Ruby Read online

  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.

  “You need your bad day cane?”

  He didn’t look at her when he said, “I’m not going out today Mama.” Ephram walked to the doorway as Celia took a cloth and wiped away the drop of sweat. He walked past the narrow hallway as she stood and plopped her green beans into a waiting pot on the stove. He crept into his bedroom, slipped off his polished shoes, took off his jacket and hat, then lay back flat upon the iron bed.

  Celia called in from the kitchen, “You want a slice of cake, baby?”

  “Not now Mama.”

  “Well, I’ll cut you a piece. Leave it out for when you get up.”

  EPHRAM PRAYED against the pain. It came anyway, sizzling like a pit fire. Rising, burning, sucking. Ephram gritted his teeth against it. Sweat poured into the curve of his ear, onto the pillowcase. It began receding. Ephram took in a breath. He felt the bedsprings coiled beneath him. The ceiling low and bumpy from when Celia hired the Pastor’s son to scrap stucco gray over the wood.

  It started again, clanging like a fire alarm, wrenching his stomach. Ephram balled his fists so hard, all ten crescent moons disappeared to white. It passed. He gasped for air.

  The spells were getting worse. Lately, he’d felt like his bones were God’s kindling. That God must be awfully cold to set so many fires. As Ephram waited for the pain, he saw Ruby as she used to be, the first time he’d seen her. The sweet little girl with long braids. The kind of pretty it hurt to look at, like candy on a sore tooth.

  Ephram gasped in. He could tell this wave would be big. The hurt rose up, and the world crashed down. Ephram’s last thought before passing out was of sorrow, that Ruby would never taste Celia’s angel cake.

  His body grew limp upon the chenille spread, his bones grinding even in slumber. The Saturday sun ruffling his curtains, sending fingers of light across the floor. Outside something cawed from atop a tree. Something shiny and black. It flew from its perch and made lazy eights over Jennings land, then it drifted down from the sky into a patch of yard just outside Ephram’s room. Scratching and strutting until a broom-toting woman yelled at it from inside the house. At that the crow tilted her head, spread her wings and caught the wind. Then she cawed.

  Chap
ter 2

  The piney woods were full of sound. Trees cracking and falling to their death; the knell of axes echoing into green; the mewl of baby hawks waiting for Mama’s catch. Bull frogs and barn owls. The call of crows and the purring of doves. The screams of a Black man. The slowing of a heart. All captured, hushed and held under the colossal fur of pine and oak, magnolia, hickory and sweet gum. Needles and capillary branches interlaced to make an enormous net, so that whatever rose, never broke through to sky. The woods held stories too, and emotions and objects: a tear of sleeve, bits of hair, long-buried bones, lost buttons. But mostly, the piney woods hoarded sound.

  Like the sharp squeak of a wheel from a child’s wagon turning round and round. A rusted Radio Flyer, being pulled by a little brown boy, rattling with a lunch pail of chicken and dumplings, biscuits with fig preserves stuffed inside, collard greens and a special dessert wrapped in a red and white napkin.

  The boy named Ephram pulled the wagon with great anticipation. He guessed what dessert his big sister had put in his pail. She’d made one just like it for his eleventh birthday four months ago. The white lay angel cake. His mouth watered so that he stopped under the big trees and opened the cloth. He was right. He nibbled one corner and covered it. He paused for a second, opened it again, then crammed the slice into his mouth. It was like eating sweet air. When he was done he shook the napkin over his face to catch any crumbs, brushed off and walked until he smelled the water.

  There were two suns at Marion Lake, the one high above and the one floating on the surface. The water was a blue mirror, surrounded by a hundred trees and a million frogs. Ephram took off his shoes and cooled his toes first thing. He loved Marion Lake, especially on Sunday morning when nobody else was there. He used to go on Saturdays before his mama had gone, but only after he’d finished his chores. She was very firm about that.

  Ephram watched the water swirl and skim not too far from shore. He knew the fish would be biting. He baited a bent nail with a bit of fatback from Celia’s slop jar. Then hoisted his branch pole between two rocks and sat down to eat his dinner. Ephram knew he might sit there for hours and never catch a fish. Sometimes, he’d feel one tussle with the line, he’d pull it above water and see those invisible teeth still grabbing ahold of the bait. Scales flashing silver, tail twisting … single glass eye staring straight ahead until they realized the spot they were in and let go. Flop! Splosh! Down into the sky water until it was out of sight. His real mother had called it “feeding,” not fishing. He guessed that was true. Otha Beatrice Jennings always took notice of the little things. Maybe that’s why she’d been such a good lace-maker. Ephram wondered if they let her make lace up where she was now. He sure hoped so.

  The chicken and dumplings were good. Not as good as Mama’s, but Celia was a good cook, even though she was too bossy about it. She was bossy about everything since their father, the Reverend, had been asked to step down by the Elders. He would mumble at bedtime, to no one in particular, “That was a mighty unchristian thing for a pack of Christians to do.”

  To make matters worse, the acting preacher was Elder Rankin’s cousin and a part-time janitor at the Piggly Wiggly in Newton, who had only recently heard the call. The Reverend renamed it “the Piggly Service,” then bade Celia and Ephram to never cross its threshold. “We’ll have church in our own house, fifty-two Sundays a year whether I’m here or no.” Celia had kept the faith, making Ephram memorize huge sections of Leviticus and Revelation and recite them perfectly each Sabbath. When the Reverend was in town, Sunday mornings before breakfast and after chores, Ephram and Celia would kneel and he would preach while eggs turned to yellow glue and pancakes shriveled and died. Long. And sometimes, he would pour two fingers of rye, and slip a sip between Ephesians 1 and 2, until he dozed off. That had happened that very morning in fact. Celia had scraped their breakfast into the bin, made the Reverend some coffee, then fixed Ephram’s dinner and told him to go play.

  He had just finished eating and was sitting with his pole when he spotted them—Maggie Wilkins and the quiet little girl beside her. They were across the lake. The girl tiptoed and leaned in, her nose almost touching Margaret’s cheek. She was caramel brown with her hair up and fancy, grown-up eyes in a heart-shaped face. She held shining black shoes with white stockings balled into the toes. She wore a pink dress and looked about eight or nine. Margaret was dressed like a farmer. She was one of those grasshopper children, with legs almost as thin as their arms and twice as long. There were six tall rough girls in the Wilkins family including Margaret. All lanky and black brown with a constant sheen of ash on their knees, elbows and shins. Every one of them known for being bad, but Margaret had the worst reputation. The Wilkins were the Bells’ no count relations and they lived just on the edge of Liberty.

  Ephram had heard of Margaret—Maggie’s right hook getting her kicked out of school long before he’d seen her fight. None of the Wilkins girls stayed in school for long. Most left after half-killing some student or teacher.

  After each of the girls spilled a good amount of blood, they stayed home and helped their mother, Beulah Wilkins, farm her twenty-seven acres of cane and cotton. Beulah Wilkins was bigger than all her children put together, a mountain of a woman who made the earth shake just a bit when she walked. Beulah had been his mama’s good friend and Ephram had heard his mama saying that staying out of school might be fine for Samella and the other girls, but not so fine for Maggie, since she was the smartest of them all.

  Still, he’d never met Margaret face to face. He remembered just last month he’d seen her fight Chauncy Rankin’s younger brother Rooster—so named for the rust color of his hair, and the way he liked to crow. He was built like all the Rankins. Big. Maggie was ten, Rooster was fourteen and he’d picked a fight with her because, he said, he wanted to “see if she could really fight.” He’d made her take off her boots because they were pointed at the end. She’d beaten him in bare feet. Beaten him bloody. Ephram had seen this horrible thing she had done to Rooster. Seen his pride water down to a puddle, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. Maggie beating Rooster was all anyone had talked about for weeks. So when Ephram saw Margaret on the other side of the lake, he had no desire to cross paths.

  Just as he thought of retreating into the brush, he saw the quiet girl pointing in his direction. Maggie turned fiercely and cut her eyes at him.

  “What you staring at?” she called across the lake.

  “I’m not staring.”

  “What you doing then?”

  “Fishin’.”

  “Well you best not be staring at nobody if you know what’s good for you.”

  Ephram nodded. “I’m just fishin’.”

  “Well see that’s all you do.”

  Ephram watched the other girl whisper into Margaret’s ear. The two began to approach, walking along the water’s edge. As they got closer Margaret asked, “You catch anything?”

  “Naw.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Awhile.”

  “You ain’t fishin’, you feedin’.”

  Ephram paused and looked at Margaret. Although he was a year older, Margaret towered above him.

  “Gimme that pole.”

  Ephram handed it over before she asked twice.

  “You Celia Jennings’s brother, huh?”

  Ephram nodded.

  “You got a name?”

  “Ephram.”

  Margaret slipped a bobby pin from the other girl’s hair and bit off the tip. The girl’s two plaits fell past her shoulders.

  “What you using for bait?”

  Ephram handed her more salt pork.

  She took one look at it and rolled her eyes, “No wonder.” She walked straight to the lake’s edge, dug her hand into the soft earth until she retrieved a long earthworm. She walked over to the pole, fastened the black pin to the string and bent it back. Then she pierced the moving worm with the sharp end of the pin and cast it easily in the water. Ephram and th
e little girl winced.

  “Ruby ain’t never had no catfish. This here’s Ruby.”

  Ruby nodded at him. Ephram nodded back.

  Margaret continued, “Ruby stay up in Neches most the year with a White lady. They ain’t got no catfish where she from.”

  Ephram ventured, “Ain’t they got catfish ever where?”

  “What I just say?” said Margaret. The three of them fell silent.

  They sat on the lake’s shore, Ephram to the left, Margaret in the center and Ruby to the right of her. Out of the corner of his eye, Ephram saw Ruby’s sleeve barely touching Maggie’s coveralls. Then Ruby leaned back and let her head rest against the soft moss grass. Ephram did the same and they looked into the identical swatch of sky. He hadn’t noticed it before but the blue had blown away and a dark flannel had taken its place. Maggie took a cigarette from her left ear and struck a kitchen match against the wedge of her belt.

  “Ain’t your mama up at Dearing?” Maggie asked out of the corner of her mouth, her eye squinting against the smoke.

  Ephram didn’t make a sound. Maggie went right on.

  “Thought that was you.”

  Ephram saw Ruby nudge Maggie as if to stop her.

  “Naw, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ bad. Papa Bell usta say some of the best people he know be up there. Say world be better off if them inside come out, and them out go in. How long she been there?”

  Ephram cleared his throat. “Three years.”

  “See then? She not bad off as some. I know a lady who mama been there fifteen years. Ain’t no reason to be shamed.” She sucked her teeth. “So, why they send her up there anyway?”

  Ruby finally spoke, “It’s gonna rain.”

  Maggie slipped off her overshirt and handed it to her. Ruby covered her shoulders with it.

  “What she do?” Maggie repeated, flicking an ash without removing the cigarette from her mouth.

  “Nothing.”

  “She had to do something big else she wouldn’t be there. I ain’t gone tell nobody, and Ruby going back to Neches this afternoon. I’ll tell you what I hear and you tell me if it’s right. Say your mama come out naked to the church Easter picnic. That so?”