Love, Ruby Lavender

by Deborah Wiles

  Ruby edged toward the sidewalk.

  "You come back here, young lady!" Miss Mattie's eyes were full of fire.

  "Now, Mattie." Miss Eula brushed herself off. "No harm done. You know as well as I do, those Latham children have become uncontrollable!"

  Miss Mattie shook her fìnger at Ruby, then fished a handkerchief out of her apron pocket and mopped her fórehead. "I know Leila has her hands full these days with Lionel gone. I hate that she does. But someone needs to speak to her about those children."

  "Maybe someone will. But it's probably best if it doesn't come from us."

  Miss Mattie stuffed her handkerchief back into her apron pocket and eyeballed Miss Eula. "I need help." She went inside, and the screen door slapped behind her.

  Miss Eula sat down beside Ruby on the top step of the porch. Ruby turned toward her and spread her arms out wide. "She made fun of me and the chickens! She squawked like a chicken! She called me a chicken!" Ruby stared intently into Miss Eula's face.

  Miss Eula stared straight ahead, looking at nothing. "It's so hot you can hear the dust blow."

  "What am I going to do about Melba?" Ruby blew strings of red hair out of her face.

  Miss Eula gave Ruby a sympathetic look. "I don't know, sugar; I wish I knew. She wants you to feel as bad as she does, that's all. Can you ignore her? Make her float away in your mind..."

  "You should have heard her! 'Bwauck-bwauck-bwauck!'—right in front of me and the whole store!"

  A honeysuckle vine curled around the porch railing. Miss Eula picked a blossom and handed it to Ruby. Ruby pulled the stem through to get a drop of nectar on her tongue. Miss Eula twisted off some thin branches of honeysuckle and began weaving them in a circle, like a wreath—leaves, buds, and all.

  "You know, Ruby, Melba acts brave but she's scared underneath. Just look at how she skedaddled out of here. Imagine what it must be like for her and her family, since her daddy died. There are so many children in that house, and she's the oldest—imagine being the oldest of six when you are only nine!—and her mama depends on her now more than ever." She plunked the honeysuckle wreath on Ruby's head. "Poor old Melba."

  "Poor old Melba!" Ruby shot up from the steps. The wreath skimmed off her head but she caught it. "Poor old me"

  A letter dropped from Miss Eula's lap to the step. She scooped it up and changed the subject. "Ruby! I almost forgot. I've got wonderful mail here, from your uncle Johnson and aunt Annette." She waved an airmail envelope in front of Ruby. The postmark read HONOLULU.

  Ruby didn't notice. "Good garden of peas, Miss Eula! I forgot my big news. You'll never believe it." She jammed the wreath onto her head so it wouldn't fall off. It made her whole head smell sweet.

  Miss Eula smiled and tucked Johnson's letter into her apron pocket. "I just might, sugar, since I've already read your mail."

  "You got it! Good, I was hoping you'd picked up all your mail."

  "I got it and I left you some, as well."

  "Isn't it a miracle about Ivy! She's going to be a mother!"

  "It's a wonderful surprise, Ruby! Let me get to the end of this busy day, and we can visit the chickens together. What do you say?"

  "Yes, yes, yes!" Ruby's heart lifted. "I'll go check my mail right now."

  Miss Eula reached into her apron pocket. "Here's a lemon drop for helping Miss Mattie. She appreciates your help, sugar."

  "No, she doesn't." Ruby plopped the lemon drop in her mouth and tried to talk around it. It clacked on her teeth. "Miss Mattie is a crab."

  "Well, she's got a lot on her mind, honey. When your grandpa died, she lost her brother ... Now she has all the responsibility for the store on her shoulders."

  Ruby choked as she tried to change the subject. Miss Eula pumped her once on the back, and Ruby coughed the lemon drop into her hand, then tossed it back into her mouth and wiped her sticky hand on her overalls. Her cheeks puckered with the sour taste, and she talked with a fish mouth. "I've never seen Miss Mattie smile."

  Miss Eula chuckled. "Oh, she smiles. But she is who she is, sugar. So is Melba Jane. Aren't we all? Go on, now. I know your mama must have supper waiting."

  Ruby hitched up her left overalls strap and stepped into a buttery late-afternoon sun. Long shadows slid across the storefronts, and the air was spangled with dust. The sweet taste of the lemon drop began to come through the sour.

  Grandpa Garnet had been the one who had loved lemon drops. He told Ruby most people were like lemon drops, sour and sweet together. She couldn't see it. Grandpa Garnet would have loved the story of saving Ivy, Bemmie, and Bess. And now there were eggs! There was good news. It was so good to share it. And there was no better friend to share it with than Miss Eula.

  * * *

  June 6

  Dear Ruby,

  What exciting news about Ivy! I'm glad we decided to give the chickens the old greenhouse for a henhouse. It makes a nice home for new chicks, with all those windows!

  Let's meet at the Pink Palace at six o'clock—a lucky hour. I am going to parch some peanuts in the oven.

  But FIRST, we will cluck over Ivy. What a gal! So are you.

  I have BIG NEWS for you, too. It's a surprise! I will tell you tonight.

  Love,

  your (almost done for the day)

  grandmother,

  Miss Eula

  * * *

  4

  Ruby tucked the pink note in her overalls pocket and ran for home. As she banged through the back door, she smelled the summer's first stewed tomatoes bubbling on the stove. A pile of zucchini spilled across the countertop, along with her mother's notes from the garden. At the top of page one, she had written neatly "Adventures in Zucchini." Ruby washed her face and hands and came to the table, damp.

  "It's you!" said Ruby's mother. "Glad to see you're still alive. Nice hat." She put a basket of hot biscuits on the table and sat down. "I almost went looking for you."

  Ruby flopped herself into a chair. "I came home the long way." She put her wreath hat in the middle of the table as a centerpiece.

  "The long way again. No wonder you're so out of breath. What was the life-or-death situation?"

  Ruby leaned across the table, gloating. "Ivy has laid three eggs!"

  "You don't say!"

  "I do say!" She helped herself to the biscuits, then the creamed corn and fried okra and a slice of sweet-potato pie. "We thought these hens were way too old for laying, but it turns out Ivy had other plans. I can't wait to meet her chicks."

  "You don't think there will be chicks!" Ruby's mother poured sweet iced tea into two tall glasses.

  "Sure there will be chicks. Don't you remember Herman, the Butterfields' rooster? For the past two days, we've been shooing him out of the chicken yard until the Butterfields fixed their gate and we got a gate. Now ole Herman's going to be a daddy."

  Ruby buttered biscuits: two for her mother, three for her. Her mother put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. "Life does go on."

  "That's what I heard you tell Miss Eula after church last week."

  "That's what she taught me. I was just reminding her. This year has been hard for her."

  Ruby's heart skipped a beat, and she spoke quickly. "But it's been a whole year." She shoved a biscuit at her mother. "Miss Eula is fine now. Just fine." Ruby took a big bite of biscuit.

  "Some losses leave great big holes, Ruby. It's hard to lose someone you love so deeply, especially when you've known them as long as Miss Eula knew your grandpa."

  Ruby talked with her mouth full and changed the subject. "I had a hard time today, too." Crumbs sprinkled her overalls and butter slid down her chin.

  "Do tell."

  Ruby held up a freckled finger and finished chewing, then swallowed. "At Miss Mattie's store, Melba Jane started picking on me, making fun, acting like a chicken ... then she called me a chicken..."

  "Goodness! Then what happened?"

  Ruby took a sloshy gulp of iced tea and wiped her whole face with her napkin.
"I lit out after her."

  "Ruby!"

  "But I didn't tackle her; she got away."

  Ruby's mother opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. Instead, she reached over and captured Ruby's chin gently in the cupped palm of her hand. "What am I going to do with you?"

  Ruby tried a grin. "You're going to love me."

  "That I do." Her mother sat back and picked up her iced tea. She swirled it around to cool it, and the ice cubes tinkled against the glass. The mantel clock kept time in the living room, a solid tock-tock, tock-tock, and for a moment time stretched out and away. Ruby thought about how she and her grandpa used to wind the clock together, every week, and the words came out before she could stop them. "I miss Grandpa Garnet."

  "Me, too, sweetie. I expect I'm always going to miss my daddy. He loved us to pieces, didn't he?"

  Ruby gave herself over to memory. "He always let me have the first scoop of ice cream when we made it ourselves."

  "He taught me to whistle, and how to play poker."

  "Miss Eula says she played strip poker with Grandpa Garnet."

  "Ruby!"

  "Well, she did..."

  Ruby's mother laughed. "I'm quite sure she did..."

  Ruby sighed. "He would have loved Ivy, Bemmie, and Bess."

  "I expect he would have. It's good to see his greenhouse being used this summer."

  "Good garden of peas! I forgot—I've got to go!" Ruby almost fell out of her chair. "Miss Eula and I are going to visit the chickens tonight and see Ivy's eggs. And Miss Eula has big news for me!"

  Ruby's mother stood up. "Well, take her a plate. She loves my sweet-potato pie ... and goodness knows she won't cook for herself." She followed Ruby to the sink, where she kissed the top of her daughter's head. "Be back before the crow calls. And no more raids on any egg ranches."

  The Pink Palace glowed in the early evening sunset. Big old hydrangeas—snowball bushes, Ruby called them—bloomed the length of the front porch. Grandpa Garnet had planted them before Ruby was born. He was the gardener in the family. "That's where your mama gets her green thumb," Miss Eula had told Ruby. "It's no wonder she's so smart about flowers and vegetables and bugs arid such. She was digging in the dirt in the dark before she could talk!"

  Ruby remembered doing the same thing with her grandfather. He had told her that corn was the tallest when you planted it under a new moon. He taught her to soak her moonflower seeds before she planted them. Every year they planted zinnias and marigolds and bachelor buttons and geraniums together, but no one had planted them this year. Still, there were flowers that returned year after year, and here they were, blooming their heads off in the front yard, the side, the back, all over—flower beds full of hollyhocks and bee balm and lemon verbena and peppermint and black-eyed Susans, her grandpa's favorite. Ruby picked one now and stuck the flower stem behind her ear. The golden petals tickled her face.

  Ruby and Miss Eula had painted the house "Shell-shocked Pink" late last summer, after Grandpa Garnet died. Miss Eula had said it was a rite of passage.

  Rite of passage. It made Ruby think about traveling through secret tunnels and passageways and having her ticket punched at different checkpoints. She had the feeling, painting the house, that they were doing just that. One day they had splattered themselves silly, laughing and crying and telling stories about themselves and Grandpa Garnet. If he had been there, he would have directed the painting. "A little more here! You missed a spot there!" He would have made tomato sandwiches for them at lunch. He would have taken pictures.

  But he wasn't there, so they did it themselves with no audience but the nosy neighbors, who drove by the house slowwwly or peeked out from behind their Venetian blinds. Miss Eula had waved a messy paintbrush at all of them.

  Ruby blinked herself out of her memories. She stood and hiked up her left overalls strap. She and Miss Eula had a ritual they followed each evening. Ruby faced the Pink Palace, put her hands on her hips, leaned her head backward into the early summer evening, and called, "Oh, Miss Euuuuuuulaaaaa! Can you come out and play?"

  And Miss Eula did.

  5

  "Let's get this straight." Ruby leaned over Miss Eula's kitchen table, an old issue of Poultry Today spread in front of her. 'Twenty-one days from egg to chick. That means we should have some babies before July!"

  "Let's see. Laid today, means chicks on..." Miss Eula counted on her fingers, "June twenty-seventh. Or maybe twenty-sixth, depending on what time these eggs were laid. Either way, that's a lucky day."

  The kitchen smelled like peanut butter and the table was littered with peanut shells. Two empty bottles of Orange Crush and a Mason jar full of black-eyed Susans sat among the shells. The attic fan droned and shoved the hot air around the room. Miss Eula wore one of the muumuus her son, Johnson, had sent her over the years. It had purple flowers on it.

  Ruby sat back in her chair and smiled. "Ivy looks as shiny as a new penny."

  "Yes, indeed," agreed Miss Eula. "And don't you love how jealous Bemmie is! All full of clucks and squawks and 'Let me see, let me see!'"

  "Now can you tell me your big surprise? The one you told me about in your note?"

  "I can. Ruby, let's take a walk to the back meadow. That's a good place for my surprise. I'll bring the quilt and the softball; you bring the gloves. There's still enough light to have a catch."

  "Yes, ma'am!" Ruby grabbed the floppy hats by the back door, plopped one on her head, and gave the other to Miss Eula. "I love big news. I can't wait to hear about what we're going to do next."

  The back meadow shimmered with sound. Ruby and Miss Eula walked through the flowering meadow grass, holding hands in the last wash of daylight, listening to the zizz, zizz, zizz of life around them. The moon was beginning to rise, a crescent moon, the color of old teeth.

  "Here we are," said Miss Eula. "So nice of this willow tree to keep our spot for us."

  They spread out their quilt under the willow in the warm purple light.

  "I do love this quilt," said Miss Eula. "It holds good memories, doesn't it?"

  Ruby straightened a corner. "Yes, ma'am, it does." The quilt was sewn in a pattern of stars made from pieces of old clothing: Ruby's old overalls, her baby blanket, her red shorts, her button blouses. Miss Eula's wild aprons were in there, as well as two everyday dresses and some striped dish towels. Grandpa Garnet had donated his favorite flannel shirt for the corner stars. Between the stars was a path of pink, made from an old set of sheets. Ruby and Miss Eula had sewn every stitch themselves. It was a masterpiece.

  Ruby put the ball and gloves by the tree trunk. She sighed and let go of the hard day as she flopped herself onto the quilt. A breeze began a little puff-puff around them as Miss Eula slipped off her shoes and sat beside Ruby. Her muumuu spread out around her, making her look like the center of a giant flower. A firefly winked on, and Miss Eula reached out her knobby hand to catch it.

  "Look, Miss Ruby, what I've got."

  The first firefly! Miss Eula gave it to Ruby, and she held it between her cupped palms. "Oh, Little One, Bright One." She recited the rhyme her grandfather had taught her:

  "You are the first one, so you are the light.

  You are the one we follow tonight.

  Fly away now to your free life—so sweet!

  We'll follow you with our true hearts till we meet

  on the side of the shore, in the meadow so fair,

  in the place where our souls soar into the air..."

  Ruby parted her palms and lifted them upward. The firefly winked once and flew into the darkening sky, winked again, and was gone.

  "I believe that is the first firefly tonight." Miss Eula's voice was sifty and far away.

  "What's the matter, Miss Eula?"

  "Oh, sugar, I've been thinking tonight about you, me, your grandpa, your mama ... about Johnson and Annette ... oh, about life and how it does go on."

  "Mama says you taught her that. I heard her say it to you, too, last Sunday after church."

>   "Well, your mama needed to hear that a long time ago, when she found out she'd be raising you all by herself. And she did go on; we all did. Now it's my time to go on. And I will."

  "What does that mean? Are you going somewhere?" Ruby felt a tingle across her shoulders.

  "I am, sugar." Miss Eula's voice caught in her throat. "I am."

  Ruby blinked. "Where? Where are you going?"

  "I'm taking a trip, Ruby honey. I'm going to go visit Johnson and Annette in Hawaii."

  "Hawaii!" Ruby held her breath. "When? Why?"

  "The day after tomorrow." Miss Eula's voice picked up its old sturdiness. "Remember the letter I waved at you at Miss Mattie's store? There's good news in Hawaii, Ruby. Johnson and Annette had a baby! They kept it a secret, and now they are telling everyone. And I'm invited to come to Hawaii and be with them. I'm going to take me a trip. They sent a ticket with the letter."

  Ruby felt the earth open up to swallow her. "Wait!" She scrambled to her feet.

  "Ruby, it's all right, listen to me—"

  "No! You can't be leaving!"

  "I'm not leaving forever, Ruby."

  Ruby felt light-headed. "When does the ticket say you come back?"

  "It's a round-trip ticket to Hawaii, with an open return. That means I can pick the date I come back."

  "It means you don't have to come back at all!" Ruby turned her back to Miss Eula and kicked her catcher's mitt. The inside of her nose got that stinging feeling it got whenever she was about to cry. "I don't want you to leave! You can't! If you leave, you leave me alone with Miss Mattie and that awful Melba Jane!" Ruby held back her tears, but her shoulders shook.

  Miss Eula got to her feet and tried to put her arms around Ruby, but Ruby took two steps away. A willow branch brushed her face, and she shoved it aside.