Rubyfruit Jungle

by Rita Mae Brown

  I put my toothbrush, pajamas and comb in a paper bag and walked down the road to the Bislands. You could see their house from far away because they had a t.v. aerial on it. We stayed up and watched the Milton Berle show. He kept getting pies in the face and everyone thought that was so funny. I didn’t think it was so funny. They should have eaten the pies instead of throwing them at each other. If they were mad why didn’t they just knock the crap out of each other? It made no sense to me but it was fun to watch. I didn’t care if Milton Berle didn’t know better.

  After the show, we got into bed and pulled up the sheets. Leota’s mother closed the door and shut off the lights because they were still watching t.v. That was fine with us. Soon as the door was shut we started kissing. We must have kissed for hours but I couldn’t really tell because I didn’t think about anything except kissing. We did hear her parents turn off the t.v. and go to bed. Then Leota decided we’d try lying on top of one another. We did that but it made my stomach feel terrible.

  “Molly, let’s take our pajamas off and do that.”

  “Okay, but we got to remember to put them back on before morning.” It was much better without the pajamas. I could feel her cool skin all over my body. That really was a lot better. Leota started kissing me with her mouth open. Now my stomach was going to fall out on the floor. Great, I am found dead in the Bisland home with my stomach hanging outa my mouth. “Leota, that makes my stomach hurt a lot more but it’s kinda good too.”

  “Mine too.”

  We kept on. If we were going to die from stomach trouble we were resolved to die together. She began to touch me all over and I knew I was really going to die. Leota was bold. She wasn’t afraid to touch anything and where her knowledge came from was a secret but she knew what she was after. And I soon found out.

  The next morning we went to school like any two sixth-grade girls. I fell asleep during fractions. Leroy gave me a poke and snickered. Leota looked at me with those dreamy eyes and I hurt all over again. We couldn’t move to Florida, we just couldn’t.

  But we did. Leota came down on the day we packed up the old Dodge truck and the 1940 Packard. She and I hung around while Carrie put the last things away then called me to the car. I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her then ran to the car. We wrote a few times after that, then the letters drifted off. I didn’t see Leota again until 1968.

  Our raggedy caravan kept to the coast as we moved slowly through the flatlands of the South. Carl and Ep detoured to take us kids to Richmond and there we saw a stuffed seal that had come down to swim around Richmond in the 1800s. There was a stuffed Indian too, but he made me sick. Leroy, Ted, and I liked the Civil War uniforms best. The Confederate ones were the prettiest because they had gold braid all down on the cuffs of the sleeves. Leroy confessed if he didn’t become a famous actor, he’d become a soldier so he could wear gold braid on his sleeves. I said that was okay but then he couldn’t wear lipstick and he’d have to follow orders.

  The journey dragged on and we nearly went crazy cooped up in the car. Carrie invented a license plate game that helped. First one to get one hundred points wins. The plates of the state you were going through counted one point. Every state in the South aside from that state was two points. Northern states were five points and Midwestern ones were ten. Western states were twenty points and California plates were thirty. I knew we’d never see California plates because only movie stars lived out there, and why’d they want to be driving around these washed-out lands?

  Once in Athens, Georgia, we pulled over to eat and go to the bathroom. Leroy, Ted, and I popped out of the car and zoomed into the dinky restaurant that smelled of years of grease. I sped past the door the boys used and into the next one. Carrie seized my arm as I was coming out.

  “You got no sense, girl. You do that again and I’m gonna whale you good, you hear me? That’s the colored room and you stay out.” I wasn’t about to argue with her in front of strangers, but when we got back in the car I asked Carl what all that meant. Carrie turned to him. “See, she won’t listen to me. You make her listen.”

  “Down South things are a little different than up in York. Here the whites and the coloreds don’t mix and you’re not to mess with those people, although you are to be mannerly should you ever have to talk to one. Your mother was trying to save you from getting in trouble someday.”

  “Daddy, that’s no different than up home in York. They just don’t put ‘Colored’ over the bathroom doors, that’s all.”

  “You little smartmouth, you shut your trap,” Carrie warned.

  “No, I ain’t shutting my mouth. It’s no different except for the signs. I ain’t gonna sit here and pretend it’s different when it ain’t.” Leroy tugged my sleeve fearing a fight. I gave him a job. “Daddy, why should I shut up?”

  “You got a point there, kid, but around here people get more riled up about coloreds than they do in the North. Other than that, you’re right. I can’t see it’s no different neither.” Carrie said we were both teched and looked glumly out the window.

  “Since I don’t know who my real folks are maybe they’re colored. Maybe it’s all right for me to go in those bathrooms.”

  “My God!” Carrie exploded, “if you ain’t enough trouble now you want to go be a nigger.”

  Carl laughed and the sun caught on his gold tooth and reflected back on the window. “It’d show, Molly. Who knows what you are, you’re a mongrel, that’s all.”

  “She’s darker than the rest of us, Uncle Carl.” Leroy piped up.

  “She’s got brown eyes, none of us got brown eyes.”

  “Lots of people have brown eyes and are olive complected; Italians and Spaniards are like that.”

  “Hey Molly, maybe you’re a spic,” Leroy offered.

  “I don’t care what the hell I am. And I ain’t staying away from people because they look different.”

  Carrie whirled around in a full fury and spat. “If I ever see you mixing with the wrong kind, I’m gonna wring your neck, brat. You try it and see how far you get.”

  “Cat, children don’t understand these things. No reason to get so upset. Your mother’s trying to save you trouble, Molly. Let it lie.”

  When we hit Florida, we were all excited but that didn’t last long. We drove and drove and it was still Florida. Florence said we were going down the east coast to the southern tip because that’s where all the jobs and money were. Finally we pulled up in Ft. Lauderdale. Carl said Miami was full of Jews, so he’d try this place first. I couldn’t believe there’d be a whole city where people walked around with their hands in their pants, but I didn’t ask. Ft. Lauderdale was laced with canals and palm trees, and everyone liked it a lot. Within a week Carl had found a job in a butcher shop in the northeast of the city. Ep got one the week after that putting jalousie windows in houses, but the company wanted him to move up to West Palm Beach. He said he would, so Leroy, Ted and Ep moved up to Loxahachee and lived in a trailer. It looked like a fat silver larva squatted on four acres of scrub. We didn’t get a trailer but a house next to the Florida East Coast Railway and behind an electrical power plant that hummed constantly. The only time you couldn’t hear the hum was when the train came through.

  Every Sunday we went up to Loxahachee or Leroy, Ted, and Ep came down to see us. Leroy had a .22 rifle and thought he was hot shit. Ted was working after school in another gas station and I was mostly hanging around Holiday Park because there was nothing else to do and Carrie wouldn’t let me have a .22.

  That September I went to Naval Air Junior High School, a makeshift school in Navy barracks leftover from World War II. The teachers were leftover too, and I was bored out of my mind. I kept to myself to see who was who in that place before I made any friends. There were a fair amount of rich kids at Naval Air. You could tell them by their clothes and the way they talked. I knew enough from English lessons by this time to know they had good grammar. They held themselves away from the red-neck kids. I didn’t mix with anybody. I knew
I wasn’t rich but then I wasn’t walking around with little plastic clothespins on my collar like all the red-neck girls either. The boys were much worse than the girls. They had long greasy hair and wore denim jackets with bloody eyeballs drawn on them. Hot as hell, they’d wear those denim jackets and black motorcycle boots and they were dirty mouthed to go along with it.

  Back in the Hollow we were all the same. Maybe Cheryl Spiegelglass had a little more, but the gap didn’t seem so wide. Here it was a distinct line drawn between two camps and I was certain I didn’t want to be on the side with the greasy boys that leered at me and talked filthy. But I had no money. It took me all of seventh grade to figure out how I would take care of myself in this new situation, but I did figure it out.

  For one thing I made good grades and they counted for a lot. You couldn’t go to college without good grades. Even in junior high school, the rich kids talked about college. If I made those grades, I’d get a scholarship, then I’d go too. I also had to stop talking the way we talked at home. I could think bad grammar all I wanted, but I learned rapidly not to speak it. Then there was the problem of clothes. I couldn’t afford all those clothes. The next fall, when Carrie took me to a Lerner Shop for my wardrobe, I told her I didn’t want two-dollar blouses from Lerner’s. She didn’t get mad like I expected. In fact, she seemed pleased that I was taking an interest in my appearance. It gave her hope for my femininity. She agreed that I could buy a few good things from a better store. Kids at school may have noticed that I wore the same things a lot, but at least they were good things. And I knew I couldn’t make my way by throwing parties. What would we all do, dance to the power plant hum? Anyway, I wasn’t up for bringing those snots home. I decided to become the funniest person in the whole school. If someone makes you laugh you have to like her. I even made my teachers laugh. It worked.

  It was about this time during the last of eighth grade that Leroy and I began to understand we weren’t going to run away together and become famous actors. One Sunday when the ixora were in full bloom and everything was bright red we went up to Loxahachee. Leroy and I were down by the canal at Old Powerline Road, fishing. Leroy wasn’t a tub any more. He had grown his hair into a d.a. that curled over his denim jacket with the bloody eyeballs on it.

  “Hey, is it true you’re flunking out this year?”

  “Yeah, the old man is ready to take the strap to me but I don’t give a damn. School’s stupid. There’s nothing they can teach me. I want to go make money and buy me a Bonneville Triumph like Craig’s.”

  “Me too, and I’d paint mine candy apple red.”

  “You can’t have one. Girls can’t have motorcycles.”

  “Fuck you, Leroy. I’ll buy an army tank if I want to and run over anyone who tells me I can’t have it.”

  Leroy cocked his slicked head and looked at me. “You know, I think you’re a queer.”

  “So what if I am, except I’m not real sure what you mean by that.”

  “I mean you ain’t natural, that’s what I mean. It’s time you started worrying about your hair and doing those things that girls are supposed to do.”

  “Since when are you telling me what to do, lardass? I can still lay you out flat.” Leroy backed off a few paces, because he knew it was true and he wasn’t up for no fight especially since we were near a bed of sandspurs. “How come you’re all of a sudden so interested in my being a lady?”

  “I dunno. I like you the way you are, but then I get confused. If you’re doing what you please, out there riding around on motorcycles, then what am I supposed to do? I mean how do I know how to act if you act the same way?”

  “What goddamn difference does it make to you what I do? You do what you want and I do what I want.”

  “Maybe I don’t know what I want,” his voice wavered. “Besides, I’m a chicken and you’re not. You really would go around on a candy apple red Triumph and give people the finger when they stared at you. I don’t want people down on me.” Leroy started to cry. I pulled him close to me, and we sat on the bank of the canal that was stinking in the noon sun.

  “Hey, what is it? You gotta be crying over more than me fixing my hair and riding a bike. Tell me. You know I’ll never tell.”

  “I’m all mixed up. First, there’s the gang at school. They’re all tough and if I don’t act tough, they’ll whip my ass and laugh me right outa the school. I got to smoke and swear and take cars apart. I like taking cars apart, but I don’t care about the smoking and the swearing, you know? But you gotta do it. You don’t do it and they say you’re queer.”

  “You mean queer for real—sucking-cock queer?”

  “Yeah, and there’s this one poor bastard, oh, sorry, there’s this one poor guy, Joel Centers. Joel’s skinny and tall and he likes school. He does his lessons everyday and he likes English class best of all. English. You should see what they do to him. Nobody’s doing that to me.”

  “Who cares what those dumb jocks think? Anyway, you can play along with them, and as soon as we both get out of high school we can hotfoot it up to a big city. We can do what we want then. And that’s only four years away.”

  “Might as well be a hundred. I got to worry about right now and at the rate I’m going, I’m not getting outa high school in four years. I’m sure to flunk a few more times.”

  “So we wait until I get out, then we leave. It’s not so impossible.”

  “Yes it is. You’re different than I am. You make good grades and know how to act with different kinds of people who aren’t like us. I can’t do those things.”

  “You can learn. You’re not deaf, dumb, and blind.”

  “Sure, then they’ll call me a queer for sure.”

  “Leroy, you are harping very heavy on this queer thing. First you tell me I’m a queer, and now you are so worried everybody’s gonna think you’re one. You look like an ordinary person. What are you worried about?”

  “You swear never to tell. You promise me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, a couple of weeks ago I was down at Jack’s Gulf station where Ted’s working, you know? So there’s this old guy, Craig, hangs around there. He’s maybe 25 or something like that and he lifts weights, you should see his muscles. And he’s got the biggest, hottest Triumph in all Palm Beach County. He’s all the time taking me for rides. He don’t look like no queer to me. Not with all those muscles and that deep voice. We’re getting to be friends, him and me. The guys at school really get jealous when they see me on that bike, you know. Nearly kills them. So one night we got out drinking, I didn’t get drunk, just feelin good. We were out near to Belle Blade, out in the scrubs and well, Craig puts his hand on my crotch. I was scared shitless but it felt good. He gives me this blow job and it felt great, really great. So now I’m scared. Really scared. Maybe I’m a queer. Damn, the old man finds out, Ted, they’ll kill me for sure.”

  “You tell anybody besides me?”

  “No, you think I’m crazy? You’re the only one in the world I can tell because I think maybe you’re queer too. I remember all of us kissing on old Leota B. Bisland.”

  “You seen Craig again?”

  “I stayed away from the station for a couple of days after that. I couldn’t face him. Then he came tearing down the road to the trailer after I got home from school, and nobody’s home so we talked and he tells me not to worry. He’s not telling anyone, because they’ll throw him in jail for corrupting a minor. Then he tells me he loves me and tried to kiss me. I may be queer but I ain’t kissing no man. But I let him suck me off again. Shit, I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  “Keep doing it if it feels good. Hide it, that’s all. It’s nobody’s business what you’re doing anyway, Leroy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s the way I figure it. I’m just scared someone’s gonna find out and throw Craig in jail or beat me to shit. The guys at school roll queers all the time. I ain’t up for being blasted to hell, for sure.”

  “Leroy, you screwed any girls?”

  “
Yeah, I screwed this blonde whore at the Blue Dog Inn one night. Everybody had a shot at her. I didn’t think it was so great. I mean it was okay but it wasn’t so great. You been fucking around?”

  “Naw, it’s harder for girls. I go doin it and I lose everything, you know. Carrie and Florence would put me in a convent plus the whole damn school would run me to the ground. But I’ll do it on the sly, the first chance I get. See, the real problem is getting the boy to shut his mouth. They screw a girl and they got to announce it to the whole friggin’ world. I got to find a boy with his tongue cut out or something.”

  “You ain’t worried about getting pregnant?”

  “No, I ain’t that stupid.”

  “Do you think I’m a queer?”

  “I think you are Leroy Denman, that’s what I think. I don’t give a flying fuck what you do, you’re still Leroy. It’s kinda cool that Craig likes you and you get to fly around on that big machine. He sounds nice. And he sounds better than pumping some tired whore, who don’t give a shit if you live or die. I mean, Leroy, at least he cares about you. That’s got to count for something now, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but it makes me feel funny inside. Sometimes when I hear songs on the radio, I think that’s how I feel about Craig. That scares me a lot more than getting sucked off. What if I’m in love with him for Chris’ sake? Have you ever loved anybody?”

  “I think I loved Leota, but that was a long time ago.”

  “See, I told you you were queer.”

  “Fuck off. Why have you got to label everything? Get off that jag before I bust you one in the mouth.”

  “That’s the way it is. You ain’t gonna find many people that think like you so you’d better be ready to hear what they call you when you talk to them the way you talk to me.”

  “Guess I’ll find out for myself, because I ain’t shuttin up.” Leroy didn’t look much better than when we started this conversation. He was fiddling with his fishing pole. “You got something more to say?”