Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin

by Blew, Mary Clearman;

  Here?

  No.

  Here?

  No.

  Here?

  Yes!

  Brad jots down the street address in his notebook. Anne’s ponytail is twitching from the excitement of the hunt, but I can’t concentrate. I’m carsick from riding in the back seat, and I hold my stomach and swallow back the bitter taste that roils up to my mouth.

  Brad drives up to the rental house on the north side of the Milk River and slows.

  What about this house here, Anne?

  Yes, that’s one of them.

  Ruby?

  When I don’t answer, Brad barks at me. Ruby!

  Yes, I mumble through my clenched fingers over my mouth, and Brad parks by the curb and jots down the address.

  We’ll get to the bottom of this horror, he says. I promise.

  *

  I was eight years old that summer. Anne was going to be a junior in high school in the fall. At the police seminar where Brad learned how to uncover and root out satanic cults and detect child abuse, he also learned that children never lie about abuse. My truth issues were why we were driving through the streets on the north side of the Milk River in Brad’s car, and I was the problem. Just want to get to the truth, said Brad. I promise! We’re gonna get to the bottom of this.

  The really perplexing question had to do with the accusations and the confessions, all later recanted. Forty-eight people signed statements that they’d either witnessed or taken part in the sacrifice of babies and the rape of small children on altars, and they named the names of others who’d done the sacrificing and raping.

  And I had done the same. Named my own mother. Yes. I have a lot to be sorry for.

  Truth issues! Anne is screaming at me. Ruby, I’ll pinch you if you don’t tell the truth! I told you the truth! Now you tell it!

  Anne’s fears. Brad’s fears. What had possessed Brad and otherwise sane adults to believe in the scenes they imagined were being enacted behind their backs, just outside the edges of their vision? I once asked Brazos, who read a lot and had theories, why people seemed to want to believe in the cults and the satanic rituals. Wanted to believe in the dead babies, wanted still more vacant lots dug up, whole fields dug up to find the bones they were sure were buried somewhere.

  Brazos shook his head and talked about the Salem witch trials, which didn’t answer my question. Now I wonder if people in Versailles enjoyed the fear, if the panic was pleasurable, like living in their very own horror movie.

  A cult!

  The scene unfurls in red and orange flames that leap and spread and crackle and fill my imagination. Before such a conflagration I’m doomed; we’re all doomed. Oh, the thrill of it, the rush of panic, the surging heartbeat! Run! Run for your lives! Or gather here in the temple of despair!

  The flames rise from a brazier that has been set before the altar. Flames redden the faces of the watchers and reflect from the walls, the stained glass, the paintings of saints hung upside down. But who is the figure behind the altar, why is he hooded in black, and what is he waiting for? His eyes move behind the slits in his hood, gauging his audience, watching for—yes, now they approach the altar—his acolytes in black robes and hoods. Between them they carry the limp child. Her hair and the hem of her white dress brush the floor as they carry her. Her eyes are closed. Perhaps she has been drugged. Or is she dead? No, at least not yet.

  The acolytes lift the child to the altar and back away. And now the hooded black priest lifts the hem of her dress and folds it back, exposing her naked white legs, her hairless pubic fold—

  Stop! In the name of decency, stop!

  Except they didn’t stop. Brad and the others asked Anne and me over and over, keeping at us, insisting on details. What had we seen? How did we get the bruises on our private parts? It wasn’t really the big boys in the alley, was it! It was the Mister! Or it was what’s-his-face, my mother’s current man! Are they all a part of it? A part of the cult?

  In particular they wanted to hear about the dead babies. Where were the dead babies? Tell us where the babies are buried! Eventually, as they pieced together the stories wrung from Anne and then from me and from other frightened foster children, they dug up the vacant lot behind a church and sifted for bones, but not a dead baby did they uncover.

  *

  I can’t sit here in the parking lot forever, in the shade of dusty birches and firs, where the only shadows are those dappled by early sunlight that forecasts another scorching day, so I drag myself out of the Pontiac and up the flights of stairs to the Office of Student Accounting, where I find the outer door locked.

  I dig out my key and unlock the door and set my backpack down by my computer station. The office feels empty. No Jamie, of course. Dr. Brenner’s office door still closed, Anne’s door closed. No sign of Catina, no coffee started. Even the spider plants and philodendrons in the window look wilted and shadowy, and I try to remember if this is one of Jamie’s plant-watering days.

  After I turn on the overhead fluorescents and click the START button on my computer, I go to fetch water for coffee. Dr. Brenner arrives as I’m measuring coffee into the filter. He looks more grim and gray than ever, and his eyes linger on the empty pot.

  I shake my head. “It takes about fifteen minutes to perk.”

  He bends down, making me think of a skeleton folding at the waist, and studies the coffee maker as though to discover some flaw in its design. “Maybe we should invest in one of those Canadian velocity brewers.”

  When the door opens behind us, we both look up, but it’s Catina with her black eye plastered over with makeup and her hair a cascade of wet ringlets.

  “No Jamie, huh,” she says.

  But at least Catina is a bright presence, with her scent of citrus and this morning’s orange shirt and cropped pink pants like a sunrise lighting up the office. She sips her soda through a straw and sets her go-cup beside her computer, in no hurry to get to work.

  “I wish she had let one of you go with her,” says Dr. Brenner.

  We had tried. No, no, Jamie said. They won’t let you into the room. It’s just me and the lawyers and the CPS people.

  What are CPS people? asked Catina.

  Child Protective Services. It’s about my little girl, Jamie explained. My ex in Bozeman has custody of her. I’m trying to get custody back. Or at least visitation.

  Dr. Brenner lingers by the coffee maker with his empty mug. He’s decent, I remember Jamie saying on my first day in the student services office. This morning he seems less like an automaton, almost human, as he studies his mug as though he expects it to fill magically on its own. Fortunately, at that moment the coffee maker emits its deep climactic gurgle, and I take the pot off the burner and pour for him.

  This is also the moment, of course, that Anne Albert appears. Navy-blue silk suit this morning, navy stiletto heels, and enraged blue glare. Her clothes! If Dr. Brenner is the robot assigned to this animated cartoon office, Anne is its fashion runway model.

  Anne takes in the three of us, standing around the office coffee pot with our heads together like three conspirators against her: me in my black crow clothes, Catina in her flamboyant colors, and Dr. Brenner towering over us, a rack of bones in a gray suit. She says nothing but flicks an angry glance over us, unlocks her office door, walks in, and closes the door behind her.

  “Well,” says Dr. Brenner. He lifts his coffee mug to me, like a toast, and takes himself off to his own office.

  Catina sucks on her straw. “She never even said good morning.”

  “Does she ever?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing new then.”

  “Oh, there’s something new coming down. You just wait.”

  The morning rolls on.

  The light in the window gradually strengthens, and Jamie’s hanging plants get their color back. Catina plops herself into her chair and uncovers her computer, talking to herself in a whisper. I’ve been assigned a new set of student numbers to enter, and after
a few minutes, thankfully, I find my rhythm on my keyboard and let it lull me. No point in trying to decipher Anne Roscovitch’s—Anne Albert’s—strange behavior. I stop hearing Catina’s whisper or the clacking of a printer. Only, when someone walks down the corridor outside the office, I hear a trailing thread of song that must be playing on an electronic gadget tuned to the golden oldie country station I listen to in the Pontiac. A rich voice singing about kissing an angel good morning. The song fades with the footsteps.

  13

  Another morning. More of the same. Seven thirty, and already the air in the admin foyer is warm and stale. By afternoon we’ll all be sweltering.

  I lock the Pontiac and walk under the birches in the patterns of sun and shadows, counting sidewalk cracks to try to stay in the present. Other women, mostly classified staff, hurry toward the administration building in a rat-a-tat of heeled shoes on cement and high-pitched voices, a clamor of pointless noise.

  On the third floor I smell the coffee as soon as I open the door to the Office of Student Accounting. This is a good sign. Jamie’s back, and the coffee maker is bubbling, just the way it’s supposed to do, and Dr. Brenner is waiting with his mug. He gives me his robot’s faint smile, but I have the feeling I’ve interrupted something between him and Jamie.

  Maybe she’s been telling him what happened at her hearing. I want to know too, but I’m not going to ask. When the coffee maker utters its last gurgle and Jamie pours for all of us, her eyes meet mine, deep and brown but expressionless.

  And then Catina bursts in— “Oh, I’m late, I’m late, I’m so fricking late”—in bright yellow pants and a yellow T that looks brand new and her black eye almost completely faded. She looks me a question as Jamie turns back to her computer, and I shrug.

  “So. The first half-session is almost over,” says Dr. Brenner.

  We all know that. We’re well into June now, and we nod, and he retreats to his own office with his coffee, looking stonier and bonier than ever. He’s never told us more about Anne or her divorce, although we know Anne is planning some leave.

  We work steadily through the morning. With the half-session only a few days from being over, we’re getting student records to update. Plenty to do. But ten o’clock is time for our first coffee break, and Catina and I glance at each other, but Jamie pushes her chair back and slips out of the office by herself.

  “It must have been bad,” Catina hisses, and I nod. I’m wondering just how bad the outcome of Jamie’s hearing was and what she might have been telling Dr. Brenner, with the result that I’ve been having trouble finding my rhythm, losing my place in the lines of numbers and striking the wrong keys. The whole office feels wrong with Jamie in a mood.

  But Jamie comes back almost immediately. Perhaps she walked down to the women’s room and washed her face. Her eyes are bright, but otherwise she is her sturdy fireplug self.

  “If we skip the break, we can take a little longer lunch,” she says, and so we all go back to work.

  The heat bears down when we leave the office at noon and walk across the courtyard to the food court. The leaves hang limp and unmoving above us, and the pavement shimmers with mirages. I feel trickles of sweat through my hair, the damp tendrils pulling out of my braid, the weight of the air, the sunlight of the here and now.

  It’s easier to stay in the here and now when I’m with Jamie. Jamie stands for no nonsense, none of the mind floating and memory trolling that comes over me, and I’m thankful she’s back, even in a mood.

  The frigid air-conditioning in the food court hits like a blow for the first few minutes, until our startled pores shrink back in our skins—“Whew,” says Catina, and I know what she means. We pick up our trays and go our separate ways, Jamie for the burger bar, Catina for pizza, and me for salad, to meet at our usual table near the stairs.

  Jamie sets down her cola, takes a long draw through her straw, and studies her burger. “Ought to give these up.”

  “Why?” says Catina.

  Jamie shrugs. Something’s on her mind, though, and I think she might be ready to tell us what happened in court.

  But no.

  “Ruth, you were in foster care when you were a kid, right?”

  “Yes,” I say, surprised.

  She takes a bite of her burger and chews for a moment.

  “How old were you when they took you?”

  “When CPS took me away? The first time I was six. The second time? I was eight.”

  Another long pause. Catina, wide-eyed, has forgotten the slice of pizza that’s halfway to her mouth.

  “How long were you in care?”

  A trickier question. I think about an answer and come up with the truth as far as it goes. “I guess—until I was old enough to, well, take off on my own.”

  “So you never went back to your mother.”

  “No.”

  But Jamie never asks her next question because here’s Isaiah with his sloping walk and his smile. He pulls out a chair for himself at our table as though he’s been invited.

  We all stare at him. And what Isaiah must be seeing—Catina with her mouth open for her forgotten pizza, Jamie edgy and glaring at his interruption, and me with my messy memories probably written all over my face.

  But his eyes are on me, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what he wants. All I know is that he’s fractured the shell I thought I’d grown and let the old memories of Versailles crawl out in their ugly larval shapes. Act like a normal person isn’t going to do it for me.

  Okay, so at least act like a grown-up.

  I lay down my fork among the chunks of tomato I’ve been pushing around my plate and look Isaiah in the face. His thick black lashes, his brown eyes that are fixed on me. The unfamiliar crow’s-feet web that spreads to his cheekbones and reminds me that years have passed, years Isaiah spent doing what? I have no idea. I feel a weight at the thought of the years. A few more years and I’ll be thirty myself.

  “What are you doing here, Isaiah?”

  He answers me literally. “I’m picking up certification credits. What, you don’t believe it? That I’m a teacher?”

  His eyes slide around me to take in Jamie and Catina. “I’m the wrestling coach at Mike Mansfield High School, and I teach history and physical education.”

  Mike Mansfield High School, where the corridors seem to stretch forever and turn dark corners, and the long overhead fluorescent bulbs burn out so regularly that there were rumors of electrical shorts. Anne Roscovitch had graduated by the time I started at Mike Mansfield as a freshman, but I still sensed the older girls whispering about me as I passed their lockers. Too many stories were still too fresh.

  “You ever think I’d turn out to be a history teacher, Ruby?”

  “No.”

  “So you teach history,” said Jamie. She’s bristling at this stranger who has interrupted our precious lunch break, while other classified staff women stare at us with open curiosity as they walk past our table on their way to the recycling bins. Jamie will have her fill of droppers-by and gossip seekers to chase out of our office this afternoon. I can just hear them: Who’s the black guy?

  Isaiah looks completely at ease. But then he has always looked at ease. By now he’s probably used to people staring at the only black guy in the room, maybe the only black guy on campus except for some basketball players. But in the middle of the cafeteria, as voices chatter and plates and forks clatter their way along the conveyor belt to the dishwasher, Brad Gilcannon is pounding his fist into his hand and threatening Isaiah—God damn you, I swear I’ll kick your ass from here to the courthouse if you don’t tell me the truth—while the rest of us kids cower, thinking Isaiah will surely get killed this time.

  Ain’t gonna tell you no nevermind that never happened!

  One of Isaiah’s favorite tactics to drive Brad crazy was pretending to be a badass black city street kid, when the only streets he’d ever seen of a town bigger than Versailles were on television.

  “We’ve got to
get back to the office,” Jamie says, and pushes away her plate. “Look at the time!”

  “Where you living these days, Ruby?”

  “With—” I hesitate. “My old piano teacher. She has a spare room, and I can—well, help out.”

  “Mrs. Pence?”

  “You know her?”

  I can’t think how, and Isaiah doesn’t get a chance to answer, because Catina has already carried off her tray and Jamie is impatient, waiting for me. As I lay down my fork, Isaiah reaches across the table and touches my fingers. “Big piano-playing hands,” he murmurs as Jamie pulls me away.

  “Who the hell was that?” she says, more to Catina than to me.

  “He’s cute,” says Catina.

  *

  Brad’s fights with Isaiah are getting worse.

  Isaiah and I are the only foster kids still living with Brad. After the appeals and then the exonerations began, one by one the other three boys were taken away, and we’re never told where they went or why. No Curtis one day. No T.J. a few days later. Then no Paul. Then Anne turned eighteen and moved into a dormitory at Versailles State, although Brad tried to talk her out of the move and was grumpy for days afterward.

  After they’re gone, Isaiah and I get along better. Just the two of us, after all, except for the little Gilcannon boys.

  Brad is testy and drawn into himself and not just because of Anne. He goes to work on his shift, and then he comes home and takes his plate and leaves the dinner table to eat by himself in front of the six o’clock news on the TV, and then he watches it all over again on the nine o’clock news. The abuse convictions and then the appeals and exonerations in Versailles, Montana, are making national headlines, and Brad is eating more and drinking more.

  Isaiah comes home late from high school football practice. Brad looks up sharply at the sound of the front door opening and closing. Pulls himself out of his TV-watching recliner, confronts Isaiah on his way to the kitchen.