Ruby on the Outside

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  But that night, after the yelling stopped, it just got quiet.

  When I heard my mother’s footsteps coming near my door I quickly turned my head to the wall and pretended to be fast asleep. I could tell she was looking at me, listening. I tried to make my breathing slow and even. She walked away from my bed, out of my room, and she carefully closed the door behind her.

  A few seconds later I watched the car lights move across my ceiling and down my wall, I knew they had driven away.

  I wasn’t afraid. Not really. I was tucked into my bed. Safe in my room. The door was closed.

  I waited.

  And I waited.

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is the sound of our front door cracking off its hinges—splintering, cracking, breaking, booming shattering—the men’s voices, and the bright lights shining under my bedroom door. The sound of things falling, drawers opening. I could hear it. I could hear walkie-talkies and shouting, footsteps. Voices that weren’t my mother’s. And weren’t Nick’s.

  I froze. Every sound shot through my body, sinking me deeper and deeper into my covers. I was alone.

  I was alone.

  Then my whole room lit up when my bedroom door flew open.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart.” A woman’s voice. “It’s okay.” The woman policeman handed me the teddy bear and nothing was okay. Ever again.

  Then everything is pretty much a big bank of fog, until I remember living with Matoo here in the condos in Mt. Kisco, and I had no idea how either me or my stuff got there. It’s like there’s a big chunk of time that just disappeared. I suppose for a while we were all lost and then slowly, slowly it just started to be home. I didn’t ask any questions but I was vaguely aware that being here had something to do with being near my mother so we could visit her easily—so when she came home we were ready.

  Soon.

  And when “soon” never happened, the past fell away, along with all those meetings, and phone calls, lawyers and plea bargains, court dates, babysitters, more meetings, more phone calls, another trial date. A new lawyer. Another trial.

  Sentencing.

  Twenty to twenty-five years.

  Then I started school and I had to figure out my new teachers, new kids, where the bathrooms were, who to sit with on the bus, who not to sit with. I had to learn spelling and geography.

  I learned to be quiet and listen, not get into trouble if at all possible so I can report to my mother every week—all good things—nothing bad. And my worlds, though a mere five miles apart, divide like the continental shift we learn about in social studies, hopefully never to meet again.

  Inside and outside.

  Real and unreal trade places. And then they trade back again.

  Somewhere during that time Aunt Barbara becomes Matoo.

  Now it’s just my house, where I live; my bed, my dresser, my books, but not much from my old life, except that teddy bear.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Matoo doesn’t make homemade anything, but you’d think from the way Margalit goes on, that there were no better chocolate chip cookies than the ones that we are having for dessert.

  “Oh wow, these are so good. Can I have another one?”

  Matoo looks kind of happily astounded as she passes the box across the table. “Of course, sweetie. But they’re just Entenmann’s.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. But they are so good. My mother never lets me have store-bought. I mean, not that she doesn’t let me, she just never buys them. These are amazing, but don’t tell her I said that.”

  We all laugh. I guess you never know what you should be grateful for.

  Matoo asks Margalit a lot of questions, which is something I never do because when you ask people questions that leaves you open to their questions about you. But I see that Matoo’s technique is to ask so many questions the other person doesn’t have a chance to ask you anything. Besides, she’s really good at it and she remembers everything a person tells her, which is probably why she’s so good at her job at the doctor’s office. Everyone likes her because she remembers their names and anything they tell her.

  Pretty clever, I must say.

  And so far it’s working. We know all about Margalit’s mom and dad, what they do for a living. What kind of car they drive. Where her mom learned to cook. What kind of art the grandfather does. But I notice Margalit stays away from mentioning anything about her brother.

  I understand.

  I haven’t said much at all until I suddenly make one of my infamously dumb statements when Margalit tells us where she lived before she moved here to Mt. Kisco. “Why have I heard of Glens Falls,” I blurt out.

  “Because, Ruby,” Matoo says. “You used to live right near there, in Saratoga.”

  “Oh.” And a warning light goes off in my brain. A little late, however because Margalit is all over this one.

  “You did? You lived near Glens Falls?” Margalit says. “Where? Usually when I tell people where I’m from they never heard of it. It’s not that far from here really. When did you guys live there?”

  Us guys didn’t. Just me. And my mom.

  “It was a long time ago,” Matoo answers quickly. She pats both her hands on the tabletop firmly. “Well, that’s it. Do you girls think you could take Loulou out for a walk before it gets too dark?”

  “Oh, really? I’d love to. Can we?” Margalit jumps up.

  And she forgets about Glens Falls. But I don’t.

  “You can just look it up.”

  Rebecca had all the answers. She was older than me and had been coming to the Bedford Hills children’s center much longer. She had both her mother and father in jail and she knew a thing or two about jails and prisons, parol hearings, clemency boards, and, well, pretty much everything, and when I first met her, she scared me.

  She was one of those tough girls. You can find them everywhere, not just in prison. I heard that there are plenty of tough girls in the middle school, ones that sneak out of the cafeteria to hang out in the bathroom, leaning on the wall or blocking your way to the stall. I heard some girls hold in their pee all day because they are too scared.

  But after I got to know her, Rebecca wasn’t really like that. She just wanted other kids to think she was.

  “Look what up?” I asked her. We were both sitting in the seats inside the trailer. It was raining and instead of making us wait outside getting wet, like we usually have to, they let everyone pile inside the trailer and wait. There was a little corner with little-kid seats and some old books. Rebecca looked funny sitting in one of those seats. I bet I looked funny too, but she must have been at least thirteen. It was just a little while after Tevin stopped coming.

  “You can look it all up,” she said. “Go on the Internet. Google your mother’s name. It’s all public record. Court documents, newspaper articles, even transcripts of the trial if you know where to look. If you know how to search.”

  It seems funny now, that I never thought to do that. But at the time, it seemed perfectly normal.

  “Did you do that?” I asked Rebecca.

  I knew that her dad was in jail too, and she had told me that visiting her dad in prison in Ossining made Bedford Hills look like a four-star hotel.

  “Sure I did,” Rebecca told me. “When I was about your age. Maybe a year older, like around twelve. I learned everything, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.”

  I can see Matoo sitting in one of the regular seats by the door, waiting our turn to show our papers, show my birth certificate, empty our pockets, sign the papers, and begin the process all over again, for the hundredth time or more. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been here once or a million times, it’s the same every time.

  “What?” I asked Rebecca. “What isn’t pretty?”

  “Well, let’s just say ‘criminal justice’ is an oxymoron.”

 
; I had no idea what she meant by that, but I could tell she was angry.

  But I knew better than to ask. Tevin talked, but most kids didn’t. And you never ask. We just don’t talk like that in the children’s center. Nobody says stuff like, What did your mother do? Do you think she’s guilty? Do you think she did it? Or if she did it, do you think she deserves this?

  I never thought like that. Why would I? I can’t change it. Matoo says the past is the past. What good does going over it do? What good is talking about it?

  “So are you glad you found out?” I asked Rebecca.

  She got quiet for a bit.

  She didn’t answer me but I could tell whatever she found out wasn’t what she thought it was going to be. Let’s just say that conversation with Rebecca didn’t exactly inspire me to want to run home and do the same thing.

  At least not that day.

  But after Margalit went home, stuffed on Entenmann’s, I stay up in bed to work on my story. Our story. I touch my pencil to the paper at least five times before I realize I can’t think of anything to write or draw. Margalit and I are both supposed to write a whole new elf chapter before camp tomorrow. But I am stuck. Is this what they call writer’s block?

  I can’t even think of a name for my character.

  I have the story notebook propped up on my knees, under the covers, all cozy for the night. My teeth are brushed. The house is quiet.

  Under the green, green grass, I begin. No, not under the grass. You can’t be under grass, can you?

  Deep, in the dark, dark woods, Edgar the Elf makes his journey.

  Edgar the Elf is stupid. I don’t like that, so I erase it.

  Peter the Elf.

  Nah.

  Josh the Elf?

  Josh?

  Josh Tipps. Why is that name stuck in my head?

  Glens Falls? Why does that come into my head?

  Saratoga. Glens Falls.

  Glens Falls. Saratoga.

  Josh Tipps.

  I can’t write. My brain won’t let me think about anything else.

  I look over at my computer on my desk. It’s off for the night. Our computer teacher at school say it’s better to just leave it on, sleeping, but Matoo can’t stand leaving anything on. She unplugs the microwave when we are not using it. She even turns the router off at night, so computer waves can’t penetrate our brains while we are sleeping.

  But sometimes she forgets.

  I slip off my bed and into my desk chair. The computer hums to life when I press the power button. If the Wi-Fi is still on, the Internet availability icon will show full access. It takes a while for everything to boot up and come flying onto my screen in bits and pieces.

  The Internet is working.

  I open Safari, type my mother’s name and “Josh Tipps” into the search box, and while the little icon loops in circles I hold my breath.

  Chapter Fifteen

  While they thought I was sleeping, my mother and Nick Sands drove eighteen and a half miles away to a drugstore. There is video recording the entire two-minute-and-forty-two-seconds exchange between Nick and the boy behind the pharmacy counter, so there really wasn’t much for the defense attorney to argue.

  According to the Saratoga Daily Gazette and the district attorney of Saratoga County, Nicholas Sands, age 26, and Janis Sands, age 23, walked into the CVS on Congress Street in Glens Falls, New York. They wandered the cosmetics aisle for a while. Mrs. Sands picked up some shampoo. They then proceeded to the back of the store and approached the teenager working as a clerk in the pharmacy that night. There is a heated discussion that at some point turns aggressive on the part of Mr. Sands. In the video Mrs. Sands stands somewhat behind her husband but does not appear to be in distress, nor does she appear to be participating unwillingly.

  At some point during the argument, which became increasingly more heated, Mr. Sands pulled a gun from his pocket and shot the CVS employee. He then fled the scene. Mrs. Sands is seen, in the video, climbing over the counter, where she remained on the floor beside the victim until police arrived.

  There is more.

  Nick Sands, who had several previous drug offenses, was charged with second-degree murder but was able to reduce his sentence, from life behind bars to eight to ten, by giving the district attorney information that led to the arrest of a well-known local drug dealer. Janis Sands was sentenced to twenty to twenty-five years in a maximum security prison.

  The computer screen is the only light in my room. It is like a beacon, but it does not lead me to safety. It threatens to take it all away. I don’t want to find out what I know I will find out if I keep searching. But I click link after link.

  I keep searching.

  There are newspaper articles. Police reports. Court documents, all online. There are follow-up stories on everything from gun control to spousal abuse. It seems to be significant that the defendant, Janis Sands, had no knowledge of the gun prior to the incident; however, she was an accessory to an armed robbery and an accomplice to murder. The boy behind the counter died on this way to the hospital. He was seventeen years old.

  His name was Joshua Alan Tipps.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Even after I figured out that my mother wasn’t coming home with us, I still wanted to be able to at least call my mom whenever something bad happened to me. Not even something that bad, just a little bad. Like someone at school hurt my feelings or I was scared that I would never learn my times table or I had a stomachache, which usually came from one of those two other things, and I wanted to tell my mommy.

  I could always tell Matoo, but it wasn’t the same. For one thing, Matoo usually told me to let it go, and for another, she wasn’t my mom.

  “But there’s the phone, right there.” I stood in the kitchen in my pajamas and bare feet.

  “Yes, I see the phone is right there,” Matoo told me, sitting at the breakfast table, eating her cottage cheese and berries. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

  I was probably in second or third grade. No, what am I saying? It was second grade, I remember exactly, because my supposed best friend in the neighborhood, Kristin, hadn’t invited me to her after school birthday party. I only found out because one girl in my class made the mistake of asking me if I was going. Of course, back then, I hadn’t yet perfected the skill of how to hide important things from the outside world, and I just started crying. Right then and there, in the middle of free reading time.

  Mrs. Chompsky sent me to the guidance office. The guidance lady wanted to know if my emotional state had anything to do with my “situation at home,” and I had no idea what she was talking about since I didn’t yet understand that I had a situation at home. I just had a home. With Matoo. And a mom at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

  I didn’t really understand yet that that wasn’t normal.

  I was still upset when I got back home that day, and there was the phone. And I just wanted to call my mother and tell her about it. I wanted to ask her why my only friend hadn’t invited me to her birthday party and why I got sent to the office for crying in class when Lucille Ramirez does that practically every day. And Jody Bronson has not said one word out loud all year. And Donald Hancock kicks everyone under the table and everyone knows it’s him. So why me?

  Why? Why? Why?

  There are some things only a mommy can fix.

  I knew just hearing her voice would fix it. I knew she would say just the right thing and tell me I was okay, or that I was going to be okay, and I would believe her. And everything would start to be okay.

  “Ruby, you know you can’t call your mother,” Matoo told me. “You know it doesn’t work that way. She has to call us.”

  Us?

  I didn’t want her to call us.

  I wanted her to call me. Me. Right now. I needed my mother, right now.

  But also, I
knew Matoo was right. And not only that, but my mother had to call collect, which meant someone had to be home to pick up the phone and hear the mechanical, recorded message on the other end:

  “You are receiving a collect call from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. Do you want to accept the charges?”

  Matoo tells me it is very expensive, but the worst part is how they cut you off. It doesn’t matter if you are right in the middle of talking or singing or telling story. The recording comes back on, interrupts you, and warns you that you have one minute remaining. That recording is like a nightmare in my head, like a horrible bodyless, faceless voice-monster. After that minute the phone goes dead.

  Mommy? Mommy? Are you there? Mommy?

  “What is it you need to talk her about, Ruby? About school today? About Kristin’s birthday party?” Matoo asked me.

  She knew? The school called her?

  “I took care of it, “ Matoo said, before she put her glasses back on. I hoped she didn’t see my mortified expression.

  “You’re going to the party. So get ready. You’re going to meet everyone at the bowling alley in ten minutes.”

  Matoo was smiling. But I thought I was going to die.

  I knew I couldn’t call my mother but I wanted to so badly right then. I wanted to so badly that I thought maybe my wanting could be strong enough to make it happen. If only I deserved it more, never got into trouble, never did anything wrong, never cried in school—if only I did all those things, then my mother would somehow just know I needed her and she’d magically be calling right at this very minute.

  Please, Mommy, call me.

  Please call me right now.

  Because if I was good enough, she’d know.

  By the way, I never saw Rebecca again. Just a few weeks ago I found out that Rebecca ran away from her foster family. I overheard one of the other visitors saying she heard that Rebecca was in juvie now.