Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

  Dr. Savoie wasn’t that much younger than Sara. She probably went through a lot to have a white coat with her name on it. Saying this wouldn’t make a difference. Truth plain in front of her face rarely does. That’s why she had liquor I suppose. Easier to deal with your life at the bottom of a glass full of whiskey.

  “Mmm-hmm, bet you’re gonna say your daddy said the same thing. Poor smart, sweet, innocent Sara.”

  “Shut the hell up! You don’t know what you talking ’bout!” Sara’s body tightens, she grimaces and hits a small plastic button attached to the twisted artery of tubes and her body relaxes. Whatever liquid concoction she released takes hold quick. She tries to yell, but she’s whispering. In her head, Sara’s probably calling me all kinds of names like when I was a kid, but she mutters, “Don’t talk about...him...no right.” Her eyes glaze quickly and close. Her breathing is uneven and she whimpers like some wounded animal. And I’m at peace. Not because it’s quiet and she isn’t grumbling whatever cruel nonsense comes out her mouth.

  I might be happy. Maybe not so much happy as I need Sara dying to mean something more to me. I’m scared it won’t. That’d make me even less human than I already feel. Who doesn’t feel something when their momma dies?

  Me and Sara are tethered by time and hate, by blood and broken promises and dreams, and even more fractured beliefs of who’s guilty for what’s happened between us. Without Sara, who do I blame for...being me? Are children supposed to forgive their parents for the horrible things they’ve done? Alice begged me to see Sara, to listen to her story, find some understanding for why she is the way she is. Alice wanted me to do this for the sake of our family, for “our little girl Ruby,” she said. And I never listened, because my anger was righteous. It still is.

  But what if I’d have forgiven Sara earlier? Would I have been different? I don’t know what a better man is supposed to look like. But maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m almost underwater without my wife, so lost when I look at our kid who has that same look in her eyes for me, the same one I have for Sara. And I know that girl can do something about it. And the hate Ruby has for me is the same flavor I have for Sara. Salty with a little bit of smoke.

  I have no answer to who Sara is to me and why she is the way she is, why I am the way I am, because whatever haunts her, haunts me. What I should do with her. There’s no action for this situation that seems whole enough to provide relief for the inside of me, the parts constantly churning and moving.

  The nurses’ station is perched just outside of Sara’s door. Some of them type. Some of them are on the phone. Dr. Savoie calls my name right before I make my escape. “Mr. King, can I steal a few more minutes?” She shrugs on a long black wool coat. The muted clack of her feet ringing in my ears. I do my best to muster any semblance of sadness or sense of loss or anything a son about to lose his mother would feel. Something other than relief.

  “Mr. King... I again want to...”

  “What’s up, Doc?” I chuckle. “I’m sorry, I just...”

  “It’s fine. I’ve heard it all.” An easy smile graces her face. Like the kind Alice had when we first met. The one I hadn’t seen in years until I witnessed it a final time in her open casket.

  “Mr. King, your mom needs you. She’s a fighter—”

  “That she is, Doc.”

  Her eyes go wide for a brief moment as she continues, “I know she puts up a tough front, but Sara’s scared. Having someone there for her, to hold her hand can make these next days easier, for both of you. Maybe easier isn’t the best word, but I...well I hope to see you more.”

  “Sara doesn’t need anybody.” I can’t snatch back those words after they escape my mouth. “What I mean to say is she’s tough and she deals with things the way she deals with them, and sometimes it’s alone. That’s her way. It’s best to leave her be.”

  Her mouth opens to respond, but she thinks better of it and squeezes my shoulder.

  “I appreciate your help and you being so nice to her,” I say.

  She smiles that smile again. “Well, you know your mom, but we all need someone. Connection is a human thing. We all recognize that especially if there’s something...propelling us to an inevitable conclusion.”

  Sara is right. Dr. Savoie uses too many words.

  “What I mean to say, Mr. King, is to visit her if and when you can as much as you can handle. I’m sure your mom will appreciate it and, in the end, so will you.”

  She glides to the bank of elevators beyond the clustered desks and computer screens, past the glossy pictures of doctors pretending to care for patients with rosy cheeks and hope in their eyes. I start to follow when I hear my name again. A nurse with flat dark eyes and golden skin motions me to the desk.

  “Mr. King, we still need the rest of your mother’s insurance information.”

  “I’m not sure what it is. I don’t really handle that.”

  Alice begged me to visit Sara before all this. In that cramped, dirty apartment, where my childhood was broken off into my blood on the floor, and the men in her room and the light in the refrigerator with no food.

  “Well, do you know who does, because we have to contact them in order to maintain care and we can’t do that without—”

  “Money. Yeah, I get it. What’s the balance?”

  “I don’t have the current information, sir. Accounts Receivable would deal with that.”

  “Give me an estimate,” I say, my voice starting to rise.

  The nurse’s tiny nose goes slightly in the air and she closes her eyes though I can see the slight roll of them under her lids. “Sir, as I said, I don’t have the current information. So anything I say...”

  “Goddamn it! Just tell me what the hell I need to know!”

  The rest of the nurses’ eyes cut in our direction, a pack of wolves ready to protect their own.

  “Mr. King, I’m gonna need you to lower your voice!” She smooths her crisp uniform as if it had wrinkled from my shouting. “If you don’t have your mother’s information, there are programs that can subsidize her care. Medicare. Medicaid. I’m sure you can visit one of those offices and they can help you. I’m trying to let you know what’s coming.”

  “Help? Yeah if that’s what you call it. I’ll get my own subsidy or grant or whatever,” I say softer.

  “Of course you will.” The fake politeness drips from her thin lips as a smile mars her ashen face.

  Death isn’t the hard part. It’s the money it takes to die. Money I got tied up in other things and doesn’t deserve to be spent on Sara, on a mother, even if she’s my own.

  But we all need a backup plan and I have the church. And I ain’t planning on praying for money either. I just have to ask for it. Church folk, folk like my wife, Alice, would say ask in Jesus’s name. I don’t have to ask Jesus though. I just have to ask Reverend Jackson Potter Sr.

  Problem solved. Prayer answered. Ain’t God good?

  JACKSON BLAISDELL POTTER SR.

  Three lines and forty-five words. I have no idea how I am going to minister to my congregation. My left shoulder is tight and I want to pour a glass of whiskey and drink until my body is slack and slumped and I no longer have the energy to think how much my daughter, Layla, disrespects me. She pushes and pushes until you give her what she wants. That, or you better move to a remote location where she can never, ever find you.

  All I want to do is protect and provide understanding, and I can never figure out how to do both. Perhaps because to protect I must omit, blur lines and control what I present myself to be in front my church. And to my family.

  This chair is too soft. I can’t get comfortable. I stare at the mostly blank notepad. There is one sermon I have in reserve, but it’s one I can never deliver so I’ll leave it tucked away safely, in my Bible.

  Rushing footsteps shuffle past my door and voices whisper bits of gossip about a funeral for a
God-fearing woman, a woman whose life was taken too soon by a beautiful city with a lot of ugly, broken parts.

  Some in our church and others who live on the twisting blocks of neighboring apartments whisper that Alice probably stored away money in the house and that’s what the murderer wanted. They always saw her scurrying about with stacks of papers and folders. Maybe those papers held some secret accounts. Others hear Lebanon turns a good profit at the bakery, so he probably also had thousands or tens of thousands stashed somewhere in the house.

  It’s foolish listening to idle gossip. There’s never knowledge gained, just temporal excitement.

  Many people believe it was a random act of violence, and our lives, black lives, are like that. Unforeseen patterns shape our fate. And on the South Side of Chicago, we exist with a unique kind of knowledge of how fragile life unfolds among these clustered rows of brick, cement and asphalt.

  I need answers like everyone else. The problem is, I’m not supposed to be like everyone else. I’m supposed to know or at least act like I know.

  Addressing her murder in my sermon puts upon me a pressure I haven’t felt in a long while. Reconciling myself with the fact Alice is dead is proving difficult. I’m dealing with my own guilt, my eyes overlooking bruises pancaked over with makeup and long-sleeved blouses on ninety-degree days.

  What are the odds that Lebanon just abused her, but didn’t kill her outright?

  The odds are low. They are very, very low.

  Persuading others to put their faith in a God that didn’t protect a good person is not easy, but forgiving myself could prove damn near impossible.

  Lost in my meditation, I don’t notice as the door creaks open and he strolls in. Doesn’t knock. Doesn’t care. Doesn’t respect the title on the door.

  Nothing about Lebanon is friendly or shouts friend to me anymore, but that’s what he’s supposed to be, that’s what he was to me at one point long ago. That’s what I still want to see in him, what I need to feel in my bones, but those are cold, like the windowpane rattling against the gusts of wind.

  “Need a favor.”

  “They’re never favors. You just come in here and give orders like you run this place,” I say.

  “Dramatic as always, Jack. Damn! I don’t ask if I don’t need.”

  “Stop cursing. Have some respect for this place, and my place in it.”

  “Your place.”

  The door remains open and the hall, though at this moment empty of walking bodies, isn’t empty of listening ears. He follows my every move as I rise and close it behind him. I move deliberately, every limb and muscle careful not to incite suspicion or anger.

  “You do that, you know? You tiptoe around me like Alice does, did. I hate that.”

  Did he hate her or something about her so much that he took her life? I piece the night together as I remember it. Layla getting the call from Ruby. Her rushing out, her momma and me following behind. Blue lights, yellow tape, brown bodies and a redbrick house with rigid white bodies cycling in and out. Lebanon’s eyes filled with tears when people looked, his body shivering with grief when eyes wandered over his frame. But when people didn’t look, those few moments when something else grabbed their attention, the tears and the grief briefly seemed to dissipate.

  “This is a private conversation. Listening ears and all,” I respond.

  “Sure. Whatever you say, man. Now about that favor.”

  “No. Whatever it is, I got things I need to do. And you need to be with Ruby right now.”

  “Don’t tell me about my family, Jackson. Worry about yours.”

  “Don’t let this robe fool you, Lebanon. Watch your mouth about my family.”

  Wind rattles the windowpanes. Lebanon stares at the picture of me and my father on my desk and picks it up, the hard glint in his eyes softening a moment. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven in the picture, and I’m looking up at my father maybe the way all children look at their fathers at one point in their lives, with a mix of love and awe. He was telling me to look at Momma, but I refused to look at anyone but him. I had what some called a charmed life. Blessed. Then one night two officers came to the door of my home saying my father, Pastor Thomas Potter, died in a car accident. Some criminal trying to outrun the cops caused a good man to not come home. The guy who killed Dad died too, so I suppose there is some justice in that.

  “Uncle Thomas was a good man.”

  “Yeah, he was.”

  “You’re a good man, too. A good pastor.”

  “Now you want to sweet-talk me into doing your bidding.” I sit back down behind my desk and begin writing, trying to compile something, anything for a sermon I have to deliver in an hour or so.

  “Nah. I don’t have to do that. You’re gonna do what I ask, but this picture reminds me of something...something good and I wanted to acknowledge it, I guess.”

  He sets the picture reverently back down on my desk. My breath catches and I’m still caught off guard by how much I miss Dad. You don’t forget those who mold you or how disappointed they’d be if they saw how misshapen you’ve become in this world.

  “What do you want? ’Cause you want something, and I got a sermon to finish up.”

  “I saw her today. Sara.”

  I drop my pen. “It’s been...”

  “Over ten years. Since Naomi’s funeral. Only time I’d ever seen Sara cry.”

  “But why?”

  “Sara called me. She’s dying, wants me to help her make arrangements. Crazy right?”

  “Isn’t that something you’ve always wanted? Her. Dead.”

  His dry, bitter cackling bounces off the walls. “I’ve wanted a lot of people dead,” he responds while looking straight in my eyes. “Anyways, hospital says it needs money.”

  “I’m not sure how you think I can help.”

  “Church is about charity isn’t it?”

  “Meaning...”

  “You’re really gonna make me beg, Jackson, Reverend-Pastor-Apostle-All-Good-All-Knowing Jackson Potter Sr.? I mean instead of charity, I could make church about confession,” warns Lebanon.

  I stop scribbling and glare at him.

  “Come on, man. I was kidding,” he teases.

  “No. You weren’t.”

  “What happened stays with us. You go out there, preach, be their god.”

  “I’m not a god.”

  “Don’t seem to mind sacrifices like one, Jackson.”

  I swallow hard with no comeback for this statement. It twists like a knife in my stomach. Now, I’m back there in a dirty hotel room staring at a painting of vast wilderness with no way out. Pleading to God to forgive me. Wanting to tell someone what really happened to a boy named Syrus, but my voice and self-preservation keep me silent.

  Lebanon saunters to the bookcase running his fingers over etchings and trophies, stock paper with my name in loopy letters embossed with gold print.

  “You accomplished so much when I was locked up,” he says.

  “I don’t know how you think the finances work here, but it’s not just my eyes on the paperwork.” I pretend to write again. “Can’t you figure out your own problems? You always come to me to clean up your messes.”

  “Remember who started that tradition, Jackson.”

  I could reach across my table and punch him, bloody that nose, mess up that pretty high yellow face women seem to love. I remain in my chair. I try to count slowly and let my rage escape in uneven breaths. “We already helped with Alice’s burial costs.”

  “And you can eventually help with Sara’s, but for right now I need some money to pay a hospital bill. Come on, Sara was Aunt Violet’s friend too, right?”

  “Yeah Sara was Mom’s friend. Still is for whatever reason.”

  “Probably the same reason we still friends.”

  “That’s what you call it?
”

  Lebanon smiles big and wide. That perfect row of teeth. I know what’s coming. He’ll ask the impossible of me and I see my life in this moment as if I can reach out and touch it, and I know to go right, but I’ll still propel myself left. Because I still owe him.

  Damn it.

  “Tell whoever you have to tell, whatever you have to tell them. Make the check out to the bakery like always, Jackson. It should be for $9,000 at least. Meet me by that spot after church, the one your dad would take us to. Be there around 2:30 p.m.”

  “I have to be at another service around that time.”

  “And you’ll make time for this. Me being happy is important to you and for you, Jackson. Remember that.”

  The door creaks open and he walks out.

  I still possess the three lines and forty-five words I managed to cobble together before Lebanon’s arrival. I am bereft, defeated in this moment, laid naked to all the things I know about myself and that he knows about me, but I’m alone in this circle of dark winter nights and infinite debt.

  I unlock my drawer and write the check.

  CHAPTER 3

  CALVARY

  September 17, 1960

  A young girl walks into my hall wearing a yellow dress with white flowers. She wants forgiveness. She wants solace. She wants resolution. I can’t give this to her, but I can provide a place where she is safe and where the night holds no fear, only stillness.

  Hands grasping together so tight, the only word leaving her lips is, “Please.” This drastic begging, calling out to God in the heaviest of her pain, her fear—listening to these pleas is my ministry.

  I cannot comfort, nor put human arms around a body, but I can be. I can stand. I can hear their cries, feel their despair and be present with them.

  The young girl in the yellow dress thinks about home. She thinks about her mother, who died when she was nine. She gave her a rag doll with black buttons for eyes. Her mother said the doll would protect her when she was hurt or scared, or if she needed a friend. She thinks about her father’s hands, how they are rough and how they grab her in the night. How he puts them over her mouth and how her tears hopscotch over his fingers, never falling to her pillow. She thinks about how those hands tear and grasp and touch and she thinks about her hands and her pretty yellow dress with the white flowers, and she looks down at her fingers now gently cupping her belly.