Ruby (2 page)

I
T WAS
after the big Brownsville hurricane of ’67. After eighty-six-mile-an-hour winds crashed into Corpus Christi and rippled all the way east to Liberty Township. Splashing the edge of west Louisiana and flooding the banks of the Sabine. It was after the bending of trees, of branches arching to the floor of earth. After Marion Lake had swollen up and washed away Supra Rankin’s hen house, and Clancy Simkins’s daddy’s Buick, and the new cross for the Church of God in Christ.

Hurricane Beulah had come Ruby’s fourth year back in Liberty. It was then that she saw Ephram Jennings.

She had lain in the stagnant pools thick with mud and browning leaves. She had knelt before a cracked sugar maple tree and lain in the collecting waters, letting the thick fluid cover her like a bedtime blanket. She felt her skin melt and slip from her bones; her heart, spine and cranium dissolve like sugar cubes in warm coffee.

She had been muddy waters for three hours when Ephram found her. Her nose rising out of the puddle to inhale … and dipping back to release. Out and back. Out. Back. Rhythmic, like an old blues tune.

He did not scream. He did not leap over the tree. He did not scoop into her water center to set her free.

For Ephram did not see what anyone else passing down the
road would see: a skinny dust brown woman with knotted hair lying back flat in a mud puddle. No. Ephram Jennings saw that Ruby had become the still water. He saw her liquid deep skin, her hair splayed like onyx river vines.

As rain began to fall upon her, Ephram saw her splash and swell and spill out of the small ravine. Ephram Jennings knew. That is when Ruby lifted her head like a rising wave and noticed Ephram. In that moment, the two knowings met.

They stared at each other under the ancient sky with the soft rain and the full wet earth. More than anything Ephram wanted to talk to her and tell her things he’d kept locked in the storehouse of his soul. He wanted to talk to her about the way Rupert Shankle’s melons split on the vine and how honeysuckle blossoms tasted like sunlight. He wanted to tell her that he had seen a part of the night sky resting in her eyes and that he knew it because it lived in him as well. He wanted to tell her about the knot corded about his heart and how he needed her help to loose the binding.

But at that moment Ruby closed her eyes, concentrated, and melted once again into the pool.

Ephram heard himself asking the strangest question, heard it before it left his berry lips. “Are you married?” But before it could lace through the air, he saw that she was once again water. And he couldn’t ask that of a puddle, no matter how perfect. So he tipped his hat, and made his way back down the road.

“E
PHRAAAM
!
EPHRAM
Jennings your breakfast is been ready!”

As he had nearly every morning of his life, Ephram heard his sister’s call.

“Yes Mama,” he replied.

Celia had raised him since March 28, 1937, when their mother had come naked to the In-His-Name Holiness Church Easter picnic. Ephram was eight, Celia fourteen. The thing he remembered was his sister running over to him covering his eyes. That next morning, their father, the Reverend Jennings, took their mother to Dearing State Mental—Colored Ward, then packed his own bags and began preaching on the road ten months out of twelve. Celia tended Ephram, cooked for him, cut his food, picked and ironed his shirts, blocked his hats, nursed him within an inch of his life when he came down with that joint ailment. She had paused only long enough to bury their father, the Reverend, when he turned up dead. Lynched a few days after Ephram’s thirteenth birthday. Ephram had curled up and lost himself in the folds of Celia’s apron where he stayed for the next thirty-two years.

“Ephram come in here boy!”

Ephram knew without looking that Celia was biting her inner cheek, a thing she did whenever a food item wasn’t eaten at the proper temperature. The colder it got the more furiously she would gnaw. Then he heard her sweeping with a vengeance. Each morning of his life Celia swept bad luck out of the kitchen door. Every evening she sprinkled table salt in the corners, and every morning she swept it out again, full of any evil the night air held. The sweeping stopped.

“I know you hear me!”

“Inaminute,” Ephram called as he smoothed the weathered brim of his hat once more and faced his sister’s mirror. This morning, this crisp, end-of-summer morning, Ephram did something he had not done in twenty years. He looked.

He had always straightened the crease in his slacks on Sunday, or picked bits of lint from his Deacon jacket. He had held a
handkerchief filled with ice on his split chin and lip, the one winter in his life snow had slicked the front walk. He had combed and oiled his scalp and plucked out in-grown hairs. He had shaved and brushed his teeth and gargled with Listerine. But in twenty years, Ephram Jennings had not truly looked into a mirror.

His greatest surprise was that he was no longer young. He assessed the plum darkness under his eyes, the grooves along his full nose, the subtle weight of his cheeks. Ephram pressed a cool washcloth to his skin, then he practiced a smile. He had tried on five or six when Celia launched her final call.

As Ephram sat down to eat, his chair scraped against the butter flower tiles.

“Sorry.” Ephram managed.

“S’all right baby, just got to remember to pick it up instead of drag.”

“I will, Mama.”

“And remember not to leave your bad day cane out where folk can trip on it.”

“I’ll put it away after breakfast.”

“Don’t forget now.”

“I won’t, Mama.”

Celia swept the long hall as Ephram dipped buttery biscuits into syrup. She straightened a wood-framed photograph of the Reverend Jennings as Ephram cut into the chicken fried steak. He had gotten the cutlet on special at the Newton Piggly Wiggly, where he worked.

By way of apology Ephram said, “You fixed that cutlet up real nice, Mama.”

“That was a fair cut. Why don’t you get me some more when you go into Newton today.”

“I ain’t going in today Ma’am.”

“Oh. I thought maybe your sick friend was from Newton since you didn’t say who they was.”

“I’ll pick up more of them cutlets on Tuesday, Mama.”

Celia put
Andy Williams—Songs of Faith
on the phonograph while Ephram peppered his grits and four scrambled eggs. She finished sweeping salt from every corner of the house as “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” smoothed across the furniture. Ephram chewed slowly and glanced at Celia’s cake. Flaked white inside, the outside was all honey-gold. He imagined handing it to Ruby Bell and seeing something he had not witnessed in over thirty years—Ruby smiling.

Celia sailed into the room with her dustpan full of salt. “Well, if you ain’t going to Newton, do your friend stay out by Glister’s?”

“No.”

“Cuz Glister got six of my mason jars if you goin’ round that way.”

“I can’t today Mama.”

“I was going to make Supra Rankin some of my fig preserves for her husband’s great-uncle’s funeral on Monday if you was going that way … Lord knows it’s a shame that family don’t believe in getting they people preserved right. And how they think the man will keep fresh while they waitin’ on them Mississippi Rankins to get here I don’t know.”

“Shephard’s Mortuary lay folk out nice, Mama.”

“Shamed Mother Mercy last year with them red lips and rubbed-on fair skin.”

“Mama …”

“Woman look like a peppermint stick, Lord know. You yet one of Junie’s pallbearers?”

Ephram nodded yes. Celia opened the kitchen door to empty the dustpan, just as a strong wind blew a mouthful of salt into her face. She spit it from her lips, wiped it from her eyes and quickly swept what was left out of the back door.

Celia turned to face Ephram, “You know Baby Girl Samuels back in town.”

Ephram took a bite of eggs.

Celia wiped the table with a damp rag. “Supra Rankin say Baby arrive from New Orleans three days ago, painted up like a circus clown, wrigglin’ like a mackerel all over town.”

Ephram lifted his cup and plate as she cleaned. “Mama—”

“I didn’t say it. Supra Rankin did.” Celia looked hard at Ephram, “Which is why I asked you to get my jars from Glister, since the Samuels are just past that way.”

“Mama! I ain’t taking that cake to Baby Girl Samuels! I ain’t thought nothing about her in fifteen years.” Ephram stood up. “I got to go.”

“Finish your breakfast.”

Ephram reluctantly sat.

Celia poured the steam back in his coffee. He ate the last of his meal as Andy Williams’s rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” syruped its way through the kitchen. Celia circled back to the sink, emptied water from soaking green beans, sat beside Ephram and began snapping the tips off the beans. With practiced grace she chucked the remaining pod into a pail with a hollow
TING
!

Without looking at Ephram she said, “Run into Miss Philomena yesterday at P & K. She asked after you.”

Ephram ate quietly as the music curled under him.… 
truth is marching on …

Celia continued, “That Miss P always be so generous. Helping all manner of folk and such.”

The song infused itself into the air.

I have seen Him in the watch fires …

Ephram breathed it in.

The beans echoed.
TING
.

Celia continued, “Way she give ’way that Wonder Bread to them folks flooded out in Neches.”

Ephram nodded.… 
of a hundred circling camps …

TING
.

“And her old jerky and pickles to them no count Peels.”

TING. TING
.

… builded Him an altar …

“And don’t she help out that Ruby Bell quite a bit?”

… in the evening dews and damps …

TING
.

“Now that Bell gal one sad case, ain’t she?”

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps …

TING
.

“You knowed her as chirrun, didn’t you? Pretty thang she was too, with them long good braids.”

Glory glory Hallelujah!

TING
.

“Look like”

Glory

“she was gonna”

Glory

“come to something,”

Hallelujah!

“being raised by that White lady after Papa Bell died.”

TING
.

“Going off”

Glory

“to New York”

Glory

“City like she done.”

Hallelujah!

“Even going”

His

“to that White”

truth

“folks’ school up there.”

Is marching on
.

TING. TING. TING
.

The song faded into the wallpaper, but Celia sang on.

“It’s more than a sin how far she fall. Hair nappy with mud, raiment’s torn and trampled. Now I hear she take to doing her pee-pee in the streets! Beggin’ for scraps with crazy scratched acrost her pate. And they say what happens at night with menfolk in old Mister Bell’s house would set his bones to spinnin’.”

Ephram felt little dots of sweat along his temples. “Ma—”

“But I don’t blame them none. You know how men do. Nasty ring its bell and they come running like it’s suppertime in hell. Devil got him a firm foothold in Liberty. I know. I seen firsthand what conjure can do. Folk cut down, men shriveled up like prunes. Leave a body empty of they spirit so they just a hollow thing ’til they lay down dead. Boy, I sat acrost the hearth from Satan, close as you is. Seen him stirring his big kettle a’ souls over a lake of fire. I’m on a first name basis with the Devil, so I know how his mind be working, always looking out for another sinner
to season his brew. So when Glister say her boy Charlie seen you eyeballin’ that Bell gal ever day. Sniffin’ after her, I say to her, No Sir. I raise my boy better than to eat at no Jezebel’s table and I
know
he ain’t bringing dessert.”

“Ceal—”

“I ain’t got flippers.”

“Mama—”

“What?”

Ephram noticed his wrist trembling. Just barely, but there it was. He set his cup down.

“Mama—it’s just cake.”

“Bait more like it.”

“She just—”

“Tell me you ain’t lie your own mama into making ho-cake?”

Ephram breathed in a huge gulp of air, as the sleeping pain in his fingers yawned to waking. Far away Andy began singing “Amazing Grace.”

“Your bones botherin’ you today baby?”

“No.” The pain stretched itself into his knuckles, wrists and arms.

Celia took his hand. “Ephram, you always been simple. When you was a boy you’d come back with half a pail a’ milk instead of whole. Couldn’t never figure out how to stop that cow from kickin’ it out from under you. But that’s all right. God love simple, but so do the Devil. Cuz simple ain’t got the kind of mind to withstand temptation.”

Ephram’s bones began to shoot through with fire, the very marrow sizzled under his skin. It was the bad day pain, the worst he’d felt in years. He began to perspire. His legs began to shake as a dot of sweat dropped onto the kitchen table. Ephram stood.