Ruby (15 page)

R
UBY FELT
her eyes grow wet, a knot form in her throat. She swallowed it down—as she had done the whole of her life.

Then she grew angry. If Maggie had left, even for a trip to Houston, she would not be on that platform.
Fuck Maggie
. She saw the Red Cap helping a young blond woman with her bags. New passengers had begun to congregate on the platform waiting for the next train, both Negro and White.
Fuck Maggie and fuck the Red Cap. Slow-ass Negro
. She flicked her dead cigarette onto the tracks and as she lit another, her jaw started aching. Over the past week she had been pressing her molars together so tight that at times the mandible had begun to throb. She wished she had brought her aspirin, or Mrs. Gladdington’s sleeping pills, or both. Ruby could not remember the last time she truly slept. Even before the telegram, many nights a low scraping sound had kept her awake—like a man sanding a wooden floor. Ruby’s hand shook a bit as she took another long puff of her new cigarette.

The train platform was sparse and clear. She had to think. Wait. She pursed her lips and pushed the smoke out of her
lungs.
Where was the goddamn porter?
Suddenly a dark curve between her bags shifted and moved. Ruby ignored it, as she had ignored it for weeks, as she had ignored so many things lately. But the nothing that lived on the periphery of her vision had been the worst of it. The nothing with small chubby fingers that sifted through the weave in her clothes—that sometimes had the outline of pigtails. Ruby hated her. Hated her need, the way she tried to curl on her chest when she slept. Hated that she knelt beneath the apple bins and ruffled through the bok choy in the fresh-air markets in Chinatown. Ruby saw that the dead nothing was hollow and imagined that was why it had affixed itself to her left femur.

Once anchored, she had trailed behind Ruby like a helium balloon, drifting back down to earth, only to rise again. Ruby had tried to shake her, take sharp turns, or leap into subway cars seconds before they closed, to no avail. Once she had gotten the telegram from Maggie, once she was headed home, the spirit floated above her in Penn Station near the newsstand, fluttering the folded papers with images of the young Buddhist nun guilty of self-immolation. She had settled near a cafeteria radio while Ruby got a regular coffee, and swung her legs in time to “It’s All Right.”

She’d cozied beneath Ruby’s seat on the train, tickling the inside of her knees. Now on the platform she crept out of her hiding place. Ruby refused to look down. In answer the puff of air leapt onto her shoulders. Ruby stood quickly, knocking over two of her bags. Four faces turned her way. A shock of fear shot through her. She sat back on the bag but the little spirit clung tight to her neck. Desperate now, Ruby felt it trying to enter at
the base of her skull. She quickly put her hand there, a thin sweat filming her forehead. It then slipped under her arm and was pushing now against her chest, softly at first, then roughly, almost knocking Ruby onto the platform boards. Ruby wanted to run, to scream and kick the cloud of a girl away.

Now, Ruby was trapped on the mountain of pink bags. The day tilted. The horizon slipped blue to prairie brown to cut-outs of green. Too green. An electric spinning green. The black of the tracks, the wash of the ties. Her fingers were on fire. Ruby flicked her orange cigarette to the ground then sucked at the fleshy burns. She smelled the remnant of a cigar burning somewhere, some salty thing like ham, perfume. And sweat. All left behind on the platform. The child was weeping now, so strong that the air crackled. In moments, Ruby knew she would scream. In a few moments she would break through the mirror of convention and the White men would come running, their hands twisting her thin wrists, eyes too red, faces too white. The Black folks would cower as they hauled her to jail or worse. So Ruby prayed. She prayed for the illusion of sameness.

As if in answer, the spirit grew smaller. Younger. A toddler. Younger still until she was six months old, three, until she was a small baby newly born. Ruby recognized her for the first time. Heart-shaped face. Long tan body. Her breath stopped when she saw it was her girl. Her baby who died without a name when Ruby was fourteen.

She was swaddled and tiny, there on the wooden planks, so of course Ruby lifted her into her arms. The child began crying. Bawling so loud, so scared, coughing something out of her lungs, trying to breathe. Ruby held her and rocked back and forth. Her
girl. Her lost girl. Ruby tried to hide her from the people at the station, some of them turning to look. Ruby pretended she had a chill and was merely wrapping her arms around her body, but her child could not stop—the sound tearing through Ruby.

There on the platform Ruby bade her to enter. The girl hushed and looked into her eyes. Ruby could hear the echo of her tiny heart and suddenly the baby slipped as if soapy from a bath, and fell hard into Ruby’s chest.

Ruby stumbled back, tripping over her bags. She struggled to right herself and her feet caught the handle of a bag and she fell down again. Then Ruby wept. Huge black tears that plopped onto the sky blue of her dress.

The Red Cap was back, hand on her arm, face crunched like a fist with worry, the Station Master was looming behind him. A small crowd of White folks pushed forward.

The Station Master boomed over her, “What’s the problem here, Jonah?”

Ruby looked around, liquid liner running down her cheek.

The Red Cap, Jonah, knew something. Was it about the child? Had he seen it too?

Jonah threw out a rope. “She just trip and fall is all Suh.”

Ruby took it. “Yes, I’m sorry, I just tripped. Over my bag. I’m so sorry.” Ruby began standing, straightening her dress.

The Station Master took a step forward.

“You drunk, gal?” The White man was less than a foot away.

Ruby knew if she looked at him she would be taken. So she stood, slumped her shoulders, stared at the ground and answered the White man, “No, Sir, No. I’m sorry, so sorry.” She spit out, “I’m on my way home—my cousin is dead.” Ruby cut the truth
out of her gut and sliced it up to save herself. “She—her funeral was a month ago. I just found out, Sir. Yesterday, Sir. I’m just—just got upset is all.”

The air was close to boiling. Ruby searched the platform. Her purse lay on its side. She reached down and grabbed the telegram, the one Western Union had tried to deliver to three old addresses before they found her. She pushed it in the Red Cap’s face. He handed it over to the Station Master. He scanned it, lips tight.

Jonah put the nail on the thing. “You know how emotional we be sometime, Suh.”

Nearly satisfied, the Station Master stepped away, throwing the telegram in Ruby’s direction, “One thing I don’t need is another drunk nigger. They been leaving from here all week for that monkey march, I swear to God as drunk as Moses.” His associates chuckled. The rest of the White folk turned on his cue, retreating into cool shade and ice cold soda pops of the Whites Only Waiting Area.

Ruby took a breath. Her hand on Jonah’s arm. “Thank you.”

“No need, Miss. How old was she?”

“Thirty-three.”

“What happened?”

“Cardiac arrest, they said.”

Off of his confounded look, Ruby said, “Heart attack.”

He shook his head, “I’m sorry for you.”

“Thank you. Can you—did you find a car?”

He looked to make sure no one was around. “No. I’m sorry Miss, but you best get yourself out this here station if you gots to walk. They be looking for somebody to lynch since Minister King started this here. My nephew be up there. Young men’s church
group. Ain’t never had a drop of liquor in his life.” Then he bustled into the station.

Ruby watched his back walking into the building.
Fucking Maggie
. Ruby collected her pocketbook and walked and sat on the bench next to a withered plum-colored man chewing a wad of tobacco. A bit of the brown juice dripped onto his chin. He wiped it with the edge of his sleeve. She started crying anew.
Her fucking heart. Her fucking weak-ass heart
. Ruby pulled out her compact, looked in the mirror. Crazy stared back. Black lines like soot across her face. Crimson lipstick on her teeth, chin. Cheeks. Her perfect hair unpinned and sticking straight up. But it was her eyes that finished the job. Blood red, but more than that, there was a new, empty terror spreading from the center. Her eyes had disappeared and these new dead things had emerged. The old man handed her a handkerchief. She silently thanked him and began to wipe her face with shaking hands.

She had cleaned her face as best as she could when the man said, “I ain’t got a car,” then gave her a wink, “but I got me a truck.”

“I can pay you—”

He smiled, bashful but certain. “Yo’ company be payment enough.”

Ruby’s eyebrows lifted a bit. He looked to be about seventy. The few teeth he had left were dark brown with tobacco. He smelled musty with age. She tried to conjure her smile, the one that used to send the New York boys and girls reeling. She tried, but all she managed was a nod.

The old man caught his breath and began dragging her largest bag across the platform, looking back as if he’d just stumbled upon a free steak dinner.

Her little girl shifted inside of her chest and Ruby was forced
to step out of the dark room of her mind. Step out and turn off the projector, the one with an old truck pulled over on an abandoned Texas road. And a not so young girl with her head in an old man’s lap, destroying the girl and corrupting the man, whose biggest temptation in all his years had most likely been hard apple cider in his wife’s basement.

Ruby looked up. Gray, when had the sun become so gray?

“You’re in luck lady,” Jonah said. “Train’s coming back.”

“What happened?” the old man with her bag asked plaintively.

“Seems the Rail Manager for Southeastern line’s wife done fell asleep and forgot her stop.”

The railway platform filled with people, surprised at the returning train. The Station Master ran to the doorway flagged by a conductor as the train screeched to its stop, and everyone watched as a drowsy-eyed White woman stepped down. Angry. Embarrassed. Flustered.

Jonah said gently, “Colored car in the rear. Get yourself on and quick.” Ruby flew from the bench, and with his help, gathered her bags and climbed into the designated car. She pushed a ten-dollar bill into his hand. He tried to push it away, but Ruby won out. In seconds the train cranked into movement and headed for the heart of the Black folks’ Liberty.

A
N HOUR
passed before Ephram returned with two bags of groceries. His forehead was wet and there were dark stains under the arms of his shirt.

Ruby stood, bones stiff from sitting, and nodded towards the house. He waved back and walked towards the porch.

Ruby knew what he would find just inside the door. Refuse,
soiled clothes, feces in the corners, caked dirt, flies breeding. Ruby had found that nursing and battling ghosts and the hell of memory was hard work, and keeping house while doing it had proved to be impossible. She was anxious to see how Ephram’s flag of hope fared in such desolate waters. She would not raise hers until she was sure.

She felt saliva rising in her mouth like anger so she spit. Not raise her flag? She’d have to make one first. Hope was a dangerous thing, something best squashed before it became contagious. She looked at Ephram inches from her door and felt a low growl in the pit of her stomach. She doubted he would last the day.

C
elia looked at the rooster clock on the kitchen wall. It was now nine on Sunday morning. The In-His-Name Liberty Township chapter of the Holiness Church was beginning service across town and Celia had not put on the navy dress she had ironed the day before. It rested like a grounded flag on the bed in her room—the fabric, napped and pleated just under the bodice, the scooped high collar and sleeves trimmed in duchess lace—starched hard and pointed.

Two minutes after nine. Her eye began to twitch in anger. Celia stood to make breakfast then sat back down. There wouldn’t be time to eat once Ephram arrived home. They would have to hurry and dress. Celia knew that, whatever else he may have done, her boy would be home this morning, because in forty-five years, Ephram Jennings had never missed Sunday service. He certainly, absolutely would not miss today, the day she had patiently waited for the last twenty-five years. The day of the election for Church Mother. Her name was one of only three on the ballot. She began to pace.

For four months Celia had planned to wear her new Star-of-Bethlehem brooch to church this morning. Only members of the congregation with the proper discernment would see the dark-sky dress and the pear-cut rhinestone pin and know the symbology,
the statement the dress was making. But when Celia stood in church to bear witness before the election, she would weave the brooch into her testimony, lay it out with such clarity that even Melonie Rankin, her opponent’s own daughter, would give one of her little sighs. May, the Pastor’s wife, would be moved to call out a strong “Hallelujah!” followed by echoes of “Preach on, Sister Jennings!” “Tell the truth and shame the Devil!” “Seraph,” and of course, “In His name!”