so in love with him that she had lost her common sense, and sometimes it seemed like she had lost her vision. He decided that with Ruby being so lovesick, young, and stupid, he could convince her that black was white if he had to. He had Ruby so deep down inside his hip pocket that he could, and did, tell her the first thing that came to his mind when she questioned him. This time was no different.
He sucked in some air, rolled his eyes, shook his head in protest, and stuck out his chest. But this display of displeasure didn’t stop him from acting like he was being accused of something un-Christian-like. “Didn’t I tell you? It was Sister Barkley’s birthday today. I dropped her off some of that new smell-good that the women wearin’ these days, and she had to try it out right away. I didn’t realize when she was huggin’ me, to thank me, that she got perfume and some lipstick on me. And right in front of her husband.”
Ruby leaned back on her legs, arms folded. “Who is this Sister Barkley, and how come you ain’t never mentioned her to me before, sugar pie?”
Roy rolled his eyes again and brushed past Ruby. “Now, baby, you know what kind of business I do. I know
beaucoup
folks, half of ’em women. This ain’t the first time a woman hugged me and got lipstick and perfume on me.”
“Oh, it sure enough ain’t,” Ruby commented, giving Roy a stern look. “And this ain’t the first time I seen lipstick on your shirt, or smelled another woman’s smell-goods on you. . . .”
Roy shrugged. “I’m a bootlegger, baby. You knew that when you got with me.” Roy decided that if he was going to save his face and ass, he had to defend himself more vigorously. “I know you ain’t decided this late in the game to get jealous!”
“I didn’t say nothin’ about bein’ jealous,” Ruby said, pouting. She followed Roy as he moved toward the kitchen, strutting like he was a barnyard cock. And as far as he was concerned, that was exactly what he was.
To keep his role intact, he had to divert his wife’s attention. “Do I smell some turnip greens cookin’?” he asked, sniffing so hard his nose twitched like a rabbit’s.
Another thing that Ruby liked about Roy was his dry sense of humor. He didn’t display it that often but when he did, she appreciated it. “Now you stop that, darlin’! You know you don’t smell no turnip greens cookin’.” She giggled in spite of herself.
“Well, can I smell some turnip greens cookin’?”
“I . . . I don’t see why not. Let me go get out the Crock-Pot,” Ruby said, moving toward the cabinet where she stored her cookware. “I just washed a mess of turnip greens a little while ago—”
“Hold it! Hold it right there! Come here, baby,” Roy interrupted. He grabbed Ruby and pushed her up against the counter. Then he hauled off and kissed her long and passionately. And even though it was a struggle for a man his size, he managed to lift Ruby’s hefty frame into his arms and take her to the bedroom.
By the time Roy finished making love to Ruby, she was so dazed and pliant, she almost slid off the bed.
CHAPTER 56
W
HEN RUBY’S PERIOD WAS LATE AGAIN THE FOLLOWING
month, she went out and purchased more baby clothes. She also purchased a crib and several pieces of baby furniture. By the end of that month, Ruby had everything in her house that indicated she was a mother, except a baby.
A year later, when she finally did get pregnant, she didn’t believe it until two doctors confirmed it. And a week later when Othella discovered that she was also pregnant, Ruby was the first person she shared her good news with.
“And it’s a damn shame that your husband ain’t here to hear this blessed news before I did,” Ruby told Othella, giving her a much needed and a much appreciated hug. “I guess we both know by now that when we can’t count on our men to be there for us when we need ’em, we can always count on each other.”
“I wish we women could marry women. That would solve most of our problems,” Othella quipped, her voice cracking.
Ruby shook her head and patted her crotch. “Not all of our problems, honey.” She laughed, and was glad that Othella did, too. But she knew Othella well enough to determine that she was not happy about the way her marriage was going.
“I hope my next husband is more like Roy,” Othella said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Eugene was away on another alleged sales trip for a “few days.” He had been gone for a week, but was supposed to be home by now. He had disappointed Othella in every way possible. She didn’t know how to get in touch when him when he was working, she didn’t know how much money he made at his mysterious job, and she never knew when he was going to give her any money to spend. Not just on herself, but for the household incidentals. When she wasn’t babysitting some of the neighborhood children or cleaning somebody’s house to make money, she borrowed from Ruby. The money issue and Eugene’s frequent absences were bad enough as far as Othella was concerned. But the man was also flawed in other ways that irritated her. He did not pay much attention to her, even when they were together. And he didn’t seem to care about her feelings at all. Last month when he was home for a two-week period, she talked him into accompanying her on the bus to visit her family in Shreveport. The visit was supposed to last for a week. When they returned, four days after they had departed, Othella was too upset to tell Ruby why the trip had been cut short until three days later. And by then, Eugene was gone again.
“He claimed he had to rush off to go check on a sick sister in Memphis that I didn’t even know he had,” Othella complained to Ruby. “Now don’t you take this the wrong way, but I wish I had been the one to get Roy. He’s perfect, ain’t he?”
A thoughtful look spread across Ruby’s face like butter. But just a split second later, she looked confused and uneasy. “What’s wrong with you, girl? You know the Bible almost as good as I do. Even Moses wasn’t perfect!”
“Oh, you know what I mean. I mean that for a regular man, Roy is about as close to perfect as one can get, right?”
“Well, he tries to be,” Ruby answered slowly, and with a mysterious gleam in her eyes.
“Well, at least he is tryin’ to be perfect!” Othella said. “And that’s way more than I can say about that
thing
I married.”
Roy continued to give Ruby large sums of money to go shopping, and he was just as happy as she was about the fact that she was finally pregnant. But it was not because he wanted to be father of the year, or because he loved kids. He knew that a baby would keep Ruby even busier. Once she had the baby, she wouldn’t have time to badger him as much about the things that he did when he wasn’t with her, and the things he didn’t do when he was with her.
Ruby was so excited that she couldn’t buy enough baby clothes, and she couldn’t buy them fast enough. And Roy couldn’t make the money fast enough for her. He didn’t discourage her when she answered a newspaper ad and started babysitting for the niece of Silo’s mayor.
“You just make sure you take real good care of that white woman’s kids. It don’t matter how young they is, don’t sass ’em. And you sure better not whup ’em, no matter what they do or say to you. You don’t want to upset the mayor,” Roy warned Ruby.
“I know how to handle white kids. I took real good care of a white woman’s baby in New Orleans. That baby wanted to be with me more than the mama,” Ruby replied. Just the thought of little Viola back at Maureen’s house made her feel sad. She couldn’t wait to have her own baby so she could know exactly what it meant to be a mother.
 
One month before Ruby’s due date, she stretched out on a red leather couch in the living room of the woman who had hired her to look after her two young sons. She had consumed a five-pound box of peanut brittle, three sugar tits, a large moon pie, and nine bottles of beer since Roy had dropped her off, two hours ago. Not only was her belly stuffed, she was enjoying a very nice buzz.
“Now look, Bobby, Jimmy is your baby brother so stop teasin’ him,” Ruby scolded, thumping the five-year-old on his blond head, making him howl like a baby wolf. She rose and glanced out the window, clutching one-year-old Jimmy in her arms. She gasped and set the boy down on the couch as she rushed out to the spacious front porch. “I don’t believe what I’m seein’,” she said, talking to herself as she stared at the car moving slowly down the street.
Ruby trotted down the porch steps. She didn’t stop trotting until she reached the end of the block. The car that she’d seen had stopped at a red light, and before she could catch up to it, it shot off as if the driver knew she was in pursuit.
And she was in pursuit. She knew who was driving that dusty black Chevy, and she had a good idea where it was going. It took her twenty more minutes to reach Smoky Moe’s bar.
Roy was surprised and annoyed when Ruby stormed into the bar and stomped over to a booth in the back that he occupied. A thin, attractive woman in her early thirties with thick brown hair and a silver plated front tooth was on his lap, kissing his cheek.
“Mama Ruby, what the—what the hell you doin’ in here?” Roy yelled, rearranging the woman on his lap. “You supposed to be watchin’ that white woman’s kids!”
“Baby, who is this beast?” the woman sneered, looking Ruby up and down.
“Woman, if you want to live to see tomorrow, you better get your skinny tail off my husband’s lap!” Ruby erupted. A small crowd quickly formed in front of the booth.
The owner, a gray-haired white man in his sixties, held his breath as he stood behind the counter. He owned the only establishment in the area that served blacks. They had to enter through a back door and were only allowed to occupy the back booths. Ruby had done the unthinkable, or at least something that no other black person had ever done; she’d entered through the front door, just like the white couple that she had come in behind.
“Don’t you be gettin’ crazy in this white man’s place now, woman,” Roy warned Ruby, shoving his girlfriend off his lap. “We need to take this mess home,” he said, rising. “And you better make this the last time you clown me in public!” Roy didn’t wait for Ruby to respond. He grabbed her by the arm and attempted to steer her out of the bar. He managed to smile as he waved to the nervous owner, who had already picked up a telephone on the counter.
“Roy, is this that teenage battle-ax I heard you got married to?” the woman asked, scooting out of the booth. The woman stood next to Roy as she laughed and shook her finger in Ruby’s face. “You must be stupider than I heard you was! Roy is
my
man and he’s been my man for a long time. As soon as I get rid of that old dog I married and Roy gets rid of you, with your husky self, me and him will get married.” Ruby’s eyes followed the woman’s hand as she grabbed Roy’s hand and held onto him like he was made of gold.
Had Roy pushed the woman aside and denied what she’d just said, it might have made all of the difference in the world. But he didn’t. He stood there looking at Ruby with contempt. All he could think about was how he was going to get a switch and whup her ass as soon as he got her home. Didn’t she know that he was only doing what men had been doing since the beginning of time? There wasn’t a man on earth who could be happy with just one woman in his life! Didn’t women know that by now?
He finally spoke again. “Mama Ruby, tonight me and you are goin’ to sit down and have a long talk. I told you to your face, on the same day I married you, how it was goin’ to be with me and you. I PAY THE COST TO BE THE BOSS, BITCH! You will not be spyin’ on me like this no more! Do you hear me?”
Ruby calmly looked from her husband’s face to the woman’s as they stood smack dab in front of her, holding hands like they were Romeo and Juliet.
When Ruby lunged at the woman, Roy grabbed Ruby’s arm. He attempted to punch her in the face, but he was no match for her. She swiveled her head out of the way just in time so he missed. Just as he was about to swing at her again, she slapped his face so hard, his false teeth—that she didn’t even know he wore—flew out of his mouth. He yelped and kicked her leg, bringing her to her knees. A split second later, she sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. There was a look on her face that words could not describe. It was a look that frightened everybody in the bar, even the owner, and he was an ex-cop. Her nostrils flared, her eyes darkened, her jaw twitched, and her lips quivered. If there was such a thing as a she-devil, Ruby was it.
“I . . . I ain’t goin’ to put up with this mess. I’m goin’ to beat you like you stole somethin’,” Roy told Ruby, looking angry and embarrassed at the same time. “Don’t you worry none, Mr. Brown, I got this situation under control!” he told the bar owner. He ignored his false teeth on the floor and proceeded to punch Ruby in her stomach, her chest, and on her arms. He and everybody else present were stunned: none of his punches fazed his enraged wife. She stood there glaring at him with one hand calmly rooting through her purse. Roy delivered a blow to her face that was so severe, he broke the knuckles on two of his fingers.
But even that didn’t faze Ruby.
The woman who had accompanied Roy to the bar dropped to her knees and crawled under the table in the booth, shaking like a leaf.
Roy was sweating bullets. That was why he didn’t feel the one that Ruby fired into his heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.
 
Ruby had not contacted her parents or anybody else in her family since she’d left home. But they were not worried about her, thanks to Othella. Othella still wrote to her siblings and her mother on a regular basis. In each letter, she gave her family a sanitized version of what she and Ruby were up to. Most of the information that she fed to them was ninety percent false, such as part of her most recent letter:
. . . Me and Ruby Jean clean houses for rich white women, and we are out here in Florida living like kings in a rich white woman’s guest house. And we are both married to real handsome businessmen. . . .
“I wonder why they left New Orleans and went to Florida,” Simone asked Ike after he’d read Othella’s letter to her.
“You know Othella and Ruby, Mama. They like to get around,” Ike surmised. “And ain’t it a pip them gettin’ married, too?”
“Sure enough. And to
businessmen
! I always knew that them two had real high expectations,” Simone said with a profound sigh. “I’m so glad my girl didn’t end up like me.”
Ruby’s father was still giving “spiritual comfort” to Othella’s mother, and he was still paying her to let him do so. She was the one who relayed information about Ruby to him.
“I’m so glad I can tell Mother that Ruby Jean done settled down and got herself married,” he said, grinning after Simone read Othella’s letter to him. “I always knew my girl was goin’ to make somethin’ of herself. I just hope this man of hers can control her enough to keep her out of trouble.”
At the same time that Ruby’s father was speaking those words, Roy was being loaded into a hearse.
And Ruby, handcuffed and dazed after she’d been subdued by the butt of a deputy’s revolver on the back of her head, was being transported to jail.

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