The Upper Room

by Mary Monroe

  Snowball and Zeus looked at one another, at Maureen, and then at Ruby.

  “BY WHO?!” Zeus asked.

  Maureen started to giggle and clap her hands together.

  “Mo’reen, you get these might-be rapists out my bedroom!” Ruby ordered.

  “Now, Ruby, do you mean to set there and tell me you think one of us might have raped you!” Zeus asked, hurt.

  “You’s a man, ain’t you?” Ruby cried.

  Zeus grabbed his pants from the foot of the bed and trotted out behind Maureen and Snowball into the living room.

  “Yall better go on home. Give Mama Ruby time to wear her beer off,” Maureen suggested.

  “We didn’t mess with Mama Ruby,” Snowball told Maureen. “Honest to God, we didn’t. At least I didn’t,” he said, turning to Zeus.

  “Zeus, did you take advantage of Mama Ruby?” Maureen asked. “Did you rape her?”

  “Mo’reen, ain’t a man alive that crazy. Anyway, me and Mama Ruby like brother and sister,” Zeus answered fumbling with his pants.

  “I know, Zeus. Yall go on now. Come back later after Mama Ruby done come to her senses.” Maureen ushered the man on out the door.

  “Mo’reen, can I come back to see you later today?” Snowball asked, buttoning his shirt.

  “Write me a letter or somethin. We’ll talk about it some other time . . . go on now,” she insisted, closing the screen door in Snowball’s face.

  40

  Instead of returning to his two-room compartment at the camp where he lived, Snowball went to visit Loomis.

  Loomis snatched open the door wearing only his pajama bottoms.

  “Set down, Snowball,” he said nervously, as he eased himself down into a chair facing a lumpy sofa. On a coffee table were two glasses, one with lipstick on it, and three empty whiskey bottles.

  Snowball looked toward the back and saw a half-naked woman running out the door.

  “You got company?” he asked, embarrassed.

  Loomis turned and looked over his shoulder, then quickly back at Snowball.

  “Not no more,” Loomis answered. “. . . Um . . . you didn’t see who that was, did you?”

  Snowball shook his head.

  “Good. She a married woman. I can’t tell you her name on account of if her man was to find out about her and me, he would take a brick and bust her brains out. She a happily married woman.”

  “Oh? If she happily married, how come she come to your house, Loomis?”

  “Snowball, let me put a bug in your ear. When I love a woman, she stay loved. These women around here ain’t never had a man like me. That one what just snuck off, I had socked it to her best friend. Well, the woman bragged about me so much this woman had to start to messin with me. I usually don’t lay it on married women. Shoot. I’m a Christian to the bone and I have a lot of respect for marriage. I’m hot as a six-shooter now on account of what Catty done to my cousin Yellow Jack. The bitch. But the people around here call me the lover,” Loomis said, crossing his legs.

  “That’s why I’m here right now,” Snowball whispered.

  “I declare! Wait a minute now—” Loomis gasped, holding up his hands. “I LIKE WOMEN ONLY!”

  “Oh no—I ain’t no sissy! I come here for advice.” Snowball was more alarmed than Loomis. “A man like you done probably had more than a million women, Loomis. You could prob’ly tell me how I can get one. Can you?”

  “Oh,” Loomis sighed, uncrossing his legs. “What’s the problem? You got the blue balls or somethin? Man, I had em last year!”

  “I ain’t got no blue balls. I’m havin trouble with Mo’reen. I been after her since I moved to Goons eight years ago and she still don’t like me. What am I suppose to do?”

  Loomis scratched his chin and looked Snowball over thoroughly.

  “Mo’reen ever give you any?” Loomis asked, with one eye closed.

  “Any what?”

  “I declare!” Loomis exclaimed, slapping his thighs. “Is you ever had you a woman?”

  “Two. Ain’t too many women want to lay up with a albino. You know that, Loomis. Shoot.”

  Loomis looked at Snowball and shook his head.

  “In the first place, Mo’reen been busted already. Bobby Boatwright told me he got it down by the Blue Lake. So she been experienced. She’ll want her a man what know how to love her the way he suppose to. Understand?”

  Snowball nodded and leaned forward, listening.

  “I want you to get you a French tickler and carry Mo’reen off private. Put your piece in her pocketbook—”

  “Slow down, Loomis. What’s a French tickler?”

  “It’s a little doo-dad you slide on your piece and tickle your woman with. I wear em all the time. I’ll lend you a few.”

  “Oh. And what’s a pocketbook?”

  “Goddamn, Snowball, don’t you know nothin? A pocketbook is a coochie! A pussy, man! Damn! How you expect me to school you if you don’t even know the basics?”

  “OK. How long will it take you to learn me all I need to know so I can tickle Mo’reen in the pocketbook?” Snowball asked.

  Twenty minutes later, Snowball was knocking on Maureen’s door. She answered, opening the screen just enough to stick her head out.

  “Mama Ruby ain’t here,” she snapped.

  “I know. I seen Mama Ruby in the truck with Slim just now. I didn’t come to see her, Mo’reen.”

  “Oh? Who did you come to see then?”

  “You.”

  Maureen laughed.

  “To talk to you about us—I . . . um . . . Loomis told me to say . . . listen—will you give me some pussy like you done Bobby Boatwright?”

  “WHAT?!” Maureen shouted.

  “Well . . . will you?” Snowball asked impatiently.

  “He told?”

  “Oh yeah, he told. Now listen here, I am even willin to buy you a bottle of pop,” Snowball continued, fumbling in his pants’ pocket to remove a fistful of coins.

  Maureen stared at him.

  “I ain’t no rich man now. Don’t be expectin more than two or three bottles of pop,” Snowball said.

  “You low-down, funky, no-color, dope addict you! Get outta my face! And when you see that low-down, funky Bobby Boatwright, tell him I’m goin to kill him dead!” Maureen shouted. She slammed the screen door shut and locked it, then threw herself on the sofa and sobbed.

  41

  Maureen lay on the couch crying for an hour. The sound of a car coming down the hill made her leave the sofa and stagger to the window. It was Yellow Jack’s Cadillac, and Fast Black was driving. No Talk sat next to her and Ruby and Loomis occupied the back seat.

  The car stopped but Fast Black did not turn off the motor. She got out and ran up on the porch.

  “Oh, Mo’reen, Mama Ruby say for you to give me—” Fast Black stopped talking as soon as she got inside the door. “What you cryin for, Mo’reen?”

  Instead of replying, Maureen’s sobs intensified and she ran back to the sofa and fell forward.

  “What’s wrong, sugar?! Is you been raped?! Who done it?!” Fast Black asked, running to Maureen. “Talk to me, girl—who done it?!”

  “Bob—Bob—Bobby Boatwright—” Maureen stammered.

  Fast Black ran from the room back out to the car.

  “Wait, Fast Black,” Maureen shouted, jumping up behind her.

  “BOBBY BOATWRIGHT DONE BROKE IN THE HOUSE, RAPED MO’REEN AND LEFT HER FOR DEAD!” Fast Black cried.

  Ruby’s face froze.

  Fast Black got back in the car and turned it around.

  “All he done was talk about me, yall—COME BACK HERE!” Maureen shouted. “Don’t kill Bobby Boatwright!” But they could not hear her over their own loud, angry voices. “Oh, Lord, they fixin to go kill Bobby Boatwright!” Maureen said to herself. Instead of running up the hill, she took off through the bayou at the side of the house, a shortcut that would put her five minutes ahead of the Cadillac, enabling her to reach Bobby’s house first.

&n
bsp; The house Bobby lived in with his father sat in back of the Kaiser camp. It was a small, shabby cabin surrounded by palmetto trees. Bobby’s bedroom was in back. His Mustang was in the backyard, so Maureen tiptoed up to his room and tapped on the window.

  “What you want, you honky lover!” Bobby barked as soon as he raised the window.

  “Help me in, Bobby Boatwright! I got to put a bug in your ear!” Maureen exclaimed. “Help me in the window!”

  “Bitch! I’m goin to fuck the hell out of you this time,” Bobby threatened as he helped Maureen climb in the window. He squeezed her breasts and buttocks angrily. “Get your juicy butt on in here.”

  Bobby’s room was small and congested with a large bed, two chifforobes, and numerous pieces of stereo equipment. On one wall was a large poster of Malcolm X. Facing Malcolm X on the opposite wall was a large poster of a naked white woman.

  Before Maureen could get a word out, Bobby had grabbed her and thrown her across his unmade bed.

  “You don’t two-time me with no cracker like John! You don’t do that to me, girl!” he said, as his lips came crushing down on hers.

  She bit his tongue.

  “You wench!” Bobby spat, jumping up.

  “Bobby Boatwright, you got to run and hide! They comin to get you! They comin to kill you dead! I come to warn you so you can get a head start!” Maureen shouted. “I declare, you got to run off somewhere! THEY COMIN FOR YOU!”

  “WHO?! THE WHITE FOLKS?!” Bobby’s eyes got big and his lips quivered with fright. “Why the white folks comin?!”

  “Not the white folks, Bobby Boatwright! Ten times worse! Mama Ruby, Fast Black, Loomis, and No Talk!”

  “WHAT?!”

  “They got a notion in em you raped me and left me for dead!”

  “I ain’t raped nobody! Once I got you goin, you the one liked to raped me!” Bobby cried. “I ain’t raped you, Mo’reen!”

  “They didn’t give me a chance to tell em!”

  “Great balls of fire!”

  Bobby lifted his mattress and removed a wallet and stuffed it in his back pants’ pocket.

  “What you goin to do, Bobby Boatwright?!”

  “Girl, I’m fixin to haul ass! Soon as I get into Miami, I’m goin to ship out on the first vessel’ll have me! Shit—goddamn! Them niggers get me, I ain’t worth a shit no more!”

  “I’ll straighten em out! Give me at least a day! Don’t haul ass yet!” Maureen wailed.

  Bobby climbed out the window with Maureen, each running off in a different direction into the woods.

  42

  It took Maureen, Catty, and Yellow Jack to convince Ruby that Bobby had not committed any crime.

  “I swear to God, Mama Ruby, Bobby Boatwright ain’t done nothin to be ashamed of,” Catty said.

  “He sho nuff ain’t. Honest to God, Mama Ruby, Bobby Boatwright been leadin a Christian life like you told him to. I seen him at that church on Brewster Street in Miami last night with my own eyes,” Yellow Jack lied.

  “I seen him too,” Catty agreed.

  “He can preach up a storm if you was to ax him,” Yellow Jack continued.

  “He sho nuff can, cause I seen him do it,” Catty added. “That boy got more spirit than a little bit. I declare, I ain’t never knowed no one boy with so much of the Holy Ghost in his soul,” Catty added.

  Yellow Jack gave her a sideways glance. He was still angry about Catty running off with the albums and letting them be destroyed.

  They sat on Ruby’s front porch. No Talk and Loomis sat in Yellow Jack’s car holding blunt-ended sticks. Fast Black sat on the hood of the car shining a switchblade.

  “Where is Bobby Boatwright now?” Ruby barked. “We went through his daddy’s house with a fine-toothed comb yestiddy and his Mustang caught afire as we was leavin. Accidental,” Ruby said casually. She sat on the glider with her arms folded across her chest. She held a can of beer in one hand and her shotgun in the other.

  “. . . I think he at John’s house,” Maureen said.

  “Bobby Boatwright’s daddy sho nuff don’t know what happened. He thinkin Bobby Boatwright went with John to fish in Tampa Bay and they think a maniac broke in they house and messed it up. We ain’t told him it was yall,” Catty said.

  “You done right tellin him that, Catty. We don’t want the law down on us on top of everything else,” Loomis said.

  Ruby looked up at Catty’s pleading eyes.

  “Please, Mama Ruby. Don’t yall do away with Bobby Boatwright. He play ball with us sometime and if he was to up and disappear, we’ll have to find another pitcher,” Catty said.

  “All I want to hear is the truth,” Ruby said. She paused and drank. “If the nigger busted in my house and raped my baby, he ain’t fit to live,” Ruby declared, looking to Maureen.

  “I swear to you, Mama Ruby. I swear on Virgil’s disappearance . . . ain’t nobody raped me,” Maureen said.

  “Is you certain?” Ruby asked quietly.

  “Mama Ruby, everybody know how tough you is. What man around here is goin to rape me?” Maureen asked, with a smile.

  Ruby considered Maureen’s comment and nodded.

  “I see what you sayin. Ain’t none of these men got that kind of nerve. Certainly not Bobby Boatwright.” Ruby sighed and smiled. She then looked from Maureen to Yellow Jack. “Yall go tell that child he can go on home. I ain’t goin to mess with him,” Ruby said.

  43

  It rained continuously for the next four days. During this time, no one came to Ruby’s house. But as soon as the weather cleared up, the usual visits resumed.

  Maureen spotted Fast Black, Loomis, and No Talk strutting down the hill one afternoon. Fast Black entered the house first, snatching open the screen door without knocking.

  “We want to see Mama Ruby,” Fast Black told Maureen.

  “Mama Ruby watchin Lassie right now, Fast Black. You know she don’t allow nobody to mess with her when she watchin Lassie”, Maureen said.

  “This is important,” Fast Black said.

  “Sho nuff,” Loomis interjected.

  Maureen looked at him and studied his dry face.

  “Well, so is Lassie, Loomis.”

  “Come on, Mo’reen. We got somethin for her. Go ax her to come out for just a minute,” Fast Black pleaded.

  “I ain’t messin with Mama Ruby when she watchin Lassie, I’m tellin you.” Maureen placed her hands on her hips and shook her head.

  Fast Black ran across the floor to Ruby’s room and kicked on the door.

  “Mama Ruby, it’s me and Loomis and No Talk. Don’t you want to see us?” Fast Black shouted at the door.

  “Not unless yall want to talk to me about Jesus,” Ruby replied.

  “See,” Maureen grinned. “I tried to tell you.”

  “Mama Ruby sent word by Yellow Jack she wanted us to help her settle a dispute between her and that A’rab down the road,” Loomis said. “We want to get this mess the maniac done caused straightened out right now. Shoot. I want to get home to watch Roller Derby.”

  “I don’t know nothin about no dispute between her and that A’rab.” Maureen shook her head again, looking toward Ruby’s room.

  “Some lyin foreigner done cut his throat. Them foreigners comin over here takin over and we fixin to put a stop to it,” Fast Black declared. “Mama Ruby, come on out here!” Fast Black kicked the door a second time. “We fixin to bust Goons wide open!”

  Ruby did not come out of her room until her television program ended, ten minutes later.

  “Mama Ruby, can I put a bug in your ear?” Loomis began as Ruby floated across the floor.

  “As long as it don’t bite me,” Ruby replied. She stopped in her tracks and looked at Maureen, recognizing the fright in her eyes. “. . . Um . . . Mo’reen, go pick me some blackberries,” she ordered gently.

  Maureen was glad to be dismissed. She grabbed the first bowl she saw in the kitchen, ran out the back door, and headed for the berry patch near the Blue Lake.

  44r />
  “Who is that in them bushes?” Maureen asked in a loud voice. “Who is that, I axed?” A moving blackberry bush by the Blue Lake had startled her.

  “Is that you, Bobby Boatwright?” she asked. There was a sudden rustling in the bushes again and Maureen dropped the bowl she had brought with her, spilling berries all over her feet. Someone was hiding in the bushes trying to frighten her. She became angry, because whoever it was had succeeded.

  First one, then two, three, and finally four white boys jumped from behind the bushes, where they had been hiding. Maureen clutched her bosom. In her bra, she carried the switchblade and the cross Ruby had given her on her thirteenth birthday. Maureen had never had to use the weapon and often forgot she carried it.

  “What you doin out here by yourself?” one boy asked with a grin.

  Maureen suddenly realized one of the boys was John French and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Yall like to scared me to death,” she said, talking in John’s direction.

  “What you doin out here alone? You pretty little ole brown hussy, you,” John growled.

  Maureen’s eyes got big as she looked at him.

  “I—I’m pickin blackberries to make my mama a . . . pie,” she answered feebly.

  John looked away, then quickly back at her.

  “I like blackberries myself . . . especially the kind with hair,” John smiled. “How about a black berry for me?”

  Maureen looked at him and blinked.

  “I got to go home,” she said. As soon as she started to walk away, John jumped in front of her and grabbed her arms.

  “You ain’t goin no place,” he informed her.

  “I ain’t?” she asked dumbly.

  “Girl, I’m fixin to do what I should have done a long time ago,” John told Maureen.

  The other boys laughed and egged him on.

  “Look-a-here, boy—”

  “BOY ?! Who you callin boy? How many boys you know who got nine-inch dicks like me?” John unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants quickly with one hand, still holding Maureen securely in place with his other.

  “Turn me loose!” she ordered, trying to pry his hand from her arm. She felt her bosom.