The Upper Room

by Mary Monroe

  “Close that door before you let them flies in this house, Ruby Jean,” Ruby’s father said. He was wearing a red-and-white-checked flannel shirt and green corduroy pants. He sat down hard on a footstool backed up next to the wall near the staircase.

  “Papa, I’m so happy to be home! I’m so happy I could wrap it in egg shells!” Ruby exclaimed. She ran over and embraced her father, kissing him on his cheeks and burying her nose in his thick white hair. Maureen stood timidly in the middle of the floor.

  “Where is Mama at, Papa? How has everybody been? Cousin Hattie told me Beaulah and Carrie the only two of my dear sisters left here what still livin.”

  “Girl, where you been all this time? And what you been doin to get so fat? Look like you been swallowin watermelons whole!”

  “Papa, you know heaviness run in our family! Look at you! We all fat!”

  “Where you been, girl?” the reverend asked again, pulling away from Ruby’s kisses long enough to stuff a wad of chewing tobacco in his jaw. He folded the tobacco bag and squeezed it before putting it in his shirt pocket.

  “I been some of everywhere, Papa. New Orleans. Miami. Silo. You know I always had a itchin to travel.” Just then, a short, stout, light-skinned woman of sixty with long white braids came into the room from a back entrance. She was carrying an armload of clothes and a sack filled with clothespins.

  “Ruby Jean! The good Lord done sent me my baby girl on back home!” Ruby’s mother, Ida, dropped the clean clothes and the pins on the floor and rushed toward her daughter. Maureen was still standing in the middle of the floor watching as Ida kissed and cried and hugged Ruby. On the wall a large picture of seven plump young girls smiled at Maureen. The girls resembled one another and it was obvious that the youngest one, a pear-shaped toddler with a moon-shaped face, was Ruby. Two limp hound dogs lay sprawled across the floor, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the visitors. A whatnot stand stood backed up in a corner, every shelf filled with miniature ornaments: little ceramic horses, plastic Oriental people, tiny glass kittens, and dime-store pictures of various movie stars. Ida whirled around and looked at Maureen.

  “Whose little ole girl is this here, Ruby Jean?” she demanded.

  “Mine. Ain’t she pretty, Mama? You ever seen such a angel?”

  “What your name is, girl?” Ida asked Maureen, shaking a finger in her face and leaning forward with one hand on her knee.

  Maureen looked at Ida and blinked.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Ida asked, looking at Maureen out of the corner of her eye.

  Maureen opened her mouth wide and pointed inside.

  “Ain’t no cats in my mouth,” she said.

  Ida laughed and looked at her husband, who had fallen asleep, his thick arms folded across his chest.

  “Wake up, old man!” she shouted, receiving no response. “That old goat ain’t worth a nickel no more,” Ida said to Ruby.

  Ruby turned to look at her aging father.

  “Ruby Jean, how come you didn’t come back with Othella for her mama’s funeral?”

  Instead of answering right away, Ruby removed her handkerchief from her bosom and wiped tears from her eyes.

  “Othella got on a high horse and acted like she ain’t knowed me. I ain’t knowed nothin about her mama passin till Cousin Hattie told me when she come to visit with me that time.”

  “Well, you couldn’t expect nobody with Cajun blood to act like regular folks. I always said Othella was crazy. I guess I been proved right.”

  “I pray for her every night,” Ruby said, returning her handkerchief to her bra.

  Ida caressed her chin and nodded.

  “Uh huh. Now how come you ain’t been in tetch?”

  “Oh, Mama—it was awful! I got myself mixed up with the devil and he led me to the ruins. I’m in worse shape than a foreigner with nowhere to go!”

  The reverend looked up and faced Ruby. He and Ida looked at one another.

  “I raised you to dispute the devil. You is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. You supposed to set a example, Ruby Jean!” the reverend shouted.

  “I know, Papa. And that’s what I been doin. Why so many folks in Florida done got on the right track on account of me! It’s a wonder they ain’t renamed that state the Holy Land, we got so much connection with the Lord!”

  “I declare, Ruby Jean. You ain’t forgot your upbringing. Most kids what leave home go to livin like fools soon as they out of sight. I bet ain’t a soul in Florida regret you come there, huh?” Ida said proudly, smiling.

  “Them folks would be lost without me.”

  Ruby smiled and blinked her eyes as her parents took their time looking her over. Reverend Upshaw looked at Ida again and shook his head.

  “Don’t your little girl talk?” Ida asked, turning to Maureen, brushing the tail of her dress, then inspecting her hair.

  “Mo’reen, talk to your grandmama and grandpapa,” Ruby ordered.

  “Mama Ruby, you want me to tell em about—” Maureen began but was abruptly cut off by Ruby.

  “I got me a boy too!” Ruby said.

  “Where he at?” Reverend Upshaw asked.

  “. . . I don’t know,” Ruby replied, with her head lowered. She moved slowly across the room and sat down hard on the sofa facing her father. Ida looked at her suspiciously.

  “What you mean, you don’t know?” she asked.

  “He run off and joined the army cause he was mad at some ole fast-tail girl named Fast Black and went and got hisself lost or captured or somethin in that V-Eight Nam,” Ruby said in a low voice.

  “Praise be.” Ida spoke under her breath. “That poor boy.”

  “Mama, he looked just like you,” Ruby muttered.

  Ida nodded.

  “Where your man?” she asked, locking eyes with Ruby.

  “Don’t tell us you still single, runnin around loose as a goose like your cousin Hattie,” the reverend hollered.

  “Shoot! I married me a sho nuff sport!” Ruby shouted back. “A man what use to wear socks that matched the color of his underwear. A sport if ever there was one!”

  “Where is he?” Ida demanded. “With another woman?”

  “I bet he left you for another woman!” The reverend said to Ruby. “Stubborn as you is, Ruby Jean.”

  “Well, the first year it was wine what come between us. The second year it was wine and women. I took all I could, then the Lord run him off. I been in Goons by myself tryin to raise my children and continue to live like a Christian should.”

  “When your husband leave you? How old was your kids?” Ida asked.

  “Well, Virgil was eleven. I was still carryin Mo’reen.”

  “That ain’t what Othella told folks when she come for her mama’s funeral,” Reverend Upshaw informed Ruby.

  “It ain’t?” Ruby gasped.

  “Othella said you shot your husband down like a dog when Virgil was a baby.” Ida folded her arms and glared at Ruby.

  “I . . . I . . . was too shame to tell yall. It was a accident. My husband got involved with this woman and run me crazy. I didn’t mean to kill him. Oh, Papa, Mama, he axed for it!”

  “If you kilt your husband, where you get Mo’reen from? You been married twice or what? Othella ain’t said nothin about you havin no two children. And what Othella do that was so bad you skipped town?”

  Ruby removed her handkerchief from her bosom and wiped away her tears again. She staggered to the sofa and sat down. Maureen giggled and joined her, placing her arm around Ruby’s shoulder.

  “I declare, yall. Othella wasn’t no true friend of mine. She just wanted somebody to leave home with her. She tricked me into goin from New Orleans on to Florida. I wanted to come home and take up ministry. She went to drinkin home brew and listenin to ex-convicts. She wanted to live like a gypsy. I told her I was a Christian to the bone and wanted nothin to do with her wicked ways. So I left Silo. Scared to death on account of her havin all that heathen Cajun blood. I knowed if sh
e found me, she’d take a plank and go up side my head and bust my brains out. She was that kind of woman. She’d bust your brains out in a minute. I know, cause I seen her do it. She was a terrible liar. Virgil was eleven when my man left and I was pregnant with Mo’reen when I had to chastize him. Othella had me so scared of her. She had white folks’ sense, yall know. She knowed how to talk to them white folks about keepin us dumb niggers in line. She held her smarts over me like a lamp! She was evil! She was violent!”

  “I declare,” Ida sighed. “And she was such a tiny little thing. To think she claimed Christian blood.”

  “Oh, the devil come in many disguises. Poor Ruby Jean.” The reverend went to Ruby and patted her shoulder.

  “Well, I finally put Satan where he belong—behind me. I felt him sneakin up on me the other day, tryin to make me not come home to see yall. I slapped him up side his head, bent his horns back and he hauled ass. I ain’t seen him since,” Ruby said, waving her hand. Her smiling parents looked at her with pride.

  Ida went to Maureen and wrapped her arms around her and kissed the side of her face.

  “Girl, you don’t know how blessed you is to have Ruby Jean for your mama.”

  26

  The next morning Reverend Upshaw and Maureen sat next to one another on the living room sofa watching cartoons while Ruby and Ida prepared a late breakfast.

  “How come yall so quiet in there, Papa and Mo’reen?” Ruby called from the kitchen.

  Maureen looked at the old man, who had dozed off, and shook his arm.

  “Huh?” he replied, disoriented.

  Ruby came to the door holding a spatula and a mixing bowl.

  “Why come yall so quiet in here?” Ruby asked again.

  “This baby is mad cause she want some pretzels,” the reverend told Ruby, pointing at Maureen. “You reckon she can run down to that corner store by herself, Ruby Jean? She ain’t so big a fool she’ll walk out in front of a bus, is she?”

  “Mo’reen ain’t that simple-minded. She got white folks’ sense,” Ruby replied. She removed a dime from her bosom and tossed it in Maureen’s lap. “Run get you some pretzels and come straight on back here,” Ruby instructed her. “Papa, you don’t reckon nobody’ll kidnap her?”

  “Who other than a gypsy would kidnap a colored kid, Ruby Jean?” Ida asked, walking in with her hands on her hips.

  “Mo’reen ain’t no regular colored kid,” Ruby explained. “And anyway, folks do kidnap colored kids.”

  “Ain’t nobody goin to snatch up Mo’reen and run off with her, takin her away from her own flesh and blood mama!” Ida declared.

  Ruby’s breath caught in her throat.

  “What’s wrong, Ruby Jean? You look like you just seen a ghost.”

  “Ain’t nothin wrong, Mama. I just . . . Mo’reen.” Ruby turned from her mother and looked at Maureen. “Go on to the store and get you some pretzels, angel.”

  Maureen grinned and ran from the house with the dime in her mouth.

  Having purchased her pretzels, she rushed back to the house and ate them while watching the cartoons. Ruby came and sat next to her.

  “Mama Ruby, some kids was messin with me when I went to the store. They said you and Grandma and Grandpa and everybody in the family was big and fat and sloppy. Am I goin to be big and fat and sloppy like you when I grow up?” Maureen asked with concern.

  “You took after your daddy’s family. All the women and men in his family was small. You ain’t got nothin to worry about.”

  “My daddy was skinny?”

  “Yeah . . . he was thin as a rail. Look, darlin, run get me another beer while Papa is sleepin and your grandmama is next door.”

  “Then can I go outside and play?”

  “Sho nuff, darlin. Just get me the beer first before your grandma come back. Make sure you sneak it to me,” Ruby whispered. “And don’t forget me a straw.”

  Maureen returned minutes later with a Pepsi-Cola bottle filled with beer. This was Ruby’s way of concealing her passion for beer while she was home. Moments after Maureen left to play outside, Ida returned and joined Ruby on the sofa.

  “Ruby Jean, you sho nuff drink a lot of Pepsi. You was sippin on one when I left. Seem like you always got one in your hand. And how come you don’t use a glass? Seem to me that straw ought to be gettin a bit frayed.”

  “It’s easier for me to use a straw with my uppers and lowers bein so loose. I drink a lot of Pepsi cause my doctor back in Miami, a respectable Jew, told me it was good for my blood pressure.”

  “Oh. Well, one thing about it, you can’t argue with no Jew. They is some smart. Doctors. Lawyers. Businessfolk. Give me a Jew everytime. Wonder how come Jews got so much sense, Ruby Jean?”

  Ruby scratched her chin and considered her mother’s question.

  “Blessed.”

  “Blessed?”

  “Jews was persecuted all through the Bible. Bein so smart is the blessin they received from the Lord for all the sufferin they done,” Ruby explained.

  Ida looked at Ruby for a moment before responding.

  “Us colored folks done suffered a lot. During slave days, when one of us went rotten, we stayed rotten. Back then, when a nigger got the devil, he kept the devil,” Ida said with pity.

  Ruby nodded sadly.

  “And that’s still true today,” she sighed.

  27

  “Bless this girl, Lord. For she know not her sins! Shake that devil out of poor Ruby Jean’s life for once and for all. She done kilt her husband. She is guilty of just about some of everything. Runnin with a Cajun wild woman. Takin up with a carnival. Not communicatin with her family in a coon’s age. And”—Ruby’s father began his sermon with vigor—”what all else, daughter?” he asked. Ruby sat on a footstool in front of the whole congregation of the Reed Street Church of God in Christ, surrounded by flowers and crucifixes. “What else that devil had you doin, girl?”

  Ruby shrugged before speaking.

  “Gluttony . . . bad credit . . . tellin lies.” She paused to think, rolling her eyes off to the side, as the silent audience waited in a fever of anticipation to hear her story. “Let me see now . . . name-callin and associatin with foreigners, all the usual backslidin activities.”

  Her father turned to face her with his hands on his hips. He was a big man, even more rotund than Ruby. He wore a long black robe that was noticeably shorter in the back than it was in the front and in his hand he clutched a thick white cloth he used to wipe his brow during his foot-stomping sermons.

  “I ax yall,” he continued, turning back to the audience. “I ax yall if you ever knowed of a sister with so much of the devil in her as Ruby Jean? My child done spent the last half of her life ridin Satan’s coattails!”

  “AMEN!” the congregation shouted.

  “She been lost!” the preacher yelled.

  “LOST!” the congregation agreed.

  “But now she done found her way back home!” the preacher grinned. “Now, brethren . . . we got to get her boy Virgil back home. Lord, the boy done slid from the embrace of his mama’s bosom into a heathen country. A country that don’t even recognize the Holy Ghost! A country where the folks don’t even believe in eatin meat! Can yall imagine not bein allowed to eat ribs?”

  “NO!” the congregation hollered.

  “A country where they worship cows when Jesus done told em he was the only way! A cow, all!”

  “COWS!” came the response.

  Some of the younger members of the congregation looked at one another with puzzled expressions on their faces.

  “Hey—he don’t know what he talkin about! That’s India where they worship and don’t eat cows, not V-Eight Nam!” a young boy said, snickering. He received sharp looks from his elders.

  “What’s the difference?!” a woman asked the boy. The boy quickly returned his attention to the preacher.

  “And the girl’s been misled and raped and—and robbed and beat up and, and—what else, Ruby Jean?” the preacher asked, turnin
g to Ruby again.

  She looked out into the audience at Maureen sitting in the front row of benches, an incredulous look on her face.

  “. . . Um . . . my husband got involved with another woman,” she said.

  The preacher turned to his congregation with his mouth open and his hands held up high in the air.

  “As if the girl ain’t got troubles enough, the devil walked into her house and carried her man off, before she kilt him. Came in the guise of a hussy!”

  “A white woman at that!” Ruby added.

  The congregation went wild.

  “THE WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL!” they shrieked.

  Maureen’s heart was beating fast. She was terribly frightened. The reverend started to dance about the stage and speak in tongues and Ida began to hit random keys on the red piano sitting in a corner near the stage. Women, men, and children joined in the confusion, dancing. Some started to sing, no two people singing the same song, and they all shouted and spoke in tongues. Some fell to the floor writhing. A woman sitting next to Maureen lost her wig and some young boys grabbed it up from the floor and started tossing it back and forth across the room.

  Maureen rose from her seat, eased out of the church, and ran down the street back to her grandparents’ house two blocks away.

  When Ruby and the others returned home Maureen was sitting on the bed in Ruby’s old room staring off into space. Ruby stood in the doorway for a moment looking at Maureen lovingly before making her presence known.

  “What’s the matter, Mo’reen?” Ruby gently closed the door. She moved to the bed and sat next to Maureen.

  Ruby’s former room looked a lot like it had during the days she occupied it. Neat and homey, with bright-colored curtains, bedspread, and throw rugs. A large cloth illustration of the Last Supper almost covered half of one wall.

  “I want to go home,” Maureen answered.

  “Don’t you like it here?”

  “Naw. Do you?”

  “Of course I like it here! This is where I come from,” Ruby said. She made a sweeping gesture with her hand and glanced around the room.

  “Then how come you left and stayed away so long, Mama Ruby? How can you leave somethin you like? . . . I’d never do that.”