Ruby on the Outside

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  “And then after your real father—may God rest his soul.”

  “My real father is dead?”

  “I have no idea, and neither does your mother. I’m just saying that out of disrespect.”

  “Oh.”

  Matoo went on. “Anyway, after your biological father left, and your mother met Nick, well, we all thought things were going to be better for her. For both of you. Well, I never thought that. Your mother did. She was looking for a dream, Ruby, you have to understand. Nick was like her mother and father all rolled into one. He built things and planted things and took care of the house. And he brought her cups of tea with honey and cream. No one ever did anything like that for her before. She was afraid to lose him.”

  I look at Matoo. I know no one ever did anything like that for her, either.

  “So I understand why she went with him that night,” Matoo said.

  “But she left me,” I say.

  “I know, Ruby. She made a terrible mistake. I don’t think your mother ever understood how important she was to you. She didn’t think she was important to anyone. She felt worthless, and so to her, leaving you alone for what she thought would be a few minutes didn’t seem that important. I know it doesn’t make sense.”

  It did. I know what it’s like to think you are not important, not special. To think that what you do doesn’t matter or make a difference.

  “But Nick was dangerous,” I prompted her.

  “He was. And your mother knew it, right from the start. But it was like he was offering a drink of water and she was so terribly thirsty. She had been walking in the desert all her life.”

  “But the water was poison.”

  “It was.”

  We are both quiet for a while. I never really studied the underside of a row of industrial sinks before. It’s not real pretty.

  “I think we should go, Matoo,” I say.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Just one more thing.”

  “Of course.”

  “The boy that died that night. Josh. Josh Tipps,” I begin.

  “Yes?”

  “His family would hate my mother, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t care about that story, about being thirsty or living with strangers or your mother dying, would they? They would just hate us.”

  Matoo stands up. I can tell her legs are stiff and aching. She’s always complaining about her bones, her back and the pain that runs down her arm. But I think there are other aches that she doesn’t ever talk about that are her real pain.

  “I don’t know, they might. They might not. But what made you think about them? How do you even know that name?”

  I’m staying on the floor. It seems safer down here. I feel smaller. I wish I were little again, when I didn’t know any of this.

  I answer her. “I’ve heard you say that name and then I found it on the Internet. I read about the whole thing. About the boy who got shot. About the trial. About everything. It’s so awful, Matoo. My mother is responsible for Margalit’s brother dying, being killed.”

  Before I can feel sick again, Matoo is right next to me again. She groans a little but she crouches back down.

  “Ruby, what are you talking about?” Matoo is saying. “What does any of this have to do with Margalit? Josh Tipps’s parents don’t even live around here. They live in Virginia. Well, the father does. The mother is in Utah or something like that.”

  There is a kind of buzzing in my ear and the tip of my nose. “What?”

  “We’ve been in touch with them, Ruby. Your mother writes them letters all the time. We just didn’t think you’d want to hear about that. Not yet. Josh’s father even came to visit your mother once.”

  “Josh Tipps is not Margalit’s brother?” I ask.

  The buzzing is getting louder and moving into my whole face. My heart is thumping out of my control. My whole face is numb.

  “Margalit’s brother? No, why? Is her last name Tipps?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And she has a brother who was killed?”

  Yes, I mean. I don’t know. He died somehow. I think . . . so I just thought . . .”

  Now Matoo starts crying a little too. “You thought the Josh Tipps from that night was Margalit’s brother who died?”

  I nod.

  “Oh, baby girl. No wonder you’ve been so upset. No, Ruby. You don’t have to worry about that. We’ve got enough to worry about.”

  I am still a little confused. “Are you sure?”

  “What, sweetie?

  “Are you sure there’s another Josh Tipps?”

  “Yes, Ruby. I’m positive. I saw the Tippses at the trial. Every day for months, and I’ve met Margalit’s parents. They are not the same people. It’s just one of those crazy things. It’s just a name.”

  “It’s just a name,” I repeat.

  So my life is not ruined. Not completely. Not yet. Not at all.

  “Let’s go home now, okay? Maybe your mother will be able to call and we can straighten this all out.”

  “Okay.”

  I get up first, so I can help Matoo. My legs are pretty stiff now too. I rub my bottom. It’s so cold from the tile floor, but I feel better than I’ve felt in a lot of days. Like a thousand pounds have been taken off my chest, my back, my shoulders, and my head, which is pretty good considering there’s another thousand still there, but it’s better than it was before.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We are eating dinner and waiting to see if my mother calls. Loulou is sitting under the table in case one of us drops something. She’s sitting right under my feet, of course. I poke around at my Chinese food.

  “I’m sure she’ll call as soon as she can,” Matoo is saying.

  “Is your cell phone charged?”

  “It is, but she’ll call the landline, you know that.”

  Matoo gets up and starts cleaning. She won’t leave the leftovers in those cardboard boxes. She says they leak and make a mess in the refrigerator. She puts everything into fresh, clean containers and lines them up on the middle shelf.

  I drop a little piece of roast pork lo mein for Loulou and I wait.

  I remember when I used to think that phones only worked in one direction because we never called my mother. We always waited for her to call us and for the longest time I didn’t understand that you could make an outgoing call, until kids started getting their own iPhones. And even then, I thought it must be some new cellular technology.

  Wait, what? You are allowed to call someone first?

  “Maybe she’s mad at me,” I say.

  “Oh, goodness. Your mother would never be mad at you.”

  How many times we’ve sat at this kitchen table and waited. My mother tries to call at the same time every week, but there are exceptions. There are rules and circumstances that come before everything. There might be a lockdown. Or a change in mealtime for her unit. She is not allowed to call during work hours, or cleaning detail, or mealtime, or counts, or lockdowns, or after or before hours. Someone else makes every decision for her. Every choice about her life is made by someone else. Something else.

  I once heard my mother telling Matoo she was afraid she was forgetting how to be a grown-up.

  “Let’s have some ice cream while we wait,” Matoo says. She’s put away all the Chinese food, done the dishes, and wiped the drips of duck sauce that, of course, I spilled.

  “Do we have whipped cream?”

  “We sure do.”

  So Matoo and I have ice-cream sundaes and the sun drops lower and lower in the sky outside our window. An orange light spreads across the whole room. We should turn on the lights but neither one of us moves from the table. We are both eating as slowly as we can.

  I love it best when the ice cream melts and mixes with the whipped cream and it’s like scooping up thick, swee
t ice-cream soup into my spoon. I don’t want to enjoy it, but I do, and I bet Margalit would love this dessert. I bet she would love the Cool Whip that we always keep in the freezer. Sometimes I sneak and just take a scoop right out of the tub.

  Things are going to be all right.

  And now I know that if I am going to keep Margalit as my friend, my best friend, I think I need to tell her the truth.

  “Matoo, there’s something I need to do,” I say. “Can I take Loulou for a walk?”

  “Right now?” she asks me.

  “I think so.”

  “What if your mother calls?”

  “Tell her the truth. Tell her I had to go see my friend,” I say. “Do you think she’ll understand?”

  “I know she will,” Matoo says. “Here. Take a flashlight with you.”

  I nod. Even though Matoo doesn’t like me walking around after dark, she lets me.

  Loulou is stopping at every fence post to either sniff, or sniff, squat down, and pee on top of whatever it is she is smelling. I thought only boy dogs did that. But I let her take as much time as she likes.

  I like the condo neighborhood at night like this. No one is around, just a few other people walking their dogs. A couple of people, a man and a woman are all dressed up coming down their stairs to their car. I guess they are going out for a Saturday-night party or something. But mostly it’s empty and quiet. I especially love walking by the pool at night. The water is perfectly still, like a mirror. There is only one little yellow light on by the clubhouse that lights up just that one section of concrete and a patch of green grass.

  I have one long block to figure out what I am going to tell Margalit. I know I want to do it now. Before camp Monday. Before I chicken out.

  What am I going to tell her?

  I know what I want to tell her. I want Margalit to know that I love my mother, that my mother is not dead like Caleb’s mother in Sarah, Plain and Tall, and that my mother is in prison.

  That’s where I was today, Margalit. Visiting my mother in prison. And that’s where I’ll be every Saturday unless we have something more important to do. If, that is, you still want to be my friend, and we have something more important or fun to do.

  I am imagining the whole conversation in my head and so far it’s going pretty well.

  Or maybe I’m actually talking out loud.

  “Excuse me? Are you saying something to me?” It’s Mrs. Hochreiter, walking her dog, Ringo.

  I look up.

  “Oh, no. Sorry.” I say. “Just talking to myself.”

  Loulou and Mrs. Hochreiter’s golden retriever are sniffing each’s bottoms and Loulou ends up walking right under Ringo’s whole body so that our leashes get all tangled.

  “No worries,” Mrs. Hochreiter says. She drops her end of the leash and lets Ringo untangle himself. “I talk to myself all the time.”

  When Mrs. Hochreiter and Ringo move past I see Margalit. She is heading right toward me.

  “Ruby,” she calls out. “I was just going to your house. I mean, I just called your house and your mom said you were . . . I mean your Matoo . . . I mean, I was hoping . . . Oh, Loulou, oh hi, Loulou!”

  By the time she is done talking we are standing right next to each other. Loulou is wagging her tail like crazy, trying not to jump up onto Margalit because she knows she’s not supposed to jump on people.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I was just coming to you.”

  “You were?”

  There is a little worn dirt path that winds through the woods, around all the condo units, the pool, the clubhouse, and all the parking lots. Without saying anything, we start walking that way, the three of us. Then, when we get near the woods that separates the whole condo unit from the road, the mosquitoes join us.

  Margalit is swatting her hand around her head like crazy. “This one bug,” she says. “It’s been flying around my ear the whole time. Why won’t it go away?”

  I’ve got one by me, too. A buzzing unseen insect circling me no matter how far or how fast we walk.

  “Oh, I know.” I am holding Loulou’s leash in one hand and waving my hand from my face to the back of my neck.

  “Don’t you ever wonder how this tiny bug can wander so far away from home?” Margalit is asking, and swatting.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, for us to walk around this path is no big deal but for this tiny bug it’s the equivalent of like hundreds of miles, isn’t it?” She bats at the air next to her ear. “So this bug stays flying around your head, it won’t go away but we are still walking, so it’s moving farther and farther from its home. Doesn’t its family wonder where it is? How will it find its way back?”

  I never thought of that. What a dumb little bug. “I don’t know. Do bugs have homes?”

  Margalit looks at me. “I think so. They’re supposed to. I mean, if they are alive, then they were born, they must have a family of two or three hundred brothers and sisters, and a father and a mother and . . .” She finally stops talking.

  I felt like I am standing at the end of the diving board when you are so scared but if there’s one second when the thought enters your head to jump, you jump. I start, “Margalit, my mother’s not dead. I got that from a book.”

  “Sarah, Plain and Tall?”

  “You know it?”

  Margalit nods. “Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar. Especially when you used the name Caleb for the pet dog. That was kind of a dead giveaway.”

  “But you didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, I figured there was something you’d tell me when you felt like it,” Margalit said.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  Loulou stops to sniff at a tuft of tall grass that looks exactly like the tuft of tall grass we just passed a few seconds ago but apparently to Loulou it’s something completely new and exciting. Her nostrils flare open at the sides and she sucks in the air.

  “My mother’s in prison.” I say it.

  Loulou looks up to the sound of my voice, like maybe my tone startled her, but then she just continues to waddle ahead. Margalit and I fall into step with her.

  “Oh,” Margalit says.

  She looks like she doesn’t know what to say or think or feel. And I sure can’t blame her for that.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before. You are the first one,” I say.

  “I’m glad you told me,” Margalit says.

  We keep walking, which is good because we both have to look straight ahead in the direction we are going. And you should always look down, in case some other dog wasn’t as considerate as Loulou, to go in the bushes.

  “So Matoo is not your mother?”

  “No,” I tell her. “She’s my aunt. She’s my mother’s sister. Barbara. Her real name is Barbara, but she’s like—”

  “Like your Mom, too?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I say.

  “Matoo. I like that,” Margalit says.

  “So you’re not mad at me?” I ask, keeping my gaze focused on the ground.

  “Of course not,” Margalit says. But I am not that convinced.

  “I didn’t mean to lie to you. I just never wanted anyone to know.”

  I feel Margalit’s fingers reaching for my hand. When she has it, she squeezes it. “I get that, but I’m not anyone,” she says. “I’m your best friend.”

  I always knew I wanted a best friend, but I never knew a best friend would want me.

  “And I am yours,” I say.

  “To be continued.”

  “To be continued.”

  We walk the path, holding hands, Loulou leading the way.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It’s nearly the end of August, and I can already see summer getting ready to leave, in the way the morning light comes a little later. I can hear it in the dryness
of the leaves blowing outside my screen window in the morning.

  My last visit with my mom feels like it was a month ago instead of a week, which is what it was. The beginning of summer feels like a life time ago. And best of all, it feels like me and Margalit have been friends forever. Best friends.

  School starts in a mere two weeks. Now every day really counts.

  Slowly, Margalit started telling me little bits about her brother. She has a sad story too. Her brother died of a blood cancer three years before Margalit was born. She never knew him, but sometimes, when she is telling the story, she just leaves that part out. Sometimes, she told me quietly, sometimes she’s more sad that she didn’t know her brother than that he died. She feels left out of the mourning and the memories her parents share. She feels jealous, even angry, and then she feels guilty for feeling that way.

  This does not surprise me. And it does not scare me away. So far, things I’ve told Margalit haven’t scared her off either.

  If I had done the math I might have figured out earlier that Margalit’s brother could not have been the same Josh Tipps, but I think when you are trying so hard to hide your own truth, it’s hard to see anyone else’s.

  Margalit and I still go to camp every day, but things are winding down there, too. Beatrice and Yvette pretty much gave up on being real camp counselors and mostly we all just hang out at the pool, all five of us, just like a group of friends.

  “Hey, whatever happened to that little book of yours?” Beatrice asks.

  “We still have it,” Margalit answers quickly.

  I have it, but we haven’t been writing together for a while.

  “To be Continued. That was a cool title,” Yvette says.

  Elise started her own little book too, which was mostly pictures of mermaids and elves. At lunch she forced us all to listen and look at her illustrations.

  They were cute, even if she was nothing but a big copycat.

  But what Margalit didn’t tell anyone was that all week the book has been at my house because I started another story and this one was all mine. I started a story about a girl named Trudy whose mother was in prison. And, whoosh, everything came out. I wrote about how it felt not live with your mother, not to be able to see or talk to her when you wanted, and not to be able to tell anyone where she was.