Ruby

by Cynthia Bond

Ephram slipped back to his seat and tried not to look too hard at anything. Maggie slid a bowl of hot tea across to him. He followed the steam up and spied an entire wall of the hut. Besides the knives it was stocked with shelves upon shelves of mason jars, some filled with small bones, others with brightly colored powders. There were dried frog legs, snake rattles, apple cores, fuzzy rabbits’ feet. Many jars were stuffed with herbs and roots. One seemed to be full of children’s teeth, a huge glass urn was full of black raven or crow feathers, another with bits of what looked like gristle.

  An ember popped in the oven. Ephram let a shiver take hold of his spine. He knew he had to leave, but how to maneuver Ruby out of this place? Maggie handed him a steaming bowl of tea for the girl. The smell was strong, different than his. He felt a twang of concern as he passed it to Ruby, but was soothed by the sweet of her smile as she took the cup.

  RUBY SMILED at the chocolate boy as he handed her the cup. She liked the way he grinned all droopy when she did. She smelled the hot tea. It was as black dark as the old lady. The left side of her dress, closest to the stove, was warming against her skin, but her shoes were squishy. She softly pried them off with her toes. She sipped and saw the boy Ephram frown, and her Maggie give Ma Tante a nervous look. Ruby tried to trace everything with her eyes so she could tell her friend Tanny later on.

  Maggie pointed scared-like, “And that there’s Ruby Bell, the one I tole you ’bout.”

  “I see.” Ma Tante breathed out a curl of smoke.

  Ruby looked first to the left. Then the right. Then settled, like a divining rod, into the woman’s face.

  Ma Tante hissed at her, “Drink.”

  Ruby blew across the lake of tea, then took a big sip. It was bitter. Still she took more. When the cup was almost drained Ma Tante reached over, took it and studied its well. Her eyes like coal set in butter.

  “You got company.” Was what she said.

  Ruby felt her breath coming in shallow bursts.

  “You was born with a glaze over you face. Come out the womb with the white gel what let you see into the gray world. Yes?”

  Ruby just barely nodded in agreement.

  Ma Tante reached out and grabbed Ruby’s right hand. She turned over her palm and pointed. “You got da mystic star. There.” She took her other hand. “There too. Lord child you ain’t nothing but a doorway. How many haints you count at your heels?”

  Ruby stopped dead. It was the first time anyone had seen. It meant she couldn’t pretend it was a game anymore, or a piece of a bad dream. Finally she answered, “Three.”

  “Your count be off. And more on the way.”

  Maggie and Ephram stayed still, but Ruby began trembling from somewhere near her heart.

  Ma Tante’s voice quivered deep and quiet. “Child, they ride you like a chariot ride a horse.” She spit like popping grease into the girl’s hand. Ruby felt frozen in place. Ephram pushed his seat back and stood. Maggie stayed strangely quiet.

  Ma Tante leaned into Ruby, staring, fingers digging into her wrist. Ruby could smell the old woman’s pipe breath as she came close. And something that smelled like rotten meat. “Legba, Legba, libérez cette enfant de douze mauvais esprits. Legba, Legba, libérez cette petite fille, s’il vous plaît.” Ma Tante drew back her hand and slapped Ruby across the cheek.

  Ma Tante explained to no one in particular, “Sometime they need a good exsufflation to make them leave the livin’.” She spoke to Ephram and Maggie, “Y’all go outside. I got work to do.”

  Ruby started crying. With one frightened step, Ephram put himself between Ma Tante and Ruby.

  Through her tears Ruby saw Ma Tante look at him as one would a gnat. “This child gots a powerful hex sur son esprit, done by peoples who knows how. Make her flypaper for all manner of traveling haint. May already be too late. Now get.”

  Ruby watched Ephram give way. She couldn’t stop crying, her face slick. Even still, Maggie took Ephram by the hand and led him outside. Leaving her alone with the knives, the pulled teeth and the yellow eyes.

  MAGGIE AND Ephram stepped onto the damp porch and caught the tail end of the rain. The sky was an ashen pink. Ephram heard Ruby’s hollow sobs and put his hand back on the doorknob.

  “Where you think you going?” Maggie edged.

  “Inside.”

  Maggie ducked under his arm, leaned against the door and said, “Nah-uh you ain’t.”

  “I is.”

  “That right?”

  Maggie squinted at him, mouth tight. Then never taking her eyes from him, she retrieved a Lucky and lit a dry match against something inside of her pocket. She breathed it in like air, then said, “Try.”

  They stared at each other. Maggie, coiled tight beneath a lazy smile. Ephram trembling.

  He was afraid to push past her, ashamed to sit down, so instead he asked. “Why you bring us here?”

  “I didn’t bring you.”

  “Why you bring her?”

  “She needed bringing. Now shut your black ass up and go.”

  Ephram reluctantly released the doorknob. Ruby’s sobs were softer now, blending in with the last bit of rain. Ephram left the door, looked towards the gate and instead sat on the damp step, his face burning—a red shame staining the brown of his skin.

  Maggie sat beside him. The trees, the fence, the little glass bowls, everything around them was shining and wet. Maggie blew clouds of smoke into the sky.

  She picked a bit of tobacco leaf from her tongue, and said softly, “You don’t look nothing like him.”

  In the silence, she answered for him, “Yo daddy, the Reverend Jennings. Walk like him, stink like him, talk like him.” Maggie turned to face him, bitter. Then, “You best do like he say and stay way from round here. I ain’t ’bout to let no harm come to Ruby … not while I’m yet livin’.”

  EPHRAM FELT a sudden, unspoken fury crackling in his throat like hot grease. Some of it popped, “ ’Cept leave some old lady to beat on her.”

  Maggie cut her eyes against his face, her fists tight in her lap. “Beatin’ ain’t the worse can happen to a body.” The orange tip of her cigarette devoured the white. “ ’Sides she ain’t no concern of yours. I looks after Ruby.”

  They both sat in silence. But Ephram answered her behind his eyes. No words just loose thoughts floating like the tea leaves caught in his teeth: Girls don’t look after girls.

  Maggie answered as if he had spoken aloud, “You more girl than I’ll ever be and I’m more man than you ever gone grow into.” Maggie scanned Ephram from top to toe and let out a guffaw.

  He looked at her. The cock of her head, the way she threw her bony shoulders back and puffed her chest out like a rooster. This horrible girl seemed to think she was somebody’s boyfriend. Ephram swallowed the thought as another steamed into his temples: Ain’t no way to magnetize when it’s the same between the thighs. It was something he’d heard his daddy say low to Gubber’s Uncle Clem. Both men had chuckled into their collars, but neither Gubber nor Ephram had known what it meant. Now the understanding made Ephram feel sick.

  Maggie sneered. “Now get yourself home for I whoop you into next week Sunday school.”

  Ephram didn’t move his head one inch. He sat still as earth, afraid to swallow his spit.

  Maggie let out an angle of smoke. Then, quick as a rattler, she punched Ephram across his jaw. Stunned, he felt her pinkie finger like a stone as it cut into his neck, her ring finger gouging just under the jaw. Blood collected where his molar met the lining of his cheek. He tried to swing with his right but she was on top of him, cigarette pinched between her tight lips. He tumbled down the porch stairs. She sprung after him like a cat. Ephram tried to block his head from Maggie’s assault, but she was in high gear. There were no words.

  From inside the house they heard Ruby scream. Then Ma Tante’s voice booming: “Lâchez! Lâchez!” Maggie stopped for a second, fist midair. She and Ephram turned in the direction of the door. Then Ephram tried to push up to run to the house, as Maggie smas
hed into his nose with a hard left.

  She looked straight into the boy’s eyes. He was easy to polish. Poke into his right eye, pop against his left ear. Solid like she used on Rooster Rankin. The boy didn’t know the first thing about blocking. Skin on wet skin. Smack into his lip. Blood between the crack of her fingers. Mud everywhere. She heard her Ruby cry out again. Her Ruby. Pam! Jab into the boy’s nose. More blood. Pam! Same hit again. It sprayed against her lip and cheek. His weakness made her angry, his softness lit a fire under her lungs. The cigarette never leaving her lips, she puffed deep and breathed dragon smoke into the wet air. Pam! Against the boy’s ear. Teeth. The next hit skidded on blood and bent back his nose. Pam! Maggie felt something like tears squeezing out of her eyes. Pam! She knocked them away with a blow to his chin.

  Suddenly, the door of the house shook. Glass tinkled against wood. Ma Tante’s words were blades cutting wood and nails and air: “Relâchez cette enfant … Maintenant!”

  Right cut. Upper cut. Full on. Maggie would not let herself look towards the door. Not even when she heard whimpering on the other side. He was almost finished, a few more and he would be out cold.

  Ephram squinted at Maggie through the blood in his eyes. The world was fists and red and the orange of her cigarette, but somehow, he caught her fist with both hands. Brought it to his mouth and bit hard. He saw her draw in deeper on the cigarette. And then she kicked.

  Ephram felt something rise up inside of him. Something brewed and steeped and lining the edges of his soul. It entered his left shoulder then jolted down his arm and shot into Maggie’s chest. Pow! It landed firm and back she went. Surprised. Cigarette still tight. Orange tip drawing brighter as she hopped back and kicked Ephram in the side. The man boot connecting before the foot inside brought pain. He grabbed her foot and down she fell again. He jumped on top of her, his blood sliding into the narrow part in her lips wetting the cigarette. Maggie flipped him over. They were tumbling into the small mounds of earth, tangling the red flags. Ephram shot off three crunches into her ribs. Only one made a clear connect. Maggie’s cigarette broke off, the orange dying in wet dirt.

  Inside the house, Ma Tante gathered Ruby in her arms amid the clutter of glass and stone. The child’s eyes fluttered white. Ruby tried to speak but a low croak hissed from her mouth. Ma Tante held out a painted knife to an invisible something in the gloom. “Passez cette enfant! Trouvez un autre cheval à monter!” Then Ma Tante began speaking in tongues, spit arching from her mouth into the darkness. “Schoon Netwaye li Tiszta Bersihkan Garbitu Bersihkan …” God’s gibberish lifted and filled the room.

  Outside Maggie rounded back against Ephram. She held the nap of his hair and hit his jaw with all of her might. Ephram began speaking in tongues. Strange words muttered into the gray world. Maggie paused for a moment. Leaned in. Pam! Ephram hit her face. He was on top of her. He crashed into her head. Her neck. The mud. Maggie had rolled away just in time. He heard a hairline snap as his fingers crashed into stone.

  Inside, the walls leaned towards the two. “Rompre le lien! Rompre le lien!” Ma Tante snarled. Ruby looked up as Ma Tante lifted the knife and brought it down hard, halving a pomegranate on the floor beside them.

  Ephram grabbed at his hand, the pain cutting like nails. Maggie was up in a flash, wheeling back her foot then pop into Ephram’s cheek. Ephram lay still, moon eyes walled, then fluttering, then soft and still. Head tilted into the mud.

  The juice dribbled down the part and into Ruby’s hair. Ma Tante tore open a glut of seeds and squeezed the fruit until a crown of red streamed down the young girl’s face.

  Maggie walked back to the porch as the wind brought another blanket of feathery rain. The sky sweetened and thinned as sunlight sprinkled through. She took note of the fact that Ephram was still breathing.

  Ruby held the juice against her tongue and the roof of her mouth while the old woman smoothed it into her skin, still clucking words from a fold in the black of time: “Tumulong potrebno … Duboko haja Gu-semerera esivanemad … O-negai shimasu. min faDlik Apsaugoti savo … en smeken Era berean seo Faoi deara …”

  Maggie lit a new cigarette from her porch vantage. Bent but still intact.

  “There, there, child … there, there …” Ma Tante hoisted Ruby upon her lap. Ruby looked into her yolk eyes. “I don’ mean no harm.”

  Outside, Ma Tante’s yellow cat found its way from under the house, hopped onto Maggie’s thighs and purred into her chest. Maggie petted the cat, blew out smoke and pretended not to shake.

  Ma Tante petted Ruby’s head. “I try to make it harder fo’ them to steal your soul’s purse. They’s things that happen out in them woods under the blood moon. Nights when a child like you need to stay behind locked doors. But it’s too late for that, ain’t it?”

  Ruby nodded yes.

  “They already dragged you out to they pit fire, ain’t they?”

  Ruby nodded again.

  “Already cracked open your spirit like a walnut and try to stuff they rot in there. Dat’s why them spirits pester you so. They like openings and you a sieve. You got to know they two kinds of spirits—haints is like leeches, hang on, but can’t swallow you whole. Dyboù something different. Ain’t content with nothing but snuffing out all you is—smell like a burned out candle when it come.

  “I try to suck the poison of the pit fire out. I try. Girl, you got to fly off next time they take you down there. Don’t hold fort in your body, surrender it so you can come back when they done. I’m afraid they’ll whittle you down to nothing if you keep on fightin’ ’em. Won’t be nothing left of you.” She motioned towards the door. “You tell her?”

  Ruby shook her head no.

  “Good. Don’t. She too stiff a tree to take that weight.”

  Ruby let her long neck soften and bend. Let her lungs push air out and sat there empty, until nature nudged her to breathe in.

  Ma Tante rubbed Ruby’s back, lifting only an ounce of the weight in her chest—but it was something. “Lawd, Lawd. Man and magic wasn’t never meant to go together. Dey got to rule ovah things. And magic be the ocean say you ride my wave. But when you know man be content to ride nothing ’thout breakin it first?”

  She petted Ruby’s head. “Child, they’s a rainbow of doings in this here world, but man, he only see the black and the white of it. Do good work with his right, and the Devil work with his left. Stay way from that left hand as much as you able.” Ma Tante spit into her apron and wiped Ruby’s skin clean like a mother cat.

  “Me? I am not long here, you see that, yes? I take in too many people sin when I was young and didn’t know where to put them down. So my nails and eyes yellow like piss in the sun. Some things you cannot be fix. Some can. Too early to tell how it turn for you.” Ma Tante wrapped Ruby in a furry blanket.

  She rocked her like a baby against her chest until Ruby had fallen into sleep, then set her gently on the daybed and opened the front door.

  Ma Tante looked onto the porch through the screen. “Maggie, help dat boy up and quick.”

  Maggie rose and walked to where Ephram lay, surrounded by flashing stars. “Get up.” Maggie puffed and reached her hand under the crook of his shoulder. Ephram wobbled up, leaning against Maggie. Ma Tante supervised from the porch. The rain had started again. Harder than before. The crows were complaining in the trees as Maggie sat Ephram down on the steps. For Ephram, the world was dizzy with lights and the sound of waves.

  “Come in boy.” Ma Tante waved him in. “N’, Margaret, you best sit out there ’til you can think to act right.” Maggie flicked her cigarette into the rain. Got up to leave and turned around.

  “I ain’t leavin’ ’thout Ruby.”

  “Then I guess you ain’t leavin’.”

  Maggie huffed as Ephram stumbled alongside Ma Tante into the house.

  RUBY WOKE up to the smell of cocoa. Her face sticky with dried juice and the old woman’s spit, her cheek swollen from where she’d been slapped. Miss Barbara would be mad about that. So would
her grandmother. Ruby peeked out from the moldy-smelling daybed. She would fake sleep a little while longer. Ruby couldn’t get a proper look at the boy from where she lay but she saw Ma Tante rattling around, her skirt swishing against the floor like a broom. She was fiddling with something on the table—Ruby hoped she wasn’t slipping the bones out of a live bird, as Maggie had seen her do, or cutting a hex out of a horny toad. After what she had seen, Ruby didn’t doubt a word Maggie had said. Those yellow eyes had seen the thing Ruby hid, even from herself. And when two people see a thing, for better or worse, it becomes real. Ruby felt that knowing smooth over her like tree sap and fill in a little of the ache.

  The boy Ephram fidgeted in a chair. The light caught his face and Ruby saw him, eye purple and swollen shut. Two fat lips. Nose busted for sure. Cotton balls stuffed up in it. Hand bandaged. He sat like he’d wet himself in front of class. Shamed like that. Damn Maggie.

  “Hot chocolate, y’all share,” Ruby heard Ma Tante say to Ephram. Ruby could smell the sweet bitter before it reached her and she pretended to wake.

  Ma Tante set the cup down on a side table and wiped Ruby clean with a wet towel.

  Then she handed the cup over to Ruby and turned to Ephram, “Come on over here, son.” Ephram carefully lifted himself onto the far end of the bed and sat there quiet. Ruby caught the tail end of his silence and let it settle across her lap. She sipped the hot cocoa. There was a knock on the door.

  “You ain’t ready yet,” Ma Tante called and Ruby could hear Maggie stomp across the porch and sit hard. Ruby handed the cup to Ephram.

  He waited, then took hold of the handle with his good hand. “Thank you.”

  “Maggie give me this,” Ruby said after a pause and pulled a silver thimble from her dress pocket. “From P & K. She got that five finger discount.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “She do that for me sometime. Steal me treasure. She ain’t always like that, how she were with you. She get jealous is all … that, and she ain’t too fond of your daddy, the Reverend.”