Mama Ruby (7 page)

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Authors: Mary Monroe

BOOK: Mama Ruby
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CHAPTER 13
S
IMONE SNIFFED AND HELD THE BABY TIGHTER
,
STILL GENTLY
rocking her. “I know a preacher that owes me a few favors. I’ll get him to bless this young’un tonight. She’s a . . . a miracle, and she deserve to be treated as such.” Simone paused and hugged the baby even tighter, not because she was afraid she might drop her, but because she didn’t want Ruby to jump up off the bed, snatch the baby and run. Simone opened her mouth to speak but paused again. This time it was to tickle the baby’s chin. “Oochie coo,” she said, smiling.
It was obvious to Ruby that she was not the only one already attached to this unplanned miracle.
Simone suddenly got serious. She pressed her lips together, took a few deep breaths, and then she began to speak slowly and with caution. “Uh . . . them nuns at this asylum I know, they don’t turn nobody away. If Satan crawled up to their gate in distress, they would scoop him up and take him in! I’ll carry this child to them nuns in my own two hands. It ain’t a bad place. . . . I know that on account of it’s the same place where my mama dumped me off at for a while, when I was still in diapers. It was the only home I knew for a long time.” For a brief moment, Simone looked and felt unbearably sad.
Nobody, not even her children, or the many men in her life, would ever know all the details of her painful past. At the top of the list was a family tree with a drunken Cajun on each and every branch. There had been frequent physical, sexual, and mental abuse in her stormy past so severe, her tortured mind had buried most of the memories.
If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Simone’s history also included a mother with the mind of a lunatic. She had given birth to eleven children that she never wanted, six of them by her own father. She had left her last child, a severely retarded one-year-old boy, in the back of a wagon on the street while she treated herself to a night out on the town in a rowdy bar a couple of blocks away. When she left the bar several hours later to retrieve her son, it was too late. The boy had rolled around so much, his blanket had accidentally covered his face and suffocated him. When the authorities tracked down Simone’s mother a week later, hiding in a barn on her former lover’s farm, she was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Four of her remaining children ended up in other asylums. Simone had not seen or heard from any of her siblings in years. She had a very bleak outlook on life, and often used poor judgment when she made decisions. Like now.
“This child will be safe in that asylum,” Simone said, her mind a ball of confusion.
Ruby’s breath caught in her throat. The plan that Simone had for the baby was ludicrous! But because Ruby knew Simone as well as she did, nothing the woman said or did surprised Ruby. In spite of that, she still could not believe her ears! Had Simone not only lost her mind, but her memory, too? She must have! Didn’t she remember telling Ruby about some of the horrors that she’d experienced in that asylum? She had claimed that most of the mean nuns had used violence to keep things under control. Simone still had scars on the palms of her hands and legs where the nuns had beaten her repeatedly with metal rods and bamboo canes. And what about those male orderlies and how they had sexually abused the most helpless of the females that they had been hired to take care of?
“Y’all want me to turn
my
child over to a hellhole like you was brought up in, Simone? Why would a place like that even want to be bothered with a newborn baby? It don’t sound nothin’ like them orphanages they put kids in that I read about in school,” Ruby said through clenched teeth. She shook her head, trying to release all of the dark, ominous thoughts dancing around in her mind. But she couldn’t.
“I know what I’m doin’, girl,” Simone said firmly.
“Asylums is for crazy people. And the way y’all both actin’, if anybody should to go to that asylum, it’s y’all!” Ruby hollered.
Simone held up her hand. “Uh-uh! The place I’m talkin’ about ain’t that bad no more. I heard that they made some real positive adjustments durin’ the last few years. They got a new director, and some more sympathetic nuns are workin’ there now. They welcome displaced individuals—especially newborn babies. They feel that they are the ones that need the most help. And them hoity-toity orphanages you read about in school, ain’t nary one of ’em mentioned takin’ in no colored kids, now did they? I know your papa and mama got you on a hog-high pedestal. But in the real world, folks like you and your baby will be considered second class. Compared to most of the other orphanages in Louisiana, the home I’m talkin’ about would be more like a walk down primrose lane for a colored baby.”
The more Simone babbled, the more she angered, shocked, and confused Ruby. She had to get up and get the hell out of this place before Simone drove
her
crazy.
“And what in the world do you mean by displaced, Simone? My baby ain’t nowhere close to bein’ no displaced individual. I got a home, she got a home. You want me to let you turn my baby over to some frustrated nuns? I ain’t goin’ to let you do that. Not after all the trouble I went through to birth her!”
“I’m tryin’ to show you that I’m practical,” Simone told Ruby.
“The only thing you showin’ me is that you done lost your mind!” Ruby shot back.
“Don’t you keep sassin’ me, girl,” Simone warned, shaking a fist at Ruby. “I know I ain’t no church-goin’, high-level muckety-muck like your mama, but I’m still your elder! So don’t you fix your lips to sass me no more tonight. My Lord in heaven. Colored people ain’t never talked to me the way you do. It’s a cryin’ shame.”
“I ain’t sassin’ you. I’m just speakin’ my mind, and I ain’t goin’ to let you stop me from doin’ that,” Ruby protested. She sucked in some more stale air, and then she adjusted her body on the bed, turning over on her side. As much as she enjoyed visiting Othella’s house, this was one visit that she would put out of her mind as soon as possible. She had pressed and curled her hair earlier in the day. It was now nappy, soaked in sweat, and standing up all over her head like tentacles. She thought that the shadow of her head on the wall made her look like Medusa. That almost made her laugh again, but she didn’t. She was too angry to laugh now.
“Ruby Jean, be reasonable. Mama is tryin’ to help you stay alive!” Othella hollered, her voice so loud it sounded like it was bouncing off the walls. Simone gave Othella a menacing look, and Othella lowered her voice to a whisper. “Don’t you want to live, girl?”
“What do you mean by that?” Ruby asked with such a profound gasp, it almost choked her. She had to cough to clear her throat and catch her breath.
Othella rolled her eyes. “Ruby Jean, what good are you goin’ to be to a baby if you dead?” she questioned, talking so fast and hard she almost bit her tongue. “How long do you think your daddy would let you live, if he found out you had a baby tonight? I truly believe that Reverend Upshaw would beat your brains out.”
“How many times do I have to tell y’all that I can tell my folks that I got raped?” Ruby wailed. “By that hook-hand maniac that got loose from the chain gang—or some other devil!”
“It don’t matter. I know your daddy real good, been readin’ him like a book since before you was born. He’ll feel sorry for you at first, but at the end of the day, you still brought shame on the Upshaw family’s good name. I guarantee you, he won’t care about no rape. Sooner or later, he might even blame you for puttin’ yourself in a position where a rapist could pester you in the first place,” Simone hissed, her eyes dark with anger.
“Especially since you parade around town in them skin-tight, low-cut blouses, showin’ off your big titties,” Othella sneered. “Reverend Upshaw will probably even say you was beggin’ for trouble because you tempted that rapist by wearin’ one of them low-cut blouses.”
“Othella’s right,” Simone declared. Her voice had softened.
Ruby gave Simone a helpless look, and she gave some serious thought to what she had just heard.
“The bottom line is,
you
got yourself pregnant. If you hadn’t been where you was at when it happened, you wouldn’t have got pregnant,” Simone told Ruby in a voice so soft, shaky, and gentle now, you would have thought that
Simone
was the one in trouble.
“But what if a maniac had knocked me over the head and dragged me into some bushes for real?”
“Ruby Jean, it don’t matter—”
“But what if that was what really happened?” Ruby interrupted.
Othella shook her head and sucked on her teeth. “Like Mama just said, even if that was true, wherever you was at when it happened,
you shouldn’t have been there,
” Othella said. “That’s what your daddy will eventually say. Your daddy is a man, and believe you me, most men think we females are responsible when one of them pesters us against our will. And some women feel the same way.”
CHAPTER 14
“M
Y GIRL’S RIGHT AGAIN
.
MOST MEN
,
AND A LOT OF
women, believe that if a female didn’t put herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, she wouldn’t get raped,” Simon declared. “Men are naturally lusty and can’t control themselves. That’s a well-known, scientific fact; so it’s our burden to stay out of their way when they need some affection bad enough to take it by force.”
Ruby wondered if that was what Simone believed about her own grandfather when he had repeatedly raped her mother and her sisters for so many years.
“Now you listen to me, girl. Let’s lay this rapist bullshit to rest. If you smart and do the smart thing, there won’t be no need for you to tell that ridiculous story. Enough on that subject.” Simone paused to clear her throat. “I know this baby would be better off in that asylum, and you’d be better off if your folks never find out you had a baby. I been around the block a few thousand times, so I know what I’m talkin’ about. You let me take care of everything. You are still a young girl. In time, you can forget about this baby. Find yourself a sport, marry him, and let him pester you in the bedroom as often as he wants to. Sooner or later, you’ll have more babies than you’ll know what to do with.”
“But I want
this
one,” Ruby wailed. “This is my firstborn—that’s somethin’ special to a woman! And this ain’t your baby, so you ain’t got no say-so in the matter, Simone.” Ruby leaned toward the side of the bed, looking around the floor. “Othella, where my shoes at?”
Simone hoisted the baby up on her shoulder and leaned forward. Mumbling profanities under her breath, she slapped Ruby’s face so hard, Ruby saw stars. “Hush up! I done already decided what’s best for this baby! From what Othella done told me, and from the way I seen you and my boy Ike lookin’ at one another, this
could
be my grandbaby. And if that’s the case, I got a say-so in this matter.”
“You . . . can’t,” Ruby bleated, rubbing the spot on her face where she’d been slapped.
“I said hush up, girl!” Simone stomped her foot so hard, the whiskey bottle on the nightstand shook and rattled. “Now I’m goin’ to go get a tub of hot water. We’ll clean you up and send you home. Ain’t nobody got to know nothin’ about this baby. I’m goin’ to get Reverend Meacham to bless this baby before I take her to that asylum,” Simone announced.
“Reverend Meacham? Didn’t you just say that nobody else was goin’ to know about this baby? What do you plan on tellin’ Reverend Meacham?” Ruby asked with her eyes stretched open wide.
“You let me worry about that. I’ll come up with a real good story,” Simone said as she reached for the whiskey bottle on the nightstand. She took a long drink and let out a mighty belch. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she continued, “Then I’m goin’ to drive this child to that asylum myself tonight in that old jalopy of mine.” She paused and turned to Othella, giving her a sharp look. “Go make sure none of my tires is flat. Then go make sure them kids in the livin’ room is behavin’ like they got some sense. After you do that, trot down to Reverend Meacham’s house and bring him here to me. He owes me a few favors, so I know he won’t turn me down. I might even get him to drive me to that asylum so I can save my gas.” Simone shifted the baby’s position in her arms and then she turned back to Ruby. “And that’s where this baby will be brought up. Case closed.”
“Don’t you worry none, Ruby Jean. Your baby will be took care of real good by them nuns,” Othella added.
Ruby felt so defeated, she didn’t even know what else to say next. All she wanted now was for Othella and Simone to stop ganging up on her, trying to convince her that their decision was the only one to consider.
“Ruby, I know what’s best for you. I am your best friend. And I am here to tell you, you ain’t got no business tryin’ to raise no baby. What can you give a baby?” Othella asked with a weary voice. There was almost as much sweat on her face as there was on Ruby’s, and she looked just as tired.
Just when Ruby didn’t think she had any more fight left in her, she realized she did. In a strong voice, one that seemed to begin in her toes and work its way up to her lips, she said, “
I can give my child my love
.” The words spilled out of her mouth like lava. “I love kids,” she whimpered. She was immediately sorry that she had opened her mouth again to say anything. At the rate things were going, Simone and Othella were going to badger her into the ground with their “We know what’s best for you” talk.
“That don’t mean nothin’! The witch that tried to eat up Hansel and Gretel loved kids, too. You ain’t in no shape to be tryin’ to raise no baby and you know it! Now you look, girl. I am your best friend. I am way smarter than you when it comes to things like this here, so I know what I am talkin’ about. You ain’t got what it takes to raise no baby yet. Your daddy, with all of his preachin’ and Bible thumpin’, he’ll ride your back like he’s ridin’ a mule, and preach your funeral every time he even
thinks
you tempted and provoked another man. That’s the way men’s minds work. They can’t help it. I’m way more worldly than you, so I know what I’m talkin’ about. Now you got that?”
“I . . . I . . . got . . . got that,” Ruby stuttered with a heavy nod.
Othella was worldly; she knew things a lot of girls her age didn’t know yet. But that didn’t bother Ruby much. As far as she was concerned, she was a few steps above Othella. She lived in a nice house with an indoor toilet and two loving and stable parents. She was one of the few black youngsters in the community in such an enviable position. Unfortunately, Ruby’s enviable position meant very little to Othella. The only thing Ruby had that Othella envied was an ample bosom. Othella had promised Ruby that one day she’d have enough money to buy herself a pair of those fake foam titties that they advertised in the back of the sleazy magazines that Simone purchased every week. Ruby didn’t know why she was wasting time and energy thinking about Othella’s flat chest when she had a baby to be thinking about. A beautiful baby girl . . .
Ruby nodded again. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bundle in Simone’s arms; her first baby. Maybe even her
only
baby.
However, she had to remind herself that if Simone was right, she’d eventually have a house full of children. That was the only thing that she had said all night that kept Ruby from losing her mind.
“All right, y’all. I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll forget about this one baby somehow,” she rasped, her voice cracking.
But she wouldn’t. Ruby Jean Upshaw would think about her first baby every day for the rest of her life. And, she knew that somehow, some day, somewhere, she would make Othella pay for what she was helping her mother make her do tonight.
Ruby was so distracted by the thoughts swimming around in her mind, she didn’t hear Simone’s voice again until Simone slapped the side of her head. “You done gone deaf or what? I’ve asked you three times in the last few seconds, who the daddy of this baby is. Or who you
think
it is? Who you been courtin’ the most? Was it really my boy Ike? Was he your boyfriend?”
“I ain’t got no boyfriend.” Ruby sniffed.
“Yes, you do!” Othella hollered. “You got all kinds of boyfriends, girl. Almost as many as me.”
Simone looked from her daughter to Ruby, giving her one of her notorious “you better come clean with me or else” looks. “If you decide to change your mind about lettin’ me take care of this baby, I need to know who this baby’s daddy is. We need to cover all the bases. Your folks will want to know who done it, too, Ruby.”
“I swear to God, I don’t know which one done it,” Ruby admitted. “But I can’t tell my mama and daddy
that
! Y’all know I can’t!”
“Well, you got to tell them somethin’, girl. Like I said, if you don’t let me take care of this child, you can’t go home with a newborn baby and expect your folks not to want to know the details,” Simone assured her.
“What difference does it matter who got me pregnant now? Ain’t you takin’ the baby to that asylum place tonight? Ain’t we keepin’ this a big secret from everybody?”
“In case you change your mind about lettin’ me handle this situation, we need to have a backup plan. Now, you tell me, who do you think got you pregnant, Ruby Jean? Give me the name of the boy you
think
done it.”
A confused look crossed Ruby’s face. “A name? Why?”
“I’ll tell you the reason why. If you keep this baby, the daddy should know about it so he can do his part to help raise it. Another reason you need to give up his name is so your daddy can approach the boy for a man-to-man showdown. If my son is the culprit, I want him to know so he can be prepared when your daddy comes after him,” Simone snapped.
“Comes after him? What do you mean by that?” Ruby held her breath.
“Everybody in this part of Shreveport knows that your daddy don’t take no mess off nobody when it comes to his daughters. He ain’t goin’ to sit back and let his grandbaby’s daddy off the hook without a confrontation. You and Othella is too young to remember, but years ago a musician came through here from Bayonne to blow on his saxophone at the grand openin’ of a new juke joint. He already had a wife, but he still tried to pester your big sister Bessie Mae while she was babysittin’ his sister’s kids. She was sleepin’ on a couch that night, mindin’ her own business, and that man tore her nightgown clean off her body. If the man’s sister hadn’t come home when she did, Bessie Mae might have ended up in the same mess you in now. The next mornin’, your daddy went after that filthy-minded musician with his shotgun and run him out of town.”
Ruby’s eyes got big. “Oh Lord! I think your boy Ike is the one,” she whispered. “I don’t want my daddy to shoot poor Ike!”

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